Socialized Knowledge, Values and Scientific Objectivity

Traditional accounts of scientific knowledge often oppose the involvement of values in

scientific practices. Their arguments usually revolve around the idea that values can impair

the objectivity of science and prevent it from reaching its goal. However, Helen E. Longino

(2004) argues that the ideal of a value-free science is possible neither practically nor in

principle. She then goes on to show through her social account of knowledge that values can

in fact help realize the scientific agenda. I agree with Longino that her overall account not

only provides us with a new philosophical conception of science in place of the value-free

ideal, but its recognition and appreciation can also improve the fruitfulness of scientific

activities.

Longino’s rejection of the value-free ideal and her conception of a social account of

knowledge begins with an analysis of the underdetermination problem. The

underdetermination thesis as classically understood is that empirical data does not determine

one unique scientific theory to explain the data, but there could be multiple theories that are

empirically equivalent but inconsistent among themselves. This is different from the problem

of induction as the latter has to do with “a generalization and its instances”, whereas the

former applies to theoretical statements that are neither a mere generalization of the data nor

identical to observation statements in terms of their content (Longino 2002, 125). A very

simplistic example is the following: Imagine that we have given some mathematical and

geometric puzzles to 1000 male and 1000 female individuals around the age of 45 from

different districts of Istanbul, and the results show that the males scored slightly higher than

the females. If we link this data to the theory that the average male is likely to score higher

than the average female on mathematical and geometric puzzles, then we will have a problem

of induction. But if we come up with the theories that (T1) the result of our test stems from

the difference between the nurturing and education of males and females, or (T2) the result of
our test stems from the inherent and unchangeable-by-nurture biological differences in

mathematical capacity between males and females, then both of these theories should explain

the data while being incompatible. This would be a case of underdetermination.

Longino argues that when we are faced with underdetermination, there emerges a gap

between data and hypotheses/theories that are constructed upon the data. This gap is filled

with background assumptions, including “substantive and methodological hypotheses that…

form the framework within which inquiry is pursued, and…structure the domain about which

inquiry is pursued” (2004, 132). What this means is that in the course of empirical reasoning,

interpreting certain observations as evidence for (or against) certain scientific hypotheses and

theories involves more than the evaluation of data’s empirical adequacy. In linking these

observations to hypotheses and theories, scientists employ background assumptions, which

are not necessarily empirical or descriptive, and can be of other kinds of beliefs as well.

Interpreting correlational observations as evidence for a causal relation, for example, requires

some metaphysical assumptions about causality.

For Longino, underdetermination is an unescapable phenomenon as long as the scientific

hypotheses and theories are not basically the same with or a generalized version of

observations. This makes the involvement of background assumptions an inescapable part of

scientific reasoning, hence “…in principle, there is no way to mechanically eliminate

background assumptions” (Longino 2004, 132). She then continues to argue that therefore,

values cannot be mechanically eliminated from scientific reasoning, too. But this is rather a

trivial point in her account, for it seems self-evident that the values of consistency, truth,

fidelity to reality, accuracy of predictions, etc. are all presupposed by nearly all accounts of

good science to positively influence scientific activities. But these values, Longino argues, are

traditionally considered to be cognitive values, a category that is thought to be distinct from

social (and personal, pragmatic, moral, etc.) values. At this point, she needs to deconstruct the
traditional dichotomy in order to show that no value or no kind of value in principle impairs

the rationality and objectivity of scientific reasoning.

Philosophers such as Hugh Lacey (2004) argued that although complete value-freeness is

implausible in scientific activities, we can distinguish between cognitive and social values,

and hold that only cognitive values should play a role at the stage of accepting or rejecting

theories in scientific practices. Longino does not explicitly denies that such distinction can be

made or can be useful for certain purposes, but argues that it will not be a strict and mutually

exclusive distinction because of the social character of cognitive values. She points out that

scientific inquiry is a social activity, that it takes place within a scientific community that

itself in turn takes place in a larger community. Scientists are dependent on each other for

instruments, experiments, ideas, theories, etc. Moria Howes (2015) mentions that individuals

acquire intellectual virtues by following those who are deemed to be intellectually virtuous,

and also that individuals’ cognitive characters are shaped by social relations. Regardless of

Howes’s account of virtues, her two points support Longino’s claim that a part of being a

scientist is go through a scientific education. Not limited to a formal education, this means

that a person’s cognitive character, his questioning, inferencing, analyzing, theorizing,

justifying, etc. skills are shaped by community. Furthermore, moving from individuals to

community, scientific knowledge itself is also a communal product of scientists’ altogether,

rather than the collection of “the products of such imagined individuals into one whole”

(Longino 1990, 68).

Lastly, justification too is of a social character in Longino’s epistemology. Seeing that there is

a logical and formal gap between theories and observations due to underdetermination,

Longino does not conclude that we are therefore incapable of justifying our theories. Instead,

the filling of this gap with reference to background assumptions means that justification is

still possible, but it is better understood not as a formal relation between observation and
theoretical statements, but as an intersubjective response of the community to knowledge-

claims. What follows is that the justification of statements is not only a matter of their

correspondence to reality, but also a matter of their coherence with background assumptions,

which have an irreducible social element.

I think Longino’s analysis of scientific practices, scientific knowledge and justification shows

very well that science is ultimately a social practice with irreducible social elements, and that

scientific reasoning is not in principle free of the influence of values. Nevertheless this

position is sometimes criticized for making scientific inquiry too arbitrary. Gregor Betz, for

instance, seems to favor a rather pessimistic reading of philosophers such as Longino, for he

argues that according to the social accounts of knowledge, all scientific claims are necessarily

accompanied by social background assumptions that give these claims a substantial risk of

being false (2013). He then argues that if we use “hedged hypotheses that fully make explicit

the lack of understanding” (218) through “epistemic qualification and conditionalization”

(214), we do not have to rely on values to set forth scientific hypotheses. I think both Betz’s

and Longino’s accounts actually support very similar views of how science in practice does

and ought to work. The difference in their philosophical accounts of it, however, seems to

result from a bit of a misunderstanding on Betz’s part.

The key point of Betz’s account is his distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic

values, the latter of which he wishes to banish from the scientific realm. However, Longino

successfully debunks this myth as we have seen above. What is interesting for this paper’s

purposes is that Betz argues at length how “allegedly value-laden decisions can be

systematically avoided…by making uncertainties explicit and articulating findings carefully”

(2013, 207). If these decisions are indeed value-laden as Longino argues, then what Betz takes

to be the good way of doing science involves values. Betz is definitely right in claiming that

reporting uncertain results is a poor way of doing science. The difference between poorly
written-out scientific hypotheses full of uncertainties, and carefully articulated scientific

hypotheses that make uncertainties explicit through epistemic methods such as probabilistic

models is the difference between good science and bad science, between objective and non-

objective science for Longino as well. Assuming that justification has an indispensable social

feature due to underdetermination, what makes well-articulated hedged hypotheses better and

objective is not a matter of some inherent, strictly epistemic qualities of these statements, but

the role they play in a community’s scientific practices. In other words, the question of how to

achieve objectivity does not ask how to exclude non-epistemic values from scientific

statements, but asks how to use values in our favor.

Longino’s answer to this question is transformative criticism, but before explaining how

transformative criticism can help achieve objectivity, we need to discuss monism and

pluralism. They are “two contrasting assumptions…about the content of scientific

knowledge” (Longino 2004, 130). Longino defines them as the following: for any natural

process, monism holds that there is only one corresponding model while pluralism holds that

there can be multiple models; monism also holds that theories of natural processes can be

consistently incorporated in a single grand theory while pluralism holds that this is not

necessarily the case (2004, 130). Longino suggests to somehow naturalize these two

metaphysical positions, arguing that instead of committing ourselves to either position, we

should assume that both theses are possible, and we can wait until we have evidence, i.e., until

every natural process is modeled, if we want to pick a side. Longino argues that a good

account of knowledge should be compatible with both positions. I think while this may seem

like a good move especially considering its rhetorical power, these two positions may even be

compatible with one another in the following sense: considering the fallibilistic nature of

empirical knowledge and assuming that a logically indubitable ultimate theory of the natural

world is conceptually impossible for humanbeings to develop, any evidence that would
support one of these metaphysical positions would also support the other. Even if we develop

a monistic theory of everything, it is still possible for us to better explain the natural world

with an additional theory that is not wholly consistent with the grand theory, or even if we

develop pluralistic theories to explain everything, it is still possible for us to find a way to

combine them into a monistic account. Hence it seems to me that the talk of monism and

pluralism does not really add anything into Longino’s philosophical account apart from

showing that indeed the talk of monism and pluralism does not really help us, and that even if

we make sense of such a distinction, we should be open to both of them.

Back to transformative criticism: it is how values, including social, may prove themselves

useful to increasing the success and objectivity of science. Longino holds that since scientists

rely on their background assumptions to develop theories and hypotheses, and especially since

these assumptions are usually implicit, scientists may not realize that their theories and

hypotheses are constructed upon such-and-such assumptions. They may not be aware of

alternative approaches to the data, and they may even find some of these alternatives

incoherent since they might conflict with scientists’ own assumptions. It is also possible that

irrelevant personal preferences or wishful thinking on the scientist’s part may influence the

course of scientific reasoning, which could result in unsuccessful theories. To solve such

problems, Longino suggests to shape the scientific community to allow for transformative

criticism, which is an effective criticism of scientific claims in a manner to improve the

reliability of scientific knowledge and help realize scientific progress. Objectivity, understood

as the degree to which transformative criticism is found in scientific inquiries, is achieved not

by the dismissal of subjectivity altogether or “canonizing one subjectivity over others, but by

assuring that what is ratified as knowledge has survived criticism from multiple points of

view” (Longino 2002, 129). What this means is that though our theories and hypotheses have

an irreducible social as well as personal elements, if we subject these theories and hypotheses
to as many different points of view with different background assumptions as possible, our

chances of catching unfruitful, irrelevant, false, unnecessary assumptions will increase. Not

only that, but our chances of finding out fruitful, relevant, true and crucial assumptions will

also increase, which in turn fortify the justification of theories based on these assumptions. To

sum up, transformative criticism is what makes socialized scientific justification and

knowledge possible, which is in this account a matter of

not just…testing hypotheses against data, but also…subjecting hypotheses, data,

reasoning and background assumptions to criticism from a variety of
perspectives…, [and] establishing what the data are, what counts as acceptable
reasoning, which assumptions are legitimate, and which are not. (Longino 2004,
133)

Values come to play a role in achieving transformative criticism through background

assumptions as well as through public standards that the community uses to evaluate theories

and to make the critical dialogue effective. One way values may be good for science through

background assumptions is that different backgrounds with different values may provide

previously unconsidered approaches, or criticisms of previously unconsidered assumptions;

for instance, among Longino’s own examples are “feminist interventions in physical

anthropology and primate ethology…that has improved quality of science in those areas”

(2004, 138). As for public standards, there could be different amounts of weight placed on the

predictive power of a theory and its coherence with already established theories according to

different standards that involve different values. Conservativeness and open-mindedness, or

various attitudes towards various risk levels constitute good examples of how values can

effect science.

In the end, the strength of Longino’s arguments comes from her conceptual rejection of value-

free science as well as the social/cognitive dichotomy. I believe her conception of

transformative criticism is quite useful, but even if none of her suggestions for how values can

be good for science works, her arguments still show that scientific knowledge is not
conceptually separable from sociality. I believe once we recognize and appreciate the social

aspect of science, our chances of putting values to good use in scientific practices will

increase.
 References

Longino, Helen E. (2002). The Fate ofKnowledge. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

Longino, Helen E. (2004). How Values Can Be Good for Science. In Gereon Wolters, Peter
Machamer (Eds.), Science, Values, and Objectivity (127-142). Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press.

Longino, Helen E. (1990). Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific
Inquiry. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

Lacey, Hugh. (2004). Is There a Significant Distinction Between Cognitive and Social
Values?. In Gereon Wolters, Peter Machamer (Eds.), Science, Values, and Objectivity, (24-
50). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Howes, Moria. (2015). Objectivity, Intellectual Virtue, and Community. In Flavia Padovani,
Alan Richardson, Jonathan Y. Tsou (Eds.), Objectivity in Science (173-188). Springer
International Publishing.

Betz, Gerard. (2013). In Defence of the Value-Free Ideal. European Journal for the
Philosophy of Science, 3: 207-220.