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Non-epistemic values and scientific assessment: an adequacy-for-purpose view

Lusk, Greg; Elliott, Kevin C.

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Authors

Kevin C. Elliott



Abstract

The literature on values in science struggles with questions about how to describe and manage the role of values in scientific research. We argue that progress can be made by shifting this literature’s current emphasis. Rather than arguing about how non-epistemic values can or should figure into scientific assessment, we suggest analyzing how scientific assessment can accommodate non-epistemic values. For scientific assessment to do so, it arguably needs to incorporate goals that have been traditionally characterized as non-epistemic. Building on this insight, we show how the adequacy-for-purpose framework recently developed for assessing scientific models can provide a general framework for describing scientific assessment so that it goes beyond purely epistemic considerations. Adopting this framework has significant advantages and opens the possibility of effecting a partial rapprochement between critics and proponents of the value-free ideal.

Citation

Lusk, G., & Elliott, K. C. (2022). Non-epistemic values and scientific assessment: an adequacy-for-purpose view. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 12(2), Article 35. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-022-00458-w

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 8, 2022
Online Publication Date Jun 1, 2022
Publication Date 2022-06
Deposit Date Jul 15, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal European Journal for Philosophy of Science
Print ISSN 1879-4912
Electronic ISSN 1879-4920
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 12
Issue 2
Article Number 35
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-022-00458-w

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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