Ernan McMullin

Values in Science

Science is value-laden: certain epistemic values are integral to the entire process of
assessment in science.

Examples: predictive accuracy, coherence, external consistency, unifying

power, fertility.

These have gained recognized as values characteristic of science.

McMullin: If judgment in science is value-laden, then we need to reflect on the

implications of the ladenness at play for traditional views of the objectivity of scientific
knowledge.

The Fact/Value Distinction

Facts: Saying “it is a fact that p” is the same as saying “it is true that p”.

Examples: It is a fact that stones sink in water and lions roar.

Values: To acknowledge some feature as a value is to be inclined to advance it as

a consideration in influencing choice and guiding oneself and others.

“Objective” values are those that can be grounded not just in preferences but in
some standpoint accessible to reason and knowledge. Example:… ?

By contrast, “subjective” values are immune to rational argument. Example:… ?

Objectivist views of science are now more nuanced and realistic than it was when
Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions was first published (early 1960s).

Core current position about science and scientific knowledge shared by most
defenders of scientific objectivity:

P1: The goal of science is theoretical knowledge.

The basic explanatory form in science is theory, not experimental law.

Theories by their very nature are hypothetical and tentative; they remain open to
revision and even rejection.
P2: Underdetermination:

Q The theories of science are not fully determined by the empirical evidence.

The logical link between evidence and theory is neither direct nor fully rule-
governed (“algorithmic”).

P3: The assessment of theories involves in an ineliminable way a form of value-

judgment.

In science one cannot avoid relying to some extent on oblique modes of

assessment, which take the form of value-judgments.

P4: Observation in science is theory-dependent.

To the extent that observation is theory-dependent, it is also value-impregnated.

Note the picture to the right. It's a bear climbing a tree. Once you have that
'theory' in your mind, you see it instantly, but without that information you see, I dunno,
some bugs climing a string or something.

This is an example of observation being 'theory laden'. Observation of x is shaped

by prior knowledge of x. People see different things because they focus on different
aspects of what is there, which invariably is multidimensional and so ambiguous.

Contemporary realization: Attempts to construe all forms of scientific reasoning

as rigorous forms of deductive or inductive inference fail.

Science is value-laden to the extent that there are certain characteristic epistemic
values which are integral to the entire process of assessment in science.

McMullin: If judgment in science is value-charged, then we need to reflect on the

implications of this claim for traditional views of the objectivity of scientific knowledge.

Epistemic Values at Play: What Do You See?

Two Senses of “Value” Relevant to Theory Choice

1. Value as emotive assessment: The reality of this type of value lies in the feelings of
the subject, not primarily in a characteristic of the object.

In this sense, value decisions become a matter of clarifying emotional responses.

There is little reason to think that human emotionality is a trustworthy guide to the
structures of the natural world.

2. Value as characteristic value: A property or set of properties may count as a value in

an entity of a particular kind because it is clearly convenient for an entity of that kind.
 Speed is a convenient trait in a wild antelope because it aids its survival.

In this case, the desirable property is an objective characteristic of the entity.

Speed: An Objective Value for Gazelles?

Assessment of characteristic values can take one of two forms.

(a) One can judge the extent to which a particular entity realizes the value.

(b) One may be interested in judging the extent to which (if any) this
characteristic really is a value for this kind of entity.

Here one deals with the abstract relation of characteristic and entity under a
particular description. Why is speed rather than strength valuable to an antelope?

Other Valuations
If a theory is being applied to practical ends (as in, say, medicine), and the theoretical
alternatives carry with them outcomes of different value to the agents concerned, we have
the typical decision-theoretic grid involving not only epistemic estimates but also
“utilities” of some sort.

Such utilities are irrelevant to theoretical science proper.

McMullin’s focus on the presence of “values in science” does not refer primarily
to the ethical values required for the success of science as a communal activity (honesty,
intellectual integrity, etc.), or to the values implicit in decision-making in applied science.

His focus is on epistemic values.

Epistemic Values
We cannot definitively establish the values appropriate to the assessment of theory.

But we can provide a tentative list of criteria that have gradually been shaped over
the experience of many centuries, the values that are implicit in contemporary scientific
practice.

Such characteristic values McMullin calls epistemic, because they are presumed
to promote the truth-like character of science, its character as the most secure knowledge
available to us of the world we seek to understand.

An epistemic value is one we have reason to believe will, if pursued, help toward
the attainment of such knowledge.
 Current criteria for theory choice in science express the values that one expects a
good theory to embody.

McMullin’s list of criteria for theory choice is in broad agreement with Kuhn’s,
but oriented toward objectivism.

(a) Predictive accuracy is something a theory must have if it is in the long run to
be acceptable.

(b) Coherence: The theory should hang together properly.

(c) External Consistency: It should also be consistent with other accepted

theories and with the general background knowledge.

(d) Unifying Power: The theory should have the capability to bring together
previously disparate areas of inquiry.

(e) Fertility: It should generate both novel predictions and fruitful additions to and
modifications of received knowledge.

There are other epistemic values, like that of reproducibility in an experiment or accuracy
in a measurement.

All the noted criteria, McMullin agrees, correspond to characteristic values,

relative to the goal of achieving theoretical knowledge.

However, scientists may not attach the same relative weights to different
characteristic values of theory.

The fact that theory-appraisal is a sophisticated form of value-judgment explains

why controversy, far from being rare, is a persistent and pervasive presence in science at
all levels.

The value-ladenness of scientific claims derives from the problematic and

epistemologically complex way in which theory relates to the world.

It is only through theory that the world is scientifically understood.

There is no alternative mode of access that would allow the degree of “fit”
between theory and world to be independently assessed, and the values appropriate to a
good theory to be definitively established.
 McMullin: Value-judgment permeates the work of science as a whole, from the
decision to allow a particular experimental result to count as “accepted” to the decision
not to seek an alternative to a theory which so far has proved satisfactory.

Such values as these may be pragmatic rather than epistemic.

They may derive from the finiteness of time or resources available to the
experimenter, for example.

And sometimes the borderline between the epistemic and the pragmatic may be
hard to draw.

But it is not expediency values that pose the main challenge to the epistemic
integrity of the appraisal process.

If values are needed in order to close the gap between underdetermined theory
and the evidence brought in its support, presumably all values can slip in: political,
moral, social, and religious.

Case in point: the Lisenko affair.

In the mid-1920s Lysenko rejected “capitalist” mendelian genetics in favor of the

traditional hybridization theories, and adopted them into a powerful political scientific
movement termed Lysenkoism.

Soviet media reports heralding Lysenko's further discoveries in agriculture were

in place from 1927 until 1964

Reports of amazing (and seemingly impossible) successes, each one replaced with
new success claims as earlier ones failed.

Few of the successes attributed to Lysenko could be duplicated.

Nevertheless, with the media's help, Lysenko enjoyed the popular image of the
"barefoot scientist"—the embodiment of the mythic Soviet peasant genius.

By the late 1920s, the Soviet political bosses had given their support to Lysenko.

This support was a consequence, in part, of policies put in place by Communist

party personnel to rapidly promote members of the working classes into leadership
positions in agriculture, science and industry.

Scientific dissent from Lysenko's theories of environmentally (as opposed to

“inborn”) acquired inheritance was formally outlawed in 1948, and for the next several
years opponents were purged from held positions, and many imprisoned.
 Lysenko's work was officially discredited in the Soviet Union in 1964, leading to
a renewed emphasis there to re-institute Mendelian genetics and orthodox science.

When no compelling case can be made for saying that the imposition of a
particular value on the process of theory choice is likely to improve the epistemic status
of the theory, this value should be held to be non-epistemic in the context in question.

This decision is itself, of course, a value-judgment, and care needs to be exercised

to head off the obvious danger of landing in a vicious regress here.

How might one exercise the needed care?

The Place of Fact in a World of Values

What is left of the objectivity of science, the element of the factual, in all this jumble of
value-judgment?

Is there any reasoned way to stop short of a relativism that would see in science
no more than the product of a contingent social consensus, bearing testimony to the
historical particularity of culture and personality much more than to an objective truth
about the world?

McMullin’s sides with strong objectivism:

We need to examine the epistemic values employed in theory-appraisal, and ask

how they in turn are to be validated, and how in particular, circularity is to be avoided in
doing so.

Ongoing approaches to validation focus on (A) experiential discovery, and (B)

realism, and (C) “meta-scientific” argumentation.

(A) Experiential Discovery

How the skills of epistemic value-judgment are learnt?

Apprentice scientists learn them from watching others exercise them.

The characteristic values guiding theory-choice are firmly rooted in the complex
learning experience which is the history of science; this is their primary justification.

We have gradually learnt from experience that humans have the ability to
construct “theories” which can provide a high degree of accuracy in predicting what will
happen, as well as accounting for what has happened, in the world around.

It has been discovered, further, that these theories can embody other values too—
such values as coherence and fertility—and that an insistence on these other values is
likely to enhance the chances over the long run of the attainment of the first goal, that of
empirical accuracy.
 It was not always clear that these basic values could be pursued simultaneously.

In medieval astronomy, it seemed as though one had to choose between predictive

accuracy (Ptolemaic epicycles) and explanatory coherence (Aristotelian cosmology).

One of Galileo’s accomplishments was to demonstrate the possibility of a single

science in which the values of both prediction and explanation could be simultaneously
realized.

There was nothing necessary about this historical outcome.

(B) Realism
In its cautious form, the thesis of realism about science affirms that there are compelling
reasons to accept that in many scientific disciplines, like geology and cell-biology, the
models postulated by our current theories give us reliable, though still incomplete, insight
into the structures of the physical world.

(C) Metascientific Argumentation

We can try to account for the desirability of the noted epistemic values in terms of a
higher-order epistemological account of scientific knowing.

For example by providing a theory in terms of which such values would be shown
to be appropriate demands to lay on scientific theory.

McMullin’s conclusion: To the extent that the above validation moves succeed,
there is reason to trust the values used commonly in current science for theory appraisal
as something much more than the contingent consensus of a peculiar social group.

But a further step is needed, because these values do not of themselves determine
theory-choice.

Other values can and do enter in, the sorts of values that sociologists of science
draw attention to (such as the personal ambition of individual scientists, the welfare of
his/her wider social group, etc.).

Case in Point: Lomobroso’s Theory

Through years of postmortem examinations and anthropometric studies of criminals, the
insane, and normal individuals, Cesare Lombroso (1835, 1909) became convinced that
the "born criminal" could be anatomically identified by such items as a sloping forehead,
ears of unusual size, asymmetry of the face, prognathism, excessive length of arms,
asymmetry of the cranium, and other "physical stigmata."

Specific criminals, such as thieves, rapists, and murderers, could be distinguished

by specific characteristics, he believed.
 Lombroso also maintained that criminals had less sensibility to pain and touch;
more acute sight; a lack of moral sense, including an absence of remorse; more vanity,
impulsiveness, vindictiveness, and cruelty; and other manifestations, such as a special
criminal argot and the excessive use of tattooing.

Lombroso postulated that criminals represented a reversion to a primitive or

subhuman type of man characterized by physical features reminiscent of apes,
lower primates, and early man and to some extent preserved, he said, in modern
"savages." The behavior of these biological "throwbacks" will inevitably be contrary to
the rules and expectations of modern civilized society.

Lombroso's research methods were clinical and descriptive, with precise details of
skull dimension and other measurements.

But he did not enjoy the benefits of rigorous statistical comparisons of criminals
and non-criminals.

Adequate control groups, which he lacked, might have altered his general
conclusions.

Although he gave some recognition in his later years to psychological and

sociological factors in the etiology of crime, he remained convinced of, and identified
with, criminal anthropometry.

In the more credible scientific disciplines, the process of learning is one long
series of test and tentative imaginative extensions.

To the extent that non-epistemic values and other non-epistemic factors have been
instrumental in a given original theory-decision, they are gradually sifted by the
continued application of the sort of epistemic value-judgment described above.

The non-epistemic, by definition, will not in the long run survive this process.

The process is designed to limit the effects not only of fraud and carelessness, but
also of ideology, understood in the pejorative sense as distortive intrusion into the process
of shaping our thought to the world.