The epistemic impact of theorizing: generation bias implies evaluation bias
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The epistemic impact of theorizing: generation bias implies evaluation bias Finnur Dellse´n1,2
Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract It is often argued that while biases routinely influence the generation of scientific theories (in the ‘context of discovery’), a subsequent rational evaluation of such theories (in the ‘context of justification’) will ensure that biases do not affect which theories are ultimately accepted. Against this line of thought, this paper shows that the existence of certain kinds of biases at the generation-stage implies the existence of biases at the evaluation-stage. The key argumentative move is to recognize that a scientist who comes up with a new theory about some phenomena has thereby gained an unusual type of evidence, viz. information about the space of theories that could be true of the phenomena. It follows that if there is bias in the generation of scientific theories in a given domain, then the rational evaluation of theories with reference to the total evidence in that domain will also be biased. Keywords Bias in science Context of discovery Context of justification Problem of new theories Theory generation
1 Introduction It is hardly controversial at this point that scientists’ own human interests, identities, and ideologies can influence the content of science, i.e. which theories are accepted as true within a particular science. To take a well-known example from evolutionary anthropology, it was once nearly uniformly accepted that the carved stones used as tools by our hominoid ancestors, and which are thought to have provided selection & Finnur Dellse´n [email protected] 1
Faculty of History and Philosophy, University of Iceland, 101 Reykjavı´k, Iceland
2
Department of Philosophy, Law, and International Studies, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, 2624 Lillehammer, Norway
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F. Dellse´n
pressure for bipedalism and greater intelligence, were primarily used for hunting other animals. This ‘man-the-hunter’ model of human evolution was only seriously challenged with the influx of significant numbers of women into evolutionary anthropology in the 1970s. At that point, a ‘woman-the-gatherer’ model was proposed according to which the carved stones were primarily used to prepare edible vegetation. This episode exemplifies a general phenomenon, widely discussed by feminist thinkers, of science being biased against theories that challenge dominant ideologies and power structures.1 But how, exactly, do the theories accepted in science become biased by the biases of those who practice it? Put differently, how do scientists’ own social, political, and moral values—when biased—undermine the objectivity of scientific theories? Several influential accounts have been proposed to answer this and related questions, appealing to factors such as the role of background assumptions in scientific reasoning (Longino 1990; Intemann 2005), differing thresholds for inductive risk (Rudner 1953; Hempel 1965; Douglas 2000, 2009), and the ways in which scientific theory choice is based o
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