Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Longino on the Theoretical Virtues


So I’ve just read Helen Longino’s work on the theoretical virtues:
Longino, H. E. (1994), "In search of feminist epistemology", Monist 77 (4):472-485.
——— (1995), "Gender, politics, and the theoretical virtues", Synthese 104 (3):383-397.
——— (1997), "Feminist Epistemology as a Local Epistemology", Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 71 (1):19-36.
(For those who are interested, I don’t think you lose much if you just read the 1997 article, as there’s quite a bit of redundancy, and, in my estimate, Longino’s argument gets clearer over time.)

In these articles, Longino argues:
(1)  There are traditional theoretical virtues that work in certain contexts, e.g. empirical adequacy, conservatism (external consistency), simplicity, unification, scope, fruitfulness, and refutability.
(2)  There are also feminist theoretical virtues that work in other contexts, e.g. empirical adequacy, novelty, ontological heterogeneity, complexity/mutuality of interactions, applicability to human needs, and decentralization/universalization of power.
(3)  Neither of these sets of virtues is intrinsically epistemic, i.e. it doesn’t appear that the virtues have a very obvious link with truth.
(4)  Rather, the epistemic significance of these virtues is always relative to the cognitive goals of the communities that use them.
a)     In feminist inquiry, this is the goal of “revealing gender,” e.g. identifying gender biases that have been operant in scientific inquiry.
b)    It’s unclear what cognitive goals Longino takes the traditional virtues to serve, but both feminist critics and advocates of these virtues (e.g. Hugh Lacey) have taken control and manipulation (e.g. as found in experimental settings) to be a plausible candidate.
(5)  Longino then situates these ideas within her four social-epistemological criteria:
a)     Provision of venues for the articulation of criticism;
b)    Uptake (rather than mere toleration) of criticism;
c)     Public standards to which discursive interactions are referenced;
d)    Equality of intellectual authority for all (qualified) members of the community.
(6)  “Within this scheme the traditional and alternative virtues constitute partially overlapping, but distinctive sets of public community standards [i.e. item (5.c)].” (1997, p. 29)

Longino’s argument, particularly premise (3), leaves much to be desired. But I won’t quibble with it in the current project, since that would amount to an external critique, and my goal is to provide an immanent one. I want to suggest that, unlike the feminist virtues, the traditional virtues play a special role in item (5.b), i.e. uptake of criticism. Without playing my hand just yet, the virtues need not be guides to truth, but only guides to warranted acceptance (not belief!) of a theory.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Fine-Tuning Our Distinctions

Thus far, I’ve framed the S&V literature in terms of "doing good science," viz.
  1. A value is constitutive of science if and only if it is necessary for doing good science.
  2. A value is contextual in science if and only if it is sometimes (but not always) useful for doing good science.
  3. A value is invariant in science if and only if it is always useful for doing good science.

I think this is too loosely formulated. Since I’ll be focusing primarily on the theoretical virtues, I’m interested in a much narrower set of values, namely those that are predicated of theories as criteria of acceptance. It's my sense that the following fairly glosses what most have meant by the constitutive-contextual distinction:
  1. A value V is constitutive of theory acceptance if and only if, for all theories T, correctly identifying V as a property of T is necessary for being justified in the acceptance of T. 
  2. A value V is contextual in theory acceptance if and only if, for some (but not all) theories T, correctly identifying V as a property of T provides some justification for the acceptance of T.

If that's right, then we have two important dimensions by which to catalog values in science. The first is the scope of theories to which the value applies (which I've italicized), and the second is the value's justificatory role (in boldface). Minimally, invariant and constitutive values have the same scope: they apply to all theories. 

However, I want to suggest that we consider three justificatory roles: necessity (as illustrated by our new definition of constitutive values), contributing (as illustrated by our new definition of contextual values), and sufficiency (which provides a natural foil to necessity). This would then suggest a stronger and a weaker brand of invariantism about values:

3.  A value V is invariantly strong in theory acceptance if and only if, for all theories T, correctly identifying V as a property of T is sufficient for being justified in the acceptance of T. 

4. A value V is invariantly contributes to theory acceptance if and only if, for all theories T, correctly identifying V as a property of T provides some justification for the acceptance of T.

I note in passing that we can do the same thing with contextual values. In this case, i.e. 

2 (revised). A value V contextually contributes to theory acceptance if and only if, for some (but not all) theories T, correctly identifying V as a property of T provides some justification for the acceptance of T.

5.  A value V is contextually strong in theory acceptance if and only if, for some (but not all) sufficient for being justified in the acceptance of T. theories T, correctly identifying V as a property of T is

6. A value V is contextually necessary in theory acceptance if and only if, for some (but not all) necessary for being justified in the acceptance of T. theories T, correctly identifying V as a property of T is

These won't be part of my story, but it's useful to observe that we should have a six-part distinction instead of a bipartite one, as has been the norm. As for me, I'm leaning towards claiming that the virtues are invariantly strong, though I'll have to do more work before I make a firm decision on this. Otherwise, I'll claim that they're invariant contributors.

Friday, February 4, 2011

More on the Constitutive-Contextual-Invariant Distinction


I just hunted down the exact Longino quote that baptizes the distinction between contextual and constitutive values, and wanted to compare it to yesterday's musings:

I will call the values generated from an understanding of the goals of science constitutive values to indicate that they are the source of the rules determining what constitutes acceptable scientific practice or scientific method. The personal, social, and cultural values, those group or individual preferences about what ought to be, I will call contextual values to indicate that they belong to the social and cultural environmental in which science is done.
Science as Social Knowledge, p. 4.
This is Longino’s clearest account of the distinction. Let’s try to unpack it. First, there is an assumption that constitutive values are “the source of rules.” Moreover, they appear to be the source of rules that tell us what to do, as "practices and methods" are naturally seen as actions. However, constitutive values are not the same as goals, as the latter “generate” the former. Goals naturally function in rules as follows:
            If one wants to achieve goal G, then one ought to do A.
But where are the values in this? Either G is valuable, or A is (instrumentally) valuable because it is a means to achieving G. That suggests the following:
(L1) A value is constitutive of science if and only if it is either a goal of science or it is a necessary means of achieving a goal of science.
I’ve added that the means must be necessary, because otherwise, a means works in some contexts but not others, which prima facie, sounds like a contextual value. Note that this gets us something very close to yesterday’s gloss. Now let’s tease out Longino’s definition of contextual values:
(L2) A value is contextual in science if and only if some but not all practitioners of a science take it to be valuable.
This is not quite the same as yesterday’s account of contextual values, as that made no reference to whether practitioners take something to be valuable or not. This yields an odd consequence: if some scientist does not take a constitutive value to be valuable, then it is contextual. But this doesn’t leave any room for the scientist to be just plain wrong in his evaluations. For instance, logical consistency is presumably a non-negotiable value, so a contradiction-loving scientist seems to be doing something more suspect than expressing an “individual preference,” as Longino puts it.
            Yesterday’s constitutive-contextual distinction blocks this, since it requires the value to be useful for doing good science some of the times. Something can be useful even if nobody takes it as such and somebody can value something that is useless, so scientists’ attitudes don’t determine contextual values. As a result, I’m sticking with that distinction, since it seems tidier. Moreover, I’m holding fast to distinguishing invariant and constitutive values.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Science and Values, Part 1: The Constitutive-Contextual Distinction


I’m beginning to research my next essay, which touches on that thorny issue of “science & values” [S&V]. I hope to be blogging quite a bit about this, as I have quite a bit of background reading to do.

I begin with a well-known distinction in the S&V literature, which is primarily associated with Helen Longino.

(1)  A value is constitutive of science if and only if it is necessary for doing good science.
(2)  A value is contextual in science if and only if it is sometimes (but not always) useful for doing good science.

While it marks a subtle change, I want to suggest that we offer something that falls in between (1) and (2):
(3)  A value is invariant in science if and only if it is always useful for doing good science.

What’s the difference between constitutive and invariant values? It is possible for something to be always useful and yet not necessary for doing an activity well. For instance, having an accurate three point shot is always useful, but not necessary, for being a good basketball player.

In the paper I’m working on, I’ll suggest that several “theoretical virtues,” e.g. simplicity, scope, precision, etc. are invariant scientific values. Moreover, I’ll be arguing that some of the most vociferous critics of the virtues should accept this claim, given their other commitments. I suspect that they have resisted this claim because the constitutive-contextual distinction poses a false dilemma. The true dilemma is between invariant and contextual values, with constitutive values simply being a particularly demanding form of invariant values.