Download Conference “The Special Role of Science in Liberal Democracy”

Conference “The Special Role of Science in Liberal Democracy” (University of
Copehagen, 21-22 November, 2013).
Klemens Kappel & Julie Zahle
Division of Philosophy, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of
Copenhagen.
Last draft - Published in Journal For General Philosophy of Science
The conference ”The Special Role of Science in Liberal Democracy” was held November 21-22
2013 at the University of Copenhagen. The conference was organized by Julie Zahle and Klemens
as part of a research project on this topic, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.
There were six plenary speakers: James Bohman (Saint Louis University), Heather
Douglas (University of Waterloo), Harold Kincaid (University of Cape Town), Martin Kusch (Vienna
University), Eleonora Montuschi (London School of Economics) and Erik Weber (Ghent University).
The other speakers at the conference were: Manuela Fernandez-Pinto (University of Notre Dame),
Anton Froeyman (Ghent University), Heidi Grasswick (Middlebury College), Rico Hauswald
(Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Oier Imaz (University of the Basque Country), Kristen Intemann
(Montana State University), Saana Jukola (University of Jyväskyla), Klemens Kappel (University of
Copenhagen), Arnon Keren (University of Haifa), Loren King (Wilfrid Laurier University), Inkeri
Koskinen (University of Helsinki), Janet Kourany (University of Notre Dame), Martin Kowarsch
(Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change), Inmaculada de MeloMartin (Weill Cornell Medical College), Jeroen de Ridder (VU University Amsterdam), Kristina Rolin
(University of Helsinki), Walter Ysebaert (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), and Julie Zahle (University of
Copenhagen).
The common basis for all speakers at the conference was the following more detailed
description of its theme: It is often assumed that science has a certain, indeed fundamental, role in
democratic decision making in liberal democracies defined by a distinctive division of cognitive
and deliberative labor: Science should be the neutral supplier of relevant factual knowledge,
whereas democratic decision processes should retain the task of deciding the policies.
Though widely accepted, it may be asked whether this model is really defensible and
applicable. Many voices, in academia as well as outside it, question the legitimacy of according this
special epistemic authority to science. Moreover, many sociologists of science and philosophers
stress as illusory or plain false that science can be neutral in the ways needed to play this role.
According to these views, science is replete with values and this makes the picture of science as a
neutral arbiter of facts naïve at best. Yet others deny that science and politics can be disentangled
in our actual scientific and bureaucratic practices, again putting the idea of a division of roles
under pressure. Finally, even if feasible in the case of the natural sciences, on may wonder
whether the model is applicable to the social sciences and the humanities where issues about
entanglement are arguably more pressing than in the natural sciences. Perhaps there are other
roles that fit the humanities or the social sciences better.
At the conference, there were many interesting responses to these reflections. In the
following, we can mention some of them. In his contribution Erik Weber discussed – and rejected
– a number of ways of developing the idea that the social sciences produce items of intrinsic value.
He proposed that what makes social scientific knowledge valuable is its impact on democratic
decision-making broadly construed. In his talk, Harold Kincaid was also concerned with the role of
the social sciences in liberal democracy. Among other things, he discussed how the social sciences
may help us understand the nature of a well-functioning democracy by empirically investigating
the various ways in which democracy works.
In turn, Eleonora Montuschi addressed the question of what it takes for science to
perform the role of aiding decision making at a collective and individual level. She took as her
starting point a recent example from the UK involving biological scientific advice in policy making
and proposed an expanded notion of objectivity that sees ‘scientific inquiry as a model for policy
making’. According to her suggestion, the appropriate normative concerns should, so to speak, be
built into a wider notion of objectivity, ideally providing science with a more normative role in
decision making.
This view is very different from the more traditional Weberian ideal of value
neutrality and separation of facts and values. A view of this type involving a specification of a
limited ideal of political neutrality of science was elaborated by Klemens Kappel. He defended it on
the grounds of compatibility with various basic ideals of liberal democracy. Similar themes
concerning the relevance of political philosophy for philosophy of science were addressed in
Kristina Rolin's talk.
No matter how one specifies the proper interface between science and democratic
decision making, there will be an issue about what a responsible science in a liberal democracy
would be. What freedoms and obligations do scientists have regarding, say, potentially dangerous
research? And how are these obligations best discharged, individually and collectively? Heather
Douglas offered a detailed discussion of this problem in her talk.
In his statement, Martin Kusch questioned an assumption probably shared by most
other contributions addressing the proper roles of social science in liberal democracy. Martin
Kusch argued that this question permits no politically neutral, a-historical, or context-free answer.
There are only contextually determined roles of social science, and this view goes against both an
ideal of political neutrality and various specific forms of non-neutrality.
Many talks related to the working of scientific institutions and practices. Janet
Kourany and Manuela Fernandez Pinto outlined a number of issues pertaining to how financial
interests can distort science and undermine conditions for proper decision making. Other values,
however, need not have a distorting effect. Julie Zale discussed how nonepistemic values may –
and often do – play various legitimate roles in anthropological research processes.
In our individual and collective decision making we depend on trust in scientific
institutions, just as these institutions and the researchers involved in the scientific practices
depend on relations of trust. Heidi Grasswick discussed the nature and limits of responsible
epistemic trust in scientific institutions. Excluded groups, for example, might have good reason not
to trust certain institutions. In their contribution, Inmaculada de Melo-Martin and Kristen Inteman
took up a related thread. Maybe we should often trust scientific institutions, but dissent, including
dissent to received views, is nonetheless important for epistemic reasons. So, we should pursue
opportunities for dissenters and take dissenting views seriously. However, there is non-trivial
question about how far off can dissent be, and yet we should still take it seriously, rather than
ignore it.
There were many other interesting contributions that we have not mentioned for
lack of space. We want to conclude by noting that much interesting work is beginning to emerge in
philosophy of science and social epistemology regarding the role of science in liberal democracy.
We hope that more work on this topic within political philosophy will also begin to appear.