Abstract:
Increasingly,
scientists are being asked to produce data that can help support social
decision making. To ensure such data is appropriately used, scientists
should be responsive to relevant social needs,
value
systems, and decision frameworks. In many areas of science, however, what
this responsiveness
might
involve in practice is often not articulated in detail. In this talk, I
analyze one such area of climate
science
– known as climate services – and develop an account that specifies how to
consider the needs
of
users in the provision of data. The account is based on inductive risk: it
involves understanding
which
errors in climate service products would have particularly negative
consequences from the users’
perspective
and then prioritizes the avoidance of those errors. At first glance, this
account is at odds
with
much of the extant philosophical literature examining whose values should
be used in science
and
appears open to the criticism that it is socially pernicious or
anti-democratic. I defend the account
by
developing a deliberative democratic notion of political legitimacy fit for
scientific contexts and
then
demonstrating that legitimate deliberative systems might best operate when
science appeals to
users’
values.
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