Philip Kitcher, Science in a Democratic Society, Prometheus Books, 2011
Henry S. Richardson
Kennedy Institute of Ethics
Georgetown University
Washington, DC, USA
In examining the place of science in a democratic society, Philip Kitcher is ultimately asking what standards scientific activity is answerable to. Here, as in Science, Truth, and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2001), he rejects two extreme possibilities: first, the suggestion that science is autonomous, in the sense that it is answerable only to its own standards; and, second, the suggestion that it is answerable to “vulgar democracy”—that is, to unconstrained majority rule by untutored citizens. In this book, as in the earlier book, he deploys the idea of “well-ordered science,” which he seeks to characterize in part by leaning on the idea of a hypothetical, ideal conversation. Crucially informing this newer book is a much fuller account of nonvulgar democracy. Underlying that account is a much broader picture of “the ethical project”—the title idea of another important Kitcher book from 2011 (Harvard University Press).
In order to motivate the friends of science to turn to these broader ethical ideas, Kitcher persuasively rehearses the case against value neutrality in science. Much current distrust of science and scientists, he argues, derives from scientists falsely pretending—whether deludedly or cynically—that science can proceed in a value-neutral way. It cannot do so in resolving competitions among theories, let alone in setting the research agenda or weighing in on practical problems of public concern. By wearing a false mask of value neutrality, scientists succeed only in convincing the public that they are ideologically driven. This, in turn, gives an opening for dissenters motivated by religion or by their own ideologies to develop supposedly scientific counter-claims of their own, such as those that assert creationism or deny the reality of climate change. Better, then, for science and scientists to be frank about its lack of value neutrality.
What values ought to inform science? To answer this question, Kitcher turns to his conception of the ethical project, of which Chapter 2 gives a summary. As he conceives of ethics, it arose pre-historically as a set of mechanisms helping us to deal with deficiencies in altruistic motivation. Although inspired by evolutionary theory, Kitcher spurns the sociobiologist’s identification of the good with the adaptive. Instead, while giving an elaborate reconstruction of how our ethical practices may actually have arisen, he gives pride of place to the idea of conversation. On his reconstruction, the “egalitarian plateau” touted by Will Kymlicka (Contemporary Political Philosophy [Oxford University Press, 1990], p. 5) and others as the great achievement of the Enlightenment was merely a delayed philosophical echo of the ethical project’s initial feature, one that would have been found in the ethical discussions of human hunter-gatherer bands of forty-thousand years ago. Being more focused on how life is lived than on philosophy, Kitcher, fairly enough, is unwilling to see the Enlightenment as an egalitarian age. Rather, most recent incarnations of the ethical project have been distorted by hierarchies and inequalities. Emphasizing the word, Kitcherwrites, “I propose … that we undo the distortion,” and model the ethical project, going forward, as involving an egalitarian conversation. This frankness disarms any worry about the move from “was” to “ought” that might have arisen in the minds of those already puzzled by the current popularity of the cave-man diet; and in any case, since Kitcher’s account of the ethical project is defended at length in his contemporaneous book of that title, doubts about it would be better addressed in that context. Rhetorically, since the ideal of treating persons fundamentally as equals is even more popular than eating meat, he is on strong ground, here.
The book develops this core egalitarian proposal in three distinct ways, thereby gaining a rich evaluative basis for considering the place of science in society. The first is an account of the purposes to which science is answerable. Kitcher dismisses as unrealistically high-minded and ultimately elitist a conception of scientists as driven by a disinterested quest for truth and a simple love of knowledge for its own sake. Rather, his defense of science’s complex division of labor, in which many scientists compete in attempting to solve any one problem, emphasizes that scientists are driven by reputational concerns. Each wants to be the one first shown to be right about some question or other. Science’s proper agenda, then, will not arise as if by an invisible hand from the action of individuals seeking after truth. Instead, the agenda should be set in the prosaically instrumental way, on the basis of what work bids fair to help us with important social problems. This agenda-setting should of course take due account of the tremendous long-term practical value of basic research; but it should also, in line with Kitcher’s egalitarian proposal, be sure to give priority to the neglected diseases of the world’s poor. The basic interests of each person ought equally to count.
The second domain in which the book develops its core egalitarian proposal is in setting out its highly capacious conception of democracy as a conversational mode of decision-making that respects the moral equality and the equal freedoms of all people. This quite abstract understanding of democracy does not entail that all must participate in social decisions. That is a good thing, Kitcher suggests, as it is impossible that all citizens could participate meaningfully in decisions about science policy. Instead, what should be done in order to counteract public distrust of and alienation from science is to set up special citizen juries. These representative bodies—perhaps statistically representative—would play largely a communicative role. These (paid?) citizens would be “‘led behind the scenes’” (129, scare quotes in original), tutored, and then sent back out into the community to spread the word and report back with the reaction. They might even be able to “play the role of arbitrator” on some difficult questions of science policy (185).
Thirdly, Kitcher uses his egalitarian proposal to put more flesh on the idea of “ideal conversation” that, in turn, defines his conception of “well-ordered science.” In applying this idea to the issue of the scientific agenda, he glosses it as follows: “Science is well-ordered when its specification of the problems to be pursued would be endorsed by an ideal conception, embodying all human points of view, under conditions of mutual engagement” (106). Other variations of the idea show up along the way, supplemented as needed by additional normative material. One striking instance of this occurs in Chapter 6’s discussion of controversies that surround methods of certifying scientific conclusions, such as about evolution vs. creationism or the existence of climate change. Kitcher first recapitulates the (now technologically superseded) debates between scientific secularists who defended harvesting and cultivating embryonic stem cells and those of their religious opponents (the only ones he mentions) who rested their arguments on allegedly revealed truths concerning the ensoulment of the embryo, noting that neither side will convince the other and that some basis for shared public reason must be found. He then writes that “the considerations just raised would, I believe, have to figure in any ideal deliberation of the standards of certification of public knowledge” (161). Is this just a highly elaborate way of saying “these points are obviously important”?
The broad sweep of this book must be admired. The relative superficiality of some of its parts is to a considerable degree an inevitable concomitant of that breadth. At every point, Kitcher is full of ideas and suggestions, thrown out for others—or himself—to develop later. About their normative basis, beyond the “was”/“ought” doubt aired above in connection with “the ethical project,” there’s a troubling anemia in his conception of democratic inquiry. In ethics, Kitcher writes, “truth is constituted in terms of the tools that solve our problems” (48). Bertrand Russell lampooned Dewey for (allegedly) holding that a statement is true if believing it helps make the car go (“Dewey’s New Logic,” in Paul Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of John Dewey, 3rd ed.[La Salle, IL, 1989]: 137-56). Any form of pragmatism as instrumentalist as Kitcher’s is vulnerable to this charge. Escaping this refutation, and giving democracy a run for its money, calls for imitating Dewey’s stress on human practical intelligence: our ability to remake our ends and aims when we encounter obstacles. Although Kitcher’s characterization of democratic inquiry does not foreclose deliberation about ends, its tendency is to assume that the ends are given—say, as seeing to the satisfaction of the basic needs of each. Collective, democratic deliberation about ends, however, requires that the relevant representative bodies serve not merely as informational liaisons or occasional arbiters, but are actually empowered to decide important matters of public concern. That, in turn, requires a complex, democratic division of labor.
Kitcher’s willingness to gloss over the rich division of our actual ethical deliberative labor is an aspect of a more general one-sidedness of this thoughtful, synoptic book. Kitcher writes as someone concerned to advise scientists on how to deal with the public. He offers fascinating, concrete detail about the divisions of labor within science, but is willing to characterize our democratic, ethical project abstractly as a conversation among equals. In fact, he seems unwilling to trust the specification of public ends to actual citizens, preferring to let the importance of equal attention to every person’s basic interests, the standard that emerges from his just-so story, be the anodyne bottom line. In addressing how science and democracy might well cohabit, Kitcher has well focused on the public’s distrust of science, but has left largely unaddressed science’s distrust of democracy.
Henry S. Richardson
Kennedy Institute of Ethics
Georgetown University
Washington, DC, USA
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 15:57:14 +0000