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Do Collaborators in Science Need to Agree?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Haixin Dang
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Abstract

I argue that collaborators do not need to reach broad agreement over the justification of a consensus claim. This is because maintaining a diversity of justifiers within a scientific collaboration has important epistemic value. I develop a view of collective justification that depends on the diversity of epistemic perspectives present in a group. I argue that a group can be collectively justified in asserting that P as long as the disagreement among collaborators over the reasons for P is itself justified. In conclusion, I make a case for multimethod collaborative research and work through an example in the social sciences.

Type
Ethics, Values, and Social Epistemology
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 86 , Issue 5 , December 2019 , pp. 1029 - 1040
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to James Woodward, Sandra Mitchell, Kevin Zollman, and Liam Kofi Bright for valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

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