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Moral Autonomy and the Rationality of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

James C. Gaa
James C. Gaa*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Abstract

The few extant arguments concerning the autonomy of science in the rational acceptance of hypotheses are examined. It is concluded that science is not morally autonomous, and that the attendant notion of rationality in science decisionmaking is inadequate. A more comprehensive notion of scientific rationality, which encompasses the old one, is proposed as a replacement. The general idea is that scientists qua scientist ought, in their acceptance decisions, to take into account the ethical consequences of acceptance as well as the consequences with regard to the attainment of “purely scientific” or “epistemic” objectives. The result constitutes an argument for a (presumably cooperative) game theoretic treatment of inductive logic.

Type
Special Section on Value Issues in Science, Technology, and Medicine
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1977 , pp. 513 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1977

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Footnotes

†

I wish to acknowledge my good fortune in being able to discuss with Richard Rudner many aspects of the relations between science and society, some of the fruits of which appear here. I have also benefitted from discussions with Edward F. McClennen and Ann Palmeri.

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