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The Risk of Using Inductive Risk to Challenge the Value-Free Ideal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Inmaculada de Melo-Martín  and
Kristen Intemann
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Abstract

The argument from inductive risk has been embraced by many as a successful account of the role of values in science that challenges the value-free ideal. We argue that it is not obvious that the argument from inductive risk actually undermines the value-free ideal. This is because the inductive risk argument endorses an assumption held by proponents of the value-free ideal: that contextual values never play an appropriate role in determining evidence. We show that challenging the value-free ideal ultimately requires rejecting this assumption.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 4 , October 2016 , pp. 500 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thank you to Hugh Lacey and Gregor Betz for helpful comments to an earlier version of this article. We are grateful also to several reviewers who pressed us on some of the points made in the manuscript and forced us to be more precise in our claims. Whatever errors remain are, of course, our responsibility.

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