Hilligardt, Hannah (2024) Science as public service. [Preprint]
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Abstract
The problem this paper addresses is that scientists have to take normatively charged decisions which can have a significant impact on individual members of the public or the public as a whole. And yet mechanisms to exercise democratic control over them are often absent. Given the normative nature of these choices, this is often perceived to be at odds with basic democratic principles. I show that this problem applies in similar ways to civil service institutions and draw on political philosophy literature on the civil service (e.g. Rosanvallon 2011; Heath 2022) to discuss when such normative judgements can nevertheless be said to be democratically legitimate. Concretely, I seek to show that normative judgements in research need not be democratically legitimated in order for science to be democratically legitimate. Indeed, it can be democratically legitimate for scientists to go against the expressed views of the public or political representatives if this is justified in light of, firstly, the role science has been asked to fulfil and, secondly, when it is in line with public institutions’ key principles. This is a counter-position to views currently held in the values in science debate (e.g. by Kitcher 2011; Intemann 2015; Schroeder 2021; Lusk 2021) which argue that value-laden judgements in science are legitimate if they are aligned with the public’s views or directly decided by public.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | Public interest science; civil service; new demarcation problem; democratic legitimacy; values in science | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Science and Policy General Issues > Values In Science |
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| Depositing User: | Dr. des. Hannah Hilligardt | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 31 Aug 2024 00:21 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 31 Aug 2024 00:21 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 23816 | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Science and Policy General Issues > Values In Science |
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| Date: | 19 August 2024 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23816 |
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