A major problem in the social sciences and philosophy pertains to making practical recommendations derived from empirical evidence and scientific research.
Too often, researchers consider only one value when making their recommenda- tions, most probably their favored value. This is an unfortunate state of affairs because it contradicts one of the main principles of scientific inquiry, namely, value freedom. Conditional objectivism contributes toward resolving this problem.
Conditional objectivism argues that researchers have to:
1. Acknowledge value plurality.
2. Consider the relevant standpoints in a debate before making practical recom- mendations in light of each standpoint.
3. Reason on the basis of counterfactual conditional statements.
R. Reber and N. J. Bullot
These statements are of the form “if viewpoint x were to obtain, then finding y would suggest that practitioners should follow practical recommendation z.” By using such conditional statements in their reasoning procedures, scientists can cre- ate a distance between themselves or their opinions and the subject matter of their research. Their use of conditionals signals that they do not necessarily endorse the viewpoint they take when making practical recommendations. We used abortion as a case in point to illustrate the tenets of conditional objectivism. Beyond abortion and other moral issues, the heuristic of conditional objectivism could be applied to decisions about artistic value (Bullot & Reber, 2013), rationality and justice (MacIntyre, 1988), and meaning in life (Reber, 2018).
Conditional objectivism offers new solutions to address several problems that have beset the social sciences. First, it prevents the confusion between value-free science and value-laden activism. Scientists can continue to conduct value-free research and nevertheless make recommendations without being suspected of vio- lating the principle of value freedom. If researchers fail to use the contrasting of conditional statements, their recommendations amount to evidence-based but value- laden advocacy. Second, conditional objectivism removes the confusion between taking a certain viewpoint to make recommendations and endorsement of the view- point. Third, if scientists were regularly clarifying by means of conditional state- ments that they do not necessarily endorse a viewpoint, the bias in representation of liberal-progressivist academics at universities would be alleviated. Fourth, condi- tional objectivism offers a solution to the problem of stigma by making clear that the researcher takes a conditional and context-specific perspective rather than an absolutist and universalizing standpoint. Finally, conditional objectivism may alle- viate grief by those who are subject to stigma (Gray, 2002). It makes a difference whether a recommendation is made in absolute terms or embedded in conditional statements because the victim of stigma does not have to assume that the scientist shares the prejudice leading to stigma.
Some significant problems with practical recommendations derived from scien- tific evidence affect conditional objectivism, among them, motivated testing, the interpretation of data, including and weighting values, undesired side effects, feeling- based value judgments, and relativism. Some of these problems seem almost intractable, like side effects that are often not only undesired but also concealed. For other problems, like motivated testing, data interpretation, and feeling-based value judgments, the context-specific nature of problems in real-word decision-making has to be elaborated, and best practices need to be developed in the future.
References
Albæk, E. (1995). Between knowledge and power: Utilization of social science in public policy making. Policy Sciences, 28(1), 79–100.
Amara, N., Ouimet, M., & Landry, R. (2004). New evidence on instrumental, conceptual, and symbolic utilization of university research in government agencies. Science Communication, 26(1), 75–106.
90
Atran, S. (2010). Talking to the enemy: Faith, brotherhood, and the (un)making of terrorists.
New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Bachelard, G. (2002/1938). The formation of the scientific mind. A contribution to a psychoanaly- sis of objective knowledge (M. McAllester Jones, Trans.). Manchester, UK: Clinamen Press.
Baron, J., & Spranca, M. (1997). Protected values. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70, 1–16.
Belsky, J. (2003). The politicized science of day care: A personal and professional odyssey. Family Policy Review, 1, 23–40.
Blessing, K. R. (1959). The middle range mongoloid in trainable classes. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 63(5), 812–821.
Boswell, C. (2009). Political uses of expert knowledge. Immigration policy and social research.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Brinkmann, S. (2011). Psychology as a moral science: Perspectives on normativity. New York, NY: Springer.
Brinkmann, S. (2019). Normativity in psychology and the social sciences: Questions of universal- ity. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), Social philosophy of science for the social sciences. New York, NY:
Springer.
Bullot, N. J., & Reber, R. (2013). The artful mind meets art history: Toward a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36, 123–137.
Cardiff, C. F., & Klein, D. B. (2005). Faculty partisan affiliations in all disciplines: A voter- registration study. Critical Review, 17(3–4), 237–255.
Cohon, R. (2010). Hume’s Moral Philosophy. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. URL https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/hume-moral/
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York, NY:
G. P. Putnam.
Daston, L. (1992). Objectivity and the escape from perspective. Social Studies of Science, 22(4), 597–618.
Dawkins, R. (2014). Abortion & down syndrome: An apology for letting slip the dogs of Twitterwar.
Available at: https://www.richarddawkins.net/2014/08/abortion-down-syndrome-an-apology- for-letting-slip-the-dogs-of-twitterwar/. Retrieved January 8 2018.
De Sousa, R. (1987). The rationality of emotions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dixon-Mueller, R., & Dagg, P. K. (2002). Abortion & common sense. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris.
Donohue, J. J., & Levitt, S. D. (2001). The impact of legalized abortion. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(2), 379–420.
Douglas, H. (2007). Rejecting the ideal of value-free science. In H. Kincaid, J. Dupre, & A. Wylie (Eds.), Value-free science? Ideals and illusions (pp. 120–141). Oxford, UK: University Press.
Duarte, J. L., Crawford, J. T., Stern, C., Haidt, J., Jussim, L., & Tetlock, P. E. (2015). Political diversity will improve social psychological science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38, 1–58.
Elster, J. (2007). Explaining social behavior: More nuts and bolts for the social sciences.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Fergusson, D. M., Horwood, L. J., & Ridder, E. M. (2006). Abortion in young women and subse- quent mental health. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47(1), 16–24.
Friedlander, H. (1995). The origins of Nazi genocide: From euthanasia to the final solution. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Gigerenzer, G. (2004). Mindless statistics. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 33, 587–606.
Gigerenzer, G., & Gaissmaier, W. (2011). Heuristic decision making. Annual Review of Psychology, 62(1), 451–482. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346
Gray, A. J. (2002). Stigma in psychiatry. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 95(2), 72–76.
Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108, 814–834.
Inbar, Y., & Lammers, J. (2012). Political diversity in social and personality psychology.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(5), 496–503.
Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., Knobe, J., & Bloom, P. (2009). Disgust sensitivity predicts intuitive disap- proval of gays. Emotion, 9(3), 435–439.
R. Reber and N. J. Bullot
Kampen, J. K., & Tamás, P. (2014). Should I take this seriously? A simple checklist for calling bullshit on policy supporting research. Quality & Quantity, 48(3), 1213–1223.
Kant, I. (1785/1996). Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. In M. J. Gregor & A. Wood (Eds.), Immanuel Kant: Practical philosophy (pp. 37–108). Cambridge University Press.
Klein, D. B., & Stern, C. (2009). By the numbers: The ideological profile of professors. In R. Maranto, R. E. Redding, & F. M. Hess (Eds.), The politically correct university: Problems, scope and reforms (pp. 15–38). Washington, DC: AEI Press.
Kubicka, L., Matejcek, Z., David, H. P., Dytruch, Z., Miller, W. B., & Roth, Z. (1995). Children from unwanted pregnancies in Prague, Czech Republic, revisited at age third. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 91, 361–369.
Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480–498.
Levitt, S. D., & Dubner, S. J. (2006). Freakonomics. A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything. London, UK: Penguin.
Lindblom, C. E. (1965). The intelligence of democracy: Decision making through mutual adjust- ment (pp. 38–44). New York, NY: Free Press.
Lifton, R. J. (1986). The Nazi doctors: Medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Lipton, P. (1991/2004). Inference to the best explanation. London, UK: Routledge.
MacIntyre, A. (1985). After virtue. London, UK: Duckworth.
MacIntyre, A. (1988). Whose justice? Which rationality? London, UK: Duckworth.
Merton, R. K. (1936). The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action. American Sociological Review, 1(6), 894–904.
Mill, J. S. (1861/1969). Utilitarianism collected works of John Stuart Mill, volume X: Essays on ethics, religion and society (pp. 203–259). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Morton, A. (2013). Contrastive knowledge. In M. Blaauw (Ed.), Contrastivism in philosophy (pp. 101–115). New York, NY: Routledge.
Noddings, N. (2003). Happiness and education. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Paul, R. W., & Elder, L. (2002). Critical thinking: Tools for taking charge of your professional and personal life. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Porter, R., & O’Connor, M. (1985). Abortion: Medical progress and social implications. Ciba foundation symposium 115. London, UK: Pitman.
Reber, R. (2016). Critical feeling. How to use feelings strategically. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Reber, R. (2018). Making school meaningful: Linking psychology of education to meaning in life.
Educational Review, in press.
Redding, R. E. (2013). Politicized science. Society, 50(5), 439–446.
Regnerus, M. (2012). How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex rela- tionships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study. Social Science Research, 41(4), 752–770.
Robison, R. J. (2000). Learning about happiness from persons with Down syndrome: Feeling the sense of joy and contentment. American Journal of Mental Retardation, 105(5), 372–376.
Rose-Ackerman, S. (2007). Establishing the rule of law. In R. Rotberg (Ed.), When states fail:
Causes and consequences (pp. 182–221). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rosenthal, R., Rosnow, R. L., & Rubin, D. B. (2000). Contrasts and effect sizes in behavioral research: A correlational approach. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Rudner, R. (1953). The scientist qua scientist makes value judgments. Philosophy of Science, 20(1), 1–6.
Sanford, V., & Angel-Ajani, A. (Eds.). (2006). Engaged observer. Anthropology, advocacy, and activism. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Schaffer, J., & Knobe, J. (2012). Contrastive knowledge surveyed. Nous, 46(4), 675–708. https://
doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0068.2010.00795.x
Schieve, L. A., Boulet, S. L., Boyle, C., Rasmussen, S. A., & Schendel, D. (2009). Health of chil- dren 3 to 17 years of age with Down syndrome in the 1997–2005 National Health Interview Survey. Pediatrics, 123(2), e253–e260.
92
Sherman, L. W. (2003). Misleading evidence and evidence-led policy: Making social science more experimental. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 589, 6–19.
Simon, H. A. (1997). Models of bounded rationality, Vol 3: Empirically grounded economic rea- son. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Singer, P. (1979). Practical ethics. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Siegel, M. (1993). Involuntary smoking in the restaurant workplace: A review of employee exposure and health effects. JAMA, 270(4), 490–493. https://doi.org/10.1001/
jama.1993.03510040094036
Spangenberg, R. L., & Walsh, E. R. (1989). Capital punishment or life imprisonment--some cost considerations. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, 23, 45–58.
Tetlock, P. E. (2003). Thinking about the unthinkable: Coping with secular encroachments on sacred values. Trends in Cognitive Science, 7, 320–324.
Thomson, J. J. (1971). A defense of abortion. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1(1), 47–66. https://
doi.org/10.2307/2265091
Tooley, M. (1983). Abortion and infanticide. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
Tooley, M., Wolf-Devine, C., Devine, P. E., & Jaggar, A. M. (2009). Abortion: Three perspectives.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Van de Walle, N. (2007). The economic correlates of state failure: Taxes, foreign aid, and policies.
In R. Rotberg (Ed.), When states fail: Causes and consequences (pp. 94–115). Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Wagenmakers, E. J., Wetzels, R., Borsboom, D., van der Maas, H. L., & Kievit, R. A. (2012).
An agenda for purely confirmatory research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(6), 632–638.
Weber, M. (1946/1919). Science as a vocation. In H. H. Gerth & C. W. Mills (Eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Weber, M. (1949/1917). The meaning of “ethical neutrality” in sociology and economics. In E. Shils & H. A. Finch (Eds.), The methodology of the social sciences (pp. 1–49). Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Wimsatt, W. C. (2006). Reductionism and its heuristics: Making methodological reductionism honest. Synthese, 151(3), 445–475. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-006-9017-0
White, M. G. (1965). Foundations of historical knowledge. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
R. Reber and N. J. Bullot
93
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
J. Valsiner (ed.), Social Philosophy of Science for the Social Sciences, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33099-6_6