Abstract
According to John Rawls, the methods and conclusions of science—when these are non-controversial—constitute public reasons. However, several objections have been raised against this view. This paper focuses on two objections. On the one hand, the associational objection states that scientific reasons are the reasons of the scientific community, and thus paradigmatically non-public in the Rawlsian sense. On the other hand, the controversiality objection states that the non-controversiality requirement rules out their public character when scientific postulates are resisted by a significant portion of the citizenry. The paper replies that both objections miss their mark. To the associational objection, it replies that the relevant test for a reason to be public is whether the reasons have been construed under the rules and constrains of a public frame of thought. Insofar as scientific methods and conclusions correspond to the principles of reasoning and rules of evidence that liberals understand as public, their associational origin is secondary. To the controversiality objection, it replies that the standard for a scientific argument to be regarded as non-controversial should refer to its degree of intra-scientific consensus, since ordinary citizens accept or reject scientific pronouncements conditioned to their particular comprehensive views. Nonetheless, a wide extra-scientific agreement on the epistemic virtues of the scientific method will be needed. The paper concludes that there is a good case to think about scientific reasons as public to the extent that scientific reasoning is a mode of inquiry that mirrors a central aspiration of Rawlsian political liberalism: having a public way of thought and an impersonal standpoint to adjudicate between competing claims.
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Notes
In its classical formulation, the requirements of public reason are to be applied only to constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. If this is the case, the uncontested methods and conclusions of science may well enjoy a privileged epistemic status in political liberalism but limited to these few crucial debates. Outside the narrow realm of the Rawlsian basic structure, scientific reasons are thus as valid as any other reason, including pseudoscientific postulates, esoteric intuitions and personal opinions. An epistemic egalitarianism would reign for non-fundamental matters. This can be labelled as the Scope Objection, which I am not addressing in this paper.
In this sense, my argument is fully compatible with a deflationary view of science’s aims. Science does not have to assert strong ontological truths, but only provisional truths in the sense that its findings should be read as the best collective knowledge that we possess for the time being concerning the material structure of the world. Therefore, Rawls’s much-discussed passage about political liberalism doing ‘without the concept of truth’ (2005, p. 94) cannot be invoked to discredit the analogy between science’s quest for objective knowledge and the interpersonal agreement that defines political liberalism.
Among Rawlsian philosophers, Martha Nussbaum has explicitly defended this connection. In both the domain of science and ethics, she argues, many of the participants would ‘make room for a significant notion of objectivity, defined in terms of the most adequate and intersubjectively confirmed use of mental faculties—or, in ethics, in terms of that which we can reasonably recommend to all’ (Nussbaum 2001, p. 885). She goes on to assert that ‘we do have available to us a quite robust conception of objectivity both in science and ethics, and we do not need to rely, in articulating this notion, on any problematic notion of the given, or unmediated access to reality’ (Nussbaum 2001, p. 886). Diana Taschetto has persuasively tracked Rawls’s predilection for objectivity to W. V. O. Quine’s influence: ‘what [Rawls] does is simply to include Quine’s notions of explication, confirmation and scientific inquiry in its methodological agenda to face ethical questions… The same requirements of evidence and objectivity apply to both ethical and natural science’ (Taschetto 2015, pp. 156,155).
According to these requirements, ‘public reason should permit the introduction of complex, specialist, often inaccessible, nearly always controversial, and thoroughly nonpublicly reasoned expert advice’ (Mackinnon 2012, p. 23) when two conditions are met: on the one hand, when empirical and scientific evidence is indispensable to the case (the Permissibility of Expertise criterion); on the other hand, when experts themselves have established the limits of reasonable disagreement in their area of expertise (the Autonomy of Experts criterion).
As we shall see, some theorists have postulated that even individual scientific consensuses are accessible to the wider population through very basic research. But, in rigour, my argument dispenses individual scientific conclusions with the actual accessibility requirement, and instead it demands scientific methods to be accessible in their general principles of reasoning and rules of evidence. Such accessibility is not evaluated against the benchmark of real-world constituencies, but of moderately ideal constituencies.
As articulated by the philosopher of science Marteen Boudry, naturalized epistemologists recognize that modern science is a highly complex and differentiated social endeavour, but they believe that ‘the practice of hypothesis testing and ampliative reasoning underlying science is already apparent in everyday reasoning (e.g. tracking animals, fixing a car)’ (2013, p. 82). In this view, none of the characteristic features of modern science, such us the use of sophisticated technical equipment, formalization and mathematical tools, the system of peer review and public presentations, the years of formal training and practice, is enough to ‘detach scientific reasoning from everyday knowledge acquisition…The complex institutional organization and systematic methodology of science can be seen as a highly refined and sophisticated extension of everyday reasoning, reflecting a heightened awareness of human cognitive foibles and a preoccupation with difficult, cutting-edge questions of a more theoretical nature’ (Boudry 2013, p. 82).
I would add that Jønch-Clausen and Kappel, like McKinnon, think that scientific arguments ought to be privileged in public debates, but their declared aim is narrower: to show the difficulties involved in justifying such privilege, at least from a Rawlsian perspective. ‘Providing a justification of the privileged role of science in public reason’, they conclude, ‘must away future work’ (Jønch-Clausen and Kappel 2016, p. 133). This is what I intend to do here.
Samuel Freeman, one of Rawls’s leading interpreters, would agree. Freeman argues that, under the veil of ignorance, the kind of general facts that the parties are privy to include ‘relatively uncontroversial laws and generalizations derivable from economics, psychology, political science, and biology and other natural sciences’ (2016). In particular, Freeman goes on to mention ‘biological evolution’ as part of the informational background that is not suspended in the original position.
One of the anonymous referees sensibly suggests that some factual disagreements are not located at the level of conclusions but they revolve around the methods. For instance, in the case of Darwinian evolution, creationists ‘can fairly easily generate a view according to which the methods behind the evolution theory should be rejected’. As he/she sees it, this consideration puts one of the main ideas of the paper under pressure, the idea being that while we may for various reasons be inclined to reject individual results of science, we should all rationally accept the scientific method. As a reply, I distinguish two types of creationists. Most of them, like the Intelligent Design advocate Phillip E. Johnson, are integrationists, in the sense that they do not dispute the general methods of science, but they reject the idea that science can never evaluate evidence in favour of supernatural action or design. In other words, they denounce methodological naturalism as a principled dictum. But once methodological naturalism is rejected—as I think it should be—and a more expansive understanding of science is adopted, integrationists should be willing to concede defeat if their evidence turns out to be weak. They claim for fair rules, but once those rules are obtained, they should abide by the result. Others, like the philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga, are separationists, in the sense that they claim the right to opt out from mainstream science if its conclusions cannot be reconciled with their overall metaphysical beliefs. They like to play the game but they refuse to be bound if the results are hard to swallow. In my view, only separationists pose a problem to the paper’s argument. I have not much space to address such a complex issue here, but my tentative reply points out that the separationists are embracing alternative epistemologies that deliver opposite verdicts regarding the same factual claim—what the philosopher of science Phillip Kitcher (2011) has called ‘chimeric epistemologies’. Holders of chimeric epistemologies dismiss certain parts of the public knowledge in favour of their prior assumptions and basic beliefs. But they gladly accept those methods of science that deliver more friendly conclusions. Indeed, creationists have no quarrel with facts about the shape of the earth, acceleration due to gravity, or the composition of water. They are selective deniers. So, it does not seem correct to argue that they reject the conventional methods of science, but they combine these methods with their own particularistic ways of producing knowledge claims. Therefore, whereas we all accept the evidence-base core of the scientific method, separationists just ask for a second opinion when it suits them.
In Torcello’s view, ‘the moral importance of getting facts right on matters with extreme social and global ramifications (such as climate change) cannot be overstated… the obstinate public promotion of beliefs contrary to establish scientific consensus by non-experts, and especially in the context of political advocacy, is morally condemnable’ (2011, p. 202).
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Bellolio Badiola, C. Science as Public Reason: A Restatement. Res Publica 24, 415–432 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-018-09410-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-018-09410-3