Science & Values

Values in Science

Recently, I've become increasingly interested in the role of moral, social, and political values in scientific reasoning. I don't really have a firm position on whether science should or should not be value-free. I mostly find myself puzzling over how the arguments and conceputal spaces in this literature are framed and trying to clarify things to my own (possibly idiosyncratic) level of satisfaction. My work on questions in science overlaps substantially with this interest, and I'm considering writing a sequel to my book on race that is mostly about how issues in science and values interact with quantitative social-scientific research on race.

in progress. Paper on Kathleen Okruhlik's 'Gender & the Biological Sciences.' (with Kevin Elliott)
in progress. Paper on partial rapprochements between proponents and defenders of the value-free ideal. (with Wania Ahmad)
in progress. Paper on the causal assumptions of the value-free ideal.
in progress. Paper on distinguishing epistemic and nonepistemic values in science.
2026. “Value-Free Ideals in Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science.” In Histories of the Value-Laden Ideals of Science, 50-84. edited by G. I. Bıro and A. T. Tuboly, Routledge. (with Jamie Shaw, Kevin C. Elliott, and Jon Y. Tsou).
2025. Inquiry and epistemic priority: lessons from segregation research. in Jon Tsou, Jamie Shaw, & Carla Fehr (eds.) Values, Pluralism, and Pragmatism: Themes from the Work of Matthew J. Brown. Springer. (with Jared Millson & Mark Risjord)
2022. "Sins of inquiry: how to criticize scientific pursuits." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 92: 86-96. (with Marina DiMarco)
2020. "Understanding, truth, and epistemic goals." Philosophy of Science 87 (5):944-956.
2020. "Questions, perspectives, and epistemic value." In Knowledge for a Human Point of View. edited by A. Cretu and M. Massimi. Dordrecht: Springer. (with Jared Millson).
2019. "Inquiry tickets: values, pursuit, and underdetermination." Philosophy of Science. 86 (5):1016-1028. (with Marina DiMarco)