scientific pluralism, evidential pluralism, causal relations

1. Promises and perils of
scientific pluralism
Federica Russo
Philosophy | Humanities | Amsterdam
russofederica.wordpress.com |
@federicarusso

2. • Thanks
• Apologies
• Being at the end of workshop and being
able to take advantage of it
– Surely many teams already covered
• Big assumption here: move within ‘proper’
scientific framework (not demarcation
problem – see Sophie)
– But towards the end say something about it
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3. Overview
• Scientific pluralism
• Case studies on pluralism:
– Social science | Medical methodology
What do we gain?
What can go wrong?
• A qualified defense of pluralism
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4. SCIENTIFIC PLURALISM
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5. What are we plural about?
• Theories
– E.g.: successive (e.g. in physics), incompatible
(e.g. homeopathy), …
• Concepts
– E.g.: difference concepts of ‘cause’ / ‘causality’
• Methods
– E.g.: observational, experimental, qualitative,
quantitative, …
• Explanations
– E.g.: final, causal, etiological, constitutive, …
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6. The challenge of going plural
• Multiple theories, concepts, methods,
explanations are available.
• Not a ‘happy family strategy’
• Then what?
– Learn to choose
– Determine criteria to choose
– Provide a rationale for including or excluding
items
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7. PLURALISM IN
SOCIAL SCIENCE
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8. A quarrel about methods
• Social science is observational, by and
large
• Quasi-experimental methods on the rise
– Reproduce a quasi randomisation
• Potential outcome model: what would happen to a
same individual if she had and didn’t have the
factor
• Switch on / off causes
– Big assumption: Manipulate putative causes
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9. WHAT DO WE GAIN?
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10. • Arguably, the more methods available, the
better
• Supposedly, we use a ‘stronger’
methodology
– Mimicking experiment, highly mathematised
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11. WHAT CAN GO WRONG?
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12. Methodological worries
• How strict is the requirement of
‘manipulable causes’?
• In social science, race, gender, ethnicity
are causes
– What if we cannot manipulate them?
– Reject the method? Reject the causes?
– Scale down scope of the method?
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13. Ethico-political worries
• Race, ethnicity, gender are all ‘sensitive’
factors
• How to study them?
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14. PLURALISM IN
MEDICAL METHODOLOGY
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15. A quarrel about
methods and concepts
• Evidential pluralism in medicine
– Evidence of correlation and of mechanisms
• How to gain such evidence?
– Experimental and observational studies. Labs
and statistics.
• How to conceive of causal relations?
– Causality is not to be reduced to either probability
or mechanism
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16. WHAT DO WE GAIN?
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17. • If we can make use of multiple sources of
evidence our causal claims will be
stronger
– Reinforced concrete analogy
• We avoid imperialistic attitudes from RCTs
in medicine (see EBM)
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18. WHAT CAN GO WRONG?
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19. Causality and action
• How high is the bar to intervene?
– How much ‘established’ must a causal claim be?
• Do precautionary measure license lower
bars?
– Specifically, how much can we lower the bar of
explanatory mechanisms?
• What ‘causes’ can be intervened upon?
– Are social factors ‘causal’ enough to be
‘actionable’?
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20. DEFENDING PLURALISM
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21. What good is pluralism?
• Avoiding ‘imperialisms’ of any kind
– Against principled ‘gold standard’
• Foster inclusiveness
– Etherodox economics, narrative medicine, …
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22. Not an ‘anything goes’ strategy
• A plurality of pluralisms
– What are you plural about?
– Why do you need multiple theories / concepts
/ methods / explanations?
– What hold them together?
• What to keep and what to exclude
– Here connects to questions of demarcation
• Finding a rationale behind pluralism
– See e.g. mosaic approach to causality
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23. From science to action
• Pluralism can foster justification of a
narrative
– Numbers don’t speak for themselves
– Graphs and pics can be deceitful
– Slogans may be telling only part of the story
• Back them up via different theories /
methods / concepts / explanations
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