Question

explore the relationship between social values and medical practices/scientific method.

Answer 1

Ans) Science and values is a multifaceted discussion in the philosophy of science, as there are a variety of ways the conjunction of the two can be understood.

- Two major theses in this area are:

(1) that scientific inquiry, rather than being a simple matter of evidence and logic or rule-governed inference, requires a variety of value judgments

(2) that social (ethical, prudential, political, etc.) values play some role in scientific inquiry. Arguments for the first thesis have generally proceeded from some sort of uncertainty or indeterminacy in the relationship of evidence and theory, such as the underdetermination of theory by evidence. Defenders of this thesis have posited a special set of values, termed "epistemic" or "cognitive", which play a privileged role in scientific inquiry, e.g., simplicity, scope or universality, fruitfulness, accuracy. Proponents of the second thesis have argued either that epistemic values have no special status vis-a-vis other sorts of values, that epistemic values are insufficient to determine theory appraisal, or that decisions about epistemic values depend on contextual social values. Feminist philosophers of science and social studies of science have been particularly important in forwarding the second sort of argument. Those who argue that science is laden with social values have also relied on the argument from inductive risk (the trade-off between false negative and false positive errors).

- In addition to these two main issues, the category of social values includes a variety of other important issues, such as the responsible conduct of research, the relation between science and religion, the role of science in policy and politics, the politics of science, the democratization of science, and the extent to which science can generate social and ethical norms.