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LTT: Liam Bright
September 11, 2020 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT
Liam Bright, London School of Economics
Scientific Conclusions Need Not Be Accurate, Justified, or Believed by their Authors
(This talk is being given by Liam Bright and was coauthored by Haixin Dang)
ABSTRACT: It is often claimed that assertions are utterances held to certain norms, called norms of assertion. Some philosophers believe assertions are governed by special factive norms. Other philosophers place weaker epistemic constraints on good assertion—such as justification norms and belief norms. We argue that no such norm could apply to a special class of scientific utterances, which we call public avowals—namely, the conclusions of scientific papers, or more generally the sort of utterances scientists use to communicate the results of their inquiry to the wider scientific community. Such utterances might look like paradigm instances of descriptive statements purporting to describe some fact, yet the norms of assertion philosophers have surveyed are systematically inapt for science.
Hence, either philosophers are generally wrong about these norms, or strictly speaking scientists should not be considered to be making assertions at all when they report their results. After surveying our argument for this negative claim, we end by suggesting a norm of utterance that would be more appropriate to scientific practice. We give arguments for why scientific public avowals must be allowed to be proper even when they are false, unknown and unjustified, and when scientists do not believe them.
This talk will be a Zoom webinar. Registration link: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_q9eeh16ZRuS4YpXUtn2zIg
Details
- Date:
- September 11, 2020
- Time:
-
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT
- Event Categories:
- Lunchtime Talks, Lunchtime Talks 2020-21
Venue
- Online Lecture