Science and the Public Sphere: Philip Kitcher on Science, Ethics and Democracy
Abstract:
In Science in a Democratic Society and other writings, Philip Kitcher describes scientific practice as a public arena within which decision making should be governed by ethical and democratic considerations. He offers an idealized model for such decision making which he calls "well-ordered science," and goes on to support it with wide ranging ethical and political theories. Along the way he questions traditional scientific and academic values, particularly scientific autonomy, the intrinsic value of knowledge, and even the constitutive place of truth in defining the aims of scientific practice. According to Kitcher, these should all be examined with a view to the distributive social consequences of accepting them. In this paper I examine Kitcher's conception of well-ordered science as a public sphere, and some of the theoretical assumptions that Kitcher develops, particularly, his theories of the ethical project as a naturalized social contract theory in ethics, his proposals for "renewing" the ethical project on a global basis incorporating a (hypothetical) pan-human discussion intended to mimic pre-historic conditions, and the application of these theories to well-ordered science.
