Abstract
(Dellsén, Philosophical Studies, 177(12), 3661–3678, 2020) argues that a positivistic defense of science’s objectivity is incoherent because bias in the generation of scientific theories (implies that the rational evaluation of theories will also be biased. Even though this is an idea easy to agree with, this approach is flawed for two different but related reasons. First, Dellsén’s notion of bias does not account for many ordinary biases. Second, Dellsén’s use of bias at the community-level is inconsistent. It shifts from individual scientists generating new theories and making decisions to scientific communities evaluating and accepting what theories are valid. This article offers a stronger response than Dellsén’s about aseptic objectivity in science by providing a more adequate account of bias, where psychological and behavioral aspects of individual scientists and community-level scientific practices are considered.
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Notes
One reviewer suggests that we can call this type of bias not-awareness-bias cognitive bias. The reason is that, if one is not aware of the fact that you can only see from a viewpoint, one cannot see its limitations either. I would add to this, as I specifically do in Section 3, that the same possession of a viewpoint structurally implies the limitation of seeing its limits. Nevertheless, as the reviewer points out and I consider later, critical dialogue in the scientific community is necessary to alleviate this, mostly because some kind of perspective pluralism seems also a requirement to account for science objectivity.
(Colomina-Almiñana, 2018) proves points of view’s internal structure as logically coherent, consistent, and complete. This note improves this view by incorporating the requirement of relevancy.
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Acknowledgments
The conclusions here reached are part of the efforts of the research project RTI2018-098254-BI00: “Personal Perspectives. Concepts and Applications”, Programa Estatal de I+D+i orientada a los retos de la sociedad, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Gobierno de España. I thank Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández, Antti Hautamäki, Manolo Liz, and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their comments to an earlier version of this paper.
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Colomina-Almiñana, J.J. Bias? Who is Bias? Comments to Dellsén. Philosophia 50, 35–42 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00366-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00366-y