Abstract
Scientific activities strongly depend on concepts and classifications to represent the world in an orderly and workable manner. This creates a trade-off. On the one hand, it is important to leave space for conceptual and classificatory criticism. On the other hand, agreement on which concepts and classifications to use, is often crucial for communication and the integration of research and ideas. In this paper, we show that this trade-off can sometimes best be resolved through conceptual governance, in which scientific institutions set a collective conceptual standard, and that voting can be a reasonable way to implement that governance. Voting is a means to aggregate among conflicting values, preferences and priorities that often underpin conceptual or classificatory debates, all while signaling ongoing disagreement. We also discuss how the legitimacy of the voting process and its outcome can be ensured.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Tom Artois, Thomas Reydon, Stijn Conix, Charles Pence, Max Bautista Perpinyà, the audience of the Engaging Ethics and Epistemology in Science conference in Hannover, September 2022, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on this work.
Funding
This work was supported by the Research Foundation – Flanders (Belgium) [Grant number 3H200026].
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Cuypers, V., De Block, A. Resolving Conceptual Conflicts through Voting. Found Sci (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-023-09903-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-023-09903-2