Research – Projects

Research Projects | People | Publications | Values in Science Lab

SCIENCE, VALUES, AND DEMOCRACY

Project Leader: Matthew J. Brown

The research objective of my project is to develop a theory of the ways that scientific inquiries and human values mutually impact one another, and the implications of those interactions for science policy. My research will draw on a growing literature in science and technology studies about the interactions of science, values, and politics, and it will engage with the science and values debate within philosophy of science over whether there is a normative role for values in science, and if so, what it is. On that basis, I will develop an account of the role that values can and should play in various stages of scientific inquiry (common to the natural, social, medical, and engineering sciences), based in part on analyses of cases where they do play such a role (especially in the history of psychology and the history of physics) and on normative arguments about what is necessary for the production of objective, reliable, scientific knowledge as well as the conditions of justice and morality in scientific research. I will also examine the ways in which the processes and results of scientific inquiry have and rightly ought to have an influence on our values. Such an understanding is necessary for an adequate account of the interactions between science and politics. The ultimate aim of the project is to provide a more unified, adequate, and engaged account of the role of science in democratic politics that is applicable to questions such as the ideal social agenda for science, public and corporate funding of science, the politicization of science, legal restrictions on scientific inquiry, evidence-based policy, the role of science advisors, and other related problems.

This research project will attempt to transform our philosophical understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry, its relationship to personal and social values, and its role in democratic society. I will apply a synthetic approach and hope to make contributions relevant to history and philosophy of science, science and technology studies, naturalistic ethics, political theory, and science policy.

THE ROLE OF ETHICS CODES IN SCIENCE

Project Leader: Matthew J. Brown

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COGNITION, CULTURE, AND COMMUNICATION

Project Leader: Matthew J. Brown

Cognition, communication, and culture traditionally mark ontological distinctions as well as disciplinary boundaries. Cognition covers the individual operation of the isolated human mind, and is the domain of psychology (and the associated cognitive sciences). Communication is the interaction of human minds through a medium, and is covered by the eponymous field of study as well as media and information theory. Culture includes the shared knowledge, values, and practices of a larger social group and is the traditional field of anthropology. The humanities cover aspects of culture and communication but are not considered relevant to their “scientific” study. The ideal unification of science would relate these three categories reductively: culture can be reduced to acts of communication, acts of communication can be reduced to the cognitive operation of individual minds… and so on down to the level of physical particles.

We will examine a host of radical challenges to this traditional picture of separate, hierarchically organized ontological categories. We will examine critical and constructive approaches that treat cognition as embodied and enacted, constituted by culture and communication, socially and technologically distributed, extended, and mediated, as well as approaches to culture and communication which recognize them as inherently cognitive activities, rather than the epiphenomenal residue of the operation of individual minds. Rather than individualism and reductionism, we should think of cognition, culture, and communication as mutually co-constituting.

Past Projects

THE VALUES GAME INITIATIVE

Project Leader: Monica Evans

The Values Game Initiative is a project intended to create and develop serious games that further the mission and themes of the Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology. Games created as part of the Center for Values are designed to teach and explore the pressing issues of our times through new models for digital education, and created around content suggested collaboratively by students, faculty, community leaders, and the Advisory Board of the Center for Values.

As the Center for Values is committed to creating new future-thinking models for education, the creation of serious games as part of the Center provides a test bed for research and ideas, as well as heightened visibility for the Center. These games will be playable on the Center for Values website, and are available to a wider audience than the lecture series and courses. All parts of the development process and creative thinking are also documented online, as a way to inspire collaboration and involve the greater community in the game development process.

These values games are intended to be short, densely-packed, and introspective: to engender experiences that are jumping-off points for deeper, more nuanced thinking about the major issues in values we face today.

To reach these goals, the Values Game Initiative is implementing a four-phase project in 2010-2011 that includes collaborative idea generation, concept refinement and selection, and the creation and release of two to six online games that explore the values associated with human enhancement, modification, and genetic manipulation.

For more information about the Values Game Initiative or to play the developed games, please click here. Read news coverage of the project here.