Values, Pluralism, and Pragmatism: Themes from the Work of Matthew J. Brown

This book offers eighteen original historical and philosophical essays focused on values in science, scientific pluralism, and pragmatism. These themes have been central in the work of Matthew J. Brown, and the book frames these topics through an engagement with Brown's broadly ranging work on values in science. The themes of this book are integrated and unified in the pragmatic and value-laden ideal of science defended by Professor Brown in his fascinating 2020 book, Science and Moral Imagination. Brown's ideal of moral imagination prescribes that scientists should recognize the contingencies in their work as unforced choices, examine morally salient aspects of these decisions, recognize the various interests of relevant stakeholders, explore and construct alternative options, and exercise fair and warranted value judgments to guide those decisions. The interdisciplinary essays in this volume engage with different aspects of Brown's philosophical research on scientific values as well as his historical research on figures such as John Dewey and Paul K. Feyerabend. With a fresh focus on topics such as moral imagination, inductive risk, and epistemic priority in various socially salient contexts (e.g., artificial intelligence, psychiatry, segregation research), this book is of great interest to a broad audience of researchers working in philosophy of science, philosophy of medicine, history and philosophy of science, and science and technology studies.

List of contents

Introduction: Values, Pluralism, and Pragmatism (Jonathan Y. Tsou, Jamie Shaw, and Carla Fehr).- Part I: Mill, Feyerabend, and Pluralism.- Chapter 1. Mill and the Marketplace of Ideas (Kathleen Okruhlik).- Chapter 2. The Limits of Ethical Pluralism: Mill, Feyerabend, and Experiments in Living (Jamie Shaw).- Chapter 3. Feyerabend s Realism and Expansion of Pluralism in the 1970s (Jonathan Y. Tsou).- Part II: Dewey, Pragmatism, and Communities.- Chapter 4. Quine, Dewey, and the Pragmatist Tradition in American Philosophy of Science (Don Howard).- Chapter 5. Science in Dewey s Great Community (Paul Howatt).- Chapter 6.  Dismantling the Deficit Model of Science Communication Using Ludwik Fleck s Theory of Thinking Collectives (Victoria Min-Yi Wang).- Part III: Values in Socially Relevant Contexts.- Chapter 7. Who the Computer Sees: Race, Gender, and AI (Carla Fehr).- Chapter 8. Conceptions of Machine Learning: Limitations and Weaknesses from the Viewpoint of Ethics (Britta Anne Bolander).- Chapter 9. An Algorithm in Doctor s Clothing: Anchoring Trust Appropriately in AI Healthcare Deployment (Emily LaRosa).- Chapter 10. Hermeneutical Pluralism in Psychiatry: Lessons from Spectrum 10K (Bennett Knox).- Part IV: Moral Imagination.- Chapter 11. Matt Brown at the Funeral of the Value-Free Ideal (Janet A. Kourany).- Chapter 12. Pragmatism, Moral Imagination, and Existential Choices (P.D. Magnus).- Chapter 13. Brown s Pragmatic Theory of Values and the Challenges of Commercial Science (Manuela Fernández Pinto).- Part V: The Value-Free Ideal, Inductive Risk, and Epistemic Priority.- Chapter 14. A History of Metaethics and Values in Science (Paul L. Franco).- Chapter 15. Science, Values, and Action Guidance: Can we Stop Talking about the Value Free Ideal? (Greg Lusk).- Chapter 16. Characterizing the Value-Free Ideal: From a Dichotomy to a Multiplicity (Kevin C. Elliott).- Chapter 17.  Inquiry and Epistemic Priority: Lessons from Segregation Research (Kareem Khalifa, Jared Millson, and Mark Risjord).- Part VI: Reply from Matthew J. Brown.- Chapter 18. Values, Pluralism, and Pragmatism: A Career Mediospective (Matthew J. Brown).- Index.

About the author

Jonathan Y. Tsou is a Professor of Philosophy, the Marvin and Kathleen Stone Distinguished Professor of Humanities in Medicine and Science, and Director of the Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology (CVMST) at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research interests include general philosophy of science, history of philosophy of science, and philosophy of psychiatry. He is author of Philosophy of Psychiatry (2021, Cambridge University Press), co-editor of Technology Ethics (2023, Routledge), and co-editor of Objectivity in Science (2015, Boston Studies in Philosophy and History of Science). He currently serves as a member of the Governing Board for the Philosophy of Science Association.
Jamie Shaw a Postdoctoral Fellow at Leibniz University Hannover and a Sessional Instructor in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at University of Toronto. His research interests include philosophy of science, history of philosophy of science, social epistemology, and philosophy of science policy. He is co-editor of Interpreting Feyerabend: Critical Essays (2021, Cambridge University Press), and a co-editor for numerous special issues in journals (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for History of Philosophy of Science, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science). He is currently working on a book (University of Pittsburgh Press) on the new topic of philosophy of science policy.
Carla Fehr is an Associate Professor and the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at the University of Waterloo. Her research interests include feminist epistemology and philosophy of science, socially relevant philosophy of science, scientific pluralism, and philosophy of biology. She is a co-editor for numerous special issues in journals (Synthese,Feminist Philosophy Quarterly), including issues devoted to the topics of socially relevant philosophy of science and feminist analyses of artificial intelligence. She is a founding editor of the journal Feminist Philosophy Quarterly and the first (interim) Director of the Consortium for Socially Relevant Philosophy of/ in Science and Engineering (SRPoiSE).

Summary

This book offers eighteen original historical and philosophical essays focused on values in science, scientific pluralism, and pragmatism. These themes have been central in the work of Matthew J. Brown, and the book frames these topics through an engagement with Brown's broadly ranging work on values in science. The themes of this book are integrated and unified in the pragmatic and value-laden ideal of science defended by Professor Brown in his fascinating 2020 book, Science and Moral Imagination. Brown's ideal of moral imagination prescribes that scientists should recognize the contingencies in their work as unforced choices, examine morally salient aspects of these decisions, recognize the various interests of relevant stakeholders, explore and construct alternative options, and exercise fair and warranted value judgments to guide those decisions. The interdisciplinary essays in this volume engage with different aspects of Brown's philosophical research on scientific values as well as his historical research on figures such as John Dewey and Paul K. Feyerabend. With a fresh focus on topics such as moral imagination, inductive risk, and epistemic priority in various socially salient contexts (e.g., artificial intelligence, psychiatry, segregation research), this book is of great interest to a broad audience of researchers working in philosophy of science, philosophy of medicine, history and philosophy of science, and science and technology studies.

Product details

• Assisted by: Carla Fehr (Editor), Jamie Shaw (Editor), Jonathan Y. Tsou (Editor)
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 25.07.2025
• EAN: 9783031929571
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3192957-1
• No. of pages: 401
• Illustrations: XII, 401 p. 5 illus., 3 illus. in color.
• Series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); Wissenschaftsphilosophie und -theorie, Künstliche Intelligenz, Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Science, History of Science, Pragmatism, Westliche Philosophie: nach 1800, History of Philosophy of Science, Scientific pluralism, Matthew J. Brown, Plurasim and Pragmatism, John Dewey's pragmatism and the history of pragmatism, Values and objectivity in science, Socially relevant philosophy of science