ارزش‌باریِ علم و برهان تعیّن ناقص

یکی از مسائل مهم در دامان فلسفۀ علم در دهه‌های اخیر، ارزیابی امکان و لزوم پاک‌سازی فرایند علم از ارزش‌هاست. تاثیر ارزش‌های علمی در فرایند علمیْ محل مناقشه نیست، اما دخالت ارزش‌های غیر علمی به دلایل مختلف و ازجمله خدشه در عینیت علم محل تردید جدّی است. یکی از مهم‌ترین استدلال‌های مدافعان این اثرگذاری، تمسک به تعیّن ناقص گذرای فرضیه بر اساس شواهد و قواعد موجود است. در فرایند علم، گاه اتفاق می‌افتد که مجموعهٔ شواهد در دسترس به‌همراه قواعد منطقی و علمی، پژوهشگر را به نتیجه معیّنی رهنمون نمی‌شود و هنوز چند گزینهٔ بدیل پیش‌روی او وجود دارد. حال، از آنجا که مولفه‌های علمی بنا به فرض، از تعیّن کامل فرضیه ناتوان هستند، انتخاب از میان این گزینه‌ها بر پایهٔ ارزش‌های غیر علمی خواهد بود و در نتیجه، دخالت این قسم از ارزش‌ها در فرایند علم مُجاز خواهد بود. مهم‌ترین چالش پیش ‌روی این دفاع، خدشه به عینیت علم است؛ زیرا شکاف بین فرضیه و مولفه‌های علمی، با عوامل غیر علمی پر شده است و این نگرشی غایت‌گرایانه و عمل‌گرایانه به علم است؛ نه نگاهی واقع‌گرایانه. همچنین عوامل اثرگذار بر انتخابِ نظریه در حالت تعیّن ناقص، اعم از ارزش‌های غیر علمی هستند و می‌توان انتخاب نهایی را مولود ویژگی‌های شخصیتی یا عوامل محیطی و فرهنگی غیر هنجاری دانست.

The Valueladenness of Science and Argument from Underdetermination

The conflict between the impact of unscientific factors on science and its process, or in other words, “oriented science”, has a long history. But in recent decades, the issue has been reborn in more detail and with a focus on unscientific values as well as a focus on the natural sciences at the heart of the philosophy of science, with numerous proponents and opponents arguing for their claims. Opponents of influence, often influenced by the positivist discourse that governs science, considered the involvement of any unscientific factors, including contextual values, in conflict with the ideal of science (objectivity and accurate reporting of natural fact), and spoke of neutral or valuefree science. Accordingly, to justify any hypothesis, theory or scientific explanation, only scientific criteria should be sufficient, including scientific values, scientific and logical rules and evidences. On the contrary, some introduced such an ideal as unattainable, undesirable, or based on incorrect principles, and considering the scientific and practical consequences of scientific theories and hypotheses, they argued in defense of the impact of unscientific values on the process of science, which is the most important; they are: “inaccuracy of distinction between scientific and nonscientific values”, “necessity of underdetermination of hypothesis or theory through empirical evidence”, and “avoidance of inductive risk”. Underdetermination is a common term in experimental science books as well as philosophy of science. From a descriptive view, since the predominant method in the processes of experimental sciences is induction, it often happens that the collection and analysis of certain data by induction does not lead to a single and unique result, and if we consider all scientific and epistemological factors and criteria, however, no definitive conclusion can be drawn, and although numerous cases have been excluded from the results and are not supported by evidence, there are still several hypotheses, theories, or explanations that are supported by scientific criteria in much the same way. So, often more than one theory, explanation, or law is consistent with a particular set of evidence. The question is what happens when researchers eventually choose one of these alternatives and reject the others? If, according to the assumption, all scientific and epistemic factors have not been able to present a definite final result, then a complete determination is born of the involvement of nonscientific factors. The most important challenge in advancing this argument is to defend the objectivity of science despite being influenced by nonscientific factors. This problem can be solved only by knowing the values objectively and believing that they are based on real things, and that such attitudes about the metaphysics of value is common and can be defended. Other problems such as confusion between scientific and practical fields and complete elimination of underdetermination through purely scientific components are not very serious and it seems that the elimination of transient underdetermination can be achieved only by the influence of nonscientific factors. Of course, unscientific factors include unscientific values, and in practice, this gap can be filled with nonvaluable factors. In this case, the underdetermination is not a response to the ideal of valuefree science, but a trace of the ideal of epistemic purity in general (including purity of nonepistemic values and nonepistemic nonvaluable factors).