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SUMMARY:Identifying future-proof science - Peter Vickers (Durham Universit
 y)
DTSTART:20221124T153000Z
DTEND:20221124T170000Z
UID:TALK192176@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jacob Stegenga
DESCRIPTION:Some scientific ideas make a transition from speculation\, to 
 hypothesis\, to well-supported-theory\, to fact. Clearly this happened for
  the basic Copernican claim that the Earth turns on its axis and orbits th
 e Sun. There are many other examples\, and nearly all so-called 'anti-real
 ists' will accept many of the examples just as much as so-called 'realists
 '\; very few philosophers doubt that smoking causes cancer\, or that conte
 mporary global warming is anthropogenic.\n\nBut to-date there is scant sch
 olarship on the topic of _when_ we should say that a scientific claim has 
 become an established scientific fact. The renowned evolutionary biologist
  Ernst Mayr 'often deplored that he was not aware that philosophers of sci
 ence have investigated this transition from theory to fact' (Hoyningen-Hue
 ne\, 2022). Recently\, IPCC report writers have sometimes struggled with t
 he same issue\; one such writer recently asked\, 'Where is the boundary be
 tween "established fact" and "very high confidence"?' (Janzwood 2020). For
  both scientific and political reasons\, IPCC authors really need to know 
 where this boundary lies. Or\, if there is no boundary as such\, they need
  at least _sufficient_ conditions for when something can be called a 'fact
 '.\n\nIn _Identifying Future-Proof Science_ (2022)\, I tackle this questio
 n head-on. Building on Oreskes\, _Why Trust Science?_ (2019)\, I argue tha
 t one determines an established fact not by looking at the science\, but\,
  rather\, by looking at certain features of the scientific community (seco
 nd-order\, not first-order\, evidence). I argue that a fact can be identif
 ied when there is a 95% consensus within a scientific community that is la
 rge\, international\, and diverse\, and where that consensus has been reac
 hed through _bona fide_ scientific activity (thus ruling out tacit backgro
 und assumptions).\n\nIn the entire history of science\, whenever these cri
 teria have been met the claim in question has never been overturned\, desp
 ite enormous opportunity for that to happen\, if it were ever going to hap
 pen. Thus a scientific claim meeting these criteria can be called a future
 -proof scientific fact.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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