Abstract
Disagreement is ubiquitous: people, including scientists in all fields of knowledge, disagree about a wide variety of topics—from mundane facts about what’s the best way to reach the airport, to complex matters such as the degree of reliability of climate models. Clearly, disagreement plays a crucial role in virtually all our intellectual practices. The literature on the topic is growing, but core epistemological features of disagreement remain unclear, especially in scientific contexts. The first part of the project aims to fill this lacuna. Drawing important distinctions, we develop a framework to analyze scientific disagreement. This helps clarify the nature as well as the mechanics of disagreement. We then turn to the public’s understanding of scientific disagreement. We expect to gain a fine picture of common misconceptions that folk have in relation to scientific disagreement so as to identify some basic strategies to counter an increasingly common form of science denialism which poses a threat to society. Moreover, we contend that to convey an accurate picture of how science works, disagreement cannot be simply dismissed as something devaluing science and thus something to avoid. On the contrary, it must be conceived for what it is: a central constituent of the scientific enterprise. Our project thus helps developing strategies to communicate the scientific culture to the public that can counter science denialism. From a broader perspective, the project aims to achieve a better grasp of how the public’s (mis)conception of scientific disagreement may affect the democratic texture of societies and the ideal of inclusiveness. The second part of the project investigates occurrences of disagreement in two areas of scientific inquiry—mathematics and risk analysis of extreme events—with the following aims: (i) testing and fine-tuning our general framework; (ii) providing a detailed and realistic understanding of the scientific practices in these two limit cases, which are strategic for our project for two reasons. First, they are epistemically peculiar areas of scientific inquiry where misconceptions about the nature of the practice and of disagreement are prominent. Because mathematics is commonly conceived as a highly idealized practice, disagreement there is wrongly taken to indicate the presence of some deep shortcoming. In contrast, risk analysis is perceived to be highly fallible where disagreement is taken to be mundane thus inviting the wrong inference that the whole practice lies on epistemically shaky foundations. Second, since both mathematics and risk analysis are ubiquitous in science, an analysis of disagreement in these two areas is key to understanding disagreement in science in general. Overall, the project will advance our understanding of disagreement, it will cast new light on the inner workings of the scientific culture and put fallible but effective human agents back into philosophical discussions about science.
Dettagli del progetto
Responsabile scientifico: Filippo Ferrari
Strutture Unibo coinvolte:
Dipartimento delle Arti
Coordinatore:
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna(Italy)
Contributo totale di progetto: Euro (EUR) 239.238,00
Contributo totale Unibo: Euro (EUR) 122.280,00
Durata del progetto in mesi: 24
Data di inizio
30/11/2023
Data di fine:
28/02/2026
