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Scientific Communication, Ethical Argument, and Public Policy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Duncan MacRae Jr.
Duncan MacRae Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

The paper argues that ethical discourse is intimately involved in the research literature of social science, and especially of political science, but is relegated to a subsidiary position. It therefore shares some of the vagueness, flexibility, and potential self-contradiction of the discourse of everyday life, rather than being sharpened by rational criticism. The norms governing scientific discourse provide not only for empirical testing, but also for rational criticism in the formulation of theories; an analogous type of criticism is shared by legal discourse. Some of the norms of scientific communication may be transferred to ethics by the specification of rules for ethical argument, requiring that arguments derive from previously specified, clear and consistent “ethical hypotheses.” Within such rules, ethical systems formulated by social scientists and philosophers may be compared critically. Systems amenable to such comparison include those of welfare economics, cost-benefit analysis, and formal democratic theory. The discourse embodying this argument and criticism is particularly appropriate within the normative tradition of political science. Its possible benefits include clarity about our valuations; communication among disciplines that enlarges the perspectives of each discipline; and a more independent, self-conscious examination within the university of the criteria for policy formation.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , March 1971 , pp. 38 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1971

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Footnotes

*

Revised version of paper presented to the graduate students' Political Science Association, University of Chicago, October 17, 1969. I am indebted to Gordon Tullock, Richard E. Flathman, E. Wood Kelley, Nathan Leites, Alan Gewirth, Gerhard Casper and Frank H. Knight for helpful comments on a previous draft.

References

1 The problem of practical relevance is discussed in Easton, David, “The New Revolution in Political Science,” this Review, 63 (12 1969), 1051–1061 Google Scholar. The character of political theory is discussed in Sheldon S. Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” ibid., 1062–1082, but with a more humanistic and less scientific definition of “theory” than we shall use here.

2 See Weber, Max, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans. and edited by Shils, Edward A. and Finch, Henry A. (New York: Free Press, 1949)Google Scholar, Chap. II; on the possibility of critical ethical discussion, see ibid., p. 54. A critique of this aspect of Weber's thought is presented in Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)Google Scholar, Chap. II, but that critique would probably be directed in some degree at the argument of the present paper as well.

3 See Ayer, Alfred J., Language, Truth, and Logic, 1st ed. (London: Gollancz, 1936)Google Scholar; Reichenbach, Hans, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1951)Google Scholar, Chap. 17. This view was also reflected in welfare economics, as in the notion that “interpersonal comparison of utilities has no meaning:” Arrow, Kenneth J., Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: Wiley, 1951), p. 9 Google Scholar. The history of this development is traced in Brecht, Arnold, Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See for example Flathman, Richard E., The Public Interest (New York: Wiley, 1966), pp. x–xi Google Scholar.

5 See Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, vol. II, No. 2, of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, rev. ed., 1970), p. 164 Google Scholar. A complementary argument, that the social sciences are and ought to be guided by fundamental intellectual concerns, is presented in Riecken, Henry W., “Social Sciences and Social Problems,” Social Science Information, 8 #1 (February 1969), 101–129 Google Scholar.

6 Hare, R. M., Freedom and Reason (New York: Oxford, 1953), p. 25 Google Scholar.

7 The argument for removing valuative discourse from social science has been made (e.g.) in Kemeny, John G., “A Philosopher Looks at Political Science,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 4 (09 1960), 292–302 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 A case study of the politicization of natural science is given in Medvedev, Zhores A., The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko, trans. by Lerner, I. Michael (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

9 The distinction between science and common sense is discussed in Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), pp. 1–14 Google Scholar.

10 This flexible persistence of everyday factual assertions is noted in Nagel, loc. cit.; a similar persistence in the valuative symbols of ideologies is noted in Sutton, Francis X., Harris, Seymour E., Kaysen, Carl, and Tobin, James, The American Business Creed (New York: Schocken, 1962), pp. 264, 391 Google Scholar.

11 Garfinkel, Harold, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967)Google Scholar, Chap. 1. This work derives in part from that of Alfred Schutz, a bibliography of whose work is given in ibid., Chap. 2.

12 Bittner, Egon, “Radicalism and the Organization of Radical Movements,” American Sociological Review, 28 (12 1963), 930 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In law and philosophy, this property of principles is known as “defeasibility.”

13 An example of interpretive work of this kind in natural science was the interpretation of the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment as “zero ether drift” when initially they revealed a small non-zero value. See Polanyi, Michael, Personal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 12–14 Google Scholar.

14 See Bittner, op. cit., p. 931; Kuhn, op. cit., p. 164.

15 For an introduction to this approach see Chappell, Vere C. (ed.), Ordinary Language (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964)Google Scholar. Applications to law and politics include Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Pitkin, Hanna F., The Concept of Representation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and Flathman, op. cit.

16 Mates, Benson, “On the Verification of Statements About Ordinary Language,” Inquiry, 1 (Spring 1958), 161–171 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stanley Cavell, “Must We Mean What We Say?” ibid., 172–212; reprinted (the latter in revised version) in Chappell (ed.), op. cit. The relevant pages in the latter volume are 73 and 89.

17 See Kruskal, William H. (ed.), Mathematical Sciences and Social Sciences (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970)Google Scholar.

18 See Rheinstein, Max (ed.), Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society, trans. by Shils, Edward and Rheinstein, Max (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1954), Chaps. 8, 9, 11Google Scholar. Legal terms, however, can change in meaning in a way that scientific terms cannot.

19 On “khadi-justice” see ibid., p. 244. On legal reasoning see Gottlieb, Gidon, The Logic of Choice (New York: Macmillan, 1968), p. 16 Google Scholar; Hart, op. cit., pp. 125–127; Levi, Edward H., An introduction to Legal Reasoning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

20 John W. Tukey, in lecture at the University of Chicago, June 12, 1969; personal communication, January 23, 1970. A subjective element is also introduced into statistical decision theory by the Bayesian approach to consideration of prior probabilities.

21 Price, Don K., The Scientific Estate (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965)Google Scholar, Chap. 5.

22 Schick, Allen, “Systems Politics and System Budgeting,” Public Administration Review, 29 (03-April 1969), 137–151 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The process approach is represented by Lindblom, Charles A., The Intelligence of Democracy (New York: Free Press, 1965)Google Scholar. An appeal for “juridical democracy” in contrast to a pluralist liberalism is also contained in Lowi, Theodore J., The End of Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1969)Google Scholar.

23 Parsons, Talcott, The Social System (New York: Free Press, 1961), p. 335 Google Scholar.

24 The conservative aspects of this last norm are brought out in Kendall, Willmoore, “The Open Society and Its Fallacies,” this Review, 54 (12 1960), 979 Google Scholar.

25 Kuhn, op. cit., pp. 3, 10, 46, 47. The notion of “paradigm” is also clarified in “Postscript—1969,” pp. 174–210.

26 Kaplan, Abraham, The Conduct of Inquiry (San Francisco: Chandler, 1964), p. 24 Google Scholar, italics in the original.

27 Two directions that such efforts have taken are the search for universal prerequisites for a society's continued existence, and for values or norms shared by diverse societies. For the former approach see Aberle, David F., Cohen, Albert K., Davis, Arthur K., Levy, Marion J., and Sutton, Francis X., “The Functional Prerequisites of a Society,” Ethics, 60 (01 1950), 100–111 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the latter see Hart, op. cit., pp. 188–189.

28 See Ziman, John, Public Knowledge (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

29 A similar distinction is made in Levi, op. cit., p. v, between appellate cases and those that pass through the fact-finding stage of the trial court. A descriptive account of legal or ethical reasoning would have to include the latter, but there may still be advantages in setting off the ascertainment of facts for separate consideration. An alternative to this separation, involving the consistent organization of factual and valuative statements together, would be the description of ideal political systems; David Easton suggests this as a means of clarifying values in The Political System (New York: Knopf, 1953), pp. 230 ff.Google Scholar

30 See Popper, Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968), pp. 91–92 Google Scholar.

31 I ignore further differences such as that between ambiguity and vagueness.

32 Frankena, William K., Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 79 Google Scholar.

33 A disparity between the two has been noted and criticized in Gewirth, Alan, “Positive ‘Ethics’ and Normative ‘Science,’” Philosophical Review, 69 (07 1960), 311–330 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Lenk, Hans, “Der ‘Ordinary Language Approach’ und die Neutralitätsthese der Metaethik,” in Gadamer, Hans-Georg (ed.), Das Problem der Sprache (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1967), 183–206 Google Scholar.

34 By “moral convictions” I mean any beliefs that can be expressed in terms of “ought,” “right,” or their equivalents. A rule of this kind is relevant to the controversy about cardinal economic welfare and interpersonal comparison; see Harsanyi, John C., “Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility,” Journal of Political Economy, 63 (08 1955), 309–321 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also reprinted in Arrow, Kenneth J. and Scitovsky, Tibor (eds.), Readings in Welfare Economics (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1969)Google Scholar.

35 I am in effect suggesting a general “impossibility theorem” about the dictates of the moral conscience—unprovable, of course, until those dictates are specified. But I shall contend that Arrow's (op. cit.) “impossibility theorem” is a special instance of this general principle, in which economists' convictions about cardinality, interpersonal comparison, and proper professional conduct play a central role. The observation that particular moral convictions, as we have learned them, or “sympathy and antipathy,” ought not to be an ultimate and unshakable criterion for judgment of ethical systems was made by Bentham, Jeremy in Principles of Morals and Legislation (New York: Hafner, 1948), pp. 15–17 Google Scholar.

36 See Edel, Abraham, Science and the Structure of Ethics, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, vol. II, no. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), pp. 50 ffGoogle Scholar. The possible emphasis on characteristics of persons might also direct our attention to ethical systems prevalent among psychologists or psychotherapists.

37 A systematic argument for the location of intrinsic value in experience was made by Lewis, Clarence I. in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1946)Google Scholar; see esp. p. 387.

38 The distinction between preference and welfare is discussed in Braybrooke, David, Three Tests for Democracy: Personal Rights, Human Welfare, Collective Preference (New York: Random House, 1968), pp. 121–145 Google Scholar.

39 A selection of major articles in the field is Arrow and Scitovsky (eds.), op. cit.

40 See Graaff, J. de V., Theoretical Welfare Economics (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 8 ff.Google Scholar

41 Brandt, Richard B., “Personal Values and the Justification of Institutions,” in Hook, Sidney (ed.), Human Values and Economic Policy (New York: New York University Press, 1967), p. 27 Google Scholar. An earlier critique is that of Cropsey, Joseph, “What Is Welfare Economics?,” Ethics, 55 (01 1955), 116–125 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 See Lyden, Fremont J. and Miller, Ernest G. (eds.), Planning Programming Budgeting: A Systems Approach to Management (Chicago: Markham, 1968)Google Scholar; Robbins, Lionel, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (London: Macmillan, 1937), p. 141 Google Scholar.

43 U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Wel-fare, Toward a Social Report (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1969)Google Scholar.

44 See Henriot, Peter J., “Political Questions About Social Indicators,” Western Political Quarterly, 23 (06 1970), 235–255 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 These arguments are summarized, for example, in Braybrooke, David and Lindblom, Charles E., A Strategy of Decision (New York: Free Press, 1963), pp. 212–213 Google Scholar.

46 See Rawls, John, “Two Concepts of Rules,” Philosophical Review, 44 (01 1955)Google Scholar. A critique of rule-utilitarianism is given in MacRae, Duncan Jr., “Utilitarian Ethics and Social Change,” Ethics, 78 (April 1968), 188–198 Google Scholar, with additional references.

47 Dahl, Robert A., A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., p. 6.

49 Ibid., p. 32.

50 Ibid., p. 37.

51 Bay, Christian, The Structure of Freedom (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

52 Ibid., pp. 83, 88, 95.

53 Gewirth, Alan, “Categorial Consistency in Ethics,” Philosophical Quarterly, 17 (10 1967), 289–299 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Ibid., p. 292.

55 Ibid., p. 297.

56 Ibid., p. 298.

57 See MacRae, Duncan Jr., “Social Science and the Sources of Policy,” P.S., (Summer 1970), 394–309Google Scholar.

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