David M Frank | University of Tennessee Knoxville (original) (raw)
Papers by David M Frank
Biology & Philosophy, 2022
This paper explores interactions between ecological science and conservation values in the biodiv... more This paper explores interactions between ecological science and conservation values in the biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) debate of the 1990-2000s. The scientific debate concerned the interpretation of observed correlations between species richness and ecosystem properties like primary productivity in experimental ecosystems. The debate over the causal or explanatory role of species richness was presumed to have implications for conservation policy, and the use of such research to support policy recommendations generated hostility between rival groups of ecologists. I argue that the debate was due in part to the adoption of a broad conception of biodiversity as a goal and value in conservation politics and ethical debates, and the ecologists who questioned the causal efficacy of species richness were also suggesting problems with this goal. I characterize what I call the "uneasy consensus" established by BEF researchers in the late 2000s, discuss roles for values in BEF research, and suggest that this episode shows that ecological science can itself be an important site for ethical debates about conservation values.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2021
Environmental health research produces scientific knowledge about environmental hazards crucial f... more Environmental health research produces scientific knowledge about environmental hazards crucial for public health and environmental justice movements that seek to prevent or reduce exposure to these hazards. The environment in environmental health research is conceptualized as the range of possible social, biological, chemical, and/or physical hazards or risks to human health, some of which merit study due to factors such as their probability and severity, the feasibility of their remediation, and injustice in their distribution. This paper explores the ethics of identifying the relevant environment for environmental health research, as judgments involved in defining an environmental hazard or risk, judgments of that hazard or risk's probability, severity, and/ or injustice, as well as the feasibility of its remediation, all ought to appeal to non-epistemic as well as epistemic values. I illustrate by discussing the case of environmental lead, a housing-related hazard that remains unjustly distributed by race and class and is particularly dangerous to children. Examining a controversy in environmental health research ethics where researchers tested multiple levels of lead abatement in lead-contaminated households, I argue that the broader perspective on the ethics of environmental health research provided in the first part of this paper may have helped prevent this controversy.
Synthese
Recently, invasion biologists have argued that some of the skepticism expressed in the scientific... more Recently, invasion biologists have argued that some of the skepticism expressed in the scientific and lay literatures about the risks of invasive species and other aspects of the consensus within invasion biology is a kind of science denialism. This paper presents an argument that, while some claims made by skeptics of invasion biology share important features with paradigm cases of science denialism, others express legitimate ethical concerns that, even if one disagrees, should not be dismissed as denialist. Further, this case illustrates a more general point about ethical disagreement within sciences like invasion biology that constitutively pursue non-epistemic goals and values. While philosophers of science have argued that epistemic disagreement within science can be productive as heterogeneous epistemic communities “hedge their bets,” the case of invasion biology shows how non-epistemic or ethical disagreement within sciences, while carrying significant risks, can also be epistemically and non- epistemically valuable.
Synthese
This paper discusses ethical issues surrounding Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) of the econom... more This paper discusses ethical issues surrounding Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) of the economic effects of climate change, and how climate economists acting as policy advisors ought to represent the uncertain possibility of catastrophe. Some climate economists, especially Martin Weitzman, have argued for a precautionary approach where avoiding catastrophe should structure climate economists’ welfare analysis. This paper details ethical arguments that justify this approach, showing how Weitzman’s “fat tail” probabilities of climate catastrophe pose ethical problems for widely used IAMs. The main claim is that economists who ignore or downplay catastrophic risks in their representations of uncertainty likely fall afoul of ethical constraints on scientists acting as policy advisors. Such scientists have duties to honestly articulate uncertainties and manage (some) inductive risks, or the risks of being wrong in different ways.
Richard Jeffrey (1956) responded to Richard Rudner’s (1953) argument from inductive risk by maint... more Richard Jeffrey (1956) responded to Richard Rudner’s (1953) argument from inductive risk by maintaining that scientists could produce explicit representations of uncertainty and present these to decision-makers, who could then combine these “value-free” epistemic assessments with utilities (including all non-epistemic values) as in decision theory.1 Heather Douglas (2000, 2009), Kevin Elliott (2011), Daniel Steel (2015), and others have responded to Jeffrey’s strategy by arguing that decisions involving non- epistemic values affect both the content and interpretation of probabilities. On this view, problems of inductive risk arise in methodological decisions that produce probabilities (or other representations of risk or uncertainty) and in the interpretation of these estimates for policymakers.2 This chapter will focus on articulating the Jeffreyan value-free ideal and its limits, and clarifying and exploring the problem of inductive risk due to higher-order uncertainty.
In the first part of the next section, I review Jeffrey’s decision-theoretic response to Rudner and some of its main problems. In the second part, I characterize the problem of inductive risk due to higher-order uncertainty in decision-theoretic terms, using decision trees whose nodes represent methodological choices affecting both the content and interpretation of uncertainty estimates. In the third section, I argue that while it is unrealistic to expect to insulate these decisions from the influence of all non-epistemic values, the Jeffreyan decision-theoretic version of the value-free ideal may be useful in some limited contexts. These are exactly contexts in which methodological decisions introduce minimal higher-order uncertainty, and in which communications of uncertainty are unlikely to be manipulated or misunderstood by decision-makers or scientists themselves. In the fourth section, I illustrate the limitations of the Jeffreyan ideal with reference to climate science. I discuss Gregor Betz’s (2013) recent Jeffreyan response to the inductive risk consider- ations raised by Justin Biddle and Eric Winsberg (2010) and Winsberg (2012) for climate modeling. I argue that the context of policy interactions with regard to climate science are far from the Jeffreyan ideal, thus the argument that climate modeling is value-laden due to inductive risks withstands Betz’s criticisms. I conclude that while the Jeffreyan value-free ideal deserves to be further discussed and debated by philosophers of science, this chapter shows that it faces problems in complex and policy-relevant scientific contexts due to higher-order uncertainty.
Coined in the 1980s as a portmanteau of ‘‘biological diversity’’ by life scientists reporting to ... more Coined in the 1980s as a portmanteau of ‘‘biological diversity’’ by life scientists reporting to policy-makers about anthropogenic loss of species and ecosystems in the twentieth century, the term ‘‘biodiversity’’ has since taken on positive connotations for many concerned about the fate of life on Earth. However, ‘‘biological diversity’’ as a theoretical term in the life sciences had existed at least since the 1950s, and human interest in life’s variety is at least as old as biology. ‘‘Biodiversity’’ has become a term used widely by life scientists, conservation biologists, environmental philosophers, policy-makers, journalists, and activists.The conservation of biological diversity as such, as a more general objective distinct from the conservation of particular species, ecosystems, or landscape features, has become the stated goal of conservation biologists, many conservation organizations, as well as signatory nations to the 1992 Rio Summit’s Convention on Biological Diversity. Against this background, this chapter will present the case for pluralism and contextualism about ‘‘biodiversity,’’ where epistemic and non-epistemic values in particular local contexts constrain and guide the development of multiple legitimate definitions and operationalizations of ‘‘biodiversity.’’ I will argue that the multiple contexts in which the term ‘‘biodiversity’’ is used, and the epistemic and non-epistemic values at stake in these distinct contexts, should lead us to accept a deep pluralism about ‘‘biodiversity,’’ in which only minimal logical constraints limit the concept across all contexts of use. An important consequence of this pluralism is what I will call the problem of definitional risk, or risks taken in precise definition or operationalization.These risks may involve epistemic or non-epistemic values, although here I will focus on non-epistemic values. Non-epistemic definitional risks arise when biodiversity is taken as a goal to be pursued, and the concept must be defined and operationalized for conservation prioritization. Risks arise because any particular definition or operationalization might not adequately capture all the goals and values that its users endorse.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
This paper critically discusses two areas of Sahotra Sarkar’s recent work in environmental philos... more This paper critically discusses two areas of Sahotra Sarkar’s recent work in environmental philosophy: biodiversity and conservation biology and roles for decision theory in incorporating values explicitly in the environmental policy process. I argue that Sarkar’s emphasis on the practices of conservation biolo- gists, and especially the role of social and cultural values in the choice of biodiversity constituents, restricts his conception of biodiversity to particular practical conservation contexts. I argue that life scientists have many reasons to measure many types of diversity, and that biodiversity metrics could be value-free. I argue that Sarkar’s emphasis on the limitations of normative decision theory is in tension with his statement that decision theory can ‘‘put science and ethics together.’’ I also challenge his claim that multi-criteria decision tools lacking axiomatic foundations in preference and utility theory are ‘‘without a rational basis,’’ by presenting a case of a simple ‘‘outranking’’ multi-criteria decision rule that can violate a basic normative requirement of preferences (transitivity) and ask whether there may nevertheless be contexts in which such a procedure might assist decision makers.
Ethics
In the 1934 article “Have Values a Place in Economics?,” the American population economist Joseph... more In the 1934 article “Have Values a Place in Economics?,” the American population economist Joseph Spengler discussed the ethical responsibilities of economic experts and the relationship between economic science and human values. Spengler decided to examine these topics in part due to “the current economic depression” (313), and his paper is worth revisiting in light of the recent financial crisis, particularly due to the complicity of professional economists in producing it. I first discuss Spengler’s view on the obligations of economic experts, then connect Spengler’s view of values in economics to contemporary debates in philosophy of social science. I suggest that Spengler did not go far enough in identifying the moral obligations of economic experts, or in specifying roles for values and ethical considerations within economic methodology itself.
Book Reviews by David M Frank
Biological Invasions, 2021
Ethics, Policy, & Environment, 2018
This article reviews Humberto Llavador, John Roemer, and Joaquim Silvistre's 2015 book on the eco... more This article reviews Humberto Llavador, John Roemer, and Joaquim Silvistre's 2015 book on the economics of climate change, Sustainability for a Warming Planet. While the book is written for economists, its arguments should be of interest to environmental philosophers and interdisciplinary scholars of climate change. After summarizing the book's chapters, I offer modest criticisms and a brief commentary on the scope and limits of economic modeling of climate change decisions.
Biology & Philosophy, 2022
This paper explores interactions between ecological science and conservation values in the biodiv... more This paper explores interactions between ecological science and conservation values in the biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) debate of the 1990-2000s. The scientific debate concerned the interpretation of observed correlations between species richness and ecosystem properties like primary productivity in experimental ecosystems. The debate over the causal or explanatory role of species richness was presumed to have implications for conservation policy, and the use of such research to support policy recommendations generated hostility between rival groups of ecologists. I argue that the debate was due in part to the adoption of a broad conception of biodiversity as a goal and value in conservation politics and ethical debates, and the ecologists who questioned the causal efficacy of species richness were also suggesting problems with this goal. I characterize what I call the "uneasy consensus" established by BEF researchers in the late 2000s, discuss roles for values in BEF research, and suggest that this episode shows that ecological science can itself be an important site for ethical debates about conservation values.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2021
Environmental health research produces scientific knowledge about environmental hazards crucial f... more Environmental health research produces scientific knowledge about environmental hazards crucial for public health and environmental justice movements that seek to prevent or reduce exposure to these hazards. The environment in environmental health research is conceptualized as the range of possible social, biological, chemical, and/or physical hazards or risks to human health, some of which merit study due to factors such as their probability and severity, the feasibility of their remediation, and injustice in their distribution. This paper explores the ethics of identifying the relevant environment for environmental health research, as judgments involved in defining an environmental hazard or risk, judgments of that hazard or risk's probability, severity, and/ or injustice, as well as the feasibility of its remediation, all ought to appeal to non-epistemic as well as epistemic values. I illustrate by discussing the case of environmental lead, a housing-related hazard that remains unjustly distributed by race and class and is particularly dangerous to children. Examining a controversy in environmental health research ethics where researchers tested multiple levels of lead abatement in lead-contaminated households, I argue that the broader perspective on the ethics of environmental health research provided in the first part of this paper may have helped prevent this controversy.
Synthese
Recently, invasion biologists have argued that some of the skepticism expressed in the scientific... more Recently, invasion biologists have argued that some of the skepticism expressed in the scientific and lay literatures about the risks of invasive species and other aspects of the consensus within invasion biology is a kind of science denialism. This paper presents an argument that, while some claims made by skeptics of invasion biology share important features with paradigm cases of science denialism, others express legitimate ethical concerns that, even if one disagrees, should not be dismissed as denialist. Further, this case illustrates a more general point about ethical disagreement within sciences like invasion biology that constitutively pursue non-epistemic goals and values. While philosophers of science have argued that epistemic disagreement within science can be productive as heterogeneous epistemic communities “hedge their bets,” the case of invasion biology shows how non-epistemic or ethical disagreement within sciences, while carrying significant risks, can also be epistemically and non- epistemically valuable.
Synthese
This paper discusses ethical issues surrounding Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) of the econom... more This paper discusses ethical issues surrounding Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) of the economic effects of climate change, and how climate economists acting as policy advisors ought to represent the uncertain possibility of catastrophe. Some climate economists, especially Martin Weitzman, have argued for a precautionary approach where avoiding catastrophe should structure climate economists’ welfare analysis. This paper details ethical arguments that justify this approach, showing how Weitzman’s “fat tail” probabilities of climate catastrophe pose ethical problems for widely used IAMs. The main claim is that economists who ignore or downplay catastrophic risks in their representations of uncertainty likely fall afoul of ethical constraints on scientists acting as policy advisors. Such scientists have duties to honestly articulate uncertainties and manage (some) inductive risks, or the risks of being wrong in different ways.
Richard Jeffrey (1956) responded to Richard Rudner’s (1953) argument from inductive risk by maint... more Richard Jeffrey (1956) responded to Richard Rudner’s (1953) argument from inductive risk by maintaining that scientists could produce explicit representations of uncertainty and present these to decision-makers, who could then combine these “value-free” epistemic assessments with utilities (including all non-epistemic values) as in decision theory.1 Heather Douglas (2000, 2009), Kevin Elliott (2011), Daniel Steel (2015), and others have responded to Jeffrey’s strategy by arguing that decisions involving non- epistemic values affect both the content and interpretation of probabilities. On this view, problems of inductive risk arise in methodological decisions that produce probabilities (or other representations of risk or uncertainty) and in the interpretation of these estimates for policymakers.2 This chapter will focus on articulating the Jeffreyan value-free ideal and its limits, and clarifying and exploring the problem of inductive risk due to higher-order uncertainty.
In the first part of the next section, I review Jeffrey’s decision-theoretic response to Rudner and some of its main problems. In the second part, I characterize the problem of inductive risk due to higher-order uncertainty in decision-theoretic terms, using decision trees whose nodes represent methodological choices affecting both the content and interpretation of uncertainty estimates. In the third section, I argue that while it is unrealistic to expect to insulate these decisions from the influence of all non-epistemic values, the Jeffreyan decision-theoretic version of the value-free ideal may be useful in some limited contexts. These are exactly contexts in which methodological decisions introduce minimal higher-order uncertainty, and in which communications of uncertainty are unlikely to be manipulated or misunderstood by decision-makers or scientists themselves. In the fourth section, I illustrate the limitations of the Jeffreyan ideal with reference to climate science. I discuss Gregor Betz’s (2013) recent Jeffreyan response to the inductive risk consider- ations raised by Justin Biddle and Eric Winsberg (2010) and Winsberg (2012) for climate modeling. I argue that the context of policy interactions with regard to climate science are far from the Jeffreyan ideal, thus the argument that climate modeling is value-laden due to inductive risks withstands Betz’s criticisms. I conclude that while the Jeffreyan value-free ideal deserves to be further discussed and debated by philosophers of science, this chapter shows that it faces problems in complex and policy-relevant scientific contexts due to higher-order uncertainty.
Coined in the 1980s as a portmanteau of ‘‘biological diversity’’ by life scientists reporting to ... more Coined in the 1980s as a portmanteau of ‘‘biological diversity’’ by life scientists reporting to policy-makers about anthropogenic loss of species and ecosystems in the twentieth century, the term ‘‘biodiversity’’ has since taken on positive connotations for many concerned about the fate of life on Earth. However, ‘‘biological diversity’’ as a theoretical term in the life sciences had existed at least since the 1950s, and human interest in life’s variety is at least as old as biology. ‘‘Biodiversity’’ has become a term used widely by life scientists, conservation biologists, environmental philosophers, policy-makers, journalists, and activists.The conservation of biological diversity as such, as a more general objective distinct from the conservation of particular species, ecosystems, or landscape features, has become the stated goal of conservation biologists, many conservation organizations, as well as signatory nations to the 1992 Rio Summit’s Convention on Biological Diversity. Against this background, this chapter will present the case for pluralism and contextualism about ‘‘biodiversity,’’ where epistemic and non-epistemic values in particular local contexts constrain and guide the development of multiple legitimate definitions and operationalizations of ‘‘biodiversity.’’ I will argue that the multiple contexts in which the term ‘‘biodiversity’’ is used, and the epistemic and non-epistemic values at stake in these distinct contexts, should lead us to accept a deep pluralism about ‘‘biodiversity,’’ in which only minimal logical constraints limit the concept across all contexts of use. An important consequence of this pluralism is what I will call the problem of definitional risk, or risks taken in precise definition or operationalization.These risks may involve epistemic or non-epistemic values, although here I will focus on non-epistemic values. Non-epistemic definitional risks arise when biodiversity is taken as a goal to be pursued, and the concept must be defined and operationalized for conservation prioritization. Risks arise because any particular definition or operationalization might not adequately capture all the goals and values that its users endorse.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
This paper critically discusses two areas of Sahotra Sarkar’s recent work in environmental philos... more This paper critically discusses two areas of Sahotra Sarkar’s recent work in environmental philosophy: biodiversity and conservation biology and roles for decision theory in incorporating values explicitly in the environmental policy process. I argue that Sarkar’s emphasis on the practices of conservation biolo- gists, and especially the role of social and cultural values in the choice of biodiversity constituents, restricts his conception of biodiversity to particular practical conservation contexts. I argue that life scientists have many reasons to measure many types of diversity, and that biodiversity metrics could be value-free. I argue that Sarkar’s emphasis on the limitations of normative decision theory is in tension with his statement that decision theory can ‘‘put science and ethics together.’’ I also challenge his claim that multi-criteria decision tools lacking axiomatic foundations in preference and utility theory are ‘‘without a rational basis,’’ by presenting a case of a simple ‘‘outranking’’ multi-criteria decision rule that can violate a basic normative requirement of preferences (transitivity) and ask whether there may nevertheless be contexts in which such a procedure might assist decision makers.
Ethics
In the 1934 article “Have Values a Place in Economics?,” the American population economist Joseph... more In the 1934 article “Have Values a Place in Economics?,” the American population economist Joseph Spengler discussed the ethical responsibilities of economic experts and the relationship between economic science and human values. Spengler decided to examine these topics in part due to “the current economic depression” (313), and his paper is worth revisiting in light of the recent financial crisis, particularly due to the complicity of professional economists in producing it. I first discuss Spengler’s view on the obligations of economic experts, then connect Spengler’s view of values in economics to contemporary debates in philosophy of social science. I suggest that Spengler did not go far enough in identifying the moral obligations of economic experts, or in specifying roles for values and ethical considerations within economic methodology itself.
Biological Invasions, 2021
Ethics, Policy, & Environment, 2018
This article reviews Humberto Llavador, John Roemer, and Joaquim Silvistre's 2015 book on the eco... more This article reviews Humberto Llavador, John Roemer, and Joaquim Silvistre's 2015 book on the economics of climate change, Sustainability for a Warming Planet. While the book is written for economists, its arguments should be of interest to environmental philosophers and interdisciplinary scholars of climate change. After summarizing the book's chapters, I offer modest criticisms and a brief commentary on the scope and limits of economic modeling of climate change decisions.