TF colloquium: Stephen John (HPS Cambridge)

The next TF colloquium will be held on 24 May in Omega and will be followed by drinks. The speaker is Stephen John from HPS Cambridge.

Title and abstract:

Weber’s elephant: ambiguity aversion, non-maleficence and the value of certainty

One recurrent theme throughout debates over policy responses to the covid-19 pandemic was that it was somehow irresponsible to act on the basis of scientifically uncertain claims; for example, about the efficacy of facemasks or the safety of vaccines. This was despite the fact that, plausibly, the expected value of these interventions was positive. Can these attitudes be justified? In this paper, I first suggest that these attitudes make sense on the presumption that the medical norm of non-maleficence (“do no harm”) implies an attitude I call “asymmetric ambiguity aversion”. I then suggest a generalisation of this result: that different ethical norms might imply different ambiguity attitudes, in ways which affect our understanding of the value of “certainty”. The second part of the paper turns to the implications of these claims for the role of scientists in policy-making; specifically, I argue that, given value pluralism and the link I suggest between ethical and epistemic attitudes, it may be a mistake to think there is any such thing as “the science”. Rather, sensible systems for policy-making should allow for a plurality of inputs from different ethical-epistemic viewpoints. For reasons which become clear, I describe this model as “Weber’s elephant”

More information: Leah Henderson