Helen Longino, Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University

Thursday, 4/14/16 at 6:30pm in Alumni Memorial Hall

Sponsored by the SC Coastal Conservation League and the Department of Philosophy

The role of background assumptions in determining the evidential relevance of observational data to hypotheses seems to put claims for scientific objectivity in jeopardy. What I call strong social epistemology argues that this so-called underdetermination problem is best addressed by bringing the social interaction within science into the orbit of epistemology. The talk will develop this argument and suggest how the epistemological norms of social epistemology can be deployed in environmental science.