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This chapter argues that nonepistemic or contextual values should not be systematically excluded from any of the four categories of value judgments considered in Chapter 2. The argument rests on three major principles. First, the “ethics” principle is that scientists have ethical responsibilities to consider the major societal consequences of their work and to take reasonable steps to mitigate harmful effects that it might have. Second, the “uncertainty” principle is that those who are researching policy‐relevant topics often face situations in which scientific information is uncertain and incomplete, and they have to decide what standard of proof to demand before drawing conclusions. Third, the “no‐passing‐the‐buck” principle states that it is frequently socially harmful or impracticable for scientists to respond to uncertainty by completely withholding their judgment or providing uninterpreted data to decision makers. Based on this third principle, scientists cannot always leave difficult value judgments about interpreting uncertain evidence up to policy makers. Therefore, there are sometimes ethical reasons for scientists to factor societal considerations into their responses to uncertainty even when they address judgments about choosing scientific language or interpreting evidence. The upshot of this chapter is that administrators and policy makers need to find ways to limit the influences of powerful interest groups without naively trying to seal scientific research off from all societal influences and considerations.

This chapter revisits the important exchange between Harry G. Frankfurt and Gary Watson concerning the psychological structures involved in significant forms of free agency. It also aims to deepen the account of how to be a wholehearted, pluralist, self-governing agent by drawing on Joshua Cohen's interpretation of the Rawlsian “idea of reasonable pluralism.” It also develops further the central—and broadly Frankfurtian—claim that agential authority is a matter of the non-Platonic psychological role in the Lockean organization of our temporally extended agency. This is true even for those evaluative attitudes that both have agential authority and track the good: their agential authority derives from their non-Platonic psychological role. And the normal hierarchical structure of self-governing policies helps them play these Lockean organizing roles. This chapter treats the initial debate about desire, hierarchy, and value judgment as part of the debate about the psychological structures and forms of functioning that are central to human self-governance. Finally, it proposes an intention-based theory.

In his 1971 article, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Harry G. Frankfurt pointed to a deep problem in the philosophy of action and sketched an attractive proposal for a solution. The problem arises when we take seriously the idea that you can sometimes have and be moved by desires that you in some sense disown. As Frankfurt put it, though you do what you want you do not act of your own free will. What we have learned from Frankfurt is that our response to this problem has significant implications for our overall view of human agency and autonomy. This chapter addresses a Platonic challenge to a Frankfurt-type hierarchical theory of desire ownership and identification. It aims to block this challenge by emphasizing important ways in which identification may be underdetermined by value judgment.

This chapter examines the history of hormesis research as an important case study of the ways in which methodological and interpretive judgments enter scientific practice. It organizes these choices into four major categories. First, judgments pervade the choice of research projects and the design of studies. One of the important questions in this regard is what kinds of studies to prioritize, given the limited funding available to examine the low‐dose effects of toxicants. Second, crucial decisions are involved in developing scientific language. The hormesis case study (as well as the multiple chemical sensitivity and endocrine disruption cases examined in Chapter 7) provides vivid examples of how the choice of scientific terms and categories can subtly influence policy discussions. Third, judgments play a crucial role in the interpretation and evaluation of studies. This third category of methodological choices is especially important to understand in the hormesis case, because it is largely responsible for the disagreements between proponents and opponents of claims about the generalizability and regulatory implications of hormesis. Fourth, there are important decisions to make about how to apply research results in the context of formulating public policy. For example, efforts to apply hormesis to regulatory policy must come to grips with difficult questions about how to balance potentially beneficial and harmful effects of toxic chemicals.

This chapter provides an overview of the book and a summary of each subsequent chapter. It highlights the volume's two major goals: to examine the range of methodological decisions and interpretive judgments that permeate policy‐relevant scientific research and to explore ways of making these choices more responsive to a range of public values (in addition to those of deep pockets, which have abundant resources to spend on research). It also introduces readers to the book's central case study, hormesis, which involves seemingly beneficial effects produced by low doses of substances that are normally toxic. Chapters 2 and 3 perform two preliminary tasks: (1) They clarify the major categories of value judgments that contribute to differing evaluations of the generalizability and regulatory implications of hormesis; and (2) they argue that societal values should not be completely excluded from influencing any of these categories of judgments. Chapters 4 through 6 develop the book's three primary lessons, corresponding to the three “bodies” that Sheila Jasanoff emphasizes as central to obtaining trustworthy public‐policy guidance from scientific experts. These lessons concern how to safeguard the body of scientific knowledge from interest groups, how to ascertain the best advisory bodies for guiding policy makers and directing the course of future research, and how to provide the bodies of experts themselves with an ethics of expertise. Chapter 7 argues that the lessons drawn in chapters 2 through 6 are applicable not only to the hormesis case but also to other areas of policy‐relevant research, such as endocrine disruption and multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS).

This chapter argues that current financial conflict‐of‐interest (COI) policies are severely limited in their ability to prevent powerful interest groups from hijacking university research. It considers the three major elements of these policies (i.e., elimination of conflicts, disclosure, and management) and argues that none of them is likely to be both effective and practical. Given the current economic emphasis on creating links between universities and industry, outright elimination of conflicts will generally not be feasible. Moreover, despite the popularity of disclosure policies, psychologists warn that those who receive information about conflicts are often unable to employ that information effectively. By highlighting the wide array of value judgments that permeate scientific practice, this book strengthens these psychological arguments by highlighting how difficult it would be for the recipients of information to estimate how financial conflicts might be influencing such a diverse array of judgments. Finally, the prevalence of these judgments makes it unlikely that management committees could prevent questionable influences on science without instituting an unreasonable amount of bureaucratic oversight. Chapter 4 suggests that, instead of depending only on COI policies, university administrators and policy makers would do well to consider at least five additional options. These include providing more funding for independent research, preventing particularly egregious institutional conflicts, creating trial registries, and developing both adversarial and consensual deliberative forums.

This chapter explores the last of the options considered in chapter 4 for preventing interest groups' questionable influences on scientific research. It argues that there are normative, substantive, and instrumental reasons for pursuing formal mechanisms for broadly based deliberation to guide the value judgments associated with policy‐relevant science. Nevertheless, because these forums can involve a wide range of mechanisms and strategies for representing affected parties, and because deliberative proceedings have weaknesses as well as strengths, the chapter calls for more careful “diagnosis” of the mechanisms appropriate in response to particular areas of research. It develops a three‐step diagnostic model inspired by the account proposed in the NRC volume Understanding Risk. Applying this diagnostic procedure to the hormesis case, the chapter calls for a mixed deliberative approach. In the near term, it recommends that policy makers examine the hormesis phenomenon in either an existing scientific advisory committee or a special advisory council created to represent the range of important stakeholder perspectives on hormesis. This council could address some of the major judgments identified in Chapter 2, such as prioritizing future areas of research, proposing definitions of key terms under debate, and evaluating the evidence for the generalizability and regulatory implications of hormesis. If the advisory council were to conclude, now or in the future, that the evidence warranted considering regulatory changes in response to hormesis, then a more intensive deliberative proceeding such as a consensus conference might be justified. These formal exercises could serve as a valuable starting point for informal political action by concerned citizens' groups.

By integrating the major themes and arguments of this study, this chapter seeks to make a convincing case for an innovative method of analyzing and evaluating MNCs and FDI, a method that is distinctive as well as more apposite and relevant than the long-standing propensity to generalize that as a whole, they are either good or bad. Emphasis is on the heterogeneity and “it depends” concepts, along with the admonitions to disaggregate and respect the dominance of perceptions over hard facts. The main sections of the chapter argue that the generalized question about the desirability or lack thereof of MNCs and FDI needs to be restated to produce more accurate answers, urge a greater recognition of the limits and frequent ambiguity of the data, and criticize the too-frequently used methodology of selecting a limited number of anecdotes to support preconceived conclusions. A concluding section offers specific criticism of the decades-long, inconclusive public debate over the impact of multinational enterprises, e.g., its failure to recognize that the impact of a newly established foreign subsidiary will reflect where it falls on the continuum between high and low quality investment, and the importance of pre-existing value judgments in influencing the findings of anyone writing on MNCs and FDI.

Are there forms of psychological functioning that can be characterized without seeing the agent herself as playing an irreducible role and that are plausible candidates for sufficient conditions for agential governance? Are certain forms of functioning necessary for self-governance? The basic issue is one about sufficient conditions for autonomy; and we should be alive to the possibility that there are, at bottom, several different forms of functioning, each of which is sufficient, but no one of which is necessary for self-governance. This chapter highlights the basic connection between planning agency, agential authority, and self-government. It also returns to an important practical pressure in the direction of conative hierarchy. It examines two prominent models of relevant forms of psychological functioning: hierarchical models that highlight responsiveness to higher-order conative attitudes and value-judgment-responsive models that highlight responsiveness to judgments about the good. The chapter solves these problems by drawing on planning theory.

We are planning agents; our agency extends over time; and, sometimes at least, we govern our own actions. These chapters aim at understanding important interrelations between these basic features of our agency— interrelations between our planning agency, our temporally extended agency, and our self-governance. A conjecture that underlies these chapters is that we can better understand at least one basic case of self-governed agency by reflecting on the roles of relevant planning attitudes in the cross-temporal organization of our action and practical thinking. This conjecture ties together earlier work on the planning theory of intention and the present foray into debates about autonomy and self-governance. Taken together, these chapters are a preliminary effort to see whether this link between the planning theory and issues of autonomy and self-governance can yield philosophical insight. Topics range from autonomy and self-governance to agential authority, subjective normative authority, temporally extended agency, intentions and the planning theory, policies, self-governing policies, conative hierarchy, identification and hierarchy, valuing and value judgment, metaphysics, will, and stability of intention.

When a norm decrees behaviour to be obligatory, the actual behaviour which agrees with the norm can be judged (i.e. evaluated) as valuable or good, and the behaviour which does not agree with the norm as ‘disvaluable’ or bad. As was indicated previously, this norm institutes a value, if we mean by ‘value’ agreement with a norm and by ‘disvalue’ failure to agree with a norm. When a certain behaviour is objectively — i.e. purely cognitively — asserted to agree or not with a norm presupposed to be valid (and in this sense is evaluated), the norm serves as a standard of value. To that extent, ‘serving-as-a-standard-of-value’ can be called a function of a norm. But it should be noted that this ‘evaluation’ is an act of judgment and not directly a function of the norm itself, which is simply presupposed in the value-judgment.

Deciding on the resources devoted to the maintenance and development of heritage artefacts entails making value judgments. There is a presumption that heritage services should be designed to benefit those who enjoy and pay for them. However, consumers of heritage services may not possess the knowledge or opportunity fully to enjoy them, throwing in doubt what their role should be in deciding on their scope and form. A common solution assumes that it is the state's role — advised by those in charge of heritage services — to run them and finance them out of taxation. Economists are critical of this approach because it assumes that the public interest in heritage services must necessarily entail public provision and those who enjoy them can only express their choices through the ballot box. This chapter argues that it is unnecessary to take a paternalistic stance for the very fulfillment of the principle of consumer sovereignty requires public intervention, notably in order to ensure that consumers know what their choices entail.

This chapter explores the notion of identity, in particular that of role identity, and its relation to belonging and responsibility. It is a very general condition of social life that nearly everybody should find themselves wearing at different times a number of different hats—very often at one and the same time and with varying degrees of comfort or discomfort. If we are to be considered as free to dissent from or to make other value judgments than those to which we may be committed by virtue of the hats which belong to our heads, or to which perhaps our heads may be said to belong, we need to be free to remove those hats at least for the time and context of our evaluation of our obligations. The question is whether the very facts of who or what we are need to be understood as including a commitment to the making or to the endorsing of value judgments of any sort.

This chapter advances a judgment externalist explanation of the close connection that is drawn between value judgment and motivation. The explanation relies on the thesis that the canonical method for ascertaining that something has value is to get clear on what the object is like and see whether one either values it for its own sake or at least empathizes with those who do, where valuing is a conative attitude distinct from the attitude of judging to have value. This thesis is defended against several objections, including objections that Mark Johnston has raised against a similar characterization of the canonical method of value inquiry offered by David Lewis.

This chapter makes a fundamental examination of Weber's method and results in their bearing on the understanding of law and legal authority. It takes off from a critique of Anthony Kronman's 1983 book on Weber as a sociologist of law (and economy, authority, and religion), but shows with textual detail why Weber concluded that the ideal-type or central form of social authority is legal-rational authority, and the central form of that, in turn, is the value-rationality encapsulated in natural law theory. Weber's arguments for denying the rationality or objectivity of value judgments are critiqued, as well as Kronman's attempted supplementation of them.

There are close links between emotions and values. This chapter pursues the task of uncovering the nature of these links. It proceeds to do that by answering three questions. First, what is the role of emotions in elucidating the nature of value? For example, is beauty to be understood in term of admiration? Second, what is the role of emotions in our gaining access to values? For example, what is the role of indignation in our awareness of injustice? Third, what value do emotions have? For example, is anger of value because it promotes aggressive behavior? Answering the first question amounts to surveying theories according to which there is an ontological relation between values and emotions. Addressing the second question, theories are reviewed according to which there is an intentional relation between emotions and values. Finally, while responding to the third question, some reasons for thinking that emotions can exemplify values are explored.

Most amphibian biologists would agree that some species of amphibians, or at least some populations of some species, are in decline and may be heading for extinction. Steven Shapin's (1996) view of how the modern natural sciences establish knowledge (based on the historical roots of the Scientific Revolution) provides an interesting framework from which to examine contemporary discourses concerning “declining amphibian populations.” If one believes the paradigm advocated by Shapin, then amphibian population and community ecologists should follow a rigorous philosophy of science in their studies of populations and species, in which “society is kept at bay.” This chapter explores whether environmental ethics and the philosophy of science can or cannot lead to a unified approach to drawing “strong inferences” from diverse research programs. First, it considers the use of deduction versus induction to understand declines and disappearances of amphibian populations. It then compares strong inference with value judgments. The chapter also discusses the link between life history parameters and amphibian declines.