Humanities Talk

Abstract: Fueled by the social significance of climate change, philosophers of science have been actively debating the role of social, political, and ethical values in climate science. Much of this discussion has concerned the place of values in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In this talk, I suggest that adjudicating these debates requires that we be more precise about what values are and how they enter in to scientific choices. I disambiguate several senses of "value" in order to discuss the ways in which the IPCC's work is and is not value-laden. Finally, I address the worry that these discussions threaten to undermine the IPCC's credibility: if non-epistemic values color its work, how can it be an authority in public discourse? I argue that, in fact, those who favor political action on climate change may find it politically useful to emphasize how the IPCC's work has been shaped by values. This project shows the importance of attending to foundational questions about the nature of values in our discussions of values in science.