Pluralism and objectivity: Exposing and breaking a circle

The paper argues that Helen Longino’s pluralism implies circularity as it claims a preferably high number of qualified contributions to any scientific discussion that aims for objectivity, but does not regard the question who or what sets and employs the standards that rule the decision who is qualified to contribute and who is not. Therefore, objectivity is premised for a process that is to generate that very objectivity. Philip Kitcher’s ideal of democratization of science seems only to bypass the problem by introducing ideal deliberators tutored by appropriate experts, as for the implementation of this ideal the deliberators and experts, again, would have to be appointed by someone. However, Kitcher’s approach is based on a Rawlsian egalitarism and in this sense calls for political intrusion which could be based on case-by-case decisions. This offers a solution. I will illuminate the problem by some examples from climatology and demonstrate how Kitcher’s approach can help to tackle the problem by a final case study of pluralism in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

► The paper exposes a circularity in Longino’s pluralistic account.
► Public standards must already rely on objectively warranted standards and norms.
► Kitcher’s ideal of Well-Ordered Science can be used to tackle this problem.
► Deliberative scientific instances are required.
► This is demonstrated by a case-study on the IPCC.