A Philosophical Analysis Of Epistemic Risk Of Science

Epistemic uncertainty is among the basic characters of science, the applications of which prevailing the society along with their far-reaching influences. Thus signify the studies of the epistemic uncertainty of science as well as the resulted risk in intellectual and practical searching for comprehensive understanding and legitimate use of science.The concept of risk has been resorted to characterize the epistemic uncertainty of science as the epistemic risk of science, the latter constituted by the epistemic uncertainty and scientists’value judgments of its epistemic and non-epistemic outcomes. Theorizing the epistemic risk of science in the aspects of realism, epistemology, reason and rationality promises a systematic characterization of it.Hypothetical realism and naturalistic realism constitute our presupposition for the epistemic risk of science, a specification of which is drawn from Clifford Alan Hooker’s theoretical framework of regulatory systems. The world and subjects are both descripted as regulatory systems, the former as one such system in an open-ended evolutionary process with science and philosophy as its extensions. The ongoing presupposition and specification underline the following characterizations of the epistemic risk of science:firstly, there are formal analogies between the risks in biological dynamics and the epistemic risk of science; secondly, the epistemic risk of science can be modeled as the extension of the biological risks; thirdly, those two kinds of risks are unified in one metaphysics with regulatory systems framework among its characterizations.A risky decision account of science is proposed to point out that scientists must consider the outcomes of their decisions in an anticipative manner. The ability to evaluate the harmful outcomes anticipatively is seen as a key feature of science and of intelligent behaviors. With deeper and more extensive conceptions of the nature of the world comes the anticipative ability, which has another source in learning from errors. The error-avoiding methodologies can be learned from successful confirmation and location of errors. An account of error and success driven self-directed anticipative learning process is developed to model the learning process in which scientists get better anticipations of potential errors and more anticipative power in their successes as well as their growing power for success. Science is dual-driven by success and error with scientists getting more power from their improved performances.Risk-taking heuristics, non-formal judgments, context-dependence and psychological structure dependence are essential features of reason. Those features support scientists’ risky decisions and self-directed learning. This conception of reason rationalizes the epistemic uncertainty of science and scientists’ value judgments. What is risky is reason and science generally.The evaluation, weighing and choice of means and ends prevails in scientists’ risky non-formal decisions, value judgments on the epistemic uncertainty of science and on its outcomes, as well as their self-directed anticipative learning. Those activities can be evaluated rational on behalf of their conformity with law and purpose. Value can play rational roles in science, one of which is the decision of the acceptable level of epistemic risk of science.