The Error Is in the Gap: Synthesizing Accounts for Societal Values in Science

Abstract

Kevin Elliott and others separate two common arguments for the legitimacy of societal values in scientific reasoning as the gap and the error arguments (respectively, the arguments from underdetermination and from inductive risk). This article poses two questions: How are these two arguments related, and what can we learn from their interrelation? I contend that we can better understand the error argument as nested within the gap because the error is a limited case of the gap with narrower features. Furthermore, this nestedness provides philosophers with conceptual tools for analyzing more robustly how values pervade science.