Knowledge and values: A re-entanglement in epistemic regimes

Abstract

Abstract Knowledge and values are the two main ingredients of public decision-making. In the past, the predominant paradigm of such decision-making was based on an approach of value-neutral science and aimed at processing both ingredients in a disentangled way. However, this approach has some theoretical and practical drawbacks, for which reason several alternative paradigms of public decision-making arose. In this paper we highlight the importance of another paradigm of such decision-making within so-called epistemic regimes. We do so against the background of the discussion of value-neutral science and provide a conceptual analysis of the notion of a regime which allows us to outline the underlying structure of re-entangling knowledge and values in epistemic regimes.