Linguistics & Philosophy Center - L&PIC, Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS Pavia, Piazza della Vittoria 15, 27100, Pavia, Italy.
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies - DAStU, Politecnico di Milano, Campus Leonardo - Via Bonardi 9, 20133, Milan, Italy.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2023 May 2;29(3):18. doi: 10.1007/s11948-023-00438-0.
The importance of epistemic values in science is universally recognized, whereas the role of non-epistemic values is sometimes considered disputable. It has often been argued that non-epistemic values are more relevant in applied sciences, where the goals are often practical and not merely scientific. In this paper, we present a case study concerning earthquake engineering. So far, the philosophical literature has considered various branches of engineering, but very rarely earthquake engineering. We claim that the assessment of seismic hazard models is sensitive to both epistemic and non-epistemic values. In particular, we argue that the selection and evaluation of these models are justified by epistemic values, even if they may be contingently influenced by non-epistemic values. By contrast, the aggregation of different models into an ensemble is justified by non-epistemic values, even if epistemic values may play an instrumental role in the attainment of these non-epistemic values. A careful consideration of the different epistemic and non-epistemic values at play in the choice of seismic hazard models is thus practically important when alternative models are available and there is uncertainty in the scientific community about which model should be used.
科学中的认知价值观的重要性是被普遍认可的，而非认知价值观的作用有时则被认为是有争议的。人们常常认为，非认知价值观在应用科学中更为相关，因为这些科学的目标往往是实际的，而不仅仅是科学的。在本文中，我们将介绍一个有关地震工程的案例研究。到目前为止，哲学文献已经考虑了各个工程分支，但很少涉及地震工程。我们声称，地震危险模型的评估对认知和非认知价值观都很敏感。特别是，我们认为，即使这些模型可能受到非认知价值观的偶然影响，选择和评估这些模型也是基于认知价值观的。相比之下，即使认知价值观在实现这些非认知价值观方面可能发挥工具性作用，将不同的模型汇总到一个集合中也是基于非认知价值观的。因此，当有替代模型并且科学界对应该使用哪种模型存在不确定性时，仔细考虑在选择地震危险模型中发挥作用的不同认知和非认知价值观在实践中是非常重要的。
