At the moment, I am scrutinizing how scientific pluralism bears on science policy debates and the status of scientific expertise, following two research lines. The first analyses the structural symmetries between models of science and models of democracy (the congruence between scientific consensus and deliberative democracy on the one hand, and scientific pluralism and agonistic pluralism on the other). The second line of research focuses on institutional stumbling blocks in science to realize scientific pluralism (e.g., by scrutinizing the recent debates between mainstream and heterodox economists) and on how this realization contributes to a democratic system of public knowledge. Both lines of research eventually lead to a thorough analysis of epistemic democracy, a concept I am elaborating in relation to the work of Helen Longino, Philip Kitcher, Chantal Mouffe, John Beatty, Miriam Solomon, Heather Douglas, and others. Both (ideals of) scientific consensus and scientific objectivity are analysed in light of scientific pluralism.

Science, Expertise and Democracy.

This project focuses on the role of the novice, the expert(s) and society in dealing with scientific expertise. The relation between experts and stakeholders will be studied from three viewpoints: the non-expert or novice one (who is demanding adequate expertise), the expert's (who is supplying expertise), and the societal viewpoint (that is providing the institutional context and its norms in which the exchange between novice and expert takes place). Each of these players can be ascribed some form of responsibility. Spelling out each of the responsibilities as well as making the connections amongst them philosophically explicit, is the overarching aim of this project. (01.01.2010 - 31.12.2013; Promotors: Erik Weber and Jeroen Van Bouwel; Funding Agency: Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO); Researchers: Laszlo Kosolosky, Rogier De Langhe)

A Pragmatic Theory of Scientific Explanation.

A pragmatic theory of scientific explanation can be characterized as follows: (1) it starts from the idea that why-questions originate in different epistemic interests, (2) it answers questions about the structure of explanations by taking into account (among other things) these epistemic interests, and (3) it answers questions about criteria of explanatory power by taking into account (among other things) these epistemic interests. In their past research, the promoters of this project have shown that such an approach is fruitful for analyzing debates on scientific explanation in history, the social sciences and psychology. In this project, the “system” is completed by (1) analyzing explanations in physics and the engineering sciences, and (2) explicating and elaborating the general idea of a pragmatic theory of scientific explanation. The project will contribute to debates in philosophy of technology (more specifically, about the structure of technological explanation, and about the reducibility of explanations of the functions of artifacts to explanations of their capacities), and will clarify how epistemic interests, explanatory requests, structures of scientific explanation, and criteria for explanatory power are related to each other.  (01.01.2009 - 31.12.2012; Promotors: Erik Weber, Jeroen Van Bouwel and Maarten Van Dyck; Funding Agency: Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO); Researchers: Jan De Winter, Raoul Gervais, Leen De Vreese)

Interdisciplinarity, causation and explanatory pluralism in the biomedical sciences.

Explanations of diseases can result from a biological, psychological or social science approach. This project examines how these approaches relate to each other in the biomedical sciences. Should they be integrated? Are they, on the other hand, incompatible? Etc. We will address these questions by comparing the causal concepts, methodology and forms of explanation applied in these different approaches. (01.01.2007 - 31.12.2010; Promotors: Erik Weber and Jeroen Van Bouwel; Funding agency: Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) ; Researcher: Leen De Vreese)