“How performativity can be good for science”
Philippe van Basshuysen [Leibniz University Hannover]
Modera: Dra. Atocha Aliseda
Abstract:
Scientific models often do more than predict or explain; especially in the social realm, they frequently influence their targets, a capacity that is called “performativity”. Since performative effects can impair scientists’ ability to make predictions (e.g. by steering outcomes away from those predicted) and they raise concerns about the legitimacy of science influencing the social world, performativity is widely regarded as a threat to science. I call this view the “performativity-free ideal” and I argue that it should be rejected. My argument takes clues from critics of the value-free ideal, whose relevance for thinking about performativity hasn’t so far been recognized. In particular, Helen Longino’s argument that social and ethical values may sometimes help to remove harmful imbalances of power and to secure the proper place of science in democratic societies is adapted to the case of performativity. Just as with social and ethical values, we shouldn’t be worried about performativity as such, but rather, that individual scientists, or groups of scientists with uniform views, may gain a power to evoke or control performative effects that is unduly concentrated. To eradicate such concentrations of performative power and to secure science’s proper role in a democratic society, we may sometimes hope for more, rather than fewer, performative effects.