ABSTRACTTHE ROLE OF VALUES IN THEORY CHOICE: DEBATING BIOLOGICAL RACEByAnthony E. GivhanCan so-called non-cognitive values be used legitimately in good science? I argue that they have a legitimate role in several areas of science, namely the context of discovery, the context of investigation, and the context of application, but that they do not have a legitimate role in the area of scientific theory assessment. In this area they ought to be avoided because their use in this area makes for bad science. I then use the debate about whether or not race is a biological concept as an application and case study to illustrate the use of the values which ought to be used for assessing theories, cognitive values. I conclude that biological race is not real and we can make this judgment without using non-cognitive values. In the introduction I clarify various issues involved in the values debate. I then explain why I believe that the disagreement regarding whether or not race is biologically real makes for a helpful case study when considering the role of values in science. I show that the disagreement is often seen as being motivated by various non-cognitive values; that is to say, each side claims the other is being inappropriately influenced by non-cognitive values.In Chapter 1 I lay out the various arguments for and against whether ancient civilizations held to the concept of race and show that there are problems with both sides of the issue and thus, neither side can say that the fact that the ancients believe one way or the other helps their case, as is often claimed. In Chapter 2 I critically examine some of the major theories of race and suggest that they do not work. I conclude that while we can find all kinds of differences between groups these differences do not seem to allow us to make any meaningful biological distinctions. I then raise the question again whether or not non-cognitive values have influenced the race debate.In Chapter 3 I work through an account of how non-cognitive values function in various areas of science and argue that in good science non-cognitive values ought to be avoided in the context of assessment. Chapter 4 lays out an account of why cognitive, what I call epistemic and non-epistemic values, are to be used to assess theory choice. I argue that other so-called non-cognitive values for instance, ideological, psychological, ethical values, etc., ought not to be used. I argue that only those values that aid in justifying or directly assessing beliefs as true (epistemic values) or those that aid in our understanding and explanation (non-epistemic cognitive values) ought to be used to judge a theory as good, and non-cognitive values do not do this. Finally, I suggest that the lack of consensus on the biological reality of race may be due to different approaches motivated by different research programs and not necessarily the inappropriate influence of non-cognitive values. Chapter 5 attempts to apply the notion of the appropriate use of values in scientific assessment. I make a distinction between the question, "What is a biological race?" and the question, "Do biological races exist?" I maintain that these are two different questions and result in different metaphysical assumptions about the existence of race, and thus lead to different research programs. I pose two problems facing those in research programs that assume and posit the reality of biological race, a classification problem, which seems to cause the notion of race to fail what I call the non-epistemic cognitive values test, and a sorting problem, which seems to cause the notion of race to fail what I call the epistemic values test. I maintain that as a result of these problems race is not biologically real.
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