Distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate roles for values in transdisciplinary research

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that the new demarcation problem does not need to be framed as the problem of defining a set of necessary and jointly sufficient criteria for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable roles that non-epistemic values can play in science. We introduce an alternative way of framing the problem and defend an open-ended list of criteria that can be used in demarcation. Applying such criteria requires context-specific work that clarifies which principles should be used, and possibly leads to the identification of new principles – which then can be added to the open-ended list. We illustrate our approach by examining a context where distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable value influences in science is both needed and tricky: transdisciplinary research.