Richard writes concerning moral neutrality: Then comes a reasoning for the "moral neutrality" of forms of expression of the type C=a+bU. "This moral neutrality [exists due to the fact]that a law statement can support (at least) two distinct proposals for manipulation". One has the choice either to decrease or to increase the crime rate. Both opposite choices can be supported by the same law; each has equal scientific weight. Hence neutrality between choices. Let's get the thing into focus. The equation is the written expression of a significantly stable relationship between two sets of social facts transcribed as crime rates and unemployment rates. It is a bit of knowledge that tells us something about the world as it is. So far so good. But is it this fact, the fact that the hypothesis is valid, that is true, that makes the hypothesis morally neutral. No. What makes it morally neutral is that anyone who uses the hypothesis as a reason, as the grounds, to do something has a reason of the same weight as someone who uses the hypothesis for the opposite action.> Now suppose the hypothesis is junk. Its importance to she who uses it as evidence to back her view is no more or less than its importance to a rival who uses the same evidence in support of the opposing view. If it's good support for one it's equally good for the other; if it's bad support for one it's equally bad for the other. There's indistinguishable moral neutrality in both cases. Following the observation that the neutrality is derived from the sameness and not the equality of the supporting of the supporting evidence, note that flipping a coin to decide between two related opposite choices has the same moral neutrality outcome as have your law statements. It just doesn't sound as impressive. Let's probe a bit further. Someone comes up with C=c+dR where C is crime rates and R is Blacks. Let's also say this hypothesis has passsed the law statement exam. Lets add that the new hypothesis is as relaiable as the first, equivalent to it as far as science goes. With both equally strong hypotheses in hand, she, a private prison owner, wants to raise the crime rate and argues for action aimed at unemployment policy while he wants to reduce the crime rate and argues for amendments to rational laws. By construction each has equal scientific support. The example fulfills exactly the criteria of moral neutrality. We are logically forced to conclude, in this particular case at any rate, that unemployment policies and racial policies are morally indifferent. Of course we all know they're not. But that's forgetting that it's not what it is but how much it weighs as evidence that matters. Whatever the differnt impacts on the lives of different people following from the alternative policies, from the science-approach perspective one's as good as another. The paragraph that gives us this moral neutrality stuff continues with a sentence that begins, "The moral neutrality of science is its greatest strength...". We have already implicitly concluded that moral neutrality for hypotheses in the form C=a+bU has no strength. Moral neutrality as defined there is the tautology that those who use the same reason to support an argument use the same reason. The thing in issue is not a reason in support of a hypothesis but the use of a hypothesis as a reason. The same as we can use 'heads or tails' as a reason. Is the hypothesis strong? If it's the only reason given by everyone that reason doesn't tell us. Nor does it matter. But here a different can of worms is opened, a moral neutrality that has strength, that is strength. This assertion needs an explanation. We get none. Also the subject is no longer law statements but science. How are we to understand the transition from one to another. We can suppose by piling up in one column all law statements of the given kind and in a second their corresponding moral neutralities, then totalling up each column and calling the first total 'science' and the second 'grand moral neutrality'. This is sheer nonsense. But if we keep our minds clear and simply follow the path laid out for us, all we need to say is that when 'science' is used by one to support his position and the same 'science' is used by the other to support her related opposite position, then 'science' is morally neutral. As we've seen with hypothesis, when all use the same 'Science' as reason (grounds), it need not be good science. 'Science' as a reason is no better than 'heads' as reason when playing according to the moral neutrality rule. One can say, as meaningfully as you have put it elsewhere, Moral neutrality is the greatest strength of coin tossing. In the moral neutrality game , the form and content of science don't matter. Science taken as knowledge has no significance, no importance here. We can substitute 'science fiction' without the slightest loss. However, you've changed the game in mid-sentence. [...]"

Richard writes concerning skewering illusions: ... For the whole sentence is, "The moral neutrality of science is its greatest strength, as it can be used to skewer the illusions of anyone, regardless of her viewpoints." We have already seen this can't be entirely true. For if she invokes the same 'science' to support her viewpoints as you use to back yours, then she hasn't been skewered. And if she uses other grounds? Other grounds can only be 'not science'. Let's have in mind scientific knowledge and call everything else ordinary knowledge. You use scientific knowledge as a reason and she returns with ordinary knowledge. It does not logically follow that the first can be used to skewer the second. You say it is not the 'knowledge' in science that is its "strength" but rather "the moral neutrality of science". And that, at the risk of endless repetition, is defined as the episode where one and the same lump of evidence supports two distinct courses of action. Granting this, it may be the case that ordinary knowledge, while in form and content different from scientific knowledge, has the same weight as the latter when used as evidence or grounds. We saw this possibility above when we compared U and R as variables in criminal rate statements. One hypothesis was as good as the other. In this event your skewing optimism is premature. All the more so if ordinary knowledge turns out to be more robust than scientific knowledge when used as reason. Then the skewer would be in the other's foot. At all events we must move the argument step by step without skipping. We can compare the worth of different hypotheses as truth statements through established methods. There are no established methods for comparing the respective worth of scientific and ordinary knowledge (if they can even be got clear). That's beyond our task here and certainly well beyond my means. We do know that science alone can't decide between science and non-science; it's one of the parties in the dispute. And we can kick the can just for fun. Can science skewer all illusions of non-scientific pedigree? I don't know how to formulate the quetsion in a way that it can be answered. But we need not remain silent to avoid the risk of illusion. Or of skewers.

Richard picks up on the canoe example ... A Native person knows how to build canoes. He does it in traditional ways using traditional tools, techniques and materials. He can refer to no science to explain his work. But it works, and well enough for him. A specialist knows how to build canoes. He uses scientific ways, and so on, and he can refer to the studies that led him to do this and use that rather than something else. The specialist has that S-O Approach. He can teach the other to build an unquestionably better canoe. In spite of all the scientific weight against him, and no scientific evidence for him, the other turns down the offer. That "should" business the scientist came in with didn't take hold. Grumbles and suppressed insults. And yet the Native has an effecitve answer that stands up well to all the scientific grounds raised against him. He simply uses his common sense and says, 'See here. If I do it my way with my means I have full control over what I'm doing. If I do it your way I grant you I get a better canoe but at a cost I am not willing to pay. I become dependent on you for everything to have and to do with canoe building except for labour, and even as labour I have to follow your instructions.' (Especially if the orders come from scientific management, he could have added.) Rewriting this sketch formally we have: M opts for a better canoe and weighs in with scientific data to support his view. N argues for an inferior canoe and grounds his choice on reasons of autonomy. This form is not identical with, but is similar in the most important respects to, your definiton of moral neutrality. There is no scientific way to break the deadlock, for the reason given two paragraphs above. There is nothing in the rules that states every issue has to have, or even is amenable to, a scientific fix. Intuition does not tell us science made the stronger case.

Keith responds to Richard's use of the canoe example ... How to decide when to use scientific findings and when not to is the subject of the fourth part of what I wrote, which Richard has (apparently) not read yet. That's fine, just that much is addressed there. And how to decide between science and not is a matter of philosophy; just let me say here that a non-scientific worldview is possible, though increasingly not so easy. One can remain apart from science, at the "cost" of not having any means to fully evaluate its findings or policies that decide to make use of it - or not! The educator part of me stresses science as a process, tool, means and cultural artefact, not so much as a body of knowledge. So what about canoes? First, I'd like to make a terminological clarification. The Native in Richard's example is performing what I elsewhere called a "craft". This term was introduced by stipulative definition: stipulative definitions are useful because they fix terminology so that we can have some common way of talking about things. All the term means is that the plan or policy was not formed by grounding it on scientific research. Deciding when to use craft or when to use technology is the question here. So long as there are no other issues being debated, it is fine to stick with craft; the Native is also quite right to say that if another approach meant giving up something else he values he should decline. But another approach need not destroy her autonomy or anything else. It may; this is what I mean when I say that technology is morally committed, just as craft is. The craft as it is practiced (or at least as it is described by Richard) is an individual activity and thus does institute a value of autonomy. If this is the value that is to trump, say, productivity, that's fine. But there is no intrinsic reason why that should occur in every case. But also note that even if that were true, that (somehow every) science oriented approach were to do that it does not follow it should not be done. Richard is quite right to value autonomy on behalf of our Native friends. But this is only one competing value in many. The advantage of explicit proposals, once again, is so that debate and discussion can be fruitful (or even done). Suppose for example there were only so many birch trees to make canoes from. In fact this is the case; there are only a finite number, and a restricted number of those are suitable for canoe making. If a canoe is what is desired (a decision in itself) our friend might have to decide between the value of the forest and his autonomy. I for one hope that he is not confronted with that choice, but there are others, and the fact that I do not desire it either is another value judgement on my part. "No scientific way to break the deadlock" is thus in some sense true. In some cases there is, because there is a question of basic needs involved, and a scientifically aware ethics should be aware that some things (food, shelter, etc.) are more important to us in the sense we die or lead absolutely miserable lives without them. In the case of the canoe, perhaps this is not applicable. Ex hypothesi, it isn't. But there is another way to break the deadlock as well. Providing information so that people can make their choices and implement their values is in itself a way to break the deadlock, together with democratic approaches to government and economics etc. as we have discovered that these work especially well in that regard - and correspond better to our values that we seem to have largely in common. If we instead do not attempt to discover information in the best possible way we leave ourselves open to those who would either pass off bogus information or would use what they have discovered to bolster their own interests alone. This is where the "skewer" comes in. An environmentalist comes to the Native and says: "Stop cutting down the trees! You are destroying the forest!" (This example is not quite as far-fetched as it may seem. Raven (see the fourth part of the original series of documents) has told me about how Greenpeace's well meaning attempt to stop the seal hunts has produced all matter of misery amongst Inuit in Canada's north, who are now unable to pursue (to the extent that they would like) their traditional activity. Here autonomy and the importance of cultural traditions comes into conflict with environmental protection and animal rights considerations.) What is our friend to do? I am willing to hazard a guess that "Am not!" by itself is not a sufficient answer. A careful study of the matter, with the interests laid out based on this would help to resolve this conflict. (It might not: but not making use of the best available means, including the best knowledge of the systems in question and how to change them, to resolve it seems to be a recipe for disaster.)