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Resolving normative differences or healing a “two-cultures” split? A discussion of R.D. Hollander's “values and making decisions about agricultural research”

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Abstract

Difficulties in getting participants in agricultural research policy disputes to work fairly with four different and sometimes conflicting normative viewpoints might be lessened by attending to the deeper cultural differences that lie behind differences of normative view. Mediation of policy disputes might work better if cultural differences were better understood and described impartially. By treating deep differences as ideological, in a non-pejorative sense, descriptions can forestall impulses to combat, improve communication, and open fresh prospects for compromise without attempting to change people's basic thinking.

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Authors
  1. Philip T. Shepard
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Additional information

Phil Shepard is Professor of Philosophy, Lyman Briggs School and Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, where he teaches Philosophy of Technology and coordinates the Briggs' Science and Technology Studies component.

This discussion is based on work supported by the Ethics and Values in Science program of the National Science Foundation under grant No. RII-8409919. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Some of these remarks are revised from “Agriculture and the Humanities: Two Cultures or One?” presented at a conference, “Agriculture, Food and Human Values: Tradition and Change,” at Orlando, FL, October 7–9, 1987.

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Shepard, P.T. Resolving normative differences or healing a “two-cultures” split? A discussion of R.D. Hollander's “values and making decisions about agricultural research”. Agric Hum Values 5, 79–83 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02217650

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