ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I consider scientific justification from the perspective of hermeneutic moral realism. Typically, scientific justification has been understood purely in terms of evidentiary demonstration. Such simple objectivism, however, is inconsistent with the “value-laden” account of science produced by historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science. Justification, like all science work, is presided over by standards of right action (i.e., by the moral). Though values have often been constructed as purely personal and thus problematic in science, for the hermeneutic moral realist, right action is not arbitrary nor reducibly conventional. Rather, right action is a real property of every situation and so discoverable through a situated moral hermeneutics. Doing “good” science is thus a matter of finding right ways to act; it is “justification” of (that is, not “warranting” but making just) scientific systems, relations, and acts. In this chapter, I outline the argument for scientific justification as a moral practice, situating it in hermeneutic theory (and philosophy of science more generally). I then conclude with a brief sketch of some important moral affordances inherent to the choices, relationships, and institutions involved in scientific psychology.
