Weather and Society Watch
From the Director

On Philosophy and Meteorology
by Jeffrey K. Lazo*

I’m an economist by training. At least that’s what my Ph.D. is in. But my bachelor’s degree is in economics and philosophy (I added the economics when I figured out I might never get a job as a philosopher). So because I remember just enough philosophy to be dangerous, I’ll preface this article by saying that I simply want to raise some questions. My hope is that someone better qualified finds them interesting enough to step forward and clean up whatever mess I make in my philosophical musings.

My underlying focus in this exercise is this: Could many of the real questions about integrating social sciences knowledge and methods into the weather research and policy-making communities be better understood using approaches, tools, and methods from philosophy such as ethics, epistemology, logic, and metaphysics?

Ethical Questions: Societal Missions and Value-Free Research and Applications

Let’s first consider the stated missions of two major meteorological research and application organizations in the United States—NCAR and NOAA. NCAR’s mission, as seen by Walter Orr Roberts, the center’s first director, is “Science in service to society.” NOAA’s stated mission is “To understand and predict changes in Earth’s environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet our nation’s economic, social, and environmental needs” (NOAA 2005). The stated purpose of meteorological research and applications in the United States, then, is to benefit society. That raises the question: Is it possible to do research in meteorology without making value judgments?

Hunt (1979, p. 127) states that

…values stand at the very foundation of the process of theorizing. They dictate not only what a theoretician will consider an important social issue but also what types of solutions to social problems would be acceptable.

Given that U.S. meteorological organizations focus ultimately on social problems related to the impact of hydrometeorological events, I would say that the answer to the value-judgment question is an emphatic no. When decision makers consider whether to invest in research on hurricane intensity, develop next-generation radar technologies, or improve the resolution on global climate models, each choice has different potential societal impacts.

Some examples will help illustrate this point. Hurricane research benefits coastal residents more than those in land-locked Oklahoma—tornado research does the reverse. Research to advance weather forecasting for air traffic benefits the rich more than the poor. Research on improving urban heat wave warnings might benefit the poor relatively more than the rich. And benefiting one group more than another involves implicit, if not explicit, ethical decisions and value judgments of the relative worth of each.

Simply claiming that all forecast improvements are for the good of society is not value-free either, because different programs benefit different people in different ways. Even research driven by pure intellectual interest does not result in findings free from impacts on society or free from value judgments. Philosophy could bring much to this discussion through its rich history of analysis on the meaning of value——the purview of ethics.

I base my next shot at thinking philosophically on my reading of a chapter on the philosophy of the social sciences by Martin Hollis (2002), who did considerable work in this area. Hollis discusses different philosophical frameworks that can be applied to analyzing social action. He explores questions of knowledge using a dichotomy of explanation versus understanding and questions of analytical priority using a dichotomy of holism versus individualism. I focus here on my interpretation of Hollis’s discussion on explanation versus understanding because it may relate to the study of society and the integration of social sciences with meteorology. Later, I’ll touch on the holism versus individualism dichotomy when I discuss the approach of economics versus sociology.

Epistemological Questions: Explanation versus Understanding

In philosophy, analyzing the nature, scope, and meaning of knowledge is the purview of epistemology. That’s a five-dollar word that encompasses some simple questions: Can actions in the “social world” be understood in the same way that we understand them in the “natural world”? Can we find fundamental laws of society the same way we expect to find them in meteorology? Are there equations and laws governing society and decision making, just as there are equations and laws of fluid dynamics that govern atmospheric flow?

Much of the early study of society, and perhaps much still today, proceeded from the idea that humans actions were subject to explanation in the same way that phenomena in the natural world could be explained by and described by the physical sciences—an approach often called naturalism. In other words, all phenomena— human and otherwise—can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.

Explanation leads to questions of determinism in behavior and perhaps to the idea that we can eventually model human behavior using mathematical models with the same degree of predictive power as a weather forecast. To me, the explanation approach seems related to the idea of agent-based models that I’ve heard engineers and meteorologists mention as a tool for integrating decision making with weather-related decision support tools.
Understanding takes the approach that there is something fundamentally different about life compared to the natural world and that this has implications for analyzing social action. One way to see a difference here is what I’ll call “one mind” versus “two minds.” In studying the physical motions of the atmosphere, there is one mind, the observer, trying to understand nature and the underlying physical laws. Once the observer assumes that there are laws of nature underlying the atmosphere, he is simply using his mind to dig into a set of fixed and immutable laws of nature. (See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laws-of-nature/#BasQueWhaItLaw for an interesting discussion of what it means to be a law of nature.)

In understanding behavior, though, there are two minds involved—the observer and the subject. What can the observer infer about what is going on in the mind of the subject? This is a fertile—and perhaps dangerous—area of philosophical debate. Can we be sure that what appear to be laws of human behavior (as we create them in our mind) actually apply to other beings who have free will to act according to their preferences, rather than in some deterministic manner?

If a researcher takes an explanation philosophical approach, she will likely approach problems of integrating meteorology and social sciences from an entirely different perspective than a researcher taking an understanding philosophical approach. The explanation integrator may seek the equations of human action that can be modeled side by side with the equations of fluid and proceed to predict the linkages and subsequent human behavior. An understanding integrator may evaluate the meanings, roles, and rules of social action in order to understand how individuals or human institutions depend on, respond to, or influence atmospheric phenomena. The different philosophical approaches are based on very different ideas about what should be studied, how it should be studied, and what can be done to disseminate meteorological information for the betterment of society. If these two researchers tried to discuss their research, they might end up talking past each other.

Appreciating the existence of these different approaches may also help us understand why different social sciences have been integrated into meteorology at different levels. Without adequately explaining the meaning of holism versus individualism and with broad generality, we could say that neoclassical microeconomics is based on an individualistic explanation approach. I submit that this may be why natural scientists find neoclassical microeconomics more understandable than many other social sciences.

It seems—to this economist at least—that social sciences such as sociology or social anthropology come more from a holistic and understanding approach. To the extent that different social scientists take different philosophical approaches, it can become difficult for, say, economists and sociologists to reach common ground, before meteorologists even join the conversation!

And now that I’ve talked about all this in the framework of epistemology perhaps it really is more in the realm of metaphysics defined as the study of being and knowing.

Examples and More Questions

I am by no means the first to raise philosophical questions in the meteorological community. Consider, for example, the 2007 article by Morss and Wahl, which applies an ethical framework to an examination of the issues connected with the Red River flood of 1997. Even though forecasters knew there would be some level of flooding months in advance, the flood still caused more than $2 billion in damages. Using concepts from medical ethics of beneficence, autonomy, and justice, Morss and Wahl (2007, p. 342) analyze “issues related to forecast generation, communication of forecast meaning and uncertainty, responsibility for the use of forecasts in decision making, and trade-offs between the desire for forecast certainty and the risk of missed events.” Their work is a primary example of how ethical analysis can play into the forecasting of, communication about, preparation for, and response to hydrometeorological events.

Philosophy comprises many areas of study, understanding, and knowledge I cannot even begin to touch on here (nor can I claim to have adequate capacity to represent them). Logic and metaphysics could both bring light to the discussion about the integration of social science and meteorology, but I’ll leave that for another.

Let me close then with a set of philosophical questions: How far does the responsibility for protection of life and property extend for weather services that provide forecasts, watches, and warnings, especially with respect to potentially life-threatening situations? Is there a moral responsibility on the part of a forecaster who delivers a warning about a life-threatening weather event beyond that delivery? Is there any inherent responsibility to make sure that information is properly communicated, understood, and used in response to the threat? Or, is it enough to simply put forth the best technically available forecast?

Finally, in my mind, perhaps the most important question of all: Is there a qualified philosopher out there who will discuss these questions to help better integrate social science and meteorology to truly provide “science in service to society?”

*Jeff (lazo@ucar.edu) is the director of the NCAR's Societal Impacts Program. For more information on SIP, please visit http://www.sip.ucar.edu.

References

Hollis, M. 2002: Philosophy of social science. Chapter 11 in The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy Series. N. Bunnin and E. P. Tsui-James, Eds. Oxford, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell.

Hunt, E. K., 1979: History of Economic Thought: A Critical Perspective. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing.
Morss, R. E. and E. Wahl, 2007: An ethical analysis of hydrometeorological prediction and decision making: The case of the 1997 Red River flood. Environmental Hazards 7:342–352.

NOAA, 2005: New Priorities for the 21st Century – NOAA’s Strategic Plan. Updated for FY 2006–FY 2011. Available at http://www.oesd.noaa.gov/Strategic_Plan_2006_FINAL_04282005.pdf (accessed July 23, 2008).