Is mathematical modelling an instrument of knowledge co-production?

ABSTRACT

We interrogate mathematical modelling as an instrument of knowledge co-production by concentrating on the classical probabilistic operationalization of decision-making under uncertainty used for informing climate change mitigation options. We construct our co-productive assessment framework by first retrieving criticisms targeted at expected utility theory in relation to its epistemic and ethical limits in dealing with ‘true’ uncertainty. We then reflect on how ethical values should operate in relation to uncertainty in order to live up to the co-production ideal and specifically, to the principle of Responsible Research and Innovation. We thus undertake the perspective of a general modeller and test our reflections by imagining the classical probabilistic space of calculation as a space of negotiation between probabilities, ideas, values and beliefs. We thus propose an alternative ‘public’ space of calculation in which the conditions for co-production are set up on a pragmatic and moral account of rational expectations.

KEYWORDS:

• Expected utility theory
• co-production
• climate change
• uncertainty
• probability-based modelling
• moral rationality

Acknowledgment

This work has been partly produced with the financial support of the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF), London, UK, under the Independent Scholar Fellowship Award (Fifth Grant competition). The authors also wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The SCC expresses in monetary terms the social impact of the emission of a ton of CO₂ in a given year (Adler et al. 2017).

2 We choose to refer to just one exemplificative work by Dietz, but most of his contributions are actually co-authored. See for instance, Atkinson et al. (2009), Dietz and Hepburn (2010) and Saelen et al. (2008).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Independent Social Research Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Elisa Vecchione

Dr Elisa Vecchione is a public policy and science & technology scholar. Her research and work have developed at the intersection between science, policy and democracy and have mainly covered the fields of risk regulation, impact assessment and scenario building. She is particularly interested in the norms and conditions dealing with scientific uncertainty and scientific evidence at both institutional and epistemological levels. In 2019 she was awarded the Independent Scholar Fellowship by the Independent Social Research Foundation (UK) for developing her project The Poetry of Science: Restoring the Role of imagination in Mathematical Modelling where she interrogates the co-productive properties of this vastly used scientific tool.

Zaid Chalabi

Dr Zaid Chalabi is a mathematical modeller. He has a strong interest in many mathematical modelling approaches including complexity science methods for modelling complex dynamic systems such as agent-based modelling and system dynamics modelling. He also has wide interest in numerous areas of applied mathematics and operations research allied to mathematical modelling including risk analysis, uncertainty analysis, value of information analysis, decision analysis, extreme value analysis, optimization and optimal control. His main application areas are the impacts of the environment (including the indoor environment) and climate change on human health.