Análise dos conceitos de confiabilidade e confiança na metrologia sob a ótica da filosofia das medições contemporânea

Abstract

In this work we investigate the meanings of reliability and trust in the context of the practice of metrology, the “science of measurement and its applications”. We demonstrated, throughout the examination of the concepts of reliability and trust, at first glance asymmetric and employed ambiguously, the indissociability between production and dissemination of knowledge. We emphasize, from the case study on the redefinition of the unit of measure for the quantity mass, the kilogram, as standardization processes constitute mutually reciprocal stages of characterization and systematization. In other words, reliability is responsible for the quality of the measurement result. Trust, in turn, answers to the effectiveness of the actors in spreading these results in multileveled networks of actors. The link between the those values lies in the way in which the concept of metrological traceability converges characterization and dissemination: once a local measurement outcome is reproducible globally, metrology gives solidity to a feasible heterogeneity and, ultimately, answers in its own way to the issue over the objectivity of the scientific knowledge. We discuss the notion of objectivity to affirm that the codependency between reliability and trust results from a culture of standardization, without which research collectivities are displaced and their results incommunicable. Finally, the performance of epistemic and non-epistemic (or cognitive and non-cognitive) components led us to propose that values (as components of an ethos) do not constitute different types, but point to factors preponderant in a greater or lesser degree, given the context of application. We adopt the nomenclature sociocognitive values to characterize them without dissociating, e.g., unity, rationality, progress, stability or objectivity from disunity, plurality, iterativity, flexibility or subjectivity.