Chapter 6 - The Place of Values in Virtue Science

Summary

The central concern in this chapter is on the place of values and morality in virtue science. Since the advent of psychology, a strict fact–value dichotomy has predominated, with almost all investigators adopting a disengaged observer stance. This dichotomy has been repeatedly critiqued by communitarians, hermeneuticists, philosophers, and psychologists. Few, if any, systematic defenses of the fact–value dichotomy exist. This chapter combines many of the strands of fact–value critique in a neo-Aristotelian position that emphasizes that science is, itself, value-imbued because it aims at a set of goods (e.g., knowledge, human welfare). The chapter concludes by suggesting how values and morality can be included in virtue science and psychology in a frank and illuminating manner. In support of this position, it enumerates four advantages of value inclusion, paramount among them that values can then be explicitly discussed and evaluated. Values can be fruitfully incorporated into virtue and psychological sciences by making the values explicit and including discussions and critiques of those views in open intellectual discourse (e.g., peer review).