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The Exact Role of Value Judgments in Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Michael Scriven
Michael Scriven*
Affiliation:
Berkeley, Calif.
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Extract

If there is one set of arguments worse than those put forward for ‘value-free science’, it is those put forward against it. Both sets have one common characteristic, besides a high frequency of invalidity, and that is the failure to make any serious effort at a plausible analysis of the concept of ‘value judgment’, one that will apply to some of the difficult cases, and not just to one paradigm. Although the problem of definition is in this case extremely difficult, one can attain quite useful results even from a first step. The analysis proposed here, which goes somewhat beyond that first step, is still some distance from being satisfactory. Nevertheless, we must begin with such an attempt since any other way to start would be laying foundations on sand. And we'll use plenty of prescientific examples, too, to avoid any difficulties with irrelevant technicalities.

Type
Part VI Symposium: Values, Ideology and Objectivity in the Social Sciences
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1972 , 1972 , pp. 219 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing Company

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References

Note

1 The differences are of some interest, although too limited to conern us now. For example, one may talk of valuing someone's friendship, where one would not talk of liking it, and one may like a view without valuing it Valuing involves an element of enshrining, of respect But our first task here is brush cutting, not pruning.