Value Neutrality

4 Key excerpts on "Value Neutrality"

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  eBook - ePub

  An Introduction To The Philosophy Of Social Research

  • Tim May, Malcolm Williams(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  How are we to assess the actions of those whom we investigate “factually”? Weber maintains that this should be done through an assessment of the internal logic of a situation. Did the agents’ ends arise directly from the means and were the appropriate means chosen for those ends? In other words, rational behaviour is the yardstick for a factual description of a situation (Weber 1974: 73). In this way, value freedom involves not taking sides with those whom we investigate, despite the existence of our own value positions. It is within this tension that the best social science is produced. The standards of “rational action” were central to Weber’s own world view and ones that, as he was only too aware, were historically and culturally specific.

  So, Weber espouses Value Neutrality on the one hand and on the other, he seems to be saying that values are unavoidable in the practice of social science. The resolution of this paradox may be described in the following manner. The objects of social science are constituted by values and this presupposes an appreciation of the values peculiar to the part of the social world being studied. Without this, the researcher cannot evaluate the phenomena under investigation and their research is without relevance. However, it is appreciated that the investigator will be motivated by her own presuppositions that will shape her evaluative framework. This is inevitable and even desirable. However, to admit of this need not compromise “value” neutrality, for the researcher is able to objectively describe the values under investigation. Even the choice between values under investigation need not compromise neutrality. A researcher may evaluate something as “sacred” or “profane” in relation to a particular culture, and while making a value judgement on the assumptions about those terms, this does not commit them to any kind of preference. As Alan Ryan puts it:

  We cannot describe the world independently of all assumptions, and if this were required for objectivity, then we should indeed be unable to achieve it; but we can certainly describe the world independently of any particular assumptions we wish to question (Ryan 1970: 237. Original italics).

  This kind of approach maintains the fact-value distinction by accrediting the values of the researcher, relevant to the investigation, as facts. In other words, the initial conditions of the investigation in part consist of values. In Example 12 the initial conditions are that discrimination consists of certain characteristics (though they are not stated) and is a bad thing. Unless

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  eBook - PDF

  The SAGE Handbook of the Philosophy of Social Sciences

  • Ian C Jarvie, Jesus Zamora-Bonilla, Ian C Jarvie, Jesus Zamora-Bonilla, Author(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  27 Facts, Values, and Objectivity H e a t h e r D o u g l a s Although concern over values in social sci-ence spans a century, no serious commenta-tor has argued that values have no relevance for social science. Even Max Weber, the figure most associated with the ideal of value-neutrality for social science, is quite clear that social science cannot proceed with-out values. However, how the values do and should play a role in social science has been a central issue. Questions at the forefront of discussion include: When are values legiti-mate in social science? When are they neces-sary? When are they a threat to objectivity? How should objectivity as an ideal for sci-ence be understood? And does social science face greater problems concerning values and objectivity than natural science? In this chapter, I will first review the key positions on values in social science from the twentieth century. With this background in place, it will be clearer both how to parse the various roles for values in social science and what these roles mean for the objectivity of social science. Using recent work, I will map the terrain of values in social science and then turn to a discussion of objectiv-ity in light of this terrain. Objectivity turns out to be a complex concept, with multiple facets which can bolster our confidence in social science work. Perhaps most intriguing, I will discuss arguments that the objectivity of science itself is underwritten by the social. Rather than suggesting that the social under-mines the possibilities for objectivity, as was often presumed by commentators from the first part of the twentieth century, such an understanding places the social at the center of scientific objectivity. VALUES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE: A LOOK BACK The central questions on values in social science were addressed repeatedly over the course of the twentieth century. Although there is much agreement on how best to understand values in science, there are also points of disagreement.

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  Sociological Dilemmas

  Toward a Dialectic Paradigm

  • Piotr Sztompka(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  A typical statement of such a position is found in Nagel's work: The difficulties generated for scientific inquiry by unconscious bias and tacit value orientations are rarely overcome by devout resolutions to eliminate bias. They are usually overcome, often only gradually, through the self-corrective mechanisms of science as a social enterprise. For modern science encourages the invention, the mutual exchange, and the free but responsible criticisms of ideas; it welcomes competition in the quest for knowledge between independent investigators, even when their intellectual orientations are different; and it progressively diminishes the 218 Detachment or Bias: Neutralism, Axiologism, Commitment effects of bias by retaining only those proposed conclusions of its in-quiries that survive critical examination by an indefinitely large commu-nity of students, whatever be their value-preferences or doctrinal com-mitments [1961: 490]. A similar solution to the riddle of valuations is suggested by Dahrendorf: Science is always a concert of many. The progress of science rests at least as much on the cooperation of scholars as it does on the inspiration of the individual. This cooperation must not be confined to the all too popular teamwork; rather, its most indispensable task is mutual criticism. ... In the long run, this procedure alone can protect sociology—though not the individual sociologist—against the danger of ideological distortion [1968: 14]. Two more arguments of a similar sort are worth quoting. Popper says: The objectivity of natural and social science is not based on an impartial state of mind in the scientists, but merely on the fact of the public and competitive character of the scientific enterprise and thus on certain social aspects of it. ... Objectivity is based, in brief, upon mutual rational criti-cism, upon the critical approach, the critical tradition [1976b: 293].

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  A Heated Debate

  Meta-Theoretical Studies on Current Climate Research and Public Understanding of Science

  • Maria M. Sojka(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • transcript Verlag

    (Publisher)

  The third kind of value-related understanding of scientific objectivity which Douglas identifies is that of value-neutral objectivity, a view of science, which acknowledges values in science (to a certain degree), but scientists are urged to take a middle-ground position. This is a point of view on the role of values in science that will not be discussed here in more detail. Suffice it to say that taking no sides at all might be undesirable in certain situations, if what lies on one side of the value spectrum is otherwise considered absolutely unacceptable, such as racist or sexist positions. In the following, I will discuss why the value-free ideal cannot be main- tained in the case of climate science and science in general. To that end, I will first outline the historic background. A look back in history helps to better un- derstand the value-free ideal in general and how it has risen to such promi- nence in the last century. Before actually turning to the debate about the role of value judgements in climate science, I will also take a closer look at the discus- sion of value judgements in the context of inductive-risk assessments, which has taken up a prominent place in philosophical debates about the role of val- ues in climate science. 1 Philosophers of science who advocate for this strict value-free ideal of science com- monly acknowledge that there is a small number of “epistemic” values. These are con- sidered to have an appropriate role in science compared to so-called “non-epistemic” values which are generally, according to this view of science, considered inappropriate; a distinction which will be further discussed in this Chapter. 3. Three ideals of science 41 3.1.1.1 The rise and fall of the value-free ideal Historians and philosophers retrace the origins of the separation of values and science to Francis Bacon and the beginning of modern science and philosophy (Carrier, 2013; Douglas, 2009; Proctor, 1991).

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