Values in science: what are values, anyway?

Abstract

Although the philosophical literature on science and values has flourished in recent years, the central concept of “values” has remained ambiguous. This paper endeavors to clarify the nature of values as they are discussed in this literature and then highlights some of the major implications of this clarification. First, it elucidates four major concepts of values and discusses some of their strengths and weaknesses. Second, it clarifies the relationships between these concepts of values and a wide variety of related concepts that are sometimes used interchangeably in the philosophical literature. Third, it argues that this conceptual clarification reveals that much of the literature on science and values has discussed different concepts of values without making these differences clear. The paper illustrates this point by analyzing the different concepts of values at play in different arguments against the value-free ideal and in proposals for managing values. Understanding the literature on values in science as a patchwork of related discourses rather than a single discourse can help researchers more thoughtfully choose a concept of values that best fits their philosophical targets and goals, rather than conflating different discourses because of the common terminology of “values.”