Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-89wxm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-07T23:20:13.732Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Four Contributions Values Can Make to the Objectivity of Social Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Sandra G. Harding
Sandra G. Harding*
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his intellectual autobiography, Rudolf Carnap describes a dispute between Otto Neurath and the rest of the members of the Vienna Circle.

All of us in the Circle were strongly interested in social and political progress. Most of us, myself included, were socialists. But we liked to keep our philosophical work separated from our political aims. In our view, logic, including applied logic, and the theory of knowledge, the analysis of language, and the methodology of science, are, like science itself, neutral with respect to practical aims, whether they are moral aims for the individual, or political aims for a society. Neurath criticized strongly this neutralist attitude, which in his opinion gave aid and comfort to the enemies of social progress. We in turn insisted that the intrusion of practical and especially of political points of view would violate the purity of philosophical methods, (p. 23).

Type
Part VI. Aspects of Rationality
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1978 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1978 , 1978 , pp. 198 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

The author wishes to express gratitude to the University of Delaware Research fund for support of part of the work associated with this paper, and to John Connolly for helpful comments.

References

Braybrooke, D. “Introduction.” Philosophical Problems of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan, 1965. Pages 1–18.Google Scholar
Carnap, R. “Intellectual Autobiography.” The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. Edited by Schilpp, P.A. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1963. Pages 3–84.Google Scholar
Chapin, S. “Definitions of Concepts.” Social Forces 18 (1939): 153–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connolly, W. “Theoretical Self-Consciousness.” Policy 6 (1973): 5–35.Google Scholar
Diesing, P. “Subjectivity and Objectivity in the Social Sciences.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 2 (1972): 147–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fay, B. and Moon, J.D. “What Would an Adequate Philosophy of Social Science Look Like?” Philosophy of Social Science 7 (1977): 209–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaa, J.C. “Moral Autonomy and the Rationality of Science.” Philosophy of Science 44 (1977): 513–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, S.G. (ed.) Can Theories be Refuted? Essays on the Duhem-Quine Thesis. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, S.G. “Does Objectivity in Social Science Require Value-Neutrality?” Soundings LX (1977): 351–366.Google Scholar
Gellner, E. “Concepts and Society.” Transactions of the Fifth World Congress of Sociology 1 (1962): 153–183. (As reprinted in Gellner Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan, 1965. Pages 18-46.)Google Scholar
Gellner, E. “The New Idealism - Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences.” In Problems in the Philosophy of Science. Edited by Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1968. Pages 377–406, 426-432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malcolm, N. Dreaming. New York: Humanities Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Nagel, E. The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudner, R. “The Scientist Qua Scientist Makes Value Judgments.” Philosophy of Science 20 (1953): 1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winch, P. The Idea of a Social Science. New York: Humanities, 1958.Google Scholar