Explanation and Value Neutrality

Abstract

Following the progressive elimination of teleology from the province of the scientist in the seventeenth century, the domains of science and values seemed finally isolated and immune each from the other. Value free scientific objectivity emerged as the ideal, with the very notion of scientifically supported values exploded as a 'naturalistic fallacy'. Finally, the convergence in value theory of intuitionists, emotivists and oxonians, conjoined with the success and influence of a positivist philosophy of science, consummated the separation of science and values. The issue seemed securely resolved. Particularly enthroned was the value neutrality thesis of science (VN) which prohibits the scientist from making value judgments. Professor Ernest Nagel, in his illuminating treatise on the logic of explanation,1 follows the lead of Carnap, Jeffrey and Hempel in opting for this thesis. Most attempts to disunify the empirical sciences, on the grounds that the natural sciences are value free while history or the social sciences are not, he disposes of nicely with an impressive barrage of counter evidence. In particular he correctly rejects the idealist claim that to explain an action one must appraise that action. Hence he rests the unity of the sciences on the exclusion of values.