Hostname: page-component-784d4fb959-57n77 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-16T11:17:09.962Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Uses of Value Judgments in Science: A General Argument, with Lessons from a Case Study of Feminist Research on Divorce

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Elizabeth Anderson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The underdetermination argument establishes that scientists may use political values to guide inquiry, without providing criteria for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate guidance. This paper supplies such criteria. Analysis of the confused arguments against value-laden science reveals the fundamental criterion of illegitimate guidance: when value judgments operate to drive inquiry to a predetermined conclusion. A case study of feminist research on divorce reveals numerous legitimate ways that values can guide science without violating this standard.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 19 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Feminist Science Studies , Winter 2004 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by Hypatia, Inc.

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Campbell, Richmond. 1998. Illusions of paradox: A feminist epistemology naturalized. Lanham, Md.: Rowman LittlefleldGoogle Scholar
John, Deigh. 1994. Cognitivism in the theory of emotions. Ethics 104(4): 824–54.Google Scholar
Dion, Douglas. 1998. Evidence and inference in the comparative case study. Comparative Politics 30(2): 127–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geach, Peter. 1965. Assertion. Philosophical Review 74(4): 449–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1990. A lab of one's own. New York Review of Books 37(8 November): 19–24.Google Scholar
Gilder, George. 1986. Men and marriage. Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing.Google Scholar
Gross, Paul, and Levitt, Norman. 1994. Higher superstition: The academic left and its quarrels with science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.Google Scholar
Haack, Susan. 1993. Epistemological reflections of an old feminist. Reason Papers 18(fall): 31–43.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1995. Rewriting the soul: Multiple personality and the sciences of memory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine. 1983. Two distinctions in goodness. Philosophical Review 92(2): 169–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas. 1977. Objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice. In The essential tension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lacey, Hugh. 1999. Is science value free? Values and scientific understanding. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Longino, Helen. 1990. Science as social knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Longino, Helen. 1994. In search of feminist epistemology. Monist 77 (4): 472–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millgram, Elijah. 1997. Practical induction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Nagel, Ernest. 1979. The structure of science. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Nelson, Lynn Hankinson. 1990. Who knows? From Quine to a feminist empiricism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, Janet Radcliffe. 1995. Why feminist epistemology isn't (and the implications for feminist jurisprudence). Legal Theory 19(2): 365–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, Abigail, Copeland, Anne, Chester, Nia, Malley, Janet, and Barenbaum, Nicole. 1997. Separating together: How divorce transforms families. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Judith, and Kelly, Joan. 1980. Surviving the breakup. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Judith, Lewis, Julia, and Blakeslee, Sandra. 2000. The unexpected legacy of divorce. New York: Hyperion.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1946. Science as a vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in sociology, ed. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weitzman, Lenore. 1985. The divorce revolution. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Whitehead, Barbara. 1983. Dan Quayle was right. Atlantic Monthly 271(4): 47–50.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1985. Ethics and the limits of philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, James Q. 2002. The marriage problem: How our culture has weakened families. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar