An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science

Introduction

We have already discussed how the logical empiricists sought to develop a scientific philosophy that would enable investigators to reason in a manner that would be independent of their commitments to ideologies or political causes. Philosophers sometimes refer to this aspect of the logical empiricists' project as the ideal of a value-free science. But what are values?

Humans spend a lot of effort evaluating things, whether they be sneakers, songs, or senators. We can evaluate how honest a person is, how tasty a doughnut is, or how probable it is that an asteroid will collide with the Earth. One way in which such evaluations differ concerns what we value and how we value it. We value both honesty and tastiness, but in different ways. Valuing the continued survival of ourselves and other species, we might prefer that an asteroid not hit the Earth, but it would be odd to say that we value the probability of this happening: that would be something that we simply want to know. We might think of the category of things we value as those things that we take to be good, and the features of good things that give us reasons to value them (i.e., to regard them as good) we might call values.