Abstract
The value-freedom of science has traditionally been regarded as a presumption of scientific rationality. However, in addition to numerous empirical counterexamples of value-laden science, systematic arguments have put the adequacy of value-freedom as an ideal into doubt during the last decades. This chapter presents the most important debates on the value-free ideal, which concern the epistemic impact of values in the discovery and justification of theories, the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values, and the argument from inductive risk. Taken together, these arguments call for new normative models of how to deal with values in science which no longer equate value-laden science with bad science or irrationality. Rather, they suggest that scientific rationality is highly complex, since epistemic issues are interwoven with practical, socio-political, institutional, and ethical ones.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Handbook of Rationality |
| Editors | Wolfgang Spohn, Markus Knauff |
| Place of publication | Cambridge |
| Publisher | MIT Press |
| Publication date | 1 Dec 2021 |
| Pages | 757-765 |
| Chapter | 14.2 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780262045070 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2021 |