from Hypatia Volume 19, Number 1

Excerpt from

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

Elizabeth Anderson

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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.

I. RETHINKING THE UNDERDETERMINATION ARGUMENT FOR VALUE-LADEN SCIENCE

Feminist science is science guided by feminist values. To its critics, the very idea of feminist science--or any science guided by moral or political values--is paradoxical and dangerous (Susan Haack 1993; Clifford Geertz 1990; Paul Gross and Norman Levitt 1994; Janet Richards 1995). Advocates of feminist science have offered able defenses of value-laden science (Helen Longino 1990; Lynn Hankinson Nelson 1990). Their core argument begins with the observation that the link between evidence and hypothesis is mediated by background assumptions. Scientists must therefore select their background assumptions before they can determine which hypotheses are supported by the evidence. According to Quine’s underdetermination thesis, theories are, in principle, underdetermined even by all the empirical evidence that could ever be gathered. So there is always room for choice in the selection of background assumptions. Since various background assumptions could be legitimately selected for any reason, no logical or methodological principles prevent scientists from choosing some on account of their congruence with their moral or political values. A fortiori, feminists are permitted to choose their background assumptions on account of their congruence with feminist values.

The underdetermination argument has served feminist scientists well. But the time has come to rethink the way it models the relations between values and hypotheses. As the argument stands, it does not help us evaluate the different ways that values might be deployed in inquiry. Yet surely some uses of values to select background assumptions are illegitimate. Feminists object to the deployment of sexist values to select background assumptions that insulate the theoretical underpinnings of patriarchy from refutation. Critics of feminist science similarly worry that feminists will use their values in ways that insulate feminist theories from refutation. We need criteria to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate ways of deploying values in science.

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