Science and Values

1. Science and Values

2. According to Weber Ancient Judaism • A) is at the root of the western sense of “rationality” • B) was completely different from Christianity, which was “rational” • C) Was similar to oriental “magical” religions • D) B abd C • E) A and B

3. Science can provide the kind of technical knowledge, in terms of what it costs to achieve a goal, what it takes to get there, what secondary consequences there are to choosing this means to achieve that end, and so forth, But science cannot provide what ENDS TO CHOOSE, cannot tell us whether the chosen end is morally justifiable.

4. Actions • Imply in their consequences the espousal of certain values [and] the rejection of certain others. • For Weber, the boundary between science and values must be strictly observed. • Need to observe the fact-value distinction, Weber believes that two individuals who observe the value-fact distinction, but who are opposed ideologically, can agree nevertheless that a given analysis is empirically valid. • Example of “ validity” and “ objectivity” and what Weber meant when he used terms “our journal is concerned with economic phenomena but also with those which are“economically relevant” and “ economically conditioned.”

5. Anti-”Marxist” Weber • “The analysis of social and cultural phenomena with special reference to their economic conditioning and ramifications was a scientific principle of creative fruitfulness, and with careful application and freedom from dogmatic restrictions, will remain such for a very long time to come. The so called “ materialist conception of history,” as a Weltanschauung or as a formula for the causal explanation of historical reality is to be rejected most emphatically. [ However] the advancement, of the economic interpretation of history is one of the most important aims of our journal.”

6. For Weber grasping CHARACTERISTIC UNIQUENESS of phenomena is the aim of social science. To understand why things are historically so and not otherwise. • SOCIOLOGY IS A HISTORICAL INTERPRETIVE DISCIPLINE THAT STRIVES TO GRASP UNIQUE CONFIGURATIONS SINCE IT IS UNIQUE PHENOMENA WHICH ARE UNIQUE TO US • What we seek to grasp is • The real, i.e., concrete, individually-structured configuration of our cultural life in its… relationships, which are themselves no less individually structured, and in its development out of other socio-cultural conditions, which themselves are obviously likewise individually structured.

7. Specific to the social sciences • To this should be added that in the social sciences we are concerned with psychological and intellectual phenomena, the emphatic understanding of which is naturally a problem of a specifically different type from those which… the exact natural sciences… seek to resolve. • General “ laws,” for Weber, are the less relevant the more general they are. • What significance, asks Weber, would such laws have for our knowledge of an historically given cultural phenomenon? Could such laws explain the emergence and development of capitalism, and its cultural significance? In no case, Weber answers, can concrete reality be deduced from “ laws” and “factors.” Why not” “Because our analysis of reality is concerned with a particular configuration that is significant to us.”

8. “Objectivity” • The “selection” of a problem is linked to the scientists own values (e.g. U.S. sociologists study primarily U.S. society) • Society is complex, many sub-groups, social scientist will carry the values of ONE of these sub groups, necessarily • Does that mean that social science is impossible/ • Weber’s answer is a resounding no. • First because partial explanations are not necessarily false; ex. Marx on study of capitalism from the point of view of political economy, Weber study of economic relevance and selective affinity of protestant values with capitalism.

9. “Objectivity” • What does Weber mean by “objectivity”? • NOT some Olympian observer of the human condition, detached from society • “Objectivity, for Weber, entails a “moral” commitment to the pursuit of truth and knowledge. It entails a moral commitment to the ethic of Wisenschaft als Beruf– science and scholarship as a calling.” • “The first requirement of this commitment is to fully recognize the value-and-interest relevance of our approach to reality…. So the first obligation as scholars and scientsits is to become aware of our own ideologies.

10. “Objectivity” • The conscious recognition of our values dominating our thinkig and observations should lead to: • Deliberately giving serious consideration to other and even opposing views. Conscious scholar-scientists will lean over backward , so to speak, to consider evidence and arguments embarrasing to their own position. It is by such conduct that Weber would say we are trying to be objective. (IZ, IDST, 251-252)

11. The social sciences • Analyze the phenomena of the human condition in terms of their significance; but neither the significance of a social phenomenon nor the reason for its significance can be derived from a system of analytical laws. That is true because the significance of social events presupposes a value orientation towards events. What we call social reality, therefore, includes only those segments of reality which have become significant to us because of their relevance to specific values of ours.

12. WEBER • Only a small portion of existing concrete reality is colored by our value conditioned interest, and it alone is significant to us. It is significant because it reveals relationships which are important to us due to their connection with our values. Only because and to the extend that this is the case is it worthwhile for us to know it in its individual features. Meaningful cannot be the product of “presupposition-less” investigation

13. WEBER: Meaningful to us is the presupposition of its becoming an object of investigation. Meaningfulness naturally does not coincide with laws as such, and the more general the law the less the coincidence. For the specific meaning which a phenomenon has for us is naturally NOT to the bound in those relationships which it shares with many other phenomena.” • Once we grasp that truth that all social phenomena are historical, that must mean that the knowledge we seek is of historical phenomena that are significant in their uniqueness.

14. Causality? • How can we determine causality? There are so many determinations, how can one explain an individual fact? • General laws cannot explain historically specific social, political, or religious movements. • The nature of “ order” is different. • Order is brought into this chaos only on the condition that in every case only a part concrete reality is interesting, and significant to us because only it is related to the cultural values with which we approach reality. Only certain sides of the infinitely complex concrete phenomenon, namely those to which we attribute a general cultural significance—ere therefore worth knowing. They alone are objects of causal explanation.

15. General laws meaningless • For the knowledge of historical phenomena in their concreteness, the most general laws, because they are most devoid of content, are also the least valuable. The more comprehensive the validity—or scope—of a term, the more it leads us away from the richness of reality, since in order to include the common elements of the largest possible number of phenomena, it must necessarily be as abstract as possible and hence devoid of content. In the cultural sciences the knowledge of the universal or general is never valuable in itself. • The conclusion which follows fro the above is that an “ objective” analysis of cultural events, which proceeds according to the thesis that the idea of a [social] science is the reduction of empirical reality to “laws,” is meaningless.

16. NOTE HERE ON DIFFERENCE WITH MARX • NOTE HERE ON DIFFERENCE WITH MARX who did think laws of motion exist • Weber’s position: In order to understand any concrete historical development, including any given society at any given time period, on must study the unique and particular conditions that have set those events in motion. In the social sciences conceived as historical disciplines, general concepts of “ laws” are strictly a means to an end, namely, the analysis and illumination of an “historical individual” – the term Weber used to refer to a unique constellation of conditions that one has selected for study, for example, specific social and religious movements, revolutions, economic crises, and less dramatic events.

17. Weber recommends the construction of ideal types • Marx mode of production • Tocqueville dichotomy aristocracy/democracy • Durkheim’s mechanical and organic solidarity • Are examples of what Weber calls ideal types. • Ideal types are concepts, and concepts are analytical instruments for the intellectualmastery of empirical data. • They are abstractions, in the sense that they abstract what is common to many cases and construct an ideal representation of that which is common

18. ideal type • ideal type - A construct that serves as a heuristic device developed for methodological purposes in the analysis of social phenomena. An ideal type is constructed from elements and characteristics of the phenomena under investigation but it is not intended to correspond to all of the characteristics of any one case. An ideal type is a sort of composite picture that all the cases of a particular phenomenon will be compared with. • Max Weber developed this technique. Examples of ideal types are: sacred society, secular society, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, sect, church, and marginal man

19. heu•ris•tic • heu•ris•tic • Pronunciation: (hyoo-ris'tik or, often, yoo-), [key] • —adj. • 1. serving to indicate or point out; stimulating interest as a means of furthering investigation. • 2. encouraging a person to learn, discover, understand, or solve problems on his or her own, as • by experimenting, evaluating possible answers or solutions, or by trial and error: a heuristic • teaching method. • 3. of, pertaining to, or based on experimentation, evaluation, or trial-and-error methods. • 4. Computers, Math.pertaining to a trial-and-error method of problem solving used when an • algorithmic approach is impractical. • —n. • 1. a heuristic method of argument. • 2. the study of heuristic procedure.

20. nom·o·thet·ic·al • VARIANT FORMS: or nom·o·thet·ic·al (- k- l) • ADJECTIVE: 1. Of or relating to lawmaking; legislative. 2. Based on a system of law. • 3. Of or relating to the philosophy of law. 4. Of or relating to the study • or discovery of general scientific laws. • ETYMOLOGY: Greek nomothetikos : nomos, law; see nem- in Appendix I + thetikos, • thetic; see thetic. • OTHER FORMS: nom·o·thet i·cal·ly —ADVERB • _nonomthetic_ sciences, "which seek to establish abstract general laws • for indefinitely repeatable events and processes; and the • _ideographic_, which aims to understand the unique and nonrecurrent"