Sinks and Webs: From Axiological Neutrality to Critical Engagement

The central goal of this essay is to explain why the fact/value distinction does
not hold water and to reflect on what this means for the scientific ethos. The essay
has three parts. The first reviews and synthesizes various well-known criticisms of
the fact/value distinction. The critique is two-pronged. It not only argues that facts
are value-laden – a familiar point to many sociologists – but also that values are factladen
– a point less commonly made outside philosophy. The second part explores
the conditions of plausibility of the fact/value distinction, the “background picture”
that makes it seem convincing and even commonsensical. I argue that the fact-value
distinction is based on an epistemological imaginary, which is, in turn, buttressed by
certain ontological and moral assumptions as well. The third part develops an
alternative conceptualization and corresponding imagery. It replaces the terms
“fact” and “value” with the concepts “descriptive” and “normative.” And it argues
that the descriptive and the normative are always complexly entangled. Rather than
trying to keep the two apart, I argue, a critical social science should attend explicitly
and systematically to their interrelationship