THE QUESTION OF SCIENTIFIC EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND ITS FOUNDATIONS

1
How Max Weber got it mostly right about the role
of values in social research 
Martyn Hammersley The Open University,
UK Helsinki-Copenhagen Colloquium on Evidence in
Social Inquiry Workshop 1 The Role of Values in
Social Enquiry, University of Copenhagen,
December 2013
2

• Max Weber in 1917

3
An issue characterised by three Cs

• Caricature of some of the positions proposed.
• Complexity a range of difficult issues,
  concerning the legitimate products of social
  research the role of various sorts of value in
  its pursuit the institutional requirements for
  such research evaluation of its consequences
  and so on (see Proctor 1991 Kincaid et al 2007).
• Confusion a variety of terms are employed to
  mark out different positions, but these do not
  have clear or unambiguous meanings value
  neutrality, value freedom, objectivity,
  subjectivity, partisanship, perfectionism,
  etc.

4
Caricature

• Critics, and even some supporters, formulate the
  idea that social inquiry can be value-neutral,
  value-free, or even objective in ways that
  misrepresent its original form.
• Webers work is frequently ignored or
  misinterpreted.
• There is some slight excuse for both these
  tendencies value-free, value-neutral, and
  objective are problematic terms and Weber does
  not clearly express his position in a way that is
  immediately intelligible. (But see Bruun 2007.)

5
Weber was no positivist

• Weber was a post-enlightenment thinker,
  influenced by neo-Kantianism and Nietzsche. He
  did not believe, like Comte and Durkheim, that
  science can diagnose social pathology. Nor did he
  believe, like Hegel and Marx, that there is a set
  of values, built into human nature, whose
  realisation is the End of History.
• If we try to understand his views as if they were
  a form of positivism or historicism we will be
  led astray.

6
Assumptions that the value-neutral principle does
NOT imply/require

• That research involves no reliance upon values.
• That making value judgments is quite independent
  of facts about the world.
• That there is a metaphysical dichotomy between
  facts and values (Putnam 2002).
• That value judgments are necessarily irrational
  leaps of subjective faith.
• That because discussion of values cannot be
  scientific it cannot be rational.

7
Complexity Is social inquiry value-neutral/value-
free/objective? Can it be? Should it be?

• Besides these 3 questions, there are at least
  3 others that need to be addressed, with a view
  to reducing confusion
• How are we defining social inquiry?
• What do we mean by value?
• What do we mean by neutral/free/objective?

8
Types of social inquiry

• Academic research aimed at building up
  disciplinary knowledge. This was Webers primary
  focus.
• Practical research aimed at supplying
  information needed by practical actors
  governments, citizens, consumers, etc.
• Inquiry-subordinated-to-another-activity, for
  example police inquiries, legal research, civil
  service research, and much action research.
• All three can be of great value, but they are
  different in character (Hammersley 2002ch6).

9
What does value mean?

• Two meanings in Weber
• A principle that specifies a good/bad contrast.
  Very often there are multiple versions of the
  same principle, for example justice/injustice can
  take retributive or distributive forms. Moreover,
  all value principles must be interpreted in order
  to be applied to particular cases.
• A value-judgment an evaluation of some person,
  situation, object, course of action, etc in terms
  of a set of value principles (and, also, on the
  basis of various factual assumptions).

10
Webers treatment of values

• Weber argues that we are faced with plural value
  principles, and that for this and other reasons
  there are usually conflicting but equally
  reasonable (as well as unreasonable) value
  judgments about any object. Correct!
• He believed that how we choose among or assign
  priority to value principles cannot be decided by
  reason. Wrong but salutary!
• However, he thought that value judgments were
  open to rational scrutiny as regards their
  derivation from principles, and also in terms of
  their realism. Correct!

11
Weber on vocations
1. We choose particular vocations, and this will
lead us to prioritise some values over others.
Western society involves institutional
specialisation, and a rationalisation process
requiring us to pursue vocations objectively. 2.
Whatever our vocation, we will often find it
uncomfortable because of conflict among
values. 3. Those following different vocations,
like those brought up in different cultures, may
struggle to reach agreement and sometimes even to
understand one another.
12
Epistemic and non-epistemic values
Social scientists are, by the nature of their
task, committed to epistemic values their sole
operational goal is to produce knowledge. So, in
many contexts, they prioritise truth over other
values. At the same time, the practical, that is
non-epistemic, values to which they are committed
as people can serve as a value-relevance
framework for their research. (There will also be
practical values that operate as ethical
constraints on how the research is carried out,
see Hammersley and Traianou 2012).
13
What is value freedom/neutrality?

• Value freedom/neutrality requires that only
  factual research questions are investigated and
  that in seeking to find answers to those
  questions the researcher tries to be neutral as
  regards non-epistemic values.
• The implication is not that publication of the
  findings of a study will be politically neutral
  in its effects, in the sense of being equally
  favourable or unfavourable to all political or
  practical commitments. However, it will not be
  systematically favourable or unfavourable to
  particular positions in its consequences.

14
Assumptions underpinning value neutrality

• Factual conclusions are distinct from value
  conclusions even though value judgments involve
  factual assumptions, and factual conclusions must
  usually be value-relevant.
• Social science can only validate factual claims,
  not value conclusions. It can legitimately claim
  expertise, though not infallibility, about
  factual matters. It cannot claim legitimate
  expertise as regards value-judgments. To do so
  would amount to scientism, and would thus
  undermine democracy.

15
What is objectivity?

• At least three meanings, the first applying to
  knowledge claims, the others to research
  strategies. Objective as
• Corresponding to objects in the world true
• Following procedural rules rather than making
  idiosyncratic decisions
• Taking proper account of what is relevant, and
  only of what is relevant. (There is, of course,
  room for uncertainty and dispute about what is
  relevant.) This third sense was the one that
  Weber used, it is a component of a commitment to
  value neutrality.

16
Bias the conceptual complement to this third
sense of objectivity
Bias distortion of the pursuit of some goal as
a result of the influence of values or interests
that are not relevant to it. For example, bias in
job selection or in legal trials. In the case of
research, of course, bias refers to deviation
from the most effective path to finding true
answers to factual questions (see Hammersley
2000ch6). What constitutes bias in pursuing an
activity depends upon its goal(s).
17
Value relevance
Unlike natural science, social research focuses
on explaining individual phenomena, rather than
aiming at universal laws, and these phenomena
must be selected for investigation on the basis
of practical values, and studied from within a
particular value-relevance framework. A
value-relevance framework defines what is at
issue, but is not partisan in the sense of
favouring only one view about that issue, and
does not provide a basis for drawing value
conclusions as part of the research.
18
Illustrating value relevance
Levels of poverty or social mobility, and reasons
for changes in these, are factual issues that are
value-relevant from a variety of political
perspectives (though not from all). Contrasting
views can be taken about them, and the research
findings are likely to be relevant to many
different political views. How we define
poverty or social mobility can vary, partly
depending upon value assumptions, but
value-neutrality requires us to explore the
consequences of different definitions for our
findings.
19
Has social science ever practised the principle
of value neutrality?

• Not very systematically, for at least two
  reasons
• There are continual demands on social science for
  value conclusions, not just from outside but also
  from social scientists themselves.
• While, in the mid-twentieth century, there was
  widespread appeal to value-neutrality, in
  practice researchers nevertheless often assumed
  that value conclusions follow directly from the
  facts, for example on analogy with the
  (misleading) case of medicine.

20
The current situation
Today, across many fields of social science, and
especially where qualitative approaches have made
inroads, any commitment to value neutrality,
value-freedom, and even objectivity is
generally rejected, usually as positivist (but
see Letherby et al 2012). Value conclusions are
frequently presented as well-established by
evidence, and as warranting acceptance as valid
by anyone. Yet it is rarely made clear why these
value-judgments should be treated as
authoritative, and they are often open to
reasonable doubt.
21
The lost ground

• The means previously used to infer value
  conclusions from factual premisses religion,
  natural law theory, nationalist ideology, organic
  social theories, or historicism of a Hegelian or
  Marxist kind have been largely abandoned by
  social scientists today.
• We need not, and should not, adopt an
  irrationalist position, but we must recognise
  that it is much harder for rational discussion
  about values to produce consensus than is the
  case with factual matters. This is because there
  is rarely a single, true answer to a value
  question.

22
Proposed alternative approaches

1. Researchers as organic intellectuals explicitly
   committed to some set of practical values or to
   some interest group (whether marginalised or
   involved in government). MacIntyre (1990), Root
   (1993), Burawoy (2005), and Turner (2007) all
   seem to propose versions of this.
2. The contractual model researchers offer their
   services on the market, doing research that
   supports clients value positions, on the model
   of lawyers as advocates. This may be disguised
   via appeal to some notion of the common good.

23
Problems with these alternatives

1. Social inquiry loses all internal coherence and
   comes to lack clear boundaries, merging into the
   activity of pressure groups of various kinds.
2. Bias as regards factual conclusions will be
   encouraged, along with misuse of the authority of
   science.
3. Public funding is hard to justify since research
   is serving partial interests. Given this, what
   research focuses on, and the conclusions it
   reaches, will be determined even more directly by
   funding source than currently.

24
Two corollaries of the value-neutrality principle

• The primary duty of researchers is to pursue
  inquiry in such a way as to try to ensure that
  their findings are true.
• A secondary responsibility is to try to ensure
  that the discussion of research findings, and of
  other factual information, in the public sphere
  pays attention to the distinction between facts
  and values and the ways they are interrelated.
• At present, the social science community does not
  always match up well to these obligations.

25
Summary and Conclusion

• Current situation the principles of value
  neutrality and objectivity are widely rejected
  social scientists routinely present value
  conclusions as validated by research.
• There is little clarity about the basis for these
  value conclusions, and why they are legitimate.
• Rejection of value neutrality is largely based on
  misinterpretation and caricature.
• The alternatives proposed the organic
  intellectual or the hired advocate are
  undesirable they increase bias, encourage
  scientism, and thereby threaten democracy.

26
An advert!

• The Limits of Social Science Causal Explanation
  and Values, London, Sage, 2014.
• Martyn Hammersley
• Chapters include
• On the role of values in social research
• From facts to value judgments? A critique of
  critical realism
• Can social science tell us whether a society is
  meritocratic? A Weberian critique
• We didnt predict a riot! On the public
  contribution of social science

27
References
Bruun, H. (2007), Science, Values and Politics in
Max Webers Methodology (Second edition),
Aldershot, Ashgate. Burawoy, M. (2005) For
Public Sociology, British Journal of Sociology,
56, 2 pp25994. Derman, J. (2012) Max Weber in
Politics and Social Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press. Hammersley, M. (2000) Taking
Sides in Social Research, London,
Routledge. Hammersley, M. (2002) Educational
Research, Policymaking and Practice, London, Paul
Chapman/Sage. Hammersley, M. (2014) The Limits of
Social Science Causal explanation and values,
London, Sage. Hammersley, M. and Traianou, A.
(2012) Ethics in Qualitative Research London,
Sage. Hutchison, T. (1964) Positive Economics and
Policy Objectives, London, Allen and Unwin.
28
References contd

• Kincaid, H., Dupré, J., and Wylie, A. (eds)
  (2007) Value-Free Science Ideals and illusions,
  Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Letherby, G, Scott, J and Williams M (2012 )
  Objectivity and Subjectivity in Social Research.
  London Sage.MacIntyre, A. (1990) Three Rival
  Versions of Moral Enquiry, London, Duckworth,
  pp23-4 and passim.
• Proctor, R. N. (1991) Value-Free Science Purity
  and power in modern knowledge, Cambridge MS,
  Harvard University Press.
• Putnam H. (2002) The Collapse of the Fact/Value
  Dichotomy and other essays, Cambridge MS, Harvard
  University Press.
• Putnam, H. and Walsh, V. (eds) (2011) The End of
  Value-free Economics, London, Routledge.
• Root, M. (1993) Philosophy of Social Science,
  Oxford, Blackwell.
• Turner, S. (2007) Public sociology and
  democratic theory, Sociology, 41, 5, pp785798.