Meta-problems for the Values in Science Thesis

There is in the science and values literature a core set of arguments that reject the value-free ideal at the inferential core of scientific investigation. They are usefully summarized in Kevin Elliott’s Values in Science (2022) under the following headings: 1) the gap argument; 2) the error argument; 3) the aims argument; and 4) the conceptual argument. I examine each of these arguments from a ‘meta’ perspective, wherein the arguments are turned on themselves. This is a possibility since each of these arguments is partially based various historical case studies that exemplify, for ‘values in science’ philosophers, scientific reasoning. This meta-investigation has a surprising result, that proponents of the value-ladenness of science are committed to a form of the value-free ideal in terms of the assumptions each of the above four arguments are required to make. A defense of the value-free ideal precipitates from this situation.