Using the Concept of “Normative Reason” to Distinguish Justified Roles of Values in Scientific Practice

In this paper, we aim to show that analyzing the concept of “value” in terms of the wider concept of “normative reason” promotes a clearer and more comprehensive picture of science-value relation. Specifically, we seek an answer to the question that which are the justified and unjustified roles of values in science. Two well-known solutions to this problem have been suggested: one by appealing to “the value-free ideal of science”, and another based on the distinction between direct and indirect roles of values in science. First, these two answers and objections to them are briefly expounded. Then, by elaborating some formal and structural features of “normative reason” and the relation of “normative reason” and “value”, a conceptual framework for addressing this problem is put forward. We show that analyzing "value" in terms of "reason" encourages a new response to the problem of recognizing legitimate and illegitimate roles of values in scientific research, which has some advantages to the previous responses.