Examine the fact-value dichotomy in political science. To what extent has post behaviouralism resolved the conflict in the dichotomy? (1995)
The fact–value dichotomy holds that statements about what is and statements about what ought to be are different in kind, so that no quantity of evidence can establish a value. In political science it divided empirical science from normative philosophy, and behaviouralism from its critics.
Origins of the dichotomy
- David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40): an ought cannot be derived from an is.
- Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation” (lecture, 1917): value-freedom requires the scholar to separate empirical findings from personal evaluations; science can clarify means and consequences, never ultimate ends.
- Logical positivism, sharpened by A. J. Ayer‘s Language, Truth and Logic (1936): only analytic or verifiable statements are meaningful; value judgements are expressions of emotion (emotivism).
Its adoption by behaviouralism
David Easton made “values” one of behaviouralism’s foundation stones: ethical evaluation and empirical explanation must be kept apart. Normative theory was thereby demoted to preference, and Peter Laslett could declare in 1956 that political philosophy was, for the moment, dead.
The critiques
- Leo Strauss (Natural Right and History, 1953): a science that cannot distinguish good regimes from bad is blind to its subject, like one unable to tell clean water from dirty.
- Charles Taylor, “Neutrality in Political Science” (1967): every explanatory framework carries a value slope; accept Seymour Martin Lipset’s account of class conflict in Political Man, and a particular model of stable democracy follows as preferable. Choosing a framework is already evaluative.
- Hilary Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy (2002): thick concepts such as “cruel” or “exploitative” are descriptive and evaluative at once; science itself relies on epistemic values such as coherence and simplicity. A distinction may be useful; a metaphysical dichotomy is untenable.
Has post-behaviouralism resolved the conflict?
Partly, and only in practice.
- What it achieved: Easton‘s 1969 credo of relevance made values a legitimate object of inquiry, exposed the empirical conservatism hidden in “neutral” description, and made the scholar answerable for the uses of research.
- What it left unresolved: it answered the conflict by coexistence (“facts and values”) rather than by an account of how they connect. Behavioural methods stayed intact, with values simply added alongside. Relevance, its own criterion, is a value judgement it never justified.
- Who resolved more: philosophy did the conceptual work (Taylor, Thomas S. Kuhn, Putnam), and John Rawls‘s A Theory of Justice (1971) supplied a method, reflective equilibrium, which adjusts principles and considered judgements against general facts about society.
The entanglement is visible in Indian constitutional reasoning. In State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh (1 August 2024) the Supreme Court allowed sub-classification of Scheduled Castes but required it to rest on quantifiable, empirical data of relative backwardness and inadequate representation. Empirical evidence was indispensable, yet what counts as “backwardness” and why unequal access is unjust are normative judgements of substantive equality. Neither alone decides the case.
Conclusion
Post-behaviouralism ended the prohibition on values but did not dissolve the dichotomy; it negotiated a truce. The conflict has been resolved, so far as it has, by recognising entanglement: fact and value remain distinguishable in analysis but inseparable in any political judgement worth making.