Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice

express in action certain value judgements. How, then, could a social policy not ‘tend to support’ the valuations that it seeks to carry out? Again, every empirical theory presupposes the truth of some empirical propositions associated with it. In Taylor’s example drawn from Lipset a basic claim is this: any complex society with peaceful constitutional change of elected officials by universal suffrage is one that requires group conflict of a contained and rule-guided sort. Now this claim may be false. But if we accept it as true, and also accept that the claim describes a defining feature of all democratic societies, does it follow, as Taylor suggests, that we must value democracies more highly than all other forms of government? Obviously not, for we may dislike and disapprove of societies with peaceful constitutional change, universal suffrage, and an absence of violent conflict between groups. So mere acceptance of this empirical claim does not in itself tend to support the value judgement that democracy is the good society. Of course, the truth of the claim does rule out many other claims, and in that way does narrow the range of choices from which we can draw our preference. But is this all that Taylor has in mind when arguing that theories in political science tend to support an associated value-position, and therefore such theories are not value-neutral? If so, then the same holds true of every empirical proposition-a thesis that has never been in previous dispute and is unlikely to be in the future. Proponents of the value-neutrality of science, whether natural or social, will be happy enough to welcome that outcome.