Gorski is right in asserting that there are not just “value-laden facts” — which interpretive methodologies are predisposed to addressing — but also “fact-laden values” — which no contemporary methodology is designed to approach directly.(1) It is indeed somewhat contradictory that we are more comfortable (in the world of the social sciences) attempting to investigate spillover from our values to our facts that we are investigating that from our facts to our values, which might be even more constructive than the former interaction.(2) However, I think he exaggerates the divisions between the positive and normative worlds and discounts their utility. It might not be possible for a scholar confined to the methodologies of today’s social sciences to directly investigate our values in search of those coveted fact-laden values, but there is no convention that bars scholars from considering the implications of their research or resulting policy recommendations (in their conclusion, or even outside of their paper). If we did allow or encourage scholars to consider the philosophical elements of their research in a more rigorous way, readers would find it strange and probably superfluous and scholars would find it arduous. I do not think that these necessarily transition pains either — scholars always need to divide labor to cover the wide frontiers of human endeavor.
I am not sure that McBrayer proposes a complete model for his vision of the social sciences (probably because he was writing for a newspaper and under very different constraints from Gorski and Comte), but he would probably agree with Gorski’s proposition.(3) They both denounce the fact-value divide as arbitrary and consider the good that could come from the crossover from the fact side to that of values.(4) Comte, though, does not envision a neat reconciliation between the two, rather he think that his positive philosophy with its confidence in human rationalism (and its conviction that laws govern the natural and even the social worlds) can and should take over the entirety of study, overrunning theology and philosophy if they do not voluntarily accommodate it.(5) My research on nationalist protest in China is probably not geared towards directly investigating values or answering a normative question. Perhaps in my conclusion, I could consider policy recommendations for the United States to glean information from the signaling of the Chinese government. But (if we envision study as a progression from the specific focus of the hard sciences up to the social sciences, and then up to the broad focus of philosophical speculation) I do not think that I could progress any further up the ladder.
(1) Philip S. Gorski. “Beyond the Fact/Value Distinction: Ethical Naturalism in the Social Sciences,” October 16, 2013.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Justin P. McBrayer. “Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts.” The New York Times, March 2, 2015. //opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/why-our-children-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/.
(4) Ibid.
(5) August Comte. Course of Positive Philosophy. Gertrud Lanzer. New York: Harper, 1830.