THE AUTONOMY OF VALUES PROBLEM: AN ANALYSIS

In Sociology, the term ‘value’ has come to denote shared cultural standards related to objects of need, attitude or desire. Sociologists have generally confined their attention to values as empirical variables in social life whose scientific importance is not so much dependent upon their validity and ‘correctness’ as upon the fact that they are believed to be true and correct by those who hold them. For the scientific observer, values only have relevance if there is an observable relationship between the actions of subjects (individuals, groups, etc.) and the objects of their concern. Therefore, it is the holding of values and its social manifestations which is, arguably, the primary concern of the sociologist. The question of their derivation and possible ‘ontic status’ has been left largely to the uncertain ministrations of the philosophers. The possible objective validity of values tends to be regarded as a problem which falls outside the realm of science, but the insistence that social science remains value‐free, has raised the question as to what extent such freedom is really possible, and to what extent extrinsic values must always intrude.