Dimensions of Value and the Aims of Social Inquiry

The articles in this issue of the American Behavioral Scientist present a critique of mainstream social science and outline an alternative hermeneutic or interpretive approach to human science inquiry. This hermeneutic view (a) stresses that the cultural embeddedness of all human endeavors, including social science, prevents us from ever obtaining a strictly objective or value-neutral account of human behavior. It also (b) claims that social inquiry can lead to a better understanding of the good life or what ends are worth striving for by humans. But why does rejecting objectivity not undermine any claim to a better understanding of what is truly good or worthwhile? This article explores how both cultural or historical embeddedness and claims to understanding the good might be harmonized within a conception of four broad dimensions of human values or valuing: elementary value experiences, purposive human activity, pursuit of the excellence of various forms of life, and the human sense of what is worthy from every point of view. A number of implications of this framework for human science inquiry are discussed

Embeddedness · Epistemology · Excellence · Human science · Human values · Mainstream · Objectivity (philosophy) · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Value (mathematics) · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Cultural Differences and Values · Law · Social Representations and Identity

• Cultural diversity and mental health

  Open Access•Jame, Susan James et al.•Clinical Psychology Review•2002

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• Value‐Based Praxis in Community Psychology

  Open Access•Isaac Prilleltensky•American Journal of Community…•2001

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• Toward a Dialogical Self

  Open Access•Frank C Richardson, Anthony Rogers et al.•American Behavioral Scientist•1998

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• Human Agency and Language

  Charles Taylor•Philosophical Papers•1985

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• Four essays on liberty

  Isaiah Berlin•Four essays on liberty•1975

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• The Ethical Aims of Social Inquiry

  Robert N Bellah, Robert Ν Bellah•Social Science As Moral Inquiry•1983

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• The Biological Origins of Human Values

  Eamonn Butler, George E Pugh et al.•The Philosophical Quarterly•1979

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• The Rediscovery of the Mind

  John R Searle•The rediscovery of the mind•1992

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• Interpretive Social Science

  Open Access•Frank C Richardson, Blaine J Fowers•American Behavioral Scientist•1998

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• Toward a Dialogical Self

  Open Access•Frank C Richardson, Anthony Rogers et al.•American Behavioral Scientist•1998

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