Axiology

There is no such thing as research without values.

You may have been taught the opposite, that good science is neutral, objective, and free from personal bias. It is one of the most stubborn myths in how we talk about knowledge. Every research project begins with a set of choices that reveal what the researcher thinks matters. Which questions are worth asking in the first place. What counts as a valid answer. Which people's experiences get studied and which get left out. What gets measured and what gets ignored because it is too awkward to measure. All of these choices are value judgements dressed up in the clothing of methodology, and pretending they are not just means the values stay hidden and unexamined. Hidden values are not absent values. They are just the ones you never had to defend.

The philosopher who made this argument most clearly was trained to think about what makes something worth caring about. He and others called this axiology, the study of values, and they argued that every research decision sits on top of one. The question is not whether your research has values. The question is whether you know what they are and whether you are willing to say so out loud. A study that names its values is not less rigorous than one that claims neutrality. It is more honest, and honesty is the beginning of rigour, not the opposite of it. What are the values you bring to the work you care about, and would you be comfortable saying them out loud?

Last week we looked at how knowledge is built. This week we look at the values quietly sitting inside every research project, including the ones that claim to have none.