Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
> [clip]
> what discipline produces values (not historical-cultural analysis of
> values) the way that, say, physics produces atomic bombs? i have the
> same question for biology: where is the soul covered? nowhere? why
> not? well, obviously, because it can't study it. [large clip]
And Kelley wrote:
> [clip]
> your comment focused on something else entirely: "which scientific
> discipline studies meaning and values? bio? chem? physics? where do
> meaning and vaues come from? where *should* they come from (and note
> that's a value question! d'oh!)?"
>
> The answer to all is that the social sciences probably all have an arm that
> studies these things, and they also implicitly also are about where they
> _should_ come from. After all,
This is going down the wrong road I believe. During the early stages of the Appeal to Ignoranc thread I quoted Marx, Thesis 8:
Social life is essentially _practical_. All mysteries which mislead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.
And now add the Ninth, Tenth & Eleventh:
The highest point attained by _contemplative_ materialism, that is, materialism which does not understand sensuousness as practical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals in "civil society."
The standpoint of the old materialism is "civil" society; the standpoint of the new is _human_ society, or socialised humanity.
The philosophers have only _interpreted_ the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to _change_ it.
Or, as Mao (who never forgot his beginnings as an elementary school teacher) put it: If you want to know what a pear tastes like you have to change the world by biting into it. (Paraphrased from memory.)
Or Marx's answer, near the end of his life, to the reporter's question, "What is?" -- Struggle.
There is a whiff at least of Platonism in Jeffrey's question and Kelly's answer.* Values do not come from any discipline but emerge from human practice (struggle). The "disciplines" can _only_ provide what he says he does not want, "(not historical-cultural analysis of> values)." The physicist does not produce atom bombs but 'merely' discovers what is already _there_ in nature, just as the sociologist does not create values but 'merely' discovers what is already there (in human practice).
That leaves out a step: the values emerging from human practice (struggle) are implicit, not explicit, and before they can become grist for the historian's mill must be raised to the level of theory. The scholar may also be the theorist (though often the scholar, as in the case of Marx, being an unemployed scholar). But the two activities need to be separated in thought and are often separated in practice. (I note that in physics, but apparently not in other disciplines, there is a formal separation of "experimental physists" and "theoretical physicists.")
Wherever and whenever we find ourselves (and this is as true of the species as of the individual) we are always already caught up, enmeshed in an ensemble of social relations.
Justin notes that Weber held 'values' to be arbitrary: meaning, I take it, something like "not based on the nature of things; hence, capricious, uncertain, varying." I don't think that is wholly incompatible with the view being expressed here. Values are not inherent in the nature of things, i.e., no metaphysical status _and_ no physical status (as do atoms). They are social relations. But that does not make them any less binding.
Carrol
P.S. How many people stop before each contemplated situation, describe it factually, then compare it against a list of values? As I argued on some post recently, "moral values" probably were not a causal factor in the last election but merely a slogan people used to explain a decision which flowed from their activity over a lifetime.