ABSTRACT
The avoidability or unavoidability of values in the description and explanation of social facts is a question that has long vexed the social sciences. Economists especially insist on advancing what they call a positive, as opposed to a normative, science. Many of the issues we have just discussed and several other ones relevant to the relation between social science and moral philosophy are effectively raised by the work of Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize– winning theoretical and applied economist. Feminist philosophers of science and of social science have been in the forefront of those who have drawn attention to aspects of epistemology that need to be identified and discussed in order to identify and correct biases that harm science. Like the prohibition against certain lines of inquiry, the prescription of some topics because of their emancipatory potential requires a great deal of social scientific knowledge.
