Cutting Off the Branch on Which We Are Sitting? On Postpositivism, Value Neutrality, and the “Bias Paradox”

One of the most widely agreed-upon tenets of the current “postpositivist” consensus in sociological theory is the categorical dismissal of the pursuit of value neutrality in the social and natural sciences, a pursuit that is seen as both futile and undesirable. This dismissal is based on the rejection of the “positivist” claim that mainstream scientific knowledge is in some sense more objectively valid than other forms of knowledge. But this results in a “bias paradox:” on what basis can those denying the possibility of any value-neutral knowledge still claim validity for their own knowledge claims? In this paper, we analyze a series of attempts, broadly going under the label of “standpoint theory,” to resolve the paradox. We show how each of these is seriously flawed and that efforts to repair those flaws have merely led to a covert return to the kind of “positivism” the authors claim to reject. We conclude that this is the result of the persistent failure of “critical” theorists of various stripes to recognize the fact that the “positivist” ideals of value neutrality and objectivity embody the very principles of egalitarianism and democracy they claim to subscribe to.