Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Concealed Rhetoric in Scientistic Sociology 89
sion that this can be done is difficult to induce for any length of
time, as I believe the following examples will show.
Let us take for -illustration an expression fairly common in
sociological parlance today: "the underprivileged," and ask ourselves
how one determines its meaning. We see at once that it is
impossible to reach the meaning of "the underprivileged" without
reference to the opposed term, "the privileged." Evidently one
has first to form a concept of "the privileged," and this will be
in reference to whatever possessions and opportunities are thought
of as conferring privilege. The one term is arrived at through
logical privation of the other, and neither is conceivable without
some original idea frankly carrying evaluation. "Privilege" suggests,
of course, something that people desire, and hence "the privileged"
are those in whose direction we wish to move; and "the
underprivileged" constitute the class we wish to escape from. But
where is the Geiger counter with which we could go out into
society and locate one of the underprivileged? We would have to
use some definition of privilege, arising out of an original
inclination toward this or that ideal.
Or let us take the more general expression, "social problem."
How is one to become aware of the supposedly objective fact or
facts denoted by this expression? According to one sociologist, a
social problem is "any situation which attracts the attention of a
considerable number of competent observers within a society and
appeals to them as calling for readjustment or remedy by social,
i.e., collective, action of some kind or other." 2 At least three items
in this definition warn us that a social problem is not something
that just anybody could identify, like an elephant in a parade,
but something that must be determined by a dialectical operation.
First of all, the observer must be competent, which I take to
mean trained not just in seeing objective things, but in knowing
when ideas or values are threatened by their opposites. This perception
appeals to him for an attitude to be followed by an action,
and moreover this. action must be of the putatively most beneficial
kind, "social" or "collective."
The point I wish to make here is that the scientistic sociologist
is from the very beginning caught up in a plot, as it were, of