Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

114 Scientism and Values
The present writer has no interest, for the purposes of this presentation,
in the question of racial differences. Certainly he has no
interest in restricting opportunity arbitrarily beyond the absolute
minimum required for social order in any society. But he is publicly
identified as a sociologist, and, being so identified, he is
alarmed at the cited tendencies to ignore the rigorous requirements
of the scientific quest for knowledge because of value commitments.
It is amazing that the threat to the profession is not
more widely recognized and that there is so little effort to allay
the "sinking feeling" to which Bennett referred above.
It would be unfair to conclude the paper on a note of complete
pessimism about the behavioral scientists, in spite of the value
positions, the rejection of concepts, and the acceptance of the improbability
principle. The "minorities" which attract most attention
are the loudest, and it is hoped that the "scientists" who have
been considered here are themselves a minority.
Fortunately there is a model available. Dr. C. P. Oberndorf, in
his presidential address to the American Psychopathological Association
in 1954, described the necessity of overcoming personal
preferences in the light of scientific "truth."
Terms such as option, discrimination, preference, selectivity, and
segregation are generally in disfavor in the social scheme and philosophy
of 'a democracy such as we live in. So, at the outset, I wish to
make unequivocally clear my agreement with this philosophy and
opposition to legalized segregation in the social scheme. . . .
The need for a second hospital for the insane in New Mexico is
great.... However it is likely that should a new hospital be designated
exclusively for Spanish and Indians, or Anglos and Indians, staffed
correspondingly, incensed protestations against such segregation might
arise from each of the three groups concerned-and this in the face of
the obvious benefits, from the psychiatric angle, which such separations,
might yield. . . .
Certain groups to which we belong, being biologically determined,
never change. They are: sex, (2) age, and (3) color groupings. The
question of separating the first group (sex) in hospitalization is never
questioned and rarely is the second, namely, the undesirability of
mixing children with adults, and more recently, of ever growing numbers
of old-age psychotics with the average adult age group.