Epistemological Foundations for a Sociological Ethic

Unease over the ASA's Code of Ethics stems from its apparent conflict with the discipline's understanding of its Wert-Frei inheritance. One tempting solution would be to draw, with David Bidney, emulatively from the community of sci's internal communal norms; another would be to frame an ethic, with F. S. C. Northrop, rooted in its epistemological assumptions. The former route will be rejected, however, because the community of sci would commit itself to maximizing the controls it can apply to its human subject matter; the latter, because the image of man projected by sci's epistemology would characterize him as but determined object relativistically conceived. Though a Wert-Frei sociol appropriately conceives its product in indicative rather than imperative terms, sociol'ts will discover that the sociol'al role will not appropriately be viewed as contained within a broader role: that of 'intellectual' &/or 'professional' within a larger humane cultural tradition. AA.