I remember reading Hilary Putnam's The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and other essays and thinking that finally we have an analytic philosopher critically engaging with one of the deepseated dogma's of analytic philosophy that has its roots in the texts of David Hume.

This dogma holds that the objectivity of scientific investigation is to be paradigmatic of a rational methodology and that it was not influenced by the caprice of subjective values. It is broadly held. Max Weber Weber in making a distinction between facts and values, contended that there is no rational way of arbitrating between values and therefore, that there is no solution to the problem of practical judgment.

As Thomas Keith points out in this review review of Putnam's text, what Putnam calls the “Final Dogma of Empiricism,” is one whereby philosophers of language and science have attempted to expunge values from the hallowed ground of scientific investigation and logic. Keith says:

Putnam argues that value judgments creep into our preferences for one scientific view over another when we attempt to determine why one view is more reasonable than another. We are typically offered, as a response, the claim that views must be adjudicated on the basis of their plausibility, coherence, or simplicity. Putnam, however, argues that such “standards” of objectivity are themselves infused with value preferences.