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Gunnar Myrdal offers a pragmatic extension of the Weber-Rickert solution to the value-incommensurability problem in post-Enlightenment. The notion of Myrdal as a more radical Weberian than Weber himself calls for further investigation of "Science, Values, and Politics in Gunnar Myrdal's methodology". Myrdal recurrently confirms his deep allegiance to Axel Hagerstrom's radical anti-metaphysics, but actually denies Weberian influences on his way to apply explicit value premises as a vehicle to avoid uncontrolled value intrusion in policy analyses, despite obvious affinities. A public intellectual can hardly avoid to "beat the drum" for some values, which cannot satisfy any criteria of truth. The use of significant social movements as norm-senders provides a problematic way out of the problem of value-polytheism in the post-Enlightenment era and the necessity and anxiety of choice in late Modernity, even if it remains unresolved philosophically. This is the solution Myrdal applies. Weber's and Myrdal's common project is the rationalization of value hierarchies for instrumental policy analyses. Myrdal goes one step further, "operationalizing" a solution to the norm-sender problem, for intersubjective means-end-analyses. An American Dilemma is an exemplary work, with its list of explicit postulated premises. Adapted from the source document.

Karl Popper's strong attachment to music is seldom observed. He expresses strong opinions about what is good & bad in that field. Are these opinions just expressions of his subjective preferences? No, it is obvious that Popper finds a place for musical values in his "world 3." One of the aims of Popper's theory of the three worlds is to solve the body-mind problem; another is to demonstrate the possibility of objective knowledge. As the case of music indicates, world 3 does not consist of just factual knowledge; even values have a place there. Each world is said to be autonomous but interacting. What Popper has to say about the interaction between world 1 & world 2 is a polemic against the thesis that mental processes can be reduced to the physical. In the same way, the interaction between worlds 2 & 3 contradicts the idea that knowledge can be reduced to knowing & values to evaluation. Although Popper wrote Objective Knowledge, & accordingly is suspected of being a "positivist," it is, on the other hand, also possible to pick up arguments to accuse him of "decisionism." For example, he says that there is nothing that strictly compels the researcher to accept a falsification; after evaluating the results he has to make a decision. More fundamentally, nothing compels Popper or anyone to choose a critical-rationalistic philosophy. For Popper's part, such an attitude to life seems to be the only alternative to violence, & Popper insists that he hates violence. That means that objectivism follows from a fundamental ethical choice. Even the second word in the title Objective Knowledge may mislead the unprepared reader. The fact is, that Popper emphasizes how uncertain & limited our rational knowledge is. One might ask how it is possible to survive under such conditions. The answer is that we provisionally have to trust a lot of "knowledge" that is not rationally grounded. Does that means that anything goes? No, in life as in science we have to start with what is delivered, traditional, but we also should make our best to refine it into rational knowledge. Popper's acceptance of "metaphysics" is what separates him from the "positivists." From this it can already be anticipated that Popper is a "reformist," & that is what interests us as political scientists. 36 References. Adapted from the source document.