Although the philosophical literature on science and values has flourished in recent years, the central concept of “values” has remained ambiguous. This paper endeavors to clarify the nature of values as they are discussed in this literature and then highlights some of the major implications of this clarification. First, it elucidates four major concepts of values and discusses some of their strengths and weaknesses. Second, it clarifies the relationships between these concepts of values and a wide variety of related concepts that are sometimes used interchangeably in the philosophical literature. Third, it argues that this conceptual clarification reveals that much of the literature on science and values has discussed different concepts of values without making these differences clear. The paper illustrates this point by analyzing the different concepts of values at play in different arguments against the value-free ideal and in proposals for managing values. Understanding the literature on values in science as a patchwork of related discourses rather than a single discourse can help researchers more thoughtfully choose a concept of values that best fits their philosophical targets and goals, rather than conflating different discourses because of the common terminology of “values.”

尽管近年来关于科学和价值观的哲学文献蓬勃发展，但“价值观”的核心概念仍然模棱两可。本文试图澄清本文中讨论的价值观的性质，然后强调这种澄清的一些主要含义。首先，它阐明了价值的四个主要概念，并讨论了它们的一些优点和缺点。其次，它阐明了这些价值概念与哲学文献中有时可以互换使用的各种相关概念之间的关系。第三，它认为，这种概念上的澄清表明，许多关于科学和价值观的文献都讨论了不同的价值观概念，而没有明确说明这些差异。本文通过分析在反对无价值理想的不同论点和管理价值的建议中发挥作用的不同价值概念来说明这一点。将科学价值观的文献理解为相关话语的拼凑，而不是单一的话语，可以帮助研究人员更深思熟虑地选择最适合其哲学目标和目标的价值观概念，而不是因为“价值观”的常见术语而将不同的话语混为一谈。