Drawing on Putnam’s famous fact–value entanglement argument, Chapter 7 shows how economics is inescapably value-entangled, and argues that while economics is an inherently value-laden discipline it may still be an objective one. It describes economics’ value structure as being anchored by its main normative ideal shared across different approaches, individual realization – what most people in the discipline believe is most valuable and good about human society and characteristic of human nature. It compares two competing interpretations of what that ideal involves – one in mainstream economics and one in capability economics – distinguishing them according to the different additional values regarding what well-being involves, they adopt to give content to the individual realization ideal. It then evaluates these two approaches according to whether their different value structures are consistent – an analysis I characterize as value disentanglement. After this, the chapter turns to a general framework for ethics and economics – or ethics in economics – distinguishes four different forms of disciplinary relationships between economics and ethics, and argues that while cross-disciplinarity best describes the current status of economics and ethics, transdisciplinarity represents an aspirational conception of what an objective, value-laden economics ultimately requires.

Ecology is receiving more attention from philosophers as the severity and complexity of environmental problems, and ecology’s potential role in solving them, becomes apparent. Threats to coral reefs and management strategies developed in response is a vivid example. This chapter explores the ways values influence both applied ecology and policy making informed by it. Most sciences are concerned with discovering and explaining new truths. But some applied sciences pursue more immediately pressing, ethical goals, such as improving health or conserving biodiversity. Nonepistemic values permeate these ethically driven sciences. This perception has recently encouraged the view they are value-laden in a strong sense: both ethical values and nonnormative facts factor indispensably in these sciences, and their respective contributions cannot be clearly demarcated. In fact, the inextricable suffusion of value has even been taken to challenge the cogency of a fact/value distinction. Such claims are overstated. Ethically driven sciences are best conceptualized as conditionalized endeavors. Achieving ethically valued objectives dictates some of their structure, but this influence can be demarcated from the factual status of claims made within them. The conditional nature of ethically driven sciences grounds this delineation and reaffirms the fact/value distinction remains distinct.