Non-epistemic Values and Scientific Knowledge

In Science, Truth, and Democracy Philip Kitcher presents arguments to the effect that scientific inquiry is valuedependent in so far as "scientific significance" is crucial to understanding the scientific enterprise and is analysable only in terms of human interests. He proposes a marriage between value dependence and moderate scientific realism, challenging thus a long-standing tradition of radically separating non-epistemic values and scientific knowledge. In my paper I want to make the rationale of that marriage more comprehensible and interpret it as a step towards a naturalized philosophy of science. In my first section I will make clear what I understand as "naturalizing" and what I take to be the substantial problem, i.e. the steering function of non-epistemic values in cognitive processes. The second section will identify the assumptions on which the separation of non-epistemic values and knowledge are based. In the third section Kitcher's arguments in favour of a marriage will be presented and evaluated. Finally, I will sketch a positive account how nonepistemic values steer cognitive processes