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What is objectivity?

What is objectivity?

quickly
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Posted 05/07/08 - 09:19 AM: Subject: What is objectivity?	#1
I'm having a hard time understanding the concept of objectivity. Of course, the notion of fact, of truth, or of externality, is constitutive of objectivity. In this case, it seems like objective knowledge is the contiguity of descriptive models with perception. Or, of the ability of a description to always, perpetually, agree with repetitions, patterns, and appearances, within an external world. This I have no problem with. The idea that language, mathematical, logical, or descriptive, can capture in an abstract sense, and hold predictive power for, our perceptions of externality is unproblematic. Partially because it works, or because externality and constancy are useful tools, but also because overlaying seemingly repetitious, law-governed, events, with models describing relationships between events, and designating through generality the constitutive elements these relationships describe, is a method of viewing objectivity which nevertheless doesn't require obliterating the notion of subjectivity. But when we try to approach objectivity from the perspective of the subject, I'm running into trouble. To construe an event objectively seems to have several meanings. On the one hand, it is the elimination of bias in the subject, or the elimination of sensory difficulties. Mathematics (quantification) and scientific instruments, statistical modeling, experimentation, etc., allow us access to this type of objectivity. If this is the case, that objectivity is nothing more than the attempt to eradicate factors intruding upon the ability to construe events without an "anthropic" bias, then it seems unproblematic as well. Or, "scientific objectivity" is unproblematic in this regard. When we're talking about the subject becoming objective, it seems we're dealing with contradictions. For example, the notion that the subject can project themselves into an ideal state of being subject-less; or of construing events, from a finite standpoint, in an in-finite way. That is, objectivity construed as such would require the individual, the human, to be something more than human, because the requirement of objective knowledge require the subject to stand apart from themselves. That is, stand apart from their senses until they stand beside the object. What is objectivity? How is it construed? Must it be opposed to subjectivity? Are we not caught within a kind of epistemological loop, attempting to construe objects, apart from the only means we have of construing them, when we discuss objectivity as such - that is, apart from a type of subjectivity?
_____________________ "Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets." -Jacques Derrida

will11
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Posted 05/07/08 - 09:38 AM:	#2
Being objective may mean being more open minded and detached, and keeping your own notions and believes aside and be as broad minded as possible. When we are subjective, we tend tend to look at only one side of a thing, whereas everything has a lot of sides to it. So when you are objective you leave your biases behind and make an attempt to look at the truth. Of course we cannot be completely objective, but at least to certain extent, so when i say we are objective, it means we are less subjective.

quickly
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Posted 05/07/08 - 02:15 PM:	#3
When we are subjective, we tend tend to look at only one side of a thing, whereas everything has a lot of sides to it. So when you are objective you leave your biases behind and make an attempt to look at the truth. I don't think that's true. Which is where I was going in my first post. To be subjective isn't necessarily to be biased beyond being subject to a thing, an idea, a concept. But to view the thing as only some singular, planar surface - that is a natural part of being subject to, and being within subjectivity. Or, to view the thing in its full volume, to glance around and step back from the plane, revealing new spaces and dimensions, is still to step back and to glance around. If this is analogous to the concept of objectivity, objectivity is an unraveling of space and time. Or, it is the subject pretending to compromise their subjectivity in order strive towards objectivity. But it's the notion of being objective that bothers me. It would seem the notion requires the being object. Or to become object. To predicate, of the subject(ivity), an object which is not the subject. To stand beside the object in a way which is also outside the self. Basically, what I'm asking is how can some people construe objectivity, the eradication of subjectivity, defined not as bias and all the subject's para-truths and misbeliefs, but as their subject-ness, can say of objectivity that it is a being-subjectless? How does one move from phenomenality to the point where they directly predicate properties to objects existing apart from their subject, or a multitude of subjects. That is, not to obliterate a distinction between externality and internality, as my intention, but to understand how the subject predicates things of objects which are more than models? Don’t all statements refer back to the speaker, to the writer, all actions to the doer, creations to the maker? Are we able to talk of objectivity, essentially, as the lack of a subject?
_____________________ "Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets." -Jacques Derrida

will11
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Posted 05/08/08 - 07:59 AM:	#4
What you said is correct, we tend to look at every thing from a tinted glass, which is tinted by our thoughts and believes, so no matter how we try to be objective, we cannot be.

Cuthbert
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Posted 05/08/08 - 11:39 PM:	#5
quickly wrote: I don't think that's true. Which is where I was going in my first post. To be subjective isn't necessarily to be biased beyond being subject to a thing, an idea, a concept. But to view the thing as only some singular, planar surface - that is a natural part of being subject to, and being within subjectivity. Or, to view the thing in its full volume, to glance around and step back from the plane, revealing new spaces and dimensions, is still to step back and to glance around. If this is analogous to the concept of objectivity, objectivity is an unraveling of space and time. Or, it is the subject pretending to compromise their subjectivity in order strive towards objectivity. But it's the notion of being objective that bothers me. It would seem the notion requires the being object. Or to become object. To predicate, of the subject(ivity), an object which is not the subject. To stand beside the object in a way which is also outside the self. Basically, what I'm asking is how can some people construe objectivity, the eradication of subjectivity, defined not as bias and all the subject's para-truths and misbeliefs, but as their subject-ness, can say of objectivity that it is a being-subjectless? How does one move from phenomenality to the point where they directly predicate properties to objects existing apart from their subject, or a multitude of subjects. That is, not to obliterate a distinction between externality and internality, as my intention, but to understand how the subject predicates things of objects which are more than models? Don’t all statements refer back to the speaker, to the writer, all actions to the doer, creations to the maker? Are we able to talk of objectivity, essentially, as the lack of a subject? Perhaps we need to distinguish the question "What can exist independently of a perceiving subject?" from the question "What can we, as perceiving subjects, know about things that exist independently of perceiving subjects?" Those questions are logically independent. You could believe, for example, that there are independently existing objects but that we can't know anything about them - because all that we know depends upon our perceptions. Or you could believe that no objects exist independently of perceivers and that the nature of objects is identical with the nature of perceptions - because the only grounds we have for making knowledge-claims about objects is our knowledge of our own perceptions. Or you could say both that there are independently existing objects and that we can know at least some things about them - because we can't live effectively, sanely and consistently with any other belief. There are some reasons to hold any of those positions. If you want to 'obliterate the distinction between externality and internality' then you might be more drawn to the second of those views. Roughly: there are external objects and they are identical with our perceptions of them. One big problem with that view is how to distinguish reality from hallucination. Another is how to explain the unyielding external toughness of reality and its reluctance to behave in whatever way we might wish or imagine. Kick a stone and you know it's a stone, not just something in your mind. Things that are in your mind just don't feel like that. But I don't really know if that's the problem you're trying to address.

quickly
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Posted 05/09/08 - 02:12 AM:	#6
Cuthbert: If you want to 'obliterate the distinction between externality and internality' then you might be more drawn to the second of those views. Roughly: there are external objects and they are identical with our perceptions of them. One big problem with that view is how to distinguish reality from hallucination. Another is how to explain the unyielding external toughness of reality and its reluctance to behave in whatever way we might wish or imagine. Kick a stone and you know it's a stone, not just something in your mind. Things that are in your mind just don't feel like that. I’m sorry; there was awkward grammar in my last post. The sentence “That is, not to obliterate a distinction between externality and internality, as my intention, but to understand how the subject predicates things of objects which are more than models?” should have been stated: “My intention is not to obliterate a distinction…but to better understand how subjects predicate properties of objects which are more than models?” Hopefully that makes the question clearer. So I am asking a variant of your second question, but I’m asking about how the relationship between ontology and language permit one to establish descriptive statements (make synthetic a posteriori statements) which transcend being a model, or a description of mental processes. But in a more general sense, and this is the intersection at which I’m getting confused: how the significant content of external objects to the mind are construed as having independent existences, and can be studied as such – because there is reason to believe externality exists – without allowing all description and observation to be reduced to a scheme. So, assuming an object exists and is constituted (appears phenomenally) to me through my making-known of the object (perception), how is my making-known not an imposition which essentially requires the subject to conceptualize an exterior reality as an internal reality – as a representation existing in the mind, and as the representation of a presencing (or, as a re-presentation of a present passing away)? If objectivity is a schema, in this sense, created through a making-known, and modeling stabilities in the representation of the object, then becoming-objective is a process of attenuating interiority, broadly construed as the sense and thought of the subject, towards better understanding its relationship with objects. But to be objective is simultaneously to be not subjective. How can one understand the concept of objectivity, if objectivity is considered as understanding beyond the being-subject of the subject, as existing independently of subjectivity? Why is, for example, a recording of sense experience (say, of a hallucination, of a cup, of a poem, of music) less objective than descriptions of social facts, religious beliefs, or linguistic overcompensation? I supposed I know why; but I’m getting caught in a mess trying to understand how the concept of objectivity relates to subject-less-ness when it arises from subjectivity itself.
_____________________ "Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets." -Jacques Derrida

Benkei
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Posted 05/09/08 - 03:19 AM:	#7
Sense experience, in my opinion, is no less objective in the sense that it exists in objective reality but the experience of such things is entirely personal and there is a problem of verifiability that makes us consider it less objectively real (but wrongly so I believe). Although we can indirectly confirm that a person is hallucinating (REM sleep and MRI scans or their behaviour), we cannot tell with certainty what he is hallucinating about as the experience is of something entirely not-existing (beyond a collection of synapses firing away but this is, like a picture taken from a certain moment in time, is of reality itself but not the reality it depicts). This activity of the brain can be perceived and measured but it's an indirect proof of the hallucination. The reality for the person experiencing the hallucination, or experiencing a feeling, is that the experience is true even if no objective proof (e.g. observable and verifiable for all) is available. This is why claims of religious experiences should be at least respected in the sense that the experience is real even if it was of a thing that we do not normally consider part of objective reality. Objective reality then should be all things and their relationships to each other (with relationships I would mean what we perceive as natural laws for instance) existing independent of our minds. However, this existing independent of our minds is always a presumption, although common sense dictates that this presumption is true. Before I existed people described a thing called the sun and I have verified through personal experience of objective reality that there is a thing that I would also consider the sun if I take these historical definitions and apply them to what I perceive. (It is, by the way, a very nice and sunny day in the Netherlands today). Personal experiences are therefore always subjectively real and true for the person experiencing them but such experiences do not necessarily conform to objective reality, so they are not necessarily objectively true (but still real). In other words, assuming that God does not objectively exist, then the personal experience of God whispering in my ear would be both subjectively real and true to me but only objectively real and based on our assumption of objective reality it is untrue (it does not conform to objective reality but as a collection of synapses firing it is real). Edited by Benkei on 05/09/08 - 05:16 AM
_____________________ We all warm ourselves on fires we did not kindle. We all drink from wells we did not dig. - ancient Celtic saying

DoctorInWaiting
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Posted 05/09/08 - 03:50 AM:	#8
As it has been said one feels objectivity (mostly in a psychological sense) is keeping distance and being as straightforward to your findings as possible, however it is not all good in some senses. For instance qualitative research thinkers like Popper, Allport etc, wanted the aspect of subjectivity as well as objectivity (by living in a society, joint enquiry, etc) in order for the most grounded theorizing possible.
_____________________ "The Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point however is to change it" Marx and Engels "Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism." Michel Foucault Society is rebelled against if society condemns

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