Dilemmas of Objectivity

2016

2016

Church, Communication and Culture, 2019

Objectivity weakly revisited' could be the synthesis of this huge effort to rehabilitate objectivity; an effort made by Steven Maras, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Sidney on 2013, a very few years before the now almost burned-out debate on fake news and post-truth had ignited. The book has been published in the collection of 'Key Concepts in Journalism' of Polity Press, a well-known publisher of valuable and critical books regarding journalistic and media issues. The structure of Maras' book is very clear, especially in its first part. I will summarize it briefly: It opens with the history of objectivity as a journalistic paradigm and/or ethical rule, until it was attacked and rejected in the 90sfor example, by Mindich in 1998and later on (Chapter 1). Then, in Chapter 2, the author presents the main objections to the notion of objectivity, objections well-articulated and displayed in an apparently irrefutable way. In Chapter 3, the author goes into to the philosophical sources of the debate, that is to the diverse epistemologies underlying the contrasting versions of the problem and their correlative answers: the model of correspondence and coherence, empiricism, positivism, pragmatism, realism, naturalism and postmodernism. Although Maras' book is not a book on the history of epistemology, his account is good enough … for the theories of knowledge of the Enlightenment. This is, in my view, the main objection to the book, as it is the missing point of any Modern attempt to establish a sound basis for connecting journalists' work with the world outside, if those attempts want to avoid arbitrarily falling into limitless subjective points of view, or even into more limited overarching 'narratives', or on the other hand to giving up to the changeable consensual truth imposed by the tyranny of the majority. Maras goes back no further than the Enlightenment. Moreover, he even forgets to present the origin of the fact/value divide: it was Hume's epistemology, whose defining division is between isjudgments and ought-judgments that shaped the terms of the debate from then on. Needless to say, the great father of the Modern objective-subjective epistemological breakfor there are other pre-Modern versions of the break, such as medieval nominalism against realism-is also missing: Descartes, whose cogito ergo sum is the turning point in the Copernican revolution in the theory of knowledge of Modern times. Chapter 4 offers the grounds on which objectivity has been defended, poorly defended as the title clearly shows: 'has been defended'. The chapter mirrors the previous one and echoes also the very same deficiencies. In my view, the conclusion of this chapter could have also been the conclusion of the book: 'What is evident [this is after his account of the arguments in favor of objectivity, arguments whose effectiveness the author does not measure] is that any simple dismissal of objectivity as impossible has been complicated. Objectivity needs not to be tied to an idea of a reality that exists independent of our mind' (emphasis is mine). Right, objectivity needs not to be tied so; truth does need it, desperately. The point is that objectivity was (and is) a poor surrogate in the place of truth. After

Essays in Honor of Dr. David Gordon, 2022

When I say that, for example, "Liberalism is best," am I speaking the truth? Do the facts and the evidence and the arguments make my assertion justified? Consequently, is my belief objective—or subjective? Do I know it, or is mine just another opinion? Is it all “just” semantics—or do concepts have real meanings? Do statistics lie or capture probabilities? Is history written by the winners and so dismissible bias, or can we all genuinely learn from it? In this essay I focus on two mistakes that regularly plague thinking about objectivity. One is the mistake of seeing two only options (intrinsicism and subjectivism) when in fact there are three. The second is making assumptions that implicitly demand omniscience or a view from nowhere—and taking the failure of human cognition to live up to those impossible standards as making objectivity impossible. Instead, we should start with actual human beings and discover how their cognitive capacities work and why objectivity arises as a need for them to strive for.

Beyond Modes of Objectivity

ABSTRACT: Frege, and others who followed him, stressed the role of fallibility as a means to defining ‘objectivity.’ By defining objective judgments as fallible, these philosophers contributed to the consolidation of a theory of objectivity which suggested interpreting epistemological, as well as other judgements, as being objective. An important philosophical implication of this theory lies in its disclosure of the interrelations between truth and objectivity. In light of this insight, and based on an analysis of instances of false (epistemological and other) judgments, I show that truth and objectivity go hand-in-hand, while falsity and objectivity do not. This finding alone indicates the necessity to revise the theory of objectivity.

Oxford Studies in Metaethics, 2010

Let me start with a confession: I suspect that as a psychological matter, I hold the metaethical view I in fact hold not because of highly abstract arguments in the philosophy of language, say, or in the philosophy of action, or because of some general ontological commitments. My underlying motivations for holding the metaethical view I in fact hold are-to the extent that they are transparent to me-much less abstract, and perhaps even much less philosophical. Like many other realists (I suspect), I pretheoretically feel that nothing short of a fairly strong metaethical realism will vindicate our taking morality-or perhaps normativity more generally-seriously. Elsewhere I develop an argument for my favorite kind of realism-the one I call Robust Realism-that is an attempt to flesh out the details of one member of this taking-morality-seriously family.¹ Here I want to develop an argument that is another member of this family.

Companions in Guilt Arguments in Metaethics

I this article, I introduce the notion of pluralism about an area, and use it to argue that the questions at the center of our normative lives are not settled by the facts -- even the normative facts. One upshot of the discussion is that the concepts of realism and objectivity, which are widely identified, are actually in tension. Another is that the concept of objectivity, not realism, should take center stage.

Medical Education, 1991

In a previous article the distinction is made between objectivity and objectification. Objectivity is considered a generic goal of measurement, marked by freedom of subjective influences in general, whereas the latter term is used to describe strategies to reduce measurement error. A survey of several studies indicated that objectified methods are not intrinsically more reliable than subjective measures. In this paper the consequences of objectification are analysed for issues related to validity, efficiency, transparency, and effect of these methods on students and teachers. Several studies comparing objectified and subjective methods are surveyed for this propose. The studies indicate thatas in the previous article on reliabilityobjectification and objectivity are not identical, and that there are many pitfalls in the objectification of measurement procedures. As a consequence, it is argued that objectified methods should not exclusively be chosen on the basis of their unconditional appeal to objectivity, but that the application of measurement methods should follow the specific purpose of the testing situation. In the context of the testing situation, arguments against and in favour of objectification should be weighted, and trade-offs are to be evaluated. The outcome of this evaluation may vary from situation to situation, and from institution to institution.