FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2024 6:24 pm
Uhm, ok. The thing is that one of those methodologies involves looking at a phenomenon/object/thing/situation/etc, and properties that inhere to that phenomenon/thing/situation. This is the one we call objectivity. Those other methodologies aren't. I'm not saying that they are invalid, I'm not saying they are inferior, but I am saying there is a clear difference of type specified in the terms I have written and the location of the properties to be observed when resolving questions.
I'm not saying that we don't look at phenomena. But what do we look at phenomena via. The observations/sensings/perceivings will be part of methodologies.
If I want to check that a conclusion of reseach paper X or someone's hypothesis about granite are correct, I might be able to criticise their conclusions just by looking at their protocols. Hey, you were looking at copper not granite. But, even if you then go to the phenomenon, you don't just look at it - not that I'm clear you're saying that - in some kind of process.
IOW I don't think it's objective just because there is an empirical portion.
If there is an objective answer to a question, then there is either one or a range of correct answers, which can be validated by observation.
Proposed alternativew answers that fall outside that range are objectively untrue. THAT is the role that objectivity and subjectivity plays in our question answering language games.
But every observation and any process of evaluating those observations is either subjective or an agreement by a number of subjective observers. Which is why I prefer intersubjectivity.
I'm not saying we shouldn't look at things, though I think we can object to claims of objectivity in specific cases (if we are using objective, without observing the things the conclusions we are challenging are about. We need to look at the argument. We'd need to read the research paper. But we can challenge objectivity based on protocol errors or limitations. Perhaps the researchers didn't realise they weren't controlling variables well.
But when we do want to challenge a conclusion on empirical grounds we are going through our senses, our paradigmatic limitations and so on.
We do our best to minimize possible biases but our efforts will also be affected by our biases.
In the end it is intersubjective. If you are a scientist, generally, it is an intersubjective based on people considered experts. Their views and analyses are valued highly, others not so much. This is the kind of thing I mean when I talk about rigor in intersubjectivity.
The way people are talking about objectivity here, there would have to be some correct answer to that question subject to a boiled egg FSK, or some official intersubjective response.
To me there are different kinds of intersubjectivty. But what gets called objectivity is one kind of that.
There is no objective question about betterness of egg opening methodologies,
I'm arguing against the term itself. So my conclusion can't be there there is an obectiveness to this.
and any propsed objective answer to such a question, aside from being false, also does not offer a epistemically superior slice of knowledge. Objective information is epistemically preferrable when we would like for some reason to know that alternative answers are incorrect.
Or it turns out it wasn't preferrable in any given situation. But yes, in what gets called objective by most people, we are talking about conclusions that deal with specific experiences/observations one will have.
The egg situation conclusions will be affected by the preferences of the individuals.
By rigor, are you saying that alternative answers are deemed to be wrong in some way? I hope so, but I would suggest that the answer I have given above explains what that usually entails.
I'm thinking more that processes either meet rigor or don't. Different people have different ideas about what is the correct rigor.
I have my sense of that rigor.
VA uses the word objectivity, even though he has said it is intersubjectivity.
I think he doesn't want to let go of that word.
I don't really like that word. I think it's misleading.
So, it's not that I want to grant objectivity to more endeavors.
I want to lose that idea.
See my next post for examples.