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บันทึกครั้งแรกเมื่อ Monday, September 12, 2005

[คัดลอกมาจาก blog เก่าค่ะ]

Confusion about objectivity, subjectivity, realism, truth comes from the ordinary oversimplified (and problematic) view that;

"Subjective" (private "mental" stuff: sensations, beliefs, feelings, emotions, opinions, etc.) is the opposite (contradictory) of
"Objective" (public "physical" stuff: publicly-observable things, events, knowledge, facts)

***This oversimplified way of making the distinction leads to philosophical trouble.

Philosopher John Searle has proposed (link to original article: WORD doc file) to clear this confusion away by distinguishing between

• observer relative facts (e.g. I am a citizen of the United States, that baseball is a game played with nine men on a side, and that the United States of America contains fifty states) and
  
• observer independent facts (force, mass, gravitational attraction, the chemical bond, photosynthesis, the solar system and tectonic plates).


So the first question is...what is the object/matter being studied?
Roughly speaking, we can say that the social sciences are about observer relative facts; the natural sciences are about observer independent facts.

Also, we need to distinguish between

• [Something is real, something exitsts]: ontological (metaphysical) objectivity and subjectivity on the one hand and
  
• [Statement is true or false]: epistemic objectivity and subjectivity on the other hand.

..............................................................................................................................................

1.1 ontological (metaphysical) objectivity = They exist whether or not anyone has experienced them = oberver independent facts



The relevant event really took place, or it didn't, independently of anyone's experience. What happened happened, ontological (metaphysically) objectively (e.g. whether ET visited earth or not, that's a factual matter).

And if reasonable people ever had access to all the relevant information about the case, reasonable people would all agree about what happened. That is...if we knew enough about extraterrestrials and had access to all the relevant data, and agreed about what could constitute sufficient evidence, we would be able to say (epistemologically objectively) whether the statement "Extraterrestrials have visited the earth" is true or false.


1.2 ontological (metaphysical) subjectivity = e.g. a headache. Nobody else can feel the same pain you feel. But the pain is there. It's real.

.......................................

2.1 epistemic objectivity = a claim or a matter of fact = that there are generally recognized methods for deciding whether the claim is true or false. (e.g., "Antartica is a continent" = "true," and "Sandy LaFave is the current U.S. President" = "false".)

Note that "objective" now does not mean the same as "true," since the claim, for example, "There are 45 desks in this room" is objective whether or not it is true or false. "Objectivity," properly understood, presupposes the availability of a method for producing agreement among people.

In other word, epistemic objectivity is intersubjective (interpersonal)agreement?

Its truth value odepends on what we've agreed on the meanings of the terms in the sentences, and the measuring devices, etc. The claims can be ascertained as true or false independent of the attitudes of observers.


2.2 epistemic subjectivity = matter of opinion (e.g. Rembrandt was a better painter than Rubens; Does Vanilla ice cream tastes better than Chocolate ice cream?)

There is no way we can settle the arguments....no social truth value?

More about Eating ice cream...


The issue of whether vanilla ice cream tastes better than chocolate ice cream is a matter of opinion (epistemic subjectivity) because the truth value of the statement "Vanilla ice cream tastes better than chocolate ice cream", uttered by a particular person, depends primarily on (the only method available) how the ice cream tastes to that person.

However, many aspects of ice-cream eating are matters of fact (ontological objective): a particular dish of ice cream has the chemical composition it has, for example, independently of anyone's experience.

Taste is different; taste does not exist until somebody experiences it (ontological subjective). Remember this doesn't mean taste isn't REAL; taste simply exists in a ontological/metaphysically different way from the chemical composition.

But here's a tricky part: if we ask,"Vanilla ice cream tastes better than Drano?"; the ordinary response to the latter would be "Well, of course" — not "Well, that's YOUR opinion".) Then this statement or claim is epistemic objectivity.




Anyway, with these distinctions, here's the pay off:

If an event is metaphysically subjective, claims about it can still be epistemologically objective!

For example, consider pain again. If you had severe and unexplained pain, you would probably go to a doctor who would treat the pain as well as the underlying physical cause. There are even doctors who specialize in relief of pain. There are well-recognized physical drugs and therapies for pain relief. In other words, there’s all kinds of epistemologically objective knowledge about what is metaphysically a subjective occurrence.

Observer relativity implies ontological subjectivity but ontological subjectivity does not preclude (prevent/impede) epistemic objectivity

Though the constitution of society thus contains ontologically subjective elements as absolutely essential to its existence, all the same the ontological subjectivity of the domain does not prevent us from getting an epistemically objective account of the domain.

In a word, epistemic objectivity does not require ontological objectivity. If it did, the social sciences would be impossible (John Searle, 1999)

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