Objectivity

This entry discusses the nature and place of objectivity in science, and especially the social sciences, and introduces the various issues making up the topic of objectivity as well as various critical approaches to it.

Being objective is an attribute that can be related to truth, knowledge claims, and persons. Aiming at objectivity is traditionally considered as a necessary condition of all science, but this is challenged by relativists and social constructivists. The formulation of the ideal of objectivity by scientific realists usually relies on assumptions that are typical to natural science, but it can be defended also in the case of the social sciences.

Let us briefly see what objectivity involves for the three items mentioned above: (1) truth, (2) knowledge, and (3) persons.

According to the realist theory of truth, a belief or statement is true if its content corresponds to facts obtaining in reality. A modern explication of this correspondence theory, or reality theory, of truth is given by Alfred Tarski's semantic definition: Truths have to be expressed in some interpreted language or conceptual system, but in the objective or absolute sense, truth is not relative to person, gender, social class, culture, belief, theory, or paradigm.

Knowledge, classically defined as justified true belief, is objective if it is true in the absolute sense. Most scientific realists are fallibilists, who acknowledge that all knowledge claims about matters of fact are corrigible by further inquiry. Even though complete certainty cannot be reached, the most reliable way of finding well-grounded knowledge is justification by publicly accessible scientific evidence.

According to the traditional ideal, a scientist should be an objective person: just, impartial, unbiased, not misled by emotions, personal prejudices, or wishful thinking. Thus, science is objective in so far as its results correspond to the real properties and lawlike relations of the research object, and in contrast, science is subjective insofar as its results are influenced and biased by personal motives, values, wishes, beliefs, and interests.