We tell you what objectivity is, its relationship with objects and science. Furthermore, the Kantian notion of objectivity and absolute objectivity.
What is objectivity?
Objectivity is the character of the objective. In philosophy, the objective is said in two senses: with respect to objects and with respect to the objective capacity of the sciences.
In its relationship with objects, and also in its relationship with the sciences, objectivity is crossed by the problem of the object and the subject. Subject and object They are two words that, in the philosophical vocabulary, have a lot of weight. The link between the two contains a series of metaphysical, epistemic and gnoseological problems.
The objective capacity of the sciences, for its part, is the possibility that they have to work without allowing subjectivity to interfere. The objectivity of science is known as scientificity: It is the way in which the sciences operate without letting their work be affected by prejudices or previous ideas, as well as by interests, passions or personal values.
Object and subject
The relationship of objectivity with objects has to do with the problem of the relationship between the object and the subject. These two poles or elements intervene in every theory of knowledge and the relationship between them varies depending on the philosophical perspective with which it is viewed.
Some traditions, such as the empiricism of David Hume (1711-1776), give priority to the object. Empiricists maintain that, when it comes to knowing something, the object is what determines what the subject can know. Other traditions, such as the rationalism of René Descartes (1596-1650), give priority to the subject. For rationalism, the subject determines what is known about the object, not the other way around.
Objectivity, however, is the way in which the object is known independently. of the pole of the relationship to which priority is given (whether to the object or the subject). Objectivity will be the way in which the object is known and, in any case, the way in which knowledge of that object to be known is constructed.
Key points
- Every relationship of knowledge is a given relationship between a subject and an object.
- The subject is the knowing pole: who wants to know something.
- The object is the knowable pole: that which one wants to know.
- In this relationship, objectivity is the way in which an object is known.
Objectivity for Kant
Within the most traditional positions of philosophy, the position of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) functions as a bridge between empiricism and rationalism. For Kant, all knowledge begins with the objects of experience, but is not exhausted in them, but ends and is modified by the operations carried out by the subject..
Kantian theory of knowledge is a mixed theory. This means that knowledge is built thanks to the contribution made by the objects and the operations carried out by the subject.
Kant maintains that all knowledge carries an immediate (direct) reference to an object. This means that all knowledge is, in principle, intuitive, and also that every object is presented as given to intuition. When an object is given to intuition, it does so through empirical sensations. Kant calls this freak. These sensations provide the subject with a multiplicity of dispersed data that must be unified. The “form” of the phenomenon is what allows the multiple to be ordered into relationships (for example, quantity, quality, among others).
Some forms are called “pure” forms. These “pure” forms are empty representations, prior to sensation.. All empirical intuitions in general have pure forms that function as conditions of possibility to perceive sensations. These pure forms of sensitivity are time and space.
Kant maintains that all objects are given to us according to the forms of our sensibility. This means that they are given to us as spatio-temporal objects. That something appears as a phenomenon, and therefore appears as an object, means that it always appears in time and space.
Thus, phenomena are spatio-temporal objects: constructed in space and time. The synthesis that unifies the data of the phenomena is the synthesis that produces a certain space or time. For Kant, objectivity is the way in which the synthesis of objects is constructed.. That is, the way in which the structure is given that allows the objective character of the phenomenon to be built.
Kant's theory of objectivity is based on a way of constructing the object. What is behind the constitution of the object is a construction process in time and space. In this process, the object intervenes, which provides the sensitive material, and the subject, which gives the form that that material acquires.
Scientific objectivity and the positive method
Scientific objectivity or scientificity is the absolute nature of science compared to the relativity of the subjective.
In scientific disciplines, something is “objective” when it is in the objects, independent of any subject. The subjective, on the other hand, depends on the subject, and that is why it is relative. Science claims to be objective because it tries to reflect objects as they are in themselves.
Scientists work in such a way that they try to put aside their prejudices, interests and other subjective aspects. Your task is not to allow anything to distort your unbiased view of reality.
The positivist method
The scientific conception of objectivity leaves the social sciences aside. In them, the subject of knowledge is immersed in the object of study. Some schools, such as positivism, maintain that the social sciences have to follow the positive method of the natural sciences.
The positive or positivist method is the one that It is based on real facts, independent of any subject, it rejects any speculation and everything that is not in the things themselves.. This method is based on observation, draws general consequences and formulates a theory that is then confirmed empirically based on a large number of cases.
The problem with the positivist method is that it works with an absolutist idea of objectivity. Neither the ideal of science nor the positivist claim take into account the real working conditions of scientists, whether they are in the natural or social sciences. Contemporary philosophy of science maintains that there are other ways of thinking about objectivity, different from the traditional absolutist conception.
Some thinkers, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Jürgen Habermas (1929-.), and mainly Karl Popper (1902-1994), maintain that objectivity must be thought of as intersubjectivity. That is, as the common agreement of a group of subjects.
There are also intermediate theories, as happens in cultural anthropology, where objectivity is worked as a scientific ideal without leaving aside cultural relativism.
References
- Kant, I. (1977). Critique of pure reason. Porrúa.
- White, J.J. (1974). On the dispute of positivism in German sociology. Spanish magazine of public opinion(36), 105-121.
- Hume, D. (2004). Research on human understanding (Vol. 216). AKAL Editions.
- Descartes, R. (1904). Metaphysical meditations (Vol. 22). Direction and Administration.
- Otero, S. (1992). The problem of objectivity and the Kantian transcendental philosophical position. University Signs11(21).
