"Our claim was only that what sortal concepts we bring to bear upon experience determines what we can find there – just as the size and mesh of a net determine, not what fish are in the sea, but which ones we shall catch." – David Wiggins [1]
What are objectivity and subjectivity in the context of human judgement?
When we make claims about the empirical world, and the world of human affairs, we deem those claims to be objective inasmuch as they purport to accurately report what is out there. However, we must always make use of human concepts to refer to what is out there, and those concepts are, by and large, human inventions. Which concept we choose to make use of in order to talk, or think, about some feature of the world, on each particular occasion, reflects our particular interests. Furthermore, what determines whether or not those concepts properly apply to particular things in the world depends on our understandings of the sorts of things that they are. Different sorts of concepts are better suited to refer to animals, games, social institutions, works of art, chemical elements, etc. Our interests, and our understandings of the things that interest us, are features of us. They necessarily reflect our subjectivity. If that is true, does that mean that all of our judgements about the world are merely subjective?
One philosophical view that is very popular, not only among philosophers but also among scientists and, in general, among intellectuals who are "scientistically" inclined, is that our claims about the world are true only inasmuch as they accurately reflect what really exists out there quite independently of our special interests or of our limited understandings of them. The thesis that the furniture of the world—what is out there—is what it is regardless of our interests in singling out specific features of them has been called metaphysical realism by the philosopher Hilary Putnam (Harvard). Putnam has spent a major part of his long career criticizing this thesis and proposing, as an alternative, a pragmatist philosophical thesis about objectivity that he once called Realism with a human face [2]. David Wiggins (Oxford) and John Haugeland [3] (Pittsburgh) also proposed alternatives to metaphysical realism. Wiggin's alternative is a form of conceptualism while Haugeland's alternative centers around the notion of existential commitment. I'll provide links to some of my discussions of Haugeland's and Wiggins's conceptions of objectivity that took place on The Philosophy Forum [4][5]. My goal here is, first, to point out that the stances of Putnam, Wiggins and Haugeland on objectivity and subjectivity are very similar. I want to give them proper credit for what I am going to explain in this blog post. My second goal is to explain as clearly and as simply as possible why metaphysical realism is deeply misguided and how it is possible to endorse an alternative account of objectivity that doesn't have the shortcomings often attributed (rightly or wrongly) to various forms of social constructivism, postmodernism or relativism.
Stay tuned!
[1] David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance Renewed, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2001
[2] Hilary Putnam, Realism with a Human Face, Harvard University Press, 1992
[3] John Haugeland, Having Though: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind, Harvard University Press, 2000
[4] Discussion about John Haugeland on The Philosophy Forum
[5] Discussion about David Wiggins on The Philosophy Forum
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