Objectivity – what it is for, when we can have it and when we can’t

Hardie, Jeremy

Abstract

The usage of the words “public” and “public sphere” betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and....they fuse into a clouded amalgam. Jűrgen Habermas German: I wonder what future historians will make of all this? Clemenceau: One thing is certain. They will not say that Belgium invaded Germany. From a conversation between the French Prime Minister Clemenceau and a German representative at Versailles in 19192 I introduce these quotations to highlight two important themes in this paper. The first is that the word objectivity has a ‘multiplicity of concurrent meanings’ which ‘fuse into a clouded amalgam’. We cannot start, and I do not start, by assuming or stipulating a well behaved definition of the word or a specification of its correct usage. What has to be clarified is not what it really means, or what we should require it to mean, but rather how its ambiguities work to confuse the conversations of ordinary people, or at least ordinary professionals, in their practical lives. The second is that although the notion of objectivity is attractive above all because it promises clarity and certainty, it does not follow that its failure to do so throws us into a subjective, relativist, only a matter of opinion, world in which anything goes. Practical reasoning and deciding require that we find at least some things that we have good reasons to agree on, and that Belgium invaded Germany is not one of them. There are many difficulties in practical life in deciding what is true and what is relevant. We have to be careful not to assume that these difficulties are best resolved by searching for what is objective, nor to fear that if we do not or cannot do that, we are in the Wild West. There are other good reasons for believing other than that we have achieved objectivity.

Citation

Hardie, J. (2016). Objectivity – what it is for, when we can have it and when we can’t

• Working Paper Type: Working Paper
• Publication Date: 2016-02
• Deposit Date: Oct 13, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 13, 2016
• Series Title: CHESS Working Papers
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1699803
• Publisher URL: https://www.dur.ac.uk/chess/chessworkingpapers/