Rethinking objectivity in social science

Montuschi, Eleonora

doi:10.1080/0269172042000249246

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…While reading recent discussions (e.g. Montuschi 2003;Douglas 2004;Crasnow 2013;Wright 2018; see also Koskinen 2018), I have outlined four desiderata that philosophers trying to defend some applicable notion of objectivity appear to largely share. They characterise a satisfactory applicable account of scientific objectivity:…”

Section: Applicable Senses Of Scientific Objectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Objectivity in contexts: withholding epistemic judgement as a strategy for mitigating collective bias

Koskinen

2020

Synthese

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In this paper I discuss and develop the risk account of scientific objectivity, which I have recently introduced, contrasting it to some alternatives. I then use the account in order to analyse a practice that is relatively common in anthropology, in the history of science, and in the sociology of scientific knowledge: withholding epistemic judgement. I argue that withholding epistemic judgement on the beliefs one is studying can be a relatively efficient strategy against collective bias in these fields. However, taking into account the criticisms presented against the strategy, I also argue that it is a usable strategy only when the distance between the researchers and their ideas, and the people and ideas being studied, is significant enough. two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions. Any errors that remain are my own.

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Section: Applicable Senses Of Scientific Objectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Objectivity in contexts: withholding epistemic judgement as a strategy for mitigating collective bias

Koskinen

2020

Synthese

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“…The relationship between observation and interpretation can be understood, particularly in this case, as tightly related to the terms, to the assumptions and the systems of reference used case-by-case (Hanson 1958;Popper 1963;Davidson 1980). Psychological phenomena are complex not just because they imply more variables than natural phenomena, but rather because they include particular dimensions, such as meanings, rules, and reasons, which are irrelevant to and incompatible with the definition and analysis of natural phenomena and there can be also an interactive relation between phenomena and their representations (Montuschi 2004;Faccio 2011;Thompson 2019).…”

Section: The Application Of Diagnoses: Disease Syndrome or Symptoms?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For these reasons we can highlight the multiplicity of epistemological levels in knowledge and the choice of them can be pragmatic, dependent on the configuration of the object of reference (Salvini 2004). Also, objectivity can be considered an issue related to specific systems of reference, that is in relation to objects embedded in those practical, theoretical, historical procedures of description, classification, conceptualization and questioning, which allows them to become possible objects of specific inquiries (Montuschi 2004). Objectivity, like scientificity of a discipline, cannot be considered in a univocal way and based on value-freedom and the ideal of an independent nature of the scientist of the objects of study and of his/her subjectivity.…”

Section: Some Conclusive Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Concept of “Normality” in Medical and Psychological Sciences: Differences and Interconnections

Neri¹,

Iudici²,

Faccio³

2020

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social and Commu

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The "normal-abnormal" continuum is one way to organize models of operational interventions, and to define various professional roles, especially in medicine, psychiatry, and psychology. In these fields the diagnostic process draws on the concept of normality to distinguish between healthy and pathological states and draws conclusions about prognosis, treatment, and cure. In psychiatry and psychology, unlike in medicine, diagnosis is often a problematic and controversial process because of the lack of clear boundaries between normal and psychopathological states. This has practical consequences for the work of professionals and the way patients are treated. In this work we make some epistemological observations about the relationship between diagnostic processes and normality. In particular, we consider some specific terms relating to the diagnostic process and the concept of "normality" in order to distinguish between the medical and clinical-psychological implications of intervention.

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“…Also see Daston and Galison (2007), Fine (1998), Kincaid et al (2007), Kuhn (1977), Montuschi (2004Montuschi ( , 2014Montuschi ( , 2017, and Padovani et al (2015), for a series of discussions on objectivity and value-freedom that foreshadow the contextualised accounts of objectivity we refer to here. of hand: drawing attention to the perspectival considerations informing GGGI and framing them as biasing the index, and presenting their supposed mitigation of these same considerations in BIGI as a consequent achievement of a greater degree of objectivity-all whilst ignoring the different perspectives informing their construction of BIGI.…”

Section: Calculation Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

My objectivity is better than yours: contextualising debates about gender inequality

Worsdale

Wright

2020

Synthese

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Absract In this paper, we contribute to a growing literature in the philosophy of social science cautioning social scientists against context-independent claims to objectivity, by analyzing the recent proposal of a new Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) by Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary. Despite the many internal problems with BIGI, Stoet and Geary have had some success in positioning the index as an important corrective to the way in which gender inequality is measured in mainstream metrics like the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI). We argue that this success is facilitated at least in part by the failure of GGGI’s proponents to adequately justify the methodological choices underpinning the index in relation to the context in which the index’s findings are intended to be used. In so doing, the authors of GGGI oversell the objectivity of the metric’s assessment of the state of global gender inequality—and it is this overselling that allows Stoet and Geary to present BIGI as a metric that corrects what they claim are systematic biases within GGGI. The case of BIGI and GGGI, we argue, suggests that the kind of epistemic modesty exhibited by recent operational approaches to objectivity is particularly important for social research on highly politically contested topics.

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Rethinking objectivity in social science

Cited by 8 publications

References 3 publications

Objectivity in contexts: withholding epistemic judgement as a strategy for mitigating collective bias

Objectivity in contexts: withholding epistemic judgement as a strategy for mitigating collective bias

The Concept of “Normality” in Medical and Psychological Sciences: Differences and Interconnections

My objectivity is better than yours: contextualising debates about gender inequality

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