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Sun 15 Jul, 2007 09:04 am
Do the physical sciences have more objective validity than social science, psychology, metaphysics, or theology? Theories which are non-testable are usually of no interest to specialists in the various physical sciences. Is it possible to acquire objective knowledge in "non-scientific" fields of study?
wandeljw
"Objectivity" simply means "agreement" about experimental controls and definitions. The problem with the so called "social sciences" is that such controls and agreement are lacking or impossible. You use the term "validity" for the physical sciences where it means "test-retest replicability" rather than "truth", and such replicability is also sought in the social sciences. However there are other aspects to "validity" such as "content validity" which are more illusive in the social sciences and can prevent extrapolation from particular observations to general theories. Other factors such as "the personal equation" (the social equivalent of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle) also have a role to play.
In essence this question boils down to what "science" is about. It is not so much about "knowledge" except when "knowledge" is defined as "prediction and control". In so far that the social "sciences" can predict or control social behaviour they may be worthy of the label "science", but all too often they fail on this respect.
I did not choose my terminology very carefully, fresco.
I was thinking of "objective knowledge" as facts that can be independently verified or can achieve the kind of consensus that exists about the facts of physics, biology, chemistry, or mathematics.
Theories which are non-testable and cannot be independently verified are not even worth dinner time discussion, in my opinion.
I wrote a long reply to that which was lost by the server.
Points for discussion.
1. There are no such things as "facts"...only degrees of consensus.
2. Theories are not "verified". They "hold" until falsified or delimited by paradigm shift.
3. Social science may only yield statistical as opposed to universal predictions and may resist falsification. However its terminology can often provide a "therapeutic" mode of communication (e.g. psychoanalysis)
I believe facts exist in both physical science and social science, but they are simply uninteresting (water is wet, one plus one always equals two, the majority of American Evangelicals vote Republican, etc.).
Consensus is required for the theories used to explain facts and make predictions based on facts. Theories which survive numerous attempted refutations are given consensus but may never be ultimately proven. (This idea, of course, comes from Karl Popper.)
Wandelfw, I would say that the physcial sciences have more "objective validity" if by that we refer to, as Fresco notes, consensual validity. Objectivity may mean in this case that it can constrain people on the basis of its ability to predict and control, the observation of which contributes to the consensus. This does not happen in the case of philosophy and theology (the Church tried to coerce the illusion of consensus during the time of the Inquisition). Many social scientists (members of the positivist branches) have argued that, like the physical and natural sciences, they can also produce theories that provide us with the "engineering" advantages of prediction and control. But for the most part such claims have not delivered the goods. Most social scientists I am familiar with (and more so in the postmodern present than in the modernist past) have rested content with plausible and penetrating interpretations of social and behavioral phenomena.
Facts are little theories (cooked data); they are BRUTE FACTS (raw or unprocessed data) only when they are tautologies (as in water IS wetness and two and two is another way of saying four).
Science pursues answers to questions. Philosophy pursues better questions.
Mysticism pursues the fulfillment of unspoken needs.
Interesting comments, JLN. I remember social scientists borrowing methodology from the physical sciences. The results of their efforts were usually uninteresting.
Re: Objective Knowledge
wandeljw wrote:Do the physical sciences have more objective validity than social science, psychology, metaphysics, or theology? Theories which are non-testable are usually of no interest to specialists in the various physical sciences. Is it possible to acquire objective knowledge in "non-scientific" fields of study?
I think the only
objective validity can come from hard science, but other methods may be employed to study unverifiable data.
In other words, just can discover all kinds of things that you must accept are not neccessarily true, and that you can never verify, and should never be relied upon.
Objectivity is a myth. All the hard and soft sciences rest on "unproven" presuppositions, like the researcher's impartiality and cause and effect (causality) that are artifices of human endeavor. It seems more obvious that this would be the case in the "soft" social sciences, but at least it has become prevalent that social scientists are acknowledging a need to be "reflexive", to take into account their (cultural and theoretical) presuppositions and the dynamics by which data are "negotiated" with informants.
The so-called objectivity of the "hard sciences" is not as unproblematical as many think it to be (cf. Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, or Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil). And the more sophisticated among the physical and natural sciences acknowledge the philosophical problematics of notions objectivity and causality.
At most,"objectivity" refers to intersubjectivity (consensus) which is a form of collective subjectivity. At best science produces results that, while not necessarily True by all philosophical standards, are useful, either for human survival or because they satisfy curiosity (viz. answer questions whatever their philosophical worthiness might be). Remember, however, that human survival has been assisted throughout history (and prehistory) by notions that are now seen as false, i.e., the "value" of an idea goes beyond its "truth" status.
wandel, neuroscience *could* eventually put social science on the same footing as physical science, but not sure that will happen in our lifetimes.
Thanks JLN,
You have covered most of the points I intended to raise.
The central issue is of course the epistemological one, namely the meaning of the word "knowledge". "Objectivity" implies there is an overt demarcation between "knowledge" and "belief" but as you say "objectivity is a myth". If we refuse to entertain some social "theory" we are merely refusing to identify with some "paradigm". In essence all "theories" could be deemed "social" whether viewed vertically or horizontally with respect to time.
Yitwail, it may be fanciful--a nice fancy, I admit--to be able to REDUCE all social phenomena to principles of neuroscience, but that may be something like the search for solid philosophical FOUNDATIONS for knowledge. We might keep in mind that our pursuit of such reductions rests on epistemological presuppositions. We seek solid principles while standing on not too solid foundations.
I wonder if social phenomona may involve the occurrence of EMERGENT realities, i.e., realities that are the result of new (previously nonexistent) combinations.
I DO imagine, however, that all our knowledge (and experience) consists of "neuroevents": an ant cannot, by the very nature of its nervous system, think of the world as we can (and vice versa). And we can think as we do by means of the combination of the structure of our nervous systems and our historically emergent-constructed cultural systems (i.e., language, science, etc.)
Karl Popper sometimes described theories as artifacts produced by human thought. As artifacts, theories can have a reality of their own (independent of the person who constructed the theory). It seems that, in Popper's view, some theories can be considered "objective".
I guess by "objective" knowledge I am referring to "absolute" knowledge, meaning knowledge that derives from a combination of immaculate perceptions and interpretations deduced from non-arbitrary presuppositions.
Beethoven's symphonies--like Schopenhaur's or Einstein's theories--exist independently of Beethoven's present state of mind (he is in fact now de-composing). Beethoven's scores and their embodiment in actual orchestral performances ARE independent of Beethoven's mind--they are objective insofar as they are no longer his subjective experience--but that is not what I mean by the objective status of a truth proposition.
JLN,
Popper was thinking of concepts such as scientific laws or mathematical properties. These would not have the personal connection that a Beethoven symphony has.
The so-called scientific laws (read: laws of nature) are no more than observed REGULARITIES in the "behavior" of Nature. But this does not mean that Nature is OBEYING statutes legislated by a God or some kind of Intelligent Designer.
Moreover, it might be that apriori principles such as the theorems of geometry only SEEM to be self-evident because of the ways our nervous systems are hardwired. To believe that Reality cannot be other than how we think it to be, speaks to the limitations of our nature, not the necessary structure of that which we are thinking about. For example, during Descartes' time it was "self-evident" that thinking entailed a thinker (cogito ergo sum); we now realize that deeds do not necessitate doers (including the fallacy: "it" is raining, whereas there is only "raining").
The fallacy of philosophical Rationalism is that the structure of our logical thinking must correspond with the structure of Reality. I call this: shrinking the Cosmos to the size of our heads.
JLNobody wrote:Yitwail, it may be fanciful--a nice fancy, I admit--to be able to REDUCE all social phenomena to principles of neuroscience, but that may be something like the search for solid philosophical FOUNDATIONS for knowledge.
Asimovian Psychohistory and ol' Hari Seldon
Excerpt from Immanuel Kant's "Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics":
Quote:Nature is the existence of things, so far as it is determined according to universal laws. Should nature signify the existence of things in themselves, we could never know it either a priori or a posteriori. Not a priori, for how can we know what belongs to things in themselves, since this never can be done by the dissection of our concepts (in analytical judgments)? We do not want to know what is contained in our concept of a thing (for the [concept describes what] belongs to its logical being), but what is in the actuality of the thing superadded to our concept, and by what the thing itself is determined in its existence outside the concept. Our understanding, and the conditions on which alone it can connect the determinations of things in their existence, do not prescribe any rule to things themselves; these do not conform to our understanding, but it must conform itself to them; they must therefore be first given us in order to gather these determinations from them, wherefore they would not be known a priori.
A cognition of the nature of things in themselves a posteriori would be equally impossible. For, if experience is to teach us laws, to which the existence of things is subject, these laws, if they regard things in themselves, must belong to them of necessity even outside our experience. But experience teaches us what exists and how it exists, but never that it must necessarily exist so and not otherwise. Experience therefore can never teach us the nature of things in themselves.
We nevertheless actually possess a pure science of nature in which are propounded, a priori and with all the necessity requisite to apodeictical propositions, laws to which nature is subject. I need only call to witness that propaedeutic of natural science which, under the title of the universal Science of Nature, precedes all Physics (which is founded upon empirical principles). In it we have Mathematics applied to appearance, and also merely discursive principles (or those derived from concepts), which constitute the philosophical part of the pure cognition of nature. But there are several things in it, which are not quite pure and independent of empirical sources: such as the concept of motion, that of impenetrability (upon which the empirical concept of matter rests), that of inertia, and many others, which prevent its being called a perfectly pure science of nature. Besides, it only refers to objects of the external sense and therefore does not give an example of a universal science of nature, in the strict sense, for such a science must reduce nature in general, whether it regards the object of the external or that of the internal sense (the object of Physics as well as Psychology), to universal laws. But among the principles of this universal physics there are a few which actually have the required universality; for instance, the propositions that "substance is permanent, " and that "every event is determined by a cause according to constant laws," etc. These are actually universal laws of nature, which subsist completely a priori. There is then in fact a pure science of nature, and the question arises, How is it possible?
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