Objectivity

My own position in the midst of all this has been to try to resist subjectivism on the one hand and cabbalism on the other, to try to keep the analysis of symbolic forms as closely tied as I could to concrete social events and occasions, the public world of common life, and to organize it in such a way that the connections between theoretical formations and descriptive interpretations were unobscured by appeals to dark sciences. I have never been impressed by the argument that, as complete objectivity is impossible in these matters (as, of course, it is), one might as well one's sentiments run loose. As Robert Solow has remarked, that is like saying that as a perfectly aseptic environment is impossible one might as well conduct surgery in a sewer. - Clifford Geertz, from The Interpretation of Cultures

     Every once in a while, or perhaps more often than that, I will re-watch a movie, or return to a book to find some significant quote, expecting a specific line of dialogue or a particular sentence, only to find that I invented it. I assume this happens to everyone, but it may be that few people devote as much time as I do re-watching movies, or re-reading books. It isn't exactly the most rational thing to do. But I hope you know what I am referring to.
     While this post is about objectivity, and this is an illustration of subjective memory, I am not actually trying to make you aware of the fact that memory is subjective. I assume everybody realizes that. If you don't, well then, I am sure you'll have plenty to complain about if you bother finishing this post. Feel free to let me know what you think, but don't expect to persuade me of anything. No, the reason I bring this up is entirely different. I enjoy coming across subjective memories. They present me with an opportunity. The times when I misremember movie dialogue almost always involve me inventing lines that I thought more funny, or more emotional, or more revealing than what actually appears in the movie. In a way my mind is synthesizing the movie, and presenting shorthand for what it creates by inserting this extra little bit. Just about everybody does this. Recognizing when it happens allows you to see what meaning you attached to something.

     Also, sometimes, I had just misinterpreted what I read. These instances can be rewarding too, in a very different way. Casual reading asks us to simply get at the plain meaning of what the author is trying to say. It is all on the surface. Critical reading, including philosophy, asks us to consider alternate meanings. It requires us to provide arguments for and against what the author is stating so that we can evaluate it. We have to decide whether or not to accept what is said. The meaning is packed into a few words. When I think I read one thing, which doesn't really exist, and return to it to find something else, I am presented with the opportunity to do some unpacking that I otherwise would have overlooked. I have accidentally created a thought experiment that, by forcing me to think about what is not said, allows a better understanding of what is said.
     The quote I began this post with is one of those instances. But before I get into that too much, I want to take a minute to reveal that I chose this topic to have a chance to refer to Geertz. His thought had a big impact on me both as an undergraduate and a graduate student. Also, his style of writing, and the way he commented on specific subjects in the book Available Light provided me with one of the models I used in trying to determine a way to talk about philosophy in a blog. My style is somewhat more confessional than his, so he can't be blamed for that. This is a blog after all, and it is difficult not to be confessional, especially since I don't really know that much about what I am writing on. Still, he is, to the extent that he responsibly accounts for the intellectual grounding of his comments, a little confessional too, as can be seen in the above quote. Moreover, this topic allows me to comment on another theme this blog is based on, but I will get to that in due time.
     Back to the topic at hand. When I first read the opening quote, "complete objectivity is impossible in these matters (as, of course, it is)," I somehow found a way of reading the "it is" as a refutation of "objectivity is impossible." That is, I thought that Geertz was stating that objectivity is possible. I suppose that I expected him to, if he were agreeing with his previous statement, to reiterate the negative, to state "as, of course, it is not." I thought he was stating that while it is attainable, objectivity isn't important. In my defense, this is the type of thing that happens when your mind is tired. When you think and write philosophy for a few hours, you tend to make some cognitive misjudgments. This is why I like light movies.
     Until I eventually found the quote again, I labored under the impression that one of the most important minds of postmodern generation was telling me that objectivity exists, a claim too significant to be disregarded. (Yes, this blog's url is also a reference to Geertz. He is my favorite postmodernist.) In thinking through the implications of this, even though my motivation was flawed, I confronted some important questions. If objectivity is possible, then what is it? How do we achieve it? Why do I find subjectivity acceptable? And, the really big one, if my point of view is subjective, how do I justify having it? Furthermore, how do I justify any sort of opposition to a different point of view? In a political climate that allows a party to hold as core to its platform certain policies that reject science, this is an important question to ask, and to understand. Aside from the climate and education issues, this topic was also central to the confirmation hearings of Justice Sonya Sotomayor. Her "wise latina" comment brought out the view held by other justices that real legal reasoning can't be affected by race, or background. It is objective. Which, of course, it is not.
     And so, I will try to explain what I eventually came to see as "objective." To best do this, I would have to get into why I don't see objectivity as possible, which would in turn require a full explanation of social constructivism. This is too big a task for one blog post. Though, if you are interested, let me know, and I will write one focused solely on that topic soon.
     The typical, or should I say the positivist, modern (as in modernism) idea of an objective truth is one that is reached through rational application of logic. It is a truth that is universal: true now, was always true, and will remain true. And here is the important bit, that it is true for everyone. You can see why this type of truth is important to legal reasoning, as it makes it quite difficult to justify laws, and punishment for breaking them, if they are subjective. The means to arrive at such a truth, one would think, is to remove from consideration anything that isn't true, anything that isn't objective, anything that is subjective. The problem is, the more rigorous you get with this, the less you have left to call true. Ultimately, says the postmodernist, you get rid of everything. Descartes, in his attempt to find a rational basis for his own thought famously had to rely on his conception of God to make it all work, inventing the cartesian circle.
     So, taking for granted that that method doesn't work, what is the alternative? How do we get to something that we can claim is "objective?" (Keep in mind that ultimately this is a thought exercise; objectivity isn't there.) To do that, I return to Geertz: "An attitude at once critical and apologetic toward the same situation is no intrinsic contradiction in terms (however often it may in fact turn out to be an empirical one) but a sign of a certain level of intellectual sophistication." This quote appears in the essay "Ideology as a Cultural System." A special thanks to the website HiLoBrow for pointing me to this quote. It too is a model for this blog, but it does an entirely different thing with "hi-brow, low-brow," due in no small part to the fact that the writers on that site are much more learned than me. The writer of the article I am sending you to points out that one quality of the word "critical" in that quote is objectivity, and one quality of the word "apologetic" is subjectivity. Thus, presenting a possible resolution to this issue. That objectivity need not exclude subjectivity. Essentially, instead of arriving at an objective truth by removing subjective ideas from consideration, they are merely labeled for what they are. This allows for all kinds of intellectual work including: categorization, comparison, symbolic analysis of the logical sort, etc.
     Why did this not seem obvious before? Well it was. But it is missing something to satisfy the die hard rationalists that believe objectivity is necessary to be able to think clearly. Why should we, if everything is subjective, accept one idea over another, especially when they are in contradiction to each other? This is a good point. I've heard it remarked before that "genius" is the ability hold two contrasting ideas at the same time. This is crazy. Not the idea of believing in two things that are in paradox to each other, the idea that somehow doing so is ingenious. I know plenty of people who can do this who are most assuredly not geniuses. In fact, willful ignorance is more often what enables them to do so.
     Again, Geertz presents the answer to this issue. And the answer is, it is not an issue. The fact that knowledge is subjective is not up for debate. When addressing relativism, the notion that everything is subjective, in his essay "Anti Anti-Relativism" he has this to contribute: "What looks like a debate about the broader implications of anthropological research is really a debate about how to live with them." In other words, the more you look at anthropological data, the less you can deny subjectivism. Nevertheless, we don't ever really witness any of the things that anti-relativists are scared of happening. All morals, justice itself, and cognitive function is supposed to melt if we can't believe one thing is true and something else isn't. But this great mental thaw has yet to show itself in reality. Or, as Geertz so perfectly put it: "The image of vast numbers of anthropology readers running around in so cosmopolitan a frame of mind as to what is and isn't true, or good, or beautiful, seems to me largely a fantasy. There may be some genuine nihilists out there, along Rodeo Drive or around Times Square, but I doubt very many have become such as a result of an excessive sensitivity to the claims of other cultures; and at least most of the people I meet, read, and read about, and indeed I myself, are all-too-committed to something or other, usually parochial...anti-relativism has largely concocted the anxiety it lives from."
     OK, so, if objectivity is possible, it is merely the recognition that truths are subjective. And, that isn't as big a problem as you might think, since the people who recognize it still by and large have confidence in the commitments they have made.
     I have not gotten into the method Geertz uses in order to make observations, as he cannot rely on a non-existent objective point of view. Or scientific knowledge and objectivity. As for his method, I can post on that. If someone is interested, let me know. It too, would be a full post on its own. And, as for science, I don't feel entirely comfortable commenting on this, as there is so much I don't know. But yes, science is in fact a social construction. It is an institution we invented based on our own culturally formed ideas. It uses a method that is designed to remove the necessity to rely on plausibility and confidence, and enable us to refer only to fact. But, it only serves to uncover material fact. It is also a process, meaning that the facts it reveals are constantly reworked, and improved. If they were universal, this would be a very bad thing to do. Anyone who has any knowledge of the history of science, with the radical changes it has undergone in uncovering evolution and DNA, recognizes this. If anyone who reads this has a knowledge of the philosophy and history of science, please comment. Correction and clarification is welcome.
     However, unlike with anthropology, I cannot observe that the realization that science is subjective hasn't had any consequences. There are far too many people running around willfully rejecting critical thought so that they can believe what they want to about the world. If I have to explain this statement to you, please let me know where you live, and how I can go about getting some property there. Until I can live in such a place too, a foolish belief in a hypothetical, non-existent objectivity is useful. After all, it helped me become comfortable with ideas of confidence in what I believe, and commitment to it. And it keeps me from simply rejecting what I don't want to believe. So yes, objectivity is impossible. But, we don't lose anything, both logically and otherwise, by it not being there. We just have to be prepared to explain ourselves a bit more extensively.



As a final note, you should be prepared to face some serious opposition if you try to claim that relativism isn't the problem it is thought to be, especially if you study or practice law, journalism, or anything else that deals with multiple points-of-view. (By the way, relativism didn't cause the Holocaust nor does it imply that we cannot condemn genocide.) Also, I am aware that science is empirical. And if you think that empiricism is absolute, please comment and explain yourself. I'd like to debate the point with you.