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I don't disagree with the article. But I have a long-standing problem with this post-modern representation of 'objectivity' as binary. Yes, the tiniest bit of

by sago 7y ago

I don't disagree with the article. But I have a long-standing problem with this post-modern representation of 'objectivity' as binary. Yes, the tiniest bit of subjectivity makes something nonobjective. Okay, there is absolutely nothing objective. But things can be more objectively true than others. Science is more objective than theology. A spherical Earth more than a flat one. Treating objectivity as binary, to constantly make the point that nothing is objective, invites the conclusion that everything is equally subjective. Which is nonsense. I'd like to see us move beyond this black and white model. Post-modernism made some good points (e.g. that those who claimed we could get to 100% objectivity were wrong). But being post-post-modern isn't the same as rejecting them all.

scott_s 7y ago
And I don't disagree with what you said. But I don't think most of it applies to what the author said: I don't believe she is a post-modernist, nor do I think she subscribes to the simplified view of objectivity that you presented. Her point is not about things being subjective, but people.
salty_biscuits 7y ago
Weird to say post modernism. Post modernism started as post structuralism, which is all about critiques of false binaries...
baddox 7y ago
I think what you're describing is close to scientific fallibilism. As a fallibilist I can maintain that there is objective truth, and that I can learn objective truth, but that I can always make errors, and there's no technique that can guarantee that there are no errors in my understanding. This seems like a pretty reasonable way to frame methods of reason like science and philosophy. For instance, it offers a good explanation for why the scientific method is so effective, even though the explanation may differ from a lot of scientists' philosophy of science which does claim to offer methods which if followed precisely can give guarantees about objective truth.
dekhn 7y ago
I think it's easier to just sort of think of this like probability and statistics. I start with an assumption: the universe does exist, it's real, and humans can perceive the real universe, although likely with a bunch of filters and biases. Then I also assume that through careful work (identifying filters and biases, setting up good processes to avoid them) we can see the real universe in a truthful way (Plato's cave allegory, and Descartes' Great Deceiver are both interesting explorations into the limits of this idea). I figure if either of those assumptions is violated (for example if there is some sort of Great Deceiver) we can't really supercede them. Then, based on those assumptions, I mainly focus on empiricism combined with high quality experimental technique, and a relentless drive to reduce variables which don't contribute directly to the system under study. Think of Galileo's experiment dropping two balls of different mass. When he conducted it in air, if he had used a feather, many people would conclude that heavier objects fall faster. But if air effects are excluded (in vacuum), we can see that feathers fall at the same velocity as heavy balls. This requires some leaps of intuition and also some very careful experimental setup. Once you've got to that point, you're well set up to start using the great tools of science: microscope, telescope, spectroscope, precision clock. Those immediately give you access to a whole collection of additional high quality data that is not directly available to our senses and intuition. They allow you to collect additional data, and help make confusing things like diseases and stars make a lot more sense (germ theory of disease, our sun is a star that is just very close, and our sun is composed of elements that exist on earth). Much of what science then studies is as close to objective as we can realistically get- I don't worry too much that gravity, space, time, etc are significantly different from how we perceive them in 4d (it would be interesting if our mental filters really do warp the real universe in a way that we see a very false representation of it). Once you've reached that point you can build satellites and reduce the likelihood a flat earth compared to a oblate spheroid model. But then it starts to get hard: you will discover relativity and quantum mechanics, both of which are not intuitive and in fact completely counter all our normal expectations. yet they are key theories that help us make and improve technologies like GPS and transistors! Right now some of the most interesting questions in science are about things we don't have any good experimental apparatus to probe. QM is a great example- we can do all sorts of amazing things with QM in the lab, but our brains can't wrap around the underlying physics at all. Is QM the theory wrong? Is there a better theory, one that's more intuitive and consistent with our daily lives? Probably not; as much as I like the idea of a deterministic universe, it's just an unlikely hypothesis to test. I don't think post-modernism really was the origin of the idea that objectivity was an ideal, not a real. I think most empiricists have implicitly assumed that we have to work really hard to not fool ourselves. I once saw an interesting talk, where the presenter didn't understand the difference between relativism and relativity. So they argued that their cosmology (native american) was just as valid as Einstein's theories. I can't really see that as true. I think under any reasonable subjective determination, empirically determined theories of cosmology will do a better job of explaining the observed universe than a spiritually derived one. I recently learned of a term, "scientism" (after being accused of it while arguing with a religion and philosophy professor who likes to mix buddhism and christianity).
Der_Einzige 7y ago
If I have no way to evaluate what is objective, than how do I know that I'm closer to objectivity? At the point that we conclude "there isn't a single objective thing in the whole universe" we have no reason to believe that the appearance of getting closer to objectivity actually correlates with getting closer to objectivity. It's entirely possible that "objective" or a global optimum solution is extremely "close" to a solution which appears to be extremely suboptimal. Science finding what appears to be good local solutions using rationality is the same as finding "lottery tickets" in a state space for a problem. This is why global optimization methods like Simulated Annealing or Genetic Algorithms rely so heavily in efficient exploration of a state space, and why they can easily solve adversarial reinforcement learning problems that backprop techniques (get "global solution" by moving closer to locally better solutions) fail at (the cart hill climbing problem being the classic one) I'm willing to believe that there are local "solutions" which appear to get better solutions to a problem than random, but I have no reason to believe that my solutions which appear better correspond to actually better solutions (I may have failed at evaluating the correct measure of "good") , or even that by moving towards the appearance of a better solution that it gets me closer to the global solution (which is why backprop fails on cart hill climbing) tl;dr the post modernists are right on this one and science needs to immediately dispel it's platonic rationalist roots because it's basically just applying backprop (Plato would call it the "dialectic") to a philosophical problem and hoping that human thoughts gets us closer to truth because it appears rational to us. Yeah, actually, you should put the astrik on all science that says "may not actually correspond to truth because we don't know what truth is"

by sago 7y ago

scott_s 7y ago

And I don't disagree with what you said. But I don't think most of it applies to what the author said: I don't believe she is a post-modernist, nor do I think she subscribes to the simplified view of objectivity that you presented. Her point is not about things being subjective, but people.

salty_biscuits 7y ago

Weird to say post modernism. Post modernism started as post structuralism, which is all about critiques of false binaries...

baddox 7y ago

I think what you're describing is close to scientific fallibilism. As a fallibilist I can maintain that there is objective truth, and that I can learn objective truth, but that I can always make errors, and there's no technique that can guarantee that there are no errors in my understanding. This seems like a pretty reasonable way to frame methods of reason like science and philosophy. For instance, it offers a good explanation for why the scientific method is so effective, even though the explanation may differ from a lot of scientists' philosophy of science which does claim to offer methods which if followed precisely can give guarantees about objective truth.

dekhn 7y ago

I think it's easier to just sort of think of this like probability and statistics. I start with an assumption: the universe does exist, it's real, and humans can perceive the real universe, although likely with a bunch of filters and biases. Then I also assume that through careful work (identifying filters and biases, setting up good processes to avoid them) we can see the real universe in a truthful way (Plato's cave allegory, and Descartes' Great Deceiver are both interesting explorations into the limits of this idea). I figure if either of those assumptions is violated (for example if there is some sort of Great Deceiver) we can't really supercede them. Then, based on those assumptions, I mainly focus on empiricism combined with high quality experimental technique, and a relentless drive to reduce variables which don't contribute directly to the system under study. Think of Galileo's experiment dropping two balls of different mass. When he conducted it in air, if he had used a feather, many people would conclude that heavier objects fall faster. But if air effects are excluded (in vacuum), we can see that feathers fall at the same velocity as heavy balls. This requires some leaps of intuition and also some very careful experimental setup. Once you've got to that point, you're well set up to start using the great tools of science: microscope, telescope, spectroscope, precision clock. Those immediately give you access to a whole collection of additional high quality data that is not directly available to our senses and intuition. They allow you to collect additional data, and help make confusing things like diseases and stars make a lot more sense (germ theory of disease, our sun is a star that is just very close, and our sun is composed of elements that exist on earth). Much of what science then studies is as close to objective as we can realistically get- I don't worry too much that gravity, space, time, etc are significantly different from how we perceive them in 4d (it would be interesting if our mental filters really do warp the real universe in a way that we see a very false representation of it). Once you've reached that point you can build satellites and reduce the likelihood a flat earth compared to a oblate spheroid model. But then it starts to get hard: you will discover relativity and quantum mechanics, both of which are not intuitive and in fact completely counter all our normal expectations. yet they are key theories that help us make and improve technologies like GPS and transistors! Right now some of the most interesting questions in science are about things we don't have any good experimental apparatus to probe. QM is a great example- we can do all sorts of amazing things with QM in the lab, but our brains can't wrap around the underlying physics at all. Is QM the theory wrong? Is there a better theory, one that's more intuitive and consistent with our daily lives? Probably not; as much as I like the idea of a deterministic universe, it's just an unlikely hypothesis to test. I don't think post-modernism really was the origin of the idea that objectivity was an ideal, not a real. I think most empiricists have implicitly assumed that we have to work really hard to not fool ourselves. I once saw an interesting talk, where the presenter didn't understand the difference between relativism and relativity. So they argued that their cosmology (native american) was just as valid as Einstein's theories. I can't really see that as true. I think under any reasonable subjective determination, empirically determined theories of cosmology will do a better job of explaining the observed universe than a spiritually derived one. I recently learned of a term, "scientism" (after being accused of it while arguing with a religion and philosophy professor who likes to mix buddhism and christianity).

Der_Einzige 7y ago

If I have no way to evaluate what is objective, than how do I know that I'm closer to objectivity? At the point that we conclude "there isn't a single objective thing in the whole universe" we have no reason to believe that the appearance of getting closer to objectivity actually correlates with getting closer to objectivity. It's entirely possible that "objective" or a global optimum solution is extremely "close" to a solution which appears to be extremely suboptimal. Science finding what appears to be good local solutions using rationality is the same as finding "lottery tickets" in a state space for a problem. This is why global optimization methods like Simulated Annealing or Genetic Algorithms rely so heavily in efficient exploration of a state space, and why they can easily solve adversarial reinforcement learning problems that backprop techniques (get "global solution" by moving closer to locally better solutions) fail at (the cart hill climbing problem being the classic one) I'm willing to believe that there are local "solutions" which appear to get better solutions to a problem than random, but I have no reason to believe that my solutions which appear better correspond to actually better solutions (I may have failed at evaluating the correct measure of "good") , or even that by moving towards the appearance of a better solution that it gets me closer to the global solution (which is why backprop fails on cart hill climbing) tl;dr the post modernists are right on this one and science needs to immediately dispel it's platonic rationalist roots because it's basically just applying backprop (Plato would call it the "dialectic") to a philosophical problem and hoping that human thoughts gets us closer to truth because it appears rational to us. Yeah, actually, you should put the astrik on all science that says "may not actually correspond to truth because we don't know what truth is"