Objectivity is not Neutrality: Rhetoric vs. Practice in Peter Novick's That Noble Dream

Abstract

In general, I believe that skepticism is revealing and not refutable, but that it does not vitiate the pursuit of objectivity. It is worth trying to bring one's beliefs, one's actions, and one's values more under the influence of an impersonal standpoint even without the assurance that this could not be revealed from a still more external standpoint as an illusion. In any case, we seem to have no choice but to make the attempt.... Objectivity and skepticism are closely related: both develop from the idea that there is a real world in which we are contained, and that appearances result from our interactions with the rest of it. We cannot accept these appearances uncritically, but must try to understand what our own constitution contributes to them. To do this we try to develop an idea of the world that includes an explanation of why it initially appears to us as it does. But this idea, since it is we who develop it, is likewise the product of interaction between us and the world, though the interaction is more complicated and more selfconscious than the original one. If the initial appearances cannot be relied upon because they depend on our constitution in ways that we do not fully understand, this more complex data should be open to the same doubts.... However often we may try to step outside of ourselves, something will have to stay behind the lens, something in us will determine the resulting picture, and this will give grounds for doubt that we are getting any closer to reality. The idea of objectivity thus seems to undermine itself.... I want both to defend the possibility of objective ascent [that is, of developing an impersonal standpoint, the from nowhere, a view of the world in which the self is not at the center but is included as merely one among many objects] and to understand its limits. We should keep in mind how incredible it is that such a thing is possible at all. We are encouraged these days to think of ourselves as contingent organisms arbitrarily thrown up by evolution. There is no reason in advance to expect a finite creature like that to be able to do more than accumulate information at the perceptual and conceptual level it occupies by nature. But apparently that is not how things are. Not only can we form the pure idea of a world which contains us and of which our impressions are a part, but we can give this idea a content which takes us very far from our original impressions.... The search for objective knowledge, because of its commitment to a realistic picture, is inescapably subject to skepticism and cannot refute it but must proceed under its shadow. Skepticism, in turn, is a problem only because of the realist claims of objectivity. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 7, 67-71.

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