11 - Cognitive relativism: between positivistic and relativistic thinking in the social sciences

Summary

Some of the issues raised by the postmodern, anti-positivist critique of the notion of objectivity are not new. The problem, for instance, of the influence exerted by the researcher's values and/or conceptual tools on a theory's empirical findings has a long history, and has been tackled, quite adequately I think, by such scholars as Weber and Elias (Weber, 1925/1978: 24–36, 285ff; Hekman, 1983; Elias, 1987a). Other problems, however, to the extent that they are part of the postmodern emphasis on the symbolic construction of all social phenomena, while not entirely new, raise new issues regarding relativism, and therefore deserve more extensive treatment. I begin with a brief reference to the more conventional questioning of the notion of objectivity.

Objectivity and the issue of mediation

Postmodern theorists reject the idea of objectivity and ‘value neutrality’ as it is formulated in positivist accounts of the social sciences. They reject the notion that social researchers can orient themselves to their field of study in a value-neutral, detached manner. They argue that it is not only values (political, ethical and aesthetic), but also the vocabularies used (lay or specialized) that mediate between the researcher and the research object. Therefore researchers with different values, different lay idioms and different specialized conceptual tools must inevitably end up with different interpretations and explanations of the phenomena they study.