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A Sociological Theory of Objectivity1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

David Bloor
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Extract

I want to propose to you a theory about the nature of objectivity—a theory which will tell us something about its causes, its intrinsic character, and its sources of variation. The theory in question is very simple. Indeed, it is so simple that I fear you will reject it out of hand. Here is the theory: it is that objectivity is social. What I mean by saying that objectivity is social is that the impersonal and stable character that attaches to some of our beliefs, and the sense of reality that attaches to their reference, derives from these beliefs being social institutions.

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 17: Objectivity and Cultural Divergence , March 1984 , pp. 229 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1984

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Footnotes

1

With the exception of section (v), which has been considerably expanded, what follows is the text of the lecture given to the Royal Institute of Philosophy on 22 October 1982.

References

2 Popper, K. R., Objective Knowledge. An Evolutionary Approach, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 154Google Scholar (hereafter abbreviated to O.K.).

3 O.K. 154, 166.Google Scholar

4 According to the Lewis principles, for all formulae a and b, a tautologically implies b if a is a counter-tautology. This might be taken to mean that if world three contains contradictory propositions it contains all propositions, and so all further evolution and development of its content will be impossible. It will, so to speak, be full and complete and hence static. This objection has been put forward by J. Cohen, review of The Self and its Brain by Popper, K. and Eccles, J., Mind 88 (1979), 301–304, 302.Google Scholar

5 For a fuller statement of the following arguments see: Bloor, D., ‘Popper's Mystification of Objective Knowledge’, Science Studies, 4 (1974), 65–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This is an essay review of Objective Knowledge. For critical reaction to this line of interpretation, see the discussions by Dolby, R., Meynell, H. and Wojick, D., Science Studies, 4 (1974), 187–195CrossRefGoogle Scholar; De Witt, L., Social Studies of Science, 5 (1975), 201–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Grove, J., ‘Popper “Demystified”. The Curious Ideas of Bloor (and some others) about World 3’Google Scholar, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 10 (1980), 173–180.Google Scholar In what follows I address a few of the more important objections. I should emphasize at the outset that my reading of Popper's theory is not meant to be true to Popper, 's intentions.Google Scholar Indeed, it directly cuts across those intentions. It is amusing to find references to these subjective intentions used as an argument against my reading by Popper's objectivist defenders.

6 I am pleased to find that I am not alone in giving a sociological reading to what Popper says. Quinton, for example, says: ‘Objective knowledge in this sense is just one more social institution…’ Unfortunately he does not develop this passing remark. Quinton, A., ‘Sir Karl Popper: Knowledge as an Institution’, Encounter 41, No. 6 (1973), 33–36.Google Scholar

7 O.K. 155.Google Scholar

8 Examination of Popper's examples on p. 110 of O.K. bears out this interpretation.

9 O.K. 164.Google Scholar

10 O.K. 163.Google Scholar

11 O.K. 121.Google Scholar

12 O.K. 155.Google Scholar

13 I am, of course, paraphrasing Wittgenstein's attack on Platonism as presupposing the very competence that it is meant to explain. See Wittgenstein, L., Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1964), Part I, section 3.Google Scholar

14 This theory often takes the form of the claim that meaning (e.g. the meaning of the logical constants) is the source of validity. For a devastating, though often misunderstood, attack on this claim see Prior, A. N., ‘The Runabout Inference Ticket’, Analysis 21 (1960), 38–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a further discussion, including a discussion of the misunderstandings, see Barnes, B. and Bloor, D., ‘Relativism, Rationalism and the Sociology of Knowledge’, Rationality and Relativism, Hollis, M. and Lukes, S. (eds) (Oxford; Blackwell, 1982), 21–47Google Scholar, cf. especially 40–46.

15 I should emphasize that by a ‘convention’ I do not mean a verbal maxim or rule but a non-verbal and pre-verbal pattern of behaviour and judgment.

16 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967)Google Scholar, Part I, section 201. The sociological importance of this is brought out in Kripke, S., ‘Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposition’, Perspectives on Wittgenstein, Block, I. (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 238–312Google Scholar; and in Bloor, D., Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1984).Google Scholar

17 The policy of sustaining a theory in the face of repeated difficulties, rather than treating the difficulties as refuting instances is, of course, commonplace in science. The classic account of science based around this idea is in Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1962).Google Scholar The particular example that I have used is described, though not very sympathetically, in Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science, Conant, I. J. and Nash, L. (eds), (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966), 67–115.Google Scholar

18 Lakatos calls this the policy of ‘monster barring’. See Lakatos, I., Proofs and Refutations (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a sociological reading of Lakatos's work see Bloor, D., ‘Polyhedra and the Abomination of Leviticus: Cognitive Styles in Mathematics’, Essays in the Sociology of Perception, Douglas, M. (ed.), (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), 191–218.Google Scholar

19 ‘Apprehending a general patttern of what is right and necessary in social relations is the basis of society: this apprehension generates whatever a priori or set of necessary causes is going to be found in nature.’ Douglas, M., Implicit Meanings. Essays in Anthropology (London; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 281.Google Scholar

20 As well as Implicit Meanings (above) see, for example, Douglas, M., Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, Routledge, 1963)Google Scholar; Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (Harmondsworth; Penguin, 1973)Google Scholar; Cultural Bias, Occasional Paper No.34 (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1978).

21 Hill, C., The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975).Google Scholar

22 The idea that to worship god is to worship one's own social collectivity, and that the soul is really the social self is, of course, straight out of Durkheim, E., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Swain, J. (trans.) (New York: Collier Books, 1961, first French edn, 1912).Google Scholar

23 See Barnes, B., Interests and the Growth of Knowledge, (London: Routledge, 1977)Google Scholar and Shapin, S., ‘Social Uses of Science’, The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the Historiography of Eighteenth-century Science Rousseau, G. S. and Porter, R. (eds), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 93–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a valuable survey and bibliography which will serve as an ideal introduction to the present state of scholarship in the sociology of knowledge, see Shapin, S., ‘History of Science and its Sociological Reconstructions’, History of Science xx (1982), 157–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 See, for example, Jacob, J. R., ‘Boyle's Atomism and the Restoration Assault on Pagan Naturalism’, Social Studies of Science 8 (1978), 211–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Jacob, M. C., The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976).Google Scholar For a fuller bibliography see Shapin, , 1982Google Scholar, above.

25 Richards, J., ‘The Reception of a Mathematical Theory: Non-Euclidean Geometry in England, 1868–1883’, Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture, Barnes, B. and Shapin, S. (eds) (London: Sage, 1979), 143–166.Google Scholar

26 See, for example, Turner, F. M., ‘The Victorian Conflict between Science and Religion: a Professional Dimension’, Isis lxix (1978), 356–376CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jacyna, L. S., Scientific Naturalism in Victorian Britain: An Essay in the Social History of Ideas, unpubl. Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh (1980).Google Scholar

27 The discussion after the lecture drew to a close with a philosopher expressing the following sentiment: there might be things wrong with Platonism, but at least it does justice to the fact that when we formulate a proposition there is such a thing as getting it right or getting it wrong FULL STOP. The theory I am proposing says that the termination of dispute and doubt is itself a social process. We have, so to speak, the institution of the FULL STOP. This idea is central to Wittgenstein's late work: that doubt and justification alike come to an end with conventions and a form of life. It is also the idea that is central to the work of the ethnomethodologists. They express the point by saying that the job of repairing indexicality can never be completed. In the idiom of philosophy the point may be re-expressed by saying that all knowledge claims are ‘philosophical’, i.e. open to dispute. There are only sceptical solutions to sceptical doubts. When we have discovered how we live with the permanent possibility of scepticism, and how and why the possibility is sometimes exploited and sometimes overridden, then we will have understood the social nature of objectivity.