Moral Objectivity (1)

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A dialogue between the philosopher Karl Popper and a salesgirls at a bakery (apocryphal):

— All knowledge is conjectural knowledge.

— That you know for sure, right? 

Dialog zwischem dem Philosophen Karl Popper und der Verkäuferin in einer Bäckerei:

— Alles Wissen ist nur Vermutungswissen.

— Das wissen Sie aber. 

Dialohg zwieschn dehm Filosohfn Koal Bopper (Österreichisch) und de Fekäuferin innerre Backstubb (Pfälzisch)

— Ohles Wiessn iss nua Feamuhtungswiessn. (Österreichischer Akzent)

— Unn dess wisse Se abbeh, (Pfälzischer Akzent)

Science Is Not "Objective I" — Science Is "Objective II" and So Is Ethics

Are moral judgements "merely" subjective? Is objectivity a feature reserved to science and unknown in ethics? If so, why should the supposed difference matter? 

My tentative answer: ultimately, what objectivity ("objective II") means is that we humans, in contrast to other animals, are capable of making our thoughts and inner subjective experience the object of empathy, comment and evaluation by other humans.

That turns out to be a powerful advantage over other animals in terms of learning more about and instrumentalising our environment.

But that by itself does not make objectivity ("objective I") what it appears to be in accounts of crude popularisation: indubitable knowledge, unassailable truth.  

In fact, to all intents and purposes, most of our knowledge of the experienceable world seems to be provisional, subject to revision.

We do not have a general criterion by which we would be able to discern truth from non-truth. We have to find out case by case—each time anew—adapting our methods of corroboration to changing circumstances and elusive evidence.

There is no such thing as an algorithm detecting truth whenever it is to be had.

We do not have recourse to a truth-finding machine, automatically sucking up "the truth of the matter" subsequent to having cleansed it—fully and for good—from untruthful dust and debris.

We can assure ourselves only of verisimilitude (a similarity to truth), for there is no guarantee that observation-based conclusions may not one day be compromised by new refuting evidence, or that we might discover faults in our reasoning and contrive better conceptualisations that overturn facts and theories we had held to be certain.

We tend to underestimate the extent to which modern science is controversial, uncertain, open-ended, capable of pluralistic accounts, and based on value-judgements—on this latter point soon more.

We tend to focus on the stable results of science, disregarding the huge volume of contested and unsettled science and the long trail of discarded chunks of once "certain knowledge."

So, is science "objective"? If by the term we mean "irrefutable" ("objective I"), then the answer is a resounding "no"!

Were we to think science a repository of irrefutable truths, strangely, we would find ourselves in the intellectual company of crocodiles, who probably think they know all there is to know. After all, their "omniscience" has worked well for their species.

Are we better off, feeling more uncertain about our knowledge than do crocodiles about theirs?

We surely are. Being curious, which implies uncertainty about our environment, is part of human nature just as predator teeth are part of  a crocodile's nature. We would probably be unhappy without the ability to indulge our curiosity and the sense of uncertainty that drive us, and it is a certainty that we would perish if we lost our human intelligence, for it has evolved to make us survive.

Continued here.