metonymy4u

Humans seem to frequently focus on differences between “objective” and “subjective.” For example, the “hard” sciences like physics and mathematics are often seen as more “objective” than “soft” sciences like sociology or psychology. Frequently I think this is ascribed to the fact that data in physical sciences is seen as precisely quantifiable whereas data in the social sciences is seen to depend on “observational judgments.” Take, for example, the measurement of the speed of light and the measurement of depression. The physicist might claim that precise instrumental observations yield exact numerical data about the speed of light and that this process is much less subject to “bias” or “error” as a human being gathering observations about a person’s affect and behavior. And yet the psychiatric mental status exam has been shown to have a high degree of reliability (inter-rater reproducibility). And so the claim to objectivity comes down to a claim of greater validity. And validity, as we all know, can never be proven. What I think we are overlooking is the fact that in both cases the performance of the behaviors we call science is dependent on a community of like-minded observers who have all trained themselves to see the world in similar ways. The physicist with her instruments is simply following different “rules” than the psychologist with her “subjective” terminology. By that I mean that the physicist has simply been conditioned by a different set of discriminative stimuli. Why on earth would we simply assume that one set of stimuli is, a priori, more valid than any other? The distinction between subjective and objective is, to my way of thinking, itself just one more set of interesting events in a distinctive language game, a game which we can choose to play or not. What I think is unfortunate about our ignorance of the principles of psychology and learning is that we fail to solve problems that have consequences like the recent events in Newtown, CT.