Objectivity

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• The traditional arguments for relativism start from the premise that things appear different to different people depending on a variety of circumstances, and that any attempt to decide between these different appearances depends on our having a criterion by which to judge them, which prompts the question where such a criterion could come from. Consider Aenesidemus’ argument concerning the colour of gold. We cannot ask what colour gold is, he argues, because the colour of a substance varies depending on what state it is in (gold is yellow when it is solid and white in powder form), what state the observer is in (whether, for example, the observer has jaundice), and what the intervening medium is (whether the substance is viewed in air or in water, through coloured transparent material, and ... (查看原文)

  Efkfra 2013-03-28 08:26:16

• In his Trust in Numbers, Porter explains how effective quantification has never been a matter simply of discovery, but always also of administration, hence of social and technological power. Quantitative objectivity is a form of standardization, the use of rules to confine and tame the personal and subjective. In other words, through quantification, a new realm has been created in which, rather than securing objectivity, objectivity has been created. The information has been marshalled in such a form that one can now raise questions of objectivity in a way that one could not have done before. Quantification has become a powerful tool for understanding a world that it has itself constructed. With the compilations of statistics and the introduction of targets, audits and league tables inevi... (查看原文)

  Efkfra 2013-04-07 14:24:43