Comment: On Objectivity Martin Landau The American Political Science Review, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Sep., 1972), 846-856. Stable URL: bttp//links jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0554%28197209%2966%3A3%3C846%3ACOO%3E2,0,CO%3B2-V The American Political Science Review is currently published by American Political Science Association. ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www.jstororg/about/terms.hml. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hup:/www jstor-org/journals/apsa.heml. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, STOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals, For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hupslwww jstor.org/ ‘Wed May 19 12:54:06 2004Comment: On Objectivity Martin Lanpau University of California, Berkeley While I thoroughly enjoyed reading Miller's paper—it is a very graceful presentation, Tam nevertheless left with a sense of disquiet. Tts strokes are so broad and its statements so sweeping, that it tends to gloss over a series of rather critical problems. And given its enor- ‘mous range of coverage, it becomes a virtual impossibility, in the space allowed me, to re- spond to each of the elements that I consider problematic. ‘One could, for example, raise question as to the imputed ‘relationship between logical posi- tivism and behavioralism, When the over- whelming emphasis that logical positivists have placed on formalized logics is taken account of, ‘SLi fair to say" that their influence on the be- hhavioral movement is a matter to be investi pated, There has been, of course, much discus- sion of science in general and, more particu- larly, of formalization and axiomatization by political scientists, but it is rather obvious that the bulk of behavioral research has exemplified a “barefoot empiricism.” It is only recently, with the advent of mathematics inio political science, that one observes a movement toward formal modes of explanation. Unless numbers are equated with logical positivism, the line be- tween it and behavioral research becomes rather tenuous. It was Graham Wallas who urged, in 1908, that we must learn to think in terms’ of statistical curves, and the National Conference on the Science of Politics in the 1920s was responding, not to the Vienna Cir- cle, but to the extensive use of “tests and mea- surements” during World War T; and the up- surge of survey research in the 1950s owed more to advances in research design and statis- tical technique than it did to Schlick, Carnap, Feigl and Hempel. It is also of interest that many “behavioralists"—even today, resist the “logical reconstruction” of formal models as arid and sterile, as for too distant from experi tence. The case could be made that the political scientists who fashioned behavioralism vastly ‘overestimated Bacon, ‘Or, one wonders why there is so much dis- cussion of phenomenology—and of what is haere selected to represent phenomenological re- searches—when the only studies that bear even Temotely on polities are those of Schutz, Gar- finkel, and company. T have no doubt that we shall "soon see some rather interesting re- searches along these lines and I have no hesita- suggesting that these will be strictly em- Iie, if they follow Schutz and Gar- pire nel ‘Or, how does it happen that the new “leading theory of knowedge™ aries at atime when an Intense power srugee going on in the ro- fesion? Here, I should have sesomed tht p= per which takes ite ce from Mannheim and The historicity of the mind would have otto Ghced a more specie consideration of the rela. tion between “Weologieal snd epistemalosical Giaims, There is more to the restive thrust than contemporary cspites inthe philosophy Bot above all, what I find most dstrbing i te lack of any sustained analysis of relate fn cbjstiviy n'a paper which fcetanly ad Ghessed to these themes. Accordingly 1 have ‘Shosen to center any remarks on these problems in the hope of stimulating» isusvon that may yet lead foward a solution of these. problems Too often it seems, we go around in circles My. fist comment offer some enti Millers use of the category “histone my Second isa consideration of relatiism=a doc tine which T think is entirely tenable my thi, digesion perhaps, Is designed to cor rect some impressions (in political science) of the Vienna Cirle; my fourth i a considertion, In detail of the concept of objectives and my final comment iva bret note of auton on the tse of Kuhns study as 3 leptimating agent. 1 beg off direct comment on Cunnel, Wali, Connoly, Kare, Surkin nd Tung because this Srould require another paper. Bot T have 2d Gressed some oftheir writings chewhere*Toso- far as Eaton is concerned, T agree that he has made eros (i) Av. preliminary comment on “Posi ism Historie and Politea!Taguiy,” Tish {eal attention tothe rather loos constriction Of the term historic,” Ax presented inthis essay, caries a "soft foeus"= it connotation {Sto difse as to give rise inevitably to ambigw- ity, An admission incidentally that historic isan ambiguous term does not by sel hep to Srity rather, it signals the eed for claren ‘Martin Lande, Political Theory and Polite Seix cencet Suuties in the Methodology of Politeal Inquiry ‘New York: Macmian. 1972) 8461972 tion, For concepts of this kind are a patent lia- bility in any domain of inquiry, especially as regards methodological problems, because they conduce to the indeterminate and the indefinite. Tt needs to be emphasized that the function of a Aefinition is exactly the opposite—to make @ class term, a category or concept definite Terms which have loose meanings, which are vague and ambiguous, generate the elasticity of equivocation. They allow for alternative and uncertain reactions, And this means that no amount of observation can settle a dispute. An- swers can never be clearer than the questions ‘which prompt them. “Moreover, diffused connotations tend also to be “noisy.” They frequently contain a confus- ing variety of characteristics, many of which are inconsistent with each other, many of which are unrelated to each other. The result is then the collection of a miscellany that one of- ten refers to as an “oversimplification.” (Paren- thetically, I should like to distinguish this type ‘of concept from one that is general or compre hensive: the mark of the latter is that it points to invariances—properties or relationships that seemingly diverse phenomena have in common without the clutter of incidental associations.) Oversimplification results in the clustering of s0 disparate a group of philosophers as are here assigned to the class “historicist,” thereby per- mitting a bypass of such profound differences as, for example, that between historical deter- rminism and historical relativism, A historical basic method of knowing is induct by “analysis of sense-data one can inductively laws reach the most general and objective of nature."? Further, the soft focus in e permits the confusion of relativism as an epi temological position and the distinctive empiri cal hypothesis known as the “historicity of the mind.” These are not necessarily connected, and one can find historical determinists (e.g. Engels and Marx) holding to the latter as they reject the former. One can even find Mannheim separating epistemological relativism from the empirical hypothesis that we have no choice bout to plagiarize the Zeitgeist—i.e., that social time, place, and circumstance condition our thought. This separation is not at all unusual fon the contrary, it must be made. And the rea- son, as I shall show below, is this: If the princi ple of epistemological relativism is correct, then the thesis of the historicity of the mind cannot *Narcyr Lubnicki, “Episemological Problems of Dialectical, Mater Synthase, 7 (1988), 292. Objective” inthe Leninist (materialist) sens Comment: On Objectivity 847 be accepted as corret; it cannot even be de- Cided upon, ‘As a final note on Mr. Miller’ claifiati scheme, let me add the following? If an opposi tonto phenomealism,epstemolosca el: ism, and the historicity of the mind adit to the set (histories), ithe qualification for membership i the posession of all of these Properties, then we shall have to crt asgn- nent drasealy. And ifthe atibuton of any One’ of these i any single property admits the set then it shall have tobe enlarged ad ie Fini 1 may very well be wrong, but the only tay fo make sense of s0 motley collection of philosophers as Miler has asigned tothe cess Eston s to. sssume thet they sre unfed by some form of rejection of phenomenal — which would then take Otto Neorath a histor cit "These considerations bear dretly on Mi c's assertion that after a century of protracted Confit, histriism has vanquished postism and has become our leading theory of kaon flies I think tht this clams patel false spite the fat that postvism as undergone fone profound changes since the days of the Vienna Cirle, Nor has historic had very uch inldence on the shaping of contempo- ary approaches, Indeed the extcsm of the “hibtoriist" has received scant attention, only that necessary to point out thatthe relative theory is el-refuting. would have been more fermane to contemporary developments in the Philosophy of science had Miller hooked the These of the historicity of the mind to thone Philosophers. who. reject “presupposientss” Theories (as do” Hanson, "Feyerabend, and Kan) but this isan entirely diferent problem, fone that does not necessarily lad to relat ism that enjoins objectivity. Sich philosophers Sand apart from the. “perpeteal beginner” (Merteat-Poatys phrase) of phenomenoo tho, in following’ Husser?s. command, taker "Ao the things themselves” without preconcep- tion. For to Huser, phenomenology ss fo be a rigorous, purely descriptive stud), eminent Scientific in the most fundamental senee-—ond itis toward ths goal that metaphysis! specs tion ‘and. theoretical postulates were to be “bracketed.” His quarrel with the empiric turned on the hypothesis that experience” was far more varied, or complicated, or richer than the later would or could admit. But for this “stores i wat the things themselses that were to be the final arbiters Rejection of the Tosico (mathematical) -empiical model tn the Study of human behavior dd -not transform Hssel into a relativst, Relativism to him was,