Causation and the postmodern critique of objectivity

Abstract

Advocates of what are loosely called interpretive, critical, and now postmodern theories reject the possibility of objective knowledge and instead assert the subjectivity of knowable phenomena. According to their critique, facts and realities are socially constructed and politically negotiated, and therefore subjective rather than objective. The concept of objectivity itself is taken to be a tool of hegemonic discourse, and science is just politics by other means. I argue, however, that the critique of objectivity mirrors the scientism it rejects by conflating two very different types of facts and realities. I conclude that the critique is correct for one of those types, but not the other. My basic argument is that the critique of objectivity and the social and cultural scientism it rejects both err in making a simple category mistake that is founded in turn on an empirically incorrect, Humean account of causation, and that as a result, they both err in taking objectivity fundamentally to be a matter of inter-subjective agreement. I draw two primary implications from this argument. First, the critique of objectivity helps to undermine fatally attempts to construct an objective science of ‘social facts’ and ‘social reality’. Second, the critique is irrelevant to carrying out an objective science of physical facts and physical reality. Replacing the mistaken Humean account of causation with an explicitly physical account, I develop a simple litmus test that anthropologists and other researchers can use to determine whether any particular assertion makes an objective claim and is therefore vulnerable to the test of experience. Finally, I apply the litmus test to a very brief survey of anthropological theory, and then in more detail to current debates on ethnic identity, sacred sites, and anthropological authority.