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p.4 Objectivity... has to do not with the subject matter of a claim but with its justification. It pivots on the way the claim is substantiated and supported - namely without the introduction of any personal biases or otherwise distortive individual idiosyncrasies, preferences, predilections, etc.
p.4 Objectivity calls for not allowing the indications of reason, reasonableness, and good common sense to be deflected by "purely subjective" whims, biases, prejudices, preferences, etc. Accordingly, objectivity always strives for the sensible resolution, while subjectivity gives rein to temper and lets personal inclination have its way.
p.5 Objectivity is not necessarily detached from the issue of appearance. A perfectly viable way to objectivity proceeds by the consideration of how things should appear to me, how they would appear to me if matters went well - if conditions were right in terms of external circumstances and personal reactions.
p.8 To strive for objectivity is to seek to put things in such a way that not just kindred spirits but virtually anyone can see the sense of it.
p.8 Objectivity... is a matter of doing... what is appropriate.
p.9 For a belief, action, or evaluation to qualify as rational, the agent must (in theory at least) be in a position to "give an account" of it on whose basis others can see that "it is only right and proper" for him to resolve the issue that way.
p.11 To be objective in one's proceedings is to do what any sensible person would do in one's place. The resolution of an issue is objective if it is arrived at without the introduction of any resources... that would not be deemed as acceptable in the circumstances by any rational and reasonable individual.
p.11 Consider an example... Have I acted rationally? ...But why, exactly? Well - because a long story can correctly be told about what I have done, a story in which all of the following play a significant role: my well-evidentiated beliefs... my sensible preference for... my custom of doing what I effectively can... The whole chain... is part and parcel of a sound rationale for my action.
p.16 In cultivating rationality one will, accordingly, care for what is convincing to others... If I care for objectivity, then only those things should be convincing to me that would be convincing to others... we must see it as incumbent on ourselves to put what we maintain in a way that others (insofar as reasonable) would be hard put to deny.
p.17 rationality carries objectivity in its wake: the universality and impersonality of reason validate the pursuit of objectivity in direct consequence.
p.18 the essence of objectivity lies in its factoring out of one's deliberations personal predilections, prejudices, idiosyncrasies, and the like that would stand in the way of intelligent people's reaching the same result.
p.36 Reason urges the intelligent cultivation of appropriate ends.
p.44 evaluations should be supported by good reasons rather than by appeal to the mere customs of the group - let alone individual likes and dislikes.
p.45 Objectivity calls for putting aside one's idiosyncratically personal and affective predilections and inclinations, by doing what any reasonable person would do in one's place. It requires that we do what sensible people at large would agree to as being appropriate in the circumstances.
p.48 the only really meaningful consensus is one that pivots not on what people do happen to agree on, but on what they should agree on... Consensus turns on what people do think: objectivity on what they ought to think
p.51 The inconsistent "consensus" yielded by majority opinion is not a rational one. It is perfectly clear that consensus offers us no universally safe route to truth.
p.51 The argumentation at issue demonstrates that when, in situations of choice, several inherently plausible requirements are set for forming a collective group consensus from the distributive preferences of individuals, then no rationally viable process of consensus formation will be available at all.
p.54 We do - and should - do the best we can to achieve an appropriate answer, and consensuality is not determinative here because the community is not always right.
p.54 The bottom line of these deliberations is that consensus - actual real-world agreement among people - affords no failproof guarantee of rational appropriateness and is not an indispensable component of the demand for objectivity.
p.71 We have no choice to pursue the truth by way of cultivating our truth; we have no direct access to truth unmediated by the epistemological resources of rational inquiry.
p.73 rational inquiry aims at providing implementable information about our natural and artificial environments - information that we can use to orient ourselves cognitively and practically in the world.
p.75 A fetish for measurement is astir among our contemporaries. We worship at the altar of statistics: the penchant for quantities is a salient characteristic of contemporary Western culture... It is often said that quantification provides a high-road to objectivity in science and rational inquiry in general... All the same, there are problems here. For quantification is no guarantor of objectivity, simply because numbers, even robustly determined ones, may in fact fail to be effectively meaningful.
[JLJ - 'Numbers' in themselves can represent a metric of some kind, but just not necessarily one that is appropriate or useful in any way for 'going on.' A metric that is not meaningful to you might in fact be meaningful to me or to others. An economist might find it useful for predicting the economy.]
p.76 quantities... Some actually effect specifications (in at least estimates) of the measurable features of things. But others are simply meaningless numbers.
[JLJ - Yes, perhaps "meaningless" in determining how to 'go on.' Be careful what you call 'meaningless', Mr. Rescher. I find your work 'Epistemic Logic' to be totally and completely meaningless.]
p.76 A measurement, after all, has to be a quantitative characterization of some meaningfully descriptive facet of reality, as opposed to one that is arbitrary and uninformative.
p.77 Actually to measure something is to affix a numerical yardstick to some quantitative parameter that has its operative foothold in the world's scheme of things
[JLJ - Yes, we measure because the result will help us (in part) determine what to do next, how to 'go on.']
p.77 Measurement must, ideally, represent an objective, well-defined quantitative aspect of the qualitative makeup of things in the real world.
With a genuine measurement two questions arise:
- What is it that one is measuring? (the object question)
- How is it that one is measuring what is at issue? (the process question)
[JLJ - Measurement is most effective as part of a scheme to 'go on.' I can measure many things, accurately in fact, that tell me nothing about how to 'go on' within my current predicament. We can spend only so much time doing this before we need to go back to measuring the things that impact how we decide to 'go on.']
p.79 It is clear that we need a cogent way of distinguishing between meaningless quantities and genuine measurements. But it is far from clear how we are to draw this distinction.
[JLJ - Find a successful business. Chances are, in one of their processes that they use to provide products/services to customers, they use tricks that work, that involve quantizing something in a meaningful way, then proceeding on some kind of procedure. Since Mr. Rescher does not appear to value strategy or practically effective schemes in general, as ways of 'going on', it is clear why he is perplexed.]
Some numbers can be acknowledged as measurements because, like weight and distance, they are paradigmatic of the very concept. Others are clearly not measurements because they violate one or another of the necessary conditions of the conception.
p.80 reliance on numbers brings in its wake a host of problems of its own. For one dangerous thing about numbers is that small errors in their use can produce large - and very unfortunate - consequences... the prospect of meaningless quantities should cause unease. For in this measurement-enchanted time of ours we constantly depend on quantitative information as a basis for decision-making and policy guidance.
p.80 Numbers do not always tell the story... The immense success of quantitative techniques in the mathematicizing sciences has misled people into thinking that quantification is the only viable road to objectively cogent information... Where is it written that numbers alone yield genuine understanding...?
[JLJ - Yes, but you have to start somewhere, and 'numbers,' especially those that are estimates of practically useful quantities in schemes for 'going on,' become useful starting points for understanding.]
p.81 There is nothing about quantities as such to indicate that they measure anything objective.
[JLJ - Yes but consider: data processed or interpreted from a sensor becomes information, and information that is timely, relevant and actionable becomes knowledge.]
p.89 To make a true contention about a thing we merely need to get one particular fact about it right. To have a true conception of the thing, on the other hand, we must get all of the important facts about it right... To assure the actual correctness of our conception of a thing we would have to be sure - as we very seldom are - that nothing further can possibly come along to upset our view of just what its important features are and just what their character is.
p.101 Real things are cognitively opaque - we cannot see to the bottom of them. Our knowledge of such things can thus become more extensive without thereby becoming more complete.
p.101 To be a real thing is to be something regarding which we can always, in principle, acquire more and possibly discordant information... In view of the cognitive opacity of real things, we must never pretend to a cognitive monopoly or cognitive finality... This recognition of incomplete information is inherent in the very nature of our conception of a "real thing." It is a crucial facet of our epistemic stance towards the real world to recognize that every part and parcel of it has features lying beyond our present cognitive reach - at any "present" whatsoever.
p.117 Rationality foregoes guarantees because it recognizes their unavailability. It is content to play the odds.
p.117 Objectivity eliminates sources of error.
p.118 Why do we follow the... recommendations of the [experts] of the day? ...we accept them as guides only because we see them as more promising than any of the identifiable alternatives that we are in a position to envision... We do not proceed with unalloyed confidence but with the resigned recognition that we can do no better at the moment.
[JLJ - It is your own fault if you blindly follow the recommendation of 'experts'. Society is full of accessible wisdom, including practical 'rules of thumb' that we can use to check and double check the opinions of experts. An expert should be able to explain a recommendation. We can also use a second opinion to check the recommendation of an expert.]
p.121 The only sort of justification of anything - rationality included - that is worth having at all is a rational one. That presupposition of rationality is not vitiating, not viciously circular, but essential, an unavoidable consequence of the self-sufficiency of cognitive reason.
[JLJ - I would argue that certain human actions that involve feeling and expression do not require justification. I see the concept of being as involving (in part) a reveling in the present. One does not need permission of any authority to revel.]
p.123 Failures of objectivity - wishful thinking, self-deception, bias-indulgence, and similar departures from the path of reason - may be convenient and even, in some degree, psychologically comforting. But they are ultimately indefensible.
p.123 In the final analysis, "Why be rational?" must be answered with the only rationally appropriate response: "Because rationality itself obliges us to be so."
[JLJ - A circular argument. A better response would have been: Because rational behavior, in the long run, offers us better chances for a successful coexistence in an unknowable, complex and changing social world. Rationality is perhaps your best defense against the lures and traps of the modern world, and the best refuge from the schemes and large-scale social engineered plans of others. One should demand and expect a rational justification from others, and from all aspects of one's society.]
p.127 After all, merely expressing an attitude or declaring a preference does not state or claim anything; only contentions (assertions) manage to state or claim. Expressing one's sentiments just does not come to claiming something to be the case, be it factually or evaluatively.
p.161 Every free act of an intelligent agent has wider ramifications.
p.173 Rationality and its accompanying objectivity, accordingly, do not require putting values aside. Objectivity is not a matter of value disconnection; it is a matter of evaluative appropriateness.
p.175 In an oft-cited passage in Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote:
We deliberate not about ends but about means... They [JLJ - the expert professionals cited previously by Aristotle] assume the end and consider how and by what means it is to be attained; and if it seems to be produced by several means they consider by which it is most easily and best produced...
This sort of thinking that Aristotle has in view here - deliberation about efficient means for realizing preestabilshed ends - is unquestionably important in human affairs.
[JLJ - This is the closest Rescher comes to considering the importance of strategy - "deliberation about efficient means for realizing preestablished ends." In a complex, changing world with competing agents, you must be strategic about reaching contested ends.]
p.176 The long and short of it is that there are two very different sorts of deliberations: cognitive deliberations regarding matters of information (encompassing the issue of the efficiency of means), and evaluative deliberations regarding matters of value (encompassing the issue of the merit of ends).
p.186 Rationality is a matter of the intelligent pursuit of appropriate ends... Rationality demands that our beliefs, evaluations, and actions should "make sense."
[JLJ - That may be, but it is not specific, as in it does not (specifically) tell you what to do next in a complex or changing world. Using that definition, some of human activity likely qualifies as 'irrational' since the complexity and change inherent in our world does not often allow us determine, let alone keep, our 'aim' on an 'appropriate end.' I would say that 'being' is (broadly) a reveling in the present predicament, while visited by ghosts of the past and premonitions of the future. Rationality is instead for me a choice for determining how to 'go on,' in order to obtain a reasonable payback in the future from investments made (of time and effort) in the present. Due to the complexity and change of the life world, such a choice cannot be made without practical, ethical and strategic considerations.]
p.192 Rational valuation calls for value ascriptions rooted in the thought of an intelligent, unbiased mind that adequately reflects on the nature and ramifications of items at issue... It is a matter of how duly informed, unbiased, and sensible individuals normally respond to objects in standardized conditions.
p.195-196 The value of an item is no more accessible to perception than is the ownership of a piece of property. In neither case can mere inspection suffice to determine the issue... The crucial fact is that value is not sense-perceptible but mind-judgmental: something to be determined not simply by observation of some sort but by reflective thought duly sustained by background information and suitably equipped with an awareness of principles.
p.202 Any viable approach to the theory of text interpretation must accordingly be normative... Sensible text interpretation is not a matter of anything-goes imaginative flights into the never-never world of free-floating fancy; it is tethered to the down-to-earth realities of the case imposed by rational standards of validity and appropriateness.
p.203 The crucial task of text interpretation is one of not merely examining possibilities but of evaluating them.
p.204 But who makes the rules of appropriateness? The answer is that they are... not something invented but rather something to be discovered by anyone who examines the range of relevant phenomena with sufficient care.
p.205 what a text is depends on its function, on what it sets out to do... The texts being of the author's making, we need to take the contexts of its production into account to determine what it actually is as a product... texts are produced with a view to their communicative mission; they are instruments of communication - of conveying information and inciting to action - even where the only "action" at issue is one of deliberation or discussion.
p.205-206 Texts have a bearing not only upon what we think but upon what we do: our actions and activities, our experiments and observations, our predictions and ventures at control.
p.206 insofar as texts are elements of a wider teleological domain, their adequate interpretation will pivot on this fact. The textual world is not self-contained, it is inextricably interconnected with the realm of action, activity, and living. And actions (even intellectual actions like understanding) can be more or less successful. Accordingly, we can evaluate our texts (representations) because they have a pragmatic dimension in the communicative domain.
p.208 In sum, then, the fact has to be recognized that texts come into being in relation to rather different sorts of aims and purposes. In particular, they can be made either for the transmission of information and ideas or for thought-provocation and the stimulation of the inventive imagination. And therefore two quite different "interpretive" enterprises can be at issue.
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