ant wrote:If it's relative, why bother even saying "science is objective"?
Being close to objectivity is not the definition of Objectivity.
One of the connotations of objectivity is to do with a gradient. We don't shoehorn definitions into what we want them to be, we use what people understand. The people in this context are philosophers. That something is relative does not mean that it is necessarily subjective.
I take my information from the SEP rather than a college course, so there may be a more authoritative source. But I don't have access to it. From the SEP's article on
Scientific Objectivity: "
This article discusses several proposals to characterize the idea and ideal of objectivity in such a way that it is both strong enough to be valuable, and weak enough to be attainable and workable in practice."
This directly implies the notion of objectivity that is not a dichotomy, but is instead flexible. Read the article from top to bottom, the notion is all throughout.
Wouldnt laws of nature need to be analytic to be True?
True with a capital T? Why not accept them as provisionally true, and avoid the false certainty that comes with a capital T?
Data is constantly being interpreted and reinterpreted. It is not a fixed point of reference.
it may anchor us temporarily. But it does not anchor us in place.
And what we are mapping is in flux.
That the data isn't fixed doesn't mean it is free-floating either. There is a margin for error between different scientific values that are used to interpret the data. If you value accuracy when looking at the map rather than simplicity, the dots will be in slightly different places. But not grossly different. With the data comes a measure of objectivity, even when value-laden.
From the SEP:
"According to the second understanding, science is objective in that, or to the extent that, the processes and methods that characterize it neither depend on contingent social and ethical values, nor on the individual bias of a scientist."
Value-laden interpretations are laden with epistemic(cognitive) values, such as simplicity, accuracy, scope, coherence, etc.
Theory laden issues are worse, from my understanding of the concept. This would be looking at the map and it's points, and assuming it represents a territory in Russia rather than the US. This is always a concern, and traces back to not only the problems Kuhn discusses with paradigms, but even the problem of induction.
This is why I mentioned Quine, because not only did he criticize science in the areas you mention, but he offered something of a solution to the idea that we can't justify anything if everything is relative. The web of belief as it applies to the map analogy would consider the point we're looking at on a larger map, as it relates to many other countless maps.
At least in this sense, the theory-laden issues are reduced and more localized. Which means that like the issues with value-laden interpretations, there is objectivity in the sense that our margin for error is limited as time goes on(verisimilitude). Not the ideal, Objectivity, because that is impossible to achieve scientific or otherwise.