This paper investigates how unsupervised machine learning methods might make hermeneutic interpretive text analysis more objective in the social sciences. Through a close examination of the uses of topic modeling—a popular unsupervised approach in the social sciences—it argues that the primary way in which unsupervised learning supports interpretation is by allowing interpreters to discover unanticipated information in larger and more diverse corpora and by improving the transparency of the interpretive process. This view highlights that unsupervised modeling does not eliminate the (...) researchers’ judgments from the process of producing evidence for social scientific theories. The paper shows this by distinguishing between two prevalent attitudes toward topic modeling, i.e., topic realism and topic instrumentalism. Under neither can modeling provide social scientific evidence without the researchers’ interpretive engagement with the original text materials. Thus the unsupervised text analysis cannot improve the objectivity of interpretation by alleviating the problem of underdetermination in interpretive debate. The paper argues that the sense in which unsupervised methods can improve objectivity is by providing researchers with the resources to justify to others that their interpretations are correct. This kind of objectivity seeks to reduce suspicions in collective debate that interpretations are the products of arbitrary processes influenced by the researchers’ idiosyncratic decisions or starting points. The paper discusses this view in relation to alternative approaches to formalizing interpretation and identifies several limitations on what unsupervised learning can be expected to achieve in terms of supporting interpretive work. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss and develop the risk account of scientific objectivity, which I have recently introduced, contrasting it to some alternatives. I then use the account in order to analyse a practice that is relatively common in anthropology, in the history of science, and in the sociology of scientific knowledge: withholding epistemic judgement. I argue that withholding epistemic judgement on the beliefs one is studying can be a relatively efficient strategy against collective bias in these fields. However, taking (...) into account the criticisms presented against the strategy, I also argue that it is a usable strategy only when the distance between the researchers and their ideas, and the people and ideas being studied, is significant enough. (shrink)

AbsractIn this paper, we contribute to a growing literature in the philosophy of social science cautioning social scientists against context-independent claims to objectivity, by analyzing the recent proposal of a new Basic Index of Gender Inequality by Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary. Despite the many internal problems with BIGI, Stoet and Geary have had some success in positioning the index as an important corrective to the way in which gender inequality is measured in mainstream metrics like the Global Gender Gap (...) Index. We argue that this success is facilitated at least in part by the failure of GGGI’s proponents to adequately justify the methodological choices underpinning the index in relation to the context in which the index’s findings are intended to be used. In so doing, the authors of GGGI oversell the objectivity of the metric’s assessment of the state of global gender inequality—and it is this overselling that allows Stoet and Geary to present BIGI as a metric that corrects what they claim are systematic biases within GGGI. The case of BIGI and GGGI, we argue, suggests that the kind of epistemic modesty exhibited by recent operational approaches to objectivity is particularly important for social research on highly politically contested topics. (shrink)

The effect of values on science has created the fear for some philosophers of science that the main mission of science, namely objectivity, will be undermined. The traditional conception of objectivity, which depends on metaphysical objectivity, has been the correspondence of the mental image with external and independent reality; but with the difficulty of achieving it, as well as the diversity of modern epistemological foundations, newer interpretations of it have been proposed that also affect the value-ladennessof science. Linking objectivity with (...) the element of trust or epistemological perfection or purity of unscientific values and personal tendencies are examples of these approaches. Objectivity means the conformity of science with external reality and once the basis is clarified as to whether such a thing is possible or not, the method of achieving this ideal and its ills are discussed. This objectivity includes two stages of process and outcome, and scientific results will be objective if the process of science is objective and free of non-objective factors and tools. (shrink)

In his text ‘Wissenschaft als Beruf’, Max Weber associates the understanding of science as a vocation with the scientist’s ability to present the audience with ‘inconvenient facts’. He argues that this presentation provides a ‘full understanding of the facts’ and overcomes any personal value judgment. This overcoming refers to Weber’s understanding of scientific objectivity. I propose to interpret this understanding in the context of contemporary studies of public science communication. I pose the question, ‘Should scientists objectively present inconvenient facts to (...) the public or should they neglect objectivity in science-society communication?’ I will start by legitimizing this question in the context of contemporary discussions on public science communication. To answer this question I will then use Heather Douglas’s observations addressing irreducible complexity of objectivity as a conceptual framework. I will briefly describe, with some modifications, this idea in relation to Weber’s representation of ‘inconvenient facts’. I then will continue by referencing discussions concerning scientist’s norms in public science communication and relate them to the formulations of objectivity above. In conclusion, I will offer an explanation of why the objectivity in Weber’s interpretation remains relevant to regulate contemporary public science communication. (shrink)