IV. Longino and heidegger on objectivity

Abstract

H. E. Longino maintains ('Scientific Objectivity and the Logics of Science’, Inquiry, Vol. 26 [1983], pp. 85–106) that scientific objectivity is constituted jointly by the intersubjective criticism and corroboration of the community of scientists, and by ‘the formal requirement of demonstrable evidential relevance . . . independent of and external to any particular research program or scientific theory’. Not only do these two constituents of objectivity seem incompatible, but several additional problems arise from her account, the main one of which is her failure to recognize that background assumptions are of several kinds, operative on several levels. An alternative version of objectivity, grounded in Heidegger's analytic of Dasein, is briefly offered.