“Objectivity is of the essence of science, just as subjectivity is one of the essence of art. Natural scientists are natural objectivists ... But it is harder to scientific, hence objective, about human affairs than about the nature. (...) This is also why we often mistake opinions for data, value judgements for descriptive statements, and prophecies for forecasts.” (d Mario Bunge)
“The work of the logical positivists became known in the English-speaking world through the writings of A.J. Ayer and others, and it was the source of B. F. Skinners’s view that psychology should restrict itself to the study of behaviour. For only behaviour is observable.”
“To philosophers, positivism (including behaviourism) is a form of empiricism; and empiricism in turn is one of the two forms of foundationalist philosophy. The problems faced by positivism are merely variants of the problems that have surfaced with respect to foundationalism . The following schematic should make the relationships clear. “
Earlier this century philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein or Karl Popper argued that “observation is theory-laden: What the observer seen and what he or she doesn’t see (...)” the judgement of the observer will also be influenced by the background knowledge and the life experiences of the observer him/herself like “assumptions, hypotheses or even conceptual schemes that the observer harbours.”
It is worth exploring the concept of truth; I think it is safe concluding that the truth is rather something that people se as their truth and not always what is factually proven. And therefore we can say that there are multiple realities, individual truths that are created through individual beliefs and backgrounds. However we know that the belief and the truth are two completely separate things.
Charles Sanders Peirce defined the truth as “that upon which a person is prepare to act” and this seems like quite a logical perception of individual truth as people do act on things that they believe to be true as well even though that truth may not be a proven fact.
Lets take an example from 1492. Many people believed that our globe is flat and Colubcus believed it was spherical. This belief of spherical globe, even though as we know being a fact, was not taken as a general true fact until it was proven. And since travelling proved it to be so, it was then taken as a general proven truth - a fact. Also “because people strongly believe or imagine the world to be certain way, it has become colloquial to refer to ‘their ‘ realities.”
All the quotes above and inspiration are from:
Positivism and Educational Research by D.C. Phillips and Nicolas C. Burbules, (2000)
