Varieties of Subjectivity
Recent work in analytic epistemology, philosophy of language and of science has brought back forward the distinction between the objective and the subjective (MacFarlane forthcoming), ( Gallison & Daston 2007), (Wright 2003), ( Kölbel 2003, 2000), ( Daston 2001), (Searle 1995). As Searle (1995, 8) has clearly stated, the distinction works at different levels and as ( Daston 2001) has also stressed, these senses have historically evolved. In the following section, I will offer a taxonomy of senses and applications of the distinction, trying to make justice to the contemporary literature on the topic, but also necessarily diverging from all previous accounts of this polysemy . My starting point is Daston’s claim that our current understanding of the distinction is based on the identification of particular subjective factors , like perspectives, linguistic conventions, psychological architecture, etc. These facts...