Reading Questions for Longino’s “Values and Objectivity”

Due Date: 10/6

According to Longino, in what two senses is science thought to be objective and how are they related? On which sense of objectivity will she focus?

What is the context of discovery/context of justification distinction and what philosophical work does it do?

What is positivism? What is contextualism? (glossary may help)

1. Immediately after asking the question which she will try to answer, Longino claims “it is important to distinguish between objectivity as a characteristic of scientific method and objectivity as a characteristic of individual scientific practitioners” (173). She then claims that both positivists and contextualists conflate these senses of objectivity, leading both to an overly individualistic view of science. Explain how she sees this happening in each case (i.e., that of the positivists and that of the contextualists).

What are the three aspects of the social character of science (from Grene) which Longino sees herself as expanding upon?

2. What various considerations does Longino raise to argue for the collective/social character of science? What does she see as the function of this social/collective character?

In what two senses is science logically public, and how do they enable criticism and help promote objectivity?

3. Longino distinguishes evidential from conceptual criticism, then divides conceptual criticism into three different types. Explain these distinctions. Which type of conceptual criticism does she see as “crucial for the problem of objectivity” (178)? Why and how does it play this crucial role?

4. Contrast Longino’s account of how objectivity is possible in science with (a) the positivistic view of how objectivity is possible and (b) the contextualist view of why objectivity is absent.

5. What does Longino mean by transformative criticism, and why is it important to objectivity? What four criteria necessary for achieving transformative discourse? And what four factors can inhibit criticism and reduce the objectivity of a scientific community?