Andrea Andiloro

Assignment for Seminar 3

Scientific Theory for Social Scientist
Use Webers and Connollys views on language to discuss objectivity in the social sciences. Can the
social sciences be objective? If so, how? What role does subjectivity have to play in social scientific
studies? How does Weber and Connolly discuss language with regards to the objectivity of the social
sciences?

The question surrounding objectivity and subjectivity in the Social Sciences has been a central one in
development of the discipline. Many authors have expressed their opinion and many different views
and perspectives have been brought forward, Max Webers and William Connolys among them.
For Weber the social sciences are inherently subjective, in the sense that the researcher will
always and necessarily subjectively decide what to research based on his or her own interests. There
might be some rough guidelines in what a scientist should research, in particular Weber speaks about
researching the great and historical culturally significant phenomena of ones period, but it appears clear
that the broader the cultural significance of one phenomena, the harder it is to reach an single
unambiguous result in the pursue of its research based on empirically collected data from different
scientists, thus affording a greater role to the single researchers interest (value-ideas). Transparency,
therefore, becomes of primary importance for a scientist. When approaching the research of a new
cultural phenomenon, one must clearly state why it was of interest to him or her, and when required to
research something (i.e. when a government requires social scientists what would be the best way to
reach a social policy goal), one must stick to the facts without giving any sort of value-judgment.
Value-judgements in particular are the domain of politics, and Weber warns us about the need to
maintain a clear demarcation between science and politics.
This is how Weber claims the social sciences to be ultimately objective, and in fact he never
questions their objectivity, merely pointing out their subjective elements. The presence of transparency
and the absence of value-judgments is the key, as long as these elements are respectively present and
absent, we can say we are being objective. Furthermore, Weber writes that any result is in fact
objective, if based on those premises, the subjectivity simply lying in the degree to which the result
might interest somebody else.

As much as I appreciate Webers defence of the personal interest of the researcher and his effort
to illustrate how the social sciences can be objective, I am not quite sure I agree with him on his
conclusions when describing the ideal-type. Weber invents this tool as a central part of his
methodology, and as a concept it is not as straightforward as it may seem at a first glance. According to
Weber, when describing any event of the past or any cultural phenomenon, we effectively create an
ideal-type, which we then use as a lens in our empirical observations. If we were to take the
institution of public school, for example, I might describe it as the State-run institution responsible
for the education of the offspring of the population living within the boundaries of said State. With
this definition I arbitrarily selected, based on my value-ideas, certain aspects of the phenomenon, while
excluding others. Some other scientist might very well develop a different ideal-type based on his own
value-ideas, since ideal-types are not a mirror of reality, but a representation of some of its aspects, and
different value-ideas might mean different highlighted aspects by different researchers. How can we
then use ideal-types for reaching objective results? Weber says that ideal-types are ideal in the strictly
logical sense of the term, in that we, by elaborating them, construct imaginary relationships, which are
plausibly motivated and objectively possible.
It appears clear how the words we choose in constructing ideal-types are of crucial importance.
If, in some areas, Weber admits that it is sufficient for the reader to have a feel for what the researcher
had in mind while writing a text, or that he or she can easily grasp the particular meaning of one word
from its context, in other instances Weber recognizes the need for the use of unambiguous concepts
systematically defined, but nevertheless, by adopting ideal-types as a minimum common
denominator, we can agree on what we mean, and the result of our research, though stemming from
subjective interest, can be said to reach objective results. I personally think that Webers argument
offers a series of interesting and certainly valuable perspectives and tools, namely the importance of
value-ideas and the ideal-type, but I found the conclusion on the supposed objectivity of the ideal-type
not truly convincing (or perhaps it is simply my limitation, not having been able to fully grasp Webers
conclusions). Connoly offers a point of view that I find more convincing (to a certain extent).
Connoly wrote extensively of the use of language and focused on essentially contested
concepts, which can be defined as those concepts whose proper use sparks inevitable and unending
debates, which cannot be settled by empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or logic alone. Examples of
these concepts are democracy, politics,art, among others. What he means is that these concepts
are inherently complex and several definitions of them can be given, each of these definitions
highlighting a different aspect of that concept. However, none of these definitions, which we could

identify as ideal-types, to use a Weberian term, chosen singularly is able to fully describe the richness
and detail of the concepts they refer to, effectively making it necessary to resort to the implementation
of other definitions as well, in order to give a somewhat fuller picture of the concept. Furthermore, the
definitions we give might very well include more contested concepts, leaving us in a never-ending
spiral of debate. We actively choose to use certain definitions arbitrarily, and in acting in such a way we
necessarily adopt a perspective that is both descriptive and normative at the same time. We are always
making value-judgments, to use Webers concept, when describing something, and Connoly does not
think it possible to maintain a descriptive-normative dichothomy, to the point that he writes that
claiming to be able to describe something using terms and vocabulary so inherently complex and
normatively heavy, while maintaining a descriptive objectivity, would be like eating a chicken salad
without the chicken. One simply cannot do it. Concepts, in Connolys view, necessarily have both a
descriptive and normative meaning, and scientists must be aware of that, unless they want their
research to be ultimately biased.
As a way to get out of this linguistic impasse, Connoly says we should resort to conventions,
since that is necessarily how we make sense of the communication we adopt everyday (he brings the
example of a person experiencing pride for the fact that the sky is blue, without any plausible
explanation or reason, which, while being logically possible, defies linguistic convention, therefore
rendering making sense of that utterance impossible). However, in order to describe social phenomena
(in Connolys example a political community) using a value-laden vocabulary, we must first understand
the conceptual system within which those social phenomena takes place.
I personally agree with Connolys position. It appears clear that to describe a concept like, for
instance, democracy, one cannot adopt a clear cut, simple and concise definition of it, on the
contrary, entire books should be written (and an endless number of them have been) to give a somewhat
acceptable description of democracy. This, however, does not mean that we should completely
disregard ideal types as a tool of research, quite the opposite, they can be extremely useful, especially
in historical comparative studies. One must nevertheless keep in mind Connolys ideas and realize that
the language he or she chooses carries with it a certain weight both in terms of description and, perhaps
more importantly, norms. I cannot disagree with Weber, then, having considered all the implications of
subjectivity and choice of language, that transparency is a must when doing research.
I found the post-modern position on language also quite interesting, with Lyotard speaking of
language-games, a type of discourse based on a series of rules which define their properties and their
uses, in a similar way to chess. More precisely, Lyortard identifies 3 rules: 1) the rules do not imply

their own legitimation, but are subjected to contract between the players; 2) if there are no rules, then
there is no game, and even the slightest modification of the rules changes drastically the nature of the
game. Furthermore, any word which doesnt follow the rules does not belong to the game; 3) every
word or utterance is a move in the game. Lyotard, therefore, identifies language as a field of
agonistics, where speaking means fighting/competing. What I found particularly interesting is that, in
his view, one can make a move for the mere pleasure of it, without necessarily having the intention of
winning the game in mind.
Lyotard speaks about language-games as part of a wider discourse that has to do with power,
legitimation, and authority, and delivers a pungent description of how the language-game of science is
legitimated by the metanarrative of human emancipation, which sees the human being as necessarily
striving towards wealth and education. Metanarratives (or better, the scepticism towards them), are a
central part of Lyotards discourse, where the author claims them to be dead after the incredible
technological progress of the second half of the XX century, advocating for a multiplicity of small
narratives that would be better suited to describe reality, although a multiplicity of small narratives
might not ever be able to give us a full picture of the world we live in.
I personally find myself agreeing to a certain extent with the post-modern position. While I am
not ready to declare that metanarratives are dead (couldnt one very well consider the end of all metanarratives and the impossibility of understanding reality as a form of metanarrative itself?), I do find
Lyotards criticism towards the operationalization and performativity of science of great insight.

Bibliography
Connolly, William E., Essentially Contested Concepts in Politics in The Terms of Political Discourse
(Princeton University Press, 1993).
Lyotard, Jean-Franois (1979). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
Weber, Max (1904). The Objectivity of Knowledge in Social Science and Social Policy in Max
Weber: Collected Methodological Writings, Routledge, London, 2012.