Abstract
Qualitative methods are ultimately methods for making classifications of meaningful phenomena. Concepts used in qualitative research have an intentional component. Such classifications concern individuals, groups, or the result of the actions of individuals or groups. The resulting categories are interpretations of human actions and the artefacts produced by those actions. The question about the objectivity of these interpretations is thus the question about the objectivity of interpretation.
Those who claim that all interpretation is subjective and that there are no objective facts in the human and social sciences have implicitly assumed that the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity is construed in the same way in all disciplines. This view is based on a confusion of two different meanings of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’. One can use the objective/subjective distinction to mark an ontological difference; certain phenomena are subjective in the ontological sense, viz., if they are contained in, or part of, an individual’s consciousness, otherwise they are objective. But we also use the objective/subjective distinction to distinguish between different types of propositions. A proposition is objective if it is true or false independently of what the speaker believes to be the case, otherwise it is subjective. Individual’s mental states are ontologically subjective, but propositions about these subjective things are objective in the epistemological sense. A proposition is epistemologically objective if it is possible to establish criteria for the truth or falsity of that proposition (we need not be able to decide the truth!) and if different people’s application of those criteria yield the same result.
Social facts and social constructions are discussed and it is argued that propositions about social facts and about social constructions are epistemologically objective, in spite of the fact that these phenomena depend for their existence on human individuals’ beliefs.
We classify as we can. But we do classify.
Claude Levi-Strauss
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- 1.
Physicists nowadays claim that they observe electrons, but obviously they mean that they observe electrons using highly advanced technology based on quantum mechanics. So the ’observation’ is highly indirect.
- 2.
John Searle, (1932) American philosopher, professor at Berkeley.
- 3.
See Searle (1995), p. 12.
- 4.
Robert George Collingwood (1889–1943) British philosopher, historian and archeologist.
- 5.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was an Austrian doctor, first active in Vienna, later in his life in London, who started psychoanalysis.
- 6.
This description is adapted from Alvesson and Sköldberg (2008).
- 7.
op.cit p. 84.
- 8.
This conclusion is similar to Kant’s view, expressed as ‘intuition without concepts is blind’.(Critique of Pure Reason, A51, B75).
- 9.
Quine argued in his (1960) that one cannot determine which ontology the native has only by agreeing on translation of complete sentences. So the native may not after all, view the visible world as inhabited by physical objects. His argument is in my view convincing as far as it goes, but there are other reasons to think that all humans cognize the visible world as inhabited among other things, by physical objects.
- 10.
Like all Europeans, by ‘football’ I do not refer to american football, but to soccer.
- 11.
According to Searle, examples of social facts that are not institutional facts are collective actions that do not require use of language; for example, the coordinated hunting of wolves’.
- 12.
Searle uses here the distinction between regulative and constitutive rules. A regulative rule regulates activities, which occur independently of the rule; for example, traffic rules. Constitutive rules, by contrast, constitute the activity, which comes into existence by the implementation of these rules. The rules of chess are a good example; if you are not moving the pieces mainly according to the rules, you are not playing chess.
- 13.
The written constitution of Soviet Union fulfilled high demands on democracy, but in practice the secretary-general of the communist party was dictator and all kinds of opposition to the communist system was promptly and severely punished. The document meant nothing. On the other hand, the constitution of UK is to a great extent not written; yet one may say that democratic procedures are strictly upheld by all involved.
- 14.
Berger, & Luckmann. The social construction of reality. New York: Anchor Books.
Further Reading
Berger, P., & Luckman, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. New York: Anchor Books.
Cresswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Glassner, B., & Moreno, J. D. (Eds.). (1989). The qualitative-quantitative distinction in the social sciences. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Hacking, I. (1999). Social construction of what? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kirk, J., & Miller, M. L. (1986). Reliability and validity in qualitative research. Newbury Park: Sage.
Searle, J. (1996). The construction of social reality. London: Penguin.
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Johansson, LG. (2016). Qualitative Data and Methods. In: Philosophy of Science for Scientists. Springer Undergraduate Texts in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26551-3_5
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