Defining Objectivity
This term is the opposite of objectivity and refers to knowledge shaped by personal feelings and opinions.
What is subjectivity?
Natural scientists aim for objectivity by repeating this process under controlled conditions.
What is experimentation?
Historians try to remain objective when interpreting this type of first-hand material.
What are primary sources?
People often argue that judgments about beauty are this, the opposite of objective.
What is subjective?
This cognitive factor, often unconscious, challenges the knower’s ability to be objective.
What is bias?
Objectivity in TOK means knowledge is free from these influences.
What are personal biases (or emotions/values)?
This process, where other scientists check results before publication, helps safeguard objectivity.
What is peer review?
This problem arises when historians project present-day values onto the past.
What is presentism?
Some argue that objectivity exists in art through measurable aspects like symmetry, proportion, and this design principle.
What is balance (or harmony)?
Language can challenge objectivity because it does this to thought and perception.
What is shape (or influence)?
A knower who insists on neutrality and detachment is striving for this quality.
What is impartiality?
Human sciences often struggle with objectivity because their subjects have this quality.
What is consciousness (or free will)?
Objectivity is questioned in history because accounts are often shaped by this — the historian’s own viewpoint.
What is perspective (or bias)?
When critics use rubrics or standardized criteria, they claim to increase this quality in art evaluation.
What is objectivity?
Ethical claims often resist objectivity because they are grounded in these.
What are values (or moral beliefs)?
This TOK key concept is often paired with objectivity in debates about truth and knowledge.
What is certainty?
Thomas Kuhn argued that scientific progress is shaped by these shared frameworks, which may challenge pure objectivity.
What are paradigms?
Leopold von Ranke’s phrase “wie es eigentlich gewesen” means history should be written like this.
What is “as it actually happened”?
Tolstoy suggested that the value of art depends on its ability to do this across cultures.
What is communicate emotion (or universal feeling)?
This TOK theme questions whether objectivity can ever exist in personal knowledge.
What is the “Knowledge and the Knower” theme?
The idea that knowledge claims must be evaluated based on shared, independent standards is linked to this concept.
What is intersubjectivity?
In medicine, double-blind trials are used to minimize this threat to objectivity.
What is observer bias (or placebo effect)?
Postmodernist historians argue that history is not objective, but instead shaped by this element of narrative.
What is language (or storytelling/discourse)?
This debate in aesthetics asks whether judgments of taste can ever be considered objective.
What is the subjectivity vs. objectivity debate in beauty?
The theory that there is no absolute truth and all knowledge is relative undermines objectivity.
What is relativism?