Impartiality and Objectivity

Science is objective, about matters of fact; morality is subjective, a matter of opinion. This caricatured view is not only to be found among students in introductory courses to philosophy. W. V. O. Quine gave a classical take on it when he regretted "the methodological infirmity of ethics as compared to science", based on the "irreparable lack of empirical checkpoints that are the solace of the scientist." (Quine 1979, 477, 480) While scientific disputes can be settled by empirical tests against the "independent course of observable nature" (Quine 1979, 477), opponents in a moral dispute have, in the end, nothing but their own values to refer to, and so argument ultimately devolves into "mere abuse" (Ayer 1946, 111). According to Michele M. Moody-Adams, the negative comparison of moral inquiry to "an idealized model of inquiry and argument in science" is one of the main reasons why the mere existence of moral dispute has been interpreted as evidence for the assumption that “rationally irresolvable moral disagreement is an unavoidable fact of human experience." (Moody-Adams 1997, 9) However, according Lorraine Daston, the dominant ideal of objectivity in modern science has its roots in the notion of impartiality first developed by Scottish enlightenment philosophers in ethics and aesthetics. Given a richer understanding of ‘objectivity’ and its history, the methodological gap between idealised ethics and idealised science might not appear so wide after all.