Objective Knowledge in Social Sciences and Humanities: Karl Popper and Beyond

Abstract

This collection of papers addresses the issue of ‘objective vs. subjective’ knowledge in the social sciences and humanities: how we may get ‘objective’ knowledge out of ‘subjective’ perceptions; how ‘induction’ and ‘deduction’ should interact; how we can make policies or legal recommendations based on ‘objective knowledge’; how social agents’ knowledge should be modelled. Drawing on the structure of the conference, the papers are organized in sections which address a set of interrelated questions, against a common thematic background provided by Popper’s contribution on objective knowledge in the social sciences and humanities: the ‘induction problem’ and the accumulation of ‘subjective’ knowledge out of ‘objective’ knowledge; ‘objectivity’ of the law and of social policies; objectivity of facts and causal relations in the social sciences and humanities; the objective/subjective rationality of social agents.