Interpretivism is subjective

The argument

Interpretivism is distinguished by its acceptance of subjectivity as a feature of research rather than a defect to be engineered out of it. Where other philosophies treat the investigator's perspective as interference, interpretivism focuses on complexity and on multiple interpretations, and understands research as an attempt to create meanings rather than to uncover a single fact waiting to be found. The importance of subjectivity within the philosophy is, on this account, undisputed — it is what the approach is built on. That commitment applies first to the researcher. Interpretivists hold that their own beliefs and interpretations play an important role in the research process, and they say so rather than claiming a neutrality they do not possess. Declaring a standpoint allows readers to weigh the findings with it in view, whereas a suppressed standpoint continues to shape the work while escaping scrutiny. It applies equally to the people being studied. Interpretivists treat the beliefs and assumptions of their subjects as important material rather than as noise obscuring the behaviour of interest, because it is their firm belief that every person's point of view matters. Each person experiences a different reality, and an account that discards those differences in order to produce a single clean description has discarded the phenomenon along with them. This is what makes the approach useful in particular fields. Researchers in sociology, psychology, business and similar disciplines frequently study individuals or groups who find themselves in unique and complex situations — circumstances that resist being reduced to a standard case. A method built to accommodate complexity and multiple valid perspectives is suited to exactly that work. Because interpretivism is subjective in this deliberate sense, the argument concludes, it belongs among the best research philosophies in academia.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Positivist critics reply that the very subjectivity the argument praises is interpretivism's chief liability. Building the researcher's own beliefs into the method makes findings hard to replicate, generalise or test, and folds investigator bias into the result rather than controlling for it — the opposite of what many take rigorous inquiry to require. That a philosophy foregrounds "every point of view matters" is, on this view, a reason to doubt its objectivity, not a mark of being "best." They add that "best" is discipline-relative. Interpretivism may suit the study of meaning-laden human situations while being ill-suited to questions that demand measurement and prediction, so its usefulness in some fields does not make it superior overall.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Building the researcher's own beliefs into the method is exactly what critics fault interpretivism for, since it makes results hard to separate from investigator bias. [Rejecting P3] Suitability in sociology or psychology shows interpretivism fits certain subjects, not that it ranks among the "best" philosophies overall — a judgement that depends on the research question.