1 Synthese, forthcoming Harold Kincaid Live Empirical Issues in Debates over Objectivity in the Social Sciences 1 Abstract Questions of objectivity involve many general philosophy of science issues; when directed toward the social sciences, even more complex issues surface about the status of the social sciences, e.g. can they be sciences as are the natural sciences? This paper does not take on this mass of issues directly, but instead argues for more restricted theses, in particular that questions about objectivity in the social sciences are often usefully seen as local empirical issues. I look at arguments around underdetermination, value ladenness, the indeterminancy or nonquantitative nature of social science categories or attributes, and traditional ontological debates over materialism and idealism. I show that in all these cases some of the key issues about objectivity are specific empirical issues in the social sciences. Questions of objectivity involve many general philosophy of science issues;3 when directed toward the social sciences, even more complex issues surface about the status of the social sciences, e.g. can they be sciences as are the natural sciences? This paper does not take on this mass of issues directly, but instead argues for more restricted theses. I look at arguments giving a negative answer to the epistemological question whether social science research can be objective and to the ontological question whether social phenomena are objective. I try to show that common general arguments against objectivity in the social sciences are not persuasive. The idea of objectivity is instead often a variety of empirical issues in ways not commonly realized. My task is thus to argue for these two claims for the social sciences. The paper proceeds in four steps. Section 1 provides a general approach for thinking about arguments concerning objectivity, one I label “contextualist.” In the process, it presents some general ideas about what makes for objective social research. Doubts about objectivity in social research based on the holism of testing and underdetermination of theories by evidence is topic of Section 2. Section 3 looks at arguments from the alleged value-laden nature of social science. Though the arguments convered in Sections 2 and 3 do not cover all the various doubts about epistemic objectivity in social research, most challenges to objectivity make some use of these claims. Arguments that social research is not objective from the interpretivist and social constructionist tradition rely heavily on underdeterminism and holism and a denial that science is value neutral. Antirealist arguments in support of an instrumentalist understanding are often motivated by underdetermination claims. The arguments considered are fundamental issues for assessing claims about objectivity in the social sciences. While most of the paper focuses on epistemological questions about objectivity in the social sciences, Section 4 finishes with ontological concerns about objectivity in the social world. There are many different issues that fall into this category. I only address two of those, though they are central: can social reality be quantitative in the way needed for standard scientific investigation and can social reality be mind-independent and thus objective in that ontological sense? My response is again that answering these questions turns on empirical issues in social research.