Perspectival Instruments

Despite its potential implications for the objectivity of scientific knowledge, the claim that 'scientific instruments are perspectival' has received little critical attention. Yet understanding 'who’s point of view?' instruments might depend upon is invaluable to understanding how scientific knowledge is obtained. This paper shows that whilst the unqualified claim that 'scientific instruments are perspectival' is epistemically unproductive, once finer-grained notions of perspectives are taken into account, perspectivism can be used to develop new strategies for resolving well known epistemic problems in relation to scientific instruments, such as conceptual relativism and theory-ladeness