My problem with non-objectivist philosophies

Frequently, I quote from the opening verse of the Tao Te Ching: “the Tao that can be named is not the absolute Tao.” It’s an epistemological statement of limitation—a statement about our ability to know and communicate ideas—and one that reflects my understanding of our ability to know things. Knowledge, I believe, is not absolute. I do not, in short, accept the existence of “objective knowledge”—but that has implications for a scholar, philosopher, or researcher, and it becomes a problem.

Objective knowledge (if there is such a thing) is, by definition, true for everyone. That’s a great standard on which to drive a research agenda: “I’m going to discover something that everyone can agree upon!”
But if there is no objective knowledge—as generally asserted by post-modern and other philosophies (e.g., American Pragmatism, Hume's Skepticism, the Tao Te Ching)—what then prevents the slip of research into knowledge that is only meaningful for the individual?  If there is no objective knowledge, what makes my work valuable to anyone else?
This is one of the struggles for non-objectivist scholars: on the one hand, the limitations of knowledge are made central to any argument, and on the other, there is a desire to do work that is meaningful and even useful to others.

A lot of research strives to serve important social goals, but if the work is only “true” for a select group of people and not for others, can that serve the larger social goal?  This idea of being able to generalize is central to research methods, even those that accept limits to objective knowledge: the point of those methods are to give research work a foundation that others will accept, too.

For me, personally, I want to espouse ideas that will be “true” for everyone—ideas that any person would accept, given the evidence.  When I write about issues in writing and research, I want to write things that help others, and that requires other people to be able to apply my ideas to their view of the world.  But at the same time, one of the ideas that I write about is how ideas are limited, and how they are imperfect and uncertain, and that makes it difficult to make any claims.

So how to do I convince other people that my work has meaning and value to them?  This is especially difficult when dealing with people who generally accept the idea of objective truth.  After all, objective truth is a very comforting notion—even if the objective truth is unpleasant, it is, at least, certain and undeniable. A truth that is contingent on my limited knowledge and perspectives, on the other hand, is much more easily dismissed.

The problem, then, with non-objectivist philosophies, is how to convince others that they are meaningful and useful without resting on the idea that the claims are universally true.
My answer is generally driven by pragmatic concerns: because logical, certain proof is out of reach, and because I need to commit to something in writing (otherwise, I don’t write), I do my best. I accept what I accept for the best reasons that I can find and go from there.

On a certain level, that’s fine: personally, I’m ok making decisions in the face of uncertainty, and even though I’m sometimes wrong, I don’t belabor the decisions that were the best decisions I could make. But on another level, it’s a big problem if the audience doesn’t like what you have to say, or doesn’t accept what you have to say, especially if they want something certain—something solid that, if not objective, at least makes a claim to objectivity.

I don’t really have the answer to convincing a hostile audience. But I suppose on place to look is at your own concerns: what benefits might accrue from your research? If you suggest looking at some field of endeavor from a new perspective, what benefits could accrue? What can motivate interest in that view beyond just saying “here’s a different way of looking at things?” Focusing on benefits can reveal problems: if using a new perspective leads to doing things “better” in some way, that area of improvement could be viewed as a problem that you are addressing.

On advantage of focusing on benefits of a new idea is purely emotional for a writer—focusing on benefits keeps attention on the strong points of work, and helps sustain confidence.

I don’t have an answer for this. Without the anchor of objective certainty, how does one prevent the slippage towards ideas that are meaningful to the individual alone? If I am certain of anything, it is that there is no certain knowledge, but where does that lead me?

Somehow the scholar/philosopher/researcher who rejects objectivist philosophies needs to be able to make some claim that will convince their audience that their work is worth the time. But I’m not sure of the means of accomplishing this.