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That depends. If you are unbiased, then it’s not relative to other people, but relative to the truth. To the other side in the argument you’re having, you may seem partial but if you aren’t you aren’t, no matter what anybody says.

The issue of whether there is any point in claiming a lack of bias is a different one. In some senses, it depends on who is arbitrating, and the extent to which your claim is objectively demonstrable.

ED.
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SINCERE IGNORANCE AND CONSCIENTIOUS STUPIDITY
http://blog.myspace.com/CAUGHTNOTTAUGHT

Not necessarily. If the party crying foul is biased then they can’t be expected to recognize an unbiased claim/statement as such.

The best arguments avoid this quandary by putting the opposition at the advantage.

C.S. Lewis took the best approach when, as a four year old, he admitted prejudice.

In The Narnian Jacobs wrote that one the four year old Lewis stated.

“I have a prejudice against the French.” When his father asked him why, he replied, “If I knew why it would not be a prejudice.”

I’m not sure it’s ever wise to claim an unbiased perspective. We all naturally have some level of bias all the time, don’t we? It’s a product of not living in a vacuum.

I think you’re right, Barnabas.

But there is a sense in which a document can be more free of bias than a human being, even though a human being wrote it.

And the easiest way to know if a book or article or speech or encyclopedia is indeed unbiased is whether both sides will admit it.

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