Neutrality

Neutrality is the property of not being influenced by forces outside a well-defined boundary.

For example, an observation can be considered neutral in the context of a given experiment if all relevant parameters were as expected and no measurable force registered a threshold it is known to cause interference in.

The less defined the boundary, the harder it is to claim neutrality.

For example, a decision by a judge is normally considered neutral if it follows the law, is evidence-based, unbiased, proportional, and so on. But these criteria are complex to assess and one would have to ask about the neutrality of these assessments as well. The interpretation of law and its hierarchies are so subjective and autocratic that biased decisions become commonplace, are perceived as the expected outcome and in this way get naturalized as normal and therefore neutral.

In contexts such as this, affirming neutrality becomes significantly harder and might as well be considered impossible.

Even in the first example, the fact an observation is itself considerably neutral should not be conflated with the neutrality of the conclusions drawn from it, how these conclusions will be used or the motivations to investigate or not a given problem in the first place.