Even if we accept the questionable assertion that no study of any aspect of the mind so far has been objective, you have provided no argument that it cannot be so in principle.
I notice that the link you provide on 'hard' vs. 'soft' sciences contains passages that cast doubt on whether the distinction is significant. Biology is classified as less objective than physics, yet biology explains many things very well, and, in fact, actually better than a reduction to the underlying physics would (evolution, for example, or genetics.) By your original argument, however, human biology could not be an objective science.
>Even if we accept the questionable assertion that no study of any aspect of the mind so far has been objective, you have provided no argument that it cannot be so in principle.
Perhaps if we had aliens or god study our minds, then it could be objective and not influenced by the biases of our own human minds. There's no argument that they can't exist in principle.
Seems like a false dichotomy. Quantum physics has shown that the mere act of observing fundamental reality changes it's state, so perhaps our consciousness of reality is much more subjective than we thought.
Yes, it is a false dichotomy, but the point is that it is one that follows directly from your argument: all your 'just like' comparisons apply as well to human biology as they do to the study of the mind, and if a thing studying itself is hopelessly compromised by subjectivity, then, by your argument, this must be so for human biology.
History is another example of human self-study that is not rendered impossible by subjectivity. In this case, there is a term, 'whig history', for one form in which the investigator's bias is applied to his analysis of past events. The fact that this term exists, and that the phenomenon it labels can be identified and corrected for, shows that it is possible to work around the subjectivity of self-study.
As for quantum mechanics, it seems there is indeed a good deal of subjectivity, at least in the Copenhagen interpretation. By your argument, that should have destroyed physics as an objective science, yet physics has been extraordinarily fruitful since the discovery of QM. Here is an example of Luboš Motl dealing, in his characteristic style, with subjectivity, and, in fact, discussing the topic "Why subjective quantum mechanics allows objective science."
It is somewhat ironic that all your arguments for the impossibility of understanding the mind, on account of a lack of objectivity, are themselves subjective.
You are, of course, free to hold the opinion that there is something about consciousness that will put it forever beyond our understanding, and I cannot prove that there is not, but until we run into that barrier, I prefer to apply Occam's razor to the proposition.
The more sensible interpretation of the available facts is not that making observation changes reality, merely that we are ourselves part of reality. In any case the precise, constrained observations of QM are by no means a license to make arbitrary assumptions about "consciousness".
I notice that the link you provide on 'hard' vs. 'soft' sciences contains passages that cast doubt on whether the distinction is significant. Biology is classified as less objective than physics, yet biology explains many things very well, and, in fact, actually better than a reduction to the underlying physics would (evolution, for example, or genetics.) By your original argument, however, human biology could not be an objective science.