2

Many of us understand subjectivity as the opposite of objectivity; that they are mutually exclusive concepts. Evidence for that is all around; for example, take Wiktionary:

subjective (adj.):

  1. Pertaining to subjects as opposed to objects (A subject is one who perceives or is aware; an object is the thing perceived or the thing that the subject is aware of.)

But the notion of "subjective experience" seems to indicate to me that the word is often used in a subtly different way; that is, as a precise synonym for conscious awareness. Funnily enough it is even implied in the prior definition in stipulating that "a subject is one who perceives or is aware". Wiktionary otherwise tries to avoid this, for example by adding conditions:

  1. Experienced by a person mentally and not directly verifiable by others.

I'm using Wiktionary as an example but I think my point holds that people don't really use the word very precisely, and dictionaries reflect that.

I presume we all agree that we can only know about the world through our first-hand experience of it, and that objectivity is just the label we give to verifiable sense data (people and sensing equipment agreeing on observations). Would it not follow that all objective truths are necessarily subjective truths, in the sense that we can only observe them as "subjects" (creatures with awareness/perception)?

As far as I can see there are two competing definitions here and they are causing a lot of havoc in epistemological conversations I've been having lately. So; are objectivity and subjectivity mutually exclusive, or is the objective a subset of the subjective?

This question has been asked elsewhere on the internet, with unsatisfactory answers IMO:

Community
  • 1
Thennicke
  • 33
  • 1
  • 5
  • 2
    Please refer to : https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/8384/what-exactly-do-objective-and-subjective-mean-in-contemporary-philosophy , https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/41380/what-were-descartess-conceptions-of-objectivity-subjectivity , https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/23270/truth-is-subjectivity – virmaior Aug 04 '17 at 14:40
  • 1
    Also, I presume we all agree that we can only know about the world through our first-hand experience of it, and that objectivity is just the label we give to verifiable sense data / this is not by a long shot the most common definition of objective... – virmaior Aug 04 '17 at 14:42
  • 1
    It seems like you're looking at the opposite between the objective and the merely subjective -- rather than grasping what subjective as a term (in its contemporary usage) means by itself. – virmaior Aug 04 '17 at 14:42
  • @virmaior regarding objectivity: "the state or quality of being true even outside of a subject's individual biases; uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices" is from an empirical perspective the same as "verifiable sense data". Verification is why we deem things as true independent of our interpretations of them (hence hallucinations=subjective). It it's deemed as verifiable, it's deemed as objective, unless proven otherwise with further testing. Yes it's not the most common way of phrasing the definition, but I think it's fine. – Thennicke Aug 05 '17 at 02:34
  • @virmaior I understand the two ways that subjective is used; as you say, it can refer to the merely subjective (that which is not objective), but yes, it can also be used in its more contemporary sense, to encompass all of our personal experience (we are "subjects"; conscious of the world). What I'm asking is whether we as philosophers need to think about using the word a bit more precisely, and perhaps finding another way of saying "merely subjective". Because the ambiguity causes a lot of pointless, confused arguments. – Thennicke Aug 05 '17 at 02:57
  • I think you're wrong on your historical etymology when you say its more contemporary sense. The original sense of "subjective" is things that inhere in subjects -- where subject does not mean experiencer but rather means formed matter in its necessary respect. – virmaior Aug 05 '17 at 03:07
  • regarding your I think it's fine definition, it seems to have a big problem in that it would exclude axioms of mathematics and many other things that are not sense-based. Moreover, if that's the definition you want, why even call it "objective" generically, just call it empirically verifiable data. – virmaior Aug 05 '17 at 03:09
  • @virmaior Okay, I'm willing to accept your authority on the etymology of the word, but the important point is that we've ended up with two competing definitions of subjectivity. Re. objectivity again, I would claim that no, this definition doesn't exclude mathematics, logic or theories at all. – Thennicke Aug 05 '17 at 03:17
  • 2
    Not going to visit a blog post to read something, but the axioms of math are not empirical or at least most us don't think so. I'm also eagerly waiting your wholly empirical demonstration of the law of the excluded middle. – virmaior Aug 05 '17 at 04:06
  • @virmaior The concepts of quantity, or of length, or of “therefore” are found in reality. If I have an apple, and then I get another apple, I now have two apples; hence the “rules” of addition (i.e. Peano’s axioms). Mathematics and logic are just formalisations of those observations, and have proven to be immensely useful tools thereafter, due to the invariant nature of the patterns underlying reality. They're abstractions of the deepest structures of our world, otherwise they couldn't be applied to it. The law of the excluded middle included. Anyway this is getting off-topic. – Thennicke Aug 05 '17 at 04:40
  • @virmaior I observe that the sun is either risen or it is not, I observe that it is never both risen and not risen and that this continues to be the case for all such binomials -> empirical theory (as yet un-falsified) for the law of the excluded middle. As you know, the purely rational theory still would require a truth value to "unicorns can fly", which by some authorities undermines its value as objective knowledge. I'm well aware that there are also very good solutions to the "unicorns can fly" problem, but as before we mustn't confuse 'unpopular' with 'wrong'. –  Aug 05 '17 at 06:55
  • I'm sure you are also well aware of the works by Putnam and Dummett, linked here for the benefit of others. That logic might be empirical is a perfectly valid position. –  Aug 05 '17 at 07:00

3 Answers3

2

are objectivity and subjectivity mutually exclusive, or is the objective a subset of the subjective?

I would agree with the second option (which I believe aligns with the intuition underlining your question) ... I would also regard it as a failing of philosophy, if in general philosophers are unable to answer clearly what they believe about these questions. Testing the reliability of our current models through such questions as these, I think, is precisely the life-blood of philosophy as a practice of discovering what we think we know about the world, and how we think we know it.

The bias towards privileging the value of "objective" information over "subjective" information, I think comes from modelling philosophy on science, at the expense of not seeing how philosophy is as much like art as it is like science - also, culturally, it seems that science is regarded as an inherently more reliable source of "truth" than art - yet, as you have pointed out, objective knowledge could be regarded as a subset of subjective knowledge, which has apparently passed a threshold level of reliability.

l_ruth_
  • 783
  • 4
  • 7
  • 1
    Thank you for a thoughtful answer; I also tend toward the second option. As to your comment about "truth", well then we get another semantic problem in asking whether truth refers only to the objective, empirical aspects of our lives, or rather to correspondence to standards in general, such as an aesthetic or moral standard. I prefer the first definition; truth=the objective/verifiable parts of our personal experiences – Thennicke Aug 05 '17 at 02:42
2

This is a very tricky issue. As you say, the words are often used sloppily or in differing ways. You're right to say that all objective facts are subjective, and one strategy to allow for this is to use the word 'inter-subjective'. People sometimes use 'objective fact' to mean a fact that is inter-subjective, verified by a shared subjective experience. It is hard to see how an observation can be an objective fact.

A complication is that a major school of thought denies the reality of the distinction between the objective and the subjective. Schopenhauer for instance, speaks of his 'better consciousness', a level of awareness for which the subject/object dichotomy evaporates to be seen as a perceptual error. This is the common experience of those who meditate.

I feel that you're right and that the issues are muddled in much of philosophy. It's not that any one philosopher is muddled, but that the words are used in varying ways and with varying degrees of care.

1

They're related, rather than being a 'subset' or a superset; take for example, Descartes cogito:

I think therefore I am

In which the subjective element is related to the objective.

Mozibur Ullah
  • 47,073
  • 14
  • 93
  • 243