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I'm inclined to believe it's objective because isn't them liking curry chicken the case regardless of how anyone else feels about it?

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Jayden
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    Finally! All of my feelings are now unassailably objective! I'm looking for the thumb icon on the chicken though... – Scott Rowe Apr 20 '23 at 02:39
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    Isn't that a question for English.SE!? – Peter - Reinstate Monica Apr 20 '23 at 11:33
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    Heh heh. An opinion based question that should not be closed. Though, usually, it is good form to state the question in the body of the question, not just the title. – Boba Fit Apr 20 '23 at 13:24
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    @Peter-ReinstateMonica The question for what constitutes objectivity, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity is about as philosophical as one can get. It invokes the issue of mind-body duality implicitly. – J D Apr 20 '23 at 14:37
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    Congratulations! As a new contributor, you have asked a simple question that has generated a number of fine answers and interesting comments. Welcome to the SE. –  Apr 20 '23 at 15:57
  • I would call it a subjective statement, but this an informal and intuitive (rather subject itself) feeling on my part. "He ate curry chicken today" would be an objective statement, and either true or false. "He wrote that he likes curry chicken" would be an objective statement about writing that was itself subjective. – JosephDoggie Apr 20 '23 at 21:32

7 Answers7

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An objective statement is a statement about "the thing in itself", with reality as is rather than as perceived. The statement "my computer runs Mac OS" is objective.

I start there to hopefully help avoid the following misunderstandings:

  • objective does not mean unchangeable. I could install a new operating system.
  • objective does not mean universal. You cannot then shift to "computers in general run Mac OS."
  • objective does not mean unambiguous, and the statement may still need refining (eg by clarifying which computer) to get a unique truth value.
  • objective does not mean that you are in a position to check the statement is true
  • objective does not mean true, and in fact this one is false.

That is to say, as with everything in philosophy, you have to be careful not to take a statement for more than it claims.

With that important clarification out of the way, the actual answer to your question is is "it depends". It's an unhelpful answer because people don't agree on the definition. Some Philosophers define "subjective" as referring to any statement which is filtered through a consciousness. Some define it as any statement filtered through the speaker's consciousness, with other consciousnesses deemed part of the external world. You'd want a slightly different distinction though, because categorising "he likes curry chicken" and "I like curry chicken" differently isn't going to sit well with you. Arguing that it's not a statement filtered through consciousnesses at all but instead a statement about those consciousnesses could be promising, so long as you're up to the challenge of asking what a consciousness is! Finally, I should be explicit that the definition I opened with is just mine. I give it to illustrate how careful you have to be with not exceeding the definition, and not as a claim to any sort of authority myself.

As a point of practical advice, if this is a test then the correct answer is whatever the mark scheme says. If, however, you are making an argument which depends on this level of subtlety in the definition, either provide your definition or coin a less ambiguous phrase to reflect what you mean. Finally, if you find that a new phrase loses something, reexamine the argument that you are trying to form because it may depend on a rhetorical connotation of the word "objective" which is not actually implied by the meaning.

Josiah
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  • Since there is no agreement on the definition, does that mean that the distinction between subjective and objective is not so useful in the end? Should it be replaced by something else? Or is there a method to arrive at "more and more" objective statements? – Frank Apr 20 '23 at 13:29
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    Knowing that we mean the same thing from words is a genuinely hard problem at the best of times. Even so, there's a fairly broad consensus that "The chair weighs 5 kilograms" is an objective statement and that "The music is sublime" is a subjective statement. Even the statement "He said that he likes curry chicken" is an objective statement about the event when he said that. Unfortunately that's not the same as the statement "he likes curry chicken". The concepts are clear and useful for such cases. It just gets fiddly when we're talking about precisely where the boundary goes. – Josiah Apr 20 '23 at 13:46
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    Talking about "useful", in what ways is the objective/subjective distinction "useful"? – Frank Apr 20 '23 at 14:45
  • For one thing, it is useful because it distinguishes statements about reality from statements about a model of reality. Such clarity is generally important if you want to "debug" your model, or to decide how to behave in response. – Josiah Apr 20 '23 at 16:31
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    Can there be "statements about reality" which are not based on any "model of reality"? – Frank Apr 20 '23 at 18:37
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    Even if the answer is no, that's still a useful distinction because it allows us to verbalise the fact that we're working with models and talk about the relative trade-offs among the models. Even so, this is a rather bigger question than the original, and comments aren't the place to thrash out the biggest problems in epistemology. – Josiah Apr 20 '23 at 20:32
  • Surely you can make objective statements about subjective matters? If not, subjectivity itself can never be defined. – fectin Apr 21 '23 at 01:35
  • "objective does not mean that you are in a position to check the statement is true" This is the key to this initial question. Your list of bullet points is insufficient to rigorously define "objective" vs "subjective" for all cases, but does provide a sufficient partial definition to elucidate the OP's question: stating "his" opinion on curry chicken would be a subjective statement, but stating that "he" holds said opinion is objective. Thus, by the partial definition given by this post, the answer to the OP's question is "yes". – Matthew Najmon Apr 21 '23 at 18:48
  • @MatthewNajmon, I agree that the bullet points don't define the terms. That would be difficult, as they're all negative statements. What they're really meant to do is provide context for the final point, to avoid sliding from "'he likes curry' is objective" to something like "'he likes curry' is beyond dispute". The answer I'm giving is a nuanced "maybe, given varied definitions, but tread carefully." If you think that didn't come across, I'd welcome suggestions as to how to clarify. – Josiah Apr 21 '23 at 18:57
  • "to avoid sliding from "'he likes curry' is objective" to something like "'he likes curry' is beyond dispute" " This is already covered by your other bullet points, in particular by the first, third, and fifth ones. "the true-ness of statement X is beyond dispute" does not follow from "statement X is objective", for any definition of "subjective" vs "objective" that comes anywhere close to being consistent with your bullet points (hence why commenting here, rather than a separate answer, as my point is specifically dependent on your bullet points). – Matthew Najmon Apr 21 '23 at 19:01
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    I agree, for any technical definition. I think it does follow in a colloquial understanding, which is why it seemed worth taking so much space to say what I'm not saying. – Josiah Apr 21 '23 at 19:08
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The other answers rely on either a non-technical understanding of the terms "subjective" and "objective" or depend on a particular philosophical viewpoint. This answer is viewpoint-neutral and uses the terms in their usual technical sense in philosophy.

Used as technical terms in philosophy, these words have a fairly standard meaning: the subjective is that which is accessible only to a single mind and is entirely mind dependent. It includes things like sensations, pain, mental states, qualia, and the like. The objective is that which is independent of any mind. Another way to think of the difference is that the subjective is directly experienced by some mind; the objective is indirectly observed.

Some philosophers deny that the subjective exists. They suggest that our experience of the subjective is some sort of misunderstanding. Other philosophers deny that the objective exists. Some of these try to reduce the notion of the objective to the notion of the intersubjective. Both viewpoints have lots of problems that they need to work around.

Now, we come to the question: is "He likes curry chicken" objective or subjective? I'll reword to "Joe likes curry chicken" for ease of discussion. The answer is that whether Joe likes curry chicken is subjective; it is a report of something that is only accessible to Joe's mind. However, the report itself is objective. The proposition that Joe likes curry chicken is accessible to anyone, so the proposition itself is objective.

David Gudeman
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It is tempting to say that:

"If he actually does like chicken curry, then the claim 'he likes chicken curry' is objective".

But this is not necessarily the case.

If the person who claims 'He likes chicken curry' is not privy to whether or not he actually likes chicken curry, then the statement "He likes chicken curry" remains subjective, regardless of whether or not the claim has truth value. The claimant might be mistaken as to whether or not the person actually does like chicken curry, or have insufficient evidence with which to determine whether the person likes chicken curry.

If the person making the claim, "He likes chicken curry", has access to 'proof' that a person actually likes chicken curry, then the claim might be deemed objective, but how would such proof be obtained, as:

The person whose liking of chicken curry is being questioned might lie about whether or not he likes it, or change his mind about whether he likes it (or be mistaken about whether or not he likes it?).

The person assessing the claim that a person "likes chicken curry" might be inadequately equipped to know for certain as to whether or not he actually likes chicken curry (for how can we be certain about anything?).

Perhaps the person who is eating the chicken curry might be equipped to argue that "he likes chicken curry", in which case the statement would become "I like chicken curry". Providing he is being truthful, and providing that his faculties are reliable, such a statement might be deemed objective, but another person might not not be able to reliably determine whether or not he is being honest or accurate, in which case a determination of objectivity seems difficult to obtain.

Futilitarian
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  • If we can never be certain about anything, does that mean that nothing is ever "objective"? – Frank Apr 20 '23 at 13:32
  • @Frank. Maybe it just means we can never be certain about what, if anything, is objective. But I might be mistaken in my 'logic'. – Futilitarian Apr 20 '23 at 14:27
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Subjectivity, Objectivity, and Intersubjectivity

First off, like all questions on objectivity and subjectivity, let's redirect our attention to intersubjectivity which is the idea that what most people call objectivity can been seen as a subjective agreement. Thus, two people can argue over if someone is "tall", but the moment everyone accepts that 2 meters is tall for a human, then any person who walks into a room 2 meters in height is objectively tall. If two people in a room argue whether or not there is a distinction between the color red and green, and one adduces a third person who sees the distinction, it's fair to consider that the red-green colorblind person genuinely and subjectively does not perceive the difference. Thus, red which is the experience of color, may not be experienced in the same way. Now, if all three people are physicists and are capable of using equipment to differentiate wavelengths, then we're back to having universal agreement about wavelengths and colors, and even the color-blind person can agree there's a difference between red and green apples based on the distinction between physical and phenomenological color. This sets the background for analyzing the meaning or semantics of your proposition:

He likes curry chicken.

Qualia and Propositional Attitude

Subjectivity comes into play with the act of experiencing curry chicken favorably. A person can say they like chicken, they can eat lots of chicken, and they can write an essay on how they like chicken. All of these events are considered objective because a room full of people can experience them. What the room full of people cannot experience is the actual conscious experience of enjoying what some call the qualia of curry chicken.

Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, and the redness of an evening sky. As qualitative characters of sensation, qualia stand in contrast to propositional attitudes, where the focus is on beliefs about experience rather than what it is directly like to be experiencing.

Thus, the qualia of curry chicken, such as the taste and smell and the feeling of pleasure, are opaque to everyone else. This is the aspect of the example that is subjective. Furthermore, besides the qualia being subjective, direct introspection of that mental state, that is knowledge of it which forms the basis of the propositional attitude are also subjective:

propositional attitude is a mental state held by an agent or organism toward a proposition.

Thus, while "I believe I like curry chicken" is a thought that might be subvocalized by our consumer. The moment the consumer states this aloud as "I like eating curry chicken", the consumer has made a public assertion which is a speech act. Unlike introspection which is subjective, speech acts are objective since they are visible in the shared perceptions. It might be true, or it might be false to others because other than the consumer, no one has access to the experience of qualia and propositional attitude directly. They might attempt to experience the same qualia and propositional attitude, but then disagree when characterizing the experience. The opacity and the inability to always have agreement combined characterize subjectivity.

Interpretation of Meaning

Thus, your example "He likes curry chicken" has both subjective and objective dimensions that emerge during analysis. The key to determining whether or not this is a subjective or objective use of language depends not on the words, strictly speaking, but on the context. That is propositions that emerge from meaning-bearing artifacts of language are partially determined not just by the explicit language, but the large system in which the language use occurs and may be affected by factors such as endophora, implicature, etc. Printed and written words don't have meaning in the same way a box has cereal. Rather, they lead to experiences that allow agents to participate in the language-game. All symbols must be interpreted including those of formal systems.

If by "He likes curry chicken" you mean:

He experiences preparing, receiving, and eating curry chicken favorably by his own introspection.

Then it is a subjective statement. However, if you mean:

He can be witnessed preparing, receiving, and eating curry chicken favorably by others.

Then it is an objective statement. Since you provide no additional context, strictly speaking, the sentence itself is underdetermined, which is the fancy word philosophers use to say "you can't tell the difference. So, your question is partly about intersubjectivity and partly one of epistemology.

J D
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  • I seem to experience that gravity is invariably pulling me down, not up. I'm willing to bet you are experiencing the same. Is that observation objective or inter-subjective? – Frank Apr 20 '23 at 14:48
  • @Frank What is this gravity force you speak of? According to relativity, gravity is fictive and motion we experience as gravity is just curvature. But, setting aside your naive psychological report, as per my post, if by your "report" you mean an assertion about your qualia and broader mental state, your report is subjective. If by your report you mean you utterance about our shared organization of perception, then it is objective. The moment we go down the rabbit hole when someone else comes along and disagrees, the mask of objectivity drops to reveal intersubjective agreement... – J D Apr 20 '23 at 15:46
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    @Frank Following in the footsteps of Kant, let's consider critical realism the framework for discussion. If you disagree with my claims, you have to find a meaningful way to attack critical realism or my interpretation of it. – J D Apr 20 '23 at 15:47
  • @Frank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_realism_(philosophy_of_the_social_sciences) and https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/ – J D Apr 20 '23 at 15:48
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    +1 There are tears of joy and tears from pain. So you cant say a person is sad because you observe them crying. More information is required. –  Apr 20 '23 at 16:16
  • In a statement that contains both a subjective and objective component, is the default to categorize the statement as subjective if no context is available? –  Apr 20 '23 at 16:54
  • @StevanV.Saban Devils are in the details. I would say this, however. When people play at a Sprachspiel, they have a vested interest of treating the subjective as objective, when the claim of objectivity is instrumental to getting what they want thereby projecting desire onto something like "the universe" or "God" or "fate". That is, psychologically, sometimes people make statements like "everyone knows the tallest person gets to go first" when they are the tallest and want to go first. People also do it when they make real definitions like "A man is someone with a penis and testicles" and... – J D Apr 20 '23 at 17:01
  • refuse in absolutist style to draw finer distinctions, such as is done with progressive definitions about biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender. – J D Apr 20 '23 at 17:02
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    @StevanV.Saban That is to say, the whole process of arguing about what is "real" when conducted in bad faith as a search for truth philosophically is an attempt to win the argument in the same way lawyers argue about facts to get a favorable ruling from a jurist. Some people can't handle the emotional implications of objective truth, so merely persist in staying aloof of intersubjectivity insisting that their subjective version of truth is the only truth. These sorts of techniques are often described with Freud's defense mechanisms. – J D Apr 20 '23 at 17:06
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    A statement that contains both an objective and a subjective component becomes a three state problem with these choices: objective, subjective, to be determined or undefined. I believe that is why the question has such diverse answers and comments –  Apr 20 '23 at 17:08
  • @StevanV.Saban Summarily, then, there is a distinction in Sprachspiele between logical argumentation and rationalization, although it's arguable it's one of degree, not one of absolute difference. – J D Apr 20 '23 at 17:08
  • @StevanV.Saban That, and that not everyone has come to grips that the claims of objectivity they were fed by their school, religion, government, parents, idols, usw. are inherently political in nature. – J D Apr 20 '23 at 17:10
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – J D Apr 20 '23 at 17:10
  • @JD I am only asking probing questions. The one I was asking is along the lines of: whoever we are, when we jump up, we all seem to come back down to the same point we were, if we jump straight up, unassisted etc etc. Is that an "objective" observation, or an "intersubjective" thing? Is it true because we happen to agree, or is it true because of something else that doesn't depend on whether we agree or not? That is my question. – Frank Apr 20 '23 at 18:53
  • @Frank As per our other thread, objectivity-as-intersubjectivity does not entail agreement of preference causing external reality, but rather does entail agreement of perception adequately explaining external reality fallibly as to admit that our inductive, defeasible reasoning is not sufficient to exclude another reality. Reality is underdetermined. – J D Apr 20 '23 at 22:20
  • Thus, even if someone utters "I like curry chicken" as he eats curried chicken with a smile does not guarantee that someone's mind hasn't committed to deceiving us no matter how much we agree that he "objectively" likes curry chicken. Gravity objectively and necessarily pulls us down until someone potentially cooks up a device to generate anti-gravity waves and suddenly we are confronted with the fact that gravity no longer necessarily and objectively pulls down. In both cases, we can add ad hoc language or abandon our claim entirely, but ultimately the "objective" truth ceases to be. – J D Apr 20 '23 at 22:23
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In this case, consider that objectivity is sometimes understood as shared subjectivity.

Synthetically, you can say the statement is objective for both of us if we share the same subjective opinions. If we don't, we hold opposite and subjective positions (and statements) about it: I would sustain that "he doesn't like curry chicken".

The more the differences in opinions, the more the level of subjectivity. If we all agree that 1+1 is 2, or that 1m=1000mm, that is an objective statement. But if some think God exists and some don't, statements are subjective.

~

Unrelated but interesting: any statement is a relationship between an object and a subject (eg. Subject=he, object=chicken). Try finding both in the following imperative sentence:

  • Sleep.

Judgements are the same, but without the formal (linguistic) character. For example, the personal attraction to music, which, expressed as an statement would be "I like music".

A predicate is similar, but implies a subject sustaining it:

  • Good! (That is, for me and you, the subject).
RodolfoAP
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  • Although we all agree that 1m = 1000mm by convention, would we call that an "objective" fact? Isn't it rather a conventional agreement, whereas an "objective fact" would be a fact about nature? – Frank Apr 20 '23 at 00:07
  • @Frank the fact of it being a convention, does not imply it being NOT an objective statement (facts are neither objective nor subjective). Regarding nature, statements about nature are objective when we agree about them. While we don't (eg. while Einstein-Bohr were holding a debate on QM), there's no scientific truth, and statements are subjective. As said, the simplest rule is to understand objectivity as shared subjectivity. – RodolfoAP Apr 20 '23 at 00:13
  • So, does "objective" always apply to "statements"? Or is "objectivity" a term that stands on its own? If so, what does it refer to? – Frank Apr 20 '23 at 01:10
  • Can "objectivity" account for people's mistakes? For example, if some people think water does not boil when exposed to heat for some reason, but some people think it does, is the statement "heat results in water boiling" now a subjective statement? (since there is no agreement or "shared subjectivity") – Frank Apr 20 '23 at 01:22
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    If I think 1+1=2 and someone else doesn't, aren't I objective, and they are... wrong? That said, I think it reflects poorly on humanity that we can't at least agree on things, even if we turn out to be wrong later. – Scott Rowe Apr 20 '23 at 02:36
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    You're mistaking arbitrary for subjective. Definitions are always arbitrary. Symbols with objective definitions (up, meter, +, 1) are objective and arbitrary. Symbols with subjective definitions (delicious, big, cute, easy) are subjective and arbitrary. A language is when a group of people agree on similar arbitrary definitions for various subjective and objective ideas. Of course, nothing stops you from having a different language in which symbols that I map to objective concepts, you map to subjective ones, and vice versa. – g s Apr 20 '23 at 03:32
  • @Frank objectivity, in general, is applied to perceptions, not to facts themselves. We addressed statements here, because the discussion is about one. And yes, scientists can be objective and wrong. Objectivity does not imply consistency with scientific truth. – RodolfoAP Apr 20 '23 at 10:24
  • "Definitions are always arbitrary" Is that really true..? Aren't they in fact, highly contextual? – CriglCragl Apr 20 '23 at 12:11
  • There's a difference between sharing subjectivity (eg telling) & intersubjectivity (experiencing vicariously). – CriglCragl Apr 20 '23 at 12:12
  • @RodolfoAP Shouldn't "objectivity" include a dimension of referring to the "truth of the matter", as in the example of 1+1 = 2, or heat resulting in water boiling, regardless of full agreement? Should there be a gradation from subjective to inter-subjective to objective? – Frank Apr 20 '23 at 13:27
  • @Frank "the truth of the matter" is a fallacy: "matter" is something our bodies and minds create to understand the world: outside of our heads and bodies there is nothing more than fields/atoms, not rainbows or cakes (check Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic, Hume, Berkeley). Similar: metaphysical realism, physicalism, scientific realism (the problem Kant tries to solve), logical positivism, rational empiricism, neo-positivism. None of them is sustained by nowadays' leading branches of philosophy. – RodolfoAP Apr 20 '23 at 15:00
  • @RodolfoAP If that is the case, should we name "objective" whatever facts stem from those fields/atoms rather than whatever lies in "inter-subjectivity"? For example, if we jump straight up, we seem to all fall back down to the same place. Can that be changed depending on our agreement, or is it true for a reason that does not depend on whatever we think? – Frank Apr 20 '23 at 18:58
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Your intuition is right. It's an objective statement. Just like when you say "He likes vegetables." or "I am Brian." In either case, I'm stating an objective fact about something subjective.

Marxos
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I think the objective vs subjective statements would go something like this:

Objective: "He likes curry chicken"

Subjective: "Curry chicken is good"

Saying that he likes curry chicken is objective, because he can say for sure that he likes curry chicken. However, saying that curry chicken is good is subjective because not everybody likes curry chicken. Even if he likes curry chicken, that doesn't mean you or I could say the same.

Logan
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