Thinking Critically About the "Subjective"/"Objective" Distinction

Sandra LaFave

The words "subjective" and " objective" cause lots of confusion. Their misuse is responsible for subjectivism in ethics. Ethical subjectivism is the view that moral judgements are nothing but statements or expressions of personal opinion or feeling and thus that moral judgements cannot be supported or refuted by reason. Careless use of the terms "subjective" and "objective" also leads to odd views in metaphysics, e.g., the denial of material reality (idealism); and odd views in epistemology, e.g., the claim that all statements are equally warranted. In other words, if you're careless about how you handle the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity, you can end up saying there's no such thing as morality, reality, or truth!

The ordinary non-philosophical (i.e., oversimplified) view is that the word "subjective" is the complete opposite (negation or contradictory) of the word "objective." If something is subjective, it's not objective; if something is objective, it's not subjective. "Subjective" is thought to mean "from someone’s point of view." " Objective" means "not just from someone’s point of view." An objective matter is one that everyone (who is sane, rational, and appropriately informed) will agree about. "Subjectivity" connotes lack of objectivity. Ethical subjectivism is the view that since we can’t be "objective" about morality, morality must be purely "subjective."

Furthermore, on the ordinary non-philosophical view, "subjective" goes with words like "belief" or "opinion." The idea is that subjective matters are not certain. "Objective," on the other hand, means "certain" or "factual." "Objective" matters are those that can be measured or quantified. For example, the answers to questions such as "How many desks are in this room?" and "What is the current temperature in this room?" would be objective. Note that these questions have precise mathematical answers, and anyone with access to the appropriate properly-working measuring devices would agree what those answers are.

In this essay, I am going to critically analyze this ordinary oversimplified (problematic) view, so let's recap it now:

"Subjective"	(private "mental" stuff: sensations, beliefs, feelings, emotions, opinions, etc.)

is the opposite (contradictory) of

"Objective"

(public "physical" stuff: publicly-observable things, events, knowledge, facts)

This oversimplified way of making the distinction leads to philosophical trouble.

Consider your experience of a headache versus your experience of the Eiffel Tower. Naturally, you have your own personal private "subjective" experience of the headache, and nobody else can have your headache for you. So, in one of the usual (oversimplified) senses of "subjective", all headaches are subjective.

But people tend to say furthermore that "subjective" and "objective" are logical opposites in the strongest sense: they are negations or contradictories of each other. This means that if X is subjective, it can't be objective, and if X is objective it can't be subjective. In other words, people mistakenly think everything has to be EITHER subjective OR objective. This leads to startling consequences. You have a headache. You feel it, and nobody else does, so you say it's "subjective" (private). But look at the other notions that go with "subjective": if it’s subjective, it’s just your opinion. But opinions have no standing — so why should the doctor believe you when you say you have a headache? The doctor doesn't feel your headache; it's just your opinion — and you might find yourself agreeing that you can't be "objective" about your headache. And since your headache isn't objective, it isn't really REAL at all! The headache is "really" just in your mind. (This is the philosophy behind Christian Science.)

Now of course you could apply this very same reasoning to your experience of the Eiffel Tower. There you are in Paris, looking at the Eiffel Tower, and you think, "Gee, no one else is having this precise experience of the Eiffel Tower, so this experience of mine is just as subjective as my headache!" (And that wouldn't be wrong, of course, in a way; it's true that no one else has your precise experience of the Eiffel Tower either.)

But if all you really know is that you had a subjective experience of seeing the Eiffel Tower, and that’s all anyone ever has, why say the Eiffel Tower — or anything — exists objectively, independently of observers? But we do (at least most of us do). We think emotions and pains are real AND we also think physical things are real. Yet when some people get "philosophical" and begin thinking of all experience as "subjective" (not only their experiences of pains and feelings but also their experiences of so-called "physical" things), they can't then be certain anything exists "objectively," independently of their experiences. All they "know" are their experiences, which are "subjective," and thus just "opinion".

Because of confusion about subjectivity and objectivity, people get led down the philosophical road to skepticism and metaphysical idealism and solipsism.

Metaphysical idealism is the view that there is no reality independently of people's minds — in other words, according to metaphysical idealism, so-called "physical" things don't really exist at all. Nothing exists independently of our experiences, and since our experiences are private, they count as "mental" and thus "in our minds", so nothing exists independently of our minds. (I say "our" minds, but of course, a real idealist would object to this locution, since one consequence of metaphysical idealism is that other people exist only in my mind; i.e., there are no other minds except mine — that's what philosophers call solipsism.)

Metaphysical idealism was popular in philosophy in the early 1800's, and re-emerged in the late 20th century as deconstruction or post-modernism. Once you understand how most people oversimplify the terms "subjective" and "objective", it's not hard to understand why good-hearted people get snookered by metaphysical idealism. Here's a typical argument.

(Premise 1) All my experiences are metaphysically subjective (i.e., no one else has my unique experiences; all my experiences are from my unique point of view).

(Premise 2) "Subjective" is the opposite of "objective". If X is subjective, it can't be objective, and vice-versa.

(Premise 3) If my experiences are metaphysically subjective, then by Premise 2, any statements I make about my experiences must be epistemologically subjective — they are "merely" my beliefs, or my opinions. By Premise 2, nothing metaphysically subjective can suddenly acquire the prestige of "objectivity". For any X, if X is subjective, X stays subjective.

(Conclusion) But — hang on to your seats, now, this is the big "insight" — Premises 1 and 3 are true of everyone! Whoever you are (Mother Teresa, Einstein, Charles Manson, Hitler, Neo, Trinity, etc.), you have access only to your experiences ("your reality") and no one else's, and whatever you say, it's just your opinion ("your truth"). We simply can't be objective. There is no Objective Reality or Objective Truth. Reality and truth differ for everyone, and always will.

This argument gets a lot of support in this age of Political Correctness. If we all have only our limited points of view, nobody has THE truth. For too long now, some people have disrespected others' opinions in the name of "THE truth". But this argument shows that the "Truth Fairy" doesn't exist, and it's time all the European/male/imperialist/capitalist/Christian folks learned a little proper humility. There's nothing special about anyone's point of view; everybody's point of view is equally correct. Sound familiar?

We have a tangled web here. Confusion about the subjective-objective distinction might lead you to philosophical positions that are completely at odds with your ordinary beliefs and practices. Philosophy is supposed to clarify, enlighten, explain, etc.; the ordinary senses of "subjective" and "objective" merely confuse and mystify! Contemporary philosophers conclude that something is very wrong with the ordinary simple-minded opposition of "subjective" and "objective."

Let's start untangling the obviously less plausible parts of this argument.

First, metaphysical idealism seems unbelievable. It's more than a little odd to doubt the existence of a world external to your experience. When you live your life, you do seem persistently to ACT as though there is a world independent of your mind — a world you didn't make up and that you don't control. Philosophical pragmatists say (I think correctly) that you don't really believe any proposition if it has no effect on your choices. For example, if you really believed that tables and chairs didn't exist, you wouldn't walk around them. You do walk around them. So you're not really skeptical about their existence.

A lot of people might say, "Well, you can't prove metaphysical idealism is false, can you?". (These are maybe the sort of people who think The Matrix has deep philosophical significance.) Arguments like that are pretty lame, though; they commit the fallacy of appeal to ignorance. You appeal to ignorance when your only premise in support of a claim is that you or your opponent can't show the claim is false, i.e., you are ignorant of any evidence that would disprove it. But that kind of ignorance doesn't prove anything. Think about it: I can't prove the universe didn't come into existence five minutes ago, complete with "historical" records and "memories," but the fact that I can't prove it's false doesn't make it true, or even plausible. I can't prove there isn't an invisible elephant (with no odor or any sensible properties) in my backyard. But if I seriously concluded on the basis of my ignorance of reasons for disproof that there were such an elephant, you would not say "Ms. LaFave, you are such a deep thinker"; you would say "Ms. LaFave, you are out of your mind".

Now let's turn to the real heart of this essay. Most people don't worry about metaphysical idealism or radical skepticism. But a lot of people worry about ethical subjectivism. Subjectivism in ethics is really just another example of the same confusion about "subjective" and "objective". The subjectivist says that because people have feelings about ethical matters, claims about ethical matters themselves must be subjective and therefore merely matters of opinion, and therefore not liable to adjudication by reason or other objective methods. In other words, nobody has "better" (more objective) views about ethical matters than anyone else.

A similar debate exists in the contemporary art world, because of the same confusion about subjectivity and objectivity. Nowadays, some people say that no work of art is better than any other. The Campbell's Soup logo is art; a pile of rocks or dog poop is art; the Aurora Borealis is art. Why? Because whether or not something is art is a "subjective" matter. Philosophers cringe.

Here’s one way to solve the problem, proposed by the philosopher John Searle.

We should distinguish two kinds of objectivity:

1. metaphysical objectivity, and
2. epistemological objectivity.

We also should distinguish two kinds of subjectivity:

1. metaphysical subjectivity, and
2. epistemological subjectivity.

Remember the distinction between metaphysics and epistemology?

Metaphysics consists of arguments and counterarguments about what we should call "real" or what we should say "is" or "has being". "Is free will real?" is a metaphysical question. In metaphysics, something exists objectively if its existence does not depend on its being experienced. For example, Antarctica and the Eiffel Tower exist objectively. They exist whether or not anyone has experienced them. Many realities are real in this way.

Something exists metaphysically subjectively, by contrast, if its existence depends on its being experienced — like a headache, or how Bourbon tastes to you. A particular headache ceases to exist if the person experiencing the headache stops feeling it. Many realities are real in this way, too — still real, just real in a different way.

Now, you might be thinking your headache is a metaphysically objective event, in the sense that your headache is just your brain state, and your brain state is potentially public and measurable. Or, you might say that your headache is metaphysically objective in the sense that it exists as an event in the history of the world; it is part of the stream of history just like any other event. I agree. Your headache IS a metaphysically objective event in these senses.

So how is a headache metaphysically subjective? Here we have to get a little technical and introduce the word qualia ("qualia" is plural; the singular is "quale"). There's been a lot of interesting debate in recent philosophy about qualia. A quale is, roughly, a "raw feel": the taste of pineapple, the particular red of ordinary tomatoes, the smell of wet dog, etc. Qualia are metaphysically subjective, in the sense that "the taste of pineapple" really comes down to "the taste of pineapple for me", and that taste might be unique to me, mine alone, and I can't ever find out if the way it tastes for me is the same as the way it tastes for you, etc. [1] (I am assuming here that the taste of pineapple is consistent enough from pineapple to pineapple to allow me to recognize the resemblance among my pineapple experiences; otherwise, if the taste of pineapple changed radically from pineapple to pineapple, I wouldn't develop a concept of "the taste of pineapple".)

On the view I'm defending, the word "subjective" is not an adjective that denotes a more or less fixed class of beings. Instead, when we think about metaphysical subjectivity, we are thinking primarily in adverbial terms: "subjectively" is a way of being real. Some things — like headaches — exist subjectively because they go out of being — they cease to be — when you stop having the relevant experience, e.g., of some qualiae.

What if I dream, imagine, hallucinate experiencing the Eiffel Tower? The Eiffel-Tower-I-hallucinate (that qualia or set of qualiae) exists metaphysically subjectively (for me only); it does not exist metaphysically objectively. By contrast, the Eiffel Tower, if it exists, exists metaphysically objectively. I can say that with confidence! The only way I could deny that the Eiffel Tower exists metaphysically objectively would be to adopt metaphysical idealism, but, as we've seen, there aren't good enough reasons to go there. Once you stop taking idealism seriously, it's obvious that metaphysically subjective things (like tastes or headaches) do not exist in little self-contained vacuums. People are objects in the world, and people also experience metaphysically subjective realities. Persons, like everything else, have many metaphysically objective properties. So the metaphysically subjective usually "spills over" into the metaphysically objective. Headaches ordinarily come with a whole bunch of metaphysically objective aspects in addition to the felt pain. For example, people with headaches often say, "I have a headache", or they take aspirin, or lie down, or say they don't feel like having sex, etc. All the latter events are public and normal.

And, of course, people can lie about having a headache. They can feign the public behavior without the private experience. But the notion that people can lie about their experiences presupposes the existence of metaphysically subjective experiences they can lie about.

Is this getting a little clearer?

Now let's turn to epistemology, the philosophical investigation of knowledge. Epistemology is largely about what statements are true or false. Statements are linguistic entities; they are strings of words or symbols. People use statements (as opposed to questions or exclamations) when they want to assert that something is so. In philosophy, the words "true" and "false" apply primarily to statements. Epistemology is about what makes the "true" statements true.

People label some statements "true" (e.g., "Antartica is a continent") and some statements false (e.g., "Sandy LaFave is the current U.S. President"). In epistemology, a statement (claim, assertion, proposition) is epistemologically objective if its truth value can be determined intersubjectively by generally-agreed methods or procedures. To say a statement is epistemologically objective is not to say the statement is true; it's just to say we could figure out a public method for determining whether or not the statement is true. For example, the statement "The Eiffel Tower is 10 feet tall" is epistemologically objective. Its truth value can be readily determined, and there's no disagreement about its truth value once we've agreed on the meanings of the terms in the sentences, and the measuring devices, etc. And once we apply the appropriate decision procedures, we find the statement is actually false; the Eiffel Tower is more than 10 feet tall. All observers using the same vocabulary and measuring devices would agree to that. We are said to know epistemologically objective claims that turn out to be true, i.e., claims about which there is (or would be) universal agreement.

An issue is a matter of fact (or, if you prefer, a factual matter) if metaphysically objective data would decide the truth values of statements about it. An issue can be a matter of fact (a factual matter) even if we do not currently happen to have the metaphysically objective data. For example, whether or not O.J. Simpson murdered his wife is a factual matter (a matter of fact and NOT, in the philosophical sense, a matter of opinion), since we could agree on the truth value of the statement "O.J. murdered his wife" if we had access to all the relevant information about the case. O.J., as a matter of fact, either did murder his wife, or he didn't. The relevant event really took place, or it didn't, independently of anyone's experience. What happened happened, metaphysically objectively. And if reasonable people ever had access to all the relevant information about the case, reasonable people would all agree about what happened. The same is true of whether or not extraterrestrials have ever visited earth. That's a factual matter; either extraterrestrials have visited the earth or they haven't, independently of anyone's experience. And if we knew enough about extraterrestrials and had access to all the relevant data, and agreed about what could constitute sufficient evidence, we would be able to say (epistemologically objectively) whether the statement "Extraterrestrials have visited the earth" is true or false.

[1]There's currently an extremely interesting debate raging in philosophy over the metaphysical significance of qualia. The issue is whether or not qualia refute materialism (the metaphysical position that everything is ultimately "stuff"). Do qualia exemplify non-material realities? Some philosophers, e.g., Frank Jackson and David Chalmers, think so. Back