Q&A: What Is Subjectivity
What Is Subjectivity
Question
I always thought that a subjective question is one that each person would answer differently. For example, "How old are you?"—because each person (subject) would give his own specific age. Then I was told that this is דווקא an objective question, because a person's age is something measurable and not connected to his feelings or personal experience, unlike, for example, the question "What is your favorite color?" which is a subjective question. But seemingly that too is an objective question, because I can answer "blue," and that would be a claim that is objectively true: "My favorite color is blue." And beyond that, if they say that what determines it is my feelings, is the sentence "I feel that one plus one is two" a subjective sentence?
I would be glad to hear your take. How would you define a subjective question/statement?
Answer
This is a semantic question, and therefore not important or interesting. The term "subjectivity" can have several meanings, and you need to clarify which one you are using.
For example, "I love so-and-so" is a subjective claim in the sense that it deals with my inner mental and emotional world, which is not accessible to other people. They cannot verify it for themselves (beyond trusting my report). So you can call it a subjective claim in that sense. But if I really do love so-and-so, then the claim is an objective truth, because it corresponds to the state of affairs in the world that it describes. By contrast, the claim "This picture is beautiful" is subjective because here there is no possibility at all of comparing it to something in the world, or inside the person, and determining that it is true (assuming the common view that beauty is not rooted in the objective world). On the other hand, if I say, "This picture is beautiful in my eyes," then we are back to the claim "I love so-and-so"—that is, it is an objective truth described in a subjective claim.
"I feel that one plus one is two" is exactly the same kind of claim as "I love so-and-so." Call it subjective or objective—it is a semantic matter and not interesting.