Subjective Judgments (point of view, religion, science, Zen, Roman)

[coberst]

Subjective Judgments

What do we mean when we consider one judgment to be subjective while another is objective?

I think that when a person, an agent, makes a judgment about an object we must take into account the stability of the agent and the stability of the object. When the object is another agent the stability is different than when the object is an inanimate thing with an essence that changes only under rare or substantial forces.

The agent has many forces working on her or him when a judgment is made. Depending upon the ability of the agent in dealing with those forces determines to some extent the variability of the agent.

In making a judgment regarding a matter of physics the agent can be considered to be very stable because the physicist is trained to disregard subjective forces plus the paradigm of that particular natural science places tremendous controls on the agent. Also inanimate objects are unlikely to disturb the agent to nearly the degree as does political and social thoughts.

The agent making judgments about political or social thought has tremendous internal forces pulling in an irrational direction plus the object of consideration is almost always one or more agents with tremendous irrational forces at work also. I guess that there are seldom if ever paradigms involved in political and social domains of knowledge.

[Sunstone]

So far as I understand it, the notion of judgements being subjective or objective is an old fashioned, loose way of distinguishing judgements that are obviously biased from those that are not obviously biased. That is, it's not a very precise way of discussing things, but it has it's uses.

[coberst]

Originally Posted by Sunstone

So far as I understand it, the notion of judgements being subjective or objective is an old fashioned, loose way of distinguishing judgements that are obviously biased from those that are not obviously biased. That is, it's not a very precise way of discussing things, but it has it's uses.

What word do you use when you make a decision? If judgment is not the correct word what is the correct word? It seems to me that if you are a physicist working in the lab or a Supreme Court judge handing down an opinion you both are weighing the evidence and making a judgment.

I would say that there are opinions, considered opinions, and judgments. Everybody has an opinion about everything. Some people give careful thought and study to arrive at a considered opinion and then some people on other occasions give more study and greater consideration and make a judgment. What other words are available?

[Sunstone]

Originally Posted by coberst

What word do you use when you make a decision? If judgment is not the correct word what is the correct word? It seems to me that if you are a physicist working in the lab or a Supreme Court judge handing down an opinion you both are weighing the evidence and making a judgment.

I would say that there are opinions, considered opinions, and judgments. Everybody has an opinion about everything. Some people give careful thought and study to arrive at a considered opinion and then some people on other occasions give more study and greater consideration and make a judgment. What other words are available?

Please reread my post more closely. I wasn't talking of judgement as being an old fashioned term, but of objective and subjective as being old fashioned terms.

[Willamena]

Originally Posted by coberst

What do we mean when we consider one judgment to be subjective while another is objective?

A subjective judgement is an opinion; that is, it directly or indirectly contains within its phrasing the point of view of the subject or observer.

If Betty says, "You suck, Bob!" that is subjective, because it contains a subject, Betty, who is observing or interacting with an object, Bob, as indicated by the first-person singular language. Betty's conscious point-of-view is what is being expressed in the phrase.

An objective statement eliminates the observer.

"Bob acted in a way that was unacceptable to Betty," is objective, as it includes both Bob and Betty as objects in a story-like fashion. Whatever opinion the story-teller might hold is eliminated.

Originally Posted by coberst

I would say that there are opinions, considered opinions, and judgments. Everybody has an opinion about everything. Some people give careful thought and study to arrive at a considered opinion and then some people on other occasions give more study and greater consideration and make a judgment. What other words are available?

A judge's judgement very often involves opinion, though they are supposed to weigh the evidence objectively and come to the best conclusion regardless of their opinion. For instance, if a judge says in his ruling that it goes against his religion to do whatever and that that is what his decision is based upon, then he is bringing himself, his own issues, into the decision. If, on the other hand, he sticks to the letter of the law (the law does not allow whatever) then he is being objective. Same with the scientist: if he can show that the evidence points to a particular conclusion through the scientific method, then he is being properly objective.

[coberst]

Opinions are 'a dime a dozen' everybody has an opinion about everything. Judgments are made after careful study and consideration.

[coberst]

I think that this matter of subjective versus objective judgment has been left rather ambiguous. Here is my subjective judgment regarding this matter:


The natural sciences deal only with entities that can be measured. For the natural sciences ‘to be is to be measurable’. The natural sciences deal only with objective judgments. Objective judgments are judgments dealing only with entities that can be measured.

Subjective judgments are about all other entities.

[Sunstone]

All science rests on observation, and all observation is ultimately subjective. What scientists do is look for intersubjectively verifiable observations. An intersubjectively verifiable observation is just short hand for "an observation that can be made by more than one person."

For instance, I look up and see the moon. You look up and see the moon. You have therefore made the same observation that I have. The observation is intersubjectively verified.

Much of science, especially what's considered "hard science", relies extensively on reproducable observations or reproducable results. I combine hydrogen and oxygen, run a spark through the mix, and get a bang and water. You are able to reproduce that experiment to get a bang and water too. The results of the experiment are reproducable. Because they are reproducable, they are also intersubjectively verifiable.

Some science, especially what's considered "soft science", also relies on observations that are not easily or entirely reproducable. Suppose you are a field biologist who observes wolves. One day you notice a wolf rolling itself on a dead fish that has washed up on the shore. How are you going to reproduce that observation? Maybe you can put a dead fish out for wolves to roll in, if they feel like rolling in a dead fish, but you really can't reproduce that observation entirely at will. Therefore, it is somewhat difficult for you, as a field biologist, to achieve intersubjective verification of some of your observations. But despite the practical problems associated with achieving intersubjective verification, that's what you are trying to find for your observations.

Thus, to be precise, it is not "objective" truth that science looks for, but rather "intersubjectively verifiable" truth.

[coberst]

Sunstone

It is the case then that you do not consider measurability is a consideration?