The Difference Between Objective and Subjective

Subjective and objective are two adjectives that often describe views, information, and arguments. Subjective implies that something is biased or influenced by personal feelings and opinions.

The main difference is objective and subjective.

Subjective and objective are two adjectives that often describe views, information, and arguments. Subjective implies that something is biased or influenced by personal feelings and opinions. The objective is the opposite of the subjective; it means that something does not depend on personal feelings or opinions when considering and presenting facts.

This is the main difference between objective and subjective. This distinction between objective and subjective is like that between facts and opinions; Facts are objective and opinions are subjective. It is very important to distinguish between the objective and the subjective when receiving new information; Knowing the difference between the two can also help you understand the difference between truth and lies. Let’s take a deeper look at what is objective and what is subjective, what is the difference between objective and subjective, and how knowing this difference helps us.

Purpose – meaning and use

Objective information, arguments, views, etc. are unbiased and always based on facts. They are not colored by personal feelings, opinions or tastes. They can be tested by evidence and evidence. Objective information is measurable and factual. They can also be described as facts.

Objective information can be found in textbooks, news reports, encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. When a person makes a judgment or decision, they must be objective and impartial. An objective point of view is also required in technical and academic writing. When an author is objective, he is simply stating facts and observations; he usually cannot insert his own comments and opinions. However, the author may present his own theories if he can back them up with facts.

Subjective – Meaning and Usage

Subjective is the opposite of objective. Moreover, they cannot be supported by concrete evidence. While they may be grounded in reality, they reflect the attitude and perspective of the writer or speaker.

Subjective information can be found in editorials, feature articles, biographies, and other fiction. Human opinion is naturally subjective. Being subjective is valued when evaluating literature. You cannot evaluate and properly criticize literature without being subjective. It is because of this subjectivity that different people have different views on the same literary subject.

Objective vs. Subjective – Examples

“More than 40% of oil was exported from Middle Eastern countries such as Algeria, Iraq, Libya and Angola, former Soviet republics such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and Nigeria and Angola in Africa.” –

Subjectivity and objectivity (new look)

I can’t help but write on the topic of “subjectivity” and “objectivity”. These concepts are widely used in philosophy, and from philosophy they have long passed into ordinary language, they are used very often. “Subjective” – ​​with the meaning “own”, “special”, “specific”; and “objective” with the meaning “valid”, “true”, “not dependent on perception”. Even here, strangeness is visible – clearly opposite words are not opposite in their meaning. Further more. If you dig deeper, it turns out that these concepts are empty, meaningless and used illegally, with an arbitrary meaning. They always, without exception, bring confusion instead of clarity.

Antonrai’s recent post and comments are a good example of this:

Sharing the general pathos of the post, an attempt to defend the value of knowledge, justify the claims of philosophers to the truth of judgments, I can not agree with the definition of objective and subjective. Actually, I have not come across a single clear, consistent text about these concepts, including Lektorsky’s articles in the Philosophical Encyclopedia (both old and new). Here, for example, is a quote from A.A. Megrabyan “Depersonalization”:

“The whole objective material world is displayed in the subjective only through the objective higher neuro-physiological processes occurring in the body and brain. The subjective mental content of consciousness, in turn, affects the external world only through objective processes. They tried to shove dialectics everywhere, but here it turned out especially unsuccessfully, how the objective turns into the subjective and vice versa is a mystery. Understand, what is subjective and objective is difficult even for a philosopher. So, let’s figure it out.

The subject is the actor, the object is what the action, activity is directed at. This is the basis from which to start. But action is a process, it cannot be permanent. This means that the actor can be considered as such only when he acts. And given that he can also be affected, the relativity of action arises. There is no subject at all, but there is “subject x and object y”, that is, no person is a subject at all. Well, for example, a person can be called a “goalkeeper”,

who is a goalkeeper?

The man who stands at the gate. Without this clarification, there will be ambiguity. But what does “stand” mean when the goalkeeper is sleeping – is he a goalkeeper or not? Not a goalkeeper. The goalkeeper is not the one who stands on the gate at all, we call a person a goalkeeper WHEN he is standing on the gate. The “subject” is exactly like a goalkeeper. The subject is the one who acts, right? No. The subject is the one who acts when he acts (at the moment of action). The one who is not standing at the goal now is not the goalkeeper, the one who is not acting at the moment is not the subject. Conclusion: no person is a subject by default, this is not his quality. Any person can be both the subject and the object of action.

Let’s move on to knowledge. On what basis is knowledge equated with action? I see no reason. Only by the fact that there is a direction? Maybe. But the direction of what? attention. Moreover, we are talking here about perception, and not about cognition. Cognition is the result of the processing of perceptions, it is a purely intra-rational act. If we talk about the impact in cognition, then the impact is more likely to be on a person (“subject”), rather than vice versa.

Direction of attention

For example, when watching a movie. It is not the eyes that affect the screen image. If there is no action that we mark, the words “subject” and “object” are not applicable. It is wrong to mark the direction of attention with the help of these words. Here, under the subject is designated “perceiving” and under the object – “perceived”. Further, the concepts are replaced, which distorts the meaning.

If everyone would say “subjective” – ​​understanding would be impossible. Even an opinion contains only an element of the characteristics of the perception of a given person. Usually this does not prevent him from being adequately understood. When a person speaks of knowledge and opinion, he speaks differently. “I see an apple” is not knowledge. Such a statement cannot be disputed – it speaks of perception, and not of an apple. “There is an apple on this table” is already knowledge subject to verification and completely devoid of “subjectivity”. The mistake is when a person confuses these two things, that is, arbitrarily translates “I see an apple” into “an apple is on the table.” But these are already problems of the accuracy of statements, and not of “subjectivity”.

I summarize:
1. The categories “subject” and “object” cannot be tied to objects.
2. In the absence of action, the expressions “subject” and “object” are inappropriate. These concepts do not correspond to epistemological problems.
3. Subjective – is a property of the subject, and is not applicable to either perception or cognition.
4. Knowledge is always independent of the specifics of the knower. Thus, not only the word “subjective” is inapplicable, but also any concept with the same meaning, which we would like to replace it with.