Subjective vs. Objective

Greg Damico hosted a lecture redefining what subjective means versus objective on May 6. The purpose of the lecture was to provide a starting point from which people can utilize subjective thinking and objective thinking in everyday critical thinking. Many people have come to equate objectivism to facts and subjectivism to opinions and bias. However, Damico’s intent was to further define the two for the purpose of applying them to more complex critical thinking such as quantum physics and the more difficult-to- answer questions in our daily lives. He defines first the human being as being the subject. All the thoughts and sensations felt by the subject are effectively its objects. Being subjective, according to Damico and many other philosophers,
is anything that “pertains to the subject,to the human being as an interpreter of the real world and its objects.” We can then deduce that anything relating to the beliefs and ,”opinions is subjective while anything of the real world is objective.
Another important thing to note with this updated definition is to keep in mind that the subjective “relates to people’s opinions,” thus an argument is only subjective when “people’s opinions about it are relevant to the determination of that claim’s truth.” Damico provided the audience with an example to help clarify the definition: “the sky is blue” is an objective statement because whether or not we can perceive with our eyes that the sky is blue is independent from any values or beliefs. Whether or not we believe the sky is blue doesn’t matter because the sky will still be the color of the sky. “Broccoli goes well with mashed potatoes” is a subjective statement because it relies on the thoughts of outside influences to claim whether or not it’s true that broccoli goes well with mashed potatoes.Topics such as these may be sometimes hard to swallow but “good philosophy is like that,” said DAmico. “It’s one of these distinctions that gets thrown around too easily by almost anyone, yet there’s still  lot of lack of clarity. The modern world is really complex but Damico agreed that the purpose of the lecture was to add onto his critical thinking course, sharing with the audience that people must alway question the little questions as well as the big questions. as long as we develop a firm foundation to begin questioning the rest of the world and beyond, it becomes easier to ask the bigger questions.
“Philosophers and scientists have a hard time agreeing on things,” Said Damico, “but it often helps to think about which sorts of questions are subjective and which sorts of questions are objective.” Damico’s idea behind his lecture in conjunction with his critical thinking curriculum was to clear certain deep issues of the nature of beliefs. “When an issue is objective or subjective might influence a lot of what we take in an argument.”