I was trawling the 'nets today when I saw something online that I realized would be a perfect example of the difference between objectivity and subjectivity. It was a short current affairs bio page of a politician named Yulia Tymoshenko. The descriptor underneath her name went something along the lines of, "prime minister of Ukraine, world's hottest politician". Conventionally, I would say that the objective statement is "prime minister of Ukraine"
and the subjective would be "world's hottest politician", and this would be correct. She is the prime minister of Ukraine. It isn't a matter of what someone thinks about her. To say that she is the "world's hottest politician", on the other hand, is obviously subjective, because it is but one person's thoughts on her physical attractiveness. Someone could think that she really isn't the "world's hottest politician", because physical attractiveness is based on an individual's opinion. However, I would contest that what are facts, but a majority consensus about an idea? For instance, people once thought the Earth was flat. We now know that in fact, the Earth is not flat. But to these ancient people, the Earth being flat was an undisputed fact. Consequently, our own factual views of the Earth might change at some undetermined point in the future. What we view as facts are really nothing more than the general prevailing thought on a subject. This being said, If it were possible to show pictures of every current politician to every single person on the Earth and had them judge each politician's level of attractiveness, I am willing to bet a shekel or two that Yulia Tymoshenko would have the highest attractiveness ratings of any current politician, thus objectively earning her the title of "World's hottest politician". QED.
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Great way of showing how the subjective claim could be made into an objective claim. It just really shows how in order for a claim to be objective it has to be able to be tested in a reasonable way. And reasonably is definitely not showing pictures of all current politicians to every person in the world, that is near impossible. The line that is the difference between objective claims and subject claims can be a blurry one sometimes, because depending on who you are, what country you are from, and how you were raised you could read or hear a subjective claim and think it is a fact, because from your knowledge and culture it is.
ReplyDeleteI thought both your examples were really good. Both of them give a clear vision of the difference between subjective and objective claims are. I agree with DeeAnn as well in the idea that the line between objective and subjective claims can be very blurred at times. People learn in different ways but it all boils down to the fact that we're all learning just about the same things just at different times, places and speeds. I also really liked how you brought up past experiences of subjective claims about the earth being flat. I thought that was a great way to end your blog and discussion on objective and subjective claims.
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