The Objectivity Spectrum

Introduction

I am going to discuss the shortcomings of thinking in terms of the dichotomy between objective and subjective. Instead of pointing out its flaws, and leaving it at that, I will propose an alternative view that addresses these shortcomings and helps me to better navigate the issues that come with thinking about statements about reality.

The Current View — Objective VS Subjective

Have you ever wondered what is real and what is not? If so, don’t be embarrassed, it is quite an interesting question, and I’m sure one could argue an important one. Either way, since antiquity people have devoted a great portion of their time pondering it. Before looking at the current state of this debate, let’s take a step back and consider why this question comes up in the first place.
As humans we have the capability to intuitively distinguish between those facts that concern the world irrespective of humanity’s presence, and those facts that are tied to people’s perception or opinion in order to even make sense. Without having to perform any intellectual effort, we can all agree that there is a meaningful difference between your preference to walk in the sunlight and the sun existing in the first place. Or you liking one painting more than the other, and the fact that both paintings are made out of atoms.

In an effort to make this distinction more rigorous we came up with the idea of two categories, and then assign each fact to one, and only one of them. I am of course talking about statements being either objective or subjective. The current debate revolves solely around deciding to which bucket each fact belongs. This can be quite straightforward: When I drop something, it will accelerate towards the ground in a straight line, with is perfectly objective. I like the colour blue over red, which is obviously a personal, subjective statement. However, oftentimes, this supposedly binary decision becomes more fluid such as statements about aesthetics, which I will address in a moment. Objectivity and subjectivity have become so pervasive in contemporary language that most people have stopped questioning this binary thinking in the first place.

As much as this dual view on reality has its merits, it clearly has some shortcomings. First, some facts are just not as easily assigned to either objective or subjective. Take for example the entire field of aesthetics in any art form. We are all able to identify a well written text. Then, where does a statement about the quality of the text fall? Second, humans invent concepts to make more sense about the world, in this sense good concepts are those that are useful. However, when assigning a category to a specific fact results in endless debate, the usefulness is far to be found. Third, we live in a time where much more authority is given to objective claims, and subjectivity is often used to discard any attempts to formally argue about non-scientific topics. The Arts for example, let’s take Literature. Many people have devoted their lives to the study of what makes good literature. Are we then to say that their field of expertise is just subjective, and ultimately boils down to a matter of taste? Clearly not.

Perhaps we should let go of the notion that knowledge can be divided into two categories. What we could do is invent a new category, a new bucket if you like, for those statements that fall in between objective and subjective. However, this will only lead us to come up with even more categories whenever a statement does not quite fit in the existing ones. You might then ask, why buckets in the first place? Why not discard the idea of categories and replace it with a continuum, a spectrum with at its extremes the classical notion of objective and subjective. Alright, but what then determines where to place a specific statement? Which brings me to the next part.

The three criteria that determine Objectivity

I will here go over the three criteria that determine where on the spectrum a specific statement falls. It is important to keep in mind that all three criteria have to be considered simultaneously, and no one criteria can uniquely determine the result. Moreover, I have formulated the criteria in such a way such that the more a statement fulfils a criteria, the more on the objective side of the spectrum it falls.

1. Number of believers
   This criteria probably incites the most controversy, but hear me out. If you look at the history of knowledge and consider the way in which most knowledge is required by the majority of people, this criteria becomes a statement of basic observation. Whether we like to admit it or not, the fact remains that we all get the majority of our knowledge through interactions with other people. This is how we arrange our educational system and especially applies to life after formal education. By simply reflecting on how you acquire your own knowledge on a daily basis, this claim becomes self evident. As much as we would like to think otherwise, most of the ‘common knowledge’ everyone considers as trivial, is for the vast majority of us not acquired by observation, logical reasoning, or by independent inquiry. Rather, it is initially instilled into us by authority, and then reinforced by iteration. This might sound like an uncomfortable truth, but after some honest thought seems true nonetheless, just consider on what basis you are convinced the earth we live on is a globe.
   As countless studies around conformity show, we often legitimize what we know by probing other people. The more people we find that agree with us, the more we think we must be right. Contrary to common believe, this is no different in Science. The more people convinced into believing your new findings, the more it is considered to be true. The only difference is that the convincing process is subject to more rigor and strict conditions. The peer review process makes sure that nothing is published without at least four people agreeing on the contents. Part of scientific conferences can be seen as marketing efforts, where you try to convince enough people to believe what you are claiming is worth looking into. Then there is the number of citations which is a basic measure of how many people agree with your findings. If you boast a lot of citations, then you must be on to something. With a sufficiently large number of citations, or people convinced, your work is deemed true enough to be published in a book, which in turn might find its way into higher education. It all comes back to convincing the most people to believe what you found is true. Naturally, number of believers alone cannot determine how objective a statement is, this would make some religions among the most objective descriptions to date, which is absurd.
2. Precision
   The more precise a statement is, the further on the objective side of the spectrum it falls (in conjunction with the other two criteria). This criteria lies at the heart of why the exact sciences are considered to be more objective than the social sciences, and why art and aesthetics is often discarded as being too subjective for credible analysis.
   The precision of a statements is the degree of detail in the description of the statement. More precision means less vagueness, which leaves little room for interpretation. Apart from the obvious fact that the vagueness of imprecise statements often conceals a lack of certainty, there is a beautiful interplay with the previous criteria. If the objectivity of a statement is partly determined by the number of people believing it, we need to make sure that all of them agree on what it is exactly that they believe. For instance, if you ask people if they believe God exists, more than half the world population will agree. However, when you subsequently specify the God you meant as the Christian God, you will find most people to disagree. It is much easier to get people to agree on a vague statement open to interpretation, than it is to convince them of a highly detailed description.
   Vagueness can be attributed to different origins, but the one that strikes me the most is the use of language itself. Take for instance the hierarchy of sciences concerning objectivity. Mathematics, physics and chemistry are widely regarded as endeavors towards understanding reality and thereby making objective claims. The reason for their success in doing so, and the resulting incredible progress in these fields, is the unmatched level of detail in their descriptions. The true strength of these fields is the highly precise and restrictive form of communication, which is made possible by the use of mathematics. When a mathematical statement is made, there can be no ambiguity about its contents. Consequently, when scientists agree on a statement, they can be sure they are all agreeing on the exact same thing. Compare this with social sciences, where we cannot mold ideas into a mathematical form. Instead, language must be used as a way of communicating, leaving significantly more room for interpretation and debate. Then there is philosophy, which deals with abstract thoughts and concepts for which our language is not necessarily fit to even describe them. In this scenario you might never be sure whether two philosophers actually agree with each other. Lastly there are the arts, where language as means of communication is largely abandoned. Music, painting, and many others are ways to express feelings and emotions where language is unfit in doing so. It is therefore not surprising that such endeavors are highly prone to interpretation and therefore land near the subjective outer end of the spectrum.
3. Consistency
   If only the first two criteria would determine the degree of objectivity, we are still left with some awkward situations. For instance, the old testament is very clear, and precise about the history of the cosmos and life on earth. Moreover, there was a time when the majority of people held the creationist view to be true. Should we therefore consider the old testament as an objective, credible source of information? Probably not. To avoid these kinds of flaws a last criteria needs to be proposed, one that is based on the observation that reality is consistent.
   The more a statement is in agreement, or consistent with other objective statements, the more itself is to be considered objective. A statement or believe can be precise and be agreed upon as being true by a vast number of people. However if it cannot be reconciled with other precise, widely held believes, it necessarily needs to be placed on the subjective side of the spectrum. Since the old testament is in stark disagreement with the extremely detailed and consistent description by cosmology and evolutionary biology, it cannot be set on equal footing. What we look for in statements to be considered objective is their interconnection to everything else considered true. We want the most objective statements to form an interconnected network that is internally consistent, thereby reflecting the fundamental property of the physical world.

Examples

Thus the three criteria are Number of believers, Precision, and Consistency. I want to reiterate that all three have to be considered in conjunction to judge where a statement falls on the spectrum. To make this all more concrete, let me briefly go over some example to show how it works in practice.

1. The sciences are all pretty equal when it comes to number of believers and consistency. The only relevant distinguishing factor is the preciseness of their statements. On the objective side we have Mathematics, Physics, and chemistry, whose statements are mostly written in the form of Mathematics. Then biology and medical sciences both bridge the gap between the hard sciences and the social sciences such as psychology, sociology and political sciences.
2. Religion to this day scores very high in number of believers, and religious based on written text are quite precise as well. However, religion has a severe consistency problem.
3. Philosophy is quite the interesting field when it comes to deciding where it falls on the spectrum. There is a large divide between Western and Eastern philosophy in this regards. Where Philosophers in the West have tried to make philosophical statements more and more precise and internally consistent (e.g. Kant), Eastern philosophers did not bother with this. This being said, there are some philosophical statements that resonates with a very large audience. Take for instance the International Human Rights idea, which is a philosophical statement that is widely accepted a being truth.
4. With these criteria we can also lift the study of aesthetics out of its subjectivity stigma. Although it is hard to use language to make precise statements about art, we can use the fact that there are universal preferences ingrained in humans to consider the study of art more objective than mere personal preferences.
5. Purely personal preferences. Depending on your taste, number of believers is minute, preciseness is limited by language at best, and intuition generally does not have a good track record when it comes to consistency.

Those are just five brief examples of how the three criteria come into action and give a much more meaningful way to handle these issues. There are of course countless more examples, which I am sure you will find on a daily basis.

Conclusion

I hope you are at least partly convinced that the spectrum approach of the entire Objective vs Subjective debate offers a more satisfying way of thinking about these terms than the current dichotomy. When you start thinking of the continuous spectrum and corresponding three criteria, you will discover a much more nuanced picture of reality, which is oftentimes the more accurate one. I am certainly not presenting this approach as a waterproof way of making sense of the world, I am sure there are flaws, shortcomings and examples where it breaks down. However, this does not discredit its usefulness over the current point of view. It is with this in mind that I thought I’d share my approach.