Subjective/Objective
This was originally posted at Secular Perspectives.
Here’s something that occurred to me recently. It’s nearly-trivial, but I found it interesting.
The reason a subjective statement, like “Beethoven’s ninth is his best symphony” is subjective is that a) it refers mental state, and b) that mental state can vary from person to person.
But it can be turned into an objective statement by simply saying whose mind it refers to: “Smith thinks that Beethoven’s ninth symphony is his best”. This is an objective statement, and its truth or falsehood can be ascertained simply by asking Smith. In a few years, maybe we’ll even have scanners that can read the answer in Smith’s brain.
Or instead of specifying a particular subject to whom the statement applies, we can specify a class of people, e.g., “Most music critics think that Beethoven’s ninth is his best”, or “Nobody likes being humiliated” (vs. “humiliation is bad”).
One consequence of this is that it helps put morality on a reality-based footing: a question like “should the US intervene in the Ivory Coast?” seems hopelessly subjective, but we can at least ask questions like, “how many Americans think the US should intervene?” and “how many Ivorians want the US to intervene?”. These questions, and their answers, are called polls, and they’re used all the time. (I’m not saying that complex moral questions should be decided by polling. But polls can provide an objective underpinning to moral arguments. For instance, if 98% of Ivorians hated Americans and wanted the US to stay the hell away, that would undercut arguments like “we should move in: we’ll be greeted as liberators”.)
Secular morality is often attacked for being too subjective. I hope the above helps correct that perception. The whole point of having a system of morality is, presumably, to improve the universe in some way, and hopefully allow us to be happier and get along with each other in the process. What “better” means, above, is subjective, but at the very least we can see what people think, and what most of us can agree on.