What does "objective" mean?

Encountering Philosophy, Chapter 15

Travis Joseph Rodgers

One of the concepts most central to philosophy, at least in the Western Canon, is Objectivity. It is also a concept frequently misunderstood by students of philosophy. Here, I consider two ways of understanding objectivity. They end up being very similar despite taking different paths to get there.

Peter Van Inwagen (PVI)

PVI’s chapter on objectivity is a masterwork of clarity. To say that there is objective truth is to say, first of all, that our claims represent the world as being certain ways and the world either is that way or it isn’t. Our claims can be expressed in speech or thought. If I claim that the phone is on the table, I’m making a claim about how the world is. This claim is true just in case that’s how the world is. And this claim is false just in case the world is not that way.

The second part of objective truth is that the world has the features it does “largely independent” of our beliefs and assertions. Two things must be said about this point. First, it’s true that our beliefs and assertions are, at least in some sense, part of the world. I’m part of the world, and the beliefs I have are mine, so they’re in the world, too. I think the best way of understanding this point is to say that it’s not my beliefs that make something true. It’s not that “the phone is on the table” is true because I believe it. It might, however, be that I believe it because it’s true. Second, this doesn’t mean that all our claims are easily understood as being about the world. Sometimes, it takes hard work to figure out just what we mean.

It's About Objects

Imagine a film you’ve seen. I ask you what you thought about the film. You make some claims. “It scared me,” you say. “It contained very little dialogue,” you say. “It was slow-paced,” you say. “But it was beautiful.” Some of these claims are clearly about “the object” that is the movie. “It contained very little dialogue.” Dialogue is a part of the movie. There was either a lot or not a lot. Pacing is part of a movie, too. We could look at how many scenes there were, divided by run time. “It scared me,” is not a claim about the film itself. It’s a claim about what happened to you when you watched it. That’s not a claim about the movie.

I’ve left the best for last. Sometimes, when people say, “It was beautiful” or “it was good,” all they mean is, “I liked it.” That’s a claim about you, the viewer. But sometimes we form a judgment that something is good even if we don’t like it. We might even think that something can be beautiful but still not like it. This suggests that these judgments are not the same as reports of how things struck me. Some people, that is, use “good” and “beautiful” objectively. Objectively how? Because they’re making claims about the object – the film.

Truth and Falsity

Now, so far, I’ve spoken of objectivity. On either of these views, at least some claims that are objective are possibly true. Some objective claims are false, too. How could these claims be false? Consider PVI’s view. If it’s false that the phone is on the table, then the claim is objectively false. It could be false in many ways. The phone might be on the floor. There might be no phone. The phone might be taped underneath the table.

What would it mean for something to be false on the second approach? Given that the claim is about object(s), we’re making a claim about how one object (a phone) is related to another (the table). What would make this claim true is just that the two objects stand in relation to one another in the way we’ve claimed. If they don’t, then the claim is false.

This is why I suggest the two approaches end up in much the same place. But, you might say, how could “beauty” be objective, given that people disagree? In fact, in my own example, I suggested that some use that term in an objective way, but some don’t.

Truth and Proof

The claims of objectivity are not that everyone must use the same terms. In fact, this article is not about terms. It’s about concepts. The concept of objectivity, as it appears in the Western Canon, has certain characteristics. I’ve tried to capture them here. Even if someone uses a term in a different way, that doesn’t mean the way philosophers use the term is stupid or wrong. In fact, it may be a good idea to use a term precisely because it helps us think clearly about things.

Some challenge the idea of objectivity I’ve laid out there. They’ll say that we must be able to prove something in order for it to be objective. (Aside, with snark: can we prove that claim?) On one hand, anything that is objective could in principle be proven. But given that we exist in particular spaces and times, we will in fact not be able to prove many claims that are objective and true. Thirty seven seconds after the Big Bang, was the universe more dispersed in one direction than another? That’s an objective question, but I can’t imagine we can prove the answer. Did I just order an iced coffee or a hot coffee? In principle, we can prove that. But in reality, you won’t be able to prove it. It’s still objective because truth and proof are different.

Truth is a question of existence. Proof is a question of evidence. I’m holding up a certain number of fingers right now. It’s either zero, one, two, three, four, or five. One of them is objectively true, even if you don’t know and can’t prove it.