The objectivity question

[koganbot]

Offnotesnotes asks "can music be objectively good?" and Tom repeats the question and Daddino and I comment. Sane people tend to flee such discussion, but I don't, and this was my two cents:

Well, a problem is that the word "objective" has an air of precision about it but it's actually vague and problematic as all shit, and Marc never told us or figured out what he was asking. A connotation of "objective" is that everyone who has access to the same facts or data or sense impressions and isn't mentally deficient and is willing to do the work must come to the same conclusion, and we can't imagine that they wouldn't. Generally, the word that "objective" attaches to is "true" rather than "good," the distinction supposedly being that we can - or, once we know more about tides and winds and such, we will be able to - determine objectively whether a dike in or near New Orleans can withstand Category Four or Category Five hurricanes. Whereas whether New Orleans is worth the trouble of protecting and preserving, and what about New Orleans you want to protect and preserve, and whether dikes are the way you want to do it (rather than, say, moving the city periodically) are generally considered value judgments, which are supposedly the sort of thing that we can imagine disagreeing about, no matter how much data we collect.

For a whole slew of reasons I won't go into here, I wish the words "objective" and "subjective" would disappear: notice that in the question we're discussing now the word "objective" is a barrier rather than a spur to thought. I suspect that what might really be nagging at people isn't whether the term "good song" can be moved into the category "fact," where we can't imagine disagreement, but rather that it seems to waver somewhere between "matter of taste" and "matter of judgment." For example, whether broccoli tastes better than cauliflower is generally considered a matter of taste, with nothing much riding on whether we agree or not, whereas whether a particular embezzler deserves prison is considered a matter of judgment. I'd say that, e.g., for the people who care about hip-hop, whether Asher Roth is better than Kanye West isn't considered just a mere matter of taste, but why it isn't, or just how important the question is, is not clear. In general, moving a question from the category "judgment" to either the category "fact" or the category "matter of taste" is an attempt to end discussion, but in matters of music the attempt always fails.

(This isn't meant to imply that people are clear or definite as to how they categorize something, or are putting thought into it; "matter of taste" means "you can't criticize me" and "matter of fact" means "you have to agree with me (and therefore can't criticize me), or ideally you would agree, anyway, once we gather all the data," but people's behavior in regard to music doesn't cooperate with either of those categories.)

Comments

[koganbot]

Relevant koganbot links here would be Kuhn 3: Incommensurability and of course the classic "Relativism: So What?": So What? and Relativism: So What? (Part Four)

[koganbot]

A standard application of the term "subjective" is to matters of taste, and my critics appear to suppose that that is what I have made of theory choice. But they are missing a distinction standard since Kant when they do so. Like sensation reports, which are also subjective in the sense now at issue, matters of taste are undiscussable. Suppose that, leaving a movie theater with a friend after seeing a western, I exclaim: "How I liked that terrible potboiler!" My friend, if he disliked the film, may tell me I have low tastes, a matter about which, in these circumstances, I would readily agree. But, short of saying that I lied, he cannot disagree with my report that I liked the film or try to persuade me that what I said about my reaction was wrong. What is discussable in my remark is not my characterization of my internal state, my exemplification of taste, but rather my judgment that the film was a potboiler. Should my friend disagree on that point, we may argue most of the night, each comparing the film with good or great ones we have seen, each revealing, implicitly or explicitly, something about how he judges cinematic merit, about his aesthetic.
--Thomas Kuhn, "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice," 1973, collected in The Essential Tension

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Good quote to encapsulate why, as I said in one of the comments thread (forget which), the discussion that ends at like/dislike is usually a BORING one. And in the end that's the biggest crime committed by the anti-objective swing to subjective "let's talk about taste and how everyone is entitled to it" style musings: THEY'RE BORING AS SHIT. The real conversation happened at the end, when they argued most of the night in comparisons and implicit/explicit judgments. Kuhn said a lot in the phrase "how I liked that terrible potboiler!" related to the discussion of "bad movie" or "good movie" as "sociocinematic category" ((c) Kogan) (yes I had to look that up).

[koganbot]

Perhaps the best way to deal with the charge of "subjectivism" brought against Kuhn is to make a distinction between senses of "subjective" other than the one he himself made... We can distinguish two senses of "subjective" which will stand roughly opposite each of the two senses of "objective" distinguished earlier. "Objectivity" in the first sense was a property of theories which, having been thoroughly discussed, are chosen by a consensus of rational discussants. By contrast, a "subjective" consideration is one which has been, or would be, so should be, set aside by rational discussants - one which is seen to be, or should be seen to be, irrelevant to the subject matter of the theory. To say that someone is bringing in "subjective" considerations to a discussion where objectivity is wanted is, roughly, to say that he is bringing in considerations which others think beside the point. If he presses these outré considerations, he is turning normal inquiry into abnormal discourse - he is being either "kooky" (if he loses his point) or "revolutionary" (if he gains it). For a consideration to be subjective, in this sense, is simply for it to be unfamiliar. So judging subjectivity is as hazardous as judging relevance.
--Richard Rorty, Philosophy And The Mirror Of Nature, 1979, pp 338-339

I'll paste in the rest of this passage below, regarding the second sense of "subjective" and "objective," but first I'll interject that: (1) Rorty botches the distinction between "normal" and "abnormal" in that it's perfectly normal to argue over what is relevant or not, and to not come to definitive agreement; the situation in "normal science" (Kuhn's term), where what is relevant is generally agreed-upon, is not the situation in most normal nonscience. I say a lot more about this over in Department Of Dilettante Research, Part 2: Depart Harder. (2) "Relevant" and "irrelevant" are perfectly good words, a lot better than "objective" and "subjective," and given that most people mean something else by "objective" and "subjective" than "we agree" or "it's irrelevant," we should simply throw the terms "objective" and "subjective" into the garbage. Also, "relevant" and "irrelevant" are judgments as Kuhn is using the term.

Which isn't to say that the Rorty passage I just quoted isn't ace. There's no basis for calling something objective other than that we've agreed to agree on it (except no one would bother calling a statement "objective" unless there's a question as to whether everyone actually is going to agree with it), but "objective" is supposed to mean something more forceful than "we agree."

[koganbot]

By contrast, a "subjective" consideration is one which has been, or would be, so should be, set aside by rational discussants

I mistyped: "so should be" is "or should be"

[koganbot]

In a more traditional sense of "subjective," on the other hand, "subjective" contrasts with "corresponding to what is out there," and thus means something like "a product only of what is in here" (in the heart, or in the "confused" portion of the mind which does not contain privileged representations and thus does not accurately reflect what is out there). In this sense "subjective" is associated with "emotional" or "fantastical," for our hearts and our imaginations are idiosyncratic, while our intellects are, at their best, identical mirrors of the self-same external objects. Here we get a linkup with "matters of taste," since the state of our emotions at a given moment (of which our unconsidered momentary reaction to a work of art is an example) is indeed undebatable. We have privileged access to what goes on inside us. In this way, the tradition since Plato has run together the "algorithm versus no algorithm" distinction with the "reason versus passion" distinction. The various ambiguities of "objective" and "subjective" illustrate the way in which the confusion can develop.
--Richard Rorty, Philosophy And The Mirror Of Nature, 1979, p. 339.

(I'll point out that Rorty isn't saying that he believes that we have privileged access to what goes on inside us, or that our intellects can be identical mirrors of self-same external objects.)