disingenuousness

Actually, I was asking earnestly, but this has given me long overdue chuckles for a mundane Friday...

Anyway, right now, it seems like you're asking "are humans who hold they are imperfect at judging objectively just full of shit when they try to judge as objectively as possible anyway?"... and I'd say "no".

"Judging objectively" just seems a colloquialism for "analyzing the best solution while disconnecting oneself from any passions that are the side effect of personal bias."

On the DMB thread, Ned (I think) threw a comment at the bottom of one of his posts: "...and because the Googlers want me to say so, 'that's just my opinion, anyway.'" In this instance, Ned was making claims that seemed objective -- and so he wanted to make sure that others wouldn't think that he thought they were unassailable objective facts. But there was a touch of "Jeez, I guess I gotta say this" -- because among ILX regulars, it would've been implied.

I'm sure this post will get me in trouble somehow.

Am I radical yet?

The striving to be objective is more like a striving to make as many people as possible follow the higher-order-of-things/standard "you" follow.

pretenses towards objectivity aren't meant to accomplish it, they're methods by which we persuade ourselves that that we have accomplished it. I am a lawyer, and this is precisely why the law is an ass. Momus and I had a moment of agreementabout this on ILE once.

meanwhile when i am certain of something (or making an obv. subjective claim like "the best" or a silly claim whose silliness also clearly implies subjectivity and the firmness is part of the joke -- i.e. "x AND NOTHING ELSE") i tend to be very strident.

not declaring interests often = a canny way of leveraging power

not declaring interests often = a canny way of leveraging power

Josh OTM.

This question deserves to be raped.

You just keep making that point, over and over.

I can't help but be inclined to think that the powerless are more prone to theoretical denials of objectivity.

blanket denials harder to make, or harder to take?

you interpreted it the way I meant it, stu.

like when?

like when it's the critics analytical intention

intention = crutch if and only if the critic (also an artist btw) wields subjectivity unintentionally/lazily.

i think wielding objectivity is an oxymoron.

Big problem: The belief that judgments are subjective is itself a judgment that must be believed to be objective in order for it to have any explanatory power whatsoever. (*paradox alert*)

Of course, when we stop insisting that statements like "Steely Dan is objectively great" or "Value judgemnts about music are necessarily subjective" (a judgment and a meta-judgment, respectively -- see, it works on both levels) actually "get at" something, we can see that we use statements like these to accomplish things. Saying that something is objectively great lends it an air of definitiveness, whereas insisting on the subjectivity of musical judgments can be an attempt to: (a) deflate someone else's bullheaded insistence on a point you disagree with; or (b) appear modest and nonconfrontational when making your own point.

The notions of subjectivity and objectivity as discursive weapons to be wielded is pretty damned illustrative. The problem with subjectivity as a weapon is that, in turning the other guy's sword into a banana, you turn your own sword into one as well. It's a peacemaking gesture for sure, but it's not always intended to be one, and in the case of talking about music, "peacemaking" = "discourse-ending". Oops! To respond to Dave's "What is wielding objectivity like?" -- objectivity-as-weapon is not really something that needs to be wielded; it does the work for you, so to speak, by lending that aforementioned weight of definitiveness to your statements. In that sense it's much more of a critical crutch than subjectivity-as-weapon.

bananafication not always a peacemaking gesture: some people place a great deal of significance on their weapons, and are offended when you turn them into comedy fruits.

I'm surprised no one's talking about the other side of the coin: a friend of mine argues -- very persuasively, I think -- that people who lavishly invoke "there is no absolute truth [1]" sorts of things are frequently (though not always) in fact using it as a mask for covert or passive aggression, i.e. "Ergo, I don't have to listen to anything you say, and there's nothing you can possibly believe in or care about that I can't devalue and dismiss", i.e. pathological narcissism disguised as (most frequently) quasi-beatific "nice"-ness. I'll take locked horns, raised voices, and snortings of steam over "a rose in his hand and a switchblade in his heart" any day, thank you.

[1] which is a logical fallacy, of course, as Clarke points out

By the way, Josh, the answer to your question is to say, and practice, "but I might be wrong" -- and as Dave says, declaring interests (though not to the point of self-flagellation) certainly helps (though I still can't quite parse "('disingenuousness') = ('canny way of leveraging power' by the powerless?)" -- whose are the scare quotes?).

how do you 'practice' 'but I might be wrong'? (I'm being disingenuous now, because I have some guesses)

I do welcome any connotations of destruction you care to read into the analogy -- wielding subjectivity really does clear the ground, often in a subtly violent way (as Phil so otmly points out above). How do you respond to someone who insists that "it's all just your opinion in the end" anyway? In terms of its function within a given exchange between two arguers, it's a slightly more sophisticated "I know you are but what am I?"

- "I'm not an oracle; stop asking me and go away"
- "Even though I've rarely if ever been wrong when it comes to x, 'I might be wrong now' (i.e. I'm definitely not wrong)"
- "I don't want you to blame me if something goes wrong based on what I tell you"
- "I'm not the type of schmuck who has 100% confidence in the truth of his every utterance"

If two people are both contemplating the same object, but are seeing different things -- which, naturally, they always will be, because they can't occupy the same space at the same time -- then, when discussing said object, they might first address the discrepancies in their respective perceptions by dividing said discrepancies into Column A, "Things we saw differently because we were looking from different places", and Column B, "Things we saw differently because our instruments of perception and cognition are in some way fundamentally different". Yes, it's the old "Is my the-color-orange your the-color-orange?" argument, but it's also another old and far more deeply important issue, that of what one might call compassionate identification, or at least recognition, of the Self in the Other (I skimmed the DMB thread and saw very little of that). Isn't part of music criticism -- if not almost all human endeavor, when practiced with good will and generosity of spirit -- in some sense the art of getting Column B to be as short as possible?

So, um, in other words: one attempts to communicate in such a way that both has opinion and conviction, but locates it in that which (one hopes) is at least potentially common to most/all human beings, and in so doing one gives the reader/conversation partner/whatever a sense that their divergent opinion can engage with yours having already defined terms in which both of you agree that you believe. This is hardly new news, cf. Socrates etc., but Socrates has a way of feeling stupid, and the best writers, teachers, and even people bring out those traits in others, and make them teachers as well. "It's all just your opinion in the end" = "I don't believe we, in some fundamental sense, are both human beings whose differences can be overcome and who can genuinely recognize each other through all this fog" = really terribly sad, when you think about it (not to mention deeply selfish: "You can never hold the keys to the kingdom, which I hold"). But fortunately, I'm not one to particularly think we all speak through underpaid, half-drunk interpreters.

I hope no one who reads my writing ever thinks that, if they sat down with me and spoke thoughtfully about their passionate love for a band I'd written negatively about, their thoughts would fall on metaphorically deaf ears.

(OT: Josh did you get the CDs?)

Whoops, I annihilated this! Should've been something more like:

"but Socrates has a way of making PEOPLE feel stupid in the course of bringing out their 'best selves', and the best writers etc. bring out etc."

Er? I find this a strange conclusion and one that does not necessarily have to follow from what is being outlined. What if the argument is that there is NO key but merely multiple possible approaches to a state of mind?

(As you might guess, I'm rather on the side of subjectivity and find Phil's portrayal of defending it/sticking to it as somehow sad or despairing extremely bemusing, to say the least.)

getting it to be that requires a willingness to do more than 'wield', though.

I have a problem with the notion that we're either gonna like something or we ain't, and there's not much we can do about it. It insinuates that our hearing faculties (pardon that unfortunate phrase) are somehow fixed -- or, if not fixed (i.e. if we can come to like something we once hated), then concrete (with the ability to change (yet still remain concrete)). It's as if our hearing faculties have a definite shape which certain songs/styles/noises fit with and certain ones do not. To go back to Phil's earlier point, in this view, we're the hapless victims of our predetermined tastes -- we're gonna like what we're gonna like.

Aesthetic judgments are far more complex, though. We need to stop viewing statements like "I like X" as indicating a state constituted by some harmonious relation between song-as-transmitter and human-as-receptor. Our tastes (in the sense that we can talk or think about them -- and is there really anything else to them besides that?) are created, revealed, modified, etc., through discussing them and thinking about them.

recognizing and appreciating differences = leaving room for them to surprise us eventually, or for something to happen to US so that we surprise ourselves (or not)

Therein lies the problem, though. You've already framed taste as something cognitively "inscribed" in some sort of neural structures or something -- an understandable and seemingly sensible way to think of it, especially with all the current research into things like violence genes and such. But suppose you were to isolate an area of the brain that corresponded to aesthetic judgments -- a neural flurry of sorts that occurred when judging art or music -- where would you be then? Your discovery would amount to something like: Taste judgments are caused by the taste-area of the brain. There's still a gigantic, unbridgable explanatory gap. That's because taste exists in discourse, in thinking and talking about art -- it's a linguistic activity, not a cognitive one. Certainly cognition plays a huge role in taste-making (no sight/hearing, no notion of art!), but it's a mistake to conflate the two -- cognition is a prerequisite for taste, but taste goes much further, and in a quite different direction.

i like where you describe the "taste-area of the brain". it's very much how i remember chomsky's description of the origination of language, that we are hardwired with linguistic capabilities at birth, a linguistic-area of the brain. if taste-making is a linguistic activity then we are right back at the cognition question. if the basic rules for language are cognitively inscribed that is. taste > language > cognition. it's as much a question for philosophy as it is for science.

what's also related to this is the marginality or popularity of certain forms of art. what makes certain forms of art resonate with larger groups of people. is there also a melody-area of the brain? i'm sure there are volumes of writing on this...

Those who are careful to fashion their sentences in the form "I feel..." rather than "It is..." come across as passive-aggressives.

If people on ILX stopped using the words "objective" and "subjective," their ability to think would not diminish.

Here's your question rephrased: Is it disingenuous to know that judgments are made according to one's interests, values, premises, predilections, circumstances, goals, etc., while at the same time thinking that one's judgments are right? No, it's not disingenuous, since (1) my interests, values, etc. often match up with other people's, and (2) when they don't match up, my interests and values etc. are often better than other people's.

Answering this in relation to Kuhn: If I know that Aristotle's, Newton's, and Einstein's physics are incommensurable, hence can't be checked against some theory-independent "reality" to see which matches up best, am I entitled nonetheless to say that Einstein is right? Sure. Once I've chosen, with good reasons, to use Einstein's theory and to demote Newton's and jettison Aristotle's, I don't see a difference in how I phrase my choice, whether I use the word "true" or "right" or "useful." Once I've chosen Einstein, nothing else is at stake.

And Josh, what's at stake in your question? When has the issue actually arisen? What opinions were expressed? Who expressed them? Sure, some people in academia and elsewhere try to use the concept "radical subjectivity" to delegitimize other people's ideas but not their own, but these people are just being schmucks, or sloppy thinkers, anyway.

Your question comes down to: Are we allowed to commit to our value judgments? The answer is that we often have no choice but to commit to them, no matter how we word the commitment. I'm not sure what else you're asking - there are related issues, but they pertain to specific statements in specific contexts. Even without your use of the stupefying buzz word "objective," I don't know what issue is involved in "making lots of judgments that seem impartial, objective, etc." ("impartial" in regard to what?) or, for that matter, lots of judgments that seem partial and "subjective," either - as if you have a choice.

Even if I were to convince every one of you that "objective" is a stupefying buzz word, I can't make my calling it "stupefying" read as anything other than an opinion, even though it's the correct opinion. (Mice that used the word "objective" were shown to take 2 seconds longer negotiating the maze than those mice that used the word "freestyle." No mice used both words.) And even though "Hitler is evil" is obviously an opinion, I don't think there's a way to say it so that it comes across as just a matter of personal taste (even if you said, "This is just my opinion" or "This is a matter of personal taste, of course"). Conversely, you're going to have a lot of trouble starting a knock-down, drag-out fight over "Hitler had a funny mustache." And with "I'm bored," you're going to have to work hard to convince people that your indifference isn't a commentary on the thing you're indifferent towards.

So I have nothing to say that would cause anyone to rethink idiomatic speech (except for telling you to lose the s and o words). But I do have a question, though it's necessarily as vague as yours: What's going on when people try to push a discussion from a particular opinion-statement-judgment-observation to a semi-philosophical one about partiality and "subjectivity"? (The answer will be different depending on the particular statement and the particular push.)

"Subjective" is not a synonym for "opinion." "Objective" is not a synonym for "factual."

Opinions originate in social life, not in neurons.

Especially given "Opinions originate in social life, not in neurons."

Can somene explain what they mean by objective and subjective please?

Someone told me a while ago that they always write music reviews in an "objective style". I think they were very wise to append the word 'style', because there is no such thing as an even vaguely objective music review.

i think a better way of posing this would have been to ask:

is there something wrong with speaking as if the things you said deserved the commitment of everyone, then maintaining your own commitments in the face of disagreements by claiming that anyone can make any commitments they like?

this still isn't really very satisfactory, and not much clearer, but maybe it's improved enough for me to say that i'm not so much asking about the possibility that this move is a bad one, per se. i would rather put the emphasis on what your speech, and your actions, would have to be like ('speaking as if the things you said deserved the commitment of everyone'), for this move to the 'subjective' justification to be especially disingenuous, apart from whatever its philosophical merits or demerits are supposed to be.

i think the typical response, of assuming that a move like this calls for sticking literal or implied 'in my opinion's after every judgment, ignores what might be interesting about the move. this response says, in effect, that -any- apparently unqualified statement is disingenuous (in the mouth of someone who defends their statements, ultimately, by recourse to some kind of claim that all judgments are subjective anyway). but it's not just being unqualified or formally hedged that makes statements like these seem disingenuous. it's something else about the way they're put forth. when i say 'speaking as if the things you said deserved the commitment of everyone', i'm not talking about the sense in which we generally talk as if what we believe to be true were actually true, and sort of presume that everyone else will think so too. i have in mind something more active, i guess, something to do with the style of speaking (or writing, cough) not just at one time, saying one thing about one record, but as a normal mode of talking about records.

it could be that i'm more interested in that mode itself than in its potential conflict with this disingenuous argumentative strategy (the slide to assertions about subjectivism); if inquiring about this strategy isn't really a good way of turning the discussion back onto the mode (the one that presumes entitlement to commitment in some way), then maybe it's not really worth talking about.

it sure would be nice if someone would fill in clever examples of people arguing about records for me. that's not really my thing.

Mike P just seemed to get the objective/subjective tone wrong in a way I struggled to articulate. Of course putting in 'IMHO' after everything would be lame and pointless, but there is an issue here, as josh says.