[Western Philosophy class writing]

Do Hyun Lee

Professor Richard Menard

Western Philosophy

19 March 2013

Existence of objectivity

             As I read this book, I kept inquiring myself about the existence of objectiveness in real world. People believe science and mathematics are two things that can be told as objective. Two phrases in this book made me doubt about the meaning of objectiveness: Most sciences, have inception, have been connected with some form of false belief, which gave them a fictitious value; the pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty. As Russell and Thomas Kuhn stated, there exist fundamentally hypothesis in science that can never be proved. Also Thomas Kuhn had stated that science is influenced by outer-interests. It is not just base on research but is base on interest of researchers. This means that science movements is kind of change in science paradigm, not objective science development.

            Before going to answer my question on existence of objectiveness, we should be clear on definition of objectiveness. According to Internet, meaning of objective is a state that is not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased. For people to determine objectivity there should be a definite and clear standard to make distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. It is really hard for people to determine whether something is influenced by personal feelings or not.

             Then what will be the things that are objective? How about time? Thanks to Albert Einstein, we easily know that time is relative; time changes as the speed of observer change. Not only that reason but also the time is a concept that people made. For convenience of people, they created time as a linear thing that can be easily matched with some incidents. The name of place is very subjective by the similar reason. Long time ago there were just something that people can stand on, and people called those something land. As time pass, people learned that there were lots of people living in different side of lands. For convenience of people, they created specific name for lands, which are called regions and locations. Like this, time and place are two things that are subjective.

             Can the fact be objective? For example, we believe that the war occurred in 25^th of June, 1950 in Korea. Although time and place are very subjective concept, people can claim that something happened. In this case, something is the fact, and people believe that the fact is objective. But I believe that the fact and the concept of object are two very different things because the meaning of objectiveness inherently includes the perception and views of people. This means that people can determine something happened as a fact, but cannot claim that the fact is objective because people have to percept that fact. And I believe this procedure will distort the fact, leading to a conclusion that people should distinguish between fact and objectiveness.

             Another thing that I’ve kept thinking about was subjectivity of languages. The actions of saying languages are very subjective because names for objects are indoctrinated by our ancestors’ values and thoughts. If the new objects or concepts are found, there will be new names and languages for those. So languages are not objective. But some might claim that I am contrasting my own opinion on objectivity as I claimed languages are formed to represent existence things. According to my logic, our ancestors created the word “objective” because it exists. But I believe that our ancestors misunderstood the concept of Intersub-Jektivität, which is mutual subjectivity. I cannot prove it, but I believe that our ancestors were amazed by some common subjectivity that is prevalent in society, a fact that made them to believe the existence of objectivity.

             The belief that I have on toward objectivity is very crucial for me because it infers that people can never find essence of concepts, which are made by people. People will understand or create symbols on concepts with their particular views. Because they have their own ideas and perspectives, people could not discuss on things as a same topic. If people are discussing on different problems, it is hard for them to make practical decisions. But people and academics are working so hard to reach to the clear end. So my motto in academic field is to bring new kind of concept that can be expressed with existing words or languages.