Subjectivity

In reason, subjectivity refers to the property of perceptions, arguments, and language as being based in a subject's point of view, and hence influenced in accordance with a particular bias. Its opposite property is objectivity, which refers to such as based in a separate, distant, and unbiased point of view, such that concepts discussed are treated as objects.

In philosophy, subjectivity refers to the specific discerning interpretations of any aspect of experiences. They are unique to the person experiencing them, the qualia that are only available to that person's consciousness. Though the causes of experience are thought to be objective and available to everyone, (such as the wavelength of a specific beam of light), experiences themselves are only available to the person experiencing them (the quality of the colour itself).

In social sciences, subjectivity (the property of being a subject) is an effect of relations of power. Similar social configurations create similar perceptions, experiences and interpretations of the world. For example, female subjectivity would refer to the perceptions, experiences and interpretations that a subject marked as female would generally have of the world.

See also

• Objectivity
• Phenomenology
• Phenomenology (psychology)

References

• Block, Ned; Flanagan, Owen J.; & Gzeldere, Gven (Eds.) The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Bowie, Andrew (1990). Aesthetics and Subjectivity : From Kant to Nietzsche. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Dallmayr, Winfried Reinhard (1981). Twilight of Subjectivity: Contributions to a Post-Individualist Theory Politics. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
• Ellis, C. & Flaherty, M. (1992). Investigating Subjectivity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• Farrell, Frank B. Farrell (1994). Subjectivity, Realism, and Postmodernism: The Recovery of the World in Recent Philosophy. Cambridge - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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