Discussion Question #1

1. Use an example from outside of the classroom. Discuss Subjective and Objective Claims. Give an example of Subjective Claim you have heard or used recently AND give an example of an Objective Claim you have heard or used recently. Describe the situation. Describe all claims in DETAIL.

Define:

Subjective claims are statements that are made based off of an individual’s/individuals personal opinion, judgment, feeling, belief, etc. Since a subjective claim is created by an individual’s personal opinion, it cannot be proven by facts. This means that even if someone disagreed with your claim, they cannot prove it as being wrong.

Example of Subjective Claim:

In my philosophy 10 class I took last year I encountered a philosopher, John Locke, who was trying to understand where our knowledge derived from. I won’t go into the technical details of his thought process because I don’t want to bore you all, but I remember that he made a subjective claim in his process to discovering the source of knowledge. He gave a similar example to this one: “peaches are delicious.” Now according to John Locke, this statement would be considered a personal opinion because each person has a different perception of what a peach tastes like and what he or she would consider delicious. So the statement “peaches are delicious” would be a subjective claim because it is a personal opinion that may be true for some people but not to everyone. “Peaches are delicious” is also not a factual statement that can be proven right or wrong because it is based on opinion and is therefore a subjective claim.

Define:

Objective Claims are statements that can be proved either true or false because they are based on “impersonal standards” or facts. In other words, they are claims that you can prove right or wrong because they are not personal opinions.

Example of Objective Claim:

In my Comm. 20 lecture on Monday we were discussing that you can sometimes detect whether or not someone truly believes in what they are saying or promoting. For example, 2+2=5. If they get defensive when someone argues that 2+2 does not equal 5, then the person may actually have some doubt in their belief that two plus two is equal to five. The statement they made is an objective claim because even though we all know that 2+2=5 is false, the statement “doesn’t depend on whether anyone thinks or believes that” (Epstein).

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-Gracie :)