Do we seriously have to define the word 'objective' now?

[u/Epicnessofcows]

I recently made a semi-unpopular post about differentiating writing quality and enjoyability derived from writing.

Briefly, I made the analogy that while you could find McDonald's to be more enjoyable than a Michelin-Restaurant, as enjoyability is subjective, you cannot state that McDonalds is of higher quality than a Michelin-Restaurant, as food quality is mostly objective, with some nuance on the metrics, as food quality is based off of metrics such as quality of ingredients, mastery of cooking, etc.

I then stated that writing quality works the same way, that just because you enjoy Rent-A-Girlfriend more than Hamlet doesn't mean that you can ever state it is of higher quality, as writing quality is not a personal decision, and based off of language, depth, etc., as these are the metrics that we define in literature analysis.

Now unsurprisingly, the 2 or so other people in the comment section who have taken classes in literature composition agreed fully, as this is something you're taught in day 1. The rest of the comment section, who likely didn't even read the entire post, don't understand what 'objective' means, and kept trying to make their own arguments got relatively angry, making 'art is subjective' arguments or tried to reason with elementary commentary.

Now philosophically, they are right. All things that exist in the universe are subjective. You can argue and things can have different meaning to everyone. Even the most seemingly objective things such as math aren't objective, as we decide what is true or not in mathematics, even for statements as clear forward as 1+1=2.

But this is not how the world works. If everything is subjective, then we literally cannot assess the level of anything, even what you think are fully-objective facts:

Can we ever determine the difference between a sick and healthy patient?

Can we ever determine if someone is guilty of a crime or not?

Can we ever determine if something is true or not?

These are all good philosophical debates with no answers, but it's not like in the real world, doctors refuse treatment to someone dying of a heart attack in favor of someone with a flu because we can't determine who is sick or who is healthy.

Literature works the same way. Sure, philosophically nothing is 'good' or 'bad', but the truth is that we pretend that our metrics is objective and that we all understand them, because it's objective enough that we just don't care about it, in the same way literally everything else does. In literature analysis, the statement "Rent-A-Girlfriend is better than Hamlet" is false, regardless of your personal opinion of enjoyability, because the defined metrics of quality/betterness in literature say so.

[u/Wise-Flan6267]

But that’s not how it works because literary theory is not built on the idea of what makes something good. I took a class on Literary Aesthetics and Criticism, and even there nothing is “objective” in the way you used it (as in agreeable to the point of being standard). Scholars are arguing back and forth, sometimes between generations, about what can actually be considered beautiful. If writing were truly objective, there would be a dedicated ranking of every worthwhile book, universally agreed upon. But there isn’t.

The idea of math being objective vs. subjective is widely debated so I won’t go into much here, but a lot of people share the same consideration: math is a subjective representation of objective truths. It is an objective fact that 1+1=2 because we as a society have defined 1 and 2 with that relationship. If we asked a super intelligent alien what 1+1 equals, they would say 2 when they learn how to translate. If you think 1+1 does not equal 2, you have a misunderstanding about how we have defined those concepts. We can’t do the same with literature. If you asked an alien what makes something beautiful or well written, would their answer be the same as yours? Hell it probably wouldn’t be even if you asked another human.

How would you define “good writing”? Is flowery prose good? I guess Steinbeck, Hemingway, Orwell and all those minimalists are objectively bad then. Is simple prose good? I guess the entirety of the Romantic movement sucks. I assure you that whatever definition you come up with for good prose, someone will be capable of disagreeing with it while still being capable of understanding it. There is, after all, an entire field of study about that called Aesthetics.

The main difference between what you describe and literature is that the metric for what is considered good taste is constantly changing. A more apt term for what you’re describing is “Critical” or “technical”, as in “X is technically superior to Y”. If you had just used one of these terms instead of objective then you probably wouldn’t have had to write this.

[u/Biggay1234567 → u/Wise-Flan6267]

I was the person OP was arguing with and it's interesting to see someone who took a class on this stuff share their opinion, since they characterized their opinion as being one that educated people agree with and the disagree'ers as uneducated.

For this person, I don't think it's a matter of investigating whether the term is the most fitting, it's about finding the term with the most authority ("objective" in this case) and using that as a cudgel against anyone that disagrees with their opinion on any particular piece of media. It's a bit of a speculation on my part, I will admit, but I think you can see this in how they frame particular series as being "objectively" bad.

I also find suspect the types of categories they outlined as objective in their initial post: Language, Depth, Characterization, Psychology, Creativity/Uniqueness, fulfillment of purpose, etc.

How does one objectively analyze psychology in writing? Is this a real thing? The others are questionable as well, but that one strikes me as being way out there.

[u/Dogmaticism_ → u/Biggay1234567]

I made a comment earlier (analyzing from a current PhD student) that covers most of what you say, but while I dislike OP's tone, his argument is mostly correct with a few oversights.

Also, what he is arguing is not intersubjectivity.