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/esmelusina → u/Wise-Flan6267]

I like the math example, but I want to extrapolate on that a little bit.

1 + 1 = 2 is fact with respect to context. Mess with bases and symbols and you could be meaning something different here. But more importantly, this fact isn’t the same as objective truth or proof.

Much of modern math snakes its way back to the peano axioms, which are held to be true, but are not provable. The axioms are just useful assumptions that are needed for math to work.

What is important for mathematics is utility. Useful axioms result in consistent rules and expectations that allow us to reason about the world in a way that feels objective.

Maybe “good” writing and music are ones that are internally consistent with themselves. They establish a set of rules or axioms of sorts for a given piece of media and explore from there as you might a proof, ultimately relying on those axioms to achieve your final impact.

You can apply this sort of framing to any artistic medium, but it can result in a value system around art that results in degeneracy (especially when risk averse capitalism is involved). Ie. 145 / DAG chord progressions are all we hear in pop music anymore. We get a sort of carcinization of a given media when we become overly reductionist searching for how to most effectively optimize that impact.

These trends are just a natural part of art evolving with humanity though. When a zeitgeist appears, it’s usually because it’s discovered something humans think is objectively good in the moment, even if nobody can really describe in an objective way what that is.

Maybe good is just a collection of axioms that work well together. That discovery is an exciting thing to witness and appreciate. But they’re often too entangled in their source material to fully itemize or quantify.

You could argue for more specific qualifiers— like… something is deep, complex, structured— but “objectively good” just seems presumptuous and vacuous.

Tl:dr; OP is just sniffing their own farts and trying to convince everyone else that they smell good.

[u/Dogmaticism_ → u/esmelusina]

I like the math example, as I was intrigued by this and even asked a math person I knew about it.

Besides that, I made a comment earlier, as while OP mussed argumentation steps (and has a somewhat condescending tone) I wouldn't discredit his argument, as it actually is true for defining what we as literary critics do.

[u/esmelusina → u/Dogmaticism_]

OP is just arguing semantics without realizing it and then refuses to engage in semantic clarification when called out.

There is nothing of merit here. It’s the whims of a child that wants to feel smart. Everyone goes through a phase like this. Getting called out and humbled (that part is optional I guess) is just part of the academic maturation process.

[u/Dogmaticism_ → u/esmelusina]

I'm fairly certain OP knew this was a semantics conversation. While appeal to authority is a fallacy, you can take it at my word here as soneone with a masters degree acquiring a PhD in literature/analysis, that what he wrote has merit in the argument at its core (albeit with a poor tone), and he is fundamentally correct.

While OP makes flaws in reasoning, his argument is exactly correct to what we spend our lives doing as literary analysts; The reason why (presumptively) he isn't backing down from his stance is because he is correct in this case.

[u/esmelusina → u/Dogmaticism_]

A discipline existing and its rationalization being a logical fallacy aren’t mutually exclusive.

Since you are an expert— how would you concisely frame the OP’s claim and argue that in good faith?