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Deborah Hazen's picture

Why do we want to minimize subjectivity?

Can subjectivity spring from the brain's intuitive leaps? Do we want to broadly minimize subjectivity or guard against people who would not critically evaluate their own and the stories of others? Guard against the average person who would give up their story to simply follow someone else's? I don't know...just thinking that the personal experiences, background, etc... provide the spark that crafts the story based on our observations. I keep thinking about Darwin...so many of his ideas were crafted post-research as he muddled through his artifacts and diaries and mused about the differences among his own children, including those who died in infancy.

I'm not thinking of subjectivity as "unsubstantiated personal belief." Rather, I'm thinking of it as "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."  Quotes lifted from wikipedia---http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivity

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