Last week in philosophy class, our professor explained to us the difference between subjectivism and objectivism. The lecture was extremely interesting, and inspired me to ask myself a variety of questions that I hadn't previously considered.

First, our professor got us thinking by asking us how we'd define the terms “subject” and “object”. After letting us ponder this for a few moments, he went on to give us his definitions. An object, he explained, is something being perceived, while a subject is the person or thing doing the perceiving.

After asking a few more guiding questions, he told us that subjectivism is the concept that things exist because we perceive them, while objectivism is the concept that things exist external to our perceptions of them.

On a practical scale, he said, most people would agree that physical things, such as a water bottle or a shoe, exist objectively while values, such as beauty or morality, exist subjectively. But he went on to demonstrate that it isn't always so easy to draw the line between the two. What about relationships? What about mathematical concepts, such as 2+2=4?

Obviously, the majority of people don't have fully subjective OR objective perspectives. Most of us are somewhere in between. But there are philosophers who categorize themselves as being on the extreme ends of the scale.

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

If you've ever heard this famous question, originally posed by philosopher George Berkeley, then you've actually already been introduced to the subjectivism vs. objectivism debate, perhaps without realizing it. The extreme subjectivist would argue that if there was no one around to perceive the tree falling, then it wouldn't make a sound--they may even argue that without someone there to perceive it, a the tree wouldn't exist at all. Conversely, the objectivist would say that the tree exists whether we are there to perceive it or not, and by falling it would indeed give off sound waves--they just wouldn't be interpreted as noise.

I'll leave you with a few questions that you can muse over at your leisure.

Do you consider yourself more of a subjectivist or an objectivist, and why? How does this perspective influence your day to day life? Your relationships?

Many people are colorblind--to them, the world exists in shades of black and white. On the other hand, there are certain animals that are capable of seeing more colors than humans can. Does this mean that colors are subjective?

Does reality exist objectively? Put differently, is there one fixed version of reality that exists? Or is reality defined by the individual's perception of it?