subjectivity

noun

sub·jec·tiv·i·ty | \ (ˌ)səb-ˌjek-ˈti-və-tē

Definition of subjectivity

: the quality, state, or nature of being subjective Any attempt to link landscapes and music together can suffer from some measure of subjectivity.— David J. Keeling He thinks that scientists and philosophers have unjustly neglected the subjectivity of conscious experience and that this has made it harder for them to explain some of the workings of the mind.— Anthony Gottlieb

Examples of subjectivity in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Again, this introduces subjectivity into the disciplined world of finance and capital. — Howard Husock, Washington Examiner, "Big Pharma and traditional capitalism to the rescue," 10 Dec. 2020 The hope was that programs combining objective criteria and mountains of data could be more efficient than humans while sidestepping their subjectivity and bias. — Dina Bass, Bloomberg.com, "What Are Algorithms and Are They Biased Against Me?," 11 Dec. 2020 What makes McQueen’s work distinctive — what allows its to go beyond mere spectacle — is its intense subjectivity, a quality shared by a bracing number of films that emerged in 2020. — Washington Post, "In a year of Black Death, the movies showed us Black Life," 10 Dec. 2020 There’s also the inherent subjectivity of the enterprise. — Amanda Fortini, New York Times, "Revisiting an Ancient Theory of Herbalism," 12 Nov. 2020 The subjectivity of The Vow is important, because organizations like NXIVM hook people by manipulating the line between what’s real and what’s simply interpreted. — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, "How to Tell the Story of a Cult," 8 Nov. 2020 The movie begins with a nightmare that never exactly ends but continues to inform the subjectivity of The Woman’s domestic space and workaday reality. — J. Hoberman, The New York Review of Books, "Fall Films to Stream," 5 Nov. 2020 Smith also pushed back against the sidelining of Black art and subjectivity through scenes drawn inimitably from her own life as an aestheticized and objectified woman of color. — Yxta Maya Murray, The New Yorker, "Ming Smith’s Pioneering Excavations of Black Femininity," 23 Sep. 2020 Philanthropic organizations, private companies, judges and lawmakers turned to algorithms as a solution, saying risk assessment tools could remove the arbitrariness, subjectivity and disparities of the existing system. — NBC News, "California may replace cash bail with algorithms — but some worry that will be less fair," 17 Oct. 2020

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'subjectivity.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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“Subjectivity.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subjectivity. Accessed 27 Feb. 2021.

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More Definitions for subjectivity

subjectivity

noun

sub·jec·tiv·i·ty | \ ˌsəb-jek-ˈtiv-ət-ē

plural subjectivities

Medical Definition of subjectivity

1 : subjective character, quality, state, or nature

2 : the personal qualities of an investigator that affect the outcome of scientific or medical research (as by unconsciously communicating a bias to the subject of the experiment)