Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Objective and Subjective Claims


A subjective claim is more along the basis of an opinion – there is no real proof whether or not the claim is right or wrong.  Such an example is this: “Dogs make the best pets ever.”  One can give plenty of reasons why a dog would make an excellent pet, but no amount of reasoning can prove why a dog would be simply the best as opposed to a cat, a horse, or any other domestic animal.

An objective claim is a statement that can be proven with actual facts.  An example could be: “Today is the hottest day of this month.”  This statement can be proven based upon factual information and data by comparing records of average daily temperatures that have been logged for the current month.  However, objective claims can also be proven to be incorrect.  For example, a claim of 2 + 2 = 5 is not true.  One would use proven arithmetic to prove this objective claim to be wrong.

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