Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality of being subjective.
  • noun The doctrine that all knowledge is restricted to the conscious self and its sensory states.
  • noun A theory or doctrine that emphasizes the subjective elements in experience.
  • noun Any of various theories holding that the only valid standard of judgment is that of the individual. For example, ethical subjectivism holds that individual conscience is the only appropriate standard for moral judgment.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The doctrine that we can immediately know only what is present to consciousness.
  • noun The doctrine, sometimes termed relativism, that “man is the measure of things”—that is, that the truth is nothing but each man's settled opinion, there being no objective criterion of truth at all.
  • noun Same as subjectivity, 3.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Metaph.) Any philosophical doctrine which refers all knowledge to, and founds it upon, any subjective states; egoism.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun metaphysics The doctrine that reality is created or shaped by the mind.
  • noun epistemology The doctrine that knowledge is based in feelings or intuition
  • noun ethics The doctrine that values and moral principles come from attitudes, convention, whim, or preference.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (philosophy) the doctrine that knowledge and value are dependent on and limited by your subjective experience
  • noun the quality of being subjective

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Moral relativists hold that no universal standard exists by which to assess an ethical proposition's truth; moral subjectivism is thus the opposite of moral absolutism.

    Carry-Over Thread 2007

  • Here "subjectivism" isn't meant in its rigorous sense, "having to do with subjects," but in the common-sense, popular meaning, as in the phrase "purely subjective" i. e., "purely personal."

    Presentism vs. Archivalism in Research and the Classroom: Introduction 2002

  • There is no room for any kind of subjectivism, everything must follow this criteria.

    7TH SESSION OF THE ANPP 1985

  • War is an escape, for a people, from a kind of subjectivism, from the evils of a self-love to perhaps the greater evils of self-assertion.

    The Psychology of Nations A Contribution to the Philosophy of History G.E. Partridge

  • We have already followed the fortunes of that empirical subjectivism which issues from the relativity of perception.

    The Approach to Philosophy Ralph Barton Perry 1916

  • Indeed, it's widely believed that the Austrian approach to mundane topics such as factor productivity, the substitution effect of a price change, the effects of rent control or the minimum wage, etc., is basically the same as the mainstream approach, just without math or with a few buzzwords about "subjectivism" or the "market process" thrown in.

    Christian Science Monitor | All Stories 2010

  • There is a strange kind of subjectivism in his allegiances and in his beliefs.

    Challies Dot Com - Informing the Reforming Tim 2010

  • Indeed, it's widely believed that the Austrian approach to mundane topics such as factor productivity, the substitution effect of a price change, the effects of rent control or the minimum wage, etc. is basically the same as the mainstream approach, just without math or with a few buzzwords about "subjectivism" or the

    Libertarian Blog Place 2008

  • Your argument seems to take subjectivism to an absurd extreme.

    Matthew Yglesias » More on Pro-Life Incrementalism 2009

  • Secularism is another, as well as all of modernism, subjectivism, etc etc. Manuel

    Ideology and the destruction of body and soul 2009

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