The Collaborative International Dictionary
Subjectivism \Sub*jec"tiv*ism\, n. (Metaph.) Any philosophical doctrine which refers all knowledge to, and founds it upon, any subjective states; egoism.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1845; see subjective + -ism. Recorded earlier in German (and Swedish). Related: Subjectivist.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context metaphysics English) The doctrine that reality is created or shaped by the mind. 2 (context epistemology English) The doctrine that knowledge is based in feelings or intuition 3 (context ethics English) The doctrine that values and moral principles come from attitudes, convention, whim, or preference.
WordNet
n. (philosophy) the doctrine that knowledge and value are dependent on and limited by your subjective experience
the quality of being subjective
Wikipedia
Subjectivism is the philosophical tenet that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience". In other words, subjectivism is the doctrine that knowledge is merely subjective and that there is no external or objective truth. The success of this position is historically attributed to Descartes and his methodic doubt. Subjectivism accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms like Solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it. One may consider the qualified empiricism of George Berkeley in this context, given his reliance on God as the prime mover of human perception. Thus, subjectivism.
Usage examples of "subjectivism".
Finally, I will briefly and in summary fashion state what I think are the serious consequences of subjectivism and relativism with regard to moral values, and the importance of correcting the philosophical mistakes that cause them.
Spinoza can be shown to be wrong, there is no way of escaping the subjectivism and relativism that inexorably follows from identifying the good with that which is consciously desired by anyone or explicitly thought to be desirable by them.
Spinoza, like Epicurus before him and Mill after him, propounded ethical theories in which certain goods are stoutly proclaimed to be higher or better than others, not just for this or that individual but for every human being and under all circumstances, they do not have in their ethics or moral philosophy grounds adequate for establishing the truth of such views, as against the subjectivism and relativism that they cannot overcome because of other things they either say or fail to say.
I will explain how the problems raised by the three foregoing points are to be solved, thus correcting the philosophical mistakes that lead to subjectivism and relativism in regard to moral values and prescriptive judgments.
Bridging this gap, I maintain, is essential if we are to move beyond our fragmented culture towards a new synthesis which transcends both the ruthless reductionism of a science indifferent human values and a subjectivism for which truth is but one story amongst many of equal worth.
Identifying the good with the desirable rather than with pleasure in either of its two senses still leaves them unprotected against subjectivism and relativism.
But it directs this analysis along the correct road, securing it against sterile wanderings in the desert of subjectivism and scholasticism.
Our subjectivism is as different from his individualism as his modernity was from medievalism.
This did not mean subjectivism, or religious autonomy, for the Reformers held passionately to an ideal of objective truth, but it did mean that every soul had the right to make its personal account with God, without mediation of priest or sacrament.
She used words like subjectivism and relevance and involvement without having the vaguest idea of what she was talking about.
Jakub exhibits the same monstrous subjectivism but not the feverish activism of his Russian counterpart.