ISSUE157 - "There is no such thing as purely objective observation. All observation is subjective; it is always guided by the observer's expectations or desires."
Observation represents the activity that observes and discovers the world, with the help of tools or directly by the sensory organs. Are all the observations mind-dependent? As far as I am concerned, my answer would be no. Observations are actually objective activity and free with the interference of human mind and desires.
The usage of tools helps us set up a uniform standard for each observation and make the observations more accurate. Usually, tools make the result of the observation replicable in everywhere of the world and sometimes anytime from the past to the future. The length of one meter does not change no matter who do the measurement with the help of ruler etc. Those replicable observations are totally objective ones. If objective observations don’t exists, the observations made by sequencing machines in the biological labs toward the same gene would be different every time, if that is true the researchers would never find out the function of this gene as well as the protein it coded, not mention to make breakthrough in gene therapy and saving people’s life. If the objective observations don’t exist, common laws would not be able to be abstracted and thus there would be no truth and science in the world at all.
In addition, observations obtained by feelings are also objective to some extent. The color of blooming sunflowers could always be described as yellow. Summer is always to be told warmer than winter. These observations are sensed by our feeling. Although we may not be able to tell exactly and accurately how bright the color is or how warm the summer is, at least some basic information that is independent of human mind is obtained and thus I think those observations are also objective.
My point of view about the observation may be doubted by others because it is true that people have different opinions about one phenomenon. If it is not because of the subjective observations, where do all these different views come from? While, although the observations are objective, the interpretations of the same objective observation is not mind free, it is the product of human mind and inevitably guided by human desire and thought. Just as different machines could process the same raw material into different products, so does different human brains to the same observation. After being processed by human mind, various kinds of interpretations are produced.
In one word, rather than subjective, observation exists objectively. What contribute to the huge pool of views in the world are the subjective interpretations which are mind-dependent.