What does it mean to say that something is "heavy"?
I'm not formally educated in philosophy, but I am a curious learner. I've been very confused lately with some thoughts pertaining to properties and subjectivity/objectivity.
Take the statement "the dog is red". The statement is that the object (dog) exhibits a certain property (redness). As I understand it, that constitutes an objective claim.
But then take another statement, like "the bowling ball is heavy". The property "heavy" isn't actually exhibited by the object. The bowling ball isn't actually heavy, it's just someone's subjective experience of the bowling ball which they find to be heavy. Yet, the statement says that the bowling ball exhibits the property of heaviness, which makes me think the claim is objective.
So my question is, what is meant by saying that something is "heavy"? Is it a statement about the object, or does it have to do with a subject's experience of the object? Is it a relation?
Thank You, and please forgive any errors that I might have made in my assessment.
Take the statement "the dog is red". The statement is that the object (dog) exhibits a certain property (redness). As I understand it, that constitutes an objective claim.
But then take another statement, like "the bowling ball is heavy". The property "heavy" isn't actually exhibited by the object. The bowling ball isn't actually heavy, it's just someone's subjective experience of the bowling ball which they find to be heavy. Yet, the statement says that the bowling ball exhibits the property of heaviness, which makes me think the claim is objective.
So my question is, what is meant by saying that something is "heavy"? Is it a statement about the object, or does it have to do with a subject's experience of the object? Is it a relation?
Thank You, and please forgive any errors that I might have made in my assessment.
Comments (5)
It's a good question as it does get to the heart of a big controversy.
A simple answer is that yes, all properties are relative - and that in turn means relative to "some observer".
So in the case of people lifting things, that observer is the particular thing of being some human making judgments. And two humans can routinely agree the bowling ball is heavier than the ping pong ball while also disagreeing about whether they themselves think a bowling ball is actually heavy - because they are strong and can lift far heavier things by comparison.
But even in physics, relativity rules. Properties are relative to some context that speaks to what they are. The job of physical modelling is to discover the most invariant or unchanging notion of a stable reference frame from which the necessary measurements can be made. So instead of the observer being subjective - the view from some particular mind - the observer is treated as being objective ... the God's eye view that anyone making the same kind of measurement would see from anywhere in the Universe.
So we have properties defined "relative to me" and "relative to the world". And when we talk about the bowling ball being heavy, we can be meaning either.
In how the receiving end of that communication perceives "heavy" is how it shall be measured in.
The problem, arises from the presumption that isolated statements have meaning or truth.
Statements are communications, without a sender and receiver they are no more than meaningless strings of symbols.
Does this help?
Quoting DebateTheBait
OK, then the truth is subjective and becomes a label to the statement rather than a property of the statement.
Also if there is no 'receiver', then the statement can be viewed as a communication between the author and himself/herself.