Subject and object
I've been struck by the lack of clarity in several recent discussions revolving around subjectivity, objectivity, truth and belief. Hence this thread, which I doubt will contain anything new, but only stuff that seems in need of repeating.
Before commencing the main argument, it may be worth pointing out that belief and truth are not the same. One can believe stuff that is not true, as well as disbelieve stuff that is true. Believing something does not imply that it is true, and being true does not imply being believed. I mention this because it is a simple, but ubiquitous error, and may well underpin other problems.
And so to the argument. The words subjective and objective are such that we are prone to allow them to lead us up and down various garden paths. It is especially important, therefore, to keep an eye on their use in mundane contexts.
Certain statements are labeled subjective because they set out an individuals taste or feelings. In contrast, other statements are called objective, as they do not set out an individual's taste, feelings or opinions.
So that I prefer vanilla to chocolate ice-cream is a subjective fact - or if you prefer, it is a subjective truth. It's truth is dependent on my own taste.
That this text is written in English is not dependent on my own taste or feelings. Hence it is an objective truth.
That's an end to it; don't allow the notions of subjectivity and objectivity to take on any more significance.
in particular, don't pretend that there are either only subjective facts, or that there are only objective facts.
Before commencing the main argument, it may be worth pointing out that belief and truth are not the same. One can believe stuff that is not true, as well as disbelieve stuff that is true. Believing something does not imply that it is true, and being true does not imply being believed. I mention this because it is a simple, but ubiquitous error, and may well underpin other problems.
And so to the argument. The words subjective and objective are such that we are prone to allow them to lead us up and down various garden paths. It is especially important, therefore, to keep an eye on their use in mundane contexts.
Certain statements are labeled subjective because they set out an individuals taste or feelings. In contrast, other statements are called objective, as they do not set out an individual's taste, feelings or opinions.
So that I prefer vanilla to chocolate ice-cream is a subjective fact - or if you prefer, it is a subjective truth. It's truth is dependent on my own taste.
That this text is written in English is not dependent on my own taste or feelings. Hence it is an objective truth.
That's an end to it; don't allow the notions of subjectivity and objectivity to take on any more significance.
in particular, don't pretend that there are either only subjective facts, or that there are only objective facts.
Comments (652)
"Banno prefers vanilla ice to chocolate"; "This text is in English"
Whereas I can put the first of these statements, my preference for vanilla ice, into the first person, I cannot do so with the second.
If some truth can be said in the first person, it's likely to be a subjective fact.
(Edited after @Hanover's reply, below.)
"Taste" and "feeling" are often accompanied in definitions of subjective by "opinion".
Taste, feeling and belief are attitudinal. "I prefer..." "I feel..." "I believe..."
So while a fact might be either subjective or objective, a belief can only be subjective.
Hence, if someone were to confuse belief and truth, they might be mislead into concluding that all truth is subjective.
It happens; but of course, not to any of us.
So let's go with "Yes", in that it is statements that are true, subjective, objective, and believed.
Do you have something in mind?
Your test isn't whether it can be said in first person, but any person. This is because "person" simply references perspective. That is I/you/he likes ice cream are all correct and they occur in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person. You posit by definition that the statement "the cat is on the mat" is objective, but that simply points out a grammatical difference in that the author of the sentence hasn't offered perspective.
The metaphysical question is dodged by the diversion to grammar. The question still must be asked based upon whose perspective is the cat on the mat. If your answer is that it is a universal perspective, then I ask who had this universal perspective to author that sentence? If the answer is no one, then I can't fathom how that sentence got written.
A last wrinkle as to pronoun perspectives a that there does exist an objective pronoun "one" ( 3rd person objective/4th person). "Banno should eat his green beans if he wants to be happy" is 3rd person, and per your rule subjective. As noted "I" and "he" (the 1st and 2nd perspectives) work as well and the sentence remains subjective. But what if "one" is substituted for "Banno" in that sentence? That is a pronoun driven objective statement.
Note too the complications arisimg from the entry of the moral "should" in that sentence.
And last:Quoting Banno
"This text is in English" is not third person. It's not in any person grammatically, but metaphysically it must be.
Quoting Banno
Not must.
Can you say "the cat is on the mat" in first person? (or, yes, any person)
Then isn't it objective?
All that you've proven there is that individual belief is not truth (ie that it is possible for at least some belief to contradict truth). You haven't proven that therefore belief sunsu lato is not the same as truth.
"I like ice cream" defines "like" as "from my perspective." The grammatical limitations on the correct use of pronouns doesn't speak to the metaphysical perspective.
How can one not have perspective? The view from nowhere?
The view from anywhere.
Yes. That the word 'cat' refers to the feline genus is an objective fact (it is not my opinion). But it is only the case because it is believed to be so by a sufficiently large number of people to form a language community. 1+1=2 is not just my opinion either, it is true (if I believed 1+1=3 I would be wrong). But it too is only the case because it is believed to be by a sufficient number of people to form a mathematics community.
No; it is only so because the cat is on the mat.
Truth is not a plebiscite.
What? Are you suggesting that the word 'cat' refers to the creature it does because "the cat is on the mat"? I don't even understand what that could mean.
is that subjective, objective or intersubjective?
That's not how I've always understood the distinction. My take:
"I prefer...", if stated sincerely, is objectively true - its truth is not dependent on anyone's opinion.
"I prefer..." , if stated insincerely, is objectively untrue - its truth is not dependent on anyone's opinion.
I've no idea if this is an idiosyncratic use, but I've certainly seen seen it put this way elsewhere.
As if there were no places we have not been...
But how does anyone tell if it is stated sincerely. Equating a sincere statement about one's own preference with objective truth, assumes one invariably reports one's preferences accurately (when one intends to).
What would happen if neuroscience advanced to such a degree that we could measure tastes (say, some area of the brain lights up in response to what we call 'liking' vanilla). If a person sincerely thought they did not like vanilla, but these future neuroscientists had a look and confirmed they did indeed like vanilla, would their sincere statement of preference be true still. Would that make the judgment of the neuroscientists false?
You see what you call a cat on what you call a mat, how does that make it not a subjective statement? Other people might disagree that what they see is a cat or a mat. You would only consider it an objective fact if people agree with you. But if you consider it an objective fact even if people don't agree with you then you consider your subjective experience to be what determines objectivity or truth, if you see something you see it as objective fact or truth even if other people don't see it.
"le chat est sur le tapis" is true if and only if the cat is on the mat.
Where did I suggest such a thing? I haven't even mentioned mats. I spoke only about the meaning of the word 'cat'. The thing 'cat' (or 'chat') refers to.
Is it true or false that, in English, 'cat' refers to a member of the feline genus? If this is 'true', then how is it so?
Why talk about meaning here?
Do you insist that every sentence has an implied perspective?
You said that truth and belief must be two separate things because it is possible to believe something which is untrue, right?
I'm arguing that this only proves that an individual's belief can be untrue, which leaves open the possibility for truth to be collective belief (but still belief).
The example I gave was the meaning of a class term 'cat'. Such terms are often held to be rigid designators and I think most would say that it is 'true' that 'cat', in English, refers (at least fairly rigidly) to members of the feline genus.
But 'cat' only refers this way because a large enough community of people believe it does (by believe here I'm using a Ramsey, behaviourist account, ie they act as if it were). It is not a fact of the world that 'cat' means what it does, it is merely a fact of collective belief.
The other example I gave is mathematics.
Now you could dispute the account of belief among the community of language users, but you'd have to then apply that same new account to the individual belief.
Equally you could argue that 'cat' meaning what it does is now a fact of the world. Maybe it now is discoverable by canvassing language users or consulting a dictionary. But, presuming you're at least familiar with Wittgenstein, we both know what problems such an account of meaning leads to.
That a certain state of affairs is represented by a certain statements - English or otherwise - seems to me to have no bearing on it's being objective or subjective.
It is subjective if it presents a propositional attitude.
The knowledge obtained from such a test would count as an objectively verified truth about a test subject's experience of taste. Yet the measurement, in no way, gives any subjective truth concerning the test subject's subjectivity. Even if the particular test subject's actual tasting and ensuing enjoyment were directly accessible to an outside spectator, the test subject's subjectivity is immediately negated when it is appropriated subjectively by the spectator.
That's not the point at all.
Is it true that the word 'cat' refers to members of the feline genus? Is it true that the word 'book' refers to some bound together pages? Is it true that the word apple refers to the fruit of the Malus sylvestris tree?
If these things are true, then what measure are we using to determine that?
Is it simply that the words are evidently used that way (if so how would we distinguish a mistake from a creative use of a term in poetry)? Is it because the dictionary says it is so (if so, how do we account for new word uses)? Etc etc... Im not going to rewrite Wittgenstein here, you get the point.
So if it is 'true' that words mean what they do, it must be true only on account of the fact that a community of language users believes they do, and thus your distinction between truth and belief is not entirely accurate.
What's not the point at all?
Quoting Isaac
Is it simply that the words are used that way.
So if I started using the word 'cat' to mean 'a flat surface for writing on' it would become 'true' that 'cat' means 'a flat surface for writing on'? Because a word is used that way, does not seem to be at all sufficient to account for its meaning.
So, correcting myself, your contention is not (as I previously understood) that truth is decided by plebiscite, but that meaning is?
Why would this matter? There must be any number of things we don't know for which there is an objective fact of the matter?
Quoting Isaac
I'm assuming this person has in fact tasted vanilla before declaring a dislike. In this case one would have to ask how the neuroscientists corroborated their view that that a particular brain state represented a liking for vanilla (when the person sincerely reports a dislike).
In other words, is it possible that a sane and competent English user could sincerely report a dislike of vanilla but be mistaken? I don't see how.
My contention, to lay it out as clearly as possible, is that we can only be said to hold a belief which is not true if 'true' refers to some state of affairs other than our individual beliefs.
Sometimes , in the case of meaning, that external state of affairs is simply a collection of lots of beliefs, meaning that truth and belief (in the wider sense) are not necessarily separate, only so in the individual sense.
It matters because you're defining truth with it, and yet you do not know it. Truth is a word we use, if it only refers to that which we cannot know it would be pretty useless.
You said a statement of preference "if stated sincerely, is objectively true", but if 'sincerely' is something which can be doubted, then it is just a truth apt account. Which means you have said "if {objectively true}, is objectively true", a tautology.
To avoid the tautology, "stated sincerely" must mean something other than 'is a true account of'. I'm asking what it could mean that would not make your statements trivially tautologous.
Quoting ChrisH
If someone used to dislike vanilla, but now likes it, presumably at some point their situation changed. Unless that change happens exactly contemperaneously with the first direct experience of it, then it is possible for someone to claim not to like vanilla but have a brain state exactly identical to that of liking vanilla.
You've offered an interesting topic for discussion.
I immediately focus on one aspect, because I see it as an imperative to decent discussions of many issues...and that aspect is the word "belief."
For the most part, in casual conversation, "I believe..." may mean a variety of things...none of which are significant. "I believe I'll go to a movie" "I believe I left the door unlocked" "I believe Shogun was a better book than King Rat....are various casual uses that are not especially significant.
"I believe in democracy" is a shortcut way of saying, "I prefer a democratic political environment to a totalitarian one."
When used in a discussion about the unknown qualities of existence or reality, however, "I believe..." most often is a way of disguising a guess.
I believe there are no gods...is a way of disguising, "It is my guess that no gods exist."
I believe at least one god exists...is a way of disguising, "It is my guess that at least one god exists."
The "I believe IN..." format almost always is a disguised guess...when used in a discussion of the unknowns I mentioned.
(The "guess" often is just an "opinion.")
Just sayin'.
May not impact on your discussion objective, but it is my opinion that it is worth mentioning.
Very true, we have digressed from a metaphysical question into epistemoloy.
I take your point. I think my use of "sincerely" was unnecessary. The point I was trying to make was that statements of preference refer to objective states of affairs and can, in principle (advanced neuroscience), be evaluated as true or false.
Quoting Isaac
I don't think this represents a mistake. When one reports a food preference, it's understood that this represents their latest experience of that food.How could it be anything else? (EDIT: I should make it clear the the above is specifically in the context of using someone's preferences to calibrate a neuroscientist's preference detection machine)
I agree.
Quoting Isaac
Thanks for the clarification. Institutional facts. An interesting point.
I'd analyse this in a different way.
Allow me to modify the example, so that we don't get hung up on our difference regarding meaning: money has value only because of our collective belief that it has value.
SO, that this piece of paper is worth ten dollars, is true because of our belief. Hence, the argument goes, belief and truth are not necessarily seperate.
Looking closer, the statement "this paper is worth $10" is true if and only if we believe that it is worth $10.
Worth further thought.
If someone looks at dark clouds in the sky and says "it is about to rain", the object of the belief is on any scientific explication of subject's stimulus-response, nothing more than the presence of dark clouds in combination with the subject's mental state, making the belief a necessarily true statement concerning only the present. A contradiction of a belief by a future course of events is then a contradiction obtained via post-hoc revision of linguistic convention.
If someone looked at an equation on a blackboard, and said ‘that’s wrong’, is that a matter that can be explained in terms of stimulus and response?
If all stimuli impacting upon the individual accounted for, both external to and within the individual, then I am at a loss to know whatever else "that's wrong" could refer to.
It is only by linguistic convention that the shared expressions of our beliefs are said to refer to the same object, and our conventions fools us into thinking that "right" and "wrong" have deep epistemological significance.
Yes, we are agreed on that. I think I would go as far as to say this renders subjective truth meaningless, in that it would only ever refer to a category of truths for which there could not possibly be an objective equivalent and thus the distinction is irrelevant to the truth value.
Quoting ChrisH
Well, it could be else, but I take your point. A person could still be mistaken though. What if a person states that "I don't like vanilla" recalling their last experience, and their friend says "No, you do. Don't you remember that vanilla cake I made you which you liked". A response might be "ah yes, I was mistaken".
Yes, that's a much clearer example. I was going to focus on mathematics, but the reality there is contentious, so I ditched that as an example. Money works really well.
It might have practical significance. What if the equation in question controls a piece of machinery, and getting it wrong means the machinery fails? Rocket fails to launch, bridge collapses, patient dies. That kind of thing. I think I would be correct in saying that it then becomes a matter of objective fact.
It becomes a matter of objective fact if people agree that the rocket fails to launch, or that the bridge collapses, or that the patient dies, it is the agreement that leads us to view it as objective fact, as truth. Without the agreement, there is only your subjective experience against that of others.
If you see something that others can't see, you would say it's right there how can't you see it! And if you insist and others disagree with you they would start calling you delusional, unable to make the difference between objective fact and subjective imagination, but all that's really going on is that others don't agree with what you see.
Now I agree that there are a lot of things most people approximately agree on, but we view them as objective fact, as truth, only because we agree on them.
I'm afraid I'm not sure I follow what you're saying here.
It seems to me that it makes sense to say that claims such 'as anchovies are disgusting' and 'abortion is immoral' are subjectively true/false (dependent on individual perspective) because they're not explicitly statements of personal preference and neither do they reference external facts of evaluation (they're not extramental as Terrapin Station would say).
Quoting Isaac
Sure, that's why added the later edit making it clear that I was talking specifically about a neuroscience lab context.
"Truth" isn't the same thing as "fact" or "state of affairs." Truth is a property of propositions. Propositions are the meanings of statements. All three previous sentences are standard in analytic philosophy. (Which of course doesn't have to amount to anything, but a lot of people here are very concerned with consensus standards, so those folks can't consistently ignore something that's a widespread standard in the field we're supposedly dealing with.)
More controversially, meaning isn't objective. Meaning is a mental phenomenon. So propositions aren't objective. And as an upshot of this, the truth relation isn't objective, either. There are no truths that aren't believed, but truth isn't coextensive with belief--many beliefs have nothing to do with the truth relation.
I think this is a classic example of a philosophical problem which dissolves when one looks closely at the language. If one say "anchovies are disgusting" I don't think they are making a claim about anchovies at all, they're making a claim about their state of mind, it just sounds like they're making a claim about anchovies because the words are arranged in a similar manner to "anchovies are fish". But look closely at the role such claims actually play in life, they play the role of a claim about preference, and since we have no external cause of meaning other than the role expressions play, we have no cause to think it means anything other.
So "anchovies are disgusting" is just as much an objective claim as "anchovies are fish" because "anchovies are disgusting" means "I don't like anchovies".
"abortion is immoral" is more complicated because there may be implicit in that the proposition that there are external moral codes, but even so, if you look at the job the expression does, it's still really saying "according to my moral code, abortion is immoral", which is an objective claim.
Truth there can't have the property of being objective because the relation in question only obtains via an evaluation that an individual makes, based on how they assign meanings to the words/sentence in question, relative to what they're making the judgment with respect to--that is, a judgment about that meaning and its relationship to something else. Those are mental events, and hence on the definition of subjective as mental phenomena, we're talking about a subjective property, not an objective property.
I insist that every sentence is authored, and every author has perspective, so every sentence must have perspective.
Knowledge from no perspective is incoherent. Am I wrong here? I ask not to be stubborn, but only to see if your language analysis really makes metaphysical analysis superfluous.
A decontextualized sentence, read only by looking at the words would have no clear perspective. Nothing is implied related to the statement "the cat is on the mat" in terms of intent or meaning until we look upon the author, as only people have intents or perspectives, but no useful sentence is not authored by a person.
The simple test is whether we're talking about mental phenomena or not.
Re your test, we can just say, "Banno conceptualizes this text as English" or "Banno parses this text as English."
When we focus on whether something is a mental phenomenon, the text isn't, and we can simply point out that certain sets of marks are to be labeled "English," where we could fairly easily get a computer to detect what sorts of marks we have, etc.
Every proposition has a mental perspective because propositions are meanings and meaning is a mental phenomenon.
The problem with this is that there's a name for it: it's the argumentum ad populum fallacy.
The only thing that's the case due to agreement is the fact that there was an agreement.
Further to this:
Quoting Banno
Words are used all sorts of ways, by all sorts of people. There might be an individual who uses "cat" to only refer to what most of us call "dogs," for example. Saying that the most common way to use a term is somehow "true" (or correct, etc.) by virtue of that fact is the argumentum ad populum fallacy.
People will constantly try to squeeze their conformist leanings in the back door when we're talking about this stuff, but that's all it is. When you realize that's all it is, you need to be constantly on guard about them trying to sneak that stuff in. It's never a fact that one should jump off of a bridge just because everyone else is. It's only a fact that everyone else is jumping off the bridge. That doesn't determine what you should or should not do.
Me, too. It really is very simple, but philosophers tend to muddy the waters with their use of language.
Quoting Banno
Right. In other words, subjective statements are value statements. They associate some notion of "good" and "bad", or "right" and "wrong" to some aspect of the world. Subjective statements are similar to a category error in that a person associates the feeling with the object - as if it were an objective feature of that object that everyone would agree with.
Quoting Banno
Is it not a fact that Banno prefers vanilla ice to chocolate, regardless how anyone feels about that, including Banno? Is that not an attribute of Banno?
Now, if Banno were to say, "Vanilla ice cream is the best ice cream", then that is a subjective statement because Banno is attributing "best" to vanilla ice cream, as if vanilla ice cream has this attribute called "the best". This is a category error. "The best" is not an attribute of vanilla ice cream, it is an attribute of Banno's feelings of vanilla ice cream.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
It seems to me that one can have a perspective without being able to put it into words. The cat has a perspective but can't speak English. Speaking is a human behavior that communicates one's feelings and perspectives, just as a cat can communicate it's feelings and perspective by purring, hissing, or laying on a mat (the cat finds the mat comfortable, however I prefer my bed).
What about infants, or the Man Without Words (https://vimeo.com/76386718), who have perspectives and feelings that may differ but can't communicate them via speaking a language? This line of thinking just complicates the distinction between subjective and objective and it is simpler to stick with defining subjectivity as it relates to one's feelings and personal preferences, and the objective as what is the case regardless of anyone's feelings and personal preferences.
Chalmers is famous for hoping that one day we'll have a theory of consciousness that would allow us to predict the experience of a bee.
That would allow us to be objective about subjectivity.
Right. But does this necessitate the concepts of truth and falsity? Don't all statements refer to objective facts, even the so-called "false" or "subjective" ones?
What if we interpret an engineer's words as being necessarily correct whatever he says and whatever happens as a consequence of his words? In other words, we understand an engineer's words in the same way we understand a photograph generated by a camera, that is to say idiosyncratically as a snapshot of the time and place the words were uttered.
To my understanding, the philosophy of trivialism understands falsification in terms of miscalibration; a person's words can be taken-wrongly by a community as a consequence of the person disobeying a linguistic convention. And his words are taken-rightly by community once it identifies the causes of his words.
"I see you've brought your ridiculous dog with you".
"My dog is not ridiculous"
"Well then whose dog have you brought?"
It's quite deeper than that. The majority may believe that some specific thing is going to happen at some point in time, and to them it would be truth. If they end up agreeing later on that what they predicted would happen didn't happen, they would agree that their belief was false, and they would adopt another common belief as a result, a different truth. The only thing that made their old truth not truth, is that they replaced it with another one. Had they kept the old one, their old belief would still be truth.
How could they have kept their old belief if what they predicted didn't happen? Well, it is always possible to invoke some unknown phenomenon or some additional hypothesis to save a belief that is apparently contradicted by observation. Say we make some experiment to detect dark matter, we predict we're going to detect it, and yet we don't detect it, does that imply we must change our belief that there is dark matter? No, we can say that the dark matter has properties that makes it undetectable to the experiments we performed, and we devise some new experiment, while keeping the belief that there is dark matter, while seeing it as truth that there is dark matter. It is only when we eventually end up agreeing that there is no dark matter, that we will say the belief there is dark matter was false, that we will adopt a different truth.
You can look at this from afar, and judge after the fact that well their old belief wasn't truth because it is now truth that there is no dark matter! But it will only become truth that there is no dark matter when the majority of people (or authorities on the subject) agree and believe that there is no dark matter. So essentially it's not that they were wrong and later on became right, that their old truth was a false belief and their new truth is an objective fact, it's just that the new truth is objective fact because they agree on it, just like their old truth was objective fact because they agreed on it.
I don't see any objective fact or truth completely safe from being challenged and replaced by a different one.
?? Nothing "deeper" about any of that. It's simply an argumentum ad populum that something is correct just because it's agreed upon.
I'm not saying that people don't accept whatever they accept as true or false. And someone could accept something as true or false because they're influenced by the crowd. But that has no bearing on any facts aside from the fact that they agree with each other, the fact that they assign "T" or "F" to whatever they do.
Isn't it dependent on the opinion of the speaker?
Imagine the buzz.
Quoting sime
I don't know if the faculty of reason can be explained in other terms - whether pattern recognition or adaptation or stimulus and response. To try to explain reason is already to undermine it; reason is what we look to for explanation, not what we're explaining. And secondly reason is one of the principle tools used in determining what is objectively the case; engineers whose bridges stay up are objectively superior to those whose bridges collapse. But even so, reason and objectivity still have limits, they're not all-knowing. I think that comes up in subjects like history and jurisprudence, as well as leading edge science, where it is difficult or impossible to determine objective facts, as you might have contrary accounts which both appear to be valid, and no way of saying which one is finally true.
In what way does "The cat is on the mat" set out the speaker's feeling or taste?
Now, "I believe that the cat is on the mat" sets out an opinion, and hence is subjective. But "The cat is on the mat" and "I believe that the cat is on the mat" express quite distinct things.
I think that there is some philosophical over-thinking in your approach. I do not think that we would only call a fact objective if people agree about it. I can see no reason why there can't be something that is true, and yet believed false by most folk. I's not hard to think of historical examples.
In short what you say here is an example of the lack of clarity to which I referred in the OP.
Here's a use of private and subject that is quite problematic.
They share a common experience and yet the supposition is that they can never really share the experience.
What is it that is not shared? Tell me. Say it. What exactly is it that is inexpressible?
And of course you cannot. It is, after all, inexpressible.
I think that what is going on here is a confused use of words - "the truth of their subjective experience" is a hapless concatenation. Disengaged gears spinning without doing any work.
However showing remains. Art, poetry, and some philosophy.
What I find of value in considering such things is the difference between a proposition and the belief in a proposition. In logicians parlance, belief ranges over propositions.
SO "The cat is on the mat" and "It is true that the cat is on the mat" are each only true if the other is true.
In contrast, "The cat is on the mat" and "I believe that the cat is on the mat" are quite autonomous. Each can be true or false, independently of the other.
This point seems lost in so much of what is said in these forums.
You make bare assertions which indicate that you're a moral objectivist, but you don't identify as one for some reason.
Those linguistic conventions are presumably shared expressions of our belief. And here I am trying to use your terms.
Are you suggesting that we cannot have a conversation in which we both talk about the same thing?
Because I know that's wrong.
If we're talking about the statement, "The cat is on the mat", then I agree with Banno.
Yup.
What I write next is tangential, but related.
The wording of comments in a philosophy forum should be rather exact.
Here is a thing I have raised in several fora. These are honest statements about myself...my position on a particular question:
I do not "believe" that any gods exist...
...and...
...I do not "believe" that there are no gods.
Those are NOT contradictory statements...although at first glance people will insist they contradict each other.
A second one:
I do not believe any gods exist...
...is not the same as...
...I believe there are no gods.
A fact is a fact. That "cat" means what it does because of common usage doesn't do anything in the broader context of what Banno is getting at. What do you think pointing that out achieves? It is objective in the sense that it isn't an opinion, and it is subjective in the sense that the meaning depends on common usage by subjects.
And you mentioned truth as collective belief. Truth is not collective belief. Collective belief is just collective belief.
Subjectivity is not shared. What is inexpressible (viz. rendered objectively) is actual subjective existence.
There, I said it, I referenced the inexpressible without actually expressing anything about the inexpressible.
And indeed it is a confused use of words when you misquote someone by confusing existence with experience. Perhaps you reduce those terms to the same meaning...looks like a case of engaged gears doing alot of work, but nothing's spinning.
OK, money and other institutional facts.
I was impressed by Searle in The construction of social reality[/I]. The name is a play on [i]The social construction of reality, with which it is to be contrasted.
Here's my claim, from the OP:
Quoting Banno
Do social institutions such as money show an error in my claim?
Searle perhaps avoids this using his distinction between an individual intent and a group intent. He claims, and I agree with him, that there is a different intentionality in "I am going to win the game" than in "We (the team) are going to win the game". But I am loath to use that here; it would be far off topic, and too contentious.
Instead I will argue that the answer is to do with direction of fit.
Here are two true statements:
"The cup is purple"
"I will make some chicken stock"
In the first, the statements is made to fit the way things are. In the second, the world is made to fit the statement by my making chicken stock.
This is a distinction found in Anscombe and elsewhere.
In the case of money, we make it valuable by acting as if it has value. Our belief in the value of a note is what brings that value into being. We change the world to fit our belief.
In this thread I am talking about the other sort of direction of fit, in which our beliefs are changed in order to match the way things are. We change our belief to fit the world.
So, Isaac, I take your point, and contend that while there are cases where our belief brings social institutions into being, those are not the cases to which I was referring.
Nu. Even if we agree, we might all be wrong.
I agree with all of that. I'd just point out that they're also subjective in a sense, because that can mean dependent on a subject, or more specifically their judgement, values, principles, etc.
It's an objective truth in the relevant sense. Bringing up a different sense doesn't change that.
How is disagreement possible if we really are talking about the same thing?
By "the same thing" I include any intuition or phenomena that the observer experiences as a result of their mental state. So if we look at the same sky and disagree about tomorrows weather due to having had different past experiences, we aren't looking at the same thing by my definition.
Suppose someone says "Only the sky we share before us is objective, and our private intuitions are subjective and irrelevant". This isn't a deep epistemological statement about the world we experience, this is merely a statement about a linguistic convention that ignores the private facts of each person.
No, because that's just what meaning, generally speaking, is. Idiosyncratic use is irrelevant to meaning, generally speaking. A cat is not a dog. And it makes perfect sense to state that a cat is not a dog. It makes perfect sense because of how meaning generally works.
Meaning is use.
Both funny and salient.
Quoting Terrapin Station
While it is true that some philosophers use these meanings, I think it causes more fog than clarity. it's what I am disagreeing with here. This use is an example of the sort of misappropriation Wittgenstein exposed in PI.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Sure - except that "Property" is a bit too much reification for me. I'd say it was a predicate over propositions. Basically the same.
Quoting Terrapin Station
"Propositions" is a bit too fuzzy for my taste. I prefer 'statement', because it is comparatively simple to set out what a statement is using grammatical rules, A proposition is supposedly what "it is raining" has in common with "es regnet"; saying it is the meaning derives from that. That woks to some extent, but one ought not let it run off. Better to think in terms of use than in terms of meaning.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Sure, but that does not mean they are not contentious.
Quoting Terrapin Station
And here we really disagree.
I think the word "objective" here leads to much confusion. So, if meaning is not objective, it is subjective, a question of taste or opinion. Moreover, if meaning is a metal phenomena, then it happens in each mind, independently; and you and I can never talk about the very same thing.
That strikes me as wrong. Meaning is shared. Indeed, I think it better not to talk about meaning at all, but instead to look at what is being done with the sharing of words. Sentences (propositions, for Terrapin) are not mere mental phenomena.
Hence one can reject the counterintuitive notion that there are no truths that are not believed.
Sometimes the acknowledgement of that gets lost, and sometimes the bigger picture gets lost. In meta-ethics, the application of that would lead to something like error theory. All moral statements would be false or at least unwarranted. Between error theory and moral relativism, the latter seems better. Some people don't end up with this conclusion, though. Some people are dogmatic, and so assert moral objectivism without justification.
I can go by that interpretation. I can apply it. But, in ethics, it doesn't result in moral objectivism.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I'm lost here because I am not sure what "the relation in question" is.
But again I will point out that the use of "subjective" to mean "mental" is fraught.
even if what is agreed upon is wrong, the fallacy is still based in objectivity.
If everyone agreed that subjectivity is some weird metaphysical inwardness, the proposition is an artifact of objectivity that can only be related to objectively.
If a sole individual disagreed, regardless if right or wrong, he would still be relating objectively to the proposition, and his opinion would not be subjective since it holds the possibility for agreement. Only if he kept his opinion a secret and never spoke a word could it be considered subjective, and no one would ever know.
...
But now, I shall retract all that I've previously said due to the realization that there are 2 ways of regarding the object-subject relation.
Consider perhaps:
A)views the subject-object quantitatively, as occupying the extreme ends of a gradient, which in turn represents the varying degrees of subjectivity and objectivity. Truth is found in objectivity, so the less subjective one becomes, the closer he is to obtaing truth (as a linguo-histo-cultural phenomenon).
B)views the subject-object qualitatively. They are related dialectally as irreconcilable opposites. Objective truth is completely distinct and separate from subjective truth due to the qualitative difference. An individual cannot simultaneously relate to objectivivity and subjectivity since it would be like facing east and west at the same time.
Or perhaps not
Well, I've some sympathy for this, but the premise is false. There are sentences that have not been written, hence there are sentences that are not authored. A pedantic argument we might do without.
Quoting Hanover
Yep. Because knowledge involves belief. But knowledge and truth are distinct.
I'm not sure there is much difference between your saying that all sentences come from a specific perspective, and my saying that we ought look to the use of a sentence in preference to looking at its meaning. Isn't the perspective more art less the use to which the sentence is put?
I think this in error.
Quoting Terrapin Station
And this.
Quoting Terrapin Station
My suspicion is that for you truth and belief are pretty much the same, and hence, since opinion is subjective and belief is opinion, that truth is opinion and hence truth is subjective...
But I might be wrong.
Indeed. That's why I'm not saying that.
If you came across a group of folk who used "cat" to only refer to what most of us call "dogs," then you would be best sir red to use "cat" when you talk about dogs.
This is true despite most folk using "cat" to talk about cats.
A subjective viewpoint has the viewer positioned centrally in the world. We all know what that's like. Stop thinking and look: that's the doorway to subjectivity.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Maybe. I would be a bit guarded aghast making such a broad generalisation.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Someone else said something similar. I don't think so. I think my preference is rather central to the issue, and hence the statement is subjective.
Jack the cat has a perspective, sure. I don't see that as of much relevance.
Why not just accept that it is both subjective and objective in different senses and avoid arguing over whether it is either one or other? That seems like black-and-white thinking which will just lead to problems like talking past each other.
You'll never catch up, like Achilles in the race with the tortoise. :grin:
Pointedly. I'm following the opinion that it is better to look to use than meaning.
A bit out of left field, but OK.
I also claim to prefer vanilla ice over chocolate ice. Do you expect me to provide a warrant for that, too?
Perhaps it is wrong to insist that every true statement demands justification.
No, I don't expect you to provide warrant for that, just as I don't expect you to provide warrant for saying that you judge murdering a child to be more wrong than swatting a fly.
But I do expect you to provide warrant for saying that "murder is wrong" is objectively true, if that's what you say or imply, and that's a reasonable expectation.
Two possibilities: Gods exist; Gods do not exist.
Two attitudes: I believe that.. ; I do not believe that...
Four possibilities:
a) I believe that gods exist
b) I believe that gods do not exist
c) I do not believe that gods exist
d) I do not believe that gods do not exist.
One cannot consistently hold (a) and (b) because they imply "I believe that gods exist and do not exist.
One can consistently hold (c) and (d), by not having a belief about gods.
One cannot consistently hold (a) and (c), since one is the negation of the other.
One can believe (b) and (d) by being agnostic.
Ill approach it dialectically. You listened to screamo music. Perhaps it made you despair (whether physiologically or mentally) to the verge of suicide. That is the first dialectical movement into subjectivity.
You form an opinion that the music is making you sick. The music ends and the despair disappears but the opinion remains. For the subject, what is the opinion compared to the actual experience? The opinion merely functions to mediate the subjective experience and this mediation is the second dialectical movement into objectivity.
While the actual experience is eternally confined to subjective existence, the mediated (the opinion) is a form that can potentially be held in common with others as objective knowledge. The mere fact that it is possible to hold the opinion in common makes it objective.
So I will admit that the subject's existence plays an essential role in forming opinion, but I still regard opinion as a mediation into objectivity
A circle through with the beetle drops out of the discussion.
Not as per how the term is more commonly used, but yes, in some idiosyncratic sense, it can be said to be objective.
Big deal.
That looks slightly mad.
Quoting sime
...and that would be a good thing.
Where did I say that... you give me too much credit my friend, but not enough coherence in your understanding. The gaping ellipsis of your reasoning is astounding
Too strong. Forget meaning -- look instead at what we do with words.
"For a large class of cases--though not for all--in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language."
I'll stick with that, since I can't think of a good enough reason not to.
I'm happy you agree.
Just out of curiousity and ignorance on my part, if you'll breifly explain, what is the more common use of the term?
You seem concerned that I don't use the term "moral objectivism". IS it that you think that moral statements being subjective renders them somehow less important?
Mortal statements have a direction of fit such that we change how things are to make the statement so.
Suppose I think that one ought keep holy the Sabbath ( I don't).
If Fred comes along and says that we should open up shops on the Sabbath, I might simply say that he is wrong. That does not make my beliefs about the Sabbath any less subjective.
That is, keeping the Sabbath Holy, while not objective, can still determine my attitude towards Fred.
Yeah, that's not as clear as I would like it to be. We are in a culture that has valued objective truths because it seems easier to reach agreement on them. This has led to a devaluation of subjective truths.
Yet it is our attitude towards things that is most important.
What cannot be said is of far greater import than what can be said.
While I don't understand much of what you have said, this re-thinking deserves respect.
You shouldn't be, because there's still a problem, even though we can agree.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
It would be something along the lines of a fact that doesn't depend on anyone's opinion or whether it is a commonly held opinion. Your definition is easily shown to be problematic.
Thank you sir.
I think this more aptly describes the universal rather than the objective.
I did NOT mention anything that I "believe."
I mentioned some things that I do NOT "believe."
Read my comment again...and you will see that.
But I don't think it objectively true. That does not stop me from thinking it true.
No, on the contrary, I have made the point before that they're no less important if they're subjective.
My problem is that you have said things that seem to suggest that you are a moral objectivist, but you just don't seem to want to use that term. I say if the shoe fits, wear it.
Quoting Banno
It's odd, because that's in sync with my own thinking, but you've said things like, "Kicking puppies is wrong", and seem to have suggested that it's something more than an indication of your own moral judgement, as though it was an independent moral fact that kicking puppies is wrong, irrespective of whether I judge it to be right or make any moral judgement at all on the matter.
So either you go by an account of moral truth in accordance with moral subjectivism or you just don't want to use the term "objectively".
I thought it was the latter.
I'm definitely not a Hegelian, but he says thought is what produces the universal, and that thought belongs to subjectivity.
So then, is the universal subjective? Whatcha think. Consider the epistemological question of identity, and please spare us the lame "family resemblance" spiel.
But kicking puppies is wrong. You agree with me. What more do you want? It's being objectively true (to misuse "objectively") would not make it any more true...?
I said "authored," not written. I use my term liberally, to include any that have been conceptualized, regardless of whether memorialized in writing, by utterance, or otherwise.
Quoting BannoIf you received a text with various misspellings and incorrect words placed in error by spell check, would you look to use or try to figure out what was meant?Quoting Banno
Are they? What is raw truth? When you say "truth" is that the noumena? I think it is. If all I can know is the phenomenal, then why talk about what really is?
Well it doesn't. The universal would be something along the lines of that which is true in all cases or believed by all. The objective would be something along the lines of a fact that is independent of subjects and their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, judgement, and so on.
The existence of Jupiter does not depend on you or me or anyone else or anyone at all, nor on what we think or perceive or judge and so on. It is objective.
Yes, I agree with you that kicking puppies is wrong. You've just left me confused about your stance in meta-ethics, because I thought we disagreed.
Quoting Hanover
I've no idea.
Quoting Hanover
Again, you have lost me.
Quoting Hanover
Why would you think that?
Quoting Hanover
Or what really, really is? or what really, really, really is?
Quoting Hanover
Quoting Hanover
There are sentences unwritten, unsaid, unthought. Who authored them?
I think that we ought to use it with regards to what's objective, and if we interpret moral statements in that way, then they'll be false or unwarranted at best. So it makes more sense to interpret them subjectively, by which I mean as a reflection of moral judgement.
So, instead of "murder is wrong" being false or unwarranted, it is true and warranted. At least when I say it, going by my judgement.
And this also holds true for:
And, concerning Jupiter:
suppose I see Jupiter in a picture and identify it as jupiter. Then, at a later time I observed Jupiter through a telescope, and identify it as Jupiter. That us the universal, for although I perceive particulars with no necessary causal or logical relation, I understand them to be identical.
I feel it is important for us to clarify these terms, but I may be mistaken
No, motion is an illusion. Everything is appearance. :wink:
You instigator.. :up:
I'd go with "true yet unwarranted".
The universal is a red herring. The topic is the subjective-objective distinction.
Why unwarranted?
It is my opinion moral objectivism and moral subjectivism are misleading terms...
I prefer moral relativism and absolute morality. But I don't expect anyone to adopt my definitions, I'm not a nazi of lexicon like S.
Quoting YuZhonglu
See how it confuses belief and truth?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Yep. It's one of the misused of objective and subjective to which this thread is addressed. Like Harry said:
Quoting Harry Hindu
They are two sets of terms with distinct meanings. Which set of terms is more appropriate to use will depend on the context. And we're supposed to be talking about the subjective-objective distinction, so it is obviously the former set of terms which is more appropriate.
But that does not imply that it is not something about which we can agree.
That's the error made by folk who think that being objective means being in agreement.
It's a minefield. Needs to be kept simple and we need to take small steps.
I find the terms moral objectivism and moral subjectivism to be nonsense...unless you can define them for my edification. I would be eternally grateful.
No way, let's blow up the MF and see what's leftover.
I agree that morality is not the sort of thing that can be objective. Those who think that it is objective are moral objectivists, and I am not a moral objectivist.
Quoting Banno
So this is just another semantic disagreement, it seems. I would say that our judgement that murder is wrong is justified by my standard.
And again, it was the meta-ethics that I was saying would need to be justified, not the ethics. It is about the statement, and in what sense it is true, not whether murder is wrong. Some people on this forum seem to muddle up meta-ethics and ethics.
What about the judeo-Christian ethic that pervades the western world, that seems like an objective morality to me.
Well, I'm not so naive.
Nah, you can you google it or pick up how they should be used by paying attention to people like me.
Or you can simply dismiss them as nonsense, but you'd be wrong.
Then its possible you don't mind the murder and rape of babies, but for the dominant majority of people living in the western world, they would object simply because they have inherited the judeo-Christian ethic, wittingly or not...Very objective
It's possible that you're an abnormally intelligent octopus hidden away in a secret lab somewhere in Switzerland, but you're not.
It would be silly to believe that, and it would be silly to believe that I don't mind the murder and rape of babies.
Let's not be silly.
Bare assertions about something controversial in philosophy is not an example of doing philosophy well. If you want to argue for moral objectivism, do so properly and in a discussion with that as the topic. I only brought it up here as an example relevant to the topic of the subjective-objective distinction.
There is no requirement on this forum to do philosophy well. And how can you do philosophy well without taking the proper digressions.
True, but it should be encouraged.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
We already have a topic and should stick to it. We have the ability to create separate discussions for a reason. Digressions are never really "proper". They're usually a sign of a lack of focus.
Let's recapitulate, what have we figured out so far..
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
Bolds added. ;-)
I think a better way of framing this is in terms of subjective and inter-subjective. "That this text is written in English" is an inter-subjective fact, because it can be inter-subjectively confirmed. The only difference between an inter-subjective fact and a purported fact that has not been inter-subjectively confirmed,and which we might want to call 'objective', is that it is yet to be confirmed. But it ought to be, at least in principle, capable of being inter-subjectively confirmed.
You might want to say that there could be purported facts which are thought to have been inter-subjectively confirmed and yet not facts at all (although I can't think of any likely candidates), and that is true in principle since we are not infallible, but it is nonetheless the case that such a purported fact turning out not to be a fact must be on account of a further inter-subjective confirmation. What could it mean to say that what we think of as a fact might not be a fact at all, even though its non-facthood could never be confirmed?
I don't think this is true.
Quoting Isaac The language is quite clearly the language of objectivity - the intention may not be to make an objective claim, but the language construction is identical to an objective claim.
Quoting IsaacOf course, if you take it for granted that it is intended that all such apparently objective claims are qualified by the assumed but unspoken "In my view/opinion" then the problem dissolves. But this is quite an assumption and clearly not warranted in all cases when it comes to moral claims.
it seems to me that it's reasonable to describe ostensibly objective claims for which it is believed there is no external (extramental) objective referent as "subjectively true". This has the benefit of reflecting how the term is commonly used.
What would be the subjective truth expressed in the above example "anchovies are disgusting"? Something like 'I find anchovies disgusting'? If so, I would agree that it counts as a subjective truth (when it is true) since it cannot be an inter-subjective truth, because there is no way to inter-subjectively confirm that I don't like anchovies.
Basically, you answered your own question. I felt that the distinction as Banno originally described it was too mutually exclusive when, as you point out, the meaning of a word is objective fact (by virtue of not being anyone's opinion) and subjective by virtue of being entirely mental. Noting determined that 'cat' should mean what it does other than people's opinion that it does. Once determined, however, it is an extramental fact that this is the case.
Truth can instrumentally be collective belief. Personally I don't need any more than that. It is true that bishops move diagonally in chess is entirely a description of the collective belief of chess players.
Fair enough. To answer your first question, the part I took issue with specifically was "being true does not imply being believed". Obviously, as we have just discussed, this is not universally applicable. In some cases being true absolutely requires that it is believed.
I'm glad someone understood the relevance (or maybe everyone did, but thought it unworthy of response)
Yes. It's subjectively true for anyone who does find anchovies disgusting.
Yes, that's the point. Why get tangled in what the language is constructed like? This is classic Wittgenstein, we are impressed by the shape of the grammar, as if it's shape meant something, yet we all know what it means.
Quoting ChrisH
Not really, it's exactly the sort of presumption required to communicate. If we took every utterance to mean literally what was said without contextual knowledge communication would grind to a halt.
Quoting ChrisH
I agree with you here, but only insofar as it is not the same presumption.
Quoting ChrisH
But the belief that there is no external referent is in the mind of the speaker, and the description "subjective truth" is applied by a third party. Do you not see the difficulty in having a necessary property of some class being the contents of someone else's mind?
No it's a statement of fact. I suppose you could argue that all statements of fact are "dependent on the opinion of the speaker". I'm not sure how useful that would be.
It isn't.
Quoting Janus
It doesn't need to be.
A fact is a fact, regardless of confirmation. Confirmation is completely irrelevant.
This is very salient, I think, but perhaps I could add this to my list of problems which dissolve if we don't get too tangled in the form of an expression, but focus only on what it does.
One might say "it is immoral to work on the sabbath" and we could easily tie ourselves in knots over the fact that this had the grammatical structure of a truth apt proposition. But it doesn't do what a truth apt proposition does. What saying "it is immoral to work on the sabbath" does, is either to frighten, ostracised or subject the person to whom it is said. Or (in a nicer sense) it publicly declares an intention, in Anscombe's sense, to make the world that way.
The structure of the statement does not in itself carry any philosophical significance.
I find that weird, because that isn't truth, that's just treating as truth something which is not truth. It's a bit like treating a phone as a thing which goes "ring ring", instead of a device for calling people. You and Janus are wrong to think of belief in this way. There can be a truth which is not a collective belief nor intersubjectively confirmed, and that it could be intersubjectively confirmed is irrelevant, because it is already a fact by virtue of the way the world is. A genius could discover a truth unknown by the rest of the world.
But language construction does mean something.
When some people say X is immoral they really don't mean that they personally feel that X is immoral.
Similarly some people apparently believe some works of art really are beautiful (i.e. they don't believe beauty is solely in the eye of the beholder).
The problem here is if you assume all such claims have an implied "In my opinion" attached to them then all such claims become objectively true. I think this would be confusing particularly in the case of moral claims.
Quoting Isaac
All beliefs are in the mind. Whether or not an external referent exists is objectively true or false. So. no, I don't see any difficulty.
It could be that they got it, but just decided not to reply. Although I think that some people around here just aren't intelligent enough to distinguish between funny comments with a serious philosophical point, and a simple joke with no serious philosophical point.
I don't disagree with that at all. I'm not saying that truth is intersubjectively confirmed, only that it becomes difficult to talk about truth, in the way we use it without including, in that definition, some things which are intersubjectively confirmed. I'm working from the use of the word out, rather than from the utility in.
So there is a true fact related to the chemical composition of jupiter. This fact is true no matter what anyone thinks about it.
But there also seems to be a true fact related to the meaning (or in this case proper referent) for the word 'cat'. Unlike the last fact, however, the truth of this one is entirely dependent on what people think. If, one day, language evolved such that 'cat' no longer referred to the feline species, then it would no longer be true.
Maybe you're old enough to remember Michael Jackson's 'Bad' album. Although probably not so sudden in 'the hood', here in the leafy suburbs of England, literally overnight the statement "'bad' does not mean something to be admired" stopped being true and became false.
Im just trying to find some language to express that function.
You must have arse for brains, since that is not necessary. A hypothetical unconfirmed fact is sufficient, and I already gave an example of that. That's an example of something that would be a fact by virtue of the way the world is, not by virtue of your irrelevant and wrongheaded definition of what a fact is. I can easily provide innumerable examples of that.
Yes, a hypothetical fact is not a fact. And missing the point is missing the point. Try again.
What does it mean then?
Quoting ChrisH
More confusing than assuming they don't? If some claims do have an implied "in my opinion" why would you treat them all as if they didn't and call them subjective truths. Surely all we've established is that at least some claims of the form "anchovies are disgusting" are not, nor were ever supposed to be, anything other than an objective claim about my state of mind. The sort of thing I would fully expect an fMri scan to confirm. No different to "the grass is green" which I fully expect a spectrometer to confirm. Why is the subject matter of these claims entitling them to a unique class. We don't group all claims about the weather together in one class. Why would we group all claims about mental states into a unique class?
All moral claims that are not relativist already must contain within them a hidden premise in order to overcome Moore's open question, or the is/ought problem. So treating any of them as simple fact claims is definitely wrong. No one is ever claiming "murder is wrong" without also claiming a meta-ethical commitment which then renders the claim as objective as "the grass is green", in meaning.
So, a relativist "murder is wrong" means murder feels wrong to me, an objective report of their mental state which they might reasonably expect to be verified by fMri (should it ever one day be capable)
A divine command theorist "murder is wrong" means there exists a god whose command constitutes wrongness and his command is not to murder. Again, thru fully expect, in the afterlife, to have this verified.
And so on with all moral claims.
So I'm still not seeing why we need a special category of truth for any of this.
I'm not suggesting we do. But it remains the case that the term "subjectively true" is in common use.
I'm just trying to make sense of what might commonly be meant by the term.
I see. I misunderstood your approach as claiming there to be some metaphysical, or ontological significance to the term. If you're just trying to make sense of common use, then yes, I think it is most commonly used to mean 'true, but contingent on a mental state'. But I'm not sure myself how commonly it is used outside of philosophy, which is why I think primarily it is term invented to describe a pseudo-problem arising only from taking normal sentences out of context.
In my experience it's quite common ("subjective" not necessarily "subjectively true").
Yes, I most commonly come across that as a pejorative response to a claim which is intended to carry some weight. "Shakespeare is a brilliant writer" might be rejoined with "that's just subjective". To say that it is subjective truth, I think is to either mistake the intention (which was maybe just to say "a lot of people think..."), or to give credit to what is actually a cheap trick to lend authority to a claim. If they actually do mean "Shakespeare is a brilliant writer" without any caveats, then they are just plain wrong, not subjectively right.
But what makes you think that, what makes you arrive at that objective 'fact' or 'truth'?
People have reported seeing some specific shape through their telescope, that they call Jupiter. Maybe yourself have seen that shape through a telescope, and called it Jupiter. People are able to predict where they have to point their telescope to see that shape. People have sent a spacecraft towards that shape and have seen on their screens a specific shape, that they deem to be the shape they call Jupiter shown in greater details.
You say that the existence of Jupiter does not depend on anyone because anyone is seemingly able to see that shape through a telescope as long as some conditions are met (it is night, Jupiter is not below the horizon, the telescope is powerful enough). What you deem to be the proof of the objective existence of Jupiter is that on many occasions people have reported seeing that shape, and that on many occasions people have been able to predict where they have to point their telescope to see that shape. But what this shows precisely is that your proof of the objective existence of Jupiter hinges on the reports of people, it does depend on what people see, or more precisely on what people report they see.
You don't have a proof that Jupiter exists when no one is looking at it. You don't have a proof that suddenly tomorrow people will not stop seeing that shape. What if when they point their telescope tomorrow the shape has disappeared, for no explainable reason, and no one ever sees it again. How would you react then? All that would be left is reports of people who said they saw that shape and now they don't see it anymore.
And at that point you would say that Jupiter has no objective existence any more, it did, but not any more. Would you realize then that you said Jupiter had an objective existence only because many people reported seeing it, and that Jupiter stops having an objective existence when people stop reporting seeing it? Do you then see that what you call the objective existence of Jupiter does depend on people perceiving it?
Or maybe you would say that Jupiter existed objectively, but then an unknown phenomenon that has an objective existence made Jupiter disappear. But then how would you prove that this unknown phenomenon has an objective existence, if the only evidence you ever find is that people simply stopped seeing Jupiter? There again, the 'objective existence" of this unknown phenomenon would hinge solely on the reports of people, on the reports that they perceived Jupiter and they don't anymore.
You may believe that such a thing cannot happen, that something that you deem to have an objective existence cannot possibly disappear without there being any hint of what made it disappear. But what proof do you have that this cannot happen, other than a belief?
Maybe you would then say that Jupiter was a shared hallucination, that it didn't really exist objectively, but then the consequence is that there was no way to make a difference between an objective existence and a shared hallucination.
I've always taken the "it's subjective" response as just another way of saying they're plain wrong if they think there's an objective fact of the matter.
But do you realize that subjectivity includes perception itself and not just feeling or taste? A simple example is that there are people who are visually blind, they perceive things very differently. Among people who are not visually blind, we do not agree on everything, some people see a thing as green while others call it blue, some see a thing as orange while others call it yellow. Various people see various shapes when looking at a cloud.
Quoting Banno
In what way are the two different? To me there's only a difference in the strength of the belief, "I believe that the cat is on the mat" expresses that I may be mistaken, while "The cat is on the mat" expresses that I'm certain I'm not mistaken.
Quoting Banno
But the fundamental problem is how do you determine that something is true? You refer to historical examples, but all they show is that there are things that used to be believed false that are now believed true, that doesn't show in any way that some time in the future they won't possibly be believed false again. Truth appears as shared beliefs of an era.
Today many people laugh when they are told the Sun revolves around the Earth. To them it's obvious that the Earth revolves around the Sun, it's the 'truth'. But how did they arrive at that truth? Often it's simply what they were taught in school, what they read in books, they didn't check the reasoning that leads to the conclusion that the Earth revolves around the Sun, they don't know the assumptions at the basis of the reasoning, but still to them it's obviously true that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Just like for many it used to be obviously true that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Truth appears as something obvious. Much like beliefs. When we believe it it's obviously true. When we believe the contrary it becomes obviously false. As if there was no fundamental difference between truth and belief. Beliefs change, and with it what we consider to be truth. Sometimes people have conflicting beliefs, sometimes a minority has beliefs that they see as truth, against the majority. Then if the minority manages to convince the majority to change their beliefs, these new beliefs are then seen as truth by the majority. Then we say that the minority was right and the majority was wrong, but the only thing that happened is that the majority adopted the beliefs of the minority, they changed their beliefs and with it changed what they see as obvious.
What part of what I originally said don't you understand? I don't have any "work" to do, because I don't need to provide an actual example. A hypothetical example is sufficient. For example, if there's a particular galaxy in a particular location in space that no one is currently aware of, then that would be an example of a fact that is not intersubjectively confirmed. Facts don't need to be intersubjectively confirmed to be facts.
I have defined meaning as the relationship between cause and effect. What words mean, are what the author intended, and author's are influenced by the language they learn and their skill with using that language.
Every causal relationship has meaning. We don't assign meaning, we discover it.
Quoting BannoNot that distinct. One is about the cat, and the other is about your belief. Both are objective aspects of the world that we can talk about. Is it true that you have beliefs? Is it true that a cat is on the mat? Are both of these things true independent of how people feel about them?
Quoting Banno
Sure, this would be pleading to the authority and isn't what I mean when I say that objectivity is something everyone believes. What I mean is that everyone CAN believe it if stripped of all subjectivity (like emotional attachments to beliefs), and given the same evidence (just the facts, ma'am). This is what the prosecution and defense do in a courtroom in trying to sway the jury to see their side of things. What does the evidence support? What is the logical conclusion given the evidence?
When we think we are being objective but find out we were wrong, the reasons we find that we were wrong was because we were being more subjective and less objective. We were missing information, lied to, or committed a logical fallacy, like pleading to authority.
What's the relevant sense? "A truth about an objective state of affairs"? If that's what we're saying it's fine, but we need to be careful with how we're talking, because usually
That's just another way of trying to sneak an argumentum ad populum in the back door. Argumentum ad populums are fallacious. Things that most people say or do are only relevant to the question of "What do most people say or do?" There's no other implication to it.
What would be an example or two of that (of it "causing more fog than clarity") in your view?
Quoting Banno
If this is the sort of fog you're referring to, it's simply a matter of you not being able to read what I'm writing with a definition that I just made explicit and that you even commented on. That's not something problematic with the definition. The problem is the inability to remember and apply the definition in context. I'm not saying anything like "meaning is just a question of taste or opinion."
Quoting Banno
We can never have the very same meaning. That's the case even if meaning is objective, insofar as our individual relationships (perception if it's objective, cognition, use, etc.), our individual interactions with it would go. This doesn't imply that we can't talk about the same thing. Our pointing is not identical to what we're pointing to. Meaning would be our pointing--our individual fingers. And indeed, you and I can not have the same fingers. But what we're pointing to can be the same thing.
Quoting Banno
"Meaning is shared" is what is wrong. No mental phenomena are literally shared in any sense. We share words in the "show and tell sense," yes. We don't share words in the "My word is literally, logically identical to your word" sense--which is a matter of what side we take in the nominalism vs. "realism" (realism on universals/types in other words) debate. I'm a nominalist. Maybe you're a realist (on universals) . . . and that would be a worthwhile thing for us to talk about in a different thread, rather than us starting so many threads where we wind up talking about the same handful of things over and over.
Sentences, as text strings, ordered sound waves, etc. are not mental phenomena. Propositions, which are NOT identical to sentences, are mental phenomena, because propositions are the meanings of the sentences that can be true or false. (Propositions are not the meanings of other sorts of sentences.)
There are good reasons in analytic philosophy for all of these distinctions (sentences vs statements vs propositions, etc.) Simply not wanting to learn them doesn't help you understand any of this stuff.
Aside from the fact that I've explained my truth theory a bunch of times in different threads here, the post you're responding to explains that it's "a judgment about that meaning [of a proposition] and its relationship to something else." The something else, as I've explained many times, depends on the truth theory the individual in question adheres to (at least on the occasion in question). It can be correspondence to some state of affairs, coherence with some set of propositions, etc.
Quoting Banno
How about reading the posts that you're responding to? That gives you the answer instead of having to make stuff up. If you don't understand what I write, I'd be happy to explain it to you if you'd a bit more humbly/respectfully inquire about it rather than wanting to argue with it and "win" despite it being obvious that you're not absorbing what I'm writing.
Why a group, though? Wouldn't an individual be sufficient?
Banno's sense, otherwise you're just talking past him. And he could have hardly made it any clearer. He said: "That this text is written in English is not dependent on my own taste or feelings. Hence it is an objective truth".
You don't properly understand what is and what is not an argumentum ad populum fallacy, so I dismiss what you say.
I felt like writing something similar, but I didn't care enough to make the effort. I would think something so obvious would be recognized by anyone with 2 shits for brains, but go figure.
Anyway, excellent point.
What is the "proper" understanding?
Banno, what is the sense you are getting at?
Good idea.
An artist who works for the police draws a portrait of a criminal based on the memories of a victim. After the image is broadcast on T.V., a woman calls the police to report that she knows the criminal. It is later proven that man she identified was in fact the perpetrator.
Doesn't this show that there is more to subjective experience than the modification of a sentence? It involves accurate memories of what things look like.
The fallacy is about applying the wrong criteria.
It's a fallacy to argue that because lots of people believe that in ancient Greece, sculptures were unpainted, then they were unpainted. They were actually painted bright colours. The fallacy is that the incorrect criterion is being applied.
It's not a fallacy to argue that the word "cat" means something other than "dog", because unless you're autistic, you'll know straightaway that what's meant by that is the general, ordinary meaning of the word, not what some joker or imbecile has decided it to mean. The correct criterion for that is common usage.
What you're doing is making the irrelevant point that someone can set an idiosyncratic meaning, and you're pretending to be autistic when someone says that "cat" doesn't mean "dog".
No, you're just making a very basic error in confusing facts, what is the case, with knowledge, what is known to be the case. They become known facts when confirmed. They were facts beforehand.
Confirmation is completely irrelevant here. Facts are not facts by virtue of anything whatsoever to do with confirmation. I know you really want to make your theory work, but it doesn't. It's rubbish. Just like your morality as herd-morality theory.
I've given a few. Your present post, for one.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I rest my case.
Toargue that it means something per what?
No. Meaning is shared.
So if it's something an individual is doing, you're just not going to call it meaning?
It's rather disingenuous to insist that if someone does not agree with you then they have misread your posts.
Per the rest of what I explained which you cut out from your quote. Why are you playing dumb?
here's' my contention: that there is a fairly straightforward use of "subjective" to talk about feelings and such. There is also a further use of "subjective" to talk about more philosophical stuff; this is a example of misappropriation.
This thread has already flushed out plenty of examples. See Leo arguing that Jupiter is subjective or Terra arguing that meaning is private.
I just do most see what "objective" is doing here. Both are aspects of the world that we can talk about.
Hmm. The reasons you provide, that I italicised...
Seem more objective that subjective.
What if we were misled by feelings of revulsion, a preference for blonds...
These would be subjective.
I know some philosophers talk this way. I think it misleading. The remainder of your post serves as an example of what happens when a philosopher talks this way.
You are here using "objective" in a way that differs from the one set out in the OP.
"I prefer vanilla ice" is a subjective statement in accord with the use set out in the OP. It is true only if the speaker does have a certain preference.
But it is also a statement of fact.
That is, I don't agree with your "No it's a statement of fact". You imply that subjective statements and statements of fact are mutually exclusive. I don't see why this should be so.
Nor need I argue that all statements of fact are mere opinions.
My apologies for being somewhat dismissive.
This thread is about applying the stuff in PI to philosophical problems. You can see that other issues that take on prominence here.
Hope you find it interesting.
The victim's experience of remembering what the criminal looked like is a subjective one. Though the victim does report on this experience verbally, I wouldn't think the memory itself is some database of sentences.
If that's what you're saying, 1) why do you believe that, and 2) what does that theory of mind have to do with Wittgenstein?
Quoting Banno
Is it? Philosophers frequently used specialized language just as shorthand. Is that wrong?
Now what does this mean? When you say it is subjective, what does that do?
I understand what subjective means in the contexts explained in the OP - a feeling or a preference or that sort of thing.
But a memory is not a feeling or a preference; although one can remember a feeling. Here, you are asking the victim to remember a face.
So it seems you are using subjective here to mean something different. What?
The story is constructed to keep you from avoiding my point.
Information can be subjective or objective. Information comes in a variety of forms including pictures. A picture always has a point of view. In regard to subjective and objective information of a visual type, the position of the observer is what's being identified.
When the victim was first assaulted, she had a subjective view of the criminal. So, for instance, she doesn't remember what the back of his head looked like. That's typical of the subjective view. Some things are visible, others are not. An objective view doesn't have limits of that type. It seems to be everywhere.
The police artist asks her to recall the criminal's appearance. Now she has another subjective experience, except this time it isn't directed outward, but inward (so to speak) to the realm of memory.
The idea of turning your view inward is something you'll have to understand in order to get the majority of visual art created in the 20th Century. So you couldn't really say there's anything obscure about that.
I was just asking how your theory of mind relates to Wittgenstein.
What more is added by bringing in subjective? My contention is that it brings with it considerable harmful baggage.
Not too bad.
...and things start to come apart. Well, she has a memory, and it is from her point of view... unless it changes, as memories are prone to do.
Also, we don't usually talk about experiencing memories; we just have them. Here lies another wombat hole, in which we start to use "experience" for things other than experiences. (A wombat hole is like a rabbit hole, but much, much bigger.)
If you do mean theory of mind as in the psychology of why we think other folk are not philosophical zombies, there are numerous examples in PI. They usually take a form something like "I don't doubt that the man before me is in pain..."
I guess it relates again to the rejection of the requirement that a proposition always be justified. Show me reason to think that other people are philosophical zombies...
What's the harmful baggage in a statement like this?:
Quoting SEP
Quoting Banno
Do you not understand what it means to have the experience of remembering?
No.
I don't see a difference between having the experience of remembering and...remembering.
Further I hold that if folk want to make such distinction, they ought explain it.
Only if the fanatic is right.
Something is either true, or false. Feelings usually have little to do with it.
Further, to feel that something is true is to believe in that thing. One can feel that it is true, without its being true.
I don't see how that is misleading. You seem used to interpret subjectivity as referring solely to feelings or tastes or thoughts, because on many occasions you have noticed that different people seem to have different feelings/tastes/thoughts. However you assume that perception is objective, in that everyone perceive the same world from their own point of view, that if you put different people in the same place they would perceive the exact same thing, but would only make different reports of what they perceive because of their different feelings/tastes/thoughts. That is a strong assumption. There are many examples where different people report having differing perceptions (seeing different colors, hearing different sounds, ...).
The root of the disagreement I see here is that you (and people agreeing with you) assume that there exists an objective world, existing independently of us, and that our perception is a window to this objective world. Whereas I (and presumably others) don't make such an assumption. I have noticed how different beliefs can make us see the world in very different ways, how believing in something make us see it exist.
To me, the objective world that you and many others assume to exist independently of us is a world that we construct in part ourselves through our beliefs. For instance, the belief that the things we have perceived exist when we're not perceiving them leads to construct a world in our mind, a world that is consistent in some ways, but then when we perceive things that don't fit into that construction we relegate them to the status of hallucination, while if we hadn't forced a specific constructed world in the first place we would consider these unconventional perceptions differently, more seriously, on the same level of reality as the others, which would give rise to a very different view of the world.
Forcing beliefs and assumptions onto our perceptions forces us to see the world in a restricted, limited way, and to me that's what people are doing when they are using their beliefs to construct an objective world in their minds supposedly existing independently of us, without realizing that what they see as an objective world was constructed in part through their own subjective beliefs.
But take a look at Leo's post.
What do you make of how he uses "subjective"?
I think Banno is correct here. "Experience of remembering" is a more detailed reference to what is present in the instance of someone "remembering." It's specially talking about how an experience is occurring aninstance of "remembering".
Quoting leo
In the light of our recent thread on QM, do these edits to Leo's post make it acceptable?
It is easy to explain in terms of language games. "Subjective" and "objective" have a fairly clear use, as set out in the OP.
Philosophers tend to take words of this sort out for a walk, away from their home. When they do this it is important to keep an eye on what is going on. It is apparent that when we talk of a memory being subjective, we are using "subjective" in a way that is different from when we talk about my preference for vanilla being subjective.
So, let's take care to set out that difference.
I tend to think there is less of a difference in that context than we might expect. In either case, I think "subjective" is referring to the fact the object of discussion is one person and never any other.
It saying the fact, be it the presence of a memory or a preference for vanilla, in question is formed entirely in this individual and so cannot be true on other terms (often referred to as "objective." ).
Leo talks of an "objective world". Again, I think it incumbent that he explain how an objective world differs from a [i]world[/I].
Instead, in the post above, Quoting leo
Now I hope it clear that I am not assuming the existence of an objective world, but instead rejecting the distinction between subjective and objective in this context.
Which way do you go, @frank?
@TheWillowOfDarkness?
I'm going to be a little bit meaner. In terms of the "independent world" set out in leo's quote, I don't think it can be coherently rejected. Even if we take existing things depend upon u to exist, they are still distinct from us.
If the tree is only there when I am looking at, it doesn't make my experience the tree.
Even if the presence of our experiences is causal of the things we see, our experience is still a window into the independent (i.e. things which are not our experiences). You cannot get out of this even taking an idealist position in which things we experience only exist due to the presence of our experience.
An objective world is a world many seem to have in mind when they say things such as Jupiter has an objective existence independently of us. In contrast, I say that anyone is subjectively involved in constructing their world through their perceptions and beliefs. That what people call an objective world is nothing more than a subjectively constructed world they have agreed on.
Quoting leo
Look at this section:
Quoting leo
You started by rejecting the "objective world", but then speak of noticing how people see the world in different ways. What's the difference between the objective world and the world?
So would you be incline to agree with Leo?
And I'd be meaner still. @Leo concludes that the tree disappears when unobserved despite there being no evidence to support this.
Not as written, no.
I see thanks, that was just a poor formulation on my part, when I say people "see the world in different ways", I mean to say people have their own subjective world, depending on their beliefs and perceptions. And that what many call an "objective world" is a subjective world they agree on.
Leo, and all, take a look at how this uses "we". Perceptions are only ever in one person's mind, and yet we construct the world.
Some might recall a debate from long ago in which I argued that the approach Leo is using leads to solipsism.
I like to disrupt that thought process because people cannot beyond the object they are no longer seeing.
My question in these situations runs more like this: since the person has looked away, how do they have any evidence the tree is gone? They aren't looking that spot anymore... they don't have a leg to stand on empirically.
And the meta-point, the one this thread is about, is how this has so misled Leo.
I didn't conclude this, I said that saying the tree exists independently of us when we do not perceive it is a belief. Do you agree that this is a belief, or do you see it as an objective fact?
So I have a subjective world (my world) and you have yours (your world). Where we agree, we call that the objective world.
But what's up with agreement? Do we agree on portions of worlds? Or do we agree on statements?
How could you ever know that you agree, as opposed to appearing to agree...?
After all, all you have is your perceptions of agreement...
(and so on... this is how the counterargument goes.)
Quoting leo
So many issues squeezed into such a small space.
I don't plan to answer this here. realism-idealism debates are fun, and we can have one if you like. Set it up.
We definitely depend on statements that attempt to mediate the subject into objective understanding. But this mediation is indirectly related to the subject's actual existence. So with the mediation we lose the essence of subjectivity by making it something objective.
@frank, @TheWillowOfDarkness - is this waffle for you?
It is for me. Another example of language gone astray.
"The subject" - the individual? Merkwurdichliebe?
"objective understanding" - so now we add objective understanding to the objective world, without setting out what we are doing.
"actual existence" - as opposed to existence per se?
"the essence of subjectivity" - what subjectivity is in every possible world? What else?
"making it something objective" - we can make the subjective, objective?
I can't follow this.
Not exactly, I wouldn't call "where you and I agree" the objective world, that would just be the parts where our subjective worlds are similar. I don't claim that there is such a thing as an objective world, however many make that claim, and I say that this objective world they refer to is a subjective world they agree on.
Quoting frank
Well, for instance, if it is night, do you believe the Sun is traveling below the horizon or do you have no belief on that? If you believe it, your subjective world that you have constructed would have the Sun traveling below the horizon while you're not perceiving it, and someone with the same belief would have a similar subjective world in that aspect.
Quoting leo
Is saying @frank exists independently of us when we do not read his threads no more than a belief?
Poor Frank.
Actually that is reigned in language. Read it again
Sure, there are perceptions of agreement.
You may have noticed throughout your life that you uncovered beliefs you hadn't realized you had, and that you may have replaced with different beliefs. You may have noticed also that depending on what you believe, your world appears different (for instance your world is much different depending on whether you believe in an afterlife or whether you believe you cease experiencing anything when you die, whether you believe animals have feelings and consciousness or whether you believe only humans do, whether you believe things exist independently when you don't see them or not, ...).
So if your beliefs interact with the world you see, and it's not easy to uncover your own beliefs, then it's safe to say that you believe you agree.
Quoting Banno
This harks nicely back to the early discussion with @Isaac regarding direction of fit.
But again, this is not a thread about such things. The best you can do here is to serve as an example for those who are discussing subjectivity and objectivity.
Having said that, experience tells me that this thread is about to go sideways.
SO come on, Leo - let me goad you into a debate!
I didn't mean to imply you misread the post, I merely meant to urge you to appropriate the reigned in language directly in your existence as a subject
I can follow it.
We are subjective entities who make statements to report to objective things. Our statements are, however, states of our own existence and out talk about existing things.
Thus, our statements lose the subjective character of only being us or about ourselves. They talk about things outside. Things which are true (or not) regardless of our belief.
I still do not understand what you said.
So presumably a subjective entity is one that has subjective experiences - feelings and such.
What are the objective things to which we report? Other people?
I'm not sure the comment was addressing those issues.
It just seemed to be commenting on how our statements lose subjective character because we talk about things outside ourselves.
It was a direct reply to your remark that there is appearance of agreement, you're the one initiating tangents.
You can say that "this text is written in English" is an "objective truth" if you want (as per your OP), yet people who are blind won't agree with you, people who don't speak english won't agree with you, people who are not able to recognize symbols won't agree with you, if everyone else who speaks english dies no one would agree with you, and if you become amnesiac you may not agree with you anymore. So much for objective truth.
I don't think most people care about objective truth the way you define it. It is objective truth to you that the color of this text is black, yet if you were blind it would not be objective truth to you that the color of this text is black, but supposedly you would go on lecturing people about the difference between subjective and objective truth.
who? Me
I understand what I have set out to do. I don't apologize for my intentions being hidden.
Besides, it would be lame philosophy to precede everything we said with a preface that sets out what we are doing. It's probably why ordinary language philosophy looks like a dog chasing his tail and getting nowhere.
Yes, existence as a concept, like when its talked about.
No subjectivity occupies every world. But every subject is, in essence, a complete world in itself
No, and any objective relation to subjectivity is indirect.
I'm trying to help you understand.
I think you'll find we agree more than you know
For now, you look to be yet another idealist.
Me too. I think everyone here would be grateful if any one were to posit something new in these forums. I'm pretty sure I'm not the man for that job.
And, I wouldn't consider myself an idealist, especially since I despise speculative system building. Maybe an existentialist or nihilist
So since the OP here is mine, perhaps we might proceed by your putting into your own terms what you think I have claimed in the OP?
Perhaps it will help me to understand you.
I will, standby...
You could say that the first is the assumed stance of naturalism, which assumes the perspective of the subject, attempting to arrive at as objective a view as possible, through eliminating everything other than what can be quantified (subject of Thomas Nagel's book The View from Nowhere.)
The second is suggestive of phenomenology, which takes into account the ultimately subjective nature of existence, but tries to do so in a way which doesn't fall into mere subjectivity.
It's a can of worms. Take that out of the definition, and then there's nothing much to discuss.
Yes. I don't think your use reflects how the term is commonly used.
Quoting Banno
Presumably "I have brown hair" is an objective statement in accord with the use set out in the OP (not a statement of taste, feelings or opinion). It is true only if the speaker does have brown hair.
You seem to be saying that statements of fact about the physical state of one's brain (one's brain state) are subjective, but statements about the physical state of one's hair (hair colour) are not subjective.
I just don't follow the rationale for this (what does it achieve?) and it certainly doesn't seem to reflect my experience of common usage.
.
The sooner people realize objective and subjective do not form an antithetical pair, the better.
What is the grounds for such a mandate besides personal preference concerning how philosophy should be practiced? You even wrote that belief does not necessarily equate to truth. Show me how it is that regarding words in their mundane context yields any more truth or clarity than using them in an extraordinary context.
This is only one perspective on the subject-object. I don't dispute it, but I don't think it's the only perspective, nor the best, especially in regard to philosophical inquiry. I don't think you've done a sufficient job of showing that this is the superior perspective concerning subject-object.
Again, you havent shown why. Perhaps this reduced level of significance will lead us up and down various garden paths of an even more convoluted nature.
If you would sufficiently demonstrate the truth of your claims, I might be more willing to agree.
I disagree. Suppose I say: 'I am human.' The "I" represents the existing subject as an object, and "am human" is an objective property of an object.
"I" is the subject, grammatically speaking. But, espistemologically speaking, "I am human" is entirely an objective statement, regardless if it's true or false, or if a single individual spoke it. The "I" is the objectification of something that is not objective (i.e. subjectivity), mediating it into a concept instead of an immediate reality. The confusion lies the fact that, objectively speaking, communication is direct, yet subjectivity can only be indirectly communicated, so it becomes tempting to regard the concept and the reality as identical.
True, and I like making noise
Could you please elaborate?
Excellent distinction.
Personally, I prefer experimentinting with the phenomenological approach in order to find out how far we can fall into subjectivity. But that is nothing new, just postmodern nonsense. And since the overwhelming majority of participants on this board appear to be analytical philosophers and phenomenologists, I have taken it upon myself to challenge these positions, if as nothing more than philosophical exercise
Well if objective just means reproducible under fixed conditions, does the opposite of that mean ‘subjective’? No. Some conditions simply cannot be fixed, as with, say, large-scale economies or large-scale societies, in which reproducibility is hard, if not impossible to come by. Yet the latter two are far from what anyone might call ‘subjective’ phenomena (and if they do, they’re twisting language).
So not-objective does not mean ‘subjective’; the latter is not the natural anti-paring of the former. And as for ‘subjective' - frankly, nobody knows what ‘subjective’ means. It’s one of those weasel words that people like to throw about, and it has zero conceptual consistency whatsoever. It has connotations of ‘from a first-person POV’, and it's used loosely in that manner, but it’s mostly useless as a philosophical term of art. Everytime someone uses the word ‘subjective’ in a philosophical context, the default assumption ought to be that they have no idea what they are talking about, unless they prove otherwise.
So subjective and objective are not a pair. To speak about them as such is like speaking about apples and emotions as though they were a pair. But they don't even share a similar grammar. But people are ticked by a nice bit of poetic resonance. And also because fuck Kant.
No.
Yet, if we consider subjectivity to be immediacy, then it follows that it is impossible for it to be either a product or a fixed state. If subject-object are not opposites, they are at least qualitatively opposed and conceptually incompatible.
All that is necessary for it to be objective is the possibility.
Very good.
If I had to put my finger on it, I would guess "fallible".
Subjective=fallible
Very eschatological
But it works for me, whereas your proposal seems vague and untested. Let's test it:
When I say that the existence of Jupiter is objective, you take me to mean that the existence of Jupiter is reproducible under fixed conditions?
Nope, doesn't seem to work. That's not what I mean at all.
Please explain. What do you mean?
I do.
But you already know I'm an octopus with abnormal intelligence, I also live under a rock with no internet access, somewhere in Switzerland.
So as I see it, the usual meaning is: "frankly, nobody knows what ‘subjective’ means"
I usually find your answers weirdly mistaken. It's like you're engaged in a futile fight against common sense. You present instead some account which you seem to think is more sophisticated, but which actually causes more problems. The main problem here seems to be that you're trying to dictate language instead of conforming to what it ordinarily means. It just won't work.
This sounds like you too.
In what respect? The dictating language part, I get. But in the bigger picture, ordinary language will win without any input from me. The "sophisticated" language of philosophy doesn't pick up well outside of a tiny little group.
Where is your argument for such a claim, how and why will lame-ass ordinary language philosophy prevail? it's been around about a century now and it has settled nothing
No, that's just how it works in a very narrow context. Consider that you're using language wrong in both the context around us, which is philosophy, and in general, which is ordinary language.
I spoke of ordinary language, not ordinary language philosophy. And the prevalence of the former is extremely noticeable.
That's hilarious coming from someone who declares that they eschew the thinking of the mob; which ordinary language so obviously reflects.
And usually the one who smelt it dealt it. And I'm not so sure about the OLP claim that philosophy has historically wandered into confusion and settled nothing due to the misuse of language, im inclined to think this claim more aptly describes OLP.
OLP=ordinary language philosophy
There it is...while we're all here philosophizing, you are just blabbing
And once again, you demonstrate your lack of close attention. In the context of ethics, I eschewed treating the thinking of the mob as sacrosanct, as you do, because it leads to obvious problems which you can't resolve.
Even in contexts outside of ethics, and in general, I do not treat common sense as sacrosanct. I just think that it can be a good guide.
I am opposed with you there
Oh. I had stopped paying attention when you began to blab.
Now can we get back on topic, I was digging what StreetlightX had to say.
That was basically your definition of morality. Although you're inconsistent with it.
Morality is herd-morality! Just don't expect me to properly deal with any thought experiment which shows the glaring fault in my pet theory!
Your pet theory is full of holes and leaking fallacy all over the place
That makes sense, given your clearly expressed gripe with both OLP and whatever I have to say.
Go ahead then, return to, "These terms really mean something completely different", and block out any criticism of that approach.
Toxic fools are necessary, I think they provide a healthy counterbalance to edifying wisdom
But you haven't made any relevant points yet. I'm willing consider your points if your will present them philosophically, and stop all the babbling
It seems strange to talk about a "healthy balance" when on one side you have unhealthy foolishness and on the other side healthy wisdom. Overall the balance would seem to be neutral.
:rofl:
Yeah, you've really left me with that impression.
I wasn't calling you a toxic fool, you're cool to me.
I was only commenting on the necessity of toxic fools
Wisdom can be funny too
You should take my word for it, afterall, I'm a man of my word
This is going on my list of favorite quotes
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
How very Trumpian.
Trump has great hair
Quoting Banno
Isn't appealing to feelings or emotions a logical fallacy? So I would agree that any conclusion reached by appealing to emotions or authority would be a subjective conclusion, and not actually be true in any sense of the word.
Quoting BannoYes, but remember how I explained that a subjective conclusion is a category error, where one projects their own feelings and values onto external objects, as if everyone would agree that vanilla ice cream is the best if they just tasted it. So, a subjective claim isn't a claim about some external object in the world, it is a claim about one's values. So if we were to use language properly and say things like, "It is my belief, or preference, that vanilla ice cream is the best." instead of "vanilla ice cream is the best", then we would be properly assigning the characteristic of "the best" to Banno and his preferences instead of to the ice cream.
Talking about something doesn't necessarily mean that what you are talking about is true. In order to find that out, we need to verify your claims by using logic and reason.
Only in the right context.
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting StreetlightX
Do you say the last because you think him guilty of the first two? None of his epistemological tenets are being used by name on this thread, so......just wondering.
If, on the other hand, we're trying to fix a meaning for the purpose of some further investigation, then we should be advancing advantages and disadvantages of each option. Certainly then, similarity to ordinary use might be one advantage, but there may be others unique to some particular enquiry which would render the same definition useless in another.
I'm not pitching philosophy against ordinary language. I'm pitching ordinary philosophy against senselessness. You say there's a 'context' for your claim - well, show it.
For instance, what would it mean to say that objectivity can be predicated of fact about existence, for instance? What kind of question, or questions, would it take to eatablish this (or not?). I know the question for reproducibility: is this observation reproducible under fixed conditions, yes or no? (Therefore it is objective (or not)). Now say I want to disagree that the existence of Jupiter is an 'objective fact' - what exactly am I disagreeing with here? Why is it not just a fact tout court? What conceptual work does the modifier 'objective' do, in this context? And what concequences follow - or not - from agreeing or disagreeing with this statement? And why are those concequences significant? What do they tell us about things - about Jupiter, or about facts, or about the relation between the one and the other (or something else perhaps?) What, in other words, is the grammar of 'objectivity' as you use it?
Note that I'm not saying there isn't such a grammar. Only that you've not provided one, and without it, the claim is - and remains - senseless: not even wrong.
Is it not a massive problem to interpret my claim about the existence of Jupiter to be a claim about an observation being reproducible under fixed conditions? For starters, I'm not talking about an observation.
The logical consequences of what I am saying, if we assume it to be true, is that Jupiter would still exist even if we had all ceased to exist. It is about a planet, not an observation.
Contrary to what you've said, it is very much about mind and feelings and independence and perception and reality and truth and so on.
Contrary to what you said, I do know what subjectivity means.
Yours is a very peculiar and self-defeating approach to the topic. You can't just waltz in and erase the ordinary meaning of terms and dictate a new approach to the issue which flies in the face of how the issue is more commonly understood. That carries a giant burden, and I wish you luck, as it seems kind of futile to take that approach. It seems like you'd just not be properly engaging with what folks like myself and Banno are wanting to discuss, but instead it seems as though you're wanting to reframe the topic in a different way, where the language has a different meaning, and we're at risk of talking past each other.
Ahhh, yes.....the infamous and oft-misrepresented Copernican Revolution, I’m guessing. THAT kinda messed up for everybody.
Thanks.
I haven't thought of phenomenology as starting from the premise that existence is ultimately subjective. It think Heidegger would say that subject and object are two sides of the same coin, only separated by analysis.
So there's the unified existence (the word itself having meaning relative to nothingness), and the dismantled cuckoo clock laying in parts on a table.
This thread is focused on trying to make sense of the latter, with people standing in line to offer their favorite way to analyze.
Mine was about aesthetics. I think yours is about cultural identity: east/west, naturalism/supernaturalism. True?
Sure, but I wasn't interpreting your claim. I don't much care about your claim - whatever it is - at all, and I believe the 'interpreting' was done by you.
Quoting S
Sure, and this is fine! And I agree it's also an entirely different use of the word objective to mean something entirely different. I mean, I still think it's rather a bit of noise still - as if anti/realism is at all a worthwhile debate having - and it remains rather arbitrary: as if one ought to qualify the 'existence' of anything (as 'objective' or otherwise) as turning upon 'our existence', or lack-thereof. As if we were so important that existence itself begets a whole new qualifier ('objective', or 'not-objective') to mark its proximity (or lack-thereof) to our existence. But why not the existence - or lack-thereof - of George? Or this rock here? Or that blade of grass there? Whence the conceptual necessity of this qualification, and not another? (not a rhetorical question! - It's only here that one even begins to do philosophy at all). (Edit: And maybe you can begin to see why your question isn't about Jupiter at all - it's about - and always has been - about 'us').
And I'm sure you know what subjectivity means. Everrryyonnee knows what subjectivity means.
Okay, so you just decided to turn up to a discussion relating to such claims, only to make it known that you don't care about them?
Bit strange.
Quoting StreetlightX
Jupiter was just one example out of innumerable others. We can talk about George or that rock or that blade of grass if you want to. But you don't, it seems, because you're above such discussions, right? Such discussions are beneath you. You're more sophisticated than that, and you have it all figured out, unlike us peons.
Yet your answer to the questions those discussions focus on isn't clear, unless it is basically just to stick your head in the sand.
And what's your problem with the meaning of subjectivity? Why are you making out that it's so absurd that I would know the gist of that word, such that it isn't meaningless? It's not a word that I've coined just now that no one has any familiarity with. You're the one who's coming across as absurd from where I'm standing.
Your contribution has basically been to disregard the intention of this discussion and to set out a different meaning of the terms which apparently comes from a narrow scientific context. What exactly is that supposed to achieve? I don't get it.
Just as Jupiter is a necessary existent for the Great Red Spot, a brain and an array of senses is necessary for the existent of an observation. The existence of Jupiter is not dependent upon an observation. It's existence is dependent upon the natural forces (gravity, etc.) that led to it's existence as we observe it now. So it really has nothing to do with us. We are just another group of objects that we can talk about. It is just a question of cause and effect. What are the necessary causes for some effect (like an observation of a planet) to exist?
In my experience with the 'everyday' use of the terms, the only way I've seen them used without reference to anything academic, is to furnish an epistemological distinction in a folk-theory of tastes, opinions and the like. People can say 'that's just my opinion!' and vindicate it using something like the distinction, people can suspend criticism of others' tastes under the banner of them being subjective.
What we get out of analysing the everyday use are that subjective and objective are actually properties of properties - predicates which apply to predicates- rather than things themselves. 'Subject' resonates with this by being the term in a predicate that relates to a human or human property, such as a mental state or a brain state, or the presence of a neural correlate, all of which are a necessary constituent of a 'subjective' property. Object resonates with this distinction by denoting the terms in predicates which have no human or human derived term in them. Often these properties are immediately equated with the distinction between primary and secondary qualities; the former being non-sensory or non-perceptual properties of things, the latter being sensory or perceptual properties of things.
The equivocation between the two is another problematic wrinkle of the opposition between object and subject, but it is flawed in much the same way. We are often in states where perceptual, sensory or cognitive content reflects the nature of a thing. A sphere will be seen as round, sticks in water are seen as bent due to the refraction of light, things which are far away have less visual angle to map their extent than things which are nearby; sharpness and smoothness are opposed, a cut feels different coming from a serrated blade or a non-serrated blade, the variable roughnesses of sandpaper through its grain can be felt as textures. For cognitive ones, an account of something always tries to capture the nature of a thing. All of these are relations between humans and non-humans in which non-subjective properties of things are transformed through our bodies and minds; providing a perceptual or sensory expression or representation of the non-sensory or non-representational.
Edit: TL;DR everywhere subjective and objective inter-permeate in a manner which undermines the utility of either term.
Edit2: If you want to generalise subject to be possibly non-human, replace any instance of 'human' with 'experiencer'.
This is just anthropomorphism.
Is a starfish a subject or an object? What about a mosquito?
You read what I wrote very literally, 'human' can easily be replaced with 'experiencer' in what I wrote without damaging the meaning.
But in answer; it (starfish) can be both, depending on how it is considered. It has an umwelt or sensorium dominated by temperature gradients and the textural elements of water currents. The water around it is structurally similar to our own environment (in terms of the S/O distinction), impressing itself upon its sensory apparatus in a manner that reflects environmental properties.
That a starfish has these sensory capacities is not dependent upon its study, nor is their high degree of rotational symmetry.
'Subjectivity' aside, I'm asking genuine questions though. They really aren't rhetorical.
But I think I've answered your questions, although I grant that I might not have spelled [i]absolutely everything[/I] out. I don't really get what your problem is. It seems like you're making a fuss over nothing if you ask me, which would be ironic given your complaints about noise.
The terms seem useful, as more commonly understood, in the right context, such as the debate between idealists and realists. Like I said, we can discuss George or that rock or that blade of grass in this context if you really want to. I wouldn't have a problem with that. Some things might turn out to be more clearcut than others, but that doesn't mean that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Talk of Jupiter, for example, seems sufficient to use as an example in my argument for realism, and I've made clear what I mean by talking of the existence of Jupiter as something which is objective.
What more is there to say?
This point should be emphasized.
But folks like you and banno haven't sufficiently demonstrated that your position is superior to others, and until folks llike you do, it's fair game.
I think that is a very accurate statement. Afterall phenomenology is a response to the critical errors of empiricism. Phenomenology begins with the immediate, exactly where empiricism does. But instead of stopping there and getting lost in absolute doubt or solipsism, it introduces a dialectic that clarifies the subject-object distinction.
But your definitions are weak and shoddy, and most people here appear to find them unacceptable for an edifying philosophical discourse. So they been attempting to clean up your mess.
That's one of those comments made of words, but which says nothing. Cut the rhetoric and skip to the supposed problem.
I think there is a difference between organisms with a central nervous system and those with a nerve net like starfish. I think that only organisms with a central nervous systems have some form of mind, or perspective of the world, where all the sensations come together, or overlap, and the world takes on an appearance relative to the senses.
This view from somewhere is what we usually refer to as subjectivity, and a view from everywhere, or a God's eye view, would be objectivity. So when we talk about things from a view from everywhere, we are speaking objectively. When our statement includes a perspective, then we are speaking subjectively.
The problem seems to be when we use language in a way that commits a category error, where we imply that our feelings or perspectives are part of the thing we are talking about instead of part of the thing doing the feeling or perceiving.
The problem: your definitions of subject and object are whack, lame, played-out doo doo. They have only confused things.
No, that's another one of those comments made of words, but which says nothing. If that's the best that you can come up with, I will end up losing interest. I will give you another chance to cut out the rhetoric and skip to the supposed problem: something substantial instead of a bunch of negative-sounding adjectives you seem to have picked up from a school playground.
That's just it, you haven't made it clear, and you saying you "made it clear" doesn't mean you have done so. And that is why you find everyone challenging you here.
I can see why you would think that, and it's true that do see the question in terms of cultural dynamics and history of ideas. But what interests me is the role of the subject in the 'construction' or 'construal' of the apparently objective.
Here's a graph that is provided with the internet definition of "objective", showing the usage pattern over the last few centuries.
I think it's significant that the growth of the term mirrors the rise of modernity. Because moderns will be reflexively inclined to say that what is 'objective' is 'just so', or 'actually the case' (as the second part of the internet definition states). But that is very much what has been called into question by (for example) phenomenology (Husserl) and philosophy of science (Kuhn, Feyerabend, Polanyi).
What interests me is how to acknowledge that without collapsing into relativism or subjectivism.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
:up:
Naturalism - what you see out of the window.
Phenomenology - you looking out of the window.
So, phenomenology takes into account 'the act of looking', which naturalism brackets out and then neglects to consider.
1. Stop appealing to those around you in an attempt to inflate yourself.
2. Tell me what you find unclear.
The way things are going, we're proceeding at a snail's pace, and that it isn't my fault.
I'm going to review everything you have said and break it down. Standby
And it is clear that you occupy the position described by Wayfarer:
Or alternatively explaied, but identical in meaning
My first impression is that you are not a philosopher, you are a commentor. My second impression: You have made little to no relevant points because you do not explain your reasoning for anything you claim, the only support you give to your claims is by saying things like: because I said so, because it's the relevant sense, because that's the way it is, etc. The frequency at which you posit your groundless statements is to such a degree, that it can be considered nothing else but an indication that you simply lack philosophical acumen.
Quoting Banno
That the process leads to muddles. Keep it simple. There's more, but it's about Wittgenstein and stuff, so...
That doesn't necessarily mean that Witgensteinian philosophy (or ordinary language philosophy - OLP) will clarify things any better.
For all we know, it could confuse things more, like with Descartes and Kant. Afterall, the fact that wittgenstein is dead and we're still talking means that OLP has yet to settle any of the central philosophical questions, and it's been around nearly 80 years...at least.
But, isn't that the crux of the debate here, to argue the merits of OLP against other methods and perspectives.
And the guiding topic that we are using to test OLP against other methods and perspectives is subject-object
Completely wrong.
I don't use the terms such that it is a matter of degree, such that something can be more or less objective. I don't try to reach as objective a view as possible. Objective view? That's Wayfarer's transparent attempt at using language that seems to imply a contradiction. I am not foolish enough to be trapped like that.
If you were unclear on something, you could have simply asked. I even encouraged you to do so. Yet you respond in this way, which is foolish.
The problem here is of course simply that you have not accepted Wittgenstein's explanation.
Then what's up with your sick desperation in trying to convince everyone.
Oh, so this is just and evangelical attempt at conversion, how lame
And, what are you here talking for if you have accepted lord wittgenstein's great decree, Don't believe too much in authority, you'll get taken.
But apparently not
(But you have taught me never to embellish my jokes, its lame)
And it gives me something to chew on while I watch the telly.
(...maybe I should re-phrase that... I'm not chewing on the flies... )
Flies you mean?
(Edit: Lol)
The end result is the realisation that nothing can be said about the stuff that counts.
Silence.
But where's the fun in that?
Exactly, and your descriptions are right on
Did someone get kicked in the balls?
I don't know. You're effectively the chair of the discussion. You tell us.
I objected to presenting an alternative definition of the term "objective" here on The Philosophy Forum, because it isn't what people typically mean in the context in which it's used here, which seems like an obvious problem. This ain't a science lab.
Then the other guy unhelpfully chimed in.
And now here we are.
I as going to try to reply to your last to me. But it begins to look like that might be the wrong approach.
My path would be that the uses given for our two key terms in the OP are fine, and that it's also OK to use those words in other ways, so long as we keep an eye on what is going on.
I thought I had shown how a few of the suggested extensions to their use led one astray, but it is apparent that some folk like were it leads.
I'm not in the mood to work through all the stuff done over the last few days. I was going to address replies specific to me.
Is there anything specific you or anyone else here now would like to address? For maybe an hour or so?
Nah, you're talking to the wrong person, I think. We're too close in agreement.
I could do this forever. But I'm not committed to any one perspective, except for one single one, but I don't know what it is.
The point of all this shit is to keep showing more of what you mean and why it is relevant, and sometimes you need to repeat yourself in various ways in order to get your point across.
I know this forum is full of some great philosophers that I think could work through these issues and possibly discover something new, but that's a little too idealistic for me.
Could we all agree at least on this?
I could agree, but then I'd have to go further, and say they are qualitatively opposed and categorically incompatible
Roflmfao!!!!
That means: what qualifies as a subjective fact cannot qualify as an objective fact, and all concepts that fall under the category of subjective can have no direct relation to those of the objective (viz. The subjective must be adapted through mediation if it is to be communicated objectively)
This is what causes the problem - splitting natural events, like looking out the window and what you see out the window into two separate categories. Using your eyes is as natural as using language to explain what you see. I can see you looking out the window and can talk about the contents of your phenomenology by observing your behavior, just as physicists talk about atoms by observing the macro world.
Your mind is just another object that I can talk about - no different than talking about any other thing in nature. The mind is just another thing acted upon and shaped by natural selection per evolutionary psychology.
That is not true, language is a societal phenomenon, sight is a natural phenomenon.
But talking about it and the thing in itself are two different things
Subjective facts is a contradiction. Objective facts is a redundancy. There is no such thing as a subjective fact.
More anthropomorphism.
A societal phenomenon is a natural phenomenon for some particular species. Language doesn't make us separate from nature. It is just a more complex form of communication between organisms.
(See what I did there?)
Then it follows that technology is a natural phenomenon in which case...
More transhumanism
Of course. If you want to separate humans from nature, you'd be practicing some religion, not science.
Other organisms create things and change their environment. We're merely talking about degrees of such.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I would prefer the term, "naturalism".
Sure, you referred to a fact of reality - namely my beliefs. I have beliefs, you have beliefs. There, I just spoke objectively - referring to some state-of-affairs of reality.
It is beginning to occur to me that this whole debate stems from this notion that humans are special and separate from nature. Humans and their minds are just as natural and part of reality as everything else.
Look how far you have to go to explain how society is a natural phenomenon.
I can't even say that seeing is a natural phenomenon because that is essentially a tautology, and we all know how stupid tautologies are
But I didn't ask you to spell everything out. I asked you quite specifically about what force of necessity the distinction you've drawn has. What motivates it? Why this distinction, and not any other of the rather fanciful ones I came up with? What presuppositions are at work such that this distinction is significant? What is the drawing of this distinction meant to say - imply - about how the world is, such that it has this significance? What makes this distinction non-arbitrary? The very drawing of this distinction - and not another - has something to say. But what?
Another way this might be put: as it stands, the whole question of 'objectivity' as you've set it out is merely nominal. 'Objectivity', as you use it, simply names a particular (let's call it) state of affairs, which may or may not be the case. And what is being wrangled over is nothing but the applicability of a name ("turns out, the existence of Jupiter is (what we call) an objective fact! Wow!); But again, why this distinction and not another? It is simply arbitrary that this relation (between 'us' and Jupiter) is called 'objective'? Or is the significance of this distinction - from whence it draws the force of its necessity - being guided by a certain set of (as yet un-spelled-out) presuppositions? If you're doing any kind of philosophy worthy of the name, then of course it is. If.
I can easily agree that there are both, by my understanding of what those terms mean.
I know, right. And he called [I]me[/I] unclear.
How does pointing out that the distinction is useful in certain contexts, and explaining what it means, and explaining what it says about the world, and so on, not answering your plethora of questions? What more do you want from me? You want me to declare that it's the best thing since sliced bread?
Quoting StreetlightX
I think I've addressed this by pointing out that it is useful in certain contexts. It's this distinction, rather than others, because a bunch of people came up with the philosophy of idealism, and the terms are of obvious usefulness in that context.
You're just looking for peculiarly particular answer that I don't have. I answered it in my own way. If that's not satisfactory to you, then so be it. You're creating a problem that I don't accept as a real problem.
I need an outside perspective on this which I can trust. (To [i]some[/I] extent. Don't let that go to your head, lol).
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting S
There is a motivation there. It's just a reactive, rather than creative one. It's taking something that's already there and using it, in order to define oneself against some clearly demarcated, monolithic tradition of Hocus Pocus.
I feel like that is a type of philosophy. It's not OLP, tho. It's whatever New Atheism is, in essence. More charitably, I guess you could call it Voltairism.
Yeah, that's not far off.
You might be onto something, and it's a pathetic excuse for philosophy, but an acceptable excuse nevertheless.
More like every paragraph he writes in response to an inquiry. Nothing but dodging the question
Not my opinion.
But that's what we do.
Very clever
More complex form of thought/belief... Communication(shared meaning) is one manifestation thereof.
What would happen if we didn't? Will we have solved half of the problem?
But, 'the philosophy of idealism' is a placeholder: it names, at best, a space or place where such a motivation might be found. Like: "it's East of here".
Arguing against it would be the motivation in that case, obviously.
Just idealism. The general understanding of that position. I'm not speaking French, am I?
Meaningless how? In what sense? :brow:
I dunno. How useful is it to ask an idealist about mind independent properties or objects? You kinda need to implode the position to make a convincing rebuttal IMO.
Convincing to whom? And what are the consequences in the bigger picture?
I say they can have their internal consistency, but who has the greater plausibility? When it comes down to it, isn't the truth more important than consistency? Bertrand Russell made the point in his [I]History of Western Philosophy[/I] that a philosophy can be entirely consistent, yet entirely false.
Convincing to the idealist (or correlationist). If you adopt that perspective, you're not going to find your way of using the word 'objective' convincing, even if you're pointing out something which is obvious. Typically people arguing from that perspective find mind-dependence of everything (or a qualified Kant-derived substitution-of-the-concept-of-the-thing for every thing) just as obvious as you find its falsehood. They're just going to say, if they're sufficiently developed idealists anyway, whatever you say is question begging because you 'smuggle in' the mind-independence with the concept of objectivity without demonstrating that the concept has any scope or application.
There's no way out of that. We'd just have to agree to disagree. Although we wouldn't be on par, because realism is more plausible whether they accept it or not. They're going against their own interests if they care about the truth.
If this doesn't matter, then why aren't we all solipsists? It's not impossible that Jupiter would cease to exist if we all ceased to exist, but who actually believes that? And even if they do, so what? What does that say about them?
Well, there is something performatively solipsistic in arguing against people on your own terms, knowing they won't argue on those terms.
(Though solipsistic isn't really the right word. You're not arguing with them. You're arguing against them, for someone else.That's a rabbit hole worth going down, imo. Who is your implied audience? I think that's a personal meditation everyone ought to do every now and then.)
Well, you are, in part. The readership. I'm not speaking to myself, and I'm not being solipsistic. If they won't argue on those terms then the argument becomes about why they should. It becomes a sort of meta-argument. This isn't that unusual: it happened in the discussion on morality, for example. And I'm not arguing against them because I'm arguing for someone else, I'm arguing against them because I'm arguing in favour of the truth, as I see it, and for no other reason.
I reject your spin on this.
The truth will take care of itself though. As you know, being a realist, a truth is indifferent to whether someone knows it.
Plus also, people are wrong about all sorts of truths. Why aren't you arguing about those other ones?
'Arguing in favor of the truth,' then, isn't an explanation of why are you're arguing against idealists, or the way in which you're doing so.
Your conclusion doesn't follow. I accept your first and second paragraph, yet that doesn't make any difference, and the answer to your question is simply that it wouldn't be appropriate in the context of a debate between realism and idealism to argue over other matters, but I do so elsewhere. Just look around. I do this often, and on many varying topics. You'll hopefully notice that I'm boring enough to argue in favour of the truth, plain and simple. You know, murder is wrong, Earth isn't flat, I have a body, one plus one equals two, Paris is the capital of France, and so on.
I don't like it when people treat philosophy as a sort of contest for who can be the most quirky or obscure. I want to bring philosophy down to earth.
And there has to be something you're trying to achieve in those arguments. Maybe you want them to agree with you (why?). Maybe you're trying to achieve a certain emotional state. Maybe you're playing a role to be witnessed by someone else. Maybe you're trying to work out your own thoughts in the matter. Maybe you think that argument in and of itself is therapeutic and works out conceptual knots which are troubling you.
What I'm asking is why Idealism, and what are you trying to achieve?
My suspicion is that there is a an element of jousting in public for the sake of a certain banner, or lord. That's something I've done, a lot, throughout my life, so maybe I'm projecting, but the way you talk about truth seems to mirror that, as though arguing in favor of something, truth, is itself a motivation.
I don't know. Maybe it's a sort of madness when you think about it. Maybe I should just be silent.
Yeah, I feel you. That might be my primary motivation for posting too, if I'm honest, only different things irritate us. I feel like it's a way of externalizing self-frustration. Like, the more obstinate the parts of you that frustrate you are, the more you seek out obstinate opponents. Which is why it's not really that satisfying if someone agrees with you, because now the opponents gone, and you still have the self-frustration. I guess that's well beyond the scope of this thread though.
See, this seems very productive and insightful to me. And yet we see some people fighting against this sort of discussion, against taking a psychological angle.
I think I've become passionate about psychology in a similar way to how I became passionate about logic. These seem like really valuable tools.
I guess psychological approaches can go two ways. You can use them to undermine people's arguments, as a below the belt punch, for the sake of victory. Or you can genuinely feel that there is some kind of block that is beyond the argument itself, and the only way through it is to address is it to talk at that level.
It sounds like you're referring to a recent discussion on here, which I've missed, so I'm not sure what was going on there. The tricky thing is the two approaches can look a lot like each other, so it's not always clear what's going on. It's definitely an approach I take a lot, and I think it really can be productive, but honestly sometimes I'm not sure what my motivations are, and which of the two approaches I'm using. Multiply that times five, if I'm posting after having hit the bars.
I think that that discussion probably really only meant to be a criticism of weaponising psychology. We all do that both here and elswhere to some extent, even those arrogant and deluded enough to think of themselves as innocent, whilst thinking of someone like me as a villain. I think that the author of that discussion maybe confused frankness for malice. That happens to me a lot, because I'm very blunt, and funnily enough some people react emotionally to that. Whoops.
I have a close friend who had a similar complaint. His style was to be blunt, and it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. (But also, he's tall and good-looking, and, in his teens and early 20s, it rubbed a lot of women the right way. So it took him a while to become actually concerned about the fact that a lot people thought he was a dick.)
There's a hairs-breadth between being frank and being an asshole. It's no good to be deferential to good taste, just to make sure the boat isn't being rocked, but it's also no good to just be like : you're wrong, I'm right, what are you gonna do about it?
Because an emotional reaction isn't a deficiency in a person (I'm differentiating here between genuine reactions and performative outrage. Another duo, where each looks confusingly like the other.) Emotional reactions are a fact, and to act as though they shouldn't be taken into account when talking is to replace the world one's in with an imaginative ideal world and to blame others for not being in accordance with that imaginary ideal.
(this is the 'good, reasonable' part of me speaking from a soapbox. I'm as guilty as anyone. But it's something I try, poorly, to keep in mind.)
[quote=Wikipedia]A Cynic practices shamelessness or impudence (????????) and defaces the [i]nomos[/I] of society; the laws, customs, and social conventions which people take for granted.[/quote]
I value truth, and I value speaking it. I try not to let the [i]nomos[/I] of a society get in the way of that. I likewise value humour.
He's a troll! A toxic fool! Let's lynch him! :lol:
I think there's a false dichotomy going on. There's a difference between only saying things so long as they accord with the nomos, or doxa and saying things impudently.
Now, I'm not opposed to impudence in general, tho I think there's good and bad ways of doing it. But the point of impudence and shamelessness is to evoke an emotional, rather than reasoned, reaction. If you don't want that, then deliver those non-nomos insights in a different form.
Well, that's the question: is someone just being an asshole, or are they just being honest or funny in a way which might cause some people to react by thinking, "Argh! He's such an asshole!"? That's another one of those tricky distinctions, I'd say. Those with a more conventional manner of thinking and a more conventional set of values might have more of a proclivity to knee-jerk towards the, "He's just being an asshole".
Restraint seems to be a value in political correctness - "Gasp! You can't say that! No! You can't do that!" - but I question such a value. Sometimes I just think, "No, fuck that".
Assholes and dicks have little to no respect/value for others. One can be blunt without being a asshole or a dick.
That's just it, though: I suspect we'd disagree over what's respectful, or what's more respectful, and what counts as an example and what doesn't.
I say that it's more respectful to try to get someone to realise that they're a crackpot, if you think their crackpottery is against their own best interest. And bluntness is one way of trying to break through to someone which can be quite effective. Although with some people, there's just no breaking through.
A little tangential, but I think it's essentially related.
One thing I've noticed in contemporary discussion is a kind a dialectic, where someone argues against something, only to become its mirror image.
Maybe you don't care about the manichaean culture war and you just do what you've always done, ignoring it. But, at some point, just doing what you've always done, someone lodges an unreasonable, uncharitable complaint. Ah, you think, so this is what people mean by 'political correctness.' I get it now. It's not just about protecting the powerless. At bottom, there's some malevolent, recalcitrant intent, some dissimulating eagerness to punish those who aren't party-loyal.
So maybe you pull a Stephen Fry and say, look, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, but this is something I think is harmful. More attacks. Which is infuriating. These people are even more unreasonable than you thought. Fuck them, I'm going to stop even pretending to entertain them. And you're mad, so you start focusing on things they believe, in order to furnish counterexamples.
Frog in boiling water, before you know it your driving force is no longer to defend your values against a misguided, vocal minority.Now your driving force is to show that theyre wrong, by any means. @ssu for example raised a moderate complaint, but was soon pointing to maps of muslim migration, with the same graphic design as war-charts, and asking why wouldn't you call that invasion, doesn't this chart look like one? I've read many of his posts before and he doesn't strike me as someone who would typically be prone to mixing up design choice and fact, but all of a sudden...
What I'm saying is be careful of framing stuff this way. It's easy as hell to justify oneself in terms of what other people are doing.
You're often very dismissive of proper critique. You seem more interested in recognition and in promoting your muddled and highly repetitive thinking. It actually resembles some sort of mental disorder.
No one understands your ingenious contributions to philosophy, right? Wrong.
I offer no apology for expressing this, and you can think that I'm an asshole or a dick for doing so. You can call me a troll, a toxic fool, or a sociopath. It's water off a duck's back.
:up:
What do you mean, "look how far you have to go"? All you need to do is look and see with your own eyes that human beings are part of reality as much as everything else living or non-living. We all share reality and are all part of this same reality. How else do you explain our causal influence upon each other, or even communicate?
Even when I was young and indoctrinated with religion to believe that humans were specially created and seperate from nature, I noticed the similarities between humans and other animals and wondered why the similarities existed if we were seperate from, or not, animal. So my empirical information ended up overcoming my social conditioning. As I searched for answers I found the theory of natural selection to be the best explanation for our existence and implies that human beings are the outcome of natural processes.
The only question is if this mental experience is the result of a sensory interaction with the rest of the world (realism)(I don't like to use the incoherent external vs. internal distinction) including other humans, or not (solipsism). Infants seemed to inexorably and logically arrive at the conclusion of realism with the acquisition of "object permanence", where they understand that mom still exists even we she's out of sight. Do you exist when I'm not reading your posts? Are you a human being that posts their ideas on an internet forum, or an internet post that only exists when I read it?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Would you prefer the term "real"? "Natural" and "real" and synonyms to me. Are you real? Is your internet post real? Is your internet post part of reality such that anyone that looks in the right place will find it?
Is it your opinion that that is not your opinion? Is it opinions all the way down? How do you avoid an infinite regress of opinions when ultimately you have to admit that something is happening and why would it appear like a shared world populated with living and non living objects located relative to the senses if it's not? I think therefore I am? Is it an opinion or fact that Banno exists - either as something that thinks, or are you just an internet post that exists when I read it? Does reading your post exhaust all there is to know about Banno? If not, where do I look to find out more about Banno?
How do you explain communcation if we interpret strings of scribbles differently, which includes the definitions? How can you even explain any similarities in our opinions, or understanding of scribbles, if everything is opinions, or subjective?
Are environmental scientists proposing opinions or facts when they claim that the Earth is undergoing climate change? How do you determine the strength of the scientists opinions vs. climate change deniers? What reasons would you argue for one position or another? If you are using scientific data, how do you know that you are interpreting it correctly, after all it would just be your opinion of another's opinion.
I have more points to address, but time is limited for now. . .
But I might dispute that the real and natural are synonymous. Consider that the unnatural can also be real (let's call it the synthetic). And indeed I am real, the posts are real, and they likely have a phenomenal reality beyond my immediacy. But, regardless of our mode of reality, I am still a mixture of the natural and synthetic, and all my posts are entirely synthetic.
Thus, I would argue: that society is a synthetic construct. And the human being, as such, is a natural phenomenon.
I am arguing from the perspective of the individual human being. You are arguing from the perspective that the individual human being cannot be isolated from the collective, and the collective of humans naturally forms a society. So you have to go further than I do to explain how it's natural. But it's not wrong.
Human society could be seen to be the interactive elaboration of human artifice, and might be considered to be an artificial phenomenon on that account. But is human artifice itself not a natural phenomenon?
I would say that not only can the the individual human being not be "isolated" from the "collective", but the collective cannot be isolated from nature; although it can obviously be useful for developing certain lines of thought to make the distinction between what we think of as natural and what we think of as artificial. Although, such a distinction tells us more about ourselves than about anything ontological, I would say.
Polluted water off a toxic duck's back you mean? :joke:
Oh, duck off. :grin:
The first axiom of philosophy: ????? ???????
... I just finished knowing myself, now I have to clean up
That's my take. Are humans not able to transcend nature?
Quoting Janus
To be clear, I was talking to mr. Harry in terms of degrees of nature, and that society as a natural phenomenon is not incorrect, but it is a lesser degree of natural than the individual.
It's good that you posited that it is impossible to isolate the individual from the collective. But then that brings forward thar classic philosophical debate over which is primary: the individual or collective.
Suppose objectivity is a collectively determined phenomenon, and that the natural sciences are the best tool for determining what is acceptable as fact. What condiderations can we draw from this?
What do you mean by "transcend nature"?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
OK, I think I can see where you are going with this. I guess it depends on perspective; I can think of ways of looking at it that would make society, the collective, look more like a natural phenomenon than the individual.
As to which is "primary", the individual or the collective, I'm not convinced that is an entirely coherent question, although from particular perspectives for particular purposes we might answer it one way or the other. I'd say the individual and the collective are co-arising, co-dependent and co-determining, that neither are primary,
I agree that science and common empirical observation are the "best (only?) tools for determining facts. There are no properly determinable aesthetic or moral facts, but I do think there are more or less plausible ways of thinking about aesthetic and moral phenomena. We can perhaps tick all the boxes in the domains of science and common empirical observation, but I think the very idea of ticking all the boxes in the domains of aesthetic and ethical judgement is a kind of category error.
Remember I consider the human part to be natural. So...I am just making a connection between technology as human artifice, and the technological trend towards transhumanism. So, I conclude that the degree of sophistication of human technology can exempt the human from the necessity of nature, whereas nothing else in nature seems capable of accomplishing that.
OK, I see now you are speaking about technological transcendence of nature. Personally, I think that is a misguided pipe-dream. The whole of technology relies upon nature being the way it is, and the industrial revolution would have been impossible without fossil fuels. The future development of technology, if it is to grow exponentially as it has in the last three hundred years, will depend on cheap energy, and it certainly doesn't look as if anything is on the horizon that will be able to supplant dwindling and ever more expensive fossil fuels in time to "keep the party going".
If we can't find a substitute cheap energy source pretty soon, then prosperity and technological progress will begin to falter, slow way down, and we could very well be looking at global economic collapse much sooner than we care to imagine. Even if we do, by some seeming miracle, find a replacement for fossil fuels, that will only be on account of exploiting nature in some other way, which may or may not turn out to be sustainable.
And all of that is presuming that some effect(s) of anthropogenic global warming does not catastrophically fuck up all our plans. Human life is the most complex natural system we know of, and with greater complexity comes greater interconnection and greater fragility. So much for our much vaunted "transcendence of nature"!
You may or may not have gathered from what I have said here that I am no "scientist" (in the sense of 'proponent of scientism'). :wink:
But the natural state of fossil fuel is deep underground, extraction removes it from it's natural condition. Or do you say that it's not a fossil fuel until it is powering motors? Of course that would necessitate that a motor is a natural phenomenon too.
Then, I gather you have a bit of a pessimistic view towards human nature, qua. some sort of parasite on earth. I'm inclined to agree that aptly describes the inherent nature of the human collective. And that is why I hold the individual to be primary.
Only as an individual can one avert assimilation by the collective nature. Becoming an individual, rather than a number in a crowd, is the only possibility for redemption.
As I said, of course we can think of human inventions like internal combustion engines as being "non-natural", but they are really just ways of exploiting the nature of nature, so to speak. the same goes for mining and the extraction techniques that enable us to get fossil fuels out of the ground.
Fossil fuels are the result, as know doubt you already know, of the transformation of deposited animal and plant remains. getting it out of the ground, refining it and burning it are further natural (in the sense of 'in accordance with so-called natural laws') transformations. We use resources just as any other animal does. It is also natural for top predators,which is what we arguably are, to indiscriminately use up all their resources if nothing stands in the way of doing so, which inevitably results in catastrophic collapse and dwindling of their numbers.
The only way I can see that it could be arguable that we "transcend nature" is that our possession of language allows us to be reflectively aware of the potential dangers of following our instincts, but it's not looking like that is going to help us out of the pickle we are in, because at the moment it is mostly "business as usual" sustained by copious denial and empty rationalization.
I totally agree with you on that: I certainly don't advocate following the mob. We can look after our own lives and position ourselves as best we are able to weather the coming storm.
Point is, there isn't a problem to solve. So the more one tries to solve it, the further one gets from the answer... so to speak.
Give us some credit, we are talking about the individual and the collective. Just consider those as analogues to subject and object
I should add that I don't see humanity in that anti-humanist way, I see us as an apex predator out of control, kind of like a "pig in shit".
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
But they are not.
Quoting StreetlightX
And you keep doing it.
Oh, well, the mouth of the bottle is over there. Have fun.
Well, philosophy promises nothing. In fact, from the very beginning, Socrates pointed out how useless it is. So what else is philosophy if nothing else than "business as usual"? I don't know what crazy expectations some of us may hold of philosophy, but I assure you it is delusion.
Both the collective and the individual may be seen as either subject or object; It all depends on perspective and what you want to do with it.
Indeed, if what you want to do is to stay inside the bottle.
Philosophy should help with that since it has been said to be most appropriately thought of as 'love of wisdom'; but as long as it is thought of as an intellectual diversion or a collection of language games I don't think it will turn out to be of much use.
Banno: just think if it as a language game. Your participation is not required.
Quoting Banno
Inside the bottle is where philosophy takes place. Outside of it you are just drifting in the aether and screaming into the void about your objection to the myriad bottles of philosophical discourse.
:cool: I like it! reminds me of Dostoevsky's "Pouring from the empty into the void".
That ties into the idea of Socratic ignorance.
Socrates was the wisest because of his ignorance of wisdom. Socrates uses irony to examine philosophical pressuppotions, as if to reach an understanding. The irony is, that he always arrived at the conclusion that we know nothing about our philosophical presuppositions, and as they are, they tell us nothing.
Yes, I agree, but Socrates was essentially concerned with the ethical, as in: what should one do, and why? He approached the ethical as a decision taking place in our immediate existence. In, contrast, Aristotle approached ethics speculatively, and deeply interwove it into his metaphysics (and political philosophy).
I thought tautologies were stupid.
What does it mean to be "unnatural"? How can a natural thing cause an unnatural thing?
Other animals shape their environment to their needs and even build structures. Is a bird's nest or beaver's dam "unnatural"? Stars "pollute" the galaxy with the newer, heavier elements that are forged inside them, and these elements are still considered natural.
So what reason could you have to single out human creations and environmental changes with a different term (like "synthetic", "artificial" and "unnatural") other than assuming that humans are special in some way?
They are, for instance:
Quoting Harry Hindu
It means: to not be natural.
By removing the thing in question from its nature.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes it is. The beaver activity is natural. The wood they harvest is from trees in nature. But as soon as they render the trees into wood for damn building, the trees are no longer in their natural state. My argument is that humans are capable of doing this to themselves. Even if human technology can be considered natural, it nevertheless functions by removing humans from their original nature (technology is the beaver, and humans are the wood).
(I think a better term than technology is human artifice)
Yes, I agree. The difference is that the aesthetic judgement is directed toward objectivity, whereas the ethical judgement is reversed back upon the subject.
Quoting Janus
Lol
:rofl:
Quoting Janus
I don't know how you'd reconcile that with other comments of yours.
Quoting Banno
I think I get where you're coming from, but I disagree. It's sort of like, there's only a problem if we make it a problem. I make it a problem when I fight on behalf of bringing philosophy back down to earth, instead of walking away and making some cheese on toast.
You have a sort of Nietchzean spirit. Ever read about eternal return?
Yes. I have "Amor fati" tattooed on my wrist. It serves as a reminder.
On my other wrist, I have "Cheese on toast". (I don't, it actually says "Carpe Diem", but that would be funny. Maybe that'll be my next tattoo).
Right on!
And you should cover your back with Lorem Ipsum
Okay. Then you would use terms like "beaver artifice", "avian artifice" and "stellar artifice" to refer to beaver dams, birds nests, and the heavier atomic elements in order to be consistent and to avoid arbitrarily singling out humans as the only natural that can change its environment - correct?
What about wildfires started by lightning that burn trees, or storms that uproot them? Do these processes also cause unnatural states in the trees? So maybe you've really just moved the goal posts. Instead of exhibiting a preference for humans, you seem to be exhibiting a preference for life vs. non-life as shapers of their environments. If you're going to actually say that uprooted trees from storms are "unnatural", then we can just agree to disagree at that point.
:rofl::victory:
I'm actually going to do this one day.
Well then we will agree. Perhaps, I require a biological component to regard something as natural. I just find, that to regard absolutely everything that exists as natural, and nothing as synthetic, is an overgeneralization.
The subject/object distinction is fraught. It's a bottle because when one attempts to take account of all things by virtue of saying that they are either one or the other, they will inevitably arrive at all of the well-known unresolvable philosophical problems. The problems are a result of the framework itself.
Some things consist of both, and thus are neither. The dichotomy cannot take proper account of those things. Hence... the unresolvable issues. Failing to realize that this is what's happening, even when it is pointed out is akin to remaining inside the bottle...
I always like to revisit these topics with a fresh eye - "a fish I" (that's for @banno).
The big mistake is in thinking that there are any issues to resolve in the first place. All we can ever do is methodically trace out the logical consequences of self-evident/groundless premises (we have to "kick the ladder out from under us"). If we do this thoroughly, one might arrive at some type of personal clarity. But we will never resolve anything of any great significance amongst each other.
Quoting Banno
The proposition "I prefer vanilla to chocolate ice-cream", is not a subjective truth/fact. The proposition functions to abstract your subjective conception into a mode of objectivity (viz. language). The sentiential truth is found in the propositional transmission of the objectified sense of one's subjective meaning. The "I" simply contains the subject as a grammatical device, it does not represent subjectivity in any existential/metaphysical sense. Propositional truth is only determined by the coherence of its objective sense, never by any subjective meaning.
For instance, is the following explanation about an actual state of affairs that is the case whether you say so or not?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Is it actually the case that the proposition "I prefer vanilla to chocolate ice-cream", is not a subjective truth/fact regardless of whether you claim it and Banno believes it?
By disagreeing with someone you are essentially telling them that their version is wrong and yours is right and that there is a state of affairs independent of what you both are claiming and that language is simply a means of representing some state of affairs that is either more or less accurate than another claim about that state of affairs.
Sometimes you're just presenting an alternate way to look at or feel about things, by the way.
For example, I'll often say things like, "I disagree. I feel that so and so's album x is one of their better albums."
I'm not telling the person that I'm right and they're wrong. I'm just presenting difference.
Then you are referring to your view of the thing and not the thing itself. In this instance you wouldnt be disagreeing with someone, you would be talking past each other.
You have said yourself that saying it doesnt make it so. If saying it doesnt make it so, then what makes it so? And are we talking about your view of the world, or the world itself independent of both of our views?
"Disagreeing" is a way of saying "I feel differently than you do" in these situations. That's a common sense of the term "disagree."
You seem to be telling me that the string of symbols, "disagreeing", has a meaning independent of how I feel about it, and if I feel differently then I would be "wrong".
In discussing some state of affairs, it is useful to stay on topic and not change the topic to someone's feelings when were talking about how things are independent of any feelings.
That would amount to not understanding the common sense of the term that I just described.
In this case, it is the case. In another case it may not be. Both cases may be equally sensible internally, and totally contradictory externally. But that is okay since the constant of each is independent of the other, and each uniquely contains it's own exclusive subset variables.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That is accurate. Unfortunately thought is infinite, and the range of possible perspectives is inexhaustible. Thus, it should be noted, what you say is also true for alternative cases that do not necessarily disagree.
That's just not true. Not all premisses are on equal footing. Not all are groundless.
Do you not think/believe that there are many self-perpetuated problems, all of which are a result of people becoming bewitched by certain language use? Frameworks are language use. Dichotomies are a part of all frameworks. Some dichotomies are used - historically - as a means for doing something that they are inherently incapable of doing. In the simplest possible terms...
Some things consist of both and/are thus neither. Some things are neither because they consist of both. Two ways of saying much the same thing.
Subject/Object is one such dichotomy.
Banno wants to continue/limit it's use, for/in/to some contexts I suppose, but I find it fatally flawed in such a way that it's use loses all explanatory value. It is inadequate for taking account of the attribution of meaning, the presupposition of correspondence to what's happened, and thought/belief formation itself.
I have no objection to eternal forms.
Hey!!! Leave @Banno out of it, or I'll cut you. :cool:
In what other case would your proposition not be the case? It seems to me that you would simply be talking about something else entirely (a different case), and therefore making a category error or talking past each other.
I believe we perceive all kinds of problems, and we try to solve them. I find it difficult to believe they all have one cause ("becoming bewitched by certain language use") though.
Different case indeed, that is probably what it would be. But I've qualified the particular case I presented, so unless the case you are presenting is quantifiable under the constant that I specified in my particular case, it has no pertinence, and you are the one talking past me.
But don't get me wrong, you could reconceptualize the whole enterprise, and actually arrive at a conclusion that has great significance for human existence (unlike the case I presented). I would be willing to hear it out.
Indeed, I agree. I think that all philosophy operates by creating it's own problems in order to solve them; and, from a simplified perspective, it certainly can be traced to language use. But, I think the greatest problem is thinking there is a real problem to begin with. Thus, philosophers use all manner of methodology and conceptual framework (e.g. dichotomies) to battle a self created phantasm, and not being able to defeat it, they have a bigger problem. This is true up to and including modern day reductionism/analytics, which is not only guilty of perpetuating the nonexistent problem, but of compounding it, mutilating it beyond recognition, and into a greater delusion that, again, thinks something might actually be resolved. It is all a case of despair of the infinite.
There are two approaches as I see it. One is to limit the variables so as to reduce the problem until it diminishes to the point that it effectively disappears, implodes. The other, is to include all possible variables so as to expand into a multivariate conception of the problem (as far as possible), in order to exhaust all potential issue. I don't think either can solve anything. But, this does not mean philosophy is without value.
Not sure if my overall outlook regarding all philosophy is quite as fatalistic and/or fait accompli.
I have a hard time understanding how the same person can do both; acknowledge the inherent problems in philosophy and suggest their continued use.
That's a subject matter worthy of it's own thread.
Call it a paradox. Philosophy for me is analogous to Chuang Tzu and The Useless Tree: "Useless? You should worry!"
Quoting creativesoul
I agree. But in the absence of any other criterion, this becomes the only ground to stand on.
You've stated this concern on several occasions. If we arrive at the absence of any other criterion, then we've missed and/or completely overlooked everything that existed in it's entirety prior to our account of it.
I hate the prospect of starting a thread, but I might have to do it if nobody else does.
Maybe later? After we conclude the origen thread?
Resting a minute while hoping that the others will catch up.
I agree with what you say here. It is just a round-about technique I use to arrive at an agreement. I believe the absence of any other criterion is only due to our/my failure to establish one. And clearly, this is the case with what I said above.
Agreed. I predict that thread will stir up a major shit-storm. It will probably require all my attention.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
So were you talking past Banno here:
Quoting Banno
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
If we were talking past each other, then how can we say that we are disagreeing? A disagreement is about the same thing - just different explanations about the same thing. Whether we are actually representing the actual state of affairs with our use of language is a separate issue from whether or not we're talking about the same thing. We could all be be wrong, despite our conflicting explanations - which is what a disagreement is.
Perhaps we should. The tree is a marker, a shade, a topic of conversation, a good example of what it is to be useless.
Say that it is useless, and by that very fact it has a use.
Perhaps much the same goes for your comments on the subjective.
I think this is the gyst of what he meant.
Quoting Banno
I'm pretty sure you mean this as an insult, but I take It as a compliment. So thank you. :victory:
What would you say makes it the case that something is important or that something matters?
For example, what would make it the case that only facilitating the choice of future action, including the next bunch of words is important or matters, versus something else being important or mattering?
I just did ! The fact that you responded means it matters to you.
Obviously other 'events' matter, for example had either of us been called away these actions would not have taken place.
(The printing of Jabberwocky, above, had no meaning for me... it was a like a bit of weird jiving in the corner).
I agree that there is much to be gained by considering philosophical disputes to be cultural conflicts, in which the role of the philosopher is that of a propagandist or social influencer. But personally I don't see this position as being necessarily negative or critical about the role or status of philosophy.
I can agree that 'philosophy' can be useful in assisting ethical decisions, but is pretty vacuous elsewhere.
No, you didn't.
What I'm looking for is something like this:
"What makes it the case that only facilitating the choice of future action, including the next bunch of words is important or matters, contra anything else being important or mattering is . . . . " and then you fill in the blank.
You didn't supply that, so you didn't supply what I'm asking for.
There is no thing else, other than that which informs potential action.
( We've been round that thinging on the existence thread)
If that were the case, then why would we point out that that's the only important thing? What are you making a distinction with respect to re the word "only"?
Aside from that, the question remains: if there is only x, what makes it the case that x is important or matters?
Because 'thinghood' can be assigned to irrelevancies by parties to an exchange in their attempts to 'lead' the dancing.
Are the irrelevancies something other than that which informs potential action?
Well said. This is how I take my Heidgenstein. The old masters did deal with genuine life problems, though, I would say. So your critique applies to a certain kind of obsessive digression that happens when folks get lost in dictating an ideal language.
Of course ! Languaging, like any other form of behavior can operate like a bodily habit (as in circling thoughts ), or merely for attention seeking
So then there is something else other than that which informs potential action.
You're thinking of "fact" as something like "true statement." (Otherwise saying "facts about" would make no sense.)
If we use "fact" in the "state of affairs" sense, there can be subjective facts, in that its an ontological property of the fact that it's subjective.
I think I understand and agree. It is (roughly) true or false that Gary was thinking about pizza at a particular moment.
It's not merely my subjective opinion that it objectively the case that you very probably didn't spend the past 15 minutes visualizing Abraham Lincon bouncing around on a pink space hopper.
To quote from Wikipedia: "[John] Searle has argued that critics like Daniel Dennett, who (he claims) insist that discussing subjectivity is unscientific because science presupposes objectivity, are making a category error. Perhaps the goal of science is to establish and validate statements which are epistemically objective, (i.e., whose truth can be discovered and evaluated by any interested party), but are not necessarily ontologically objective.
Searle calls any value judgment epistemically subjective. Thus, "McKinley is prettier than Everest" is "epistemically subjective", whereas "McKinley is higher than Everest" is "epistemically objective." In other words, the latter statement is evaluable (in fact, falsifiable) by an understood ('background') criterion for mountain height, like 'the summit is so many meters above sea level'. No such criteria exist for prettiness.
Beyond this distinction, Searle thinks there are certain phenomena (including all conscious experiences) that are ontologically subjective, i.e. can only exist as subjective experience. For example, although it might be subjective or objective in the epistemic sense, a doctor's note that a patient suffers from back pain is an ontologically objective claim: it counts as a medical diagnosis only because the existence of back pain is "an objective fact of medical science". The pain itself, however, is ontologically subjective: it is only experienced by the person having it.
Searle goes on to affirm that "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality". His view that the epistemic and ontological senses of objective/subjective are cleanly separable is crucial to his self-proclaimed biological naturalism, because it allows epistemically objective judgements like "That object is a pocket calculator" to pick out agent-relative features of objects, and such features are, on his terms, ontologically subjective (unlike, say, "That object is made mostly of plastic")."
I don't see how that contradicts anything I said. In fact, it seems to bolster my point: that there can be epistemically objective facts about ontological subjectivity.
Plus, I don't see how true statements don't refer to states of affairs.
"Epistemically objective" is an oxymoron. Knowledge can't be objective. Knowledge is necessarily mental.
It seems that you are misusing the word "oxymoron".
Knowledge has to be objective otherwise it's mere belief.
Scientific facts and mathematical truths are examples of things that can be objectively known.
Knowlege is indeed necessarily mental ... but it's also necessarily objective.
Knowledge requires a combination of ontological subjectivity and epistemic objectivity.
An irrational fool has the ontological subjectivity but lacks the epistemic objectivity.
A rational robot has the epistemic objectivity but lacks the ontological subjectivity.
Your mistake is due to thinking that if something is ontologically subjective then it also has to be epistemically subjective. That's an equivocation on your part.
Well I think I agree with all of that, and it was a pleasure to read.
And indeed, knowledge in the propositional sense, rather than the "how-to" or "knowledge-by-acquaintance" senses, is belief. It's a particular sort of belief--justified, true belief, but of course, that's a type of belief.
Quoting luckswallowsall
"Mental" is the opposite of "objective." Hence why "objective knowledge" is an oxymoron.
That's simply another way of effectively saying, "We're going to consider argumentum ad populums 'objective.'"
Not necessarily; Only that the objective-subjective distinction has no objective justification on pain of infinite regress. I am still nevertheless prepared to accuse the public of subjectivity.
What would be an "objective justification" in general?
I think Quine's web of belief provides a reasonable picture of the broad notion objectivity in terms of epistemic acceptability; the objectivity of a proposition being it's degree of coherence with respect to the rest of one's existing belief system.
The definition of objectivity in terms of a particular witness of a fact is a mistake. Simply put, a proposition is called 'objective' if one is willing to accept it.
Say what? You're defining "objective" as "whatever one is willing to accept"?
If you go back and read the context... Merk missed the point with the comment. There is definitely a problem when people attempt to use the subject/object(subjective/objective) dichotomy as a means to account for everything. Banno finds it useful in certain situations. Those who attempt to do too much with it find themselves in an impossible situation. They cannot take account for that which consists of both, and is thus neither. Folk who do that create their own problems... those problems are the bottle.
Well I think I agree with you. To me the subject/object distinction indeed breaks down. But I even embrace naive realism as the mundane pre-philosophy from which we start and never actually leave.
I like OLP too. We never forget how to use subject and object talk in the real world, and we do it well.
It's when we try to do pseudo-math with essences that we get in hopeless tangles. Meaning is more like a fluid that flows through both words and actions simultaneously.
Quoting creativesoul
I agree with this earlier statement too.
Quoting creativesoul
I am interested in the related themes of truth as correspondence and truth as disclosure. To check that a proposition is true, we have to look at the world and see the already disclosed entity as that proposition described it. When we talk about potatoes, we can just use our sense organs, etc. (along with an understanding of the world that operates noiselessly and makes the proposition intelligible.)
But if I talk about other objects, like the correspondence theory of truth, I am disclosing them as I describe them.Or some of my statements intend to reveal them. It's only after entities are disclosed or revealed that we can have truth as correspondence.
This stuff is in Heidegger I think, but it stands or falls on its own merits. I don't want to pretend to have thought this up myself.
I like to use the typical definition of 'objective' as (roughly) unbiased.
Can't knowledge be a belief? What if my opinion is relatively unbiased? Because I think critically, etc. Maybe I stick to quantified measurements and so on. And then some beliefs are more highly regarded than others? As in I listen to the physicists about physics and not the homeless guy. Even it's possible that the professor is wrong and the bum is right.
Quoting luckswallowsall
Basically I agree with you here. But I do think subjective and objective are about the perspective. A highly subjective statement would be biased or personal in a way that reduces its trustworthiness or utility to those who aren't like the particular person involved. Think of a witness who loathes or loves the defendant. An objective statement is more likely to come from someone who is not involved emotionally with the subject matter itself. Some people even pride themselves precisely on being unbiased. They are biased toward unbiasedness.
I agree by the way that we can make objective statements about what someone is feeling. We can give better or worse reports depending on the presence or absence of bias. We can't check in some sense, but feeling as a public entity is disclosed through tears, laughter, gesture, expression, etc. Even if we can't be sure, we trust some people more than others (which is to say they are objective.)
Yes, I am tempted to think that such notions are non-cognitive expressions of one's epistemic disposition ,-although the more general world "truth" sounds more fitting for what i had in mind, rather than objectivity. The difference being that objectivity stresses a perspective-invariant truth.
For example, if one were to say "Tinned tomatoes taste horrible", a person might accuse one of being subjective in failing to recognize their personal predilection. But if one were merely to say " tinned tomatoes taste horrible for me", there wouldn't normally be any objection.
So let's suppose that all sentences of the form "X has property Y", are formally understood to be an abbreviation for " X has property Y, for me". With respect to this new interpretation of language, is there still a notion of objectivity that is distinct from the notion of truth? And isn't truth now understood to be the mere expression of epistemic acceptance?
Your virtuosity at instigation mirrors my own, and I supremely respect that. :cool: :up:
If "'objective' is 'whatever one is willing to accept'" then how does that do any of the work that people usually want to do with the notion of objectivity?
I think naive realism is a name that carries along with it far too much philosophical baggage.
Quoting g0d
I have no idea what this means.
Quoting g0d
The phrase/simile "like a fluid that flows through" romanticizes meaning.
Actually, both words and actions can be part of a meaningful correlation.
Quoting g0d
Witt and Heiddy both realized that there was much more to meaning than what meets the eye. Unfortunately, neither of them had a good enough grasp upon human thought/belief and how it grows it's complexity. Heiddy's take completely missed the most rudimentary forms, while attempting to draw a line between pre and post reflective thought/belief. Witt was too focused upon all the different ways we attribute meaning to notice his mistaken of following convention(epistemology) with regard to belief and it's content.
They both had their own bottle.
Quoting g0d
I'm not sure what the "but" is doing here. It's used as if you think that there's a remarkable difference between talking about potatoes and talking about truth, but the difference you see in unclear to me.
When I say "just use our X", I mean that our X is all that's needed, and as such the parenthetical bit in the above quote contradicts what immediately precedes it. We use our senses and language to talk about everything from potatoes to what sorts of things can be true and what makes them so.
Fair enough. But...
[quote=Wiki]
In philosophy of mind, naïve realism, also known as direct realism, common sense realism or perceptual realism, is the idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are. Objects obey the laws of physics and retain all their properties whether or not there is anyone to observe them.[1] They are composed of matter, occupy space and have properties, such as size, shape, texture, smell, taste and colour, that are usually perceived correctly.
[/quote]
I think it's also called 'common sense realism' for a reason. I don't usually experience my car or my bed as a projection of my mind. I think both will obey certain 'laws' or exhibit certain regularities. I think both will survive me. Someone can inherit either. I think old trees in the park were there before I was born.
If I read Kant, however, I can explore all the complexities and difficulties that are hidden in the common sense I mostly take for granted.
Quoting creativesoul
'Pseudo-math with essences' means having a primitive theory of meaning and using it to do armchair science or traditional metaphysics. In short, I mean 'language on holiday,' though this phrase can itself be understood crudely and slavishly.
Quoting creativesoul
For me both at their best got it pretty much right. I especially like Ontology: Hermeneutics of Facticity (early H) and On Certainty (late W.)
At the same time, both were just people with their own quirks and prejudices. So for me neither is the least bit of an authority. I just learned from both of them.
Quoting creativesoul
It's a murky issue. If I claim there is a sack of potatoes in the cabinet, I can check by looking. If I claim that truth is correspondence or that metaphysics is language on holiday, things are far more complicated.
If the potatoes we can check for are themselves understood as mere representations of potatoes-in-themselves, we are in trouble. Because it's hard to specify what the hell we mean by potatoes-in-themselves. It can't be atoms, since those are also mere representations.
For me the 'phenomenon' of world, a structure of assertion, is perhaps what Kant was trying to get at. But it's perhaps impossible to do 'world' justice in 'word-math.' And although it fascinates me, it's not of great practical importance. Still, I think this part of Heidgenstein is illuminating.
BTW, I recommend Groundless Grounds as a great book on 'Heidgenstein.' Lee Braver fuses the insights of both thinkers on the 'groundless ground.'
Here's a brief review of the book: https://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-studies/article/viewFile/4671/5104
No. This distinction may be sufficient for everyday use. But when we want to explain a cultural phenomenon, this dichotomy is too simplistic, because cultural entities are socially constructed, they are neither objective nor subjective, but someting in between.
An *objective* phenomenon exists independently of human consciousness and human beliefs (be it an individual or the whole of humanity). Example: Measles is caused by a virus, tuberculosis is caused by bacteria. These are facts, representations of a reality "out there", whether we believe or know this reality or not.
The *subjective* is something that exists depending on the consciousness and beliefs of an individual. My political opinion, my personal tastes, my memories... all these "things" are subjective, they depend on a subject, in this case it is "me". If I think that "Life of Brian" is the funniest movie ever, so be it, nobody can prove my wrong.
But most cultural entities are are neither objective nor subjective: they are *inter-subjective*:
"The inter-subjective is something that exists within the communication network linking the subjective consciousness of many individuals. Inter-subjective phenomena are neither malevolent frauds nor insignificant charades. They exist in a different way from physical phenomena such as radioactivity, but their impact on the world may still be enormous. Many of history’s most important drivers are inter-subjective: law, money, gods, nations.
Similarly, the dollar, human rights and the United States of America exist in the shared imagination of billions, and no single individual can threaten their existence. If I alone were to stop believing in the dollar, in human rights, or in the United States, it wouldn’t much matter. These imagined orders are inter-subjective, so in order to change them we must simultaneously change the consciousness of billions of people, which is not easy." (from "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari)
Take for example law or language (e.g. the meaning of words): It is obvious that they are not objective, because they depend on the minds of human beings. And they change, be it slowly and unintentionally, or per *fiat* (a legislative authority promulgates a new law or changes an existing law). But they are not "subjective" because a given subject cannot change them (unless we espouse the rather mystical idea that a whole society is a "subject"). From the point of view of individual subjects (the only kind of subjects that exist), laws or the meanings of words (or grammatical structures) are "quasi-objective", they exist "out there" and they continue to exist even if I stop believing in them, because they exist in the minds of thousands, maybe millions or billions of other people.
The realm of inter-subjective entities, or "imagined orders", as Harari calls them, is the sphere of cultural conflicts, because what is "objective" for group A is "subjective" for group B. Religions are the best examples for this kind of conflict. Countries are another example. Before a dedicated group of like-minded men created the United States of America, this "thing" did not exist. Their challenge was to convince enough other individuals of their belief. If they had failed and if the idea of an independent country called USA never had taken root in the minds of a critical mass of other men and women, the USA would not exist. But this idea did take root in the mind of billions of people (is there anyone who denies its existence?), and therefore its existence is *quasi-objective*; not *really* objective, because countries - unlike true facts - can cease to exist (Soviet Union, Yugoslavia...). Mostly these "imagined orders" do not simply vanish but are replaced by another imagined order (the Deutsche Mark ceased, but was replaced by the Euro)
The point is: the "essence" of a belief by thousands or millions is different from the "essence" of a personal thought that happens to be in my mind. I can have a moral intuition ("That poor beggar! I'll give him a euro" ), but that is different from a moral rule: "Thou shall give a tenth of your income to the poor!" Private thoughts and intuitions come and go, but moral rules can - and they did - stay and evolve: from fuzzy rules shared by a tribe, to a written law (e.g. in the codex of Hammurabi), to a full-blown Constitution which serves as a kind of OS for a whole society of 350 million individuals. It would be ridiculous to call a constitution "subjective", and if it is not, then the moral rule shared by a tribe of 300 is not either
Collectively shared ideas often evolve to form institutions (courts, governments, corporations, councils...) which in their turn can be studied as if they were just as objective as the moon or a virus (there is vast literature on Canon Law), whereas their "objectivity" derives entirely from the shared belief of thousands or millions of minds (the objectivity of the virus does not)
Therefore it would be a great progress if everybody acknowledged that the dichotomy objective/subjective is dangerously simplistic and cannot be applied to everything (to every thing), but that a lot of "things" we are talking, discussing, arguing, fighting about are neither nor, but *inter-subjective* or social.
Yes. The two categories exhaust all existents.
That was simple. ;-)
Subjective means something like: based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
Must we stretch language and talk about 'objective entities' and 'subjective entities'?
I understand what people mean, I think, but it seems a little sloppy.
Quoting Matias
Examining the standard definitions of these adjectives, I don't think this is the right question. I do think your post makes some good points.
Quoting Terrapin Station
So you mean something like mental and physical, right? Even then, I don't think it's a clean distinction, however usual as a first approximation.
As I said... too much baggage.
Quoting g0d
When one is talking in terms of any experience "as a projection of one's mind" one has already gotten things wrong.
Quoting g0d
Kant followed Hume. Both have human thought/belief wrong. Neither takes account of pre-reflective thought/belief. Neither takes proper account of rudimentary thought/belief; in it's earliest stages. Kant tries with his categorical approach and was quite brilliant, but wrong nonetheless.
Furthermore Kant's a priori/a posteriori distinction is grounded upon a gross misunderstanding of what all human thought/belief consists of. There is no thinking possible without experience. There is no reason without thinking. All experience is chock full of thought/belief. Reason is thinking about thought/belief. Reason requires pre-existing thought/belief in the same way that an apple pie requires apples. Where there is no apple/thought, there can be no apple pie/reason.
Kant's notion of Noumena is untenable. Talking in terms of the way things are in and of themselves is fraught. It is a negative limitation within Kant's framework.
Some things exist in their entirety prior to our account of them. That's better.
Quoting g0d
Primitive theory of meaning...
What is that?
Quoting g0d
Agreed. My interest here is an adequate account of that complexity.
Quoting g0d
I reject Kant for a few reasons. You've raised a few. Kant's Noumena serves as a negative limit... a full stop! We cannot know they way things are in and of themselves, by Kant's own stipulation.
Quoting g0d
I'm sure that there are plenty of insightful authors who draw compelling comparisons between the two...
I see that they both make the same mistake of Hume and Kant. I like all of these greats and more. They've paved the way.
Truth is tricker. One can begin to say something is true if it’s verifiable and has consensus, bit of course there are holes there that philosophers would love to disect.
Generally, a subjective point of view is one from an individual based on their personal values, feelings, background, etc.. Objectivity would rely on verifiable facts.
Of course, but why do you think Kant doesn't know that?
Here's how the CPR opens.
[quote=Kant]
That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but begins with it.
[/quote]
And reason deals with beliefs:
[quote=SEP]
The first half of the Critique of Pure Reason argues that we can only obtain substantive knowledge of the world via sensibility and understanding. Very roughly, our capacities of sense experience and concept formation cooperate so that we can form empirical judgments.
...
In the famous “Refutation of Idealism,” Kant says the following: “Whether this or that putative experience is not mere imagination [or dream or delusion, etc.] must be ascertained according to its particular determinations and through its coherence with the criteria of all actual experience” (B279). To see what Kant means, consider a simple example. Suppose that our dreamer believes she has won a lottery, but then starts to examine this belief. To decide its truth, she must ask how far it connects up with her other judgments, and those of other people.[4] If it fails to connect up (she checks the winning numbers, say, and sees no match with her actual ticket), she must conclude that the belief was false. Otherwise, she would contradict a fundamental law of possible experience, that it be capable of being unified. As Kant summarizes his position: “ the law of reason to seek unity is necessary, since without it we would have no reason, and without that, no coherent use of the understanding, and, lacking that, no sufficient mark of empirical truth…” (A651/B679).[5]
In sum, what separates material error from true cognition for Kant is that true cognitions must find a definite place within a single, unified experience of the world. Since reason is an important source of the unifying structure of experience, it proves essential as an arbiter of empirical truth.
[/quote]
Quoting creativesoul
Sure, me too. Or an adequate account of why such an account should no longer be hoped for or pursued.
Quoting creativesoul
Of course, but of course I didn't pick the one I mentioned randomly.
Quoting creativesoul
By all means let's have the mistake they all made.
And I say not justification/explanation for 'too much baggage,' especially since common-sense realism is almost the minimal, pre-philosophical position.
Fair question. He waffles. A priori and a posteriori.
That's a good distinction, if not perfect. I suggest that we pretty much have only good-not-perfect distinctions.
Subject/object is included. Notions of perception are included. Etc. They are all fraught.
Taking account of human thought/belief must take proper account of how one acquires a worldview, and it must do so using a framework that is amenable to evolution.
Not drawing and maintaining the actual distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief, and as a result mistakenly thinking/believing - as a result of the consequences following from an inadequate notion of thought/belief - that only humans are capable of thinking/believing.
I think I agree with that. That's where anti-realism continues with Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, etc. The 'lens' (framework) is liquid and historical. The liquidity is realized as we get over the notion that words have fixed-enough context-independent meanings to build systems with. Our living liquid system has to already be working just fine before we even dream of fixing what isn't broken.
What I mean by 'math with essences' is treating concepts as sharp and distinct and then joining them together like legos and calling it a day. The situation is far more organic, and our skill surpasses the account we can give of it. Along with this our actions are hopelessly entangled with meaning-in-the-head. Wittgenstein's beetle in the box helps point this out. I'm sure your're aware of the idea, but this video is cute if you haven't seen it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x86hLtOkou8
It seems to me that they use the distinction constantly. Isn't philosophy largely beliefs about beliefs? I don't claim that any philosopher is adequate in the sense of cannot-be-improved.
So are you thinking of animals, aliens? And are you saying that philosophers have tended to under-rate the intelligence of animals? Personally I think that some animals do indeed think (have concepts and beliefs). I suppose the difficult issue is how much language we demand before we use the word 'belief.'
But then humans have strong visual imaginations, and we can expect a basketball to rebound a certain way for instance without having words for it.
[quote=link]
A landowner had been quite bothered by the crow since it had chosen to nest in his watch-house. He had planned to shoot it. The bird would fly away and wait until the landowner had left to return to its nest inside the watch-house, given that no-one would be inside to shoot it. In order to deceive it, the landowner had two people enter the watch-house and one leave. The crow was not deceived by this malicious plan, even when three men entered and two left. It wasn’t until five men had entered the tower and four had left that the bird did eventually fly back inside the watch-house.
[/quote]
https://blogofthecosmos.com/2016/03/01/the-numerical-abilities-of-non-human-animals/
More impressive:
[quote=Wiki]
er instructor and caregiver, Francine Patterson, reported that Koko had an active vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs of what Patterson calls "Gorilla Sign Language" (GSL).[4][5] In contrast to other experiments attempting to teach sign language to non-human primates, Patterson simultaneously exposed Koko to spoken English from an early age. It was reported that Koko understood approximately 2,000 words of spoken English, in addition to the signs.[6] Koko's life and learning process has been described by Patterson and various collaborators in books, peer-reviewed scientific articles, and on a website.[7]
As with other great-ape language experiments, the extent to which Koko mastered and demonstrated language through the use of these signs is disputed.[8][9] It is generally accepted that she did not use syntax or grammar, and that her use of language did not exceed that of a young human child.[10][11][12][13][14] However, she scored between 70 and 90 on various IQ scales, and some experts, including Mary Lee Jensvold, claim that "Koko...[used] language the same way people do".[15][16][17]
[/quote]
Even if Koko was only like a 2-year old (which I'm not sure about), that's impressive.
One would think so... none wrote about it.
Perhaps because it didn't seem important to them?
I confess: I'm still not seeing why the distinction is so important.
More likely that they did not see their own mistake. Much more likely...
Quoting g0d
Are you saying that you do not see how getting human thought/belief right is so important?
I'm a physicalist, so I wouldn't say mental and physical, but mental and non-mental, or alternately, a subset of brain function (which is what "mental" is, physically) and everything else.
Fair enough. So you acknowledge the experience of redness? A what-it-is-like to be a human being?
No. Having good beliefs is absolutely central, hence philosophy and science.
I guess I think having beliefs about beliefs is uncontroversial. We talk about beliefs about things as well as beliefs about beliefs.
Yes. I think those phenomena are obvious.
Me too.
I do like the 'non-mental' as the other to the mental. I like the lens metaphor. The mental is aimed at and reveals the non-mental. Or at least the lens metaphor gets something right.
What do you make of quarks, atoms, waves? These are mental in some sense (concepts) and yet applied to objects in the world. If the redness of the apple is mental, then why not also our understanding of it in terms of atoms? The non-mental is like a vanishing point. Yet I agree that we always aim our talk at something we might call 'non-mental.' The quest for objectivity suggests that communication presupposes a world or reality that is talked about more or less correctly.
Yes, consciousness is a network phenomenon of neurons some might say but is the neural network (the brain) conscious of itself (as a neural network)?
Since the brain isn't capable of making itself the object of its own study like it can with other things like a table or a person, the ability of the mind to self-reflect is physically inexplicable.
You could cut carefully take your brain out, keeping the neural connections and blood flow intact. Then sling your brain around by the bundle of nerves and stones. I don't think you get dizzy. A bit light in the head, maybe.
Then you can lay your brain to rest and play with the visual cortex on the back. That will alter your vision of the brain, and might even caùse damage, so be careful.
You can even yo-yo the brain by rolling vaines and nerves around it and roll it off.
The most interesting things happen when you squeeze it like a peach or poke around in it with a variety of needles and metal charged sticks.
There is a lot to stick your nose in. Colored sounds may abe heard, melodic colors be seen, hot itch be felt, pain be tasted, and sweetness be smelt, or viciousness taken for an act of mercy.
So be careful and leave the nerves and vaines connected. You might loose your head...
Connect a camera to a monitor and then turn the camera back to look at its monitor. The visual feedback in the monitor is the camera's view of itself - the camera-monitor system. This is like the infinite regress you experience when thinking about your self.
Thinking about thinking is what blurs the boundary of subject and object. In thinking about thinking object and subject are one and the same.
The camera captures itself, right but neither single neurons nor neural networks see themselves as they truly are, neurons or neural networks; in other words, they (neurons/neural networks) can't make themselves objects as they truly are.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Thus, in some sense, to a degree, the mind can't be the brain as it possesses capabilities the brain doesn't.
What do you mean, "see as they truly are"? Do you see anything as it truly is? Does the mind "see" itself as it truly is?
Metacognition: The mind forms and image of itself. This image, last I checked, is definitely not a brain.
Well no, an image is not the thing the image is of. You seem to be confusing the thing with an image of the thing. Is the image of the thing seen as it truly is?
If you don't see your brain as it truly is how can you say that you see other brains as they truly are? How is it that you have true sight of other people's brains but not of your own when you only have access to the image and not the thing itself?
If you are able to know about things by only accessing an image of those things, does it really matter that you don't have direct access to those things?
It wasn't replies, but questions that I asked that you need to answer for me to better understand your position. I'm not satisfied with your answers (or lack thereof). Have a good day.
Ok. Let's start over.
Self-awareness: x sees x via an image of x that x is capable of generating.
Come to us, humans, now. When I engage in self-reflection, I don't see myself as a brain. Physicalists insist that the brain is the mind. Ergo, the brain is incapable of self-reflection (it doesn't see itself as it truly is, a mushy mass of meat). Consciousness is an illusion?
I dont know what this means. I describe self-awareness as a sensory information feedback loop, like the visual or auditory feedback you get when pointing a camera at its monitor or a microphone to its speaker. When you think about your "self" (one problem that we need to resolve is what is a self and where is it relative to the mind, brain and body), you are creating an information feedback loop - of the mind minding itself.
Quoting Agent Smith
Im not a physicalist (i dont even know what "phyisical" means), nor do i believe that consciousness is an illusion. I do agree that the distinction between mind and brain needs a good explanation. I think that the mind and brain are one and the same - just from different views, like photons can be both waves and particles, depending on the measuring device being used. The sensory-brain system (mind) is a measuring device. But be careful not to confuse the measurement with what is being measured.
The popular idea seems to be just that: that we can correctly see others "as they truly are".
It's why a formulation in the form of "You are x" isn't merely shorthand for "I think you are x".
Yes, it matters. Are you not scared by the proposition that you're trapped in indirectness?
Direct or indirect, the monster is still under the bed.
If the mind = brain, then if the mind is capable of perceiving itself, is self-aware, the mind/brain should have, as an image of itself, a brain (network of neurons); that, for some odd reason, is false.
A monkey (brain) can't claim to be self-aware if the image it has of itself isn't a monkey (brain).
It seems to me that only x can say what they are and everyone else can only see it - which means using the way light reflects off of x as a means of knowing what x is.
Quoting baker
But are you not directly accessing your own mind and is your mind not part of the causality of the world? What would it be like to directly access something vs. indirectly.? Access is a term that implies indirectness, as something that is accessed by an accessor. How does the accessor access the accessed, if not indirectly - by accessing the effects x has on y (world on mind and mind on world)? Information takes time to travel from accessed to accessor.
It would seem that you have direct access to your mind with direct meaning that you are your mind, and indirect access to the world via light's effect on the eyes.
Suppose, arguendo, the mind = brain.
I'm now thinking about my mind. When I do, I don't see my brain. In other words my mind doesn't see itself as it truly is, assuming mind = brain.
:groan: :fear:
But because we know that on the inside of what we see is the same thing going on as inside of us we actually can understand how it feels to be them or that. Empathy.
The mind is not the brain. The mind is the conscious content of the brain. A monkey is self aware too, like all animals. A picture of their brain they have not. Only humans. But that is not the same as self awareness. It is only being aware of a specific part, the brain. It is questionable if the brain is even a part of you. It has come into existence, as a living thing, only after people started to actually take it out of people and started to do brain investigations. Nobody has actually seen a working living brain, except superficially.
The problematic part of Berkley's ontology (as I interpret Berkeley) , are "spirits" that refer to subjects with respect to which ideas are relativized, a move which appears to translate the dualism between mind and matter into a dualism between minds and ideas, and Berkeley apparently didn't consider third-party subjects as being reducible to ideas of the mythical first person "subject", and i'm not sure as to why.
As I've been trying to show, mind and brain are the same, but appear different because you are observing from different viewpoints, or measurements. In one view point you are using reflected light to observe/measure minds/brains, from the other you are using qualia to observe/measure your mind/brain.
Why would the amount and type of light in the environment affect how you see brains if light was not part of the equation? So are you seeing the brain as it truly is when the lights are out?
Then how is it that you can say that you have a neural network if youre not aware of it? You dont read other peoples posts and just keep repeating yourself.
I learnt it later on, from biology books. Plus, a brain is more alien to me than my mind is. I feel as though, in physicalist terms, I'm a verb (thinking/thoughts) than a noun (brain).
So you can become aware of something by reading a book and not necessarily by experiencing "directly".
Therein lies the rub. We don't experience ourselves directly as brains - we're told we're brains.
Then there is a difference between awareness and experience? What is the difference?
You came to that conclusion. You tell me.
No. It is what you implied. Let's recap.
You said:
Quoting Agent Smith
and
Quoting Agent Smith
So you implied that being aware of something is seeing it as it truly is.
I asked you how you know the mind as it truly is - as a neural network - if you're not aware of it:
Quoting Harry Hindu
You replied:
Quoting Agent Smith
So I attempted point out that you can be aware of something and not see it as it truly is:
Quoting Harry Hindu
A book is not a brain or a mind, yet you said that you can be aware of a brain or mind as it truly is by reading a book.
You then said:
Quoting Agent Smith
You switched from using the term, "aware" to "experience". So what you seemed to have implied is that you can be aware of things as they truly are by reading a book, but not experience things as they truly are. So I'm asking you what the difference is.
How are you using "experience" as opposed to "awareness" if you can be aware of things as they truly are even if you experience them not as they truly are. Are you experiencing the book as it truly is, that you then become aware of how brains truly are by reading it?
Is there experience without awareness? Can a rock, for instance, experience anything? Also,is there awareness sans experience? Is this sentence :point: "Tell me you experiences in Paris?" appropriate for a block of wood or does it seem like one that should be asked of a being capable of awareness, like yourself for example?
Object: Observed (rainbow)
Subject - Object: Observation (seeing the rainbow)
An action (seeing) can observe itself maybe but it isn't an entity (eye), it's a phenomenon/a process. When these two are confused, we have on our hands one big mess.
One big mess indeed. Far too convoluted.
Let's be concise - what can the entity itself - the subject, observe and what can't it observe?
Subject can observe an object.
Subject can observe an action or process(including it's own actions).
Subject can not observe subject (itself).
This is universally true for any subject/object relation. Any reflection of the subjection happens through another object.
Quoting Agent Smith
Indeed, this is logical. The subject can not observe itself.
Then however, we have this claim.
Quoting Agent Smith
Something ain't right about this. The subject observing itself is not logical.
It is not the mind that observes the mind. There's a far more logical explanation, which is simply that the brain observes the mind.
This way, our logic is not broken.
Subject (brain) observes object (mind)
Though even more accurately is
Subject (brain) observes process (thought)
Because the mind as an object is a concept and nothing more.
It doesn't exist as any form of entity. It is a process run by the brain and when the system shuts down, so does the mind.
Anyone can easily reproduce this by holding their breath for anywhere from approximately 2-5 minutes. Pass out and see what happens to your mind. Maybe don't actually try but if you've never passed out before, let me tell you the sensation is seriously fascinating.
To understand this fully, let's clarify that this kind of fainting I'm talking about is caused due to a lack of oxygen in the brain - other forms of fainting can and will be very different. At this point our brain triggers a form of emergency mechanism and shuts down all unnecessary function - including movement. The body collapses and goes on energy saving mode in an attempt to bring oxygen levels in the brain back to stable. This state is very unlike sleep, where we know the process of mind continues to some degree.
And a process it is; which becomes blatantly obvious when you experience this waking up after the brain shutting down due to lack of oxygen. You come to your senses and you have no idea what's going on. The processing of the brain works fine auditory and visualy, you can respond to people and all - but the mind is just dragging behind - as if it needs a bit to reboot and regather all it's data. Get enough perceptions until it can piece the picture back together - because the picture, along with the mind, have just been dumped in the bin by the brain.
Quoting Banno
Of course, as concepts! But they are closely connected: Isn't what I believe, true for me?
Quoting Banno
That is not true for whom? Based on what?
Quoting Banno
Again, being true for whom and based on what?
Quoting Banno
I agree, but their difference is not exhausted in that. The problem is not with "subjective", which is clear enough. It is rather with "objective". It is used to signify the existence, quality, etc. of something does not depend on what you and I believe is true, but it exists by its own, it has its own truth, etc. It is what we call "actual" or "real". Here is where matters get perplexed. What does "actual" mean? Some dictionaries say "existing in fact, real". Well, we get immediately into a "circuitry", since "actual" and "real" are in a general sense synonymous! I would even call that a "empty" definition, since when we say "it's a fact", we mean "it's actual", "it's real", "it's true"!
So, inevitably we get into the subject of "reality" and the hot question, "Is there an objective reality?"
And my equally hot answer to that is (a counter-question): "If there's an objective reality, who is out there to tell?"
Does this get us to an impasse? Hopefully not. Because we can think of reality as an agreement that something exists (or happens or happened, is what it is, has certain qualities, etc.) It starts with what we ourselves agree about the existence of something and expands to a common reality, i.e. the agreement between two or more persons regarding the existence of something. This common agreement is the closest we can get to "objective" reality! The more people agree on something the more "objective" a reality is.
So, reality and truth are always subjective! "Subjective" is something absolute. "Objective", on the other hand, is something relative.
I hope that this clears the difference between "subjective and objective" in the given context and puts them in the right perspective. :smile:
Quoting Hermeticus
The brain doesn't see itself as a brain. That's fascinating for me. It sees itself as what people call a mind. In other words, the brain identifies itself as its function (mind). If cars could think, that's like the car believing itself to be, not the car, but driving.
Sorry about tl; dr. I have ADHD.
Well, no, as those who do not believe in Covid are discovering en masse.
There are lots of things that do not care what you believe.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
We are.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Repeating the confusion is not an improvement.
I don't know what exactly you mean by discovering en masse, i.e. what are they discovering, but whatever they are discovering doesn't change the fact that as long as they believe that Covid does not exist, it is true for them that Covid does not exist.
Quoting Banno
We, who?
Well, whoever is "we", isn't each of us a "subjective" entity with our own reality? If our realities/views about something coincide, i.e. if we agree on something, we can call this "common reality". Not "objective reality". There's no such a thing.
Quoting Banno
Sorry about that. I thought I explained my point clearly ...
***
So, here is the essence of my point --please coinsider it in a new unit of time: "Whatever I believe is true, it is true for me." . Do you agree? (If not, why?)
...says no more than "what I believe, I believe".
Believing Covid doesn't exist does not prevent you from getting sick. That is, something that is "true-for-you" might not be true.
Nothing like that. It says that belief and truth are so closely connected that one implies the other.
You have maybe forgotten that all this discussion hase resulted from you stressing the point that "belief and truth are not the same" and I answered, yes, but only as concepts, not in essence.
You have no arguments. You just react.
Well, all that was a total wast of time. :angry: I'm out of here.
Not so.
Folk believe things that are not true; hence belief does not imply truth. There are true things that folk do not believe; hence truth does not imply belief.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
No. You learned about truth and belief. You just haven't realised it yet.
Cheers.
I share your point of view, as I see Trivialism as a corollary of truth-conditional semantics, which can be the only scientifically respectable semantics from a causally objective point of view. But i am inclined to express that position by saying that beliefs are concepts defined by, and pertaining to, the social convention of language, as opposed to properties pertaining to the psychological states of individuals.
For example, society is unlikely to attribute false beliefs to Amazon Alexa if she said something or acted in a way that we call "untrue", because in her case society considers itself to have causal understanding of her stimulus-responses.
I think that you are talking about another kind of beliefs, since you involve society.
I'm talking simply about "belief" as a concept and referring to individuals: "an acceptance that something exists or is true". It is something very very, but very, simple. Too simple, and that's why maybe the discucussion with @Banno turned into a loopwhole. Some minds cannot recognize or handle or stand simplicity. That is, simple logic. Things can never be straight for them. They have to be curves or sigzags.
Sure. I am only suggesting to make things even simpler by dispensing altogether the idea that beliefs are properties of individuals, given as you say, that an individual's beliefs are merely what the individual considers to be true.
For logically we get
I believe(x) implies x is true, and
x is true implies I believe(x)
implying that belief predicates of the first-person are redundant in merely asserting what is the case.
Of course, the above analysis appears to be wrong to most people, with beliefs appearing to be indispensable, due to the fact that we say that previously held beliefs can be proven "wrong". But this is just a turn of phase in which we reinterpret the past as referring to the present for the sake of maintaining our linguistic conventions.
Nevertheless, it remains an intuitively useful fiction to externally predicate beliefs and goals on behalf of third-party agents when attempting to predict or control their behaviour, as for example in machine learning when informally analysing a reinforcement learning algorithm in terms of "goals" and "belief states"
I don't see how any of this answers my questions in my previous post. I asked you a question and now you're answering it with questions. Remember, I'm asking you to clarify what you have said about your position, not mine.
Whose else beliefs are properties of? :smile: Even if you mean society's, doesn't a society consist of individuals? And even if we try to describe what the beliefs of a society are on a certain subject, wouldn't the same thing hold, that is, what a society believes about something, that would be true for that society? We get to the same point. We can expand this to the whole race and the whole planet (all humans). In all cases we get to the logical redunancy (or circular reasoning) that you are mentioning:
Quoting sime
And this is exatly what I tried to show @Banno, who in the beginning of his topic maintained that "belief and truth are not the same".
Quoting sime
Nice! :up:
No it doesn't. It implies only that you think it true.
Quoting sime
If that were so, there would be no truths that you do not believe; are you omniscient?
Who is "we"?
Quoting Banno
Ha! The placebo effect says it can.
But not that one.
Now I'm happy to do it myself, if you like; but I had thought you might like to have a say. I do sometimes make mistakes, after all.
Do you have a point here?
But the content of your brain, with which you are in direct contact internally, is. The content of your brain, structured electric charges running around continuously, from embryo to old man, can create an image of whatever physical structures, in qualia. The brain has the potential to create analogues of virtually infinite physical processes. A micro universe. The number of physically possible paths is mega giga astronomical: a 1 followed by 10exp35 zeroes!