Objectivity is relatively simple

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Mind Over Matter, Apr 14, 2012.

  1. Mind Over Matter Registered Senior Member

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    You are going to buy a chair in a furniture store. You look at it and it is your favorite color. Not only that, but this wonderful chair reminds you of the one in your childhood home. You decide to buy this chair because of your subjective reasoning. Nothing wrong with that.

    You are going to buy a chair in a furniture store. It is your favorite color. You sit on it and it is too hard. You look at the price tag and it is twice as much as you want to pay. You decide not to buy this chair because of your objective reasoning resulting from sitting on the chair and looking at its cost.
     
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  3. Believe Happy medium Valued Senior Member

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    And?
     
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  5. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Not even close, as your judgment of hardness and price are just as subjective as those of favored color and nostalgia. The objective qualities are that you can sit on it, it has a certain number of legs, etc.. Those things that everyone can readily agree on, regardless of personal considerations.

    And what is up with people repeating their own existing threads? http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=112631
     
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  7. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    I agree with Syne. The so-called 'objective' reference was logic.
     
  8. Mind Over Matter Registered Senior Member

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    As I posted, the chair was sat on. The key point of objective is that it does not depend on everyone's agreement.

    For some unknown reason, some, not all, people have a difficult time describing objective. As for computing how one can use both objective and subjective reasoning at the same time-- forget it. So, every now and then, I post about objective/subjective and let others have the last word. Thank you.
     
  9. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Still flirting with Kant, and Descartes ...
    Still missing (avoiding?) the actual problem of "objectivity" ...
    Still not getting actually involved in the threads you start ...
     
  10. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    The color, hardness, price are all subjective.

    Your desire to buy it is objective reality and the only reality you can objectively be sure exists.

    As for your memories. The act of remembering is objective, the action in the memories is subjective and may not have actually occurred.
     
  11. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Objectivity does not depend solely upon whether something is agreed on or not, and certainly doesn't preclude agreement. Objective facts will be widely agreed upon, but wide agreement doesn't necessarily make something objective. For example, a very large majority of people believe in a god, but a god does not offer any objective evidence for its existence. So objectivity entails external evidence which supports agreement.

    Desire is not objective, except insofar as you are making a claim of desire regardless of truth value to the claim. And the judgment of desirability is definitely not objective. And the act of remembering is not objective either, unless it is externally verified to be remembering of actual past events. The subjective mind can interject erroneous material, in present time, into what one considers to be remembering.
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2012
  12. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    You are simply arguing for epistemic autonomy - and in your case, it looks more like extreme epistemic egoism, along with the negative connotation, and your typical refusal to discuss anything.
     
  13. Mind Over Matter Registered Senior Member

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    What is the "actual problem of objectivity"? Feel free to use Descartes and Kant.

    It seems to me that there is only a manufactured problem. Most people have no difficulties grasping objective reality in simple cases, such as the case presented above in which a chair's existence and properties were given to the intellect through sense mediation.
     
  14. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    In principle, it is kind of simple.

    Objective statements are statements about objects, while subjective statements are statements about subjects.

    'Lightening flashes are electrical discharges' is an objective statement. It's true regardless of what people happen to think about the matter, at least given the meanings of the words.

    'I think that lightening is scary' is a subjective statement, because it isn't really about lightening at all. It's about me.

    'Lightening scares the majority of people' is more difficult. This one's an objective statement about subjects. Somebody could test it by going out and sampling the responses of people during lightening storms or something. It has an objective truth-value, and its truth or falsity is independent of whatever the speaker believes about the matter.
     
  15. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Ok.

    But the words I highlighted aren't really about the chair at all. They are about whatever the subject's favorite color is, how hard he/she prefers chairs to be, and about how much he/she wants to pay for a chair. It's still all about the subject, so the statement still looks kind of subjective to me.
     
  16. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Are you understating that to be polite, or are you unsure?
     
  17. Literphor I is for ignorance Registered Member

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    Why are you buying a chair to begin with?

    If you wish to be objective about this chair, you may want to start by explaining how genetics determine personal preference, then why qualitative experiences like hard/soft influence your decision. Why wouldn't you prefer a harder more expensive chair?
     
  18. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    That we don't have epistemic autonomy.


    You are confusing psychological egoism or "high self-esteem" with philosophical certainty.


    In the extreme case, a person can prance around claiming that they know "how things really are," but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether they indeed know that or not.
     
  19. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Oh, sure.

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    And what happens when different subjects make different - even mutually exclusive - statements about objects (and subjects too)?

    Ie. the sort of thing we experience on a daily basis?

    That is a beautiful chair. - No, it's hideous.
    Annie is a good person. - Not at all, she is a manipulative wench.


    Then what?


    That is "objectively true" only relative to a specific system of beliefs about lightening flashes, electrical discharges etc. A European from the 14th century would probably think you are talking nonsense.


    Again, that is "objectively true" only relative to a specific system of beliefs about statistics and their validity.
     
  20. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not sure what you mean regardless of the truth value to the claim?

    If I desire something then I desire it. The act of desiring is, for me, objectively real.

    Yes, I agree.

    I'm only referring to the act of remembering. Not the memories themselves. The act is objective. If it is happening, it IS happening and must be an objectively real event.

    Yes, I agree.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2012
  21. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Both, I guess. Mainly, I was acknowledging potential counterarguments that might be advanced. (See my exchange with Wynn in post #20.)
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2012
  22. Literphor I is for ignorance Registered Member

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    What do you mean by objectively real? Can you explain to me how something can be objectively fake?

    I could easily say "The act of desiring is, for me, subjective" but that doesn't mean I'm right nor have we progressed anywhere in our discussion. Would you mind supporting your claim?

    The way I see it, anything that exists in our mind, which doesn't exist by its own right, is subjective. I can't go outside and pick up an handful of desire, like I can a lump of grass. Even if I could, how do I know that handful of desire (lump of grass) actually exists in the universe in the way I perceive it? A little dabble into the electromagnetic spectrum should tell you it doesn't. Perceiving stimuli is a subjective experience, as is our perception of desire.
     
  23. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Things often aren't so simple, the more we think about them.

    Objective statements aren't always true, sometimes they are false. Sometimes inconsistent objective statements can both simultaneously be true, in different ways or from different perspectives. (It might be an error to confuse relative with subjective.) And oftentimes it isn't entirely clear whether a particular statement is objective or subjective.

    People might differ as to whether beauty or goodness are objective properties, or whether they are subjective ascriptions.

    An objective theory of beauty would want to argue that something is beautiful in itself, independent of whether particular subjects feel that it is beautiful. A subjective theory of beauty would want to argue that calling something 'beautiful' is a description of the speaker's own aesthetic response to it.

    That's true. And that's why it's probably a mistake to confuse subjective with relative.

    It's possible to make objective statements about things, relative to a particular conceptual vocabulary and to a particular set of underlying assumptions, just as it's possible to make objective statements relative to a geometrical perspective or physical reference frame. In other words, given that the community of discourse shares an understanding of what their conceptual vocabulary means, it's still possible for them to make statements whose truth or falsity depends on the facts of the matter.

    Even if the community's background assumptions are seriously erroneous, as was the case with ancient geocentric cosmology, it was still possible for ancient astronomers to make highly objective statements about the positions of the various planets in the heavens, even if today we might want to characterize their descriptions and accounts as empirically acceptable or unacceptable, rather than as literally true or false.

    True. But given agreement about that, the truth or falsity would seem to depend on the characteristics of the sample and not on the feelings of the individual who advanced the thesis.

    But yeah, I do agree with you that in real life, the objective-subjective distinction isn't always quite as simple and clear cut as it might first appear.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2012

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