Objectivity is relatively simple

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

  1. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    Manipulative people are objective. They have a mission to accomplish... Objectivity is a personality trait. Not everyone is able to comprehend the specific outcome they are aiming for. Their goal can be subjective but the work put into accomplishing this goal is objective.

    If you don't understand a persons goal consider their words objective.

    To those who ask "why repeat threads" I would rather hear one persons complaints many times on a single issue than twenty peoples endless queries on the same endless issue... "Goal" understanding the individual you are speaking with.
     
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  3. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    But there are two things to consider when it comes to 'things that exist in the mind'. One is the inner experience itself, and the other is the mechanism(s) by which that experience occurs. What Michael seems to be pointing out is that while the content of experience is subjective, the reality of experience isn't. It's something that actually happens.
     
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  5. Gustav Banned Banned

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    perceptions can be erroneous
    we circle the sun and not the other way around
     
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  7. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    1350–1400; ME < L errōneus straying, equiv. to errōn- (s. of errō) wanderer (deriv. of err-; see err) + -eus -eous

    To wander is human. I would say wanderful, but you appear to be implying the strict root of error, Gustav. Am I correct in this assumption? Have I made you rethink your choice of words or come to a better understanding in their current context?
     
  8. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    You have yet to succinctly define epistemic autonomy, much less support that it doesn't exist.

    Both of your examples are subjective judgments, which are trivially allowed to be in disagreement. This says nothing of objectivity.

    No, objective facts are empirically demonstrable. A 14th century European could not demonstrate the truth value of any claim he may have made about the nature of lightening.

    Desire is a wholly internal, mental condition, which is definitively subjective, i.e. subjectively real. Only a claim of desire can be said to be objective, because we can empirically demonstrate that a claim was made, by recording, etc.. The truth value of a claim of desire cannot be empirically demonstrated, so the desire itself cannot be objective.

    Again, the act of remembering is an internal, mental activity that does not offer any empirical evidence. Only the presenting of a memory which can be confirmed can be objective.

    There is no "kind of" about what can and can't be empirically demonstrated.
     
  9. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Again, I think that the psychology and the interests of those involved in an exchange play a crucial role.
    It's tempting to confuse psychological egoism (or high self esteem) with philosophical certainty; in fact, this confusion is precisely what often happens in ordinary life.

    An aggressive, extroverted person is likely to seem right, objective, philosophically certain to many people.

    A person's psychology can have a philosophical effect on others.
    Advertising builds on this.
     
  10. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    There have been several threads in which this was discussed, perhaps you haven't participated.

    See “Ethical and Epistemic Egoism and the Ideal of Autonomy" (it's a doc file).


    I think you underestimate the importance of differing opinions about things and especially people. On a daily basis, people lose their jobs over this kind of differences, relationships break up, courts of law come to verdicts.
    These things are anything but trivial, and even if they by their nature are subjective, given their relevance to us, ought to be ascribed the status of objectivity.


    That will depend on the system of epistemic justification that is being employed.

    The Church had a different system of epistemic justification than the witches it burnt.
    Who was right? Who was objective? The Church, the witches, neither?

    There is usually a psychological and social dimension to very philosophical claim. Philosophers tend to underestimate the role that the psychological and social dimension play. And yet in the life of an actual person, it is those two dimensions that tend to prevail over the philosophical ones.

    People indeed get killed over the things they say. Or at least lose their jobs over them.
    I tend to think that this trumps all philosophical concerns.


    Again, that will depend on the system of epistemic justification that is being employed.

    If the proof is, literally, in the pudding, then without eating the pudding, you won't know.
    Many metaphysical claims are said to be possible to verify only internally, intrapersonally, not intepersonally.
     
  11. Emil Valued Senior Member

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  12. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    That paper is uselessly vague and doesn't make any rigorous attempt to define its terms. If you are going to rely on it for you arguments, you need to be able to express it yourself, as it relates to your arguments. Otherwise it is a completely empty comment.


    Significance or relevance to people are not criteria of objectivity. This seems to be wishful thinking on your part.


    Total nonsense. Objectivity is not solely dependent upon prevalent agreement, as I've already told you. If it cannot be empirically demonstrated then it is not objective.


    You are uselessly conflating epistemology with objectivity. Objectivity does not entail the entirety of knowledge. Your posts here thus seem to be off-topic.
     
  13. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    It seems that your hostility even convinces you that you are right.

    You project things into people's words that they did not say, and then criticize them for it.
     
  14. Literphor I is for ignorance Registered Member

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    I understood what he meant.

    Certainly some kind of causation is occurring but I won't concede that the experience itself exists in it's own right. If we accept the current model of the universe as the closest thing to objective truth, the best I can say is that "Some kind of complex particle interaction creates neurons which, in turn, produce behavior", with consciousness and all its properties somehow falling in line.

    Another way to put it. "Rock" is a useful concept we employ because it helps explain that common thing we see lying on the ground. Some time ago the concept of "rock" was very different than it is today, instead of particles it may have been "hard earth" or something to that extent. "Rock" has a different meaning to a archaeologist than it does to a construction worker.

    Reality of experience, as it stands, is also a concept we employ to help explain something we just don't understand. But it's easy to fool ourselves into thinking it's "actually happening", because it's just really darn hard to imagine reality without experience (probably because we can't think objectively to begin with).


    You can take it a step further and state that every word in this post is subjective like "rock", conveying a concept that is useful, but ultimately fails in reflecting the true (objective) nature of whatever it represents. I believe this was a point BWE1 attempted to make in the thread "there is a funamental reality".
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2012
  15. Mind Over Matter Registered Senior Member

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    I can interpret "that we don't have epistemic autonomy" in a number of ways. For instance, it could be a pseudo-Kantian claim that we need absolutely free rational spontaneity if we are to be justified in our beliefs. Or it could be a descriptive remark that we rely upon other people for truth. Again, if you could be more precise, I am interested in discussing this.

    Presumably you mean to say that I equivocated? At any rate, I did not. What do you mean by "philosophical certainty"? I obviously have some sense of where you're going, but you need to be clearer. "Philosophical certainty" -- for instance, indubitable first principles used to derive an a priori synthetic truth -- is just a fiction. It's a conceptual problem for philosophers; it has very little to do with the real world.

    Right, by this I think you mean to advance a skeptical position, namely that, since people are wrong sometimes, they can never be certain. (Or, that since people are not infallible, they can never be certain.) Neither of those conclusions follows logically. More than that, empirically, people are certain -- even skeptics. They have to be certain to live.
     
  16. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    But isn't it more philosophically problematic to declare that there is an independently existing physical world apart from the mind, than it is to merely declare that there is, in fact, a mind?

    Don't get me wrong. I'm not a solipsist. But I do acknowledge that I can be more certain that there is content in my mind than I can be regarding the proposition that there is content outside of and apart from it.
     
  17. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    I already linked to an essay on epistemic autonomy earlier.

    We are epistemically dependent: we depend on other people to provide us with words and concepts in which we think; we depend on others for a number of things we consider "true," things which we do not and cannot test for ourselves, but consider them to be true anyway.

    In order for us to have epistemic autonomy (and thus be able to be objective), we would have to be completely independent of other people: we would have to be able to live by ourselves, alone, without any input from others, we would have to invent our own language (without any reference to any human language), our own methodology for assessing truths etc.


    IRL, people function on the basis of their ego(tism), not necessarily truth. But they nevertheless use philosophical terms, and expect to be given philosophical credence.

    For example:
    Person A claims that Jesus is the only path to salvation. Person A claims to be objective and unbiased.
    Person B claims that Person A is subjective but is erroneously assigning his claim the status of objectivity.
    The two get into a physical fight over this.

    Who is right? Who is being objective? Who is merely acting out their egotism?


    No, I mean neither of that.


    They are certain only in a psychological sense, not necessarily also in a philosophical sense.

    If one says "I know that the sun will rise tomorrow" this is merely psychological certainty, not philosophical certainty.
    Another example: "I know that you will pass the math test." This is a good example of psychological certainty.

    Take any "motivational speaker" or pop psychologist: these people make a point to sound and appear certain, to appear as if what they say really is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And yet many of the things they say are impossible to substantiate with empirical evidence or via philosophical argument.
    These people are psychologically certain.

    On a daily basis, people play out this dynamics as well: they project psychological certainty, even when they are flat-out telling lies.
     
  18. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    But it only makes sense to speak of the "mind" as long as we imply it is something separate from the physical world.
    Why bother with noticing a phenomenon (in this case, the "mind") if not to contradistinct it with something which is not said phenomenon (in this case, that which is not the mind)?
     
  19. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I don't dispute that. Psychology and personal interests obviously play a tremendous role in determining what sort of statements people (sometimes even scientists) make.

    But I do question the role that psychology and personal interests play in defining the objective/subjective distinction.

    Those kind of considerations probably play a larger role in determining how objective a particular statement actually is.

    I'd call that 'rhetorical', as opposed to 'philosophical'. I'm not one of the people who would like to collapse that distinction.
     
  20. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Generally, people like to believe themselves to be objective - that whatever they say, is the objective truth.

    Whether they make claims about the shape of planet Earth or the goodness of a person or the taste of a cake.
     
  21. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    That doesn't conclusively demonstrate that there is in fact such a thing as an independently existing physical world, since an imagined one would provide the illusion of such a contradistinction.
     
  22. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I've already addressed that in an earlier post. (See my earlier remarks regarding conceptual vocabularies, background assumptions, and not confusing relative with subjective.)

    That's an extremely strong claim, Wynn. It's going to need lots of argument before it has any hopes of being plausible.

    You seem to be defining 'objectivity' in straw-man fashion, so stringently that nothing can possibly satisfy the definition.

    Why can't my statement "The speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second" be an objective statement about the speed of light, even though I learned the information in a classroom or from a book and never experimentally determined that speed myself? Why can't it be an objective statement despite the fact that it makes use of arbitary units like 'miles' and 'seconds'?

    Your epistemic autonomy issue seems to me to be largely irrelevant to the objective/subjective issue, and the socially constructed nature of 'miles' and 'seconds' seems to introduce an element of relativity, as opposed to subjectivity.

    What people say may or may not be true and is probably going to be influenced by all kinds of motives and motivations.

    But how is that undisputed fact relevant to the objective/subjective distinction? I'm still kind of confused about what the connection is supposed to be.

    Why must an objective statement be unbiased? Why must it even be true? It seems obvious that people can make statements about objective states of affairs that later turn out to be false. And people often have their own reasons for desiring that some particular objective state of affairs be true, and those people are often inclined to strenuously insist that it is, whether it is or not.

    Oftentimes it isn't entirely clear whether particular kinds of statements are objective or subjective. There are objective and subjective theories of aesthetics, ethics and religion.

    Are ostensibly beautiful things objectively beautiful in their own right, or are ascriptions of beauty really statements of one's own subjective aesthetic responses to those things? Is the statement 'Jesus is the only path to salvation' really an objective statement of a religious fact that's true whether human beings like it or not, or is the statement an expression of one's own subjective religious faith?

    In both cases, the question is whether there's any truth to the matter apart from somebody's saying it's true. In the case of the speed of light, light's presumably still going to be going at that speed whether people think it does or not. That's not so clear with beautiful sunsets and divine saviors.
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2012
  23. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    I agree that it is a strong claim and that humans cannot live up to it.

    However, if we posit that humans indeed have the capacity to make objective claims, and we consider that people often make differing claims about something, then how do we explain the disparities between those claims? Who is right? How do we assess who is right?

    (The formal field of the epistemology of disagreement addresses such issues.)


    If you learned it from second-hand and third-hand sources, then how do you know that what you come to believe is in fact true?


    Objectivity is about knowing; and issues of knowing are a matter of epistemology.


    Imagine living in a society where the majority of people disagree with you on basic issues. The things you find objective, they find subjective; the things you find subjective, they find objective. Things will begin toi get confusing. You're likely going to have this kind of experience if you live in a multicultural society.


    Because that is the whole point of objectivity.

    "Unbiased," "objective" and "true" are often treated as synonyms.


    Once you find yourself lynched for not having the belief in Jesus as your savior, you may have to rethink the matter.
     

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