Is there an objective/subjective spectrum?
I assume most of our memories of things that happen to us are subjectively collected including more objective details. But isn't subjectiveness basically the filtering of an objective reality? We have no choice but to add emotional content to things that are well beyond our depth to make them seem complete? Like the number and types of atoms in a penny in our hand. We can't even know that with our human minds. Isn't the difference between objective and subjective just how well we can know anything absolutely?
Comments (52)
I experience the same sometimes. It is weird because I even have memories of people I dont even met in my life but somehow they are allocated in my awareness. It is a strange feeling. Whenever I have nightmares, I experience the same it appears places and people that I am not really sure if I ever been with them.
Paris will still be the capital of France, even if I stop believing it. The Euro is the official currency in Italy, no matter what you think about it
However, if the knowable facts of the world are finite in number, then yes, we can talk about spectrum of knowledge of reality in terms of...
Except objective/subjective are not good terms here. All your knowledge, all of every individual's knowledge is subjective. The knower knows the facts; objective is not a measure of congruence to reality, objective is a way of knowing reality, which no human possesses.
And what happens when the subject makes itself the thing that's under examination?
A good question. Wayfarer would've answered that question best. Sadly, he left (voluntarily) the forum.
[quote=Socrates]The unexamined life is not worth living.[/quote]
?
The unexamined self is not worth being?
He graduated summa cum laude from this forum as per his own words. I'm happy for him.
An extremely complex question. It is right at the heart of Fichte's philosophy of critical idealism (the subject-object) and can't be summed up in a few paragraphs. So far, it has involved a lot of descriptions relating the intuiting faculty to concepts and concepts to objects, the relationship between the act of self-positing, pure and practical action, consciousness qua intellect. If you really want to explore that, the book I'm currently reading is all about it.
To me, it smacks of Popper's three worlds, which likewise bridges the poles of the subject-object spectrum.
Maybe better still is to forget about the distinction altogether, they are just words.
We view things from a perspective, and those are at best partial views of "reality"... some are a bit wider and a little less partial than others.
Anything objective has to recorded or analyzed by something subjective, otherwise it remains in the dark, even if it is a "brute fact": the start of the universe, atoms, whatever. These would exist, as they have, but if we didn't know about them, we could say nothing of them, nor know anything about them.
It is a very complex issue, but it seems to me that objectivity is more problematic than subjectivity. We are constantly interpreting stuff (subjectively), but whether what we interpret really exists and so on, objectively, is rather difficult to spell out, it seems to me.
What are you reading?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I think there is something to what you say here.
I think objectivity is actually when the subjective is included in statements.
For example: "I like apples" (if its true) is more objectively true than "Apple's are tasty". The latter, I would call pseudo-objective. The first can be self evidently true, depending on the person. But to try and prove the second is true is absurd.
Likewise, "Apples appear to me read" is a more objectively sound claim than "Apples are red". The first can be self evidently true. The latter is impossible to prove. As are all "objective" statements. (Statements that don't include the subject's experience)
Quoting Manuel
It seems so to me too. The hard problem is objectivity or matter, not consciousness. Consciousness is only a problem if one assumes consciousness has to have an external cause, especially a material cause.
The search for objectively is hard because it seems to lead to an infinite regress of justifications for concluding that something is in fact objective...which means what? Independent of a subject? But what does independent of a subject mean? In language its easy to throw away a subject. In experience, impossible.
Subjectivity on the other had is readily apparent.
In my opinion, objective matter is an invention by subjects requiring the use of double think. It is when on imagines or experiences something existing while at the same time imagining that one is not imagining or experiencing it subjectively. Or it is, at best, a shared inter-subjective reality, like people agreeing to the rules of a card game or the meaning of words. Or the rules of the world or nature are, at their root, rules of mind.
I don't think its necessarily so complex as it is hard to go against the tendency to believe in the objective world which is hard wired into most of us from living in a highly materialistic, or thing-focused society.
PS. I'm pretty optimistic about using E-prime, though I have yet to make it a habit.
Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy by J.G. Fichte. It basically picks up where Kant left off.
Thanks sir. Does it make good sense?
Some sections flow really well, others are really, really dense. You pretty much have to just read through and wait for cumulative clarity there. I'm try to push through it fairly steadily for that reason.
No, because we cannot "know anything absolutely". What does "know ... absolutely" even mean? We're not absolute beings with the absolute perspective so it makes no sense to say "how well we can know anything absolutely". Unless, I suppose, by "know" you mean something other than cognition. :chin:
Anyway, my rule of thumb as I discern things, "the difference" is this: dispositions are subjective and propositions are objective; evidence-free, emotion-dependent beliefs are subjective and knowledge (i.e. beliefs corroborated by public evidence) is objective; subject-variable interpretations are subjective and subject-invariant facts are objective ... and so on. The latter, no doubt, is always 'value-laden' (i.e. contextualized) by the former.
The brain isn't perfect. Although there are people who can photographically remember any day when you give them the date.
Perhaps I mean objective and an altered memory of objective containing emotions for easier storage. So two types of the same thing of varied quality.
I guess we will have to assume nothing is truly infinite.
Knowledge is relative. Surely we can get closer or farther from absolute knowledge of a topic, object, concept? The number "3" is well understood? 1 above 2 and 1 below 4. We probably don't apply emotional content when thinking about the number 3 unless we specifically consider what there is 3 of?
Define, please.
I don't follow.
[quote=Ranjeet]A thousand apologies.[/quote]
I don't want to assume that. There is no reason why we need to assume that (Other than for maintaining a mental well-being, for some.)
"Finiteness is for people who can't handle infinity."
O = Objectivity
Subjectivity-Objectivity Spectrum
S-----------------O
The mission goal is to tend towards O via dialectical MAD (mutually assured destruction) as subjectivity's trademark is dissent (This town ain't big enough for the both of us); when it comes to objectivity, reject/deny at your own risk.
O seems unattainble, we must perforce retreat towards S.
All horizons are "unattainable", and yet
[quote=The Unnamable]You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.[/quote]
[quote=Worstword Ho]Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.[/quote]
The obstacle, Smith, is the way forward. Amor fati imagine Sisyphus happy! :death: :flower:
To strive to attain the unttainable is folly, oui mon ami?
Mashallah! :clap:
I mean absolute knowledge of. Something we can entirely hold in our thoughts at a single time.
I guess subjective isn't quite an opposite to objective. So I guess I mean objective that doesn't have emotional connotation or anything that isn't pure information, and a version of objective that refers to objects and objective ideas, but allows emotions and other non pure data to leak in. And have there be a spectrum between them?
I guess I am the odd one out on this topic. I think we have good reasons to believe that matter thinks, so there isn't a mind-body problem. At best we have an experience-matter problem, namely how can matter think? Echoing Locke, Priestley and Russell, I say, we don't understand how, only that it does so.
This need not necessarily enter into the subjective/objective debate. Considering other things though, makes the issue more apparent. So, take mathematics, that 2+2=4 is an objective fact, it is not affected by temporal considerations, nor differences in perspective.
When entering into present moment affairs, it is more complicated. We need to take into account several factors in order to call something "objective", including personal point of view, descriptions, the passage of time and crucially, that we are human beings, not some other species who may interpret the world differently.
:up:
Ervin Laszlo's theory of "biperspectivism" is the most intuitive solution to the mind-body antinomy that I have read.
Yes! :gasp:
For me, it's Spinoza's dissolution of the MBP with property dualism.
I will have to look him up. Thanks for the reference.
Edit: Which book or article of his did you have in mind?
@180 Proof Haven't seen you say "woo" in a while. :wink:
I'm saving up my woo-woos for this
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/746676 :smirk:
I was skimming that. Maybe I skimmed too quickly but, I don't see what arguments are given.
Should be fun to see. :lol:
I think anything that is "objective" has a subjective component due to the fact that it is the subject deciding why the object is important in the first place. So, even the most data-laden scientific concept or the most purified theoretical scientific problem has to have humans that "cared" about an answer and a result. They had to focus their intention on it and attention on it. That, to me, is all subjective.
Why did Galileo, Newton, and Einstein discover the "objective" world of nature and science? Because they cared about it.
There is no objective reality. It there were, who would be able to tell? It would be their own view (reality), wouldn't it?
There's nothing out there, outside us, that we can call "reality". Reality is created. We create our own reality, our own view of the world.
Quoting TiredThinker
There's no absolute knowledge. "Objectiveness" means not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice. It means based on facts, unbiased. That is what we can do at best: try not to be influenced by those factors. But still, our knowledge is based on our reality, which is subjective, as I described above. We can't do better than that. So, what we call "objective" is actually subjective! :smile:
:up:
Yes, I have been preparing to revisit Spinoza with a more mature understanding than a simple undergrad. I just bought Deleuze's book as a bit of a reintroduction.
More like a ven diagram than a spectrum
Why, may I ask?
Things are either subjective, objective, or both objrctive/subjective. There are not degrees of objectivity/subjectivity that would lend to some kind of steadily ordered gradation between the less and more objective/subjective.
The continuum suggests degrees of each, whereas I see each as absolute. In my humble opinion, when the objective and subjective coincide, whatever is subjective continues to be subjective, and viceversa. But I am a philosopher, so I am hoping to have my mind changed by a wiser Philosopher. Let's begin dialectically by discerning the most obvious middle ground. What is an example of something that is 50% objective and 50% subjective? Perhaps its the human being. Whatever the case, only then will we better be able to visualize a potential continuum between the objective-subjective. Or we could becom some of those monist suckers if we so wish to sound very stupid.