The world is not objective

[Z Y G G Y]

One serious objection:
most of these tenants assume a world without subjects as part of it, dynamic parts who change the world, even gazing upon it. For example, you assume objects AS SUCH prior to their discovery/creation. I don't think that this view is tenable, but it's again a useful fiction/partial truth
.
You put forth a good description of intersubjectivity though.

Please explain more.

So you are saying that the discovery of a thing changes it? If a thing exists somewhere, it becomes different through the fact that we perceive it?

Why is that? What changes about it other than the fact that our mind changes. We don't have the power to change things with our minds, unless we can physically cause changes to that thing. I don't believe that our mind is connected to the things outside. If I'm looking at a inanimate object, the fact of me looking changes nothing about the thing.

 

[Shakti]

most of these tenants assume a world without subjects as part of it, dynamic parts who change the world

He does not assume that. Most of his post is describing subjects.

For example, you assume objects AS SUCH prior to their discovery/creation. I don't think that this view is tenable, but it's again a useful fiction/partial truth

The world existed before we did, get over it. To think otherwise is incredibly solipsistic and narcissistic. So is the view that by simply observing an object we are changing the object. The only object that our perception directly changes is our perception itself.

 

[AfterGlow]

there is the universe. and then there is your perception of the universe. they are NOT the same thing.

 

[Shakti]

^of course. What's your point?

| OK, I see.
\/

 

[AfterGlow]

My point is that the OP's observation about "the world" consisting of our memories is not entirely accurate.

 

[Mugz]

Please explain more.

So you are saying that the discovery of a thing changes it? If a thing exists somewhere, it becomes different through the fact that we perceive it?

Why is that? What changes about it other than the fact that our mind changes. We don't have the power to change things with our minds, unless we can physically cause changes to that thing. I don't believe that our mind is connected to the things outside. If I'm looking at a inanimate object, the fact of me looking changes nothing about the thing.

Basic quantom theory suggests that observation of something changes it. Also that what we dont observe has neither happened or not happened. (see the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment)

 

[ebola?]

So you are saying that the discovery of a thing changes it? If a thing exists somewhere, it becomes different through the fact that we perceive it?

More precisely, I would say that we cannot seriously engage the world 'as such', prior to our observation. This is something that by necessity, we cannot observe. I think, however, that it ties up a lot of loose ends to think of the prior universe as not containing "things", but rather a blurry, partially unformed constellation of could-be things, to be brought to bear fully when an observer interacts with the world.

To yes, observation is always interactions, and our observation always colors the 'universe FOR US'.

Now, while this view is congruent with some aspects of quantum mechanics, it doesn't rely on that particular branch of science for its justification. Nor does quantum mechanics NECESSARILY point to such a view.

Why is that? What changes about it other than the fact that our mind changes.

I anchor the universe as the interaction of subject and object. As such, our frames of perception structure possibly their objects. We cannot change the world 'as such', without us, for we cannot engage this realm.

I mean, this is my particular take on ontology. I can't easily make a convincing empirical case for it, but I think that it ties up some philosophical loose ends.

ebola

 

[Z Y G G Y]

Basic quantom theory suggests that observation of something changes it. Also that what we dont observe has neither happened or not happened. (see the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment)

Please explain. How does the quantum theory suggest that observation chances the thing that we observe?

"Also that what we don't observe has neither happened or not happened"
How does that relate to what u said.


I'm might not be up to your and some of u guy's understanding of this stuff so if u can please try to explain it like u would explain it to an average person. Or is it too complicated to even explain it? I have a basic understanding of some of this stiff but not enough for what u said to make sense to me. I studied some of this stuff in college in philosophy of science courses but it's been a while.

 

[MrM]

Please explain.

It is complicated. That's why mugabe included a helpful wikilink that will explain much better than anyone in this thread is likely to be bothered to.

Also if you read through the double slit experiment you'll have an idea of how wave / particle duality works and why mere observation can change the outcome. Quick sumation - if you look which of the two slits the photon goes through you get a different interference pattern just because you looked than if you don't.

 

[Heuristic]

I don't think the objective/subjective debate, in the sense it seems to be raised in here, makes any sense.

Inevitably, lurking somewhere, is some vague conception of "objects in themselves." I frankly have no idea what that means, and I don't think Kant, after killing God knows how many trees and sucking on who knows how much meat, had any idea either.

In actual conversation, when someone says "that's subjective" what he really means is that "that's a matter of taste or preference." Is it a matter of taste or preference that I am cruising at an altitude of 33,000 feet? No. Is that an "objective" fact? I have no idea. It's certainly a fact. What do we get by adding the descriptor "objective" to it?

 

[ebola?]

Thank you.

Now...do you think that you don't have a grasp of what the 'object in itself/as such" should point to on formal terms or in terms of what kind of content it'll have?

For the former...well, the closest I can think of is a hypothetical, non-intervening God's-eye-view on the universe. But now our construct of 'the objective' is lacking, as it doesn't capture its own hypothetical viewer. 8(

Of course you're right on Kant...if there were a point to Critique of Pure Reason, that would be it.

I think it was already said by Roger and Me...but I tend to use subjective to mean actor/perceiver/judger and objective to mean acted upon/perceived/judged. These are more acts or temporary conditions, not 'things'.

ebola

 

[Heuristic]

Thomas Nagel had a book out some years ago called The View from Nowhere, which I now wish I had read more closely, addressing this matter. I honestly can't recall how he resolved the issue.

I see what you're saying re subjective - actor/objective - acted-upon. No things.

But... I think we arrive at the weird result of saying there are no things only by assuming that by things we must mean things in themselves. I point to this computer. It will exist when I turn around and leave the room. It will not disappear by an act of will or wishing. The only way I can impact it is by physically interacting with it. It's a thing.

It's when someone wants to take an extra step "but what is it, in it self" that my eyes begin to roll and I stifle the urge to curse German professors with too much free time.

If someone could adequately explain to me what "in itself" meant, in this context, I'd eat my hat.

 

[qwe]

with objectivity "absent" every point of view holds exactly the same amount of legitimacy. the concept of "mental illness" is obliterated.

this assumes that mental illness is defined in terms of social norms. if it is instead defined by whether a person suffers from mental causes, we have a more "objective" (heh) definition

i look forward to the day when science is able to investigate why exactly qualia can exist, how it is existing/produced, and how it can be manipulated. it probably deals with energies nobody has ever conceived of, though, so i think it's a far way off. so, my other hope is for life extension to happen in time to save me so i can see these amazing days in regards to technological and societal development

 

[qwe]

with objectivity "absent" every point of view holds exactly the same amount of legitimacy. the concept of "mental illness" is obliterated.

it is a hugely important question

the way we understand the universe is based on math. particles follow trajectories based on laws governing their behavior

however, those laws do not necessarily say anything about the universe itself. we can predict everything, we can make things and manipulate, but we cannot (at this moment in time) know anything about *what it is* that we are predicting, manipulating, measuring

we live in a world of emergent properties of vast numbers of particles, all those particles following their trajectories (ruling out the free will thingy; it is an emotion that deceives us imo). so, when a "thing" like a computer exists, yes it is physical and can be said to truly exist, but in what context does it exist (ie, is there a multiverse where it branches off at each decision and forms a humongous tree of possibilities, and perhaps even the whole thing is physically connected through higher dimensions so that you can "slide through universes" and as you slide the laws change slightly and the farther you go the more different the universe is (so, going a short distance means you have gone to a place where everything is pretty much the same). there are so many possibilities as to the context of "what exists, how, why"

not only that, but even taking into account all of those weird physical possibilities, we cannot get much more than guesswork at the question "what it is". our philosophies only go down to a certain level. ie, a laptop is made of trillions of atoms arranged in just the right arrangement so that information will be able to input, process, and output in a way usable by humans. those atoms, though, are more mysterious, following more complicated mathematical laws, and the world of the atomic is vastly different than this emergent world we live within and have evolved to think within. even more, there is the nagging question physics cannot yet do anything about: the fundamental particles that make up everything, why are they here? why is spacetime, a malleable stretchable and expandable structure that holds all of the particles in it and intimately interacts with them (i see particles sort of as ripples on this spacetime fabric; spacetime fabrics, whether 3-dimensional or 5-dim or *-dim, are called branes; they exist within the bulk; this is speculation from M-theory), why is spacetime and its ripple-particles here? what gives rise to it?

so, in essence, what ***IS*** that fucking computer? in order to answer the question, or at least get progress underway, perhaps we'd need to alter our consciousnses so that we can A) think in higher dimensions, B) receive sensual intuitive input from other realities like the quantum physical realm or higher dimensional realms we may discover, C) and thus be able to "look at the universe from the outside"

but even then, we are still stuck with possibilities like "this is still all an elaborate simulation" and things of that nature, or that we are somehow being tricked (thanks descartes)

so, the question is an interesting one. what is a butane lighter?

 

[rstar84]

Despite how far we go into thinking about whether the world is objective or not, one fact always remains:

"The world" really consists of our own memories.

Look around for a moment and tell me if there's anything here but the current situation, plus memories of the past (and projections of them into the future). Does anything else exist "for you"? Has it ever? If not, does it matter how far we philosophize into deciding whether the world is objective or not?

There are 6.7 billion people on the planet, and every last one perceives things subjectively. Where's the evidence for an objective world? Objectivity itself is a subjectively-created and perceived idea .

Sounds like you've read Hume.

 

[ebola?]

Thomas Nagel had a book out some years ago called The View from Nowhere, which I now wish I had read more closely, addressing this matter. I honestly can't recall how he resolved the issue.

mmm...The "what is it like to be a bat?" article is crowding out what else I know of him. I should revisit it though...

But... I think we arrive at the weird result of saying there are no things only by assuming that by things we must mean things in themselves.

I think that this is right, but I think that it's also useful to talk about things 'in themselves' (as I'll explain below). . .

I point to this computer. It will exist when I turn around and leave the room. It will not disappear by an act of will or wishing. The only way I can impact it is by physically interacting with it. It's a thing.

mmm...While valuable, I believe this take incomplete. What this computer will be (or the ability to pick out a computer as a discrete object) depends on your accrual of cultural dispositions related to use of computers. Had you been socialized otherwise, you might be apt to parse the sensory blur of the room into other discrete chunks, attaching different meanings to these chunks upon such 'analysis', possibly not involving an item that we'd call "a computer".

I think that the fact that the computer cannot be thought away without a drastic overhaul of the subject's assumptions expresses the computer's 'physicality'. One could say that there's something about the human organism's environment 'in itself' that asserts itself via the computer, as aspects of the computer that persist despite whatever the subject does besides physically manipulating the computer.

It's when someone wants to take an extra step "but what is it, in it self" that my eyes begin to roll and I stifle the urge to curse German professors with too much free time.

For me...well, I want to know desperately how things are 'in themselves'. In reckoning with how one does this...and our failure to secure such knowledge, I've arrived at my epistemology and ontology.

So what does 'in itself' mean? This would be how something 'is', apart from the investigator's attempt to know it. This may be approached either through highlighting what sorts of qualities the knowing subject imparts on her object...or by explaining the processes through which the subject can gain access to aspects of how things are 'in themselves'.

Does much hinge on it practically? Not really, but I don't care.

ebola

 

[kandytime]

I think that this world is created by a rational human mind piecing together the chaos of senses we encounter in our daily lives. If a philosopher asks you for example, how do you know those roses are there? Typically somebody would say something along the lines of, you must understand that I can feel it and smell the fragrance. Or How do you know it's raining; the reply may be, well go outside and see for yourself.

People view everything on this planet in a subjective manner, because not everyone perceives the same object in the same way. This does not mean that an objective world is false though. Coupled with rationalism and the physical existence of an object, a person can combine past experiences and sensory methods to relate an object to the senses that it triggers. This effectively gives people the ability to realize where they are and have a basic idea of what is going on, despite the fact that it may be different from what the person next to you is experiencing in a similar situation.

 

[Heuristic]

mmm...While valuable, I believe this take incomplete. What this computer will be (or the ability to pick out a computer as a discrete object) depends on your accrual of cultural dispositions related to use of computers. Had you been socialized otherwise, you might be apt to parse the sensory blur of the room into other discrete chunks, attaching different meanings to these chunks upon such 'analysis', possibly not involving an item that we'd call "a computer".

I'm beginning to get hints of Quine's "temporal slices" of rabbit. James once wrote something about this, albeit much more eloquently than Quine, and I wish now that I had a copy of his work handy.

But I think there are limits to this metaphor. First, while it's certainly true that my categorization of something as a computer depends on social reality, my categorization of it as a solid object, as such, does not. Second, while we might attempt to go further, and say that with different senses, the very concept of solidity might not make any sense, I cannot imagine what these different senses would be; and I have never seen or heard of any evidence that any creature possesses such senses.

In other words, leaving aside the valid point that socialization and use does determine to a certain extent our categories, there is nonetheless a layer with which social categorization must begin. And while I can express grammatically the possibility that there is a layer even beneath THAT, which amounts to Kant's transcendental reality, I'm not sure there's anything to the concept.

I think that the fact that the computer cannot be thought away without a drastic overhaul of the subject's assumptions expresses the computer's 'physicality'. One could say that there's something about the human organism's environment 'in itself' that asserts itself via the computer, as aspects of the computer that persist despite whatever the subject does besides physically manipulating the computer.

Agreed.

For me...well, I want to know desperately how things are 'in themselves'. In reckoning with how one does this...and our failure to secure such knowledge, I've arrived at my epistemology and ontology.

So what does 'in itself' mean? This would be how something 'is', apart from the investigator's attempt to know it. This may be approached either through highlighting what sorts of qualities the knowing subject imparts on her object...or by explaining the processes through which the subject can gain access to aspects of how things are 'in themselves'.

Does much hinge on it practically? Not really, but I don't care.

ebola

Fair enough, though there might be something to asking why you desperately wish to know this.

 

[kandytime]

of course the world is not objective! What a silly thing to think (equally silly is to think that it is subjective). This is a category mistake, a misapplication of objective/subjective continuum.

Objective and subjective apply to views that minds have toward the world. These views fall on a continuum (or within a multi-dimensional space if you'd like it more technical). A more objective view on a situation would entail bracketing one's personal idiosyncratic desires/preferences. The more subjective view would be to appeal to one's preferences despite knowing that these preferences are in conflict with other people's preferences. This idea is not original, many philosophers have discussed it: Rawls (his original position 'veil of ignorance' argument/thought experiment), Nagel (his concept of the 'greater mind'), et al.

Yeah, I like the philosophy of Immanuel Kant's view of reality; a more detailed analysis of the idea Berkeley had of our reality. Although I wouldn't say that being a realist and non-subjective isn't "silly", as they seem to make a valid argument too.

 

[L2R]

just listened to a uni lecture "the associated self" by assoc. prof. Bev Thiele who covers objectivity making strong claims that it doesn't exist, and that what we know as objectivity has been created by political process.
this is a rather interesting point, imo, and confirms some of the stuff already in this thread. it makes sense that agreement on common experiences are susceptible to the influence of power struggles.

for example, she is a feminist and her statement was "objectivity is a name given to male subjectivity".