The Foundation of Objectivism - why Objectivism is valid.

Your above views on ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’ is too shallow and narrow.

‘Subjectivity’ from the philosophical perspective is not restricted to the ‘imagination’ and ‘perception’ by the subject, but extent far beyond these elements into elements a priori [i.e. beyond ordinary experiences, a posteriori] that enable an emergence [not definition] of an interdependent reality.
What is primary and most realistic is the subject, i.e. your own self and other selves [in induction and inferences]. Surely you are not going to deny you are not real?

As for objects [not subject] the most the subject can do is to ASSUME the objects exist “out there” as an absolute independent external object.
There is no way the subject can extricate itself from reality to cognize an absolutely independent external object. No God’s Eye View is possible.
Note the limitation of the Correspondence Theory of Truth and Meno’s Paradox and counters to posit the tenability of an the existence of an absolutely independent external object from the subject.

Your above views on ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’ is too shallow and narrow. Suggest you explore more deeper and wider into the subject. Don’t try to be a smart alec in condemning others when you know so little on this issue. Read at least 100 books (a papers] on the issue.

Instead of posturing, what you should be doing is defining the concept of subject and then demonstrating its relevance to the topic.

What is subject? Is it a physical body capable of perceiving that is perceiving another physical body? Or is it something like Schopenhauer’s pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of perception?

Where does it exist? Does is it exist in the material or in the spiritual?

Then, you have to define the term subjective. What does this term describe and in what manner?

Are we speaking of phenomena and their cause? Does subjective refer to phenomena that is caused by subject? And then, by what part of the subject?

And what type of phenomena are we speaking? Are we speaking of some specific phenomena, such as observations, or any phenomena in general?

You see, the point of this thread is that observations can be objective because there are causes outside of the subject’s desire.

When I look at an apple, I am not necessarily seeing what I have created on the basis of my desire. Indeed, I am not necessarily seeing what my body has created. I am simply seeing what causes other than these ones have created.

You need to ask yourself what you’re doing in this thread.

=D>

You also appear to think that Meno’s Paradox is somehow relevant to this topic. You have to substantiate this point.

I suppose that you think that Meno’s Paradox shows that observation of the external world is either unnecessary, because if you know what you want to observe then you have no reason to observe it, or impossible, because if you don’t know what you want to observe then you cannot observe it.

But Meno’s Paradox is a language game.

The problem is that Meno is confusing the frame of observation (which determines which segment of reality is observed) with its content (which determines what is observed.)

I can know the frame of observation (e.g. I want to see whether it is raining or not) without knowing its content (e.g. it is raining.)

Meno never makes it explicit that his 1st proposition refers to the content of observations and his 2nd proposition to the frame of observations. Instead, he makes it look as if the two propositions refer to the one and the same phenomenon, namely, observations in general, which is what creates the appearance of paradox.

Kindergartenish, yes, but only because you still have to reach that level.

Yes, but you never really seem willing to examine and to explore the extent to which “the foundation of objectivism” is relevant when different folks embracing conflicting value judgments insist that behaving in different/conflicting ways is more conducive to promoting survival.

When, in other words, you are not cutting off your own head but are advocating the right of a pregnant woman to shred the life of her unborn baby. Or are advocating the right of the state to execute prisoners. Or are advocating the right of a nation to pursue a particular war by engaging particular drone strikes. Or are advocating the right of rational men and women to consume the flesh of animals.

Clearly, regarding hundreds of issues that we are all familiar with, different folks insist that behaving in different ways best promotes the survival of any particular community.

Then what? That we all go to KT and choose to be in sync with whatever Satyr argues regarding issues like this…and gender roles and race and everything else?

Like you do?

Here you merely make the assumption that the manner in which you construe living “naturally” is in sync with…with what? With the manner in which all rational men and women are obligated to think and feel and behave?

Or, as those objectivists who eschew “universal truths” here seem to suggest, each individual is permitted his or her own rendition of it.

But then what happens when these renditions come into conflict? How are the “rules of behaviors” or “the laws of the land” not then merely political prejudices?

Indeed, regarding even a single issue, note where you have effectively dealt with the manner in which I construe these conflicts as embodiments of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Only those of the American Natives who survived. 10 millions of the American Natives were killed by US "citizens“.

Yes, but your 1st group example is also an unrealistic one, because in every group there are always some who live at the cost of the others, and this fact is called the tragedy of the commons (compare my post in your other thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=190074&p=2596404#p2596404.

In the above post one will note a picture of Michelle Obama.

But is that reality?
To see what is reality, turn your head or the screen 180 degrees to look at the image from another perspective.

What has this experiment to do with the thread?

Nothing?

The real picture in on the right, but the normal human mind will default to a normal face or that of Michelle Obama.

Click Here to get a better view.

What are the philosophical implications and relevance to this thread.

For a start the defaulted face of Michelle Face from the first image is objective because 100% of normal human being will report the ‘same’ face. No matter how one repeat the observation [normal] they will observe the same evidence, i.e. a typical woman face.
That is objectivity in the basis sense.

I never said that a phenomenon must be aware of its own ability to perceive in order to be considered a subject.

What I said is that in order for a phenomenon to be considered a subject it must:

1. possess the ability to perceive
2. actively perceive another phenomenon

Because the second condition implies the first condition, it is enough to say “subject is a role that can be applied to any phenomenon that is actively perceiving another phenomenon”.

Subjects cannot exist outside of the subject-object relation.

I am not sure what you’re saying. If you’re saying that the concept of subject is defined by what the phenomenon is and not by what the phenomenon does, you are wrong. For a phenomenon to be considered a subject it must be doing something very specific: it must be perceiving another phenomenon.

You are defining the term by relating it to its opposite term that you never defined. That’s not a good way to define a word.

I insist that subjective should be defined as “caused by the subject”.

Phenomenon is a generic term that refers to anything that exists (= to anything that has the potential to be perceived.)

Interpretations, for example, are phenomena too. They are so-called “mental objects”.

Thus, phenomena can be objective, if caused by causes other than the subject, or subjective, if caused by the subject.

If by objective we mean created by the object rather than by the subject, then observations can be objective if they are created by the object.

Like Meno, you appear to be confusing the frame of observation (what kind and what quantity of reality we are observing) with the content of observation (what we are observing.)

The frame of observation can be, and should be, determined by the subject but that does not mean that the content of observation is necessarily determined by the subject.

Linguistically said a predicate is what the subject does (in your example: seeing and interpreting), either without or with a connection to an object (in your example: with). Concerning the interpretation of any object, a subject is relatively free. But this does not prove or disprove that the subject dominates the object or that there is an object at all.

The problem of the subject/object dualism is not solvable.

What makes you think that retaliation is about not recognising your weaknesses?
Not retaliating is for most the easy way. Telling yourself that you will not retaliate because of reasons is the easy way.
Retaliation comes usually with costs. Telling yourself that you take the ‘high road’ and do not retaliate comes usually with no immediate costs, it defers them or tries to put them on the shoulders of others.

Blame, blame, B-lame…
What do you think blaming is?
Can’t get an answer out of you. So here is, again, what I think about blaming.
When you blame someone then you hold him responsible and demand/expect some form of compensation, either from the individual or from society in general. Compensation can take the form of goods and services or social status and so forth.
So why is it bad?
Why is BLM bad?
It isn’t bad, it’s only bad if you don’t approve of it and then you try to shame the blamers, but only when you don’t approve of them.
And now you can say - “Oh no, I think all blaming is bad or whatever.” And then I will be thinking - “Sure, yet I see patterns when and who you like to shame for their ‘blaming’.”
Very common.

Don’t blame the oil industries for global warming, think about what you can do to improve life for yourself, on your own! Right?

As for blaming, it’s not blaming if you don’t expect a compensation in some form.
That’s also why I think blaming is a bad idea if you expect a compensation but the other person is not willing to compensate you, and neither is society as a proxy. Because then you are wasting your time and effort with a strategy that’s not working for you in this case.

In short, retaliation is not about blaming, not necessarily anyway.
And even if it were included in this case, so what?

As for your flu desire.
Go ahead and do something good for society and catch those viruses. If you are lucky, you can also spread them among your friends and they can keep on spreading it. And then maybe we get some additional beneficial DNA circulating in people. While you are at it, you can also promote miscegenation to get those potentially beneficial DNA features into circulation. The surrender to chaos as a promoter for growth, lol.

You know, I was thinking that life is growing by trying to resist the chaos, that it’s this desire to resist, to survive the increasing chaos which is promoting its (potential) growth.
But looks like I got this backwards. I thought the organism is trying to resist the chaos and in this way the inevitable change is directed, channeled towards that which is more capable of sustaining itself, more resisting against chaos. You know, like how a bacteria has a very low life-expectancy while a more complex organism has a much longer half-life which is achieved through mechanisms of constant renewal.
Renewal as in trying to make a copy of what already has proven to be successful, like the cells in your body and not trying to randomise it up like a cancer cell. (Which reminds me of the value-oncologists - finding new ‘values’ every day).

Listen, mutations a.k.a. change happens all the time and very much most of it is not beneficial but deadly. Life didn’t get where it is now by pursuing it but by resisting it. Yes, things change but that is easy. EASY, no effort. What is an effort for your body is to renew itself, trying to make very accurate copies of your dying cells and replacing them. Likewise does it work over generations. That’s what life is - Trying to resist the chaos.

So which mutations continue to exist? Right, those which are improving the organism’s chances of survival, of resisting chaos, of resisting change.

You know what a parasite prefers? A weakened host.
Not dead but weak. That’s in its nature. And if the host were the last host and the parasite would die when the host dies, it would still try to weaken the host because that is in its nature.

You promote the weakening of people and promise them a reward in the future which will never come.
Is it heaven? Is it glorious progressive future society? Is it muh adapted powerful future humanity?

Retaliating is easy too, everyone is eager to retaliate, and that’s what makes one easy to manipulate as well. The urge to retaliate without thinking. How do you think many civil wars started? And who benefited from it?

Retaliation, without thinking it through first, can be a foolish move. For most it’s purely reactionary move, like a bull running after a red cape.

Perhaps a closer look at evolution is in order. Most life forms mutate and change (evolve) in their quest to survive. Granted, the environment now is mostly man made, but the evolutionary principle of survival still works, and all lives are subjected to it. If a man creates a biological weapon capable to eradicating all human life would you not, as a life form trying to survive, want to adapt to it. The it I’m referring to could be anything, and the survival strategy has to be adopted to it. Consciously, you don’t have to, but other life forms will automatically adopt to it. That’s how evolution works anyway.

Or adapting to it. It’s not just either or, there are compromises made too. Look at penguins, they survived, but they had to give up flight in return.

I’m seeing that in your mind, you’re replicating the exact same copy over and over again. It’s like trying to survive like a crocodile, or a cockroach; remaining unchanged in millions of years. In evolution, you have to make changes too, it is part of survival game. And it’s not always how you’d imagine it to be, because when it comes to evolution, anything goes. That’s why there is such diversity of life forms on this planet.

But the parasite does not always kill the host, and in turn, the host may develop immunity to the parasite. It is even argued that those species which have developed immunity to parasites also developed secondary sex characteristics for which they were selected. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite-stress_theory

In all honesty, you cannot say that. You’re only seeing it in terms of what you are right now, which you want to preserve in a perpetual state as is, because, as you say, it resists, chaos - change. But you cannot resist it forever because it doesn’t stop and wait. Okay, you can chose to, but there is a good chance that in a perfect copy state which you seem to support, you will go out in the way of dodos. And life will continue to go on - as it always has.

It is not an assumption, it is a fact.

It is necessary to clarify what it means for an object to “exist out there”. To do so, I will break the phrase up in individual words: exist, out and there.

What does it mean for something to “exist”? It means that it has the potential to be perceived. Something exists insofar it can be perceived. It need not be perceived in order to exist, but it must have the potential to be perceived.

Example: a bottle of wine sitting on a table exists regardless of whether there is anyone in the room perceiving it or not. It does so because if anyone wanted to perceive it he could do so by entering the room and then looking at the bottle with his own eyes.

What does it mean for something to exist “there”? It means that it can only be perceived by using specific approach.

Example: a bottle of wine sitting on a table can only be perceived by placing oneself in the correct position: inside the room where the bottle is and by looking in the direction of the location od bottle.

What does it mean for something to exist “out” there? It means that it can be perceived using an approach that is not included in the given set of approaches. “In” and “out” are words that tell us whether an element is included within a given set or not.

Example: if our set of positions contains every position on Mars, then our bottle of wine, which is somewhere on Earth, is not included in it, and therefore, it exists out there and not in there.

In our case, the given set is what is termed “subject”. What does it contain? Every brain in the universe, right?

In such a case, an object that “exists out there” would be an object that can be perceived but not by perceiving brains.

How does one perceive a brain?

There are two ways: using your external senses, by looking at someone’s physical configuration of the brain, or using your internal senses, by tuning into your own body (e.g. recalling a memory, focusing on a bodily feeling, etc.)

None of these approaches would work.

Now, when you say that no object exists out there, what you’re saying is that no object can be perceived using a specific set of approaches. These are any approaches that are not included in the given set.

Again, this set is identified by the word “subject”. This is why I asked you to define the word: so that we can know which approaches can help us perceive reality.

Given my definition of the term “subject”, your claim would mean that no object can be perceived without perceiving a brain, which is demonstrably false.

A bottle of wine sitting on my table is not, and cannot be, perceived by perceiving my own brain, using my internal senses, or someone else’s brain, using my external senses.

It is a fact that objects “exist there” and it is a fact that some objects “exist out there”.

What you missed out is “absolute independent external object.”
An object out there do not exists absolutely independent by-itself or in-itself.
An object out there ONLY exists interdependently-with-ourselves.

I do not deny there are objects that “exist out there” in the common and conventional sense. But in a more realistic perspective that is only an assumption due to our humans condition.

I introduces an experiment for reflection on a higher perspective of reality in the earlier posts. I don’t think you bothered nor understood [not necessary agree with] what it is about.

Take a look at the following gif image. Wait 10 seconds for the image to turn.

The vertical ugly-face image on the right is the correct picture, but when turned upside down one see a totally different picture. [this only happen with faces but not other objects].
In this case the human brain made an assumption of what should be real for its own purpose.
Note the moment the ugly face-face is turned upside down a totally different face-image emerges spontaneously and instantly!

My argument is when you see “a bottle of wine sitting on a table out there” the same process is taking place, i.e. your brain made a spontaneous and instantly image and reality that enable you to perceive and feel that bottle of wine as real.

The point with the above handsome-ugly face example is easy to explain by showing the images and by turning them back and forth. Now if the person or the whole of mankind has only been exposed to an upside down ugly face image [object], all normal humans will see an emergent handsome face and accept the perceived face [object] as real. Even if it is in 3-D, they will touch it as really a normal face [object].

In the case of a real “a bottle of wine sitting on a table out there,” it is not an experiment and no comparison can be made that is why the majority of humans will accept the common sense and coventional reality as the the default real.
You can use all sorts of definitions for ‘exists’ ‘object’ ‘subject’ but all you are doing is self-satisficing within your specific box. To think outside the conventional box into a more-real-reality, one has to take into account the term ‘absolutely absolute’ ‘independent’ and many other necessary variables.

If want to take any reality to its extreme note Wittgenstein’s
‘Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent’

It is not easy to understand and realize the parallel between the normal-ugly face experiment and what is going on within humanity and conventional reality. There is a lot of thinking and reflection to do.
I suggested you read at least 100 [books and papers] from both sides the subject. This is not a posturing but an imperative necessity for philosophy-proper even if you are a genius and there is no compromise [else half-baked].

So,
From a higher perspective of realty, as for objects [not subject] “out there” the most the subject can do is to ASSUME [in the conventional perspective] the objects exist “out there” as an absolutely independent external objects.

A dog unwittingly chasing his own tail.

Your are merely reinforcing and protecting your own stupidity [philosophical].
Give me your arguments.

When faced with a higher presentation of reality your brain intercepts a cognitive dissonance shivers and pains, that is why you are so defensive. This is what happens with most SOME theists and SOME [especially some Muslims] will kill to defend their faith.