I’m getting the impression, in the presence of Gib’s explanations, that one can be absolutely open and unguarded without any defenses. This sense of feeling is not a self-protected one, but an objective undirected experience. One can ride on it, swim in it, play with it, or waddle in it without any purpose. Is that bad?
You could - I suppose - in a crude manner of speaking.
To what?
I’m not sure what you mean by this. What is this “sense” you’re talking about?
expressions of life
the naked throb of life energy that cannot be defined.
The actions of life are outside the field of thought. Life is simply a process of stimulus and response; and stimulus and response are one unitary movement. But it is thought that separates them and says that this is the response and that is the stimulus. Any action that is born out of thinking is divisive in its nature because thought is a self-perpetuating mechanism. Any action that is outside the field of thought is one continuous movement. It is one with the movement of life. It is that flow of things that I am referring to. You don’t even have to paddle out of the mainstream on to the banks there. But there’s a fear of sinking in it.
Are we done here, then?
but if you’re an objectivist, doesn’t that mean you believe value (good, bad, right, wrong, pleasure, pain) are out there, in the world, objective, as opposed to in the mind, subjective. after all, feelings are subjective, are they not? the cause of pain and pleasure may be rooted in things, but the effect isn’t. to say something is objective, is akin to saying something is a property of the physical world, as opposed to the psychic world, at least, that’s my take on the matter. hedonists don’t believe an apple is good, or is pleasurable, in the way an objectivist does. they don’t believe that good or pleasure is a property of the apple. the apple may cause someone to feel pleasure, but the pleasure is totally within the subject, it is not part of the physical, objective world. i always thought of hedonism and utilitarianism as subjective and non cognitive moral philosophies. hedonism, relativism, subjectivism, tend to go hand in hand. where as objectivism, absolutism and natural law or moral rationalism tend to go hand in hand. no?
Pain and pleasure both produce equally valid sensations. The body receives them impartially detached from what thought induces. Thought determines what is pursued and what is avoided. I don’t think Gib was portraying it that way, but from reading his posts it dawned on me that there is nothing that can stop life from responding to stimuli. That’s an absolute. But when thought comes in (notwithstanding how it is influenced) and becomes involved with capturing these sensations and translating them according to painful/pleasurable, good/bad experiences, it then becomes subjective in a way. In a way because of the fact (absoluteness) that there is no way of stopping the memory neurons from bringing knowledge, knowledge of past happenings into play.
The deal is, thought uses the mechanism of memory/knowledge to perpetuate itself, to create a continuity and permanence for itself. Thought can have a difficult time knowing anything as it is. It distorts what is given according to its predilections as to what is pleasant and what is unpleasant, pursues what it sees as pleasant, avoids what it sees as unpleasant in experience, and perpetuates itself in a process of seeking.
Lucis Trust
Which post(s) are you responding to?
Remster
remster
i am just responding to the original post.
Thought so. I know it’s a bore, but if you want to join in the discussion (which I presume is the point of your commenting), you’ll need to read through the whole thread to see how it’s developed.
remster
maybe i should just make my own thread.
Oh, then I was mistaken.
Sorry for not responding earlier. I’ve been traveling.
Not unless you have something more to add. Thanks for your insights.
I suppose the word ‘objective’ could connote that, but I take it to connote more a proposition’s being true independently of one’s opinion (or feelings, or perspectives, or state of mind generally) on its truth. For example, that 2 + 2 = 4 is objective as far as I’m concerned, though it doesn’t refer to anything out in the world per se.
Sure, on a certain reading. But that’s what this discussion comes down to. I seem to be using a subtly different rendering of the terms ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ (or even ‘relative’ and ‘absolute’) compared to others in this thread (and I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong, or whether the definitions of these terms is just that flexible).
Hhm. I’m glad it did something for you. 
It also makes it relative. No one individual is going to assess (cognitively) his sensations of pain and pleasure quite as precisely as another. No one individual is going to bring the same memories and knowledge to bear on those sensations and his assessment of them.
No doubt these distortions come about by the fact that thought is so self-perpetuating. It has to change if it is to persist and survive. Of course, it must periodicly return to its own prior states (i.e. it must reaffirm the things it believes in, revive its memories, experience familiar emotions, etc.) in order to have something we can call a “personal identity” - otherwise, what exactly would it be that’s self-perpetuating? - but nonetheless, such an identity can’t be static - that is, unchanging - for in order to survive (whether that’s the survival of thought, an organism, a corporation, etc.) it must be constantly adapting, constantly evolving, constantly on the move - and thus whatever experiences it finds itself making cognitive appraisals or assessments about at a given moment, those appraisals and assessments are subject to change, growth, and (as you pointed out) distortion.
gib
Yeah, your right, I suppose there’s more than one way you can use the word objective, or any of those other words we’ve been discussing (relativism, subjectivism, etc). They’re complex and ambiguous words and concepts.
In order to maintain the status quo and the purpose behind which it was made, a sort of objectivity is once again on display. Does it seem as though we are caught up in a cultural box with the ubiquitous kibitzer (which is the established kosher eye of a mindset that discourages dissent) standing over us limiting our subjectivity in light of society’s more rigid allowances comprising what makes up an acceptable objective reality? In other words, one feels his experiences will undergo the scrutiny of that which created him to abide by. When one is fully adapted to a structured state of affairs, even his pleasures and happiness become more less relative to the factors that influence how emotions are acquired. Assessments and judgments get filtered , guided by a planned system instilled in thought to take on the reflection of what everyone else is conforming to. But then we could go on to say that even the arbitrarily derived doctrines of society are relative within the also relative existence of justice, truth, reality and so on.
Well, I’ve benefited from this too. For some reason it had never occurred to me before to analyse ‘good’ and ‘right’ subjectivistically without specifying within the analyses whose mental states were in question (mine, ours, everyone’s, etc.). It seems so obvious now.
By the way, you might be interested in this:
plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral … alism/#Sub
It covers many of the difficulties in defining ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’, including some of those that we’ve discussed.