Objectivity is our security blanket

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Objectivity is our security blanket

My second son, Mike, was a blanket boy. He spent a good part of his first 24 months with a thumb in his mouth and a blanket in his arms. If we left the house with Mike we checked and doubled check that we did not leave his ‘blanky’ behind. After 24 months the blanky was nothing more than a scrap of shredded cloth. He would not accept a substitute.

Absolute truth is our blanky. DickandJane become very anxious when their security blanket, i.e. absolute truth, is not in hand.

Objectivism is a fundamentalist philosophy. It believes that reality is something external to the brain and that the task of the brain is to gain knowledge about this external reality.

Right/wrong and true/false are considered to be objective criteria rather than subjective criteria. Objectivism posits perfect knowledge and assumes such knowledge is obtainable. I think that such views have been discredited.

The myth of objectivism says that: the world is made up of objects that have properties completely independent of those who perceive them; we understand our world through our consciously constructed concepts and categories; “we can say things that are objectively, absolutely true, and unconditionally true and false about it…we cannot rely upon subjective judgments…science can ultimately give a correct, definitive, and general account of reality”; words have fixed meaning that can describe reality correctly. To be objective is to be rational.

The myth of subjectivism informs us that our senses and intuition is our best guide. Feelings are the most important elements of our lives. Aesthetic sensibilities and moral practices are all totally subjective. “Art and poetry transcend rationality and objectivity and put us in touch with more important reality of our feelings and intuitions. We gain this awareness through imagination rather than reason…Science is of no use when it comes to the most important things in our lives.”

The new paradigm of cognitive science rejects both objectivism and subjectivism. I believe in this new cognitive science, which theorizes that objectivity is a shared subjectivity.

Objectivity is shared subjectivity. Objective truth is a misnomer; there is only shared truth/false and there is only shared good/bad.

Objectivity is shared subjectivity. We create reality in our brain. If you and I create the same reality then we have a shared subjectivity. We cannot know the thing-in-itself, as Kant informs us and is easily recognized if we focus upon it.

I would say that reality comes in two forms; the thing-in-itself is the reality that Kant informs us that we cannot know and then we have the reality that our brain creates. This reality we create is aided by the senses and is congruent with how our body interacts with the thing-in-itself. If the interaction between the thing-in-itself and the creature’s embodied mind is too far off–the creature quickly becomes toast.

Most people are objectivist in many ways; do you still comfort yourself with blanky?

Quotes from “Moral Imagination” Mark Johnson (coauthor of “Philosophy in the Flesh”)

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Human beings are social animals, primarily concerned with our personal and selfish desires/wants/needs… However, we must acknowledge that we are inter-dependent, because we are social.

The most accurate picture of reality that we have is that we live in a shared-subjective world. Subjectivity is a myth that has been disproved. Objectivity is a myth that has been disproved. What is most ‘real’ is our subjective being that acknowledges our inter-dependence with other subjective beings (i.e. all living and non-living entities).

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the thing is , is that , it is reality which governs our thinking . in the end .

and the only way to find or discover true reality is by being objective .

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Subjective truth is a cop out.

If what you say is ‘true’ the statement that “truth is relative to the subject/perceiver” is an objective truth. No matter how you argue, you can’t abandon objective truth. By the very act of speaking you imply objective truth. If not, your words are completely meaningless, and you are trying to convince me to adopt your view on no criteria, hence a turning away from reality.

I think the problem with theories of truth comes with the inadequacy of language to correctly describe reality. Reality’s complexities make us realize language’s limitations.

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The embodied mind holds that the same neural structures that make it possible for us to move about and to perceive are also part of the structures that make it possible for us to think rationally. Our much touted reasoning capability is an extension of the ability of all creatures to move about, to perceive, and to thereby survive.

This paradigm of cognitive science embraces a realist view but rejects the manner in which a priori philosophy has constructed their realist view.

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A finite creature isn’t infinite to know objective infinite.

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I would think that there is a very real difference between identifying objectivity in truth/false vs good/bad situations. There is a very real truth that does not seem to be subjective. Similar to:

there could be no words said unless there was an existing speaker to speak. It is like Descartes’ reductio, where if we can think, we cannot be deceived in that we are able to think. This seems objective.

I agree that good/bad or right/wrong is purely shared subjectivity. These things are a construct of society and as such are agreed upon by the majority of the patrons of that society.

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Jon…

“Most postmodern philosophers and other post-Kuhnian philosophers of science deny that cognitive science can have “truths” that could provide a basis for criticizing a particular philosophical view…they argue, cognitive science can neither function as the basis for a critique of existing philosophy nor provide the basis for an alternative philosophical theory.”

There are at least two versions of cognitive science: a first-generation that has assumed most of the fundamental tenets of traditional Anglo-American philosophy and a second generation that has called most of these same tenets into question on empirical grounds.

First generation cognitive science evolved in the 1950s and 60s centering their concern about symbol-manipulation, which accepted without question the disembodied nature of reason. The mind from this functionalist view was seen to resemble a computer program that could run on any appropriate hardware. “This was philosophy without flesh…This was a modern version of Cartesian view that reason is transcendental, universal, disembodied, and literal.”

The realist views of first generation cognitive science are based upon specific a priori commitments such as:

• Functionalism: The mind is disembodied, meaning that mind can be studied without concern about the brain and the rest of the body.
• Symbol Manipulation: Cognition operates upon symbols without regard to the meaning of those symbols.
• Representational theory of meaning: Mental representations are merely symbolic without inherent meaning
• Classical categories: Categories are consciously defined by that which is necessary and sufficient.
• Literal Meaning: All meaning is literal without imaginative or metaphorical content.

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science)is committed to what might be called ESR (Embodied Scientific Realism).

Disembodied scientific realism is committed to at least three scientific claims: 1) There is a world independent of our perception and comprehension of it, 2) We can have a stable knowledge of this independent world, and 3) That our manner and structure of thinking are unaffected by our bodies but is determined completely by the external world and that these external truths are absolute.

ESR accepts (1) and (2) while rejecting (3). “At the heart of embodied realism is our physical engagement with an environment in an ongoing series of interactions…Our embodied system of basic level concepts has evolved to “fit” the ways in which our bodies, over the course of evolution, have been coupled to our environment, partly for the sake of survival, partly for the sake of human flourishing beyond mere survival, and partly by chance…The basic level of conceptualization is the cornerstone of embodied realism.”

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In pure simplicity:

Everything can be used as a blanket!

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coberst,

For the first two claims of Disembodied Scientific Realism, I do not understand how we could have a stable understanding of a world independent of our perception and comprehension. Even taking some observation, phenomena or event that we do not understand, or cannot explain, merely by having the observation brings it into the realm of our perception. This can be expanded in that even if some phenomena happens billions of light-years away, as soon as we notice anything in which we will be able to analyze it, or detect its’ influence on us, or postulate about it or even attach a name to it would immediately bring it into our perception.

There could be a world that exists independent of our perceptions and comprehension (#1), yet in order for us to be able to have any knowledge of this world (#2) would necessarily bring it into our perception and thereby deny #1.

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Wow, I really wonder how many people on this site have read or taken a course on bayesian probability, or heuristics, but more importantly just a course on statistical probability. Everyone talks on this site as if its just a nusiance to be swept under the rug, no one ever takes it into consideration when shitting all over ob jectivity and the scientific process.

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really

so the infinity of the existence of objects or substance or energy is not obvious to any creature ? objectively ?

it should be
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I would say that we have no knowledge of anything that is not perceived or constructed from that which has been perceived.