Subjective 9 Objective 6
Subj 9
Obj 1
I don’t say the objective can only be subjective or the substance that makes it. The objective reality may possibly exist. I’m agnostic about it. Very similar to the atheist versus agnostic approach to God. I can’t abide wth an atheist who thinks God “can’t” exist. Just seems a bit extreme. Similarly I can’t bring myself to believe with certainty that objective reality isn’t a thing. There’s always that possibility.
Objective reality does exist but all interpretations of it are subjective even if they are fundamentally objective in them selves. So for example the laws
of physics are written in mathematical language which is a primarily deductive discipline but they are also an attempt by us to understand the Universe
The need to satisfy our curiosity is entirely subjective or emotional but the methods we use are fundamentally objective or logical [ science and math ]
If what you are asking here is, on a scale of one to ten, where are you subjectively and objectively, I would probably have to say more subjective thinking BUT hmmm I cannot even be sure about that. I am trying to learn to be more objective about things even though at times I do not like where that brings me… but still…
Wouldn’t you say though that depending on what the subject matter is and how we hold something in particular as being important and having meaning, we may fluctuate from the one to the other; because it is so important we may be more objective about it wanting to come to the truth of things, rather than just believing what we want because we need to - if that made sense. It might sound a bit paradoxical but…
So, who knows? Perhaps at times I am at an even keel but strive to lean more toward the objective. lol
That is some awesome sky there.
X says: “I am more subjective than objective”.
By saying this, is X really “more subjective than objective”?
Y says: “I am more objective than subjective”.
By saying this, is Y really “more objective than subjective”?
And does “really” here really mean “objectively”?
Isn’t objectivity most similar to reality?
Also, what if X and Y are liars?
Would that not be similar to the Liar Paradox of the Cretan Epimenides who maintains that all Cretans lie.
[tab]Greetings from Spain:
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So the dilemma between an objective and a subjective stance is nothing else but a prejudicial opinion, whether it be consciously derived, or stemming from sources subjectified from by now unknown sources.
All opinion is derisively ambiguous and largely based on hearsay, and its simplified to , reduced phenomenal certainty. It is through such, that the subjective and the objective create an apparent certainty. In fact, it.can be argued that there is no real substantive subjectivity, but rather, only degrees of objective truth.
The less objective truth-values, that subjectivity is precursor
to, the more obvious the lack of clarity which such subjectivity becomes
But that does not minimise the apparent subjectivity from asserting its validity.
Arminius wrote:
No, not necessarily though in knowing himself, he just may be more subjective than objective.
I think that it may just come down to the source. If we know that the source is pretty truthful and capable of seeing himself as he IS, then we may take what he says as truth.
Same as above ~ with the opposite side of the coin.
Again, not necessarily. It just places emphasis on what is being said.
Hmmm that is a good question. I would say ONLY if someone IS looking at something objectively, without pre-judgment or personal opinion, searching for the facts, having “actual” knowledge of something.
Copernicus, among other scientists who turned out to be wrong, probably thought that he was being objective in his saying, his reality, that the Earth was the center of the Universe.
Was he being objective? I would suggest that he was or trying to be, barring unconscious intentions, but that
“reality” came to be disproved. But then again, he could only work with the knowledge for that time and there were NOT any telescopes available at that time.
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Wouldn’t it have to be known that they are liars, that they always lie? If that is the case, then one could hold the opposite as true. But it cannot be that simple. If they are liars, how could one know anything which they say? Maybe I am wrong here.
No you are not wrong or right Arc, the objective criteria of some value of fact may be not factual, but only contingent on opinion.
In other words, an opinion need not be based on an immutable fact, but in a concurrency of opinion of authorities in the field. It never is, it always starts with a theoretical basis.
Why is your self-evaluation with regard to objectivity “1” then?
Do you mean that objectivity does not exist?
In this context, words like “value”, “opinion”, “authoritiy” stand for subjectivity, the dictatorship of subjectivity, the negation of objectivity.
No, objectivity is a concept with which it is possible to talk in terms that delineate subjective ideas. But as You and Arc point out, liers can try to convince others and themselves of their supposed objectivism, but what if this supposed objectivism is held in suspense only until their honesty can be sustained.
In this sense, objectivism , or holding to an objective belief, is contingent upon a belief for supposing honesty. Is there other ways to hold to objective truth and belief, other than in the way of believing in it? So belief and objectivity are contingent via reasonable assessment and consensus by repetition
It isn’t that pure objectivity doesent exist, but that assumptions like the solar system is in the middle of the universe was objective from the ancient Greeks to the men of the Rennessaince. The objectivity of Neeton’s Second Law was objective until the quantum -relativity theory became objective.
Here an interesting turn of events turned everything around. The ‘Object’ of the objective, became no mere reified linguistic meaning, but the objective/s of science have diluted the object be increasing awareness of the porousness of the objects, into smaller and smaller particles.
The term ‘objective’, has remained meaningful, however, more in terms of meaning which used the term to mean ‘plan of action’ apart from the traditional meaning: inferring a more credible state (of mind, or of matter).
Hence degrees of subjectivity correspond to complimentary but inverse degrees of objectivity. However both concepts comprise of approximations of each other , in inverse relation, heeding the fact, that they share a common source. They do exist, but no longer as nominal concepts, but as opinions and belief systems, strengthened by repetitive and commonly held instances of usage, while weakening as they loose they devolve into less repetitive and commonly held usage.
Strictly speaking, there are no absolutely objective or subjective ideas , states of mind, only assuredly so, entangled in various channels of points of view.
Incidentally, even if this poll is fairly new, it’s interesting to note, the symmetry of 1/3-1/3-1/3 between 12 people, with 4-4-4 votes each. If anything can be said at this stage, is, that there is a uniformity in meaning between objective/don’t know/subjective matrix, and even if embryonic in its reach, the grasp represents a fairly predictable start of further possible reach.
May the poll at this point come to this kind of interpretation? I am not trying to pad my argument with this kind of reasoning, but possibly, more than a patent evaluation may be the object(objective) of the poll.
No. That would be again: Subjectivity.
Objectivity is letting the objects “talk”, “speak” (to the subject). Epistemologically, the subject should not be involved, at least in the most possible sense.
Objectivity has also and certainly or likely even basically to do with belief, yes, but just not only. You can try to let the other things (objects) “talk” or “speak” to you; you can try to let them be phenomenons which have nothing to do with you; you can try to observe them by excluding yourself as a subject. And all this can be learned, trained, exercised - more and more -, so that you can become more and more an objectivist, at least in the sense of an objective listener, an objective phenomenolgist, an objective observer, an objective monk, an objective scientist … and so on.
No. A consensus is not really necessary. You can be objective without others, without agreement or consensus. But you have to take in account that others or some of them will indeed disagree. If an Occidental monk, for example, had always considered the consensus, he would have never become the first scientist. And if scientists had always considered the consensus, they would have never had success in the accordingly centuries. They have become less successful because of the fact that they have more and more considered the consensus and become dependend.
What changed was what they called “truth”, but “truth” and “objectivity” do not mean the same. Newton’s physics was “true” till Clausius’ second law (“entropy”) of thermodynamics, in any case till Planck’s constant, Planck’s quantum theory, and Einstein’s (actually Hilbert’s) relativity theory. The “truth” about dynamics and about time changed. Both “truths” are very typical for the Occidental culture. One of the both led to the knowledge that entropy and irreversibility make probabilities and statistics more relevant, more “true”; the other one of the both led to the knowledge that time is more organic than anorganic, more historical than physical, more chronic than mathematical.
So what changed was a pattern of the Occidental way of life, experience, the kind of epistemology, the interpretation of “truth”, also of “subjectivity” and “objectivity”. The cultural goal, aim, target, object came closer.
But all this does not mean that “truth” and “objectivity” were, are and will be the same.
A short model of object and subject.
Events bifurcate reality between confirmation and Experiment. They are by Chance. This led to a belief, which is subjective as a mode of confirmation. And an opportunity to make an Experiment, which is objective.
Equally briefly, where does the confirmation come from, and what is its status of difference from experiment? If it is different from experiment/experience, then what conclusions can be drawn from it, as far as the difference is concerned?
Look at the syntax. A sentence requires a subject, not necessarily an object.
And with Schopenhauer I say that everything that is an object can be this only with reference to a subject.
Rarely, but then the subject substantially consumes its object.
Subjects have an advantage.
X says: “The Sun rises in the East”.
Y says: “The Earth rotates around its axis once every 24 hours (mean solar time), causing the change of day and night for an observer on the surface”.
Newton’s physics was “true” till Clausius’ second law (“entropy”) of thermodynamics, in any case till Planck’s constant, Planck’s quantum theory, and Einstein’s (actually Hilbert’s) relativity theory. The “truth” about dynamics and about time changed. Both “truths” are very typical for the Occidental culture. One of the both led to the knowledge that entropy and irreversibility make probabilities and statistics more relevant, more “true”; the other one of the both led to the knowledge that time is more organic than anorganic, more historical than physical, more chronic than mathematical.
So what changed was a pattern of the Occidental way of life, experience, the kind of epistemology, the interpretation of “truth”, also of “subjectivity” and “objectivity”. The cultural goal, aim, target, object came closer.
Oswald Spengler (translated):
Since Newton, the assumption of constant mass — the counterpart of constant force — has had uncontested validity. But the Quantum theory of Planck, and the conclusions of Niels Bohr therefrom as to the fine structure of atoms, which experimental experience had rendered necessary, have destroyed this assumption. Every self-contained system possesses, besides kinetic energy, an energy of radiant heat which is inseparable from it and therefore cannot be represented purely by the concept of mass. For if mass is defined by living energy it is ipso facto no longer constant with reference to thermodynamic state. Nevertheless, it is impossible to fit the theory of quanta into the group of hypotheses constituting the " classical" mechanics of the Baroque; moreover, along with the principle of causal continuity, the basis of the Infinitesimal Calculus founded by Leibniz is threatened (1). But, if these are serious enough doubts, the ruthlessly cynical hypothesis of the Relativity theory strikes to the very heart of dynamics. Supported by the experiments of A. A. Michelson, which showed that the velocity of light remains unaffected by the motion of the medium, and prepared mathematically by Lorentz and Minkowski, its specific tendency is to destroy the notion of absolute time. Astronomical discoveries (and here present-day scientists are seriously deceiving themselves) can neither establish nor refute it. “Correct” and “incorrect” are not the criteria whereby such assumptions are to be tested; the question is whether, in the chaos of involved and artificial ideas that has been produced by the innumerable hypotheses of Radioactivity and Thermodynamics, it can hold its own as a useable hypothesis or not. But however this may be, it has abolished the constancy of those •physical quantities into the definition of which time has entered, and unlike the antique statics, the Western dynamics knows only such quantities. Absolute measures of length and rigid bodies are no more. And with this the possibility of absolute quantitative delimitations and therefore the “classical” concept of mass as the constant ratio between force and acceleration fall to the ground — just after the quantum of action, a product of energy and time, had been set up as a new constant.
(1) See M. Planck, Entstehung und bisherige Entwicklung der Quantentheorie (192.0), pp. 17-2.5.
If we make it clear to ourselves that the atomic ideas of Rutherford and Bohr (2) signify nothing but this, that the numerical results of observations have suddenly been provided with a picture of a planetary world within the atom, instead of that of atom-swarms hitherto favoured; if we observe how rapidly card-houses of hypothesis are run up nowadays, every contradiction being immediately covered up by a new hurried hypothesis; if we reflect on how little heed is paid to the fact that these images contradict one another and the “classical” Baroque mechanics alike, we cannot but realize that the great style of ideation is at an end and that, as in architecture and the arts of form, a sort of craft-art of hypothesis-building has taken its place. Only our extreme maestria in experimental technique — true child of its century — hides the collapse of the symbolism.
(2) Which in many cases have led to the supposition that the “actual existence” of atoms has now at last been proved — a singular throw-back to the materialism of the preceding generation.
Amongst these symbols of decline, the most conspicuous is the notion of Entropy, which forms the subject of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The first law, that of the conservation of energy, is the plain formulation of the essence of dynamics — not to say of the constitution of the West-European soul, to which Nature is necessarily visible only in the form of a contrapuntal-dynamic causality (as against the static-plastic causality of Aristotle). The basic element of the Faustian world-picture is not the Attitude but the Deed and, mechanically considered, the Process, and this law merely puts the mathematical character of these processes into form as variables and constants. But the Second Law goes deeper, and shows a bias in Nature-happenings which is in no wise imposed a priori by the conceptual fundamentals of dynamics.
Mathematically, Entropy is represented by a quantity which is fixed by the momentary state of a self-contained system of bodies and under all physical and chemical alterations can only increase, never diminish; in the most favourable conditions it remains unchanged. Entropy, like Force and Will, is something which (to anyone for whom this form-world is accessible at all) is inwardly clear and meaningful, but is formulated differently by every different authority and never satisfactorily by any. Here again, the intellect breaks down where the world-feeling demands expression.
Nature-processes in general have been classified as irreversible and reversible, according as entropy is increased or not. In any process of the first kind, free energy is converted into bound energy, and if this dead energy is to be turned once more into living, this can only occur through the simultaneous binding of a further quantum of living energy in some second process; the best-known example is the combustion of coal — that is, the conversion of the living energy stored up in it into heat bound by the gas form of the carbon dioxide, if the latent energy of water is to be translated into steam-pressure and thereafter into motion. It follows that in the world as a whole entropy continually increases; that is, the dynamic system is manifestly approaching to some final state, whatever this may be. Examples of the irreversible processes are conduction of heat, diffusion, friction, emission of light and chemical reactions; of reversible, gravitation, electric oscillations, electromagnetic waves and sound-waves.
What has never hitherto been fully felt, and what leads me to regard the Entropy theory (1850) as the beginning of the destruction of that masterpiece of Western intelligence, the old dynamic physics, is the deep opposition of theory and actuality which is here for the first time introduced into theory itself. The First Law had drawn the strict picture of a causal Nature-happening, but the Second Law by introducing irreversibility has for the first time brought into the mechanical-logical domain a tendency belonging to immediate life and thus in fundamental contradiction with the very essence of that domain.
If the Entropy theory is followed out to its conclusion, it results, firstly, that in theory all processes must be reversible — which is one of the basic postulates of dynamics and is reasserted with all rigour in the law of the Conservation of Energy — but, secondly, that in actuality processes of Nature in their entirety are irreversible. Not even under the artificial conditions of laboratory experiment can the simplest process be exactly reversed, that is, a state once passed cannot be re-established. Nothing is more significant of the present condition of systematics than the introduction of the hypotheses of “elementary disorder” for the purpose of smoothing-out the contradiction between intellectual postulate and actual experience. The “smallest particles” of a body (an image, no more) throughout perform reversible processes, but in actual things the smallest particles are in disorder and mutually interfere; and so the irreversible process that alone is experienced by the observer is linked with increase of entropy by taking the mean probabilities of occurrences. And thus theory becomes a chapter of the Calculus of Probabilities, and in lieu of exact we have statistical methods.
Evidently, the significance of this has passed unnoticed. Statistics belong, like chronology, to the domain of the organic, to fluctuating Life, to Destiny and Incident and not to the world of laws and timeless causality. As everyone knows, statistics serve above all to characterize political and economic, that is, historical, developments. In the “classical” mechanics of Galileo and Newton there would have been no room for them. And if, now, suddenly the contents of that field are supposed to be understood and understandable only statistically and under the aspect of Probability — instead of under that of the a piori exactitude which the Baroque thinkers unanimously demanded — what does it mean? It means that the object of understanding is ourselves. The Nature “known” in this wise is the Nature that we know by way of living experience, that we live in ourselves. What theory asserts (and, being itself, must assert) — to wit, this ideal irreversibility that never happens in actuality — represents a relic of the old severe intellectual form, the great Baroque tradition that had contrapuntal music for twin sister. But the resort to statistics shows that the force that that tradition regulated and made effective is exhausted. Becoming and Become, Destiny and Causality, historical and natural-science elements are beginning to be confused. Formulas of life, growth, age, direction and death are crowding up.
That is what, from this point of view, irreversibility in world-processes has to mean. It is the expression, no longer of the physical t but of genuine historical, inwardly-experienced Time, which is identical with Destiny.
Baroque physics was, root and branch, a strict systematic and remained so for as long as its structure was not racked by theories like these, as long as its field was absolutely free from anything that expressed accident and mere probability. But directly these theories come up, it becomes physiognomic. “The course of the world” is followed out. The idea of the end of the world appears, under the veil of formulas that are no longer in their essence formulas at all. Something Goethian has entered into physics — and if we understand the deeper significance of Goethe’s passionate polemic against Newton in the “Farbenlehre” we shall realize the full weight of what this means. For therein intuitive vision was arguing against reason, life against death, creative image against normative law. The critical form-world of Nature-knowledge came out of Nature-feeling, God-feeling, as the evoked contrary. Here, at the end of the Late period, it has reached the maximal distance and is turning to come home.
So, once more, the imaging-power that is the efficient in dynamics conjures up the old great symbol of Faustian man’s historical passion, Care — the out-look into the farthest far of past and future, the back-looking study of history, the foreseeing state, the confessions and introspections, the bells that sounded over all our country-sides and measured the passing of Life. The ethos of the word Time, as we alone feel it, as instrumental music alone and no statue- plastic can carry it, is directed upon an aim. This aim has been figured in every life-image that the West has conceived — as the Third Kingdom, as the New Age, as the task of mankind, as the issue of evolution. And it is figured, as the destined end-state of all Faustian “Nature” in Entropy.
Directional feeling, a relation of past and future, is implicit already in the mythic concept of force on which the whole of this dogmatic form-world rests, and in the description of natural processes it emerges distinct. It would not be too much, therefore, to say that entropy, as the intellectual form in which the infinite sum of nature-events is assembled as a historical and physiognomic unit, tacitly underlay all physical concept-formation from the outset, so that when it came out (as one day it was bound to come out) it was as a “discovery” of scientific induction claiming “support” from all the other theoretical elements of the system. The more dynamics exhausts its inner possibilities as it nears the goal, the more decidedly the historical characters in the picture come to the front and the more insistently the organic necessity of Destiny asserts itself side by side with the inorganic necessity of Causality, and Direction makes itself felt along with capacity and intensity, the factors of pure extension. The course of this process is marked by the appearance of whole series of daring hypotheses, all of like sort, which are only apparently demanded by experimental results and which in fact world-feeling and mythology imagined as long ago as the Gothic age.
Above all, this is manifested in the bizarre hypotheses of atomic disintegration which elucidate the phenomena of radioactivity, and according to which uranium atoms that have kept their essence unaltered, in spite of all external influences, for millions of years and then suddenly without assignable cause explode, scattering their smallest particles over space with velocities of thousands of kilometres per second. Only a few individuals in an aggregate of radioactive atoms are struck by Destiny thus, the neighbours being entirely unaffected. Here too, then, is a picture of history and not “Nature,” and although statistical methods here also prove to be necessary, one might almost say that in them mathematical number has been replaced by chronological.
With ideas like these, the mythopoetic force of the Faustian soul is returning to its origins. It was at the outset of the Gothic, just at the time when the first mechanical clocks were being built, that the myth of the world’s end, Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, arose. It may be that, like all the reputedly old-German myths Ragnarok (whether in the Voluspa form or as the Christian Muspilli) was modelled more or less on Classical and particularly Christian-Apocalyptic motives. Nevertheless, it is the expression and symbol of the Faustian and of no other soul. The Olympian college is historyless, it knows no becoming, no epochal moments, no aim. But the passionate thrust into distance is Faustian. Force, Will, has an aim, and where there is an aim there is for the inquiring eye an end. That which the perspective of oil-painting expressed by means of the vanishing point, the Baroque park by its pint de vue, and analysis by the »th term of an infinite series — the conclusion, that is, of a willed directedness — assumes here the form of the concept. The Faust of the Second Part is dying, for he has reached his goal. What the myth of Götterdammerung signified of old, the irreligious form of it, the theory of Entropy, signifies today — world’s end as completion of an inwardly necessary evolution.