Subjectivity versus Objectivity

What’s the difference? I know phenomenalism as the position that things are as they seem. Phenomenalism can be a form of subjectivism/idealism, but it needn’t be. The window-to-reality view of consciousness (i.e. niave realism) could also posit that reality is just as it seems. Is this what you mean by phenomenalism?

Do you mean that they are taught these concepts from their ancestors but they don’t remember it? I agree that certain universal concepts aren’t learned from particular experiences, like in the way we might learn the concept of a tree by having experiences of trees (whereas an alien on another planet where there are no trees would not learn this concept), but I think it requires experience in general to learn any concept. That’s not to say that the concept is based on experience, but that the mere fact of having experience is necessary to form concepts period. The brain does not develop unless there is incoming information to stimulate growth. There are ample studies to support this. If I were to offer an analogy, maybe the following would work: experience is like the electric current flowing into a computer, and the concepts we acquire are like programs that are infused into the computer. Both require electrical input from the same source. But that source, the inflow of electric current, is sometimes used as input into the program (that is, as specific information that the computer interprets and processes) but sometimes used just to power the computer, making the programming of the computer possible in general.

I’m not a Kantian, at least not in the sense that we are born with a priori knowledge, as if the computer comes prepackages with a suite of programs (the OS notwithstanding), though I do believe we are all born with the potential to develop so-called “a priori” knowledge.

Why can’t theories be both? Attempts to explain the universe and devices that generate predictions?

As a subjectivist myself, I can tell you that isn’t true. I have not been able to convince myself that disease doesn’t exist though I wish it were true (though I can’t speak for all subjectivists). Subjectivism is more the position that reality is based on experience than that reality is based on what one wants to be true. As I said earlier, I am an observer of how the mind works. I observe that the mind is sometimes convinced by evidence and at other times by desires for what one wishes were true (and also by reason and the words of authority figures–the big 4 :smiley:). Observing that this is the way the mind works has convinced me that reality is first and foremost based on subjective experience, but at the same time, it has not changed the way my mind works. It hasn’t made it so that I am no longer convinced by evidence. It hasn’t made it so that I am any more capable of believe things just because I want them to be true. Believing that reality is based on experience hasn’t given me the ability to create reality out of the things I wish were true. I’m still aware that disease exists even though I wish it weren’t true, and even if I try to convince myself that disease doesn’t exist, I find that I still need evidence or reason (or the words of a trusted authority figure). This is hardwired into the brain, an immutable way it works–adopting this or that “ism” doesn’t change this. Being a subjectivist isn’t magic; it doesn’t give you a different brain.

Well, then you really need to explain to me the difference between phenomenalist and subjectivism.

Ok, so when you say that we “select” assumptions as opposed to “creating” assumption, you mean we apprehend them in others first before we adopt them for ourselves. ← Is that correct?

The difference is that subjectivism is an epistemologically meaningful term. In that sense, I am not a subjectivist. Metaphysically speaking, I am not so sure. What does metaphysical subjectivism mean? That the events that take place outside of our brains are entirely caused by the events that take place inside our brains? If so, I am not a metaphysical subjectivist either.

No windows. I take windowless approach. Somewhat similar to Leibniz’s windowless monads. Unlike Leibniz, I don’t think there is a harmony that is pre-established by God. I do agree that there is harmony (i.e. the appearance of monads interacting with each other) but I don’t think this harmony has been pre-established by some central force such as God. Also, I don’t think that monads themselves are the cause of their own behavior. I do agree that there is no communication, interaction or perception between these monads but I take this further and say that there is also no communication, interaction or perception within monads themselves i.e. one monad’s past self does not cause one monad’s present or future self.

Another way to put it, and a much simpler way to put it, is that the universe is a mass of particulars that are related to each other in a specific way. Interaction, in this view, is a reference to a specific kind of relation between particulars.

I mean that these concepts were created by their ancestors, and while they have a memory of these concepts, they have no memory of how and why these concepts were created.

That’s correct. A concept is nothing more than a range of particulars that have some specific effect. I show you a bunch of images and you immediately identify each one of them with a word. Those images that are identified with the same word immediately form a concept. Based on these images alone you cannot form any kind of concept. However, when you relate them to some other kind of particular, such as for example words, concepts are immediately formed.

It’s pretty clear to me that we are born with a priori knowledge. At least in the sense that we acquire it almost instantly soon after we are born. I don’t ever recall having to learn facial recognition, for example. I always knew what a face is.

They can be both provided that you agree that what it means to explain the universe is nothing more than to form a theory based on as many observations as possible. The problem is that they deny this just as they deny that the most significant purpose of theories is to generate predictions.

That’s metaphysical subjectivism.

On the lowest level of abstraction, there is neither “selection” nor “creation”. There is merely occurence. There are facts. You take a look at the facts and then you interpret them. You take a look at how someone acts. You take a look at how that someone acted in the past. You take a look at what happened around that someone in the past. Then you make connections. At the end of your intellectual journey, you arrive at the conclusion that that someone is assuming this or that. You come up with assumptions that have the potential to influence his behavior. You then separate these assumptons into a group of those that are actively shaping his behavior and a group of those that will shape his behavior if this or that happens. All other assumptions that you can imagine are then considered to have no potential to shape his behavior. That’s all there is to it.

Gib.

Experience has both sides: subjectivity and objectivity. Both are aspects of epistemology.

Arminius,

I would say so…almost like a harrowing experience.

They were. Can you give me an example.

Sorry Magnus, got bored of this thread.

Of course! Being a subjectivist, to me, doesn’t mean denying the existence of the objective. It just means that the subjective aspect takes primacy, and that we can only have objectivity within a great subjective context.

No. We can only have subjectivity within a great objective context. The objectives ground reality otherwise we live only in our heads, projecting a reality or at least trying to, a reality that is ideal over real.

And how do you know about this objective reality? Doesn’t it start from in your head? Or if you like, from experience?

And you’re confounding “in the head” with “unreal”. Yes, I am saying that everything is ultimately “in the head” but I don’t think that makes it unreal. I think the idea that the mental = unreal is a legacy of Cartesian dualism. He’s the one who convinced everyone that if it’s mental, its reality can’t be trusted.

The problem is that too much consideration of subjectivity can lead to extreme subjectivism, thus solipsism. Accoding to a solipsist, the subjective I (self, ego) with its conscious contents is the only reality.

The problem is that creating disagreement is the purpose (obfuscation, misdirection, and extortion).

If everyone has their own “reality”, then nothing and everything can be said to be real. That makes all history and facts questionable, and thus changeable. And manipulated change is the goal. Why allow people to restrain you with Truth?

True.

Both you of, those are known as the “slippery slope” fallacy: X can’t be true because bad things would happen if it were true. Wanna be comfortable, better not seek out the truth.

Arminius, some people might take subjectivism to its solipsistic extremes, but not I. Take the issue up with them.

James, like it or not, we already do live in our own “realities”–I call them subjective realities, everyone else calls them objective realities and thinks everyone else is wrong–at least with subjectivism, we can adopt relativism, which nicely qualifies the reality to a specific person or point of view, and thereby makes all such descriptions of reality consistent after all. Differences are resolved in the usual manner–empirical testing, and if that doesn’t work, reason and negotiation. Being a subjectivist doesn’t change this; it doesn’t change the way the brain fundamentally works.

I suspect that you don’t understand what we each said, but perhaps you merely misunderstand the “slippery slope” fallacy.

We were not saying that “X is true because if not…”. Arminius was saying that too much is too much. And I was saying that too much is intentional, to serve a purpose. Neither of those constitute a “slippery slope” fallacy.

No. You simply do not understand the words.

You are conflating a perception of reality with reality itself, the “map vs terrain” fallacy, when you say that “everyone lives in their own reality”. Everyone lives in their own perception of reality.

Then you compound the fallacy by conflating perspective with perception with reality itself. Everyone has their own perspective of reality, their own perception of reality, and even their own situation within reality, but only one shared actual reality.

The “objectivists” know this. The subjectivists continue conflating concepts and words such as to create the liberal chaos used to manipulate Man into a new beast.

Yeah, what JSS said…“only one shared actual reality” which is not “in your head” only.

No. Either you do not know what a “slippery slope” fallacy means or you did not understand what we said. Nobody of us said anything in the sense of “X can’t be true because … if …”. Just see what James S. Saint already responded to you:

This is exactly what I would have answered, if James S. Saint had not done it before me.

Yes, I also think that you are not an extreme subjectivist. But I remind you of our dialogue in this thread on page 3 where I said:

This second one could be a tiny thing, since it does not have to be a huge living being (thing) in order to be an object.

Imagine, you are your brain and the only one, the first one (see above). You know nothing about a subject and an object, since no thing (nothing) is there - except you as you brain. It makes no sense (nonsense) then to have senses, since there is nothing to observe. There is no object, thus there is no subject. You do not know that you are your brain (thoughts). You can think but you do not know that you think. You have no evidence, because you have no empirical data, no experience at all. Your thoughts are not your experience, because they are not objects but you yourself as your brain . So it is not possible to think “cogito ergo sum”.

I still don’t see how that’s not the slippery slope fallacy. Here’s what Arminius said:

All he’s saying is that if you take subjectivism to its logical conclusion, you get solipsism. ← Why that makes subjectivism wrong isn’t highlighted in Arminius’s argument. It just leaves one with the sense that “Gee, I don’t want to be a solipsist… better denounce subjectivism.” Not that I am a solipsist, but I don’t see how solipsism is logically ruled out by this.

Now you:

While this is blatantly wrong in the first place, it doesn’t rule out subjectivism. It just says that if you’re a subjectivist, then your intention is to obfuscate, misdirect, and extort. “Gee, I don’t want to do that… better denounce subjectivism.” Even if creating disagreement is the purpose, that doesn’t make a position wrong.

Welcome to subjectivism, James.

You can’t just take something you disagree with and call it a fallacy.

James, you’re just reasserting naive realism without any argument. Yes, the distinction between perception and reality is intuitive at first, but sometimes in philosophy, we like to go beyond intuition, sometimes even arriving at counterintuition. Subjectivism isn’t a step below this most intuitive understanding of the problem–as if to say: gee, I had a dream last night, did I really travel to another world?–most subjectivists have highly sophisticated reasons for joining perception and reality–they’ve moved beyond naive realism–reasserting naive realism doesn’t drag them back.

Failure to understand can lead to frustration. People end up doing excatly what you’re doing here–throwing accusations of “doing it on purpose,” “trying to cause harm,” and you end up lumping the person with the only enemy you know. It’s laziness, the lack of will to try to understand.

Did my response to James suffice?

I remember this. Your wording is rather vague here; I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Sounds like you’re saying: a subject is only a subject if it is known as a subject, and that requires something else to do the knowing. I take this means solipsism can’t be true because there must be something other than the subject.

The reason I’m not a solipsist is because I believe there is an extension to existence beyond myself. What I don’t believe is that this extension is not a subject too (it’s just not me).

True, you wouldn’t recognize yourself as a self. But you would have experience (even if that’s just thought). The experience (thought) projects as a reality (truth). The truth and the thought are one and the same. ← That’s the kind of monism I’m getting at with my subjectivism. I don’t mean to say the subject exist as a ‘self’ per se, just that as a fusion of truth and thought, the thought aspect is what makes it a subject at the same that the truth aspect makes it an object (an abstract object in this case).

So actually it is you making the slippery-slope logical fallacy. You know that he didn’t say that it was wrong, rather merely that it is a slippery slope that could lead to something that you recognize as a bad thing, so then you declare that he is wrong because of the false conclusion that you think others might draw from what he said. You are the one doing the “A can’t be true, because if it is then… bad.”

You are twisting it into a political issue rather than philosophical.

Gyahd, and again. First it is certainly NOT “blatantly wrong”, but then how would you know one way or another. But secondly (back on topic) no one “ruled out” subjectivism. He said that it was dangerous. I said that it was intentionally dangerous, but neither of us ruled it completely out, rather that it has limits.

WE are not the ones saying that it is “WRONG”. We are saying that it is not the total picture and thus is misleading. Obviously you are one of those misled into thinking that it is either totally right or totally wrong, depending on what you want others to believe about it.

You are being one of those, “Vote for Hillary to be President because she is a woman”.

No. That is not exactly what I am saying. I really meant it in the sense of “too much”: Too much subjectivism can lead to solipsism. It was meant as a fact. It was meant objectively. :wink:

I mean that a “subject” needs an object in order to be a subject.

It is because you have observed, experienced it.

If there is only one (I mean one entity), then there is nothing else. Let this one be a thought or whatever. In order to have this one as a subject (which can know what it is for the first time), an object is needed.

There is no distiction or differentiation without an object. A subject is not possible without an object.

According to my example (see above), you would not have any experience. See above again where I said: “You have no evidence, because you have no empirical data, no experience at all”.

^ Nice try, James, but I’ve seen more highly polished sophism from a monkey.

Says the kettle to the pot.

Ah, so you’re just trying to say “bad gib!”

And unless you are denying the truth of subjectivism, you’re saying “bad gib” for telling the truth.

That would imply the potential to arrive at an agreement… something beyond your ability… let’s say, for example, that in addition to expounding my subjectivism, I gave more of the whole picture (whatever that is). Are you saying you would then agree with me? Even the subjectivist part?

James, why do I get the feeling that the world, seen through your visors, wouldn’t even look like affectance, but political left and right. Eh, kettle?

So it was just an observation?

You mean a body, or an object to observe?

I agree. Put in my own terms, I say there is no experience that doesn’t project to become the experienced. But because the experienced is projected from the experience, they are not two distinct things, just two different ways of thinking of the same thing. But even this doesn’t imply solipsism. I still believe the experience is ‘given’ to us. It is given to us from an outside source. When it comes to sensations, for example, we are ‘given’ sensory input, and that becomes a sensory experience, which projects and becomes the things we sense. The world we sense, therefore, is a representation of its source. The source is communicating to us, giving us a representation of itself. But obviously this means that there is more to the world than just me and my subjective experiences.

On the other hand, solipsism can’t be circumvented as easily for this source. If this source is conscious as I propose it is, and if we can treat it as more or less interchangeable with “the universe”, then from its point of view, its experiences are all there is. It might have to be a solipsist. But even in that case, it can still be argued that the dualism between experience and experienced is really two sides to the same coin. It experiences whatever it experiences as an “object” while at the same time it is the object so experienced (the fact of the object’s being experienced is part of the object–it is its being–and it counts as the “subject” part of the object).

So you’re saying you wouldn’t even have thought. I’m not sure what a brain suspended in a void would do. Probably just disintegrate. A brain in a vat, however, hooked up to wires might experience an entire world. But in general, my theory of consciousness says that any physical activity whatsoever will come with some subjective experience characterized by some quality. So if the brain is doing something–anything–it will experience. I’m not sure what it would experience, but I don’t think it needs to take in input (i.e. perceive an object) just in order to have some experience. It is in the nature of experience, I say, to project and become the ‘object’ (or some equivalent thereof) while at the same time maintaining that aspect of being experience (i.e. being felt) which keeps one of its feet in the subjective.

gib, I didn’t realize that you had such a serious guilt complex.

@ Gib.

I just had no better example than the brain.

Um… okay.

Meh… if you think of a better example, or another way to make your point, I’ll be around.