Against Subjectivism - Is Everything Relative?
SR
I wasn't one of them, but when most people embark on a study of philosophy, they start out as subjectivists. The condition is so prevalent (but treatable - most are cured within the first year) that it even got its own name: Student Relativism. Here, I present some of my own thoughts on the matter of subjectivism.
Defenestrate your terms (-Socrates)
The words "inherent" and "objective," though thought to merit distinct entries in the dictionary, are apparently treated as mere synonyms by some. It appears that a property cannot be objective if it is not inherent in the object. If the color red, for instance, is not inherent in the tomato, then red is somehow "subjective." Relations are thus effectively thrown out the window.
But why is it that an objective fact cannot result from a relation—the relation, say, between my retina and the light of the sun and the tomato? Perhaps, like a chemical reaction, something entirely new (and objective) is produced when these three elements are combined that was not there before (inherently) in either of the three elements. If I am right, then what is true of the inherent is not necessarily true of the objective. Specifically, the inherent can be absent where the objective is present. When I say, for instance, that an act is never inherently good or bad, I do not thereby mean that an act is never objectively good or bad! (See what I did there?)
'twas his son up there, you see.
Whence Cometh Good and Bad?
Good and bad come into existence along with beings. That does not mean they are illusions. No one says smoke—the result of the interaction of fire and wood—is an illusion, even if it is true that smoke is not inherent in the fire or in the wood. It is true that good and bad are not inherent in the action—but good and bad are still products of interactions, and are real and objective in that sense.
Made with quozio.
Seeing Men and a Wolf (Cf. Blind Men and an Elephant)
Imagine a circular room, like a very small Colosseum, with a centre that can be accessed through many doors all around its periphery. In the centre of this room there stands a statue, say that of the Capitoline Wolf. The statue is stationary: it does not revolve or move. Depending on which door you open, you will see a different part of the Capitoline Wolf: some will see its head, some its side, the less fortunate ones will be confronted with its rear. What you see depends on which door you open. Yet all see the same thing, the same object, the same statue: just different aspects of it.
Source: Wikipedia Commons
So it is with the world and values. We all perceive the same objects, actions, events—but we assign a different value to them. Sometimes our valuations more or less coincide, due to our shared nature as human beings. Other times, there is a significant discrepancy between our valuations: the death of a parent is acknowledged by all as an objective fact, but for the parent’s children this event will obviously have a much more profound and sad significance than for the generally indifferent public.
Made with quozio.
All-or-nothing thinking
According to the subjectivists, presumably, a slice of a bread is not real bread. Only a whole loaf is real bread; anything else is illusory. Furthermore, again according to the subjectivists, the whole bread is not the sum of its parts, but is rather the absence of them (—objective reality is not the addition of subjective points of view, but something contrary to them altogether).
Subjectivism is out of options
Subjectivism requires contradiction between views, otherwise we fall back to the Capitoline Wolf example, where all opinions are part of the objective truth. So here's the options:
If two points of view are contradictory, they cannot both be true. Subjectivism may be capable of a number of things, but violating the law of non-contradiction is not one of them. So one POV is true and the other is false.
If two points of view are both false, then they cannot be contradictory. In that case, eat, drink, and be merry, and don't worry about subjectivism: if you're wrong it means there's a right answer out there.
If two points of view are different, but not contradictory, then they can both be objective, as in the Capitoline Wolf example. Objective, you may remember from your high-school linguistics class (no?), is the opposite of subjective.
The curtain falls
This completes the 8th installment of the Meaning Of Life series. In case you missed the other episodes:
Part 7: The Value-Laden View of Life
Part 6: I Am Therefore I Harm
Part 5: Nietzsche vs Christianity: Are Christians Nihilists?
Part 4: Can we desire death?
Part 3: Are nihilists being honest when they say life has no value?
Part 2: Does death make life meaningless?
Part 1: Is it possible to be a nihilist?
I'll see you in the next episode, as yet untitled!
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The current fad for relativism and subjectivism is a political movement with a philosophical facade. It encroaches on many domains; the one I know best is education. And it is obvious in education that the policy implementations are not consistent with their philosophical positions, but are consistent with the political aims of fundamentally weakening the individual compared with power structures.
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The capitoline wolf cannot always be seen because your senses are limited. In the same way we cannot yet observe a black hole directly but rather everything else that goes around it.
This though does not and cannot give us a whole picture of things since the way you perceive something has to be defined based on some context. Someone who is a subjectivist will accept that based on our current understanding and perception a tomato is red. Nonetheless, it can be seen in many other ways depending on seed variation and even season. A ripe tomato is red, a young one yellow, later orange. Heck, some are even blue.
The distinction between objectivism and subjectivism is rather false. Remember how Ayn Rand called for objectivist ethics. Thing is, life cannot carry objective truths, and especially when it comes to ethics (I stick to the dictionary definition, not your ambiguities). Context matters. Murder is bad in times of peace, heroic in times of war. Killing yourself to save your child or killing yourself because you are sad. Stealing because you have no money to eat vs stealing to earn dividends in a company. Ethics are extremely fragile in every possible context, hence why the judiciary system varies across time, place and culture.
Every single human follows a different narrative, hence why situations can be interpreted differently. Subjectivism is the doctrine that knowledge is merely subjective and that there is no external or objective truth. Everything we know today is a set of information acquired from everyone else before us. We don't know everything and we cannot know everything because there are many points of view and pieces of information. There are things we know, thinks we think we know and things we don't know we don't know.
You can check your capitoline wolf in 2D, 3D and even 4D (add time). The capitoline wolf exists only in one specific dimension from a specific point of view (or views if we add the variations with your window example). In 1 million years it will be something completely different. You need to be more open minded, beyond the windows and observers.
The term objectivism implies;
You simply can't emphasize what is external or independent of the mind since everything we perceive has to do with our mind. Every single tool we have created to access reality was constructed from a human mind.
also not true. The only way to believe this is to somehow rely on some higher power that dictates what is right and what is wrong. aka . a god. Steven Pinker tried to argue for this based on evolution and he failed miserably.
http://energyskeptic.com/2015/13-fallacies-of-steven-pinkers-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined-and-slate-the-world-is-not-falling-apart/
You are doing the same mistake most sophists do. You take the definition of the words out of context in order to give your own narrative. This is intellectually dishonest.
In the first 5 paragraphs or so, I'd say you're taking the Capitoline Wolf example too literally. It's nothing more than a simile, like the blind men and the elephant. What it's trying to say is something I'll say again in later posts, that every relation between an object or action and an observer is an objective relation, and it's part of the object's nature and definition. A woman is both food and a sexual object. Every object that exists IS the sum of all the ways in which it can be used by all possible conscious organisms. Without any conscious organisms in the world, the question "what IS x?" has no meaning.
I agree with what you say about objectivism, points 1 & 2. I don't believe in that kind of objectivism, and it's the traditional view of objectivism, i.e. the one that "throws relations out the window". These ideas that something is external to the mind, i.e. inherent in the object, are false.
lol. I don't even have to tackle this logically. A scientific fact does it.
"Quantum Theory Demonstrated: Observation Affects Reality"
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm
The 'object" often can have many natures (according to the time observed) and definitions (based on culture and context).
Nobody implied otherwise. A cat watches a chair as a scratcher. A human as a place to sit. Again, reminding you the meaning of the word "subjectivism" "the doctrine that knowledge is merely subjective and that there is no external or objective truth", which is true if you ask a cat or a human. The chair is a concept. Not an objective truth. To someone that has never seen a chair might as well be a sculpture.
You should know as a philosopher that before making any assertions, or posts you have to set simple to understand definitions. Your audience is the world, not a jerking circle. This is especially true when you deal with words that have dictionary definitions. If not then refer with a reference where you got that idea. Often there are others who tackled the idea.
Heck look at your title on the post. You just admitted that even the word "objectivism" is relative.
K.O.
go home. you are drunk.
That's a different kind of thing than the one I was saying. Again, you fail to grasp subtleties. It's part of the reason why you're a bad thinker. Your mind immediately goes to the first thing that has the slightest resemblance to what someone said. Why? I suspect because you're tired. Tired minds would rather file new information under 'already known' rather than put any effort into understanding something new.
Now you're starting to get me! A few years from now you'll be agreeing with me 100%, using variations of the same examples I used elsewhere, and say that either you thought of them yourself, or that it's just common sense.
Is everything you just said an objective, or a subjective truth?
I admit I didn't do a good job of defining terms in my post, which is why I played on Socrates' quote by changing it to "defenestrate (instead of define) your terms" (i.e. throw them out the window, they're wrong anyway). At a certain point you have to stop writing anyway, and leave it as it is, imperfect, sometimes highly imperfect. I rely on intelligent readers to know what I mean in my post.
ad hominems and strawman. stay classy.
You don't even agree with the dictionary definition. You are not even attempting to see your own intellectual dishonesty.
neither. Again, poor debate skills introducing ultimatums.
oh, so now your "objectivism" became ...poetry.
sure. sure.
You have your own answer to this that you've been using for years to justify your bullying. It comes in the form of a picture depicting 4 squares if I recall.
Are you kidding me about this? Do you consult dictionaries when attempting to define God, evolution, schrodinger's cat? Well, I guess, if you're a google-thinker.
Poor answer. Plus, you're the master of absolutisms, no one's trying to take away your crown, so chillax.
No, it's all there, it's pretty clear what I mean by objective and subjective, even tho I didn't exactly start the article by defining the terms, nor did I draw a distinction between subjectivism and relativism, and so many other things I could've done but didn't for the sake of space.
in your case, you didn't even make a simple argument. you just went full retard.
if you don't define it yourself then yes, the default definition falls back to the dictionary. otherwise no word has meaning. again logic 101.
me absolutist? lol. read my posts. Chaos, randomness and nihilism are my main theme.again. the blockchain proves you wrong. The only people i debate is people like you who "assume" meaning, absolutes, "objectivism" etc. don't try to turn the game around. i merely assume the null hypothesis. you on the other hand and 99% of people in earth, take things for granted.
correction. for the sake of ambiguity. same as politicians. the more generic you sound, the more appeal to the masses you can have. classic sensationalism.
100%. Or you wouldn't be writing this. Gulping down a whole bottle of sleeping pills has the same exact meaning as slaughtering rabbits and cooking them: zero meaning. Prove to me again how much of a hypocrite you are next time you choose the rabbits over the pills for the umpteenth time. If we program a robot to be a real nihilist, it will accidentally kill itself in no time. You are not a nihilist. Stop bullshitting yourself.
Wow! I look forward to reading the whole series, sometime. Looks like you can help fill some of the gaps in my self-education :-D
It seems that he rise of "Student Relativism' is due to the modern society failing to load the Camel of youth with sufficient burden of values. Instead of the Lion, the Camel is transformed into an Ostrich that seeks a hole to bury its head and imagine the Dragon does not objectively exist.
Burden. Responsibility. Key concepts. I think most people are morally stuck in their nonage years, like children they feel protected by something external so there's no need for a moral code. All you need to do is make them a judge in a court of law, responsible for the fate of real people, and you'll see their subjectivism quickly fade away.
I agree that the modern age is an age of moral immaturity. I don't think allotting power to the morally immature will result in their maturity. "Power without wisdom is tyranny . . ." so write Iain Pears; a system of morally immature judges will result in tyranny of capriciousness. I think the intent of Pol Pot's regime granting adolescents with the power to adjudicate was to undermine any sensibility of morality and justice in an already cowed population. In a sense, our current moral chaos can serve as an illustration of the failure of Kantian assumption that morality can be generated within each individual self. Even Nietzsche allowed for the Uebermensch to slay the objective moral Dragon and incorporate its dictum within himself, thus acknowledging the existence of objective moral principle.
The analogy of the statue seen from multiple points of view is illuminating. It reminds me of "Flatland," where the author considers a four-dimensional creature looking down at a three dimensional world with the analogy of us looking at a two dimensional one, and the misunderstands that ensue. Our understanding of "objective" reality is bound by our limited perception of space.
I think it would be hard to find someone who actually lives as a subjectivist. Especially for something like whether murder is objectively right or wrong.
Yeah that's interesting. Everybody has values - even if they think murder is okay, still they'll have some other values they don't like being violated - so, like nihilists, it might be a case of people claiming one thing with their words, and doing another thing with their actions.
Upvoted, resteemed and followed. Keep up the good work. I like how you release it in episodes and parts. Keeps it interesting. Looking forward for more philosophical stuff. Also, have a look at my philosophies. I am not as good as you but I am just a beginner.
Thanks @himshweta. Will do!
subjective... objective... I guess we need more words to describe all the valid points of view, or maybe it's like "do no harm" and then everything else is valued and accepted
Your posts always provide value for time we give them; the comments section is a bonus, always worth reading and thinking on.
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