Objectivity

We humans created them, but they are not arbitrary… it is a utility driven project.

You’re making my point… that’s an ad hoc utility, winning a random internet debate. However the moment you have to go live your daily life, you’ll revert back to the most practical conception of the world available to you… the reason you WILL do this is because there is an objective reality that doesn’t give a damn about your whims and wants, you know it because you’ve suffered disappointment…

You say “anything is possible and there is nothing saying it’s not.” that’s fascinating… prove it

I can only know what’s possible by what has been demonstrated… I can’t say that it’s possible for gravity to suddenly stop working, I’ve never seen that happen.
I don’t have special knowledge about the nature of reality so as to know what is and isn’t possible unless I have been shown… so how did you come by this knowledge?

See the problem you’re expressing is a real one, in that there are nearly infinite ways in which we can categorize and conceive the world.
And yes it takes religion to believe that objective reality is shaped in the image of ideas so as to expect there to be a “true” conception…

Reality might not conform to any concept… but our concepts can conform to reality, their utility is a measure of their conformity.
That is a means by which we may approach reality… even if there is no “true” conception to be had, there necessarily are more useful ones, and by extension perfect conceptions.

All of our modern science is rooted in this basic recognition… paradigms that are subject to change, models that are subject to revision, based entirely on their utility in providing us predictive power.

A scientific LAW is no different to a mathematical one, in that they are foundational to that particular framework or conception of the world.
You cannot assume gravity only works SOME of the time, yet maintain all the rest of modern physics… you would have to re-imagine physics from the ground up with this new conception of gravity.
That is not to say it can’t be done, only that it would have to be competitive if not superior to modern physics in terms of predictive power…

Now you can rattle on about gravity glitching out randomly being a real possibility rather than an imagined one…
But I won’t be bolting down everything in my house for fear of them randomly floating away, and I suspect neither will you…

So, the post where I basically quit, I saw periphery answers that would require a huge response, and I just wasn’t in the mood.

One thing that can be said about objectivity, is that it’s objective that everything is subjective, using the same definition that objectivity is: it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, it’s still true. Even the rabid subjectivist is by their own fault, an objectivist.

But I wanted to return to serendippers trick here.

Everything is interconnected, so you can’t draw boundaries … actually, I agree with this, but that’s now how reality is constructed … the only way that I see to make categories out of the muck, the amorphous blob of interconectedness is through the existence of eternal forms outside this dimension.

It’s well known in some circles that the human body contains at least some molecules of every conceivable element. According to serendipper, I am gold, or rather, gold doesn’t stop outside of me. The serious flaw in this has been noted by others in this thread about the absolute interconectivity, rather than the fragmentation that I propose, is that when (and that’s not even possible, as I explained earlier) serendipper ceases to exist, gold ceases to exist. If gold doesn’t cease to exist after serendipper dies, then there is a proven objectivity to gold. The question is, does serendipper truly believe that he’s interconnected with everything, rather than a fractured being in a fractured cosmos?

Now, I stated earlier, that if serendippers continuity of consciousness ever dies in the future, that his present state is a subset of that continuity of consciousness, and that he couldn’t exist now, if it was ever destroyed in the future.

Continuity of consciousness in an objective reality is: “I was 5 years old when I learned to tie my shoes” from an subjectivist point of view it’s " the universe learned to tie its shoes when it was 5 years old" get it?

Now there was a section that serendipper scoffed at where I explained the phenomenon of perceptual acuity and medians in order the determine separateness from the amorphous blob using eternal forms.

I’ll just leave it there for now.

Edit: Edited significantly since first draft posted

Information is like energy because it cannot be destroyed

Any so called act of destruction is simply the rearranging of atoms into some other form
So what you call destruction is just tranformation from one state of matter into another

If information could truly get destroyed then ultimately so too would the Universe but it isnt actually possible
For there will still be something even when the Universe reaches a maximum state of entropy with heat death

If information can’t be retrieved, then, yes, it is destroyed. So that means that there is an eternal access to all information in order for its retrieval.

This is more on topic to the thread though and I don’t want it to get buried: viewtopic.php?p=2722710#p2722710

A “utility driven project” is arbitrary and subject to the utility.

You missed the point. If I suffer disappointment, it’s the same supposed “objective” reality that positive attracts negative, correct? Well that’s actually “popular subjectivity” where it’s merely coincidental that every positive attracts negative subject to the mechanism they have for interaction because there is neither a such thing as “objective positive” nor “objective negative” nor “objective electro-mechanical interaction”.

You’re confusing subjectivity with opinion.

Subjectivity is where the subject determines what the object is just as much as the object itself determines itself, and vice versa.
Objectivity is the object existing independent of any subject.

Can I suffer disappointment if I don’t exist as a subject in relation to a place in which to suffer disappointment? Objectivity states there could be disappointment in absence of subjects to experience it, which is absurd. Objectivity states that murder is wrong even if no beings exist in the universe. Objectivity doesn’t depend on anything.

Objectivity states the sun would give light even if nothing else existed in the universe, and that’s as absurd as a battery only having one terminal. The sun only gives light because there is something with capability to receive it just like a battery supplies electricity because there is an opposite pole with capability to receive it. If the subject lost its capability to receive light, then the sun could no longer give it. So what the object is, is determined by what the subject is. That’s subjectivity.

Why should I have to prove an absence of existence? If you’re positing there’s an objective and absolute law regulating all behavior, then prove it exists. So far the experimental evidence is contrary to that idea and I can’t see the prudence in jumping to the conclusion that the speed of light will be the same tomorrow as if governed by a law. That doesn’t seem scientific to me. Perhaps the speed of light is variable en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light

If you don’t know what causes gravity, how can you draw any conclusions about its further existence? Why jump to conclusions and decree gravity a law? Probably because science grew out of religion.

Predictive power is a function of probability rather than certainty. We can say it’s “essentially certain” for all practical purposes, but for philosophical discussion concerning the nature of reality, absolutely anything is possible regardless how infinitesimally small the chance. So, no, we won’t bolt our furniture down, but we also can’t claim gravity is objective.

Math is asserted into existence by authority independent of reality. Math isn’t an observed phenomenon, but is defined to be objective and true regardless if subjects exist.

Okay, you tell them this. Then from conflicting perspectives come arguments that insist not only is this not true, but it can’t be true because they have already discovered the objective truth. Their own of course.

The bottom line [if only mine] is that you can’t possibly know for certain if, in the context of existence itself, there is or is not an objective morality. Rooted in either God or reason.

Or, if human interactions [and arguments] are ever in sync with a wholly determined universe, than nothing is not objectively true.

The irony then being that just as with those who insist that their own moral narrative reflects the objective truth, you insist that there is no objective moral truth.

In other words, what you all share in common is what I construe to be the objectivist mentality.

Or [perhaps] as Wittgenstein put it: ‘Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent’.

So, what is it that we cannot speak of because we have no capacity to grasp in its entirety? Well, sure, different things for different people.

But surely the very nature of “objectivity” itself is one of them.

And yet not contemplating it [and speaking of it] is not likely to be an option for folks like us.

And this explains what exactly in regard to any particular relationship we wish to grasp or speak of objectively?

Everything is directly / indirectly connected to everything else within the Universe. Death of biological organisms is merely transformation or change. When some
thing dies the atoms it is made from are simply rearranged into another form. Atoms and sub atomic particles have cosmic lifespans greater than the bodies made from them. And some elements have half lives greater than the actual age of the Universe. All a human being is is a collection of atoms that came from dead stars millions of years before they were born and will carry on existing millions of years after they die

When stars can no longer form no new atoms can be produced and this will the point at which the Universe dies. But that will be trillions of years from now. But even then there will be something rather than nothing because absolute nothing cannot persist indefinitely [ only infinitesimally ] A human beings existence in such a time frame is completely and utterly insignificant and does not matter in the slightest - not even remotely

There is no such thing as eternal forms and whenever you are asked for evidence of them you consistently fail to produce any
And there is also no such thing as outside the Universe because the Universe by definition is all there is - there is nothing else

So it would seem.

The maximum number of things in any universe could only be one.

What do you mean by fragmented? Gold is just 79 hydrogens squished together. Gold isn’t its own thing independent of everything else, so it’s not objective.

You’re saying that because I die in the future that I don’t exist now?

If consciousness is subject to anything, dependent upon anything, then it’s not objective.

Well you’re just saying that what exists is a function of distance.

I’m going to actually ad hom a bit here, because the first thing I thought when I read this was that it read like a 5th graders book report presentation before class read off index cards.

The only way we can functionally define a concept like: all that there is, is if there’s fragmentation with which to discern it which isn’t nothing. So, there’s a something, and then a something else, which isn’t nothing. This is true for all existents.

It is irrelevant that something turns to something else in terms of the destruction of information, if there’s no way to decode something else back to something, then the information is destroyed.

This proves eternity for all existents, as we agree that information is not destroyed:

God: which is disproven through necessary fragmentation

Eternal forms: which work just fine with fragmentation.

The proof that eternal forms exist is highlighted above, with the additional caveat, that they are the only way to explain object permanence and the ability to name, from what’s otherwise an amorphous interconnected blob.

Like I stated earlier, do you really think existence ceases to exist in the future? We’re a subset of the identity: existence. If it ever stops existing, again, we wouldn’t be here right now.

I’ll reply to the last 2.

Existence relies upon otherness. You’re using a straw man argument here.

Perceptual acuity can concern acuity of the 5 senses and psychological acuity as well.

Because there were 2 posts in a row, I want to also make sure this one doesn’t get buried and unread:

viewtopic.php?p=2722728#p2722728

Then ask them to prove their objective truth exists independent of all subjects. Is abortion wrong even if people do not exist? If it’s objective, then yes, because abortion is always wrong, but how to prove something is wrong with no means to execute it?

If one couldn’t possibly be certain objective morality exists, then how could anyone determine what that morality demands?

But the universe is probabilistic.

It does seem objectively true that there is no objective truth, but even that is subject to one’s capacity to understand truth, as me as the subject is trying behold me as the universe to determine what is true within that relationship.

Subject observes object (s—>o) is the only way I know how to understand reality and that’s an artifact of how I’m put together. I can’t step outside myself to take an objective view of myself. So it seems obvious that there is some totality T that is absolutely everything that exists, but there is no possible way to view it or make any conceptualizations about it; the universe can only make concepts of itself in context of itself. Is that point objectively true? So it would seem because I (as a subject) cannot conceive how it wouldn’t be objectively true. So does that make it subjectively true? So it would seem.

Popular subjectivity.

And yet he said that :wink:

Those who speak, do not know; those who know, do not speak - Lao Tzu, I think :slight_smile:

Writing is the act of discovering what you believe - David Hare

Yep, neti neti, not this not this. All we can do is specify what the absolute is not.

There is no such thing as an objective relationship. Objectivity is the absence of relationship (or lack of dependence upon relationship)

:-"

What is the strawman? If consciousness is subject to anything, dependent upon anything, then it’s not objective.

Which means existence cannot be objective.

Sure ok.

I’m usually pretty good at not missing posts. I reply to them sequentially from my last post.

I can’t tell if that is a statement about you or him.

Sometimes I can’t make sense of what Alan Watts says, and when that happens, I can’t be sure if I’m the stupid one or he is.

So is your statement about Surreptitious a statement about him or you? And how can we tell?

More can be gleaned from someone’s interpretation of the art than the artist himself. The artist could be joking, but the reaction is genuine.

You like that? :smiley:

reality.jpg

The Universe is defined as all there is and without any need to reference fragmentation which is a concept purely of your own imagination

Information that cannot be decoded back into its original form is not destroyed but simply exists in another form
For the information to be destroyed would mean it was incapable of change in any form at all but this is not true
And not every physical process is time reversible and entropy [ which actually contains information ] is one of them

Once again you fail to provide any evidence for eternal forms as what you have provided is an argument which is something else entirely
Physical phenomena require evidence not arguments and your failure to still provide any means that your assertion cannot be supported

I have never said that existence ceases to exist in the future so have no idea why you are asking me this as I think the complete opposite
Which is that existence extends to both infinity in the past and infinity in the future because non existence can only exist infinitesimally

Your analogy picture shows something outside the universe, which, per fragmentation, is the only way you can demonstrate it.

One way scientists are describing this, is that they no longer call it the universe, but rather, the multiverse.

Well, if “existence is relationship” and there is only one universe then the universe can’t exist since it has no relationship with anything.

Objective truth is that which exists beyond human imagination / interpretation / analysis
Objective truth is that which cannot be perceived in any way at all or by any mind at all

All examples of so called objective truth are therefore simply attempts by human minds to categorise them as such
These examples are instead universally or rigorously agreed inter subjective examples of what an objective truth is

Real objective truth is however unknowable and absolutely so

describe a being with no object, you can’t because it’s not possible.

The point here is that all beings are both subject and object, not one or the other.

All beings are both subject and object I absolutely agree

But I was actually talking about the concept of objective truth which is something else entirely
Namely that which exists beyond human imagination so in a philosophical sense is totally pure

There is a limitation to human knowledge and understanding and experience
Anything beyond that is unknown so is free from all subjective interpretation