You may be right, but I read it as “would”.
“Why would I be compelled to believe that is subjective?”
or
“How could I consider that to be a subjective claim.”
But should? You probably have a point there. I read between the lines.
If you attach some reasoning to it, then it becomes subject to that reasoning and is no longer objective.
IOW, if you say murder is wrong because of this line of thought ________, then someone could say, “Well, that doesn’t apply to me because _____, ____, and _____, so murder is ok for me.”
But if you say murder is wrong, period. Then there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It doesn’t depend on how anyone looks at it. It just is.
Reasoning can’t be objective?
Oh my. 
“Truth” was a poor choice of word on my part and I knew that, but I should have said “The actuality may apply objectively to everyone in the universe, but any interpretation of that actuality is subjective.”
The true actuality of an object applies equally to all subjects, but the reality of any object can only manifest subjectively.
Reality can’t exist independent of observation or else we could have positive with no negative. Positive is only positive because the negative is negative. Without the negative, the positive cannot exist. Reality can only happen in a duality.
It just means the object’s capability to transmit and the subject’s capability to receive work together to define reality.
As far as we can tell, dark matter only interacts via gravity and without that lone interaction, it would not exist. Things that have no affect, do not exist.
The subject doesn’t have to be conscious to be an observer. The confusing comes with using the word “observation” since it really means “interaction”. “Observation” makes it seem like a conscious being is necessary to manifest objects.
A destination is required before a photon can be emitted physics.stackexchange.com/quest … a-receiver
In some way our telescopes must have existed 13 billion years ago for the light to be emitted from a galaxy 13 billion lightyears away to hit those telescopes today. Time doesn’t apply to light, so there really is no issue; the whole event was instant.
If the sun were the only thing in the universe, in what way could it be said to exist? It would give off no light, no heat, it would have no gravity, nor have any properties whatsoever because there is nothing interacting with it. Things are said to exist in terms of their interactions with other things and that idea was principle to James’ theory of things being nonexistent because they have no affect on anything.
He said “I would recommend that “existence” is well defined as “that which has affect”. That which has no affect whatsoever does not exist. And “to affect” means to cause or be responsible for change.” viewtopic.php?f=1&t=193641&p=2687573&hilit=no+affect+affect+exist#p2687573
If it were, then you wouldn’t question it lol. But you do and that proves it’s subjective.
The Monty Hall Problem:
Many readers of vos Savant’s column refused to believe switching is beneficial despite her explanation. After the problem appeared in Parade, approximately 10,000 readers, including nearly 1,000 with PhDs, wrote to the magazine, most of them claiming vos Savant was wrong (Tierney 1991). Even when given explanations, simulations, and formal mathematical proofs, many people still do not accept that switching is the best strategy (vos Savant 1991a). Paul Erdős, one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, remained unconvinced until he was shown a computer simulation demonstrating the predicted result (Vazsonyi 1999). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem
You can pound your reasoning into someone’s head all you want, but if it doesn’t click, it doesn’t click. It takes a subject with clicking capability to perceive the reasoning as reasonable.
So, like I was saying, as soon as you attach reasoning to any claim in order to support it, the truth of that claim immediately becomes subject to that reasoning.
Thank you to all of you. I needed that.
Odd. That’s poor language use. In any case, I had discussions with him about his position and he mean that it must affect something. Has effects, that is. He did not mean that it had emotions. The rest of what I wrote still stands.
The first question, why would I be compelled…? could only get tentative answers: ‘well, you might feel compelled if you…’
The second can be easily answered, yes.
But I still keep all my quibbles on the table. In the end, regardless of your answers, it might very seem better or even be better for him to continue being an objectivist in some ways and view that claim as he views it.
James got confused about the proper use and meaning of ‘affect’ and ‘effect’.
It doesn’t prove anything. It again shows that you and I have very different ideas about what the words ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ mean and what they are used for.
In this particular case, if there is no “objective reasoning” then there seems to be no distinction between “biased reasoning” and “unbiased reasoning” - reasoning which is tainted in some way. Phrases like “objective evaluation” and “objective approach”, etc are used to try to convey those sorts of distinctions.
Well that clears that up. It explains a lot of your posts which appeared weird to me.
I would never call an inanimate object an ‘observer’ or say that it ‘observes’.
It seems that often when Serendipper was writing about ‘subjects’, he was referring to inanimate objects.
Which I took to be conscious beings since they were doing the sort of things that conscious beings do - observing, manifesting, etc.
Okay, any number of folks have been exploring it now for decades. And how much further have they moved on in encompassing that precise existential understanding of freedom?
How instead are the narratives not largely still the embodiment of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
And yet even though both sides are still grappling with all of the issues embedded in being “free” here, you seem to be rather adamant that Communism is a really, really bad thing.
Sure. If I suggest that it ought to be explored, then you respond that it’s been talked about a lot without progress.
If I suggest that dasein, free will, determinism, or nihilism have been talked about enough in this forum, then you respond with “what else is there to do but talk about it”.
Yeah. I got that from these interactions.
Is it a really, really good thing? How would you decide?
I’ve assigned some level of value to the various factors that can be used to evaluate a society. I measured and weighed and I came to a conclusion.
How about you?
How hard is it to understand someone arguing that his or her own moral and political values – re God, ideology, deontology or nature – reflect that which all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to embrace?
You call yourself an objectivist. How then is that either applicable or not applicable to you given a particular context in which human behaviors come into conflict over value judgments?
I’m suggesting that if psychologically he roots his own “I” in the belief/feeling that others are obligated to share his own values, then “I” would construe him to be an authoritarian.
I couldn’t agree more. The authoritarian personality runs the gamut from fascism to Communism, from the capitalist to the socialist, from the conservative to the liberal.
The reason others are punished is because they refuse to become “one of us”. Or because their gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc., disqualifies them.
Even the nihilists and the sociopaths are able to convince themselves that their own frame of mind reflects the most rational assessment of the human condition.
There are always going to be gradations in our reactions to these things. Human motivation and intention, being embedded in a complex intertwining of genes and means, are derived from enormously convoluted existential trajectories encompassing any number of vast and varied personal experiences, relationships and access to ideas.
So there will always be things that we can in fact note to be true – postmodern beatnik banned me for life from the Philosophy Forum – and things that are subsumed instead in subjective fabrications – he was justified in doing so.
Tell that to the victims of Hitler’s or Stalin’s policies. Or to those who practice capitalism like a religion and bring about policies that sustain all manner of human pain and suffering for those not in power.
What do you expect to happen when you call him an objectivist? Are you going to shame him into changing? What?
For example, when people are called racist these days, it’s often to silence and discredit them. That’s the real intent.
What’s your intent?
The irony being that I’m the one who is opposed to those policies while you go around saying “well, we can’t really decide if it’s good or bad”. “Maybe they had to do those things”.
It’s hard to visualize the society that you would create but I really see no reason to believe that it would not be full of abuses. Moderation and compromise … Are you going to be moderate and compromise with those who will produce misery and suffering?
Rule of law … the Nazis used the law to persecute and kill the Jews, as well as many others.
Moderation, compromise and rule of law seem to feel good but where do they lead in practice?
Please. On any number of threads I have noted where my own philosophical proclivities lie. And I have pointed out that those who do not share my own preoccupation with the philosophical parameters of “how ought one to live?” would be advised to move on to others.
So, if that includes you, by all means, move on to others.
I was being facetious but this is an issue in which you seem rather settled. It’s a bad thing. And somehow this perspective is intertwined in the manner in which you construe the meaning of ethics philosophically and God theologically.
I’m just still unable to grasp how that “works” for you “for all practical purposes” out in the world of actual existential interactions with others.
I can think this but that’s not the same as demonstrating it conclusively. I think that any number of things certainly seem to be objectively true for all of us in the either/or world. The laws of nature, mathematics, empirical facts, the logical rules of language.
But then we bump into Hume’s distinction between correlation and cause and effect, between what we think we know about human reality and all that would need to be known about existence itself. And then the part about sim worlds, dream worlds, solipsism, the matrix.
What you seem intent on is arguing that in the is/ought world there are objectively true value judgments. Yours for example. But all I can do is to note that while this may in fact actually be true objectively you have yet to convince me of it.