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.
If you say that and Serendipper says that all things are subjective, then a discussion could reveal that subjective and objective are reasonable categories or that there ought to be only one category.
That would be making progress in the discussion. Instead, when I present a claim and ask why it ought to be considered ‘subjective’, you back off and we continue to be in the same rut.
I’m trying to move things along.
WEll, I’m glad to see that I did understand his position, despite my not remembering his idiosyncatic language use. Such things are not a problem as long as the definitions are on the table.
I think there are few objectivists who when it comes down to it believe that there is something that has no effects that is real. It’s also not a useful category for them or for most people.
Hypothetical objectivist: I believe there is X. X has no effects.
Person 2: How did you come to believe it exists?
[whatever the answer, it means X had an effect on them, at the very least]
Yeah. I don’t know where that idea about objectivists comes from.
Well, he had his affectance ontology, so he had to stay consistent even if grammar had to be modified.
An acid affects a solution and the effects are dilution. So affect is potential to cause effect and that’s how James meant it because if a thing has no potential to cause effects, then it can’t be said to exist. He basically said that existent things can only be relationships because existence itself is a relationship.
Observation is the affectance James was on about.
It’s a misconception in QM that consciousness is required to collapse the wave function since the only thing required is observation (interaction).
With the exception of gravity, our whole universe appears to be nothing but charge: the light our eyes perceive are just charge oscillation, the heat that we feel are results of charge oscillations, the smells are charge-dependent chemical reactions, sound is pressure waves resulting from charge-dependent van der waals forces, and ditto for touch. So the connectivity between everything that exists mainly relies on the existence charge separation to happen.
So the affectance that things have (the potential to cause effects) are in terms of charge and gravity at the fundamental level… and that appears to be the extent of it. So what is observation if it’s not described by those two forces?
Like electricity seeking a path to ground, the light from the sun departs and arrives at our eyes, which causes charges to jiggle, which causes our brains, via chemical jostling, to become aware of the jiggling and interpret such as color or heat. The observation is the mechanical bit and the conscious realization of the perception of color isn’t required to make it all go.
There is no such thing as unbiased reasoning. Everyone is biased.
There is no such thing as objective evaluation. All you can do is collect more opinions. And “fact” is consensus of opinion.
What do you say Iambig, is Serendipper an objectivist?
Think like him or you are wrong!!! That meets your definition of objectivist.
But he keeps saying that everything is subjective and opinion. 
Why do you tell me this?
You must think that it’s true for me as well as for you.
If it’s true for me, then it must be true for everyone. (Why would I be an exception?). And therefore it must be objective truth.
If it’s not true for me then there is no reason to write it.
The diagrams a few posts back are a dead giveway. They are objectivist and they are based on objectivist conclusions many layers down. But not objectivist in iambs sense, since he always distinguished between is and ought.
