The end of the subjectivity debate

The point of the schema is that it wins for objectivity 3 out of 4 times. Sure, it’s subjective that it’s objective that a cardinal flew by, however it’s objective that someone thought that in the first place, if infact, someone did think that about a red flash.

Which raises another issue:

Sure interpretation MIGHT be subjective, but whether hallucinating or mistaken, whatever occurs in the sensory field is objectively the case for the subject.

This is why we keep going in circles here…

And why it’s consistently pointed out for example that people drink water (if they can) in order to not die of dehydration within a couple weeks.

There’s no room in a subjectivists stance to explain this type of behavior.

I agree that what we experience is real, these are phenomena that exist. Our experiencing exists. And this experiencing also gives us knowledge about things we are not experiencing. At least I find that model fucking useful. I haven’t read all your posts reacting to the subjectivists, but it seems to me some of them are using the term subjective to mean that what one is talking about is radically affecting by us. What are we, we are primate-like creature, with senses that work in these particular ways, with these filters and limits. We are time bound creatures and exist in specific locations. IOW we experience things unfolding through time, we experience them from a specific here and not there, and not from all angles. So everything is (partially or also) subjective. Honestly I can’t get a handle on what someone like Serendipper is saying. Sometimes he seems to be saying that our experience will always have qualities peculiar to us (our filters and vantage, including ones at a metaphysical level, like time and space restrictions) but then at other times he seems to be using it to mean we cannot know anything about anything beyond our experiences, presumably in the moment. The bedroom disappears when I walk into the living room, or perhaps, we have no idea about what happens outside our experience, in any case. I don’t think for example, Serendipper and Sillouette are saying the same things as each other when they say it’s all subjective or even if the former is consistant at all. To me the categories are not mutually exclusive. That there can be aspects of both to an event. That experience is connected to objects external to me and can give me information that is not only useful in the direction of universally but also says something about that thing. But my experiencing, description, and knowledge will be tinged by the makeup of my particular soul and body/senses.

But for Serendipper it seems to be binary, that since there are subjective aspects, it is subjective period.

Which then becomes weird because he describes what ALL OF US EXPERIENCE AND KNOW as being subjective. But then that’s him giving objective knowledge about my experience - which he cannot experience (in his model of reality), and other people are parts of external reality. But he seems very confident making objecitve-like statements about them. Or he makes a distinction between his experiencing (head not in the sand) and that of republicans (head in the sand) that seems to mean he is in better contact with external reality,w ith the objects, that he is objective while they are emotional.
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I feel like there is a lot of talking at cross purposed mixed in with what seem to also be some real confusions and false dichotomies. I can’t even sort exactly what they are trying to assert.

The general rule here is this : what you think / say / do is subjective [ because of free will ] but the act of thinking / saying / doing is objective

A subjectivist can only accept the former while an objectivist can only accept the latter but the subjectivist / objectivist can accept both

[ which is why subjectivism / objectivism is the natural default position ]

  1. There appears to be a table “out there”…
  2. if we act as though there is a table “out there” we won’t accidentally bump into it
  3. It comes and goes from “in here”, the table being “out there” solves the mystery of where it comes from and where it goes.
  4. the table being “out there” is congruent with everything else that happens…

The list goes on and on…

Now provide me with a good reason why we should doubt it…
I know we CAN doubt it… meaning we lack omniscience and therefore certainty…
But can you give me a good reason why we SHOULD doubt it?

doubt does indeed suggest there is no table… but why should we listen to doubt above all other voices in this case or in any case?

I think one could add in an argument from parsimony. As long as one is not arguing with a solipsist, and Prismatic is not one, then to think of a single cause of these experiences that different individuals/minds have is more parsimonious than thinking that there is nothing out there that is a table, but for some reason a variety of minds get (separate, a number of) stimulations as if there was. I think Occam’s R could come in and say, well, let’s take the simplest explanation.

This puts the onus on Prismatic to explain how actually his model has less or an equal number of entities (causes of the experiences of the different minds).

The out there is every bit as real as the in here so anything you perceive must by logical deduction exist in reality as well
A Gods Eye View would not make any distinction between you and the table for it would accept both as being equally real

Not just equally real, but exactly the same in every way … that’s why we know god isn’t possible.

Cannot be exactly the same because everything is in a constant state of change
And this change will affect individual parts of the whole in many different ways

For us, yes. Not for god as defined. God literally has no inside or outside, everything is EXACLTY the same, EVERYTHING.

There is more than one single definition of God because he can be absolutely anything that anyone imagines him to be
So a God for whom everything is exactly the same is no more plausible than one for whom nothing is exactly the same

It is a law of existence that existence = otherness.

It is the definition of omnipresence that there is no otherness, if god is exactly all of us, we would all exactly be god.

So only the first part stands: existence = otherness

God does not have to be omnipresent - that is just a characteristic he is traditionally given - it is completely arbitrary
Exactly the same as the other ones - omniscience and omnibenelovence - but God can be anything you want him to be

But yes you are absolutely correct - existence is otherness because there is no omnipresent God
The only thing that is actually omnipresent is the Universe but the Universe however is not God

Our situation is slightly more sinister than that, which I tried to allude to earlier…
We’re confronted with a reality of qualitative experience, that is to say a reality that can harm us, terribly.
Mistakes can cost us dearly… and frivolous beliefs are no more dangerous than doubts as we move through this space.

If you walked off the edge of a cliff, doubting you would fall, the price for that mistake can be as high as any…

The project is to construct a road map, a modus operandi, that lets us navigate this reality, whatever it may be, more effectively.
We cannot be parsimonious in the construction of that road map unless we know what is necessary and what is not.
So how can we know when we lack certainty?

And that’s where rationalists get stuck (sans a benevolent god). Conceptually it’s a dead end…
But the empiricists don’t give a damn about any of that… and merrily forge forward as warranted by the experiential evidence, claiming to know stuff in one moment that in the next they claim to have disproven.
Much to the chagrin of rationalists who berate them for it, all while they employ the road map the empiricists provide them.

The subject comes and goes in response to the things that are happening around. It is the objects that create the subject. For example, if there is no light, you have no way of looking at anything. When light falls on an “object,” the refection of that light activates the optic nerve. That in its turn activates the memory cells. When once the memory cells are activated, all the knowledge you have about it comes into operation. So, it is that which is happening there that has created the subject which is the knowledge.

Your constant utilization of thought to give continuity to your separate self is ‘you’. There is nothing there inside you other than that.

Sure. We have to assume stuff. WE have to take the advice and ideas of experts. We also have to doubt experts. I actually don’t think - referring ina sense to what you write below - one can manage without both rationalism or empiricism or finding ways to hone our intuition. No one likes to admit, it seems, that one must rely on intuition and cannot avoid it, but they all do.

Sure, not quite sure how this is more sinister than what I said. I wasn’t saying it was sinister, I was presenting a neutral argument. So this isn’t more sinister, but focusing on dangerous aspects of our situation and what can happen if one denies realism. But the truth is everyone believes in the power of cliffs to kill them. They cannot simply decide not to believe in them unless they are on hallucinogens or psychotic. So we really don’t know what the power of belief is, but you gotta go a hellava lot deeper down to actually shift beliefs.

I think it’s better to say, How can be develop a servicable map when we lack certainty and how can we continue to improve it.

Taken in a broad sense we are all rationalists and we all appeal rely on authority. We simply cannot be empiricists for all the decisions we make.

That’s fine as far as I am concerned, if only the humans in that camp understood that it was possible instead of giving it lip service. They treat anything that consensus science has not verified as false. They seem to have no option of agnositicism and no memory of the history of science.

They also do not understand that scientific models are nto the same as research data. Nor do they understand that science has metaphysics and this can be wrong also, so the way they look at anomolies is pathological. And interpersonally, they are very damaging, especially as a group. They are holding back knowledge because they think their models (that is metaphysics) rules this knowledge out. They are just another religion that also does empirical research within their models.

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Sure, but the empiricists are also using rationalism. Like - the universe has natural laws, for example. Sheldrake called them out for that, and got called a nutcase, though in the last decades research is now showing that things we considered laws and constants are not that. They constantly use deduction from models to rule out things, not understanding that their models have changed metaphors and paradigms in ways that not even Kuhn wanted to look at. And there is still this very harsh male mental rage guiding the communities reaction to anything that smacks to the scientists and their groupies as religious, spiritual and emotional. Couple them with the technocrats controlled by the corporations and you have some really pernicious real life changes happening worldwide by these supposedly rational people.

As I stated earlier, neither can the universe be omnipresent, that’s why it’s now called a multiverse.

Again: existence = otherness

I don’t think we’re on the same page… I’m not talking about being rational or irrational
I’m talking about rationalism as in the epistemology… not a mode of thinking.

And my statement about our situation being more dire was in reference to your proposed solution as a means to bridge the gap between us.
I meant to point out that the gap between us is wider than that…

What prismatic wants from me is a rational justification… but neither I nor he (in effect) needs one.
Only Rationalists think we need one…

Rationalists trust logic and reason above everything else to tell them what is true and what isn’t.
Without a benevolent god in our a-priori list of assumptions, we can’t trust our senses or any of our intuitions at all…
That’s gg for reationalism, presuppose a benevolent god or universe or become a skeptic.
that’s why prismatic talks about god so much.

Empiricists trust their experiences above everything else… but the mental models they rationally construct, however supported by the evidence, are always suspect
Hence why scientific theories are “theories” and the principle of falsification exists.
They view the suggestion about untrustworthy senses as a rational construct and an unfalsifiable one at that and dismiss it.

Skeptics trust nothing… or so they say, but they still don’t go galavanting off cliffs, so that’s a load of nonsense.

And pragmatists like myself, don’t give a damn about what’s really true, only about how well it works.

… so how do we bridge these gaps?

There is no escaping logic and rationality. It marks the limits of our human comprehension, so however we model reality, it must be rational for us to comprehend it.
There is no escaping experience either, that’s HOW we know logic and rationality is the limit of our comprehension… or that anything exists at all.

Even though some people treat it that way, this isn’t just some pointless intellectual exercise like pondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin
You cannot be a goal seeking agent without a terrain… and you cannot generate a terrain without an epistemology.
We’re talking about the literal foundation for how we move through life… and the fact remains, not a soul here is lacking in conviction regarding the existence of gravity… or the table in front of them.

The onus is on them to square their behavior with what they are professing.

wrong thread

Me too. You cannot function just on empiricism. What do you do when you wake up? Start researching everything. You have to deduce based on memory. And even to do empirical research requires assumptions that one rationalizes out. IOW you have to think that you at any given moment can using deduction and intuition reach correct conclusions, regardless of how much you argue you are an empiricist. And these deductive and intuitive processes have to do with metaphysics, reasoning itself, memory, perception - which includes the whole model of subject, perception, objects - and so on. There are no pure empiricists except maybe things like sea anemoni.

First you need to note there are many perspectives to what-is-reality from the crudest common-sense to the highest philosophical perspectives.

You are merely stuck in the common and conventional sense of reality. In these two perspectives, no normal person will doubt there is no common sense table at all. In these perspectives, there is a table for putting things on and avoid bumping into.

But to advance in knowledge one must be able to shift gears into the higher levels of knowledge.
Example, common sense tells us water, ice, steam, clouds are distinctly different to the uninformed. But for a physicist or chemist, these are all the same when they are turned to steam or all to ice, or looked when within a electron microscope.
Therefore if someone insist water, ice, steam, clouds are distinctly different, there is room for doubts to discover the higher truths that they are in fact the same from a different perspective.

There was once where physical objects down to the quarks are independently objective from the subject, but then the Wave Collapse Function proved the final object could be a wave or particle depending on the subject’s intervention.

Thus one of the greatest asset for one to doubt [a real independent permanent object table] is the opportunity to achieve higher advance knowledge that could optimize one’s well being and that of others.

The critical point here is to accept the table is real in one sense while at the same time, it is not real in another sense, i.e. accept p and not-p exists at the same time in different perspectives.

One ultimate is to recognize the self is real in one sense and at the same time an illusion in another sense in different perspectives.
This p and not-p will prevent one from clinging to a God to save the only real self [dogmatic belief] to eternal life where that God is accompanied by words and commands to kill and commit relentless evils upon non-believers.

Btw, you still have not demonstrate [against Russell’s doubts] to me there is a real independent and permanent objectively real table out there.

Note a can with 10 marbles is different from a can of 100 marbles.
A table has X number of atoms and electrons, and this number changes at every micro-second. Thus you cannot claim there is a permanent same objective table out there.

A more obvious would be an objective apple out there on a table.
That apple has X number of atoms and electrons.
At every nano-seconds, there could be atoms leaving the apple or added to it from the air.
With such nano-changes one cannot claim there is a permanently same apple.
In time that supposedly permanent objective apple out there would be a rotten apple with X minus 1-billion atoms and later becoming a mere pile of rubbish.