Is everything subjective?
Everything is processed in our brains and are thus susceptible to human biases and general confusion and misinterpretation. Naive realism, the claim that we are experiencing the universe as it is, seems untenable. Many if not most of our propositions are imbued within a emotional framework from which escape seems utterly impossible.
So there's a big problem here. It seems hard to justify that we may somehow transcend the inherent subjectivity of all our thoughts and ideas. Let's treat it as a possibility though and ask ourselves if we we got any good candidates for types of thoughts that are not subjective, i.e. objective?
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We will never be able to truly trascend subjectivity, we may only approach objectivity assymptotically, never quite getting there. Our best bet at getting closer to objectivity is to find the things that all subjects agree upon. One of the most reliable methods for doing this is to use concepts the meaning of which everyone agrees on. Everyone agrees what a number is so there's no confusion here. This is a general rule of mathematics, everything mathematical is well defined, so naturally we would like to use mathematical models as a way to guide us towards objectivity. Mathematical are abstract and don't necesarilly correspond with truth. The natural step is then to ground a model in the world in something that corresponds with truth and which we can all agree on. If our sole goal is to trascend subjectivity then we have to aim for evidence that depends on the individuals judgement to the least possible degree. Our natural candidate for evidence of this kind would be empirical evidence of the hit-a-rock-with-a-hammer-and-see-what- So in conclusion, our best bet for objective knowledge is knowledge derived from mathematical models applied to empirical evidence. 1
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With the philosophy of solipisism which I would agree there is a little bit of truth to, but not totally, as we can be pretty certain reality is... well real. We can't objectively experience the universe, the scents, feels, sights, sounds, tastes, our entire perception of everything, is an illusion. There is a VERY small chance, that for all I know I could be hooked up to some machine right now, fabicating an entire world, like a dream, for me. Here is a video about solipsism I find rather fascinating. Vsauce is the man! My perception is completely fabricated for me, within my mind, of course it is in all likelihood fabricating itself to accurately reflect the world around me, but regardless, is still a fabrication. https://www.youtube.com/ I wouldn't say everything is subjective, but rather, we can't truly experience something objectively, we are completely alone in our own minds. I think their is an objective reality, a plane to which we exist, as sentient beings, our sentience can't truly live in objective reality, we can't "perceive" objective reality objectively, so our sentience perceives it by creating it's own reality, because it is the only means that it can perceive the objective reality, by creating an artificial one to reflect it. Our sentience creates a reality unique and inherrent to itself that explains itself directly to ourselves, and this reality contains the experience of our own sentience, and combines it with it's perception of the external reality. So we have the objective reality, our sentience's, and it's unique subjective reality blending in with each other. The subjective reality makes the objective reality comprehensible to us, but not perceivable technically, the subjective reality's blend with the objective's reality becomes the sentient's reality. So you have the objective (reality), subjective (consciousness), and the sentient's total reality(phaneron?). reality is important, because we exist inside of it, it exists outside of us, we are bound by it, but it isn't bound by our mind. Our consciousness is bound by both, so in relative to us, the reality of our mind is equally relevant as the reality outside our mind. If I taste something really bad tasting, that will effect my consciousness, although the taste is just an illusion, my consciousness is bound by it, it is real to it, as with everything that is objective. https://www.youtube.com/ I think their is an objective reality, a plane to which we exist I think this is spot on and it was one of my presuppositions in my own argument in this debate. Asserting the opposite, (i.e. that there is no objective reality) undermines any basis for the claim itself. If you assert that there is no objective reality every claim becomes functionally meaningless. So I think it's essentially impossible to show that there is no objective reality. That doesn't mean though, that an objective reality exists. I am not entirely sure how I would go about showing that an objective reality exists; maybe I would appeal to the fact that each and every claim we make presuppose or hint at the existence of an objective reality. Do you have any ideas about how we could show that an objective reality exists? 1
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Do you have any ideas about how we could show that an objective reality exists?That is a very good question I haven't put much thought to, I suppose my answer, at least as of now, is that our subjective reality, our conscious experience and our phaneron seems to be dependent on an objective reality. We can differentiate between our conscious experience and the objective reality around that, our phaneron is dependent on things outside of the mind. What I see, is an illusion, color is an illusion, but that color comes from light particles, what color I see is dependent on those light particles, and thus the product of color in my phaneron, or in my mind, is dependent on these light particles. Same with my scent, the scent inside my mind is dependent on the (particles in the air?) my taste inside my mind is dependent on whatever touches my tongue, etc. edit In other words, our subjective reality, what is produced in (or through) our phanerons require a reality outside our minds. |
