IIzO wrote:

You cannot prove something is not objective by proving it is subjective... if I see a square and you see a circle all it proves is that we are seeing different things. IT DOES NOT PROVE THERE IS NO CIRCLE.

I don't get that .How does proving that something is subjective not proving that it is not objective ?

Say, for instance, that when I look up at the sky I see red, and you see blue, no matter what. You can provide all the evidence in the world to attempt to prove to me that the sky is blue, but I will still invariably see the sky as red. All the evidence will amount to is that we are seeing differrent things. All the evidence cannot prove that the sky is ACTUALLY blue to me, because I invariably see red. In order for me to say that the sky is blue would require me to have faith...

You, in the aforementioned instance, are only capable of proving that the experience of seeing the sky is subjective. However, you have failed to prove that the sky is not objective. The sky still may very well be ACTUALLY blue as you believe, although you are unable to prove it to me.

Upon further reflection I think that a better example is any normal day event. Two people who experience the same event will invariably report different subjective experiences of that event. The fact remains that the EXACT same event happened, the event was objective, although the parties had different experiences off the event.

Proving that someone has different subjective experiences than someone else does not prove that the event is not objective.

Do you understand?(no condescension, I honestly want to make sure you understand or else I will try to provide further clarity)

amkerman wrote:

IIzO wrote:

You cannot prove something is not objective by proving it is subjective... if I see a square and you see a circle all it proves is that we are seeing different things. IT DOES NOT PROVE THERE IS NO CIRCLE.

I don't get that .How does proving that something is subjective not proving that it is not objective ?

Say, for instance, that when I look up at the sky I see red, and you see blue, no matter what. You can provide all the evidence in the world to attempt to prove to me that the sky is blue, but I will still invariably see the sky as red. All the evidence will amount to is that we are seeing differrent things. All the evidence cannot prove that the sky is ACTUALLY blue to me, because I invariably see red. In order for me to say that the sky is blue would require me to have faith...

You, in the aforementioned instance, are only capable of proving that the experience of seeing the sky is subjective. However, you have failed to prove that the sky is not objective. The sky still may very well be ACTUALLY blue as you believe, although you are unable to prove it to me.

That's a great and all but your exemple still doesn't explain why proving that something is subjective does not equal showing that it is not objective .
In your exemple you say that "the sky being blue" cannot be proven to be "actually" blue to you since you see it "red" but this is exactly what "subjective" means ,that it is not a property of the object itself (objective) ,but the product of the interactions between an object and an observer (subjective), and the observers being different the experience might therefore also be .Most of what we call "objective" we do not because it appears to be so ,but because we have some pragmatic/rational logic to justify it .

IIzO wrote:

amkerman wrote:

IIzO wrote:

You cannot prove something is not objective by proving it is subjective... if I see a square and you see a circle all it proves is that we are seeing different things. IT DOES NOT PROVE THERE IS NO CIRCLE.

I don't get that .How does proving that something is subjective not proving that it is not objective ?

Say, for instance, that when I look up at the sky I see red, and you see blue, no matter what. You can provide all the evidence in the world to attempt to prove to me that the sky is blue, but I will still invariably see the sky as red. All the evidence will amount to is that we are seeing differrent things. All the evidence cannot prove that the sky is ACTUALLY blue to me, because I invariably see red. In order for me to say that the sky is blue would require me to have faith...

You, in the aforementioned instance, are only capable of proving that the experience of seeing the sky is subjective. However, you have failed to prove that the sky is not objective. The sky still may very well be ACTUALLY blue as you believe, although you are unable to prove it to me.

That's a great and all but your exemple still doesn't explain why proving that something is subjective does not equal showing that it is not objective .
In your exemple you say that "the sky being blue" cannot be proven to be "actually" blue to you since you see it "red" but this is exactly what "subjective" means ,that it is not a property of the object itself (objective) ,but the product of the interactions between an object and an observer (subjective), and the observers being different the experience might therefore also be .Most of what we call "objective" we do not because it appears to be so ,but because we have some pragmatic/rational logic to justify it .

EXACTLY. We are unable to prove anything is objective. It requires faith to actually think they are. All the evidence in the world will not be able to prove an apple is an apple, unless we believe that apples are objectively real. Proving "that you see an apple as an orange" only proves just that, that experiences of apples are subjective. It does not prove that apples or oranges don't actually exist. If they actually exist, they exist independently of our subjective experiences of them. Just because we have subjective experiences of them, does not mean they don't exist objectively.

amkerman wrote:

You, in the aforementioned instance, are only capable of proving that the experience of seeing the sky is subjective. However, you have failed to prove that the sky is not objective.

Taking this at a philosophical level ,you would have to first give reasons to escape solipsism ,but i see what you try to do .

The sky still may very well be ACTUALLY blue as you believe, although you are unable to prove it to me.

The thing is that it makes not sense to talk about an "actually blue sky" at all .You need to make a difference between noumenon and phenomenon .The least you can do with your experience that would have a hint of objectivity is to qualify it a "the sky is the thing up there that i see blue" ,you would have to refer to both the object and the observer .

Upon further reflection I think that a better example is any normal day event. Two people who experience the same event will invariably report different subjective experiences of that event. The fact remains that the EXACT same event happened, the event was objective, although the parties had different experiences off the event.

The thing is that the report of the events are still "subjective" in nature,the comonality of the experience hint at an objective event ,but the reports of the events are not necessseraly OBJECTIVE i.e. : it was "sad ,solemn ,touching" etc those are subjective caracterisations that have more to do with the state of mind of the observer than the event .

Proving that someone has different subjective experiences than someone else does not prove that the event is not objective.

But that's not what i initially discussed here ,it was rather why proving that something is SUBJECTIVE , doesn't prove that it is not objective .

Do you understand?(no condescension, I honestly want to make sure you understand or else I will try to provide further clarity)

I think there is a slight misunderstanding ,about what i am asking .I simply do not understand how something cannot be both "subjective" and "objective" ,and i think that you tossing in senses as possibly "objective" made it more complicated .

I don't think there is a disagreement. I am fully aware that things can be both subjective and objective. I just don't think that proving they are one proves they are not the other.

amkerman wrote:
EXACTLY. We are unable to prove anything is objective.

That would be doing metaphysics yeah .But i think there is an equivocation hiding in this discussion .

It requires faith to actually think they are.

Well not everybody agrees with you ,you know the "there are good aragument to believe that" wich make a belief rational without extending to faith .

All the evidence in the world will not be able to prove an apple is an apple, unless we believe that apples are objectively real. Proving "that you see an apple as an orange" only proves just that, that experiences of apples are subjective. It does not prove that apples or oranges don't actually exist.

Agreed ,but what is referenced as being "objective" or "subbjective" is not what you think it .That which is called subjective is the complexe sensory information we call "an orange" and what is "objective" is the "whatever it ontologically is" object that we infer from this information.

If they actually exist, they exist independently of our subjective experiences of them. Just because we have subjective experiences of them, does not mean they don't exist objectively.

Yeah ,but if i am not mistaken the "subjective" and "objective" used in talking about morality is not the same as the ontological we have here .
Oldskeptics definitions of "subjective" is the one used in reference to emotions and feelings .
Morality isn't part of the senses ,it is a set of emotions and codes about behaviors , showing that the set of (expressed)emotions and behavioral codes changes is not even needed for morality to be labelled as "not objective" since the only objects it refers to are actually "subjects" (and yeah i do consider subjects as a special kind of objects).

@IIzO

"Taking this at a philosophical level, you would have to first give reasons to escape solipsism..."

Exactly. Any escape from solipsism is equivalent to a belief in "God".

All the evidence in reality cannot prove that reality exists. It must be believed. One must have faith.

amkerman wrote:@IIzO

"Taking this at a philosophical level, you would have to first give reasons to escape solipsism..."

Exactly. Any escape from solipsism is equivalent to a belief in "God".

All the evidence in reality cannot prove that reality exists. It must be believed. One must have faith.

That's two false equivalences you have there .

Explain.

amkerman wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:
See, you got it wrong again. Morality nor anything else severs the function of propagating species. But morality in the form of cooperation and reciprocal altruistic behavior is beneficial to individuals that exist in social groups/societies. The species may or may not benefit from this, but it is more likely that the will.

Saving lives and not murdering children are not objective morals as can be demonstrated by wars and genocide. They are subjective in that saving some lives is seen a moral but killing people in a different society is seen as perfectly moral. The same with murdering children. Many in Nazi Germany thought that it was moral to kill handicapped children of German descent, and that was before they got started on Jews and Gypsies.

If morals do not serve the function of propagating a species (as you originally stated. Now, it seems, you are backpeddling from this position) then why did morality evolve?

I didn't say that morality is beneficial to the survival of species, Aggie did. But I added that "moral" behavior by individuals within a social species/group could benefit the species/group.

I didn't say that morality evolved either. I said that emotions that promote what could be seen as moral/reciprocal altruistic behavior evolved.

You cannot prove something is not objective by proving it is subjective... if I see a square and you see a circle all it proves is that we are seeing different things. IT DOES NOT PROVE THERE IS NO CIRCLE.

Morals/morality are a bit different than geometric shapes and the color of the sky. A square is objectively a square and a circle is objectively a circle. If we are looking at the same shape one of us is wrong, subjectivity does not enter into it.

The sky is something altogether different because it has no objective property of color. Sometimes the sky is red or orange. Sometimes it is blue. I've even seen it when it appears to be green and pink.

So why can't I show that something like morals/morality is not objective by showing that they are really subjective? If you have one moral opinion you may consider it objective, but if my opinion runs counter to yours and I consider mine objective, one of us is wrong. But unlike the case with squares and circles there is no objective way to determine which of us is right. Yours is a subjective opinion whether you think it is objective or not. The same with mine.

William Lane Craig thinks that it is moral to murder children if his god commands it.

I try my best not to appeal to authority. I didn't know who WL Craig was until a few weeks ago. I don't know what you are getting at, either.

Craig is one of the main promoters of objective morals, but his objective morals depend on the whim of his god, which makes them anything but objective, making them subjective. That's what I am getting at.

amkerman wrote:Explain.

To escape solipsism you only have to consider the advantages and coherence of not using it .
It is rational to behave with those who "look and act" like us as if they were "not you" and consciouss.There are simply no reasons to not believe our direct experience of others and fill the blanks with our knowledge or our own subjective experience while keeping in mind that we cannot possibly know what it is like to be them .So i believe there exists other people ,but this isn't faith as i wouldn't put certainity outside my pragmatic thinking .
God on the other hand is a person with properties we cannot relate by any means :what is the subjective life of a being without sensory organs ?What are the thought of something that know everything without having to reflect ? What does omnipotence even represents ?How is omniscience supposed to fit with free will ?If there are no empirically possible experience of it's existence how is belief justified in the first place ?
The pragmatic uses of belief in God are limited to those who can do without thinking about that coherence problem ,and coherence is one of the things needed to belief .
i don't think that "faith" is legitimate in any cases ,faith goes without regard to logical coherency or empirical satisfactions, it simply opens to the possiblity to believe anything .

Amkerman
Your discussion about subjectivity falls short because our understanding of "reality" is based on the consensus of a group not one or two individuals. That reality can evolve or change depending on new information added to the knowledge pool. You are ignoring history, the other 6+ trillion people, and our technological advances to maintain that reality is about individual perception.

Example:
In today's world we have a much better understanding of light than 2,000 years ago and have developed instruments that can determine the temperature of a light. If I see a blue sky and you claim it's red, it'd be easy to test who was correct (see chart below). If the sky color temperature is 5400K and you still see red, then you should have your eyes tested for a color deficiency - or maybe you are using the wrong word for the color. So you see, subjectivity can be removed from determining a color.

ElDiablo wrote:Amkerman
Your discussion about subjectivity falls short because our understanding of "reality" is based on the consensus of a group not one or two individuals. That reality can evolve or change depending on new information added to the knowledge pool. You are ignoring history, the other 6+ trillion people, and our technological advances to maintain that reality is about individual perception.

Example:
In today's world we have a much better understanding of light than 2,000 years ago and have developed instruments that can determine the temperature of a light. If I see a blue sky and you claim it's red, it'd be easy to test who was correct (see chart below). If the sky color temperature is 5400K and you still see red, then you should have your eyes tested for a color deficiency - or maybe you are using the wrong word for the color. So you see, subjectivity can be removed from determining a color.

Subjectivity can't be removed from defining the borders between colors, though. And this scientific method doesn't, say, prove that languages that don't distinguish blue from green are *wrong*; even then, two speakers seldom will draw the line between two colours at the same spot, and since our colour view seems to be pretty close to an "octave" in width - and we seem to perceive something of a "octave equivalence"-like phenomenon with colours as well (e.g. the highest frequencies we see and the lowest ones seem to wrap around, so you get a kind of circle of colours), claiming that science draws the line between blue and red at a certain place might be like saying science draws a line between C# and c in a certain place, and anyone hearing a certain pitch as c is wrong because it's clearly closer to C#.

Subjectivity can be removed from measuring colour, but not from determining "which" colour something is. Unless you give someone the authority to draw the line between colours, but that's also arbitrary and subjective, it's just we've given the subjectivity of one person some kind of primacy, and have the pretense that his subjectivity now is objective to all of us.

IIzO wrote:

amkerman wrote:Explain.

To escape solipsism you only have to consider the advantages and coherence of not using it .
It is rational to behave with those who "look and act" like us as if they were "not you" and consciouss.There are simply no reasons to not believe our direct experience of others and fill the blanks with our knowledge or our own subjective experience while keeping in mind that we cannot possibly know what it is like to be them .So i believe there exists other people ,but this isn't faith as i wouldn't put certainity outside my pragmatic thinking .
God on the other hand is a person with properties we cannot relate by any means :what is the subjective life of a being without sensory organs ?What are the thought of something that know everything without having to reflect ? What does omnipotence even represents ?How is omniscience supposed to fit with free will ?If there are no empirically possible experience of it's existence how is belief justified in the first place ?
The pragmatic uses of belief in God are limited to those who can do without thinking about that coherence problem ,and coherence is one of the things needed to belief .
i don't think that "faith" is legitimate in any cases ,faith goes without regard to logical coherency or empirical satisfactions, it simply opens to the possiblity to believe anything .

This is word salad.

There simply is no evidence to suggest a non- solipsistic reality. If you believe things exist outside of your subjective experience of them, it takes faith. Just because it is logical to believe this does not make it correct.

I get that you are trying to rationalize how you can escape soplisism without faith, but you can't. There is no evidence to show that solipsism is incorrect. All experience is subjective. If you believe that things also exists objectively, it requires faith.

ElDiablo wrote:

Amkerman
Your discussion about subjectivity falls short because our understanding of "reality" is based on the consensus of a group not one or two individuals. That reality can evolve or change depending on new information added to the knowledge pool. You are ignoring history, the other 6+ trillion people, and our technological advances to maintain that reality is about individual perception

.

This is where you are wrong Diablo. My understanding of reality isn't "based" on anything, least of all what other people think reality is. I have no understanding of reality besides, "that which is neither derivative nor dependent, but which exists necessarily."

Reality doesn't change. People acquire knowledge over time, and people's understanding of reality changes. Reality always remains the same.

I'm not ignoring anything. I do not maintain that reality is about individual perception as you stated. I believe anything but. Reality is both universal and constant. It is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, immeasurable, and infallible. It does not change. Ever. It is what it is, "that which is neither derivative nor dependent, but which exists necessarily (Merriam-Webster)".

Example:
In today's world we have a much better understanding of light than 2,000 years ago and have developed instruments that can determine the temperature of a light. If I see a blue sky and you claim it's red, it'd be easy to test who was correct (see chart below). If the sky color temperature is 5400K and you still see red, then you should have your eyes tested for a color deficiency - or maybe you are using the wrong word for the color. So you see, subjectivity can be removed from determining a color.

That's great and all, but if I'm still subjectively experiencing the sky as red no amount of science is going to be able to prove I'm not. You can justify why my subjective experience is wrong all you want. It doesn't change the fact that all it is is a subjective experience. Proving that it is subjective does not prove that it is not objective, which was the whole point of the argument.

Science can not prove the sky is an objective color, as much as science would like to do that. In order for one to think that they "know" the sky is objectively blue (I agree this is a bad example bc the sky changes colors, but hopefully you see what I'm getting at) it requires faith. Not only does it require a faith in the scientific method, it requires faith that our conscious perceptions and observations are accurate.

Any belief in objective reality, as I have stated before, I believe is equivalent to a belief in "God". There simply is no logical basis to believe things to be anything other than subjective. All the evidence in the world is going to be subjective; all scientific observation is subjective; it is made through subjective consciousness. If you believe that consciousness exists objectively,that is clearly equivalent to a belief in "God".

I am not trying to be provocative. This is plain as day; I still don't get what is hard to understand about what I am saying.

amkerman wrote:
There simply is no evidence to suggest a non- solipsistic reality. If you believe things exist outside of your subjective experience of them, it takes faith. Just because it is logical to believe this does not make it correct.

Here we go again.
If I had a Euro for each time I've heard that sentence, or versions of it, I'd be a very wealthy woman indeed.
Let me assure you that I'm a pretty non-solipsistic reality in my own right.
Perhaps someone with a little more time could point you to the relevant threads where this question has been discussed ad nauseam.

this is my argument against atheism. Any statement "that reality does not exist" or that one "lacks belief" in reality, is nonsensical. It breaks the law of non-contradiction.

It is a claim that

1: reality is a real thing

and

2: that it doesn't exist.

If realty is a real thing, then it exists.

No amount of rationalization will be able to justify the position that reality is a real thing and yet doesn't exist.

If you are of the position that reality is not a real thing and doesn't exist, then everything is purely subjective experience. It is solipsism.

There is no distinguishing "God" as anything other than "reality" in any of this. You can't point to nothing and then say, "Look! No reality". If you're looking at "nothing" and trying to find "reality" there, you won't; nothing is there to find.

In the same way, you can not point to anything and say "Look! Reality". All we have is subjective experience. Any belief that reality objectively exists requires faith. Any belief that ANYTHING objectively exists requires faith. All the concurring subjective experience in the world will only prove one thing, that it is subjective experience. To make that leap from subjective to objective, it requires faith.

It is dishonest to say, "no, it doesn't require faith. We have science to prove that things are objectively real. We have evidence."
- Yeah. You have subjective evidence to prove that people have the same subjective experiences. To claim that subjectivity can prove objectivity is false. It cannot. You must believe that things are objectively real outside of your subjective experience of them. This is equivalent to a belief in reality. A belief in reality is equivalent to a belief in God, IMHO.

@Agrippina. I mean no disrespect. I have absolutely nothing against you.

@Regina. If it has been stated a zillion times before, it probably has some merit. Instead of pointing to others to clarify your position, clarify it for yourself.

Simply argue how you can prove objectivity is real without reality existing.

Do you see how non-sensical the argument is? If reality doesn't exist then objectivity can not be real.

Zwaarddijk wrote:
Subjectivity can't be removed from defining the borders between colors, though...

Understood but his example was red and blue. And his example was not about shades in between. Would you confuse a blue sky with a red sky - assuming it was clear sky around noon?

I have clarified my position.
I exist outside your head. Or are you talking to yourself at the moment, amkerman?