The Characteristics of Objectivity

[ravage]

Re: The Characteristics of Objectivity

@psyah

We will have to avoid providing ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ as terms within the sentences we use when we are trying to define them. Unless of course we are invoking a definition for either term.

True! I was focused on the subject/object parts of the terms thats all.

Objective in one sense is ‘real’ or ‘tangible’ or ‘verifiable’.

Those can be properties of objectivity but not definitions of it. Some subjective truths are also verifiable.. I think the distinction lies at the
‘reasoner’ not the reasoning!

Can it be something that does not require human intelligence to acknowledge its presence.

Thats what it is. Galileo was pressured to give up saying that the Earth moved around the Sun. He is said to have muttered under his breath, after renouncing.. “But it still moves”.

Such as a tree which is acknoweldged by a dog when it urinates against it, or a sensor when it shows it on a scan, a photograph that captures it image, etc.

I think so. I think the ideal of objective reality is achieved when nobody in particular is watching. Thus we can try to be nobody in particular when watching in order to be objective.

Experiences such as love are intangible in this sense, but can ‘love’ be called objective because many people experience it? Perhaps the way ‘love’ is experienced is subjective, but the idea that it is being experienced in whatever manner may be an objective property of love.

I think that love is the quintessential example of what subjectivity* is. There is no objective reason for why someone is loved… it is ridiculous to say of someone you love them because they’re pretty, friendly, understanding etc.. it implies that if someone with more of those attributes came along then you’d be rationally compelled to abandon your loved one for the new party. When you love someone they define those terms for you, she is what it means to be beautiful. They become the prism through which you see things, the paradigm of your world. Your sensor would be saying shes ugly you’d be seeing beautiful.

• Im influenced in this post almost entirely by a recent bookIm reading on this topic