SquirrelTao
New member
- Joined
- May 28, 2008
- Messages
- 198
- MBTI Type
- INXX
Objective, in this sense, means independent of perception. All things that exist in the natural world are objective. However, once human beings take in information about objects in the natural world, they form perceptions of them, and they are therefore no longer "objective".
That's sort of how I look at it by default.
<tangent>
But there are some philosophical issues with it. Some will ask how we know that our perceptions don't create reality, and I believe there is a renowned physicist named Amit Goswami who takes this school of thought seriously and makes extreme arguments for it that he defends very well. I suppose the views of somebody like Goswami could be summed up as being sort of like viewing the move, The Matrix, as an analogy for the type of reality we live in and our relationship to that reality (without the evil robots, of course).
Personally, though, I don't believe that our perceptions create reality, because then how did we evolve? Reality had to already be there long enough for us to evolve. Also, what if there were intelligent aliens? Their perceptions might create a different reality from ours, and then what? Would reality be different on their planet? In their galaxy? What would the boundaries be? Would our differing realities come to conflict in the universe, even threatening to tear apart the fabric of the universe? What about differences in individual perception? How does one individual's perception prevail over another's to create reality? Does the individual with the strongest aura win? What about collectively? Do the most popular perceptions create reality? When people believed in Zeus, did Zeus exist? Once they stopped believing, did Zeus then stop existing?
</tangent>
However, once individuals form perceptions, they can compare them to the perceptions of other individuals. In doing so we form "concepts". Whereas concepts are a human creation, and in no way objective in the natural world, since they are based on many human perceptions, they can be considered objective in the human world because most if not everyone can percieve them. So since values like equality and liberty can be experienced in much the same way by everyone, they are arguably "objective" or independent of perception in the human world.
Hmmm, do you really suppose values like equality and liberty are experienced the same way? I've had some arguments about exactly what equality means, and many people don't agree on the definition. For example, do you limit it to equal rights? (But where do the rights come from if they can't be grounded in the natural world as Ayn Rand tries to do and as stoics and many others did long before her, with their concepts such as natural law?) Or do you distinguish equality from egalitarianism? Do you mean just an equal playing field, or do you mean equal results? And on and on.
Liberty, too, has been defined different ways by different philosophers. Sartre believed that even the slave in chains is free. Some believe there is no such thing as freedom, since free will doesn't exist.
(I personally, however, would love for values to be less relative, since I have some heartburn over cultural relativity. I'll get into the reasons for that later.)
Relative goes far beyond Einstein's theory. It translates as "in relation to". For example, cultural relativism is the concept that a cultural system can be viewed only in terms of the principles, background, frame of reference, and history that characterize it. This view holds that there are no absolutes or universals within any culture.
Cultural relativism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The human world is obviously "in relation to" the natural world which we can only percieve through our limited senses. The fact that individuals can percieve the world so differently demonstrates the limits of our capacities and the inherent relativity of the human world to the natural world.
Yep, I'm familiar with cultural relativism. I just wasn't sure how you were using the term relativity. You use words like "relative" so differently in different contexts, and they pop up where I would almost expect the opposite word, given what I was beginning to think I understood as your meaning, rendering me unsure what you are trying to say.
And I was also confused because you had said elsewhere that values are subjective but are here saying they're objective. It would help if you would make your shifting contexts clear since the words you use often add up to the opposite import (once you explain your use) of what I would take them to mean on first reading. It can seem on a first reading (at least to me) that you are being self-contradictory.
Now, on to the next question:
How does the nature of values, as you've laid it out so far, differ from cultural relativism?