Any honest self-report of one's own sensory impressions is a subjective truth. "That looks blue to me" is a subjective truth (if it really looks blue to you, and you're not seeing yellow and lying about it).
I’d say that for pragmatic purposes, though, that kind of claim is only interesting insofar as it”s an attempt to arrive at an objective truth or at least a shared understanding: diagnosing an eye condition or arguing about design. ‘How do we know we all see the same colour as “red”?’ was the jarring question my freshman philosophy lecturer introduced Cartesian scepticism with. But it’s jarring only because it’s normally so unproblematic outside philosophy class.
So yes, it’s a claim of subjective truth. But unless one has really extensive Cartesian commitments, I’d say it’s a trivial one. ‘That looks blue to me’ might be true. But is it knowledge? Is it not fair to follow up with ‘but what colour is it really?’
So yes, it’s a claim of subjective truth. But unless one has really extensive Cartesian commitments, I’d say it’s a trivial one. ‘That looks blue to me’ might be true. But is it knowledge? Is it not fair to follow up with ‘but what colour is it really?’
Is not the only proper answer along the lines that pure white light when reflected off it gives off a light with a wave length of 1235 which most people would call a mid-blue?
But unless one has really extensive Cartesian commitments, I’d say it’s a trivial one.
Then I'd say you're not applying enough imagination. That's the primitive, the base case, the axiom we build from. Now expand it. What else can we describe as subjective truth? Or in another direction, if that's subjective truth, what is meant by subjective truth?
Your direction is trying to move it in the direction of objective truth, which we already know a metric shit-tonne about already.
My current paradigmatic example of subjective truth would be one's gender. One can be muddled or confused about it: someone may not realise that they're actually not a cis-man but a trans-woman. What they can't be is completely wrong. Saying that they're not actually a cis-man is precisely to say that they don't really believe themselves as a cis-man.
I'm in pain might be another example.
Another example would be one's belief that one believes in God or is an atheist. That is, someone might think they still believe in God whereas in fact they're only going through the motions of religious attendance or vice versa. But that is perhaps a bit easy to confuse with saying that the belief in God is itself subjective, which is a different proposition.
Note that in none of these cases is there any apparent contradiction with other people's subjective truths. (Transphobia is a case of not seeing that there's something of which there is subjective truth there at all.) The contradiction of 'X is in pain' is not 'Y is not in pain' but 'X is not in pain'. The contradiction of 'X doesn't really believe in God' is not 'but Y does really believe in God' but 'X does really believe in God after all'.
For something to be a subjective truth: it has to be a truth, so the direction of fit must be statement to the way things are - if there's no question of direction of fit then it's not a truth but a fiction or a daydream or something, and it has to be subjective, which means that its truth depends on the act of knowledge or belief rather than on something independently accessible.
Your direction is trying to move it in the direction of objective truth, which we already know a metric shit-tonne about already.
Not at all. Upthread I mentioned that I felt the subjective/objective distinction was overdrawn. The fact that both you and @Gee D assumed if I was questioning the value of subjective truths I must therefore be asserting the primacy of objective truths convinces me further that this is the case.
Then I'd say you're not applying enough imagination.
Well, perhaps. The territory I find interesting is what I've been calling 'shared subjectivities' (I suspect phenomenologists have a better word for this, but I don't know what it is); things like wine-tasting (again, discussed upthread), where truths are objectively present but not objectively demonstrable and discovered by process. Or like falling in love, where the perception is of discovering objectively-beautiful aspects of the beloved, because s/he is seen in a new way.
In fact, I think shared subjectivity is where most of life really happens. @Colin Smith commented upthread (and IIRC you agreed) that we can't share so much as a perception of a cup of coffee. Well, that hasn't prevented a massive chunk of social and economic life being built on shared cups of coffee. And I suspect most of science, with the exception of researchers working in their areas of expertise, falls into this area of non-demonstrable-but-assumed-to-be-shareable experiential trust and exchange, despite being the usual gold standard for objective knowledge.
At any rate, the idleness of purely subjective ethical claims was, I thought, amply demonstrated above (your subjective dislike of being oppressed is matched by my subjective joy in the role of oppressor, etc.). And I tend to think of purely subjective and purely objective claims to be so rare as to only have value as recondite brain-in-a-vat-Matrix-style thought experiments.
But as you say, my imagination is perhaps limited. And I'm curious as to what I'm missing.
There is also instrumentalism, which I take to mean setting questions of truth aside, and developing methods that work. "Science works" is one commonly heard form of this, but it can be applied to religion. Whether or not Zen is true in various statements, it provides for me a satisfying set of methods, such as contemplation of a koan. I don't see why this can't be applied in any religion.
Your direction is trying to move it in the direction of objective truth, which we already know a metric shit-tonne about already.
Not at all. Upthread I mentioned that I felt the subjective/objective distinction was overdrawn. The fact that both you and @Gee D assumed if I was questioning the value of subjective truths I must therefore be asserting the primacy of objective truths convinces me further that this is the case.
I don't understand how you got that from what I wrote.
@quetzalcoatl I see what you're saying, and to some extent agree with it. But I'm not sure 'it works' gets you out of all the problems normally associated with 'it's true'. A Zen master will still give you a pass/fail on koan answers. And of course, some of the Zen methodologies look a bit extreme to contemporary western eyes: Nanzen killing the cat, Gutei chopping off the finger .... and when I was a Zen student there was always a lot of angst about the use or otherwise of the keisaku.
And that's leaving aside the whole disaster of 'Imperial Way Zen' ....
I don't understand how you got that from what I wrote.
Well, you mentioned that the 'proper' answer would involve light-wavelengths and a population survey, which I took as a recommendation of purely objective methodologies. No?
@quetzalcoatl I see what you're saying, and to some extent agree with it. But I'm not sure 'it works' gets you out of all the problems normally associated with 'it's true'. A Zen master will still give you a pass/fail on koan answers. And of course, some of the Zen methodologies look a bit extreme to contemporary western eyes: Nanzen killing the cat, Gutei chopping off the finger .... and when I was a Zen student there was always a lot of angst about the use or otherwise of the keisaku.
And that's leaving aside the whole disaster of 'Imperial Way Zen' ....
A very good story about a student who 'passed' all the koans in a certain monastery. Then his teacher began growling, "interesting but not Zen", to his solutions. Eventually, the guy began stammering and gulping, and the teacher said yes, true Zen.
I think you’re working with an idiosyncratic definition of objective truth. There are things which ‘everyone’ believes which turn out to be wrong or untrue. They are simply not truth at all they are error or falsehood.
The battle of Hastings in 1066 is an objective truth. The idea that it was a tragic truncation of high Anglo Saxon culture may be held true by some people and not others. It could be called a subjective truth, though my choice of word would be opinion.
OTOH it may be true for you to say that Brussels sprouts or coriander/cilantro are horrible. Other people may like them. I would call that a subjective truth (of sorts) because there are known genetics behind those differing experiences of taste.
ISTM that the Christian claim that there is one god who made everything that is, seen and unseen, is a truth claim which doesn’t comfortably allow the existence of other gods, or other beings to have brought things into existence.
You can transform it into a taste/preference claim - ‘this is what I like to believe’, but by so doing you deny its claim to be truth. You can also deny it altogether. ‘It’s not real it’s just a matter of preference’, or ‘there are no such things as gods’. This moves it into the realms of myth, error or falsehood.
You might consider that myth, error or falsehood to be harmless and not worth worrying about, or you might consider it to be an unhelpful or dangerous delusion which should be suppressed, or at least caused to wither away.
I am perhaps too subjective in my definition of words
I think you sum things up well. I would suggest that for a truth to be objective it must be undeniably true. Admittedly that does make objective truths relatively uncommon and not terribly useful in terms of how to live one's life. Though an awareness of gravity and Newton's Third Law are essential for perambulation.
Regarding religious belief, I do think ‘this is what I like to believe’, describes my take on it and it's why I shifted from agnosticism (a rational position) to atheism which is non-rational as there's no evidence for the non-existence of God.
What troubles me is that my position as an agnostic was down to a childhood and upbringing that was all-but devoid of anything spiritual, religious, or philosophical. I, quite literally, didn't talk to a Christian work colleague about belief until I was 19 and given that Christian was a young earth creationist it was a hell of a shock. Admittedly, I was aware that my grandparents had something to do with a church and with God because they had funerals in a church, but they also had funny clothes, cuckoo clocks, and antimacassars on their chairs so I assumed God was something old people did. By comparison, my work colleague was only in her twenties.
In short, I wish I had had a bit more exploration of spirituality and belief in my early life so that I could have chosen what I wanted to believe, rather than having a Hobson's choice.
A very good story about a student who 'passed' all the koans in a certain monastery. Then his teacher began growling, "interesting but not Zen", to his solutions. Eventually, the guy began stammering and gulping, and the teacher said yes, true Zen.
Meh. Zen's paradoxical character lends itself to cute apocrypha like this. I don't think many Zen roshis would think they had much in common with the dharma; certainly Katagiri roshi was sort of eye-rolling about what he called western 'no-nothing' Zen.
Well, perhaps. I don't think that fight, or at least, that way of framing it, has much in common with the dharma. But it's certainly a popular one, at any rate.
There is also instrumentalism, which I take to mean setting questions of truth aside, and developing methods that work.
Certainly Boris Johnson's view of political speech.
The word 'work' is doing a lot of work here. 'Work' for what purpose? I think scientific instrumentalism is only coherent if you smuggle the concept of truth back in under the concept of 'work'. Otherwise, work in what way? Make money under capitalism?
It's also a good deal more plausible if you're thinking of the physical sciences or biology which are next to medicine or engineering; less so for paleontology, say.
I would suggest that for a truth to be objective it must be undeniably true.
That is a terrible definition of objective. A lot of people seem to use the word as if that's part of its meaning, but it just breeds confusion, because they don't use that as the whole meaning and then the meanings get muddled. (Also the category of truths that really cannot be denied is as you say quite small. Most of them I would say are subjective: if I like strawberries you can't deny that.)
A truth is objective if and only if it is true regardless of whether anybody or everybody denies it.
Probably the word is too muddled and should be retired.
I would suggest that for a truth to be objective it must be undeniably true.
That is a terrible definition of objective. A lot of people seem to use the word as if that's part of its meaning, but it just breeds confusion, because they don't use that as the whole meaning and then the meanings get muddled. (Also the category of truths that really cannot be denied is as you say quite small. Most of them I would say are subjective: if I like strawberries you can't deny that.)
A truth is objective if and only if it is true regardless of whether anybody or everybody denies it.
Probably the word is too muddled and should be retired.
Oh no, most decidedly not! It is essential and should be well understood, along with the provision for a very small gap to be allowed for information that might reverse it.
That’s a rather muddled post Susan Doris. The possibility that some information might come along and falsify something previously held to be true doesn’t affect the objectivity of it. It affects how firmly one holds it - how confident in fact one can be that it is actually true.
Objectivity is about whether the same criteria can (in principle) be applied by everyone in assessing its truthfulness.
That’s a rather muddled post Susan Doris. The possibility that some information might come along and falsify something previously held to be true doesn’t affect the objectivity of it. It affects how firmly one holds it - how confident in fact one can be that it is actually true.
Objectivity is about whether the same criteria can (in principle) be applied by everyone in assessing its truthfulness.
I nentioned the proviso to be strictly correct in the scientific sense since nothing can ever be 100% proved, even gravity.
Well arguably that’s incorrect as well - at least in relation to much of mathematics.
But the possibility that something might be disproved doesn’t affect its objectivity.
So when you said
It is essential and should be well understood, along with the provision for a very small gap to be allowed for information that might reverse it.
assuming the ‘It’ refers to the word ‘objective’ the fact that something is disproved doesn’t affect whether it was objectively believed or not, it just affects whether it was true.
Part of the problem is that beliefs, knowledge, and other cognitive attitudes have two ends: the person believing (the subject) and the thing believed (the object). 'Real' definitely refers to the object; 'opinion' definitely refers to the subject. Truth though it mostly refers to the object has some element of reference to the subject, in that almost all uses of truth in modern languages require there to be a statement or a belief that is true.
Your direction is trying to move it in the direction of objective truth, which we already know a metric shit-tonne about already.
Not at all. Upthread I mentioned that I felt the subjective/objective distinction was overdrawn. The fact that both you and @Gee D assumed if I was questioning the value of subjective truths I must therefore be asserting the primacy of objective truths convinces me further that this is the case.
Either that or you're not being as clear as you think you are.
There is also instrumentalism, which I take to mean setting questions of truth aside, and developing methods that work. "Science works" is one commonly heard form of this, but it can be applied to religion. Whether or not Zen is true in various statements, it provides for me a satisfying set of methods, such as contemplation of a koan. I don't see why this can't be applied in any religion.
I think the point is that science works for everybody. No religion can claim as much.
There is also instrumentalism, which I take to mean setting questions of truth aside, and developing methods that work. "Science works" is one commonly heard form of this, but it can be applied to religion. Whether or not Zen is true in various statements, it provides for me a satisfying set of methods, such as contemplation of a koan. I don't see why this can't be applied in any religion.
I think the point is that science works for everybody. No religion can claim as much.
There is also instrumentalism, which I take to mean setting questions of truth aside, and developing methods that work. "Science works" is one commonly heard form of this, but it can be applied to religion. Whether or not Zen is true in various statements, it provides for me a satisfying set of methods, such as contemplation of a koan. I don't see why this can't be applied in any religion.
On further reflection, in addition to my earlier doubts, I’m curious about what ‘works’ can really mean here. Zen writers are often adamant/make jokes about the pointlessness of Zen (I think it was Shinryu Suzuki who was fond of saying ‘Zen is good for nothing’): it’s not there to improve your mental health, bring you balance and equanimity, and even to conceptualise it as work toward enlightenment is to miss the point. The practice, fully realised, will radically reframe (or unframe) the conditions of existence, including the notion of goal or telos. So it’s curious to see it lumped under the heading of ‘instrumentalism’. I’m not sure it’s wrong, exactly. But what exactly is meant by ‘work’ takes some thought.
Either that or you're not being as clear as you think you are.
I suspect we’re both right. I’m sure I’m often unclear, not least because I’m thinking out loud, so to speak.
On the other hand, if we didn’t have a strong subjective/objective polarity baked deep into our philosophical culture over the last four hundred years or so, I’d imagine the normal response to a lack of clarity would be, indeed, to seek clarification - rather than to assume one’s interlocutor has the wrong end of the stick and move straight to the reprimands.
I think the point is that science works for everybody. No religion can claim as much.
Indeed, I would say that is the point.
Well, it’s certainly a point. But of course, scientific enquiry achieves this universality by abstracting away a great deal. Ethics; ideals; qualitative evaluations; subjectivity; consciousness ... the list of things the scientific approach finds awkward and intractable is quite high. Grateful though I am to the scientific revolution and the technology it has engendered, the scientific method does not really address very much in my lived experience.
And of course, as a parent, I am not raising everybody. I am a part of a specific couple, raising a very specific individual in a very particular time and place. Universal and homogenising claims are only one strand in a much richer picture.
I think the point is that science works for everybody. No religion can claim as much.
Indeed, I would say that is the point.
Well, it’s certainly a point. But of course, scientific enquiry achieves this universality by abstracting away a great deal. Ethics; ideals; qualitative evaluations; subjectivity; consciousness ... the list of things the scientific approach finds awkward and intractable is quite high. Grateful though I am to the scientific revolution and the technology it has engendered, the scientific method does not really address very much in my lived experience.
And of course, as a parent, I am not raising everybody. I am a part of a specific couple, raising a very specific individual in a very particular time and place. Universal and homogenising claims are only one strand in a much richer picture.
No argument there from me. ;However, I think you will have to acknowledge that you will never* be able to tellllllll your child that God can be proved following the scientific method, since you cannot start with any independent observation to follow the starting guess that there is God. If you do not acknowledge this - and we are still on the topic of teaching children Christianitiy - how would you support this?
However, I think you will have to acknowledge that you will never* be able to tellllllll your child that God can be proved following the scientific method, since you cannot start with any independent observation to follow the starting guess that there is God. If you do not acknowledge this - and we are still on the topic of teaching children Christianitiy - how would you support this?
* usual proviso assumed.
In exactly the way that I have been doing. He will learn, I hope, that the world and life are vast and deep, and that many are the paths of enquiry leading through it. The view from nowhere - of absolute independence - is a valuable one, at least in the attempt. But toilet-training and wine-tasting and love are all a kind of knowledge as well, and not of secondary importance at all. As said above.
As for the proviso ... he will also learn, quite directly from me, that scientific knowledge is not a question of being 100% certain, minus some space left for potential revision, and this for the sake of his science education. There is nothing more destructive to scientific curiosity, IMV, then the hubris that declares the architecture complete, with all that remains to be done being the working out of some details. We learn the history of revolutions in understanding - Galileo, Darwin, Einstein. But too often, I think, with an assumption that these were the last.
There is also instrumentalism, which I take to mean setting questions of truth aside, and developing methods that work. "Science works" is one commonly heard form of this, but it can be applied to religion. Whether or not Zen is true in various statements, it provides for me a satisfying set of methods, such as contemplation of a koan. I don't see why this can't be applied in any religion.
On further reflection, in addition to my earlier doubts, I’m curious about what ‘works’ can really mean here. Zen writers are often adamant/make jokes about the pointlessness of Zen (I think it was Shinryu Suzuki who was fond of saying ‘Zen is good for nothing’): it’s not there to improve your mental health, bring you balance and equanimity, and even to conceptualise it as work toward enlightenment is to miss the point. The practice, fully realised, will radically reframe (or unframe) the conditions of existence, including the notion of goal or telos. So it’s curious to see it lumped under the heading of ‘instrumentalism’. I’m not sure it’s wrong, exactly. But what exactly is meant by ‘work’ takes some thought.
Interesting points. Yes, "works" means unhinging everything. I didn't set out with that in mind, just fell into it, but I like the constant reframing and emptying. We used to fall about laughing at the continual negation of goals and so on, and then the reversal of that. The trees are trees and the mountains are mountains.
Epistemology is a pretty heady brew for a three year old. "These things we learn this way, and those things we learn that way, and these other things we learn a third way." They're not going to get it.
Sure. But there's no need for a three-year-old to 'get' that intellectually, because they're engaged in different ways of knowing all the time. Toilet-training and tumbling by example and action; emotions and ethics through stories and family interactions; counting through memorisation, and a little later by induction. Plus, I'm sure, all through other modes and educational psychologist could elucidate.
Later on it starts making sense to wonder how all these relate to each other, and if there's some single way of grounding them all. But that's for much later.
Sure. But there's no need for a three-year-old to 'get' that intellectually, because they're engaged in different ways of knowing all the time. Toilet-training and tumbling by example and action; emotions and ethics through stories and family interactions; counting through memorisation, and a little later by induction. Plus, I'm sure, all through other modes and educational psychologist could elucidate.
Later on it starts making sense to wonder how all these relate to each other, and if there's some single way of grounding them all. But that's for much later.
"A single way of grounding them all" is interesting. I've tended to go in the other direction, whatever you call it, chaos I guess.
Yes, I'm wondering about the desirability, at an individual level, of "A single way of grounding them all". At a creative level, I think I (and maybe we) need the irritation of conflicting things to create new ideas. Otherwise we just have oysters and no pearls.
"A single way of grounding them all" is interesting. I've tended to go in the other direction, whatever you call it, chaos I guess.
Yes, I'm wondering about the desirability, at an individual level, of "A single way of grounding them all". At a creative level, I think I (and maybe we) need the irritation of conflicting things to create new ideas. Otherwise we just have oysters and no pearls.
Yes, the idea of connecting everything seems odd to me. The point about creativity and conflict is right for me. Also I enjoy not knowing.
Later on it starts making sense to wonder how all these relate to each other, and if there's some single way of grounding them all. But that's for much later.
I think we usually want some kind of cohesion amongst our different ways of knowledge, so that at least we're not acting in a self-contradictory way (right now, for instance, I'm trying to get my son's love of physical excellence and prowess in sport to align with some kind of ethics of fairness and sportsmanship). But it's not easy, and gets harder the more tightly coherent one wants everything to be. Hence my reservations.
Later on it starts making sense to wonder how all these relate to each other, and if there's some single way of grounding them all. But that's for much later.
I think we usually want some kind of cohesion amongst our different ways of knowledge, so that at least we're not acting in a self-contradictory way (right now, for instance, I'm trying to get my son's love of physical excellence and prowess
in sport to align with some kind of ethics of fairness and sportsmanship). But it's not easy, and gets harder the more tightly coherent one wants everything to be. Hence my reservations.
I think I am right in saying that you have already mentioned that you have talked to your child about God and Jesus, so that idea of the cohesion is already being established in his mind. I notice, too, that you have - as quite entitled to do of course - avoided responding directly to my point about never (including proviso) being able to verify God. Yes, I could have left this unsaid, but, being a consistent sort of person, I have written it!
I notice, too, that you have - as quite entitled to do of course - avoided responding directly to my point about never (including proviso) being able to verify God.
I rather thought I had, upthread where I wrote that the experience of God is verifiable, in the way that wine-tasting notes are verifiable, but not demonstrable in a predictive scientific sense. But to be plain: I have never seen a convincing proof of God's existence, nor would I expect the deity's existence to be demonstrable by experiment.
As I have tried to convey by various means upthread, I do not think this is tremendously important. Or at least, it does not have the importance to me that it appears to have for you.
I think I am right in saying that you have already mentioned that you have talked to your child about God and Jesus, so that idea of the cohesion is already being established in his mind.
Yes, I do talk to him about God and Jesus, but you seem to me making several assumptions about how I am doing so. My own personal theology leans strongly towards the apophatic (the divine transcends any particular proposition made of it - for instance, God does not submit to proofs, see above), and of course we know from Paul that the letter killeth, and the spirit giveth life. So I would find it hard to work my Christianity up into a logically-axiomatic doctrine into which phonics, toilet-training, and learning to count might all be grounded.
Yes, I could have left this unsaid, but, being a consistent sort of person, I have written it!
Well, consistency can be a virtue. But as Emerson observed, it can also be a hobgoblin. The trick, I suppose, is knowing when it starts shading from one to the other.
Comments
I’d say that for pragmatic purposes, though, that kind of claim is only interesting insofar as it”s an attempt to arrive at an objective truth or at least a shared understanding: diagnosing an eye condition or arguing about design. ‘How do we know we all see the same colour as “red”?’ was the jarring question my freshman philosophy lecturer introduced Cartesian scepticism with. But it’s jarring only because it’s normally so unproblematic outside philosophy class.
So yes, it’s a claim of subjective truth. But unless one has really extensive Cartesian commitments, I’d say it’s a trivial one. ‘That looks blue to me’ might be true. But is it knowledge? Is it not fair to follow up with ‘but what colour is it really?’
Is not the only proper answer along the lines that pure white light when reflected off it gives off a light with a wave length of 1235 which most people would call a mid-blue?
Thank you.
Then I'd say you're not applying enough imagination. That's the primitive, the base case, the axiom we build from. Now expand it. What else can we describe as subjective truth? Or in another direction, if that's subjective truth, what is meant by subjective truth?
Your direction is trying to move it in the direction of objective truth, which we already know a metric shit-tonne about already.
I'm in pain might be another example.
Another example would be one's belief that one believes in God or is an atheist. That is, someone might think they still believe in God whereas in fact they're only going through the motions of religious attendance or vice versa. But that is perhaps a bit easy to confuse with saying that the belief in God is itself subjective, which is a different proposition.
Note that in none of these cases is there any apparent contradiction with other people's subjective truths. (Transphobia is a case of not seeing that there's something of which there is subjective truth there at all.) The contradiction of 'X is in pain' is not 'Y is not in pain' but 'X is not in pain'. The contradiction of 'X doesn't really believe in God' is not 'but Y does really believe in God' but 'X does really believe in God after all'.
For something to be a subjective truth: it has to be a truth, so the direction of fit must be statement to the way things are - if there's no question of direction of fit then it's not a truth but a fiction or a daydream or something, and it has to be subjective, which means that its truth depends on the act of knowledge or belief rather than on something independently accessible.
Not at all. Upthread I mentioned that I felt the subjective/objective distinction was overdrawn. The fact that both you and @Gee D assumed if I was questioning the value of subjective truths I must therefore be asserting the primacy of objective truths convinces me further that this is the case.
Well, perhaps. The territory I find interesting is what I've been calling 'shared subjectivities' (I suspect phenomenologists have a better word for this, but I don't know what it is); things like wine-tasting (again, discussed upthread), where truths are objectively present but not objectively demonstrable and discovered by process. Or like falling in love, where the perception is of discovering objectively-beautiful aspects of the beloved, because s/he is seen in a new way.
In fact, I think shared subjectivity is where most of life really happens. @Colin Smith commented upthread (and IIRC you agreed) that we can't share so much as a perception of a cup of coffee. Well, that hasn't prevented a massive chunk of social and economic life being built on shared cups of coffee. And I suspect most of science, with the exception of researchers working in their areas of expertise, falls into this area of non-demonstrable-but-assumed-to-be-shareable experiential trust and exchange, despite being the usual gold standard for objective knowledge.
At any rate, the idleness of purely subjective ethical claims was, I thought, amply demonstrated above (your subjective dislike of being oppressed is matched by my subjective joy in the role of oppressor, etc.). And I tend to think of purely subjective and purely objective claims to be so rare as to only have value as recondite brain-in-a-vat-Matrix-style thought experiments.
But as you say, my imagination is perhaps limited. And I'm curious as to what I'm missing.
I don't understand how you got that from what I wrote.
And that's leaving aside the whole disaster of 'Imperial Way Zen' ....
Well, you mentioned that the 'proper' answer would involve light-wavelengths and a population survey, which I took as a recommendation of purely objective methodologies. No?
A very good story about a student who 'passed' all the koans in a certain monastery. Then his teacher began growling, "interesting but not Zen", to his solutions. Eventually, the guy began stammering and gulping, and the teacher said yes, true Zen.
I am perhaps too subjective in my definition of words
I think you sum things up well. I would suggest that for a truth to be objective it must be undeniably true. Admittedly that does make objective truths relatively uncommon and not terribly useful in terms of how to live one's life. Though an awareness of gravity and Newton's Third Law are essential for perambulation.
Regarding religious belief, I do think ‘this is what I like to believe’, describes my take on it and it's why I shifted from agnosticism (a rational position) to atheism which is non-rational as there's no evidence for the non-existence of God.
What troubles me is that my position as an agnostic was down to a childhood and upbringing that was all-but devoid of anything spiritual, religious, or philosophical. I, quite literally, didn't talk to a Christian work colleague about belief until I was 19 and given that Christian was a young earth creationist it was a hell of a shock. Admittedly, I was aware that my grandparents had something to do with a church and with God because they had funerals in a church, but they also had funny clothes, cuckoo clocks, and antimacassars on their chairs so I assumed God was something old people did. By comparison, my work colleague was only in her twenties.
In short, I wish I had had a bit more exploration of spirituality and belief in my early life so that I could have chosen what I wanted to believe, rather than having a Hobson's choice.
Meh. Zen's paradoxical character lends itself to cute apocrypha like this. I don't think many Zen roshis would think they had much in common with the dharma; certainly Katagiri roshi was sort of eye-rolling about what he called western 'no-nothing' Zen.
The word 'work' is doing a lot of work here. 'Work' for what purpose? I think scientific instrumentalism is only coherent if you smuggle the concept of truth back in under the concept of 'work'. Otherwise, work in what way? Make money under capitalism?
It's also a good deal more plausible if you're thinking of the physical sciences or biology which are next to medicine or engineering; less so for paleontology, say.
A truth is objective if and only if it is true regardless of whether anybody or everybody denies it.
Probably the word is too muddled and should be retired.
Objectivity is about whether the same criteria can (in principle) be applied by everyone in assessing its truthfulness.
But the possibility that something might be disproved doesn’t affect its objectivity.
So when you said assuming the ‘It’ refers to the word ‘objective’ the fact that something is disproved doesn’t affect whether it was objectively believed or not, it just affects whether it was true.
Either that or you're not being as clear as you think you are.
I think the point is that science works for everybody. No religion can claim as much.
Indeed, I would say that is the point.
On further reflection, in addition to my earlier doubts, I’m curious about what ‘works’ can really mean here. Zen writers are often adamant/make jokes about the pointlessness of Zen (I think it was Shinryu Suzuki who was fond of saying ‘Zen is good for nothing’): it’s not there to improve your mental health, bring you balance and equanimity, and even to conceptualise it as work toward enlightenment is to miss the point. The practice, fully realised, will radically reframe (or unframe) the conditions of existence, including the notion of goal or telos. So it’s curious to see it lumped under the heading of ‘instrumentalism’. I’m not sure it’s wrong, exactly. But what exactly is meant by ‘work’ takes some thought.
I suspect we’re both right. I’m sure I’m often unclear, not least because I’m thinking out loud, so to speak.
On the other hand, if we didn’t have a strong subjective/objective polarity baked deep into our philosophical culture over the last four hundred years or so, I’d imagine the normal response to a lack of clarity would be, indeed, to seek clarification - rather than to assume one’s interlocutor has the wrong end of the stick and move straight to the reprimands.
Well, it’s certainly a point. But of course, scientific enquiry achieves this universality by abstracting away a great deal. Ethics; ideals; qualitative evaluations; subjectivity; consciousness ... the list of things the scientific approach finds awkward and intractable is quite high. Grateful though I am to the scientific revolution and the technology it has engendered, the scientific method does not really address very much in my lived experience.
And of course, as a parent, I am not raising everybody. I am a part of a specific couple, raising a very specific individual in a very particular time and place. Universal and homogenising claims are only one strand in a much richer picture.
* usual proviso assumed.
In exactly the way that I have been doing. He will learn, I hope, that the world and life are vast and deep, and that many are the paths of enquiry leading through it. The view from nowhere - of absolute independence - is a valuable one, at least in the attempt. But toilet-training and wine-tasting and love are all a kind of knowledge as well, and not of secondary importance at all. As said above.
As for the proviso ... he will also learn, quite directly from me, that scientific knowledge is not a question of being 100% certain, minus some space left for potential revision, and this for the sake of his science education. There is nothing more destructive to scientific curiosity, IMV, then the hubris that declares the architecture complete, with all that remains to be done being the working out of some details. We learn the history of revolutions in understanding - Galileo, Darwin, Einstein. But too often, I think, with an assumption that these were the last.
Interesting points. Yes, "works" means unhinging everything. I didn't set out with that in mind, just fell into it, but I like the constant reframing and emptying. We used to fall about laughing at the continual negation of goals and so on, and then the reversal of that. The trees are trees and the mountains are mountains.
Later on it starts making sense to wonder how all these relate to each other, and if there's some single way of grounding them all. But that's for much later.
That's my point.
Yes, I'm wondering about the desirability, at an individual level, of "A single way of grounding them all". At a creative level, I think I (and maybe we) need the irritation of conflicting things to create new ideas. Otherwise we just have oysters and no pearls.
Yes, the idea of connecting everything seems odd to me. The point about creativity and conflict is right for me. Also I enjoy not knowing.
I think we usually want some kind of cohesion amongst our different ways of knowledge, so that at least we're not acting in a self-contradictory way (right now, for instance, I'm trying to get my son's love of physical excellence and prowess in sport to align with some kind of ethics of fairness and sportsmanship). But it's not easy, and gets harder the more tightly coherent one wants everything to be. Hence my reservations.
I rather thought I had, upthread where I wrote that the experience of God is verifiable, in the way that wine-tasting notes are verifiable, but not demonstrable in a predictive scientific sense. But to be plain: I have never seen a convincing proof of God's existence, nor would I expect the deity's existence to be demonstrable by experiment.
As I have tried to convey by various means upthread, I do not think this is tremendously important. Or at least, it does not have the importance to me that it appears to have for you.
Yes, I do talk to him about God and Jesus, but you seem to me making several assumptions about how I am doing so. My own personal theology leans strongly towards the apophatic (the divine transcends any particular proposition made of it - for instance, God does not submit to proofs, see above), and of course we know from Paul that the letter killeth, and the spirit giveth life. So I would find it hard to work my Christianity up into a logically-axiomatic doctrine into which phonics, toilet-training, and learning to count might all be grounded.
Well, consistency can be a virtue. But as Emerson observed, it can also be a hobgoblin. The trick, I suppose, is knowing when it starts shading from one to the other.
Thank you for that post; interesting and appreciated as usual.