Or vise versa. And/or: Is Subjectivity and Objectivity always mutually exclusive?
Dustin Jussila: Or vise versa. And/or: Is Subjectivity and Objectivity always mutually exclusive?
Too vague. How do you define those words? And what context are you using them in?
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
Thats a good question. Although, do you necessarily need to define the context?
repeatable experimentation? inter-subjective knowledge? tenous line that I'm sure you could never pin down
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun: repeatable experimentation? inter-subjective knowledge? tenous line that I'm sure you could never pin down
In layman's terms please, you'll confuse people like me who only have average IQ's.
lol sorry.
Repeatable experimentation. I develop an experiment to explain something, you can repeat it anywhere, anytime, by anyone with 99.99% accuracy.
Inter-subjective knowledge. I know something, you know something, he/she/they know something, we come to a conclusion based off this.
The second one is much less dependable, but it has its merits.
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun: Inter-subjective knowledge. I know something, you know something, he/she/they know something, we come to a conclusion based off this
Inter-subjective knowledge. I know something, you know something, he/she/they know something, we come to a conclusion based off this
Is that sort of like Groupthink?
basically, but group-think usually carries a negative connotation.
If I know that lions are dangerous, and you know that lions hang out in territory A, is it a bad thing to rely on our inter-subjective knowledge?
Can Inter-subjective knowledge relate to the field of economics in anyway?
Well, sort of. In the mainstream, it's kind of the name of the game. I don't want to say anything about austrianism, I'll probably be off base. But I would personally say that a priori axioms can only be legitimized through inter-subjective acceptance.
From Mises,
7. Means and Ends To choose is to pick one out of two or more possible modes of conduct and to set aside the alternatives. Whenever a human being is in a situation in which various modes of behavior, precluding one another, are open to him, he chooses. Thus life implies an endless sequence of acts of choosing. Action is conduct directed by choices. The mental acts that determine the content of a choice refer either to ultimate ends or to the means to attain ultimate ends. The former are called judgments of value. The latter are technical decisions derived from factual propositions. In the strict sense of the term, acting man aims only at one ultimate end, at the attainment of a state of affairs that suits him better than the alternatives. Philosophers and economists describe this undeniable fact by declaring that man prefers what makes him happier to what makes him less happy, that he aims at happiness.[1] Happiness-in the purely formal sense in which ethical theory applies the term-is the only ultimate end, and all other things and states of affairs sought are merely means to the realization of the supreme ultimate end. It is customary, however, to employ a less precise mode of expression, frequently assigning the name of ultimate ends to all those means that are fit to produce satisfaction directly and immediately. The characteristic mark of ultimate ends is that they depend entirely on each individual's personal and subjective judgment, which cannot be examined, measured, still less corrected by any other person. Each individual is the only and final arbiter in matters concerning his own satisfaction and happiness... ... As soon as people venture to question and to examine an end, they no longer look upon it as an end but deal with it as a means to attain a still higher end. The ultimate end is beyond any rational examination. All other ends are but provisional. They turn into means as soon as they are weighed against other ends or means. Means are judged and appreciated according to their ability to produce definite effects. While judgments of value are personal, subjective, and final, judgments about means are essentially inferences drawn from factual propositions concerning the power of the means in question to produce definite effects. About the power of a means to produce a definite effect there can be dissension and dispute between men. For the evaluation of ultimate ends there is no interpersonal standard available. Choosing means is a technical problem, as it were, the term "technique" being taken in its broadest sense. Choosing ultimate ends is a personal, subjective, individual affair. Choosing means is a matter of reason, choosing ultimate ends a matter of the soul and the will.
7. Means and Ends
To choose is to pick one out of two or more possible modes of conduct and to set aside the alternatives. Whenever a human being is in a situation in which various modes of behavior, precluding one another, are open to him, he chooses. Thus life implies an endless sequence of acts of choosing. Action is conduct directed by choices.
The mental acts that determine the content of a choice refer either to ultimate ends or to the means to attain ultimate ends. The former are called judgments of value. The latter are technical decisions derived from factual propositions.
In the strict sense of the term, acting man aims only at one ultimate end, at the attainment of a state of affairs that suits him better than the alternatives. Philosophers and economists describe this undeniable fact by declaring that man prefers what makes him happier to what makes him less happy, that he aims at happiness.[1] Happiness-in the purely formal sense in which ethical theory applies the term-is the only ultimate end, and all other things and states of affairs sought are merely means to the realization of the supreme ultimate end. It is customary, however, to employ a less precise mode of expression, frequently assigning the name of ultimate ends to all those means that are fit to produce satisfaction directly and immediately.
The characteristic mark of ultimate ends is that they depend entirely on each individual's personal and subjective judgment, which cannot be examined, measured, still less corrected by any other person. Each individual is the only and final arbiter in matters concerning his own satisfaction and happiness...
...
As soon as people venture to question and to examine an end, they no longer look upon it as an end but deal with it as a means to attain a still higher end. The ultimate end is beyond any rational examination. All other ends are but provisional. They turn into means as soon as they are weighed against other ends or means.
Means are judged and appreciated according to their ability to produce definite effects. While judgments of value are personal, subjective, and final, judgments about means are essentially inferences drawn from factual propositions concerning the power of the means in question to produce definite effects. About the power of a means to produce a definite effect there can be dissension and dispute between men. For the evaluation of ultimate ends there is no interpersonal standard available.
Choosing means is a technical problem, as it were, the term "technique" being taken in its broadest sense. Choosing ultimate ends is a personal, subjective, individual affair. Choosing means is a matter of reason, choosing ultimate ends a matter of the soul and the will.
So, ends are subjective and means are objective.
"However, it is only because of the very fact that a person's borders — that is the borders of a person's property in his own body as his domain of exclusive control, which another person is not allowed to cross unless he wishes to become an aggressor — are physical borders (intersubjectively ascertainable, and not just subjectively fancied borders) that everyone can agree on anything independently (and agreement means agreement among independent decision-making units!).
Only because the protected borders of property are objective (i.e., fixed and recognizable as fixed prior to any conventional agreement), can there be argumentation and possibly agreement of and between independent decision-making units. Nobody could argue in favor of a property system defining borders of property in subjective, evaluative terms because simply to be able to say so presupposes that, contrary to what theory says, one must in fact be a physically independent unit saying it.
The situation is no less dire for alternative ethical proposals when one turns to the second essential specification of the rulings of the libertarian theory of property. The basic norms of libertarianism are characterized not only by the fact that property and aggression are defined in physical terms; it is of no less importance that property is defined as private, individualized property, and that the meaning of original appropriation, which evidently implies making a distinction between prior and later, has been specified." - Hoppe
"The characteristic mark of ultimate ends is that they depend entirely on each individual's personal and subjective judgment, which cannot be examined, measured, still less corrected by any other person. Each individual is the only and final arbiter in matters concerning his own satisfaction and happiness..."
Yep, totally in terms of personal ethics. But that doesn't mean they are then "subjective" for that individual though. ...
"The combination of an objective personal ethics with a political system of freedom is, then, logically consistent." But why should we adopt it? Why not, rather, enact a political system whose metanorms require that people conform to their objective end? The authors' version of ethics excludes this suggestion. They embrace "individualistic perfectionism." There is no fixed pattern to which every individual, in his pursuit of eudaimonia, must conform. Rather, "the generic goods and virtues that constitute human flourishing only become actual, determinate, and valuable realities when they are given particular form by the choices of flesh-and-blood persons. The importance or value of these goods and virtues is rooted in factors that are unique to each person, for it is not the universal as such that is valuable. . .Human flourishing is not simply achieved and enjoyed by individuals, but it is individualized."(pp.132-33)" - Gordon, Review
Oooo! I like this thread!
Objectivity is a myth, or perhaps a theoretical state. Like EIK said, most people consider something "objective" when an inter-subjective consensus (majority agreement) has been reached using whatever means (scientific method, logic, prayer, etc.). Of course, these processes of determining "objectivity" are still subjective, since they require empirical observation.
If an argument is inconsistent, it is subjective. If an argument is consistent, it is objective. In other words, saying killing is always wrong, is objective. Saying killing is usually wrong is subjective. And yes, they are mutually exclusive.
At most, I think only 5% of the adult population would need to stop cooperating to have real change.
Yes, but you can still thoroughly rely upon repeatable experimentation and the scientific method.
Objectivity is a myth, or perhaps a theoretical state.
Is this statement objective or subjective?
"When the King is far the people are happy." Chinese proverb
For Alexander Zinoviev and the free market there is a shared delight:
"Where there are problems there is life."
The objective is itself a category within your subjective knowledge. This is why it is a mistake to assert that the objective is logically prior to the subjective. The intuition underlying this (common) point of view is that the objective world must have the properties it has in order for your subjective consciousness to exist in the first place. In other words, if you had not evolved in this physical universe which is subject to the objective facts governing it, your subjective consciousness would not be around to ask questions about itself and the objective world. However, I think this is a fallacy since I've only concluded on the basis of my subjective experiences, memories and reasoning capacity that I came to be through a process of biological evolution which occurred subject to the (objective) facts of this physical universe.
Given that the objective is a category of subjective knowledge, that means that what facts count as objective facts is subjective and so, there is no objective answer to your question. There are, however, conventions for answering your question. Is it measurable? Is there more than one possible outcome of a measurement? And so on. By convention, we classify facts that satisfy certain criteria as objective facts.
Clayton -
abskebabs:Is this statement objective or subjective?
Subjective, of course. I'm sure lits of people believe that there is a reality external to themselves. I just don't understand why.
Do our computers not objectively exist?
Epicurus Ibn Kalhoun:Yes, but you can still thoroughly rely upon repeatable experimentation and the scientific method.
Repeatable experimentation is susceptible to confirmation bias. The scientific method is dubious because it is seems to me impossible to isolate all variables but one in any experiment. What we have is confirmation based on the limits of our understanding and capacity to discern minute differences, and the faith that repetition = truth.
That's why I am a big fan of Nassim Taleb's work. He likes to push the boundaries of what we think we know, and point out that so much of what we take for granted as truth, is just ignorance rationalized.
I highly recommend this video if one wants to take a deeper look at epistemology, without which I do not think honesty is possible.
http://fora.tv/2008/02/04/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb_A_Crazier_Future
It's important to stress the limitations of the scientific method, and that it is no substitution for logical deductive reasoning, however we must be careful not to go overboard. There are many fields where it has proven very useful despite its limitations.
One such radical example is Quantum Mechanics. This is an example of a very complex theory that has been derived almost exclusively on the basis of the laws of probability. Yet, nobody would deny its usefulness.
No alternative epistemology even comes close to rivaling the scientific method.
Even the criticisms are laughable: what the heck do you expect to happen when you step foot onto a plane?
We can all be wrong on even the most rudimentary details of our worldview, so we should always be open-minded; but, when it comes to being approximately right, nothing beats science. Bayesian reasoning FTW.
"I'm not a fan of Murray Rothbard." -- David D. Friedman
StrangeLoop:when it comes to being approximately right, nothing beats science.
Science is more then just the scientific method.
Also, the scientific method is at best a tool. It is no substitute for logic. You cannot makes sense of scientific experimentation results without logically deductive reasoning.
DD5, while I think Paul Feyerabend made important contributions to an anarcho-methodological perspective, and while I believe Thomas Kuhn (and others) were right to view the scientific process in a sociological lens, I still think science can be reduced quite nicely to the scientific method.
What is the value of the scientific method without the laws of mathematics or logic? I
StrangeLoop:No alternative epistemology even comes close to rivaling the scientific method.
Taleb loves people like you. As do I. :)
Cool. I love people like me, too.
DD5:What is the value of the scientific method without the laws of mathematics or logic? I
Huh? Like Quine, I am a fallibilist about axiomatic systems: even logic is open to revision.
StrangeLoop: DD5:What is the value of the scientific method without the laws of mathematics or logic? I Huh? Like Quine, I am a fallibilist about axiomatic systems: even logic is open to revision.
Then once again, you cut the very branch you were sitting on. It is nonsensical to criticize or cast doubt in logic without also undermining the scientific method. The latter relies on the former.
Jonathan M. F. Catalan:Do our computers not objectively exist?
I can't tell, can you?
Liberty Student:That's why I am a big fan of Nassim Taleb's work. He likes to push the boundaries of what we think we know, and point out that so much of what we take for granted as truth, is just ignorance rationalized.
+1 I'm definitely check out that video!
Just to signal this sentence out (among others). This is kind of a nonsensical sentence and line of thought that can not be argued or really spoken of in any logical manner on it's own (as it begs to be taken in a vacuum, and it is a value statement). To discuss the merits and meaning of the scientific method (and they are plethora) one has to immediatly limit the perameters of the language they use to cut out idealistic skepticism and mystification of language, as well as aknowledging the meaning of existential reality (Stirnerite egoism is an ontological fact).
DD5:Then once again, you cut the very branch you were sitting on. It is nonsensical to criticize or cast doubt in logic without also undermining the scientific method. The latter relies on the former.
Do you ever get the feeling that sometimes we're debating with people who just make it up as they go?
liberty student:Do you ever get the feeling that sometimes we're debating with people who just make it up as they go?
To claim that I am a person that "just make[s] it up" only confesses your own stupidity.
And that's okay. It's nice to have mounting evidence.
But, to reference Quine's fallibilistic, empirical commitments as grounds for leaving logic open to revision is (A) an argument I've made before and at length, not an ad hoc rambling (B) a very well-known naturalistic philosophy that anyone with a cursory knowledge of 20th-century philosophy should recognize.
So far, I've seen very little evidence--none, actually--that you've investigated the ideas of contemporary philosophy.
Furthermore, it's quite a leap to claim that experience is unusable without fully-developed logic or maths first. Is that how it worked in history? Did humans actually have full-blown logic before they interacted with the external world? I can't even make sense of such an idea. And, to claim "apodictic certainty" from deductive reasoning always leaves me baffled: how do you believe the human body generate "concepts," and how could you possibly trust them so absolutely? This is a mechanical process dependent on many contingencies.
Either way, the more you wish to ridicule well-respected arguments from our most eminent philosophers, the more I'll rest confident your arguments can only reveal ignorance. (Don't worry, I already know you're about to bust out an "appeal to authority" here--of course, I have enough sense to trust reputation, which is considered even by Austrians to carry important information).
If this is his criticism it shows that he doesn't really get the point of the whole scientific method business. Look, nobody is claiming that you can control all variables in every experiment all the time. The point is that by making explicit your requirements for a theory to be scientific you can improve the efficiency with which you weed out those theories that don't fit reality.
Of course, the process isn't always that smooth. But it's the best we can do.
Not to mention that a community practicing the scientific method is a systematic way to avoid confirmation bias, so the whole point was rubbish.
Exactly, at least the scientific method makes explicit what it would take to reject a piece of research. On the other hand, I've always found it a weakness of Austrian economics that it's not quite clear exactly what it would take to disprove a particular theory or piece of research. Take the ABCT, Mises expert Richard Ebeling claims that Mises original exposition was actually only meant to describe the course of one particular housing bubble in Vienna, and no more than that.
And yet people still try desperate to make the facts fit their theory and presume that the ABCT is applicable to every business cycle in history.
StrangeLoop: Furthermore, it's quite a leap to claim that experience is unusable without fully-developed logic or maths first. Is that how it worked in history? Did humans actually have full-blown logic before they interacted with the external world? I can't even make sense of such an idea.
Furthermore, it's quite a leap to claim that experience is unusable without fully-developed logic or maths first. Is that how it worked in history? Did humans actually have full-blown logic before they interacted with the external world? I can't even make sense of such an idea.
Well, it is possible to work with an implicit praxeology, logic, or mathematics. Ludwig von Mises didn't contend that his mainstream contemporaries didn't use praxeology, but just that they weren't explicit in doing so, which led them to have an unsystematic, unscientific body of theory, which they used to study history, instead of what he thought could be a systematic, scientific body of theory. He didn't contend that his mainstream comtemporaries didn't make use of non-empirical facts like means and ends, desire, and so on, but just that they used their common sense versions of those ideas.
So they didn't have to have a fully developed praxeology, logic, and mathematics to study the empirical world right from the beginning, but just needed a common sense praxeology, logic, and mathematics, to do so.
William,
In addition, the statement you quoted is an unfounded assertion, and without an appeal to circular reasoning, seems rather difficult to validate.