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?
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 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.
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,
- 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.
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.
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?
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 -
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?