Morality and Subjectivity

[Sair]

But again, if you ever want to nurture an interest in mathematics then you really do need to engage with the fact that the term “1” does not exist in and of itself. It is a subjective comparative term we use to represent the universe around us.

Again I strongly urge you to read and explore the concept of “set theory” from which we get the concept of “1” and “+” and so on. Whole swaths of mathematics will make no sense to you if you insist on retaining the concept that “1” is something that objectively exists.

I make no claim to have anything resembling a mathematical mind, but I have recently been talking to a friend who studied theoretical mathematics at PhD level, and I think I can safely say that mathematics, in philosophical terms, is related to the externally existing universe, but nevertheless is a concept developed by minds. Mathematical proofs can be logically ‘perfect’ in ways the real world seldom is.

Think how amusing (and befuddling) it would be if we thought of apples in terms of the number of molecules that constituted them! It is much simpler, and makes much more sense from our point of view, to consider an apple, in its entirety, as a single entity requiring the designation ‘1’. I doubt the worm in the apple would consider it in quite the same way.

Our use of mathematical terminology is a way to describe our perception of objective reality (and build theoretical concepts based on that perception), and I think the same can be said of moral philosophy. Our judgement of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ actions is related to our perception of their real-world effects, but is nonetheless a product of minds and is shaped precisely according to the point of view of those minds.

 

[Sair]

Of course we can just as truly say: “immorality is a subjective response to objective circumstances” - either way, a rather banal observation, wouldn’t you say?

Same comment: “what we call immorality is a many-faceted subjective entity built by minds in response to objective facts about us and the world.”

But what is that kind of claim even supposed to mean? What are you trying to say? Is morality “a subjective response”; or is it “a many-faceted subjective entity” (whatever that means - I would have thought that you and I were such entities, but surely not morality)?

Well, gosh, if you remove it from the context, why not just make it a matter of semantics?

‘Morality’, being the name we give to questions of how one ought to live, is a branch of philosophy. ‘Immorality’ is a judgement that implies there is a moral code that has been violated. The whole notion that morality is subjective is built in apposition to the idea that there is some objective, empirically detectable entity in the universe called ‘morality’ that, regardless of circumstances, dictates the rightness or wrongness of actions. I deny that such an entity exists, but I also deny that morality is entirely a matter of “anything I want to do is okay as long as I want to do it”. The latter position ignores those objective realities that bear upon human experience.

And we humans are not a many-faceted subjective entity. We have mostly objective components, like limbs, heads, organs, vessels, which can be dealt with on an objective level as acting in the same way across all people - this is why medicine generally works, after all. Subjectivity refers to ideas - perhaps even ‘truths’ - that exist only in minds, not in an objective realm for which empirical investigation can identify facts.

 

[sidbrown]

Well done for getting back on topic. Just saying something moral is objective does not magically make it take on that attribute. Maybe you can tell me what is morally objective and how and why. Please provide the examples and arguments to which you refer.

As I said I have yet to be shown any arguments or evidence for an objective morality. What I do see is that our subjective consensus on a hand full of prevailing moral issues is so vast that it can give the ILLUSION that it must be an objective truth, but in the absence of any evidence that it actually is an illusion is all it appears to be.

No. there is no illusion.
There are some things that are objectively morally good and others that are objectively morally bad.
Examples of morally bad actions.

1. To set on fire a house in the neighborhood and burn and kill the family living there.
2. To rob a bank and shoot everyone there, including the customers.
   Example of morally good actions:
   To take an abandoned baby found in a garbage can and to feed, clothe and take care of him until the authorities arrive.

 

[sidbrown]

I make no claim to have anything resembling a mathematical mind, but I have recently been talking to a friend who studied theoretical mathematics at PhD level, and I think I can safely say that mathematics, in philosophical terms, is related to the externally existing universe, but nevertheless is a concept developed by minds. Mathematical proofs can be logically ‘perfect’ in ways the real world seldom is.

Think how amusing (and befuddling) it would be if we thought of apples in terms of the number of molecules that constituted them! It is much simpler, and makes much more sense from our point of view, to consider an apple, in its entirety, as a single entity requiring the designation ‘1’. I doubt the worm in the apple would consider it in quite the same way.

Our use of mathematical terminology is a way to describe our perception of objective reality (and build theoretical concepts based on that perception), and I think the same can be said of moral philosophy. Our judgement of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ actions is related to our perception of their real-world effects, but is nonetheless a product of minds and is shaped precisely according to the point of view of those minds.

And by the way, you don’t need to know anything about set theory, complementation, intersection, set difference, venn diagrams, antinomies, the axiom of choice, von Neumann universe, Peano axioms, or self-referential contradictions, to arrive at the objective truth that one apple plus one apple is two apples. For someone here to refer to set theory to explain that 1+1=2 is, in my opinion, an attempt to deflect the question of what is and what is not objective.

 

[Betterave]

I do not know why I even bother to make arguments and explain myself. Who needs facts, arguments, evidence and reason when you can just call something “sloppy” as if that means you have suddenly made a valid point?

Rest assured however, your inability to see where someone is coming from does not extrapolate into the person saying it being the one that is sloppy and confused. If you want me to elaborate on something then merely ask. Calling it sloppy and confused does not magically confer that attribute to it however, and it does not indicate the problem lies anywhere but with you.

Spare me your silliness, please!

That said however, what you did ask about I can now elaborate on.

1. “Subjective realm”. What I mean by this is that given there is no evidence on offer to me to suggest that morality is an objective realm, or an objective set of truths waiting for our exploration and discovery, it suggests to me that it is entirely subjective. It lives and dies with us and these magical concepts like “Right to life” are not things that exist in and of themselves, either as a thing or as a truth. They are merely representations of the consensus of desire for those participants in a society for how that society will be run.

Well that’s odd: don’t *all *concepts live and die with us? For that matter, don’t all living things live and die? That means that all concepts and all living things belong to the “subjective realm”??? No doubt this is an invalid extrapolation of your view on my part, so I await your clarification.

1. Constrained and influenced but not determined. Exactly. Think of it like a drop of water on a window of a house in normal weather. The objective truths of the condition of that drop will constrain its path. Gravity for example and imperfections in the glass. These things will make it go down, but there is no objective path it must take to get there. It will shoot left, right, down, stop for some time, start again. At no point will it start going back up however. Its path is constrained, influenced but not determined.

So the path of the drop of water belongs to your “subjective realm”?

It is the same for morality. It is influenced and constrained by several common truths about the human condition. Our desire to protect our children, not to experience pain, to retain our possessions and so on. This does not determine what the morality will be, but it sure influences it heavily resulting in exactly what we would expect… a rainbow of moral positions where at one end of the spectrum we have vast almost total consensus on moral positions, and at the other end moral questions almost no one can agree on. And everything in between.

But this rainbow is not an objective phenomenon like a real rainbow (presumably) is? It belongs wholly in your “subjective realm” (for the reasons you have given, which, unfortunately, seem to me not to make sense, but which, hopefully, you will proceed to clarify)?

1. “dominantly occurring truths * “ Had I meant objective facts I would have said objective facts. I said dominantly occouring truths because I meant, wait for it, dominantly occouring truths. My reason for that should be clear. There is nothing in my list of examples, or any list of desires of human beings, that is objective. I gave for example the wish to avoid pain. There are those who enjoy pain. I gave the example of the wish to protect our children. There are those who wish to engage in all kinds of harm on children. These wishes are dominant, often vastly so, in our species, but not 100%. Not one single desire or wish you can name is dominant in 100% of humans, not even the wish to live.*

So by “dominantly” you meant “statistically predominant” and by “occurring truths” you meant “beliefs and desires that people hold”? (If so, I must say your locution for this was extremely awkward and imprecise.)

 

[Betterave]

I am sure you would agree that morality is more than a fact! Surely it entails personal activity. Sair is right in saying it does not exist without rational beings. It presupposes judgment, free will and responsibility. Please note that I excluded neither rational beings nor inanimate objects with my use of “largely”. We have a duty to cherish God’s Creation in all its positive aspects.

What do you think a fact is? How is morality “more than” a fact?

I have not opposed rational beings to sentient beings - or viceversa! I explicitly included sentient beings because Sair was loth to discuss animal rights. We have an obligation to respect all life and not to cause unnecessary suffering and death regardless of whether it is human or non-human. Why “a **minimal **amount of respect” for snails? It sounds a rather begrudging concession for such fascinating creatures… (I agree that it shouldn’t be “a maximal amount of respect”! Perhaps “an appropriate amount of respect” would be more appropriate!)

I didn’t say you opposed them. “As opposed to” means “rather than.”

We have an obligation to respect all of creation, not just all life. My “minimal” should obviously be read in context as “appropriate.” I’ll agree that snails are fascinating, but I’m not averse to eating them or killing them when they are pests - I call that a minimal or appropriate level of respect.

 

[Betterave]

Well, gosh, if you remove it from the context, why not just make it a matter of semantics?

I’m sorry - what are you trying to say here?

‘Morality’, being the name we give to questions of how one ought to live, is a branch of philosophy. ‘Immorality’ is a judgement that implies there is a moral code that has been violated. The whole notion that morality is subjective is built in apposition to the idea that there is some objective, empirically detectable entity in the universe called ‘morality’ that, regardless of circumstances, dictates the rightness or wrongness of actions. I deny that such an entity exists, but I also deny that morality is entirely a matter of “anything I want to do is okay as long as I want to do it”. The latter position ignores those objective realities that bear upon human experience.

You are confused. Morality is not the name we give to questions of how one ought to live. The name for such questions is “moral questions.” Morality is not the same as moral questioning. Moral questioning takes morality as the object which it seeks to understand. Moral philosophy obviously includes moral questioning, but is not restricted to it - it also includes moral answers, for example.

Now this notion you’ve outlined above, in opposition to which you claim “the whole notion that morality is subjective” is built: who do you take to espouse such a notion? (I really don’t know what you mean by it.)

And we humans are not a many-faceted subjective entity. We have mostly objective components, like limbs, heads, organs, vessels, which can be dealt with on an objective level as acting in the same way across all people - this is why medicine generally works, after all. Subjectivity refers to ideas - perhaps even ‘truths’ - that exist only in minds, not in an objective realm for which empirical investigation can identify facts.

Subjectivity refers to ideas which do not exist in an objective realm for which empirical investigation can identify facts? Where did you get this notion from? I think the name for what your referring to here would be “non-empirical, irrational propositions.” Subjectivity, on the other hand, is an abstract term that has multiple possible references, but not the one you suggest. In general it refers to the qualitative aspect of being a subject. Subject, in turn, can mean a number of things in this context (the grammatical subject of a sentence isn’t relevant here): the subject as a bearer of actual being (i.e., any real thing - also called objects); or the subject as a bearer of mental states (usually including conceptualized self-consciousness - these latter are also objects - they form a subset of the objects (real things) just mentioned - such subjects are capable of reflection, meaning they can grasp themselves as objects).

 

[Sair]

I’m sorry - what are you trying to say here?

That you’re being deliberately obtuse, deflecting the intention of my post, and misunderstanding the point of the thread.

You are confused. Morality is not the name we give to questions of how one ought to live. The name for such questions is “moral questions.” Morality is not the same as moral questioning. Moral questioning takes morality as the object which it seeks to understand. Moral philosophy obviously includes moral questioning, but is not restricted to it - it also includes moral answers, for example.

“Questions of how we ought to live” constitutes the study of morality, its substance and its object. The purpose of morality is to consider how we ought to conduct ourselves in terms of negotiating and navigating our complex interrelationships with each other and the world around us. Elizabeth Anderson sums up morality as “a system of reciprocal claim making, in which everyone is accountable to everyone else”. Understood thus, as a system, one may say that morality is an object; but the substance of that object is made up entirely of subjective experience.

Now this notion you’ve outlined above, in opposition to which you claim “the whole notion that morality is subjective” is built: who do you take to espouse such a notion? (I really don’t know what you mean by it.)

Those who tend to objectify morality are the ones who think of it in terms of moral rules laid down by some higher authority than those who are subject to the rules. For the most part, such people tend to be religious believers. My original argument in this thread was that there is no other source for morality than human experience, and hence it is subjective.

Subjectivity refers to ideas which do not exist in an objective realm for which empirical investigation can identify facts? Where did you get this notion from? I think the name for what your referring to here would be “non-empirical, irrational propositions.” Subjectivity, on the other hand, is an abstract term that has multiple possible references, but not the one you suggest. In general it refers to the qualitative aspect of being a subject. Subject, in turn, can mean a number of things in this context (the grammatical subject of a sentence isn’t relevant here): the subject as a bearer of actual being (i.e., any real thing - also called objects); or the subject as a bearer of mental states (usually including conceptualized self-consciousness - these latter are also objects - they form a subset of the objects (real things) just mentioned - such subjects are capable of reflection, meaning they can grasp themselves as objects).

The point being that as a subject, you alone experience things from your point of view. If you have a headache, for example, your doctor may be able to identify objective, empirical causes for your headache (such as dehydration, a bump on the head, etc) but can’t experience the headache from your point of view.

This relationship between objective, empirical facts and subjective experience of those facts is exactly the point I was making in my previous posts, (had you taken the time to think about my point rather than quibble over word choices) and it applies to the whole concept of morality. I make claims upon those around me to respect my preferences (such as remaining alive, being spared unnecessary suffering, maintaining the freedom to act in ways that lead to my happiness) and those around me make the same claims upon me. I can understand the reciprocal nature of this relationship, but I can’t experience anyone else’s preferences in anything more than a nebulous way, by assuming that they are at least comparable to my own.

It’s obvious that if someone is killed, that violates their preference for staying alive (assuming they have such a preference); if someone is tortured, that violates their preference for being spared unnecessary suffering; and if someone is physically restrained, or threatened, or in some other way prevented from undertaking actions that lead to their happiness (for example, women in Afghanistan being restricted on pain of beatings or death from leaving their homes unaccompanied by a male chaperone) that also violates a subjective preference.

Your claim in a previous post that you might just as well speak of human beings as many-faceted subjective entities missed completely my point about the relationship between objective, externally-existing and observable things and events, and the nature of our subjective experience of such things and events. It is the subjective experience that leads to purely practical considerations becoming moral considerations.

 

[tonyrey]

I am sure you would agree that morality is more than a fact! Surely it entails personal activity. Sair is right in saying it does not exist without rational beings. It presupposes judgment, free will and responsibility.

A fact is one particular truth, i.e. an intangible **object of knowledge **which is “grasped” by the intellect. It is a fact that morality exists but morality cannot be reduced to a fact. It entails personal activity: judgments, choices and decisions. A fact is impersonal, static and immutable whereas morality is personal, dynamic and creative.

 

[Sair]

A fact is one particular truth, i.e. an intangible **object of knowledge **which is “grasped” by the intellect. It is a fact that morality exists but morality cannot be reduced to a fact. It entails personal activity: judgments, choices and decisions. A fact is impersonal, static and immutable whereas morality is personal, dynamic and creative.

Really good answer, and one that effectively supports the view that there is no such ‘object’ as morality - as well to say that creativity and love are objects. They are participatory experiences.

Morality is not something we can study from the outside, nor is it something that is judged to be the same by every person. Although I know it is the way of some religions, such as Judaism, to treat their moral law as an object, however open to academic interpretation, my understanding is that the very existence of morality depends upon subjective experience and the ability (perhaps peculiar to humans) to empathise with other sentient beings (such empathy itself being a subjective experience).

 

[tonyrey]

A fact is one particular truth, i.e. an intangible object of knowledge which is “grasped” by the intellect. It is a fact that morality exists but morality cannot be reduced to a fact. It entails personal activity: judgments, choices and decisions. A fact is impersonal, static and immutable whereas morality is personal, dynamic and creative.
Really good answer, and one that effectively supports the view that there is no such ‘object’ as morality - as well to say that creativity and love are objects. They are participatory experiences.

It is true that morality cannot exist in a void but it is not a participatory experience limited to human beings. It is a universal fact about all rational beings - since we are not entitled to assume we are unique in that respect. Since morality is objective in the sense that it cannot exist without personal activity and is essential for harmony, fulfilment and happiness it is not subjective in the sense that it is created by us.

Morality is not something we can study from the outside, nor is it something that is judged to be the same by every person.

Morality differs according to different circumstances but it is based on the same principles and facts. No one is morally infallible.

Although I know it is the way of some religions, such as Judaism, to treat their moral law as an object, however open to academic interpretation, my understanding is that the very existence of morality depends upon subjective experience and the ability (perhaps peculiar to humans) to empathise with other sentient beings (such empathy itself being a subjective experience).

Empathy is a subjective experience which has physical consequences and is a universal necessity. So it cannot be regarded as a matter of taste or opinion. Since it is an objective and distinctive feature of personal existence there must be universal moral laws just as there are universal scientific laws. Neither exist in a vacuum…

 

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Examples of morally bad actions…Example of morally good actions:

All you have done is list things that are morally objectionable or commendable to YOU. You have not shown they ARE objective nor have you shown WHY we should think so.

I said before that there are many things that have a consensus so broad that they give the illusion of being objective. You have just simply engaged in that very thing. You listed some things which most of us would reach a consensus on. That is all.

Again, as I said, just listing them and declaring they are objective does not magically make them take on this attribute.

 

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Betterave,

If you are the kind of person who thinks throwing around insults like “silliness” and “sloppy” makes you look big or clever then there is nothing I can do about this. I am moved to point out that insults demean only the insulter, not the insulted, and you let no one but yourself down in this action. Raise your game please. Some decorum please.

I am not aware of having said the path of a drop of water belongs to subjectivity. Maybe you can reply to what I actually said and not what you have imagined? The analogy to water is to show that some events are constrained by the environment but not dictated by them.

The same is true of morality. It appears to be entirely subjective, decided by us and our personal desires. The conclusions on it we reach however are guided and constrained by common truths of the human conditions. These guide our moral conclusions strongly, sometimes so strongly that there are moral choices we make that reach vast almost total consensus in our species.

At no point however have you shown a single moral that is objective, nor reasons to consider it so.

 

[Betterave]

That you’re being deliberately obtuse, deflecting the intention of my post, and misunderstanding the point of the thread.

You are mistaken here and I’ll assume that you are simply *being *obtuse, though *not *deliberately. You accuse me of being deliberately obtuse as a way of excusing your own sloppy formulation of your point of view. Why not just correct your sloppy formulation so we can get on with understanding the point of the thread? If you refuse to state your view precisely, it can’t be critiqued precisely. Instead you can just hide behind the kind of baseless accusation you offer here. (Can you see that? Could you at least please try to consider that possibility?)

“Questions of how we ought to live” constitutes the study of morality, its substance and its object. The purpose of morality is to consider how we ought to conduct ourselves in terms of negotiating and navigating our complex interrelationships with each other and the world around us. Elizabeth Anderson sums up morality as “a system of reciprocal claim making, in which everyone is accountable to everyone else”. Understood thus, as a system, one may say that morality is an object; but the substance of that object is made up entirely of subjective experience.

No it is not! Compare the following claim: The substance of your assertion (above, for example) is made up entirely of your asserting it. Agree or disagree?

Those who tend to objectify morality are the ones who think of it in terms of moral rules laid down by some higher authority than those who are subject to the rules. For the most part, such people tend to be religious believers. My original argument in this thread was that [1] there is no other source for morality than human experience, and [2] hence it is subjective.

Either [1] is false (depending on the sense you impute to the terms you invoke) or [2] is a non sequitur. Either way you have a problem.

The point being that as a subject, you alone experience things from your point of view. If you have a headache, for example, your doctor may be able to identify objective, empirical causes for your headache (such as dehydration, a bump on the head, etc) but can’t experience the headache from your point of view.

He can’t experience MY headache from my point of view, but he can experience “MY headache” from the point of view of his own subjectivity (he will even call it “my headache,” although I will call it “his headache”), just as he can experience ‘my’ concept of a headache, or ‘my’ experience of looking at the Eiffel tower, or any other denominable experience. Can’t he??? Likewise, I can experience his diagnosis of the objective empirical causes of my headache and make it my own. All experience (in the sense that is relevant here) is owned. It’s mine, or yours, or hers, or even ours, or theirs! Do you not see that? So again, your point vis-a-vis morality is banal. There is no need to invoke the subjectivity of experience here, as something different from objectivity - you’re just talking about the ‘experientiality’ of experience, without distinguishing any mark of certain experiences that qualifies them as ‘subjective,’ i.e., ‘non-objective’ (terms that you should learn to use more carefully).

This relationship between objective, empirical facts and subjective experience of those facts is exactly the point I was making in my previous posts, (had you taken the time to think about my point rather than quibble over word choices) and it applies to the whole concept of morality. I make claims upon those around me to respect my preferences (such as remaining alive, being spared unnecessary suffering, maintaining the freedom to act in ways that lead to my happiness) and those around me make the same claims upon me. I can understand the reciprocal nature of this relationship, but I can’t experience anyone else’s preferences in anything more than a nebulous way, by assuming that they are at least comparable to my own.

It’s obvious that if someone is killed, that violates their preference for staying alive (assuming they have such a preference); if someone is tortured, that violates their preference for being spared unnecessary suffering; and if someone is physically restrained, or threatened, or in some other way prevented from undertaking actions that lead to their happiness (for example, women in Afghanistan being restricted on pain of beatings or death from leaving their homes unaccompanied by a male chaperone) that also violates a subjective preference.

Your claim in a previous post that you might just as well speak of human beings as many-faceted subjective entities missed completely my point about the relationship between objective, externally-existing and observable things and events, and the nature of our subjective experience of such things and events. It is the subjective experience that leads to purely practical considerations becoming moral considerations.

Obviously I think your premise for the remarks above (“This relationship…”) is misconceived, so I’ll let you respond to that before going into a more detailed discussion.

 

[Betterave]

Betterave,

If you are the kind of person who thinks throwing around insults like “silliness” and “sloppy” makes you look big or clever then there is nothing I can do about this. I am moved to point out that insults demean only the insulter, not the insulted, and you let no one but yourself down in this action. Raise your game please. Some decorum please.

This is again very silly. I assess the worth of your comments when I use these terms. If you don’t understand why I think they merit such assessments, ask for clarification. If you understand but disagree, tell me why you disagree. Interpreting them as insults is just silly, it completely misses the point.

I am not aware of having said the path of a drop of water belongs to subjectivity. Maybe you can reply to what I actually said and not what you have imagined? The analogy to water is to show that some events are constrained by the environment but not dictated by them.

I know what your analogy was for! So this would be where you ought to explain to me why the analogy is only an analogy, and not a legitimate reductio of your view. Your criteria for designating something as belonging to “the subjective realm” *does *apply to morality and does *not *apply to the drop of water because…???

 

[Betterave]

A fact is one particular truth, i.e. an intangible **object of knowledge **which is “grasped” by the intellect. It is a fact that morality exists but morality cannot be reduced to a fact. It entails personal activity: judgments, choices and decisions. A fact is impersonal, static and immutable whereas morality is personal, dynamic and creative.

So it is not a fact that morality is personal-dynamic-creative, since personal-dynamic-creative-morality cannot be grasped as a particular truth, an intangible object of knowledge which is grasped by the intellect?? I don’t understand… Why not???

(I’d slightly modify Sair’s reaction to this: “Really -]good/-] bad answer, and one that effectively supports the view that there is no such ‘object’ as morality”… )

 

[Charlemagne_II]

The flaw in the notion of subjective morality is similar to the flaw in the notion of subjective truth. If you say there is no objective truth, you appear to be asserting an objective truth.

If you say nothing is objectively good or bad, you would have to conclude that there is nothing objectively good or bad about torturing and murdering children. Anyone who says there is neither anything objectively good nor bad about such an act is, in my opinion, objectively (and measurably) retarded.

Except for those who are likewise objectively retarded, the whole human race would objectively distance themselves from such a person. I am not talking about feet or yards. I am talking about objectively measured miles. With their children in tow they would run for their lives!!!

:bigyikes::bigyikes::bigyikes::bigyikes::bigyikes::bigyikes::bigyikes:

 

[sidbrown]

All you have done is list things that are morally objectionable or commendable to YOU. You have not shown they ARE objective nor have you shown WHY we should think so.

I said before that there are many things that have a consensus so broad that they give the illusion of being objective. You have just simply engaged in that very thing. You listed some things which most of us would reach a consensus on. That is all.

Again, as I said, just listing them and declaring they are objective does not magically make them take on this attribute.

Not really. These are universally recognised as such. Give me one person who thinks otherwise and the reasoning behind it.

 

[Betterave]

And by the way, you don’t need to know anything about set theory, complementation, intersection, set difference, venn diagrams, antinomies, the axiom of choice, von Neumann universe, Peano axioms, or self-referential contradictions, to arrive at the objective truth that one apple plus one apple is two apples. For someone here to refer to set theory to explain that 1+1=2 is, in my opinion, an attempt to deflect the question of what is and what is not objective.

But isn’t the oneness of one apple a purely subjective construct of our minds used to organize our experiences in ways that are subjectively useful for us insofar as they are conducive to making us feel good? I’m sure if I had a professional mathematician friend he’d tell me something like that and I’d have to believe him.

 

[sidbrown]

But isn’t the oneness of one apple a purely subjective construct of our minds used to organize our experiences in ways that are subjectively useful for us insofar as they are conducive to making us feel good? I’m sure if I had a professional mathematician friend he’d tell me something like that and I’d have to believe him.

It’s getting pretty complicated to see a simple objective truth that one apple plus one apple is two apples.