Subjectiveness - Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology - Shroomery Message Board
Im a new member of this site however, i have been paying close attention to it for a long long time. N E Ways... would you concider an inatimate object such as a table to be subjective or objective? I belive it to be subjective and have had many an argument about this! Before i explain my side of the story i would like to hear others points of veiws.
Re: Subjectiveness [Re: ska8ball]
Everthing you perceive is subject to the perceiver.
But if we are looking at it from the tables point of view it is objective as it isnt conscious and is outside of the mind.
nice sig by the way.
Re: Subjectiveness [Re: shaggy101]
either side can be easily argued. i am going to go with objective. the object is what it is. how a person percieves it does not change its physical being. how the object is seen and used is subjective.a
Re: Subjectiveness [Re: AbFab]
Physicist Erwin Schroedinger:
"Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist."
Mathmatician G Spencer Brown:
"Let us consdier, for a moment, the world as described by the physicist. It consists of a number of fundamental particles which, if shot through their own space, appear as waves, and are thus of the same laminated structure as pearls or onions, and other wave forms called electromagnetic which it is convenient, by Occam's razor, to consider as travelling through space with a standard velocity. All these appear bound by certain natural laws which indicate the form of their relationship.
"Now the physicist himself, who describes all this, is, in his own account, himself constructed of it. He is, in short, made of a conglomeration of the very particles he describes, no more, no less, bound together by and obeying such general laws as he himself has managed to find and record.
"Thus we cannot escape the fact that the world we know is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself.
"This is indeed amazing.
"Not so much in view of what it sees although this may appear fantastic enough, but in respect of the fact that it can see at all.
"But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itslef. We may take it that the world undoubtedly is itself (ie, is indistinct from itself), but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore false to, itself. In this condition it will always partially elude itself."
Physicist Arthur Eddington:
"Nature thus provides that knowledge of one-half of the world will ensure ignorance of the other half."
The biophysicist LL Whyte:
"Thus the immature mind, unable to escape its own prejudice in favor of permanence even in approaching the neglected process aspect of experience, fails to recognize the actual form of the process of development and is condemned to struggle in the strait jacket of its dualisms: subject/object, time/space, spirit/matter, freedom/necessity, free will/law, The truth, which must be single, is ridden with contradiction. Man cannot think where he is, for he has created two worlds from one."
Schroedinger again:
"These shortcomings can hardly be avoided except by abandoning dualism."
In other words, the whole issue of subject vs object is just an error hardwired into the way we think. Because we cannot have black without white, good without bad, and so on, we are trapped constantly in a dualistic way of perceiving the universe. We do not directly perceive the universe as it truly is, although we constantly assume that is what we are doing. We have a sort of "functional consciousness" that allows us to navigate through the universe, living "as if" there is a distinction between subject and object when in matter of fact according to the world's greatest scientists and sages, there is none.
However, in order to discuss this concept, in order to even think about it, we must fall back upon the use of dualisms, which are built into our language. Therefore language can NEVER truly describe reality, it can only hint at it in three ways:
1. analogically, ie describing what reality is like (for example, the statement, "the grass is green" describes reality through analogy. In fact what we see is neither "grass" nor is it "green", these are just concepts we share with one another in order to be able to communicate);
2. negatively, ie, describing what reality is not (for example the buddhist statement that reality is "neti, neti" which means "not this, not that", intended to reflect the fact that anything that can be said or conceived of is NOT reality); or
3. injunctively. This last one is most interesting. The easiest example I can think of is a recipe for say a chocolate cake. I cannot describe the taste of a chocolate cake to you, but I can give you a set of injunctions, or instructions, which allow you to go and make a cake for yourself and eat it, and if you follow these instructions then you will know what chocolate cake tastes like.
The injunctive way of pointing at reality is interesting because one profound example of injuctive language is meditation as a means to overcome dualism and perceive reality directly. Someone who knows how to meditate can instruct us on how to meditate ourselves, and if we do it properly, the promise is that we will encounter reality directly, without the obscuring veil of dualistic thought. In this state, we supposedly come to what could be called "Absolute Subjectivity", which is a feeling of oneness with the universe in which we directly experience the world as those scientists describe it, without boundary or division. All is all, and you are that.
This is pure unmediated experience, enlightenment, satori, god consciousness, whatever, and it's relevant to your question because it is the world as it is before we slice it up in order to have subjects and objects. There is only subjectivity in this state, no objects of perception. It's of course impossible to describe; the only way to know what those meditators were talking about is to try the experiment and see for yourself.
Edited by sunyata (04/02/03 03:06 PM)
Re: Subjectiveness [Re: sunyata]
Excellent sunyata, very helpful post. Thanks.
Re: Subjectiveness [Re: chunder]
Thx for the compliment on the sig sunyata had really good points!
ABFAB:either side can be easily argued. i am going to go with objective. the object is what it is. how a person percieves it does not change its physical being. how the object is seen and used is subjective.a
Still the fact that it is percived makes it part of mental conciousness which is just information being fed into the brain so how can one be sure that the table is there and that it is a physical being and that is hwat it is too all, you cannot see what others see, ur eyes are different, your neurons are different, your mind is different.
I thought that was the route you would take, and I agree when it comes down to it all is what we perceive... Yet if you lok atit from the tables POV( whicyou cant do since it is not conscious) yet that is the point..it excists outside of the mind and would still excist whether pereived or not..or would it?
I say eat 5 grams and ask the table
however how do u know the table is even there - if its not how can it have a point of view.. in the end the table is just in your mind - information ur senses send to u. Its true tho i do belive in matter so thats just my trippign mind talking
indeed the same I could say although everything I know is my subjective perceptions, I can reason that I seem to know that i do excist, and the world outside of my mind holds up to my reasoning( such as what is conscious and observing and what is not)
then I can reasonably determine that the table is indeed excisting and objective as it would exsist whether I observe it or not..
You should check out the spiritual and philosophy links!
lets get some shrooms under that name..
Objective Quality....an inquiry into values...... PsyllyMe 946 13 08/19/04 12:58 PM