This is deep Roc. It’s fascinating how ‘truths’ arise from culture, consensus, and agreement. And it gives me hope to know we can alter our subjective reality through a shift in perspective. Great article 🙌🏽
100%! It’s fun to think about what might be possible for reality and the human experience if collective consensus shifted entirely, but at least we do have control over modulating our own individual reality! Thanks Jen, appreciate you and your writing 😊
Great read Roc, enjoyed viewing your thoughts on quite a complex and intellectually demanding topic of reality vs subjectivity. You know my rough thoughts on this topic as we've spoken about them before, I still firmly believe objectivity (truth grounded in reason & evidence) exists but I'm accepting of the fact that we could very much be living in a 'subjective' world dependent on our view on things (simulation theory etc) - much like how you describe a movie playing on the screen; Perhaps another analogy is being in a game of chess, where there are defined rules, but all within the subjective set of boundaries of the chess set.
I think your comments about objective measures like science (temperature etc) are arbitrary are more applicable towards the language and chosen units of measurement these 'structures' utilise, rather than saying the underlying phenomena they aim to measure is arbitrary; and the observation that they are in place via consensus is a matter of convenience of enabling efficient shared understanding of that objective (measurable) thing - so while the language we use is not an 'absolute', the properties the language aims to describe aims is. For example, 10cm = 3.94 inch = 0.32 feet = 0.1 yards = 0.05 Roc's (assuming you're of average height), these are all arbitrary unit of measurements but aim to represent an 'objective' truth of distance - objective being in this case a repeatably consistent length.
Instead of thinking about language/semantics, for me a good example of the topic of 'hallucination' of (collectively accepted) objectivity vs subjectivity is illustrated in morality. We indoctrinate our culture and social tolerance (laws, social norms) based on a particular and typically consensus-led view of morals/values and really substantiate these views as the 'objective' way to live.
However at the end of the day I think morality is entirely subjective and yet we distance ourselves from the people that don't share our morals and on the extreme ends we lock them up.
Consider a serial child rapist, because their 'subjective' views don't match our culturally 'objective' set of values, we'll cast them down to the lowest rungs of society - and with this example I imagine you'd find it hard to be 'kind' when the subjective version of reality of the rapist isn't syncing up with the widely accepted objective reality. One saving grace for the rapist could be the idea that 'free will' doesn't exist, but that's perhaps an idea to explore another day.
Great article Roc. I love it ❤️
Thank you Priscilla!
This is deep Roc. It’s fascinating how ‘truths’ arise from culture, consensus, and agreement. And it gives me hope to know we can alter our subjective reality through a shift in perspective. Great article 🙌🏽
100%! It’s fun to think about what might be possible for reality and the human experience if collective consensus shifted entirely, but at least we do have control over modulating our own individual reality! Thanks Jen, appreciate you and your writing 😊
Great read Roc, enjoyed viewing your thoughts on quite a complex and intellectually demanding topic of reality vs subjectivity. You know my rough thoughts on this topic as we've spoken about them before, I still firmly believe objectivity (truth grounded in reason & evidence) exists but I'm accepting of the fact that we could very much be living in a 'subjective' world dependent on our view on things (simulation theory etc) - much like how you describe a movie playing on the screen; Perhaps another analogy is being in a game of chess, where there are defined rules, but all within the subjective set of boundaries of the chess set.
I think your comments about objective measures like science (temperature etc) are arbitrary are more applicable towards the language and chosen units of measurement these 'structures' utilise, rather than saying the underlying phenomena they aim to measure is arbitrary; and the observation that they are in place via consensus is a matter of convenience of enabling efficient shared understanding of that objective (measurable) thing - so while the language we use is not an 'absolute', the properties the language aims to describe aims is. For example, 10cm = 3.94 inch = 0.32 feet = 0.1 yards = 0.05 Roc's (assuming you're of average height), these are all arbitrary unit of measurements but aim to represent an 'objective' truth of distance - objective being in this case a repeatably consistent length.
Instead of thinking about language/semantics, for me a good example of the topic of 'hallucination' of (collectively accepted) objectivity vs subjectivity is illustrated in morality. We indoctrinate our culture and social tolerance (laws, social norms) based on a particular and typically consensus-led view of morals/values and really substantiate these views as the 'objective' way to live.
However at the end of the day I think morality is entirely subjective and yet we distance ourselves from the people that don't share our morals and on the extreme ends we lock them up.
Consider a serial child rapist, because their 'subjective' views don't match our culturally 'objective' set of values, we'll cast them down to the lowest rungs of society - and with this example I imagine you'd find it hard to be 'kind' when the subjective version of reality of the rapist isn't syncing up with the widely accepted objective reality. One saving grace for the rapist could be the idea that 'free will' doesn't exist, but that's perhaps an idea to explore another day.
It's no hallucination: https://kaiserbasileus.substack.com/p/metaphysics-in-a-nutshell