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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (12066)	4/20/2001 10:31:48 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Why not ask me? Because, despite repeated explanations from you, I'm missing something. I went back to review the discussion between the two of you but couldn't easily find it. So I asked X thinking she could articulate your point in a fresh way, one that might turn the light bulb on for me. That's why. "Purely subjective" means that the appearance is not congruent with, but contradicts, the reality. <<Main Entry: 1sub·jec·tive... 3 a : characteristic of or belonging to reality as perceived rather than as independent of mind : PHENOMENAL -- compare OBJECTIVE 1b b : relating to or being experience or knowledge as conditioned by personal mental characteristics or states >> m-w.com We've got your world and Russell's world on the table. You see a contradiction between them and I don't. In your world, what we perceive is objective and real. What makes it real is that it was created by a deity, or at least, the deity is our way of knowing that it's real. I think that's what you're saying. From your perspective, the trees and the papayas in Russell's world are not real but products of our perceptions, a mechanistic process, so they lack meaning, which is depressing. When I look at your world, what I see is objective and real. It's objective and real because that is the only way it can be. We are humans and have an anthropocentric view of the world. We don't have the capacity to perceive it any other way so it's real to us, as real and objective as it can be. Even if were not real, we would have no choice but to proceed as though it were; therefore, it is. If we use the word, objective, for your world, what does subjective mean? To me, subjective means the individual variations in perceptions of tangible things that exist within the human group and especially the individual variations in perceptions of intangible things. If you use the word, subjective, to describe human perception of Russell's world and objective to describe human perception of your world, then what do we call individual variations in either world? We'd need another word. If we try to step outside our anthropocentric world into some unknown "realer" world and define that world as objective, then we'd have to coin the word "anthropojective" to describe the relative reality of your world. In either case, we'd need three levels of words for absolutely real, humanly perceived real, and individually perceived real. I'm content to set aside, for the sake of living our lives, the potential reality beyond human comprehension and label what we all perceive to be real and objective. What we all perceive, whether it was created for us by a deity to be perceived by senses that the deity gave us humans or whether we are perceiving, as complex organisms who are in existence by some fluke, a world that is also a complete fluke, it's real. In either case, there is no inherent contradiction between what we perceive and reality. Karen