Please explain the concept of "OBJECTIVITY", I don't get it.?
I don't know if it's just me being stupid, but to me what people should mean by the word "objective" is "subjective consensus".
From wikipedia (Objectivity):
"While there is no universally accepted articulation of objectivity, a proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are "mind-independent"—that is, not the result of any judgments made by a conscious entity. Put another way, objective truths are those which are discovered rather than created"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)
Can anyone explain to me how a form of knowledge (because truth is a property of knowledge) such as mathematics fro example can be "mind-independent", or perhaps how physics is "discovered" (rather than being an anthropocentric mental construct that approximates a "supposed" noumenal reality that we supposedly know phenomenally via sense perception [as the metaphysical assumption posits])?
Response (Part 1):
Thanks for all the responses...some good or interesting concepts have been presented.
I like 12 syllogisms definition of objectivity...far more useful than the wiki definition I posited however I still disagree with the mathematical example. Even if we use two sticks to represent our mathematical formula (or conversely mathematics to understand how our two sticks relate to say four sticks) I still don't understand how mathematics is not simply a "language of the human mind" or a useful set of categories and constructs with which to describe our phenomenal experience.
I'm not talking about the "names" or symbols used but the actual concepts that they embody. Even though the name or label "two" is obviously anthropocentric, I maintain that the actual concept of "2" is equally anthropocentric or a "mental construct in the collective knowledge system of mankind."
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Response (Part 2):
On the metaphysical front I seem capable of only imaging some kind of "objective" (or noumenal) reality the likes posited by merelogical nihilism - perhaps a "sea" of quanta (even though the idea of quanta or "units" is decidedly anthropocentric). In such a schema I cannot imagine any intrinsic mathematical constructs such as "2" or "equals" (even though I know these concepts may be used to DESCRIBE our phenomenal experience of such)
Then, in terms of Rand, I find her reading of Kant to have been totally "off the mark" so to speak and this misreading her driving motivation for Objectivism, but then many have different interpretations of Kant's teaching - I don't even agree with Strawson....but anyway, that is a separate issue. Nietzsche's perspectivism comes to mind as the most parsimonious of metaphysics to deal with issues of subjectivity and objectivity.
(continued)....
Response (Part 3):
Even within the ambit of mathematics we are troubled with Godel's Incompleteness theorems which indicate that:
"If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent and complete from within itself, then it is inconsistent."
Is mathematical paradox enough to suggest that mathematics is not "objective"?
I still don't "get it".