Holy Cyclops

On the Darwin Awards Forums (at http://forum.darwinawards.com ), I’m taking part in a few threads in which the question of whether there is such a thing as an objectively existing reality, and the question of whether or not we can know anything about it if it does exist, have arisen.  To my astonishment, about half of the authors in those threads are, or say they are, subjectivists:  They do not accept that there is an objectively existing reality.

To be fair, it seems that some of them take the quite natural position that we cannot know, with certainty, that there is an objectively existing reality external to ourselves, and that even if there is, we cannot know, with certainty, what it is like.  We could be brains in vats, being stimulated by some mad scientist; we could be hallucinating.  We have no way to know, with certainty; moreover, we have no way of assigning a probability to the existence of an objective reality:  How, after all, does one assign a probability to the alternative possibility of our hallucinating all of reality?  Most of the DAF’s subjectivists seem to think that as a practical matter, we operate as though there were an objectively existing reality, and simply refuse to say that we absolutely know there is.  

But for some reason, the word “objective” makes them quail.  When I say that I make the assumption that there is an objectively existing reality, they immediately react as though I were wrong to do so.  The word “objective” seems to make them think that I have in mind not only that there is an objectively existing reality but also that I have complete and certain knowledge of it—which, of course, is not at all what I have in mind.  I only have in mind that there are apples and tables and chairs whose existence does not depend on my perceiving them or thinking about them, and that will go on existing if I turn my back or walk away or go to sleep or die, and that other people can also perceive.  Our subjectivists say that I’m assuming too much—that I have no basis for assuming that there is an objectively existing reality.  But if there were no objectively existing reality, how could one explain the patterns and regularities of our sensory qualia?  How could one explain intersubjectivity—as the telepathic sharing of a mental world?  How could one explain the possibility of error in empirical claims?  How could one explain the usefulness of our mental maps if there were no territory being mapped—if there were no correspondence between the structure of a person’s mental map and the structure of the territory?  An objectively existing reality looks like a good bet to me. 

When did “objective” become a bad word?  When did subjectivism take such hold?  I’m baffled.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 3:02 am and is filed under Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.