"Pure objectivity" is a myth

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: "Pure objectivity" is a myth

Post by neilgodfrey »

Secret Alias wrote: Thu Sep 29, 2022 2:20 pm No I will give you WHAT I THINK is the proper analogy. In a previous post I used a sports analogy. You went on to speak of banning people. A referee or arbiter in sport has the purpose of keeping things fair. He often cautions the players, reminding to abide by 'fair play.' The sport analogy or the parallel in sports would be a player announcing to the referee and everyone involved in the game and in the stands that he doesn't believe in fair play, that it is 'an impossible standard' that 'EVERYONE' is 'cheating anyway' and 'NO ONE' is abiding be fair play so he should effectively leave the game and allow complete anarchy. It's just ridiculous. If you substitute 'fairness' for 'objectivity' it's plain that we have to maintain the proper decorum, the proper demeanor, the intention at least to strive to 'see things from another perspective.' Once someone says objectivity doesn't exist their saying in effect that fairness isn't possible and - I would contend - that they won't try to play fair. That's the point everyone else should leave that person to play on his or her own.
Your memory is clouded. I called not for banning people but for:
"If you don't like someone's way of looking at the sources then simply ignore them or respond with a reasoned rejoinder.
I said that a peer reviewed journal dedicated to the historical Jesus bans ideas.

Did you actually read the OP? It called for a far deeper level of fairness than anything you are proposing. I called for understanding other people. Your dehumanizing caricature of me is beyond the pale.

Your idea of fairness, it would seem in comparison with what I wrote in the OP, is that you decide what is fair according to your prejudices and apparent inability to try to understand another point of view.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: "Pure objectivity" is a myth

Post by neilgodfrey »

Secret Alias wrote: Thu Sep 29, 2022 2:20 pm Once someone says objectivity doesn't exist their saying in effect that fairness isn't possible and - I would contend - that they won't try to play fair. That's the point everyone else should leave that person to play on his or her own.
Stephan, please read the OP. Or if you really have read it, please tell me how the argument expressed there even remotely suggests fairness is not possible.

Do you really think I do not even have basic human nature?
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neilgodfrey
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Re: "Pure objectivity" is a myth

Post by neilgodfrey »

Secret Alias wrote: Thu Sep 29, 2022 2:20 pm No I will give you WHAT I THINK is the proper analogy. In a previous post I used a sports analogy. You went on to speak of banning people. A referee or arbiter in sport has the purpose of keeping things fair. He often cautions the players, reminding to abide by 'fair play.' The sport analogy or the parallel in sports would be a player announcing to the referee and everyone involved in the game and in the stands that he doesn't believe in fair play, that it is 'an impossible standard' that 'EVERYONE' is 'cheating anyway' and 'NO ONE' is abiding be fair play so he should effectively leave the game and allow complete anarchy. It's just ridiculous. If you substitute 'fairness' for 'objectivity' it's plain that we have to maintain the proper decorum, the proper demeanor, the intention at least to strive to 'see things from another perspective.' Once someone says objectivity doesn't exist their saying in effect that fairness isn't possible and - I would contend - that they won't try to play fair. That's the point everyone else should leave that person to play on his or her own.
Stephan, your sport analogy is misdirected because it relates to observable actions to be judged against rules.

Objectivity in discussions of different hypotheses involves an interaction of minds whose basic belief systems are not always fully clear and transparent as, say, physically holding the ball when the rules disallow it.

Objectivity in discussions of competing hypotheses involves the strong likelihood that all participants have different shades or levels of understanding of the question being discussed and what is relevant to the discussion.

Studies have shown that even animals have a basic concept of what we call fairness, or "reciprocity". If you sincerely think that someone does not even have a basic nature that is even observed in animals then I suggest that the reason may be because you do not fully understand what that person has meant or where they are coming from. Hence, please read the OP and tell me if you still think it in anyway remotely suggests anything but perfect fairness and respect in academic discussions.

(Yes, this is another response to you. But you shout with caps, and you have accused me, repeatedly, of being something less than human and something more akin to a demon or having the nature of which your race was accused in times past. I am human and I do believe in fairness and would ask you to be fair and at least tell me where I have said anything to justify your accusations.)
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: "Pure objectivity" is a myth

Post by Leucius Charinus »

neilgodfrey wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 1:37 amA good researcher will be self-aware and make those things explicit. If they are not clear, the critics have a right to ask for those belief systems that led to those interpretations etc.
At the root of history and its interpretation is the evidence. This is mute. The researcher must make the evidence speak by making hypotheses about what the evidence means and how it is to be interpreted. The history of religions demonstrates that the general confidence associated with some hypotheses are at various times raised to absurd levels.

Everything should be questioned. Our own hypotheses, others' hypotheses and even those which have been long held by practically everyone.

"But I have good reason to distrust any historian who has nothing new to say or who produces novelties, either in facts or in interpretations, which I discover to be unreliable. Historians are supposed to be discoverers of truths. No doubt they must turn their research into some sort of story before being called historians. But their stories must be true stories. [...]

History is no epic, history is no novel, history is no propaganda because in these literary genres control of the evidence is optional, not compulsory.

~ Arnaldo Momigliano, The rhetoric of history, Comparative Criticism, p. 260

lsayre
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Re: "Pure objectivity" is a myth

Post by lsayre »

If objectivity doesn't exist, then the objective standard of blind justice and an equal application and upholding of the law (to all) is impossible. And only subjective law would remain. Law that is applicable differently (and applied at the level of not at all to brutally) to different groups and classes and identities and circumstances. Law that is the antithesis of being blind and equal to all. Law that is insane. The sort of law that stands down (on order) while businesses are looted and burned and entire city blocks are destroyed or declared to be a new nation, but sends a group of people who walk unarmed through their Capital for a couple hours to an oppressive gulag with no right to a speedy trial or any basic rights at all. We have witnessed what the world will be like when objectivity is declared to be impossible, and all that remains is subjectivity.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: "Pure objectivity" is a myth

Post by neilgodfrey »

lsayre wrote: Fri Sep 30, 2022 2:00 am If objectivity doesn't exist, then the objective standard of blind justice and an equal application and upholding of the law (to all) is impossible.
Not at all. That does not follow from anything I wrote in the OP. We can all agree on what is just and fair and we can agree on building institutions to enforce the rules. That is not about objectivity of knowledge and belief-systems.

lsayre wrote: Fri Sep 30, 2022 2:00 am And only subjective law would remain.
So long as we all agree then that's not a problem, right? Studies show that even animals have a basic sense of reciprocity and authority structures to enforce rules for the cohesion of society. Each human society has its own rules that all members can at least in principle agree on. We all know what's fair and just. But that's not about knowledge we acquire to support beliefs about the world, history, economics, etc.
lsayre wrote: Fri Sep 30, 2022 2:00 am We have witnessed what the world will be like when objectivity is declared to be impossible, and all that remains is subjectivity.
The riots you describe have nothing to do with how we acquire knowledge to support or test hypotheses, or how we create any scientific or historical hypothesis.
lsayre
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Re: "Pure objectivity" is a myth

Post by lsayre »

When discussing objectivity and subjectivity it helps to define terms. Here is a quote from objectivist philosopher Dr. Leonard Peikoff. mainly directed at outlining subjectivism, but briefly outlining it's antithesis, objectivism. My guess is that these statements from him date back to circa the late 1970's to early 1980's:
In metaphysics, “subjectivism” is the view that reality (the “object”) is dependent on human consciousness (the “subject”). In epistemology, as a result, subjectivists hold that a man need not concern himself with the facts of reality; instead, to arrive at knowledge or truth, he need merely turn his attention inward, consulting the appropriate contents of consciousness, the ones with the power to make reality conform to their dictates. According to the most widespread form of subjectivism, the elements which possess this power are feelings.

In essence, subjectivism is the doctrine that feelings are the creator of facts, and therefore men’s primary tool of cognition. If men feel it, declares the subjectivist, that makes it so.

The alternative to subjectivism is the advocacy of objectivity—an attitude which rests on the view that reality exists independent of human consciousness; that the role of the subject is not to create the object, but to perceive it; and that knowledge of reality can be acquired only by directing one’s attention outward to the facts.

The subjectivist denies that there is any such thing as “the truth” on a given question, the truth which corresponds to the facts. On his view, truth varies from consciousness to consciousness as the processes or contents of consciousness vary; the same statement may be true for one consciousness (or one type of consciousness) and false for another. The virtually infallible sign of the subjectivist is his refusal to say, of a statement he accepts: “It is true”; instead, he says: “It is true—for me (or for us).” There is no truth, only truth relative to an individual or a group—truth for me, for you, for him, for her, for us, for them.

.....

Kant ushered in the era of social subjectivism—the view that it is not the consciousness of individuals, but of groups, that creates reality. In Kant’s system, mankind as a whole is the decisive group; what creates the phenomenal world is not the idiosyncrasies of particular individuals, but the mental structure common to all men.

Later philosophers accepted Kant’s fundamental approach, but carried it a step further. If, many claimed, the mind’s structure is a brute given, which cannot be explained—as Kant had said—then there is no reason why all men should have the same mental structure. There is no reason why mankind should not be splintered into competing groups, each defined by its own distinctive type of consciousness, each vying with the others to capture and control reality.
lsayre
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Re: "Pure objectivity" is a myth

Post by lsayre »

Pilate and the mob and his blurb "What is truth?" is a contrived example of a situational conflict between frenzied group subjectivity and individual objectivity. A situation in which group identity driven subjective whim wins out over an attempt at a nominally rational and objective application of law wherein and under which Pilate proclaims "I find no guilt in this man.".
...men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific, and stable; it is not the known that breaks men’s spirits, but the unpredictable.
Ayn Rand

Subjective law, and/or the subjective application of that which was initially intended to be objective law, is intentionally vague, non-specific, and arbitrary. I.E., unpredictable.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: "Pure objectivity" is a myth

Post by neilgodfrey »

lsayre wrote: Fri Sep 30, 2022 2:22 am When discussing objectivity and subjectivity it helps to define terms.
Was my post not clear about what I meant by the possibility of objectivity -- that there is no god's eye view of anything?
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neilgodfrey
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Re: "Pure objectivity" is a myth

Post by neilgodfrey »

lsayre wrote: Fri Sep 30, 2022 2:54 am Pilate and the mob and his blurb "What is truth?" is a contrived example of a situational conflict between frenzied group subjectivity and individual objectivity. A situation in which group identity driven subjective whim wins out over an attempt at a nominally rational and objective application of law wherein and under which Pilate proclaims "I find no guilt in this man.".
...men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific, and stable; it is not the known that breaks men’s spirits, but the unpredictable.
Ayn Rand

Subjective law, and/or the subjective application of that which was initially intended to be objective law, is intentionally vague, non-specific, and arbitrary. I.E., unpredictable.
Sorry -- I don't follow how this relates to the OP.
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