Does the existence of language imply subjectivism?

[Nxixcxk]

A few days ago my dad said to me, "Reality is subjective in a sense that we have to agree upon what exists." I gave him a perplexing look of amusement and then he said, "How, if we don't agree upon reality, can we even communicate with each other?"

Regretably, I didn't know how to respond . I said something along the lines of, "Well, of course we have to agree upon reality in order to communicate, but I don't see how that leads to subjectivity."

And then somehow we got off on a tangent. Nevertheless, I wasn't really satisfied with how I responded.

I mean, it seems that something would have to exist before the agreement could occur (i.e. existence presupposes the possibility of communication)--and thus the existent would be independent of consciousness....but that's all I got.

Possibly it's important to not think of communication and knowledge as synonymous?

Argh, I'm lost, any tips?

[NIJamesHughes]

"Reality is subjective in a sense that we have to agree upon what exists."

Technically, no one has to necessarily agree on what exists. An example is a color-blind person and a non-color blind person. The two perceive different attributes, but that does not change the attributes themselves.

I think what dear ol dad was getting at is: how do you know that what you perceive is what actually is? The answer that most would choose is: by comparing it to the experiance of others. The correct answer would be by comparing it to the rest of a properly (rationally) validated body of knowledge.

"I mean, it seems that something would have to exist before the agreement could occur (i.e. existence presupposes the possibility of communication)--and thus the existent would be independent of consciousness....but that's all I got."

This is correct.

"Possibly it's important to not think of communication and knowledge as synonymous?"

This is correct.

I hope this helps.

Edited February 14, 2005 by NIJamesHughes

[Tom Rexton]

A few days ago my dad said to me, "Reality is subjective in a sense that we have to agree upon what exists."  I gave him a perplexing look of amusement and then he said, "How, if we don't agree upon reality, can we even communicate with each other?"

Regretably, I didn't know how to respond .  I said something along the lines of, "Well, of course we have to agree upon reality in order to communicate, but I don't see how that leads to subjectivity." 

And then somehow we got off on a tangent.  Nevertheless, I wasn't really satisfied with how I responded.

I mean, it seems that something would have to exist before the agreement could occur (i.e. existence presupposes the possibility of communication)--and thus the existent would be independent of consciousness....but that's all I got.

Possibly it's important to not think of communication and knowledge as synonymous? 

Argh, I'm lost, any tips?

You should have asked him what he meant by "subjective"--because I certainly don't understand what he meant by that term in the way he used it. In Objectivism, the terms "intrinsic", "subjective" and "objective" have unique meanings--denoting certain theories on the source of knowledge as well as consciousness and its relation to existence.

[Tom Rexton]

A few days ago my dad said to me, "Reality is subjective in a sense that we have to agree upon what exists."  I gave him a perplexing look of amusement and then he said, "How, if we don't agree upon reality, can we even communicate with each other?"

Regretably, I didn't know how to respond .  I said something along the lines of, "Well, of course we have to agree upon reality in order to communicate, but I don't see how that leads to subjectivity." 

And then somehow we got off on a tangent.  Nevertheless, I wasn't really satisfied with how I responded.

I mean, it seems that something would have to exist before the agreement could occur (i.e. existence presupposes the possibility of communication)--and thus the existent would be independent of consciousness....but that's all I got.

Possibly it's important to not think of communication and knowledge as synonymous? 

Argh, I'm lost, any tips?

After giving it some more thought, I believe I now know what he meant. He is arguing that,

In order for us to have meaningful communication, the concepts in our minds must be identical--i.e., have the same referents. Therefore, reality is subjective.

That's totally non sequitur. In order to have a full grasp of a concept, one must have formed it properly--i.e., objectively. Otherwise, it's just a vague, floating abstraction, and we could not have meaningful communication if our concepts were vague, floating abstractions. If we were to form a concept subjectively, by using inessentials as the distinguishing characteristics and classifying a certain group of concretes accordingly, and then "communicate" with that invalid concept, such a communication would be totally meaningless. Even if we "agreed" on the identity of some entity, that agreement is not subjective if the process by which we established the identity of the said entity was objective (i.e., by logical reasoning based on the full context).

As example, take the concept "chair". Your father is basically saying that because we "agree" on the meaning of '"chair" and can communicate meaningfully about chairs, reality is subjective. From this you can see how absurd his argument is. That we can communicate meaningfully about chairs is in fact due to the objectivity of the concept. That concepts can be objective is a result of the fact that reality itself is objective.

[JMeganSnow]

A few days ago my dad said to me, "Reality is subjective in a sense that we have to agree upon what exists."  I gave him a perplexing look of amusement and then he said, "How, if we don't agree upon reality, can we even communicate with each other?"

The reason that we "agree" on what exists is that we're all looking at the same things. I mean, seriously, people can't agree on whether a movie is good or a man is a genius but they're supposed to all randomly come to some sort of "agreement" on the nature of reality?

It makes just a TEENSY bit more sense to think that reality is what it is regardless of our "agreement" and the reason we all happen to "agree" is that if we don't base our thinking on objective reality, which is the same for everyone, we're INSANE.

[source]

"How, if we don't agree upon reality, can we even communicate with each other?"

A nice inversion of his question would be "How can we agree upon reality if we can't communicate with each other?"

When I read the first lines of your posts, I was struck by your dad's first sentence saying "Reality is subjective in a sense that we have to agree upon what exists." I took it in the context of a rather perverted definition of "subjective" (because otherwise it made no sense to me whatsoever). It meant the following: two people meet and they start agreeing on what things exist and by doing so they define their subjective (in your dad's words) image of the world.

Thus, the following question by your dad quoted above, revealed to me what's wrong with his statement, hence my inversion.

Obviously, the most important thing here is to define the context. You may have quoted your father out of context - which is why anyone can establish their own context when they read your post. Or while you talked to your father, there really may not have been any context leading to your father's statement, in which case it came out of the blue, and in which case the best response would be "Dad, you're not making any sense."

[Nxixcxk]

Thanks for the responses.

That's totally non sequitur. In order to have a full grasp of a concept, one must have formed it properly--i.e., objectively. Otherwise, it's just a vague, floating abstraction, and we could not have meaningful communication if our concepts were vague, floating abstractions. If we were to form a concept subjectively, by using inessentials as the distinguishing characteristics and classifying a certain group of concretes accordingly, and then "communicate" with that invalid concept, such a communication would be totally meaningless.

Yeah, good point. I was thinking in the back of my mind--"Well, we must have some sort of agreement upon reality prior to communication." So it would seem the agreement is tacit, if we are so to communicate.

A nice inversion of his question would be "How can we agree upon reality if we can't communicate with each other?"

Hmm, that's a nice, quick, refutation. Helps point out that any type of communication b/t two people already implies some sort of objectivity.

Obviously, the most important thing here is to define the context. You may have quoted your father out of context - which is why anyone can establish their own context when they read your post. Or while you talked to your father, there really may not have been any context leading to your father's statement, in which case it came out of the blue, and in which case the best response would be "Dad, you're not making any sense."

Basically I told my parents that Objectivism woudl be a life long study and that I was going to possibly move somewhere where college courses would be offered on the subject...then they started saying things like, "sounds cultish," or "who needs philosophy," etc.etc. But then I started describing the philosophy and absolutes, etc. and that's when he popped the question. (Seems there are many people whom I call implicit Objectivist...implicit in a sense that their actions are Objective-like, but they are unable to substantiate their thoughts philosophically, and thus turn to some sort of subjectivism)

It's funny, there's this book called "Atheism: The case against God." And it has a nice section about axioms, the fundamentals of logic (how logic isn't accepted about "faith"), and a refutation of universal skepticism. I understand how to refute universal skepticism when it's being purported blatantly, but when it hides behind equivocations and comes in different variants---it's a lot tougher

[the tortured one]

here's a good refutation of relavism/subjectivism my philosophy professor gave me.

"If you say that everything is relative/subjective, you are making a paradoxial statement. Since according to the statement, there are no universal absolutes, but the statement that "everything is relative" is itself a universal absolute."

[AwakeAndFree]

A few days ago my dad said to me, "Reality is subjective in a sense that we have to agree upon what exists."  I gave him a perplexing look of amusement and then he said, "How, if we don't agree upon reality, can we even communicate with each other?"

It's true, we have to agree upon certain things in reality in order to communicate. And the fact that we can communicate only proves there is an objective, outside reality that we can agree upon.

If there wasn't, then everyone whould have a radically different reality, his own reality, and we wouldn't be able to communicate.

The fact that we are NEED to agree in order to communicate doesn't prove anything except the specific nature of communication. That fact that we are ABLE to do so in so many cases, is a proof that there IS an objective reality.

Edited February 15, 2005 by erandror

[Cole]

A nice inversion of his question would be "How can we agree upon reality if we can't communicate with each other?"

That's a skewed inversion. The inverted structure of the sentence is;

"How, if we can communicate with each other, can we not agree upon reality?"