I think perhaps what is really pertinent to our conversation is not "what is subjectivity" but "what is objectivity" because all I was doing by explaining the two different kinds of subjectivity was to help you understand why your arguments for a spectrum of subjectivity were incorrect, you were just jumping between interpretation, function and perspective and using language fallacies and this seemingly for you created a spectrum of subjectivity whereas really you were just looking at the same cube from a different angle. For something to be objectively true it must exist independently of thought and without having to be perceived or interpreted by anything or anyone, we have created things like the scientific method to demonstrate the existence of something independent of thought/opinion and if you understand all of this then why are you arguing that anything you've said is objectively true? You can argue that your perspective is based on biology, your feelings, your ideology it doesn't matter... you are the one who keeps saying interpretation doesn't change reality but then you come right back every time with a new interpretation that you try to pass off as being of reality. If this is part of reality, show me the evidence for that. Show me the evidence or accept that as far as we are able to tell it is not objectively true. If you come the conclusion that this is in fact just your opinion and you can't prove it is objectively true then you must ask what your requirement for belief in something as being objectively true might be, what are you willing to accept as true in the practical sense of how you live but are unable to prove actually exists? If your answer is less than nothing, then what separates you from a religious man? Doesn't he do exactly the same thing?I would argue that there are better or worse interpretations of justice, beauty and charity. For example you might decide someone is 'ugly' and then discriminate against them. Whereas a fairer person might consider more than outside appearance when valuing people. But I think you can go further too. You can recognise that beauty has a cultural aspect which is very subjective, a biological aspect which is subjective but can be closer to interpretation or perspective (using your definitions) and perhaps some more objective aspects to do with function for which something like beauty might be considered an unconscious attempt at perspective. I mean it's complicated and messy. Some people look ugly to me because their life choices are on display. Be that heroin addiction or arrogance or whatever. Others look ugly through some injury or disease. Now ugly is this blanket term, some people are ugly and deserve a certain level of judgement and others are ugly and deserve no judgement
I would say it is but that is just my interpretation, whatever your answer is also just your interpretation. I believe that in order for this to be an objectively true statement, I need evidence that the basis for this conclusion isn't simply coming from me (as the observer) and in fact is true independently of what I think about it. That does not exist, so therefore I can't call it objectively true - that is all there is to my argument really, everything else has just been showing you why what you are saying is wrong - although by your own lecture to Christian forum members, that is not something I should have to do - I just did it because I wanted to show that this is not a "we simply don't know" but rather an "all evidence says it is subjective, but there is no proof to prove it can't be objectively true".So it is somewhat cyclic. If you refuse to accept perspective which is correct due to interpretation which is wrong, then is the interpretation not wrong?
Zeus may also exist, what is your point?Absolutely and I said so. I have no answer to the axiom that life is not of value. I already agreed with you, 'life has value' is an axiom. It is not 'right' objectively. Or at least there is no evidence to believe this. Actually in reality there may be some purpose to the universe, it's just we don't know what it is and I can't think of any educated guesses.
I can't be more specific than that, I am saying you expect others to provide evidence for their claims yet you provide claims without evidence.This here is the problem, you are happy to preach about the importance of "closeness to reality" and the scientific method, that believe mandates proof to others - condescend towards Christians and other groups yet when it comes to your own belief, there is no evidence that you practice anything that you preach whatsoever. Where's the evidence? Where's the evidence? Even when I disprove your claims - something in your words that I shouldn't have to do, you still persist! Tell me what is the difference between you and the religious types you disagree with so much? I don't see any but that isn't what bothers me, it is the hypocrisy and hubris which is all too common amongst atheists.What do I preach that I am not practicing? Can you be specific please?
Not a relevant conclusion to the notion of valuing something or anything I said, but for the sake of argument, do you believe there are times where a different experience of a word is irrelevant? Only a small difference that does not lead to different behaviour? My opinion is that this is an oversimplification.And yet I'm pretty sure if I hit your thumb with a hammer it would hurt you and I'm pretty sure you would avoid such pain.
I actually do not believe God would be objective if he were real, I think the only reason people see God as objective is because he does not have to provide reasoning for anything he says. God says "do not kill" and now killing is bad and God is objectively correct but to me, the moment he gave his reasoning for why we ought not to kill, even if it was "because I said so" I would then say "yes well, that is your opinion" nothing has changed at all. I suppose it comes down to what you define as "God", I think the notion of a nihilistic protestant is not contradictory but the notion of a Catholic nihilist is - in any case, I don't see how being all knowing, all powerful, the creator, omnipresent or anything else I have heard God defined as as being evidence that he would have answers for his views that were objectively true. I cannot comprehend the idea that I am objectively wrong here, it is unfathomable to me that interpretation could be called objectively wrong and the existence of God wouldn't change anything.That is an odd statement. If God is defined as objectively good and his word is objectively good and he tells you to do something you say it's not good? Who is working off of evidence now?
I think it is ironic but I am not surprised and I think it makes sense that it is the way it is, the reasoning behind this is because you have a self-assurance that comes with objective moral law - there is no real reason for you to do anything, naturally one does not have to assert what is objectively true - that's the definition of objective that it doesn't have to be! So for me, someone who believes that my view could be tossed out the window if people who believe in the things I believe in sit down and do nothing, that gives me more reason to care and more of an urgency that results in these more imposing views.It is somewhat ironic that my position may be considered much harsher and more unforgiving than yours but in practice the conclusions I draw are consistently much more forgiving than the conclusions you draw. This is not ironic to me, but may seem so to others.
It's not like there is nothing I would do differently, I would try to get into heaven... hell is worse than a lifetime of absolute misery so I would try to avoid that at all costs. However as far as my views becoming redundant or incorrect because of a God being revealed, I don't see that.Again I don't get this. I believe in God the least possible. Yet if God exists then I would concede that he exists and change my behaviour appropriately.
I have already explained my ideal system but as for why do I value x over y - firstly I will say that it is not always a choice and I think this is fairly obvious when you look at it. There is just too much similarity between people, from totally different cultures, ages and sexes - my similarity to my parents and the culture I grew up in - all of these nature/nurture influences which at this point for me to change them would be incredibly forced and kind of absurd to some degree. My ideas of beauty, music, food, my interests and a large part of what I value is not something I really determined by choice, it has always been this way for me and I am sure it is the same for everyone else to varying extents. This is the starting point at least, for anyone who then begins to change their views willingly or nay.Seriously then why? Why do you value X over Y? Please describe your system for deciding what matters to you? and why something mattering to you matters to you.
From here there are a few big reasons for change... firstly is that I grow older, I meet new people - essentially my nature/nurture influences change over time and there's nothing I can do about that - I cannot preserve myself as I am now whether I want to or not. As for nurture you could also include experience/perspective/knowledge changes, for example a person who is robbed may find trusting others more difficult - perhaps he comes to value openness and a candid personality due to this experience. Being honest about this kind of thing is rare, whether the experiences are big or small, for me there are some that I am very aware of and some that are more subtle but I couldn't give you a point in time where I sat down and decided to change my views - for every single view I have changed over time and this is coming from someone who deeply values introspection and philosophy and whatnot.
Another big one is alignment, I have used this term a lot but perhaps I have also failed to explain this in a way that is easy to understand. Basically the idea here is that many values change because they fall out of alignment and this happens due to perceptive changes or values changing due to whatever reason. So for example I used to be a bit of a misanthrope and now I wouldn't call myself that... just a bit anti-social, and the reason for this change isn't because I suddenly decided not to be a misanthrope anymore. It was because I came to some discoveries and conclusions that changed my opinion - I got deeper into nihilism, I started to recognise the similarities between myself and others and once all this was done, I started to feel like a prick for being condescending towards others in the first place... all my reasons for being a misanthrope went away before I stopped being one. Alignment just means some conclusions rely on premises that are subject to change or that some conclusions were rejected based on a rejection of some premises which may later become accepted. Or perhaps you recognise one view to be very similar to a view that you hold or even that a view you hold promotes/values something that you have come to hate.
The last big one I will mention is experience with regards to consequences and causality, for example a lot of the things I really value now that I didn't before is because I've come to see them in a new light due to me misreading their purpose. For example - I used to really dislike extroverted people because I felt fairly uncomfortable around them and always felt talking to them was really boring since they weren't interested in the same things that I was and they didn't seem to think out their positions on things. I started to see all the advantages to what they were doing though, and realised that I wanted some of what they had - perhaps some of my disdain was in fact jealousy? I don't know, but I came to the conclusion that extroverts and introverts have strengths and weaknesses and I would prefer to have all the strengths and overcome the weaknesses of being an introvert. Trying to do that made me appreciate the skills many extroverts have and overall my opinion changed because of it. Again, I never decided to give extroverts a fair go because I felt I was being unfair, only because everything else started to fall into place.
On a grand philosophy scale, my views generally come from my smaller views if I'm being honest. I used to revile the idea that my thoughts were "corrupted" by culture but I cannot deny the similarities - what I call reasonable, or fair, and how much I care about certain things... it clearly doesn't come from nihilism - a philosophy which dominates my philosophical thought yet scarcely offers me any kind of advice on what to care about or anything of that nature. This is basically the conclusion I came to that made me more accepting of other peoples choices, that almost all of my views come from the same things I identify the views of others to have come from. Perhaps I can word it more accurately because I thought about it more, perhaps my views are more aligned but there is nothing about me that transcends what others experience or what they are.
Moral objective law either exists or it doesn't, by my definition, this is not an interpretation. As I said from the start, if you believe claims require proof then there is no real argument to be had here, clearly there is no evidence to show objective moral law therefore the claim is absent of the proof that we require in order to believe it is the truth. I care more that perhaps someone else may have been able to convince you yet I wasn't able to and so this makes me a bit dissatisfied, especially since I have yet to hear anything more than baseless opinions to discredit what I am saying and so I don't know what I should take way from this entire discussion except that I am not articulating my views well enough or I am dealing with someone who is particularly stubborn. Either way it is less than ideal from my perspective - as for why I care about anything at all - as I said before, values are necessary for rational thought, for identity and to make sense of certain things. They make actions rewarding and they give light to life. Without my values, I would be an empty husk of a person and I can tell you this because I went through a period of dabbling with this very idea. That I thought there is no objectively true reason for me to interpret anything or do anything at all, not even breathe and the conclusion I came to was, may as well enjoy life and accept my nature/nurture personality for what it is. There is no reason to do anything but there is no reason not to do anything... that was my final conclusion and so I feel all that is left is to do what you want to do.Again why? By your own argument we are both interpreting things differently with no objectively correct interpretation which exists. Why would my interpretation cause you any consternation at all, I don't understand?