/abs/ - Absurdism

Science is good at answering falsifiable questions with empirical observation, but it's not so good with the subjective stuff. It can give us all sorts of facts, and yeah, the technology it has led to is pretty neato, but science is pretty shit when it comes to stuff like morality or aesthetics.

In other words, science can tell us What Is, but What Should We Do With It is the realm of philosophy.

Science tells us how people perceive external information and what reactions this will most likely cause.
Discordianism tells us that we should abuse these mechanisms to make the world a more worthwhile place for all.

>>225
>>226
What's the point of answering subjective questions? The answer is going to be subjective.

>>228
The process of deciding an answer has the ability to change the answerers understanding of the world. It can also provide an entertaining challenge, like a puzzle.
Furthermore, the answer can challenge, inform or entertain the person who asked the subjective question (which I believe is you). Maybe you can help out, why did you ask your question? What do you seek from the answer? Could someone else asking the same question be gain something else from the answer?

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>>228
>The answer is going to be subjective.
You say that as if it therefore has no worth.
Subjective questions are useful for many reasons:
1) diagnosis of a subject
>what number do you see in this image?
The answer is usually consistent, an unexpected answer could indicate color blindness
2) finding popular opinion to estimate probability of satisfaction
>did you like that show?
I haven't watched a show and want to know if it's likely to be a waste of time or not. Subjective reviews can help me decide, as I probably can't get an objective answer without first seeing it.
>is this joke funny?
If I am a professional artist or comedian, customer satisfaction is subjective depending on the audience's prior knowledge and taste. In a paid comedy performance, it matters how much of the audience enjoy the jokes, so that I can get more gigs or better gigs afterwards.
There may not really a feasible way for me to answer objective questions like "will the majority of my audience find that funny?", so I can ask people similar to the target audience "did you find this funny? do you think other people will find this funny?" and use that to try and predict the objective question's answer.
A similar situation would be in politics. If a goal of mine as a political leader is to satisfy the majority of citizens so they don't rise up and remove me, how can I know if a major policy will please most of them? Polling or even a referendum can be used to decide value based policies (like abortion: some Americans value a fetus as an unborn human and therefore having a right to live, others see it as a coup de grace and therefore it can be right, others see it as a violation of their religion to allow it to happen. Even an objectively correct approach, if one could exist, could cause majority dissatisfaction which leads to citizen/government conflict and could even result in being removed from power).

>>229
I asked the question because this is the philosophy board and I am doing philosophy by asking stupid-ass questions that nobody cares about.

>>231
'Nobody' is just a nickname. My first name is Enrique Jr.

>>230
These are all objective questions.

>>232
no your name is Cabbage, Cabbage.

>>233
>Subjective:
>Philosophy. relating to or of the nature of an object as it is known in the mind as distinct from a thing in itself.
>existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought (opposed to objective).
A subjective question can have a true correct answer for a particular subject (e.g. if you have fully-able eyes and perceive a 2 in that image, and I ask you the question, and you answer that you see nothing, it's subjectively incorrect. If I have protanopia, I can give the same questions that same answer and be subjectively correct).

>what number do you see in this image?
The answer depends on the subject's ability to normally process the world around them. The answers "2" and "none" can both be correct. It doesn't matter whether a pattern able to represent "2" is in the object, the question depends on the subject's perception of the object.
>did you like that show?
This is subjective. It is asking for a subject's personal opinion of the object, not any objective property of the show.
>is this joke funny?
This is subjective. It implicitly asks for a subject's personal opinion, unless you unusually believe funniness can be an objective property.

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>>235
note: in the questions, 'you' is used arbitrarily to refer to the question's answer, not to always mean the Pope I responded to. I'm not asking everyone else how that guy perceived something.
I really hope this post is useless.

Philosophy will become a science when we got good enough methodology.
>Is it morally good to wipe my ass with your toothbrush?
<Let me run the numbers.

>>237
I mean, if you specifically mean my toothbrush, the supercomputer would determine the answer is yes. About two levels of butterfly effects from me being on sick leave results in global utilitarian benefits.

>>238
Even if it's littered with bugs, the strong AI will be infallible, since people will just build a religion around it.

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>>235
> Definition of objective
> 1a : expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations

>what number do you see in this image?
This is an objective question. That I see 23 is a fact, not an opinion.

>did you like that show?
>is this joke funny?
These are the same questions, both are objective. While on the surface they might seem subjective, because they ask about personal feelings, but they are actually objective, since the answers are facts. The object is subjective but the subject is objective.

>>240
Another 1.a. definition that is used in philosphical discussion:
>ob·jec·tive (əb-jĕk′tĭv) adj.
>1. a. Existing independent of or external to the mind; actual or real: objective reality. 
and
>1. (Philosophy) existing independently of perception or an individual's conceptions

The definition you cited (Merriam-Webster) and I assume you posted over in >>>/eris/885 (wrong board) is less technically appropriate to philosophy and more generally appropriate to literature and analysis of studies. The two definitions in that image are talking about bias in writing.
It's like someone calling a person 'materialist' because they care for wealth and possessions rather than about spirituality or intellectual pursuits. It doesn't necessarily mean they have a materialist philosophical doctrine. We are using different definitions used in different fields, hence the confusion. Philosophical conversations usually use the philosophically technical definition, to analyze the relationship of the object, and the subject perceiving the object. They have questionably assumed the universality of facts.
The meaning of the word 'objective' is subjective. It depends on the subject's knowledge and judgement.

[vvv]

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>This is an objective question. That I see 23 is a fact, not an opinion.
You are the subject, interpreting an object (the image).
You are not the object.
You view the object, and I assume that you saw a pattern of dots, which in your opinion resembled symbols which to you represent the number 23.
The interpretation of 23 is a property of your mind, not the object itself. I see 2. A person with protanopia sees none. A person who doesn't understand Hindu-arabic numerals may not interpret what we do.
Therefore, the number seen is a property of the subject, not the object.
Therefore, the question is subjective.

>but they are actually objective, since the answers are facts.
Similarly, if we are talking about the  common philosophical definition of objective, different subjects can honestly reply with different answers. Hence, the answer cannot not a property of the object without self-contradicting, and therefore it is a property of the subject's mind.
>The object is subjective but the subject is objective.
Again, "thinking objectively" is a different definition to the one used in philosophy. So subjectively, you are correct.

It's all about big t and little T truth.

>>241
>>242
I did not post that. I despise people who cling to dictionaries like they are some source of truth.

I'd like to remind you that you are currently attempting to make a case for the usefulness of philosophy. Claiming that some interpretations of words are more appropriate to philosophy only reinforces my point that philosophy's raison d'être is obfuscation. We are only one step from some bright mind claiming that Science is subjective since its object is Knowledge… Nonsense!

Imagine if optometrists were philosophers. They show you one of those diagnostic images, and you innocently admit to seeing 23. "Well, why don't you just interpret it as 5? It's not like you have some bodily disorder, it's all in your mind, just think differently lmao."

"Are you dead?" Another of the classic subjective questions. Since being dead is a property of the subject, this is subjective.

Can we just admit that philosophy is bullshit?

>>244
>It's not like you have some bodily disorder, it's all in your mind, just think differently lmao
No, they would realize it's most likely that your eyes are responsible for your unusual interpretation of reality. Your mind has the symptom.

Subjective questions are useful, for example, when an objective truth is currently impractical or unable to be measured (used in diagnosis), or if the truth is irrelevant due to opinion being more valuable (arts, political power play).

>Claiming that some interpretations of words are more appropriate to philosophy only reinforces my point that philosophy's raison d'être is obfuscation.
Every field has technical terms. Physics has a different definition of 'jerk' to most people. If a physicist explains that the jerk of a vehicle is 2.3 m/s³ downwards and you said no, the jerk is actually the driver, where will the conversation go? If the conversation is in the car, it will go downwards.

>Can we just admit that philosophy is bullshit?
Yes. It's a subset of the universe.

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>>246
Let's say we want to measure the temperature with a thermometer. It has a digital display that displays the temperature. You look at the display.
You are the subject, interpreting the object (the display).
You are not the object.
You view the object, and I assume that you saw a pattern of segments, which in your opinion resembled symbols which to you represent the temperature 39°C.
The interpretation of 39°C is a property of your mind, not the object itself. An American might see 39°F because they are used to Fahrenheit and are not paying attention. A person who doesn't understand Hindu-arabic numerals may not interpret what we do.
Therefore, the temperature is a property of the subject, not the object.
Therefore, temperature is subjective.

>>248 Even if two different people measuring temperature in different continents never agree with each other, that doesn't mean temperature wasn't purely objective. It just means that those ill witted fucks cannot operate a goddamn thermometer. Temperature is the same everywhere, any data stating otherwise fit waaay inside the error margin.

>>223
>Therefore, the temperature is a property of the subject, not the object.
The measurement of an object is not the object itself.
The perceived temperature is suggestive, as you demonstrated. The actual temperature is a physical property of the object.

Another demonstration of perceived vs real temperature is a person eating food containing menthol, which chemically triggers the cold-­sensitive TRPM-­8 receptors in your mouth and could reasonably lead to a belief that the food is cold when we can scientifically prove beyond reasonable doubt that it isn't.
I wonder what happens when you mix it with chilli.

>>252
The issue is not that the thermometer might be faulty. It can be calibrated, repaired or replaced. The issue is not that the interpreter might be ignorant or incompetent. The issue is that the temperature is mediated by the thermometer. This means that there are two sides of measurement.

The simpler side is the side of the instrument. The object has a property that the instrument in some way transforms into a number. This is pretty straightforward.

The more complex side is the side of the interpreter. Here, the interpreter is presented with a measurement from the instrument. The interpreter might accept it as the true physical property of the object, within an acceptable error margin, or repeat the measurement, maybe measure it with a different instrument. However, what matters for us now is that the measurement is an objective property of the instrument. If the question is "What did the instrument measure?" and the instrument measured 39°C, then claiming that the instrument measured 39°C is objective truth even if the actual temperature of the object is -39°C.

Of course, reading out the measurement from the instrument involves another measurement: our eyes measuring the light reflected from the display of the instrument. Here we return to the problem of the number on the image. If the question is "What number do you see in this picture?" and you see 23, then replying 23 is an objective answer, even if the picture has 5 on it. Simply because the question was what you see, and not what wavelength of light is reflected at which points of the picture.

>>228
No human in the history of the species has ever experienced the world objectively. Science (or Natural Philosophy) can tell the artist how to achieve the optimal consistency of paint and give him precise control over the mixture of color, but it can't tell him what he should put on the canvas. It can't give a man a reason to carry on in the face of despair. It can't give him an exact itinerary to follow to lead him to lasting emotional fulfillment in his life.

>>255
>No human in the history of the species has ever experienced the world objectively. 
How can you know that?

>>255
Philosophy can't do any of that either, so why are you wasting our time with it?

>>256
Because by definition they've all used human sensory organs and human brains to experience the world, and this system is not capable of doing such a thing. The experience you have of the world is a filtered and watered-down story your brain is telling you about objective reality.

>>257
It can get you closer than pure empirical science can. If a thing isn't falsifiable, science isn't even capable of asking the question, let alone answering it.

>>259
This is empirically false. There's tons of evidence based research on these topics that give you advice that actually works. Unlike philosophy, where you get some stupid bullshit about Being and Becoming that not even the original author understood.

>>258
What does "by definition" refer to here, is it based on the definition of the human, from which you claim that it follows that they experience the world through their senses and cognition, or to the definition of objective, which to you seems to necessitate immediately comprehending the whole of everything that exists at any given point of time to avoid experiencing it in "a filtered and watered-down" way?

If you are going to play word games and appeal to a definition, the least you can do is provide us your definition.

>>261
What game? A human is going to have a human brain. If they don't have a human brain, they would be something else, like a parakeet, or a walrus, or dead. "They experience the world through their senses and cognition" is not a conclusion from this but a primary truth, confirmed by science in one of the areas it is good at. As for "objectivity", comprehension of objective reality does not require immediacy or entirety, but it does require the data to be unaltered. The data, however, passes through multiple stages between initial gathering and your experience of it during which a large amount of already gathered data is discarded, assumptions are made, and these assumptions are given priority over whatever primary data is left. Neuroscience and psychology have shown this repeatedly, your brain lies to itself, often creating "false" experience from the most spurious data. Science has demonstrated conclusively that not a single person has ever actually experienced an accurate version of reality.

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>>262
Is your claim that we cannot experience reality objectively because we cannot help but try to make sense of what we experience? That for sight to be objective, we would have to accept the picture as light without making any attempts to recognize objects in it?

>>263
My claim is that we cannot experience reality objectively because the systems we rely on to give us information about reality do not function in a way that permits us to do so. The human brain does not function that way. It isn't simply due to the process of pattern recognition. Before you even "experience" anything, a heuristic program formed through millions of years of trial and error has edited it and often added outright falsehoods that you take to be objective. This isn't an accident, this is a function of the brain that can be used by someone else to inject entirely false memories into your head simply by having a conversation with you. Even the act of remembering something re-writes the memory, you do not have any Read-Only Memory. For sight to be objective, it would have to be unedited. Optical illusions work by exposing the assumptions that your brain makes about reality, and that your experience of sight is an edited feed based on countless numbers of these assumptions, edited before it even enters your conscious experience. And it's not just sight, none of what your senses give your brain make it to your experience of them without going through this editing.

>>260
>some stupid bullshit about Being and Becoming that not even the original author understood
You seem to be under the impression that Sophistry is Philosophy.

>>263
Not them, but yes. Sense is merely an abstract illusion we apply to the chaotic world in order to effectively process it.

>>266
Symbolic thought and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

>>264
How can science determine that what we experience differs from objective reality if it cannot locate objective reality?

>>268
Science can give you any answer you want if you do it well enough. Trust me on this one.

>>268
When was it ever claimed that science cannot locate objective reality? That's the thing science is designed to do, and it is good at it. And it has documented objectively that the human brain lies to itself on a constant basis.

>>270
It follows from your claim, since science is a human activity. Otherwise science would allow us to experience the world objectively.

>>271
It does not necessarily follow, because science allows us to know things for a fact that we have never and could never experience.

Almost two weeks since thread was posted and we are still yet to see any argument for the continued existence of philosophy. I think we can conclude that science has made it obsolete.

>>273
Look again.

>>274
No, still nothing. We talked a lot about science but philosophy got ignored. Do you happen to have anything to say about it?

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Imagine not realizing science proved everyone's frame of reference is subjective and relative.

>>276
Isn't that proven by philosophy tho?

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>>277
That's just your opinion.

>>277
Philosophy can't prove shit, it can only claim.

>>279
Prove it.

>>279
Look at this guy here, can't even into a priori.

>>281
I can into many priories, thank you.

ah yes science, sometimes called natural philosophy.

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>>315
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
> Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin philosophia naturalis) was the philosophical study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science. It is considered to be the precursor of natural science. 
Protip: just because you are forced to reread Plato until the end of times does not mean that you are still living in Plato's time.

>>316
How can you be sure? I can't read the damn dates on this webbed site so it could be practically any time.

Any who. I'm a student of math, and one thing you learn as a student of math is that every other science has way lower standards of proof. The idea of 'scientific proof' necessarily relies on some implicit philosophical assumptions about how the world works. Mathematical proof does too but we're a lot more careful about it.

If someone is certain of the conclusions of science but unwilling to entertain discussion on epistemology, I assume they're either in it for the money or willfully ignorant.

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>>317
High standards of proof?!? A textbook told me I could prove x = 3, then the very next question told me x cannot equal 3. Mathematics is abstract postmodern imaginary  hodgepodge!

>>318
excellent meem.

>>317
>I can't read the damn dates on this webbed site 
grayface spotted

>>318
A[X]
B[X]
C[X]
D[X]

^^^all of the above^^^

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>>318

>>318
I've had someone try to tell me that advanced mathematics are a jewish trick. I didn't really know what to say. The jew thing is neither here nor there, but when someone can't understand the most simple elements of logical proof that all go back to 1 = 1, it's hard for me to respect them.

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>>418

John Horgan - The End of Science Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (2015).epub
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Sounds like you may enjoy a book called The End of Science by John Horgan. It's a collection of thoughts and interviews with big names, in some cases the very last they ever gave, on the subject of whether what we can learn will ever come to an end. The second chapter deals with philosophy/philosophers in particular.

I find that philosophy just gives as much as it gets. Some people are lost and manage to find some guidance through it, or a way to put thoughts into order. Other times it's simply a discussion circlejerk for its own sake. In short, there is no point. It simply opens up new avenues of thought if they weren't there before, or fills time in a way that lets you flex your brain to varying degrees.

>What's the point of philosophy when we have science?
this is like asking "what's the point of the internet if we have porn?"

>What's the point of philosophy when we have science?
this is like asking "what's the point of porn if we have the internet?"

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>>318
Assume the chance of picking each alphabet at random is 25%.

If A and D are correct, the chance of picking A or D is 50%, but that contradicts the answer it itself.

If B is correct, the chance of picking B is 25%, so that also contradicts the answer itself.

If C is correct, the chance of picking C is 25%, but that contradicts the answer itself.

So there are no correct answers. The answer C is paradoxical.

Maybe my logic is wrong idk.

>>228
>What's the point of answering subjective questions? The answer is going to be subjective.
Questions like "what should I do today" are subjective.

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There's no point, but we do it regardless. As with most things… hmm!

>>235
>unless you unusually believe funniness can be an objective property.

can we explore this? we're trapped in the longest shaggy dog joke ever told, and so taking humor as an objective quality seems rational-adjacent

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>>267

>>583
i hope that cat is ok

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>>223
I see no real difference, but I will try
Science is fuck around and find out.
Philosophy is trial and error.
To be fair definitions are dumb.

Maybe they are two ends of the same string. Both have the same goal, I think: investigation. They seem, to me, to have the same mannerisms and formuli, tools and deductions, rights and wrongs, corrections and mistakes, faults and geniuses with different limits therein. All the diffidence lies in a shift of mind, maybe?

Therefore I agree with OP (only if he does in fact agree with me) that there is no proper distinction between science and philosophy.

>>1307
Science is applying empirical methods to obtain actionable information about the world.  See also, the scientific method.  Philosophy is a circle jerk for the nerdy kids who weren't smart enough to hack it in STEM.

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>>1314
>Philosophy is a circle jerk for the nerdy kids who weren't smart enough to hack it in STEM.
STEM are the people who fooled themselves into hacking it in STEM.
The reality is, none of either are smart.
Look at picrel for sixty (60) minutes and you will be enlightened.

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Abstract motivation.

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You xomplain about philosophy like it's all that bad. They're nothing compared to language experts.
These are real definitions listed by real dictionaries. This is what they're demanding your respect for!

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I use philosophy as self-defense.

>>1314
Bah to Empiricism! No different from Because! Another excuse for Certainty, just like Ought. Scientists are still ever the fools, just as like the Philosophers too. In Ignorance, accidental irradiation may taste better than drinking wolfsbane I'd wager.
Two sides of a coin, Science and Philosophy are. The game-piece of the game of Investigation outside the Mind. Good enough only what they are good at and nothing more. But funny enough, noboy ever talks about the Side of the coin. Like two ends of string endlessly flayed, Science and Philosophy seem still to be the same to me. But we are the string and the side, I think. What works, works.