I think questions like these are occasionally interesting and generally a waste of time because they don't often lead anywhere useful. Quantum mechanics being an obvious exception. There's lots of room to debate what truth is and what objectivity is and even "who's to say." I think your outright rejection of these conc…
I think questions like these are occasionally interesting and generally a waste of time because they don't often lead anywhere useful. Quantum mechanics being an obvious exception. There's lots of room to debate what truth is and what objectivity is and even "who's to say." I think your outright rejection of these concepts is limiting.
But when it comes to practical matters, like women's rights or children's safeguarding, for example, my lack of patience for abstractions is much more similar to yours.
Not many realize how profoundly unsettling QM was to not just physics but to the philosophical foundations of scientific method.
I read one paragraph in a book by Karl Popper comparing intractability with the ultimate unknowability dictated by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle; it was some of the clearest thinking in my experience.
It was not all that long ago that to claim to, or even to seek to, understand how things actually worked (“realism”) was regarded as conceit and unscientific.
Yeah, exactly. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is one of the clearest assaults on the concept of objective truth. Of course, we aren't living at the Planck scale. I don't think we need to apply QM to our understanding of daily life and especially of law.
But relativity, too, has lots of interesting things to say about how changes of reference frame can produce two, equally valid interpretations.
I want to note that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle doesn't really invalidate there being objective truth, it only affects the outer limits of the measurability of same. There is a tradeoff at quantum scales between the precision with which we can measure position and the precision with which we can measure momentum.
It would be a solid counter to an argument that objective truth is always measurable to infinite precision, but who makes that assertion?
The proponents of CSJ sometimes argue against "objectivity" by pointing out that humans cannot reach absolute objectivity (thus, in their minds, objectivity can be discarded entirely in favor of their favorite subjectivity, to be imposed on others coercively).
However, that misses the point, which is that we can be relatively more objective or more subjective, and that there are real world benefits to developing the former end of the spectrum.
“we can be relatively more objective or more subjective, and that there are real world benefits to developing the former end of the spectrum.”
Yep. This is exactly the point I was making in my conversation with Jane. In our own private world, it’s fine if subjectivity is king. In areas where we collide with others, the attempt at objectivity offers us the best chance of being both fair and correct.
As for Heisenberg, maybe I should have been a little more precise and said it’s the clearest assault on the belief that we can perceive objective truth. There’s the sense that if we just think hard enough or look closely enough, we can figure out all the answers. And Heisenberg, along with Gödel and others, remind us that there will always be a degree of uncertainty in our understanding of the world.
And I’m glad that uncertainty is there. It (hopefully) keeps us humble.
"So there. Phooey."
I think questions like these are occasionally interesting and generally a waste of time because they don't often lead anywhere useful. Quantum mechanics being an obvious exception. There's lots of room to debate what truth is and what objectivity is and even "who's to say." I think your outright rejection of these concepts is limiting.
But when it comes to practical matters, like women's rights or children's safeguarding, for example, my lack of patience for abstractions is much more similar to yours.
Not many realize how profoundly unsettling QM was to not just physics but to the philosophical foundations of scientific method.
I read one paragraph in a book by Karl Popper comparing intractability with the ultimate unknowability dictated by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle; it was some of the clearest thinking in my experience.
It was not all that long ago that to claim to, or even to seek to, understand how things actually worked (“realism”) was regarded as conceit and unscientific.
Yeah, exactly. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is one of the clearest assaults on the concept of objective truth. Of course, we aren't living at the Planck scale. I don't think we need to apply QM to our understanding of daily life and especially of law.
But relativity, too, has lots of interesting things to say about how changes of reference frame can produce two, equally valid interpretations.
I want to note that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle doesn't really invalidate there being objective truth, it only affects the outer limits of the measurability of same. There is a tradeoff at quantum scales between the precision with which we can measure position and the precision with which we can measure momentum.
It would be a solid counter to an argument that objective truth is always measurable to infinite precision, but who makes that assertion?
The proponents of CSJ sometimes argue against "objectivity" by pointing out that humans cannot reach absolute objectivity (thus, in their minds, objectivity can be discarded entirely in favor of their favorite subjectivity, to be imposed on others coercively).
However, that misses the point, which is that we can be relatively more objective or more subjective, and that there are real world benefits to developing the former end of the spectrum.
“we can be relatively more objective or more subjective, and that there are real world benefits to developing the former end of the spectrum.”
Yep. This is exactly the point I was making in my conversation with Jane. In our own private world, it’s fine if subjectivity is king. In areas where we collide with others, the attempt at objectivity offers us the best chance of being both fair and correct.
As for Heisenberg, maybe I should have been a little more precise and said it’s the clearest assault on the belief that we can perceive objective truth. There’s the sense that if we just think hard enough or look closely enough, we can figure out all the answers. And Heisenberg, along with Gödel and others, remind us that there will always be a degree of uncertainty in our understanding of the world.
And I’m glad that uncertainty is there. It (hopefully) keeps us humble.