The Objective and the Subjective

Perhaps the most pressing philosophical issue of the day is the critique of the Objective. What qualifies as Objective Reality? This is hardly a new question, in fact it has been at the core of mainstream philosophy since at least the Enlightenment. All that has really changed over time has been the framing.

George Berkeley is perhaps the first to come to mind with the question of 'what is Objective Reality?' Born in 1685, he is exceptional beyond being an actual Irish Philosopher. He coined the philosophical concept of Immaterialism which he elaborated upon in his outstanding Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonus. He believed that the only real substance was that of Mind because we only ever merely perceive the sensible. Pluck out your eyes and stop up your ears, suspend yourself in a deprivation chamber, and Matter itself may take on a different meaning. Such was his approach in what would become known as Subjective Idealism in a nod to the much earlier Sage Plato, albeit not quite so extreme. In short, he did not believe that mortal sensibilities are capable of grasping the Objectively Real because individuals are vexed with unique and inherently subjective perceptions.

Going further back, we find a Frenchman born in 1596 by the name of Renée Descartes. He described himself as a Rationalist, and justified his assertion by holding numbers as the key to discerning the Real. If it cannot be measured and quantified, it is merely Subjective in the view of the Rationalist Philosopher. He was indeed a powerful mathematician whose system of logic would much later be made famous by Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary gumshoe Sherlock Holmes, and it was he who most famously argued that thought itself is proof of individuality and the reality of the individual in his formula 'I think, therefore I am."

I am admittedly uncertain as to the views of George concerning numbers and whether he held them in quite the esteem of Renée, but I do know that Renée held physical reality to be a matter of indisputable fact. Moving back forward, we find my third example who I single out as an early point of controversy in this. Prior to the modern era, as I demonstrated with my previous two examples, the objective and subjective were mostly topics for intellectual and perhaps religious debate. That is to say, they were curious concepts with little meaningful impact upon our daily lives. Then, along came Jean-Paul Sartre.

Jean-Paul Sartre was born in 1905 in the town in which he would die, Paris. He was a leading Existentialist philosopher and a Marxist pioneer of sorts whose influence upon leftist thought cannot be overstated in my opinion. There were other innovators before and since,in the political arena in particular, who may have had broader impact, but in terms of basic philosophy, his idea that existence precedes essence resonated throughout the milieu of western thought in ways that are still being felt today. As I understand this concept, to be born is to simply exist. Your Essence however, this is the result of your choices and actions and the impact that they have on the world around you. Perhaps this idea inspired Pol Pot, his student, to try to be like Kim Jong-il?

These are merely a few of the Subjectivist Philosophers that I am most familiar with to provide a cross section of views concerning basic reality well before our current era. There have been those who truly thought that physical reality was merely a projection of the mind and will of God, and I would rather not attempt an unraveling of the Logical Positivism of Bertrand Russell here at this time. Suffice to say, there is a very definite trail of breadcrumbs that we can follow if we wish to discover how we have arrived at a point in time wherein many truly believe that absolutely everything is a matter of opinion and Relativism is the unquestionable norm. Still others truly think that we live in pods hooked up to a computer, or that we live on a filthy serving platter beneath a literal celestial chandelier. Do we really dare to declare that anything whatsoever is beyond debate when our most brilliant minds can't even agree on what constitutes the Objectively Real?

My major objection to any of the "reality isn't real" philosophical ponderings is ... so what? Nothing follows from it. If reality has an objective component or if we're in a simulation or if we're just brain farts in the mind of God or whatever, what follows from it? Will anything meaningful change in your existence? In how you approach life? In how you approach other people?

I think narcissism stems largely from this direction. If "reality isn't real", then the ego is all that matters. Surely negative consequences aren't real if the objective isn't real. Surely laws and rules don't matter if they merely govern a world that isn't actually real. What use are ethics under these considerations? Could it be that the general acceptance of this perspective is behind much of our social fraying?

I don't know if narcissism is the source of the problem or problem is the source of narcissism. I've always found that people have their notion of how live "really is" and look around for whatever excuse allows them to live that way, whether from metaphysical, ethical, or political philosophy.

Admittedly, my assertion is rooted in the fact that most first world cultures are not descended from cultures that incorporate concepts like the Maÿa (sp?). That is, the idea of the veil of illusion over mortal senses as described by Shakespeare when he said, 'All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.' I don't think he necessarily had this in mind, but I think it's accurate nonetheless. Sikhism, Hindu, certain strains of shamanic thought, and other aboriginal beliefs have these concepts and I'm sure there are Buddhist traditions as well. Abrahamic traditions though are markedly vague on this, and so trend towards the imperical.

All that said for clarification, you're right especially where the young are concerned. The West is vexed by this BS, and relativism compounds it. Between the two, ideas about right versus wrong are effectively abolished from the discussion, if they were ever there to begin with.

Well, the famous so-called [url=https ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi_(book)#%22The_Butterfly_Dream%22]Butterfly Dream[/url] is found in one of the foundational texts (庄子) of Daoism.  The entire foundation of Buddhism is that all of reality is an illusion: the goal of Buddhists is achieve Nirvana (which is not "Buddhist heaven") which means you remove yourself from the cycle of rebirth into said illusion.  So the whole notion that reality isn't real isn't just a Western thing.

But the damaging variant of it seems to stem from the Abrahamic.

Like I said, the whole illusory reality thing IS NOT western at all. Relatively few western traditions outside of shamanism ever got into that idea. Outside of Hindu, it almost doesn't have a mainstream presence in the West. That's my whole point, prior to relatively recently the Western approach has vascillated between impericism and rationalism.

Ah, I misread what you said. My bad.