(January 31, 2012 at 2:58 pm)Categories+Sheaves Wrote:(January 29, 2012 at 7:12 pm)Pendragon Wrote: However, the gaps left by our subjective understanding of reality does not mean there are gaps IN reality. Subjectivity always has teeth in the way it leaves holes in our understanding.
The fault is in us. But that fault allows a skeptic the room needed to question things considered "objective truth", as impossible for humans.
What gaps are you talking about? Show how these gaps follow from subjectivity plox?
If the ghost of Emmy Noether visits me in a dream tonight, and she gives me a complete and flawless conception of everything everywhere, that knowledge is also subjective, because it came from another one of my vivid hallucinations. But... with those assumptions from earlier, this knowledge may not have any of those gaps in it...
So there are gaps in our understanding. And our understanding is also subjective. Even if both are true, why does one imply the other?
Understanding comes not just from our own crippled viewing point, but also from many others, so that a greater, clearer picture may emerge. I guess this is the essence of the scientific method.
Unfortunately, "understanding" can come from group manipulations, where under pressure, sometimes minor pressure, people will agree they saw something just to "go along".
So our "understanding" will be potentially far better, or worse than our own individual view.
The subjective aspects of what we saw, what we remembered we saw and heard, the faulty aspects of how tired, drunk, or high...etc give one great pause as to how much trust to place in ones own, or anyone's version of reality.
However, you did agree that understanding itself is subjective, and capable of being wrong. Even if we have corrected this viewpoint with as many observation aspects as we can currently find, there is always the chance that the understanding can be invalidated with new observational points. (also the scientific method)
The gaps between what we understand, to what we do not understand are huge, and the greasy little uncertainly in our own subjective position makes it suck a bit more.
Want more gaps?
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
Mark Twain