RE: Are we surprising?
January 1, 2011 at 9:21 am
(This post was last modified: January 1, 2011 at 9:29 am by Edwardo Piet.)
"People get surprised but nothing is actually surprising?" isn't a contradictory statement if the fact people get surprised is defined as merely subjective surprise and "the surprising" or "surprisingness" is defined as objective and supposedly more than just the objective fact of the subjective experience of surprise.
I'm not disputing the definition of "surprising" I am disputing whether we think "the surprising" or "suprisingness" refers to an objective matter or a subjective matter. I am alluding to the problem of Universals because I think it could apply here, or we could at least draw an analogy.
I'm pretty sure I already addressed this in my last post, but hopefully I've made it a bit clearer now.
Finally I will give an example about why I think this distinction matters: What if we replace "surprising" with another subjective matter like "good"? Or "Great"? Or "Brilliant"?
For example, if I say that Orbital are a "brilliant" band - simply because they happen to be my favourite band - is that merely claiming "brilliant to me" or is that actually an objective claim of brilliance that has to be disputed as true or false, simply because I didn't say "in my opinion", or "I think"?
And if it just means "Brilliant to me" then does that mean the "Brilliance of Orbital" exists simply because there are people, such as myself, who find them brilliant? Or would you instead say that they aren't brilliant, I just think they are, it's a subjective matter, a matter of opinion, etc, etc. In which case I can draw the analogy with surprising: "Nothing is actually surprising, we just think things are, and get surprised and say they are "surprising". Just as nothing is actually good or bad, we just think there are, and so react accordingly and say they are "good" or "bad"".
I'm not disputing the definition of "surprising" I am disputing whether we think "the surprising" or "suprisingness" refers to an objective matter or a subjective matter. I am alluding to the problem of Universals because I think it could apply here, or we could at least draw an analogy.
I'm pretty sure I already addressed this in my last post, but hopefully I've made it a bit clearer now.
Finally I will give an example about why I think this distinction matters: What if we replace "surprising" with another subjective matter like "good"? Or "Great"? Or "Brilliant"?
For example, if I say that Orbital are a "brilliant" band - simply because they happen to be my favourite band - is that merely claiming "brilliant to me" or is that actually an objective claim of brilliance that has to be disputed as true or false, simply because I didn't say "in my opinion", or "I think"?
And if it just means "Brilliant to me" then does that mean the "Brilliance of Orbital" exists simply because there are people, such as myself, who find them brilliant? Or would you instead say that they aren't brilliant, I just think they are, it's a subjective matter, a matter of opinion, etc, etc. In which case I can draw the analogy with surprising: "Nothing is actually surprising, we just think things are, and get surprised and say they are "surprising". Just as nothing is actually good or bad, we just think there are, and so react accordingly and say they are "good" or "bad"".
