Thursday, 1 March 2012

The objectivity of subjectivity and the folly of Kant

When we consider subjectivity we typically refer to matters of opinion, for example taste, artistic merit, moral rightness etc, etc. We mean objectivity to denote true propositions of mathematics, factual statements etc, etc.

Kant in The Critque of Pure Reason arrives at the conclusion that the mind is limited as it can never know the true noumenal nature of things beyond the phenomenal realm of appearances. Hence Kant denies objectivity. The Positivists and The Vienna Circle took this viewpoint to its natural conclusion-  since the majority of Kant's synthetic a priori statements had been discredited with the arrival of relativistic physics - and argued that if the truth has to be verified independently of our own minds then there can be no true propositions at all, and hence it is in a sense meaningless to ask such questions.

Traditionally as subjectivity increases philosophers have been keen to reduce objectivity (see the pink line below).



However I feel that absurd statements are in a sense truer than normal ones (see the purple line) as they accept fully the absurdity and senselessness of existence. It seems as existentialists we are more willing to accept the proposition 'I am an ethereal nobless turtle made out of Pi' than '2+2=4'.Thus this is what we end up with.

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