Although I think this series of posts is interesting and mostly very well reasoned, I find the discussion about objectivity to be strangely crafted. At the risk of arguing about definitions: the hierarchy you lay out about objectivity is only remotely related to what I mean by objective, and my sense is that it doesn’t cohere very well with common usage.
First, there seems no better reason to split off objective1 than objectiveA which is “software-independent facts”. Okay, so I can’t say anything objective about my web browser, just because we’ve said I can’t. Why is this helpful? The only reason to split this out is if you are some sort of dualist; otherwise the mind is a computational phenomenon just like DNA replication or whatnot.
Second, as Emile already pointed out, nowhere in the hierarchy is uniqueness addressed, yet this is the clearest conventional distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. 5+7 = 12 for everyone. Mint chocolate chip ice cream is better than rocky road ice cream is not the case for everyone (in the conventional sense, anyway). So these things are all colloquially objective:
Rocky road has more chocolate than mint chocolate chip
The author of this post enjoys mint chocolate chip more than rocky road
My IPv4 address has a higher value than does lesswrong.org
The Bible describes God endorsing the consumption of only certain animals
Referring to God doesn’t make things non-objective in the standard sense presuming God exists. Of course, without a way to measure God’s preferences, you may lose your theoretical objectivity, but any other single source or self-consistent group can fill in (e.g. the Pope) as an source for objective answers to what would otherwise be subjective questions.
The issue isn’t whether that is subjective or objective; it’s whether that method of gaining objectivity is practical and useful.
And since humans are the only sentient beings, I really fail to see what the distinction is between 2 and 3 is in a practical way, once you split off God (or any other singularly identifiable entity).
So I strongly suggest that this section ought to be rethought. Objectivity seems central to this sort of moral reductionism, and so it is worth using definitions that are not too misleading. Either the definitions should change, or there should be much more motivation about why we care about the distinctions between any of the definitions you’ve offered.
Although I think this series of posts is interesting and mostly very well reasoned, I find the discussion about objectivity to be strangely crafted. At the risk of arguing about definitions: the hierarchy you lay out about objectivity is only remotely related to what I mean by objective, and my sense is that it doesn’t cohere very well with common usage.
First, there seems no better reason to split off objective1 than objectiveA which is “software-independent facts”. Okay, so I can’t say anything objective about my web browser, just because we’ve said I can’t. Why is this helpful? The only reason to split this out is if you are some sort of dualist; otherwise the mind is a computational phenomenon just like DNA replication or whatnot.
Second, as Emile already pointed out, nowhere in the hierarchy is uniqueness addressed, yet this is the clearest conventional distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. 5+7 = 12 for everyone. Mint chocolate chip ice cream is better than rocky road ice cream is not the case for everyone (in the conventional sense, anyway). So these things are all colloquially objective:
Rocky road has more chocolate than mint chocolate chip
The author of this post enjoys mint chocolate chip more than rocky road
My IPv4 address has a higher value than does lesswrong.org
The Bible describes God endorsing the consumption of only certain animals
Referring to God doesn’t make things non-objective in the standard sense presuming God exists. Of course, without a way to measure God’s preferences, you may lose your theoretical objectivity, but any other single source or self-consistent group can fill in (e.g. the Pope) as an source for objective answers to what would otherwise be subjective questions.
The issue isn’t whether that is subjective or objective; it’s whether that method of gaining objectivity is practical and useful.
And since humans are the only sentient beings, I really fail to see what the distinction is between 2 and 3 is in a practical way, once you split off God (or any other singularly identifiable entity).
So I strongly suggest that this section ought to be rethought. Objectivity seems central to this sort of moral reductionism, and so it is worth using definitions that are not too misleading. Either the definitions should change, or there should be much more motivation about why we care about the distinctions between any of the definitions you’ve offered.