I need to go to bed to prepare for work yet again, but I will say that the reductionist nature of this discussion (which is a point I definitely agree with, and has been pointed out by several people) is caused by the nature of the argument.
As already stated, I had no intention of creating an epistemological discussion in a super bowl thread; I made a post that I had incorrectly presumed would be generally accepted, but it was not. When people strongly disagreed with my position, I could have simply left the thread, but that's a behavior we try to avoid on GAF, so instead I stayed and explained my position in more detail providing as much evidence and reason as I could. Eventually, this discussion became lengthy enough that the fundamental assumptions of my argument needed to be explained.
braves01 said:
The more I read this thread, the more I think meaning can't be objective at all. In Opiate's cupcake example, for instance, he says eating lots of cupcakes is objectively bad for your health, but that's a subjective value judgment unless we assume there is an objective measure of good and bad. Am I wrong?
I would provide two separate arguments to rebut this position.
1) Yes, in some cases my examples are assuming some basic axioms, like "living longer and healthier is good." That's why I've tended to stick to examples which have no necessary value to human life, like special relativity. It exists whether we care about it or not, and whether we harness its power or not; this relies on fundamental rules outside our personal or subjective viewpoints. But yes, the conversation does become even simpler if we make some very basic assumptions, like the one listed above.
2) It is certainly possible to argue that even something like special relativity only exists through our subjective perceptions, and therefore it also has no inherent meaning. This is referred to as a posthumanist viewpoint. That
is logically consistent, but then very few people actually live like this, and further, it robs discussion of meaning. For example, this viewpoint suggests that Football is no more meaningful than the lint on the floor next to me, because importance is an entirely subjective thing.
In addition, the word "meaning" effectively loses any real value, under this standard. Yes, it is possible to insist that everything is subjective and nothing is better than anything else, but that ends essentially all discussions of any kind. If nothing is more valid or true or better than anything else, then no argument could possibly rise beyond he-said-she-said viewpoints. Again, not that this is logically inconsistent; it's just entirely unproductive. And not just in relation to sports discussion.
(Okay, really going to bed now. Thanks for the discussion again!)
