Subjectivity, Objectivity, and One True Wayism in RPGs

[Elric]

A useful Latin maxim is "De gustibus non est disputandum." Means, basically, "there's no accounting for taste."

People inevitably have different tastes. Given that game designers would like to sell products, good game design consists of appealing to a not totally (just mostly ) insignificant segment of the population. However, as people have different tastes, no game will appeal to everyone.

People also disagree on what various game's characteristics are, such that people who profess to share similar preferences can be bitterly divided on which game satisfies those preferences.

For example, people may really value a game that resolves combats quickly, because their time to play is limited, but may vehemently disagree on whether "The Quick and the Undead" or "Blazing Battles" provides this to a greater extent.

It is often extremely hard to muster truly compelling evidence about such things.

 

[Wayside]

So, the first part of this post is going to be largely academic. I'll get into why when I get to the second part of the post...

I reject the whole "we cannot know objective truth" posit. It is trivial to counter, as it is itself paradoxical. Consider:

Statement A: "Humans cannot know objective truth."

If A is always true, then it is itself an objective truth. Then by A, we cannot know A to be true!

*poof!*

Those who say that since all our observations are subjective, we can never know objective truth either have a predetermined idea of what counts as "objective truth"*, or they have failed to understand the very basic point of modern empirical science.

Since we're being largely academic, let's first be clear that nobody actually says "since all our observations are subjective, we can never know objective truth." At least, nobody involved in the actual debate (the so-called "science wars") says this. On internet forums? Maybe. But not in the real world.

With that said, I think one of the clearer and more concise explanations of the constructivist project comes from Stanley Fish. Fish is often, to put it mildly, full of crap, but here he's on the right track:

What sociologists of science say is that of course the world is real and independent of our observations but that accounts of the world are produced by observers and are therefore relative to their capacities, education, training, etc. It is not the world or its properties but the vocabularies in whose terms we know them that are socially constructed -- fashioned by human beings -- which is why our understanding of those properties is continually changing.

Distinguishing fact from fiction is surely the business of science, but the means of doing so are not perspicuous in nature -- for if they were, there would be no work to be done. Consequently, the history of science is a record of controversies about what counts as evidence and how facts are to be established.

Those who concern themselves with this history neither dispute the accomplishments of science nor deny the existence or power of scientific procedure. They just maintain and demonstrate that the nature of scientific procedure is a question continually debated in its own precincts. What results is an incredibly complex and rich story, full of honor for scientists, and this is the story sociologists of science are trying to tell and get right.

Kuhn is probably the most famous of "those who concern themselves with this history," but his is really more of a general account of shifts in scientific practices and ideals, and it's also oriented toward sea changes, as opposed to incremental developments.

More apropos for this thread, Lorraine Daston's Objectivity is the book to read. You can find reviews of it online, but in short, it's a critical history of the meaning of the concept of objectivity in and for the sciences.

 

[howandwhy99]

snip

Let me give a wow, just wow. I see a minefield in your post as to ENWorld's rules. Talking about philosophy is a touchy subject at best here as it can cross over to other kinds of belief systems both religious and political.

Keeping things relevant to roleplaying, the nature of truth is inherent in any discussion of what roleplaying is as it was originally a mistake in the understanding of such. Roleplaying crosses over both conscious expression of fiction (falsehoods) and unconscious ones (which begs the question).

From your post I think you are using inter-subjectivity as a new term in order to split objectivity away from subjective experience and into noumenal reality. That simply isn't how the term is understood in the postmodern age. We cannot talk about reality fundamentally. As Wittgenstein said, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." We cannot talk of absolute truths, so it is suggested we shift our understandings from the dogmatic scale of fundamentalism / relativism to the pragmatic scale of subjectivity / objectivity. Redefining objectivity out of common practice isn't going to help our RPG discussion.

Now to read the rest of the thread. Good grief it's packed.

 

[Lanefan]

When considering reasons for change/not change, don't forget inertia.

Sometimes, things naturally want (subjectively, in consciousness) and will (objectively, in physics) remain the same and keep doing what they're doing as long as their environment allows it. In RPG terms, this goes far toward explaining grognards like me.

Lan-"this thread makes my head hurt"-efan

 

[haakon1]

So, the first part of this post is going to be largely academic. I'll get into why when I get to the second part of the post...

I reject the whole "we cannot know objective truth" posit. It is trivial to counter, as it is itself paradoxical. Consider:

Statement A: "Humans cannot know objective truth."

If A is always true, then it is itself an objective truth. Then by A, we cannot know A to be true!

*poof!*

Those who say that since all our observations are subjective, we can never know objective truth either have a predetermined idea of what counts as "objective truth"

Thanks Umbran, you saved me a waste of my breath on this.

I really, really loathe po-mo . . . so glad I'm not in grad school anymore, but it brings back bad memories of reading stuff that's supposedly in English, realizing it's actually just half-translated French ("the signifier and the signified" aren't such empty terms in French).

BTW, I thought discussing religion was banned here? IMHO, po-mo IS a religion, and it's certainly derogatory towards all religions . . .

 

[ggroy]

I really, really loathe po-mo . . . so glad I'm not in grad school anymore, but it brings back bad memories of reading stuff that's supposedly in English, realizing it's actually just half-translated French ("the signifier and the signified" aren't such empty terms in French).

BTW, I thought discussing religion was banned here? IMHO, po-mo IS a religion, and it's certainly derogatory towards all religions . . .

As in randomly generated postmodernism essays?

The Postmodernism Generator » Communications From Elsewhere

 

[Snoweel]

As in randomly generated postmodernism essays?

The Postmodernism Generator » Communications From Elsewhere

OMFG best website ever.

It will become my number 1 research tool - I'll just keep clicking refresh until it vaguely answers the essay question, and how can I get done for plagiarism of a randomly generated essay?

So very very awesome.

 

[Raven Crowking]

So, the first part of this post is going to be largely academic. I'll get into why when I get to the second part of the post...

I reject the whole "we cannot know objective truth" posit. It is trivial to counter, as it is itself paradoxical. Consider:

Statement A: "Humans cannot know objective truth."

If A is always true, then it is itself an objective truth. Then by A, we cannot know A to be true!

*poof!*

Your paradox is easily resolved on two grounds:

1. You assume that A cannot be known, therefore A is untrue, whereas, as you earlier noted, objective truths are true whether or not we know them to be so.

2. You are conflating objective truth with axiomatic truth. "2 + 2 = 4" is an axiomatic truth; it may or may not be objectively true. "These two apples plus these two apples are those four apples" is a statement which claims to be objectively true, on the assumption of validity of both the axiomatic truth and the observation.

"We cannot know objective truth" is a statement of axiomatic truth. It is not objective, in that it refers to no actual object. It may also be wrong, in the sole event that knowledge by revelation should prove to be axiomatically true.

Those who say that since all our observations are subjective, we can never know objective truth either have a predetermined idea of what counts as "objective truth"*, or they have failed to understand the very basic point of modern empirical science.

I think, rather, that they understand the axiomatic ground upon which modern empirical science rests. Anyone who believes that a system of knowledge rests on objective grounds fails to understand the axioms of objectivity itself.



RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

BTW, while this might seem post-modern, the basis of thought involved here is very much pre-modern, going back at least as far as Socrates and Plato. AFAICT, post-modern thought rejects axiomatic truth as being entirely subjective (rather than accepting that axiomatic truth is a necessary foundation to any theory of knowledge).


RC

 

[Umbran]

2. You are conflating objective truth with axiomatic truth. "2 + 2 = 4" is an axiomatic truth; it may or may not be objectively true.

Um, no, on both counts.

Any system of formal logic has axioms - these are statements upon which all later logic is based. They must be assumed to be true for the system to go anywhere. They cannot be proven true within the system. Some axioms or sets of axioms can be proven to be self-contradictory, in which case the logic system is (iirc) referred to as "trivial", and you find that anything you say in the system swallows itself, Ouroboros-like. *Poof!*

Any time you have a reason or justification for a statement ("All of our observations are subjective, therefore...") the statement is not axiomatic.

2+2=4 is not axiomatic - it is not assumed, and can be proven true within the formal system from which we get numbers. The axiom is that the empty set exists. Combine that with a definition of addition, and you construct the natural numbers, and can show that 2+2=4 as a result.