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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5082431" data-attributes="member: 4937">You didn't go from there where I thought you would go.The mistake of the relativist point of view is to mistake the map for the thing itself.  They mistake the reference to the thing for the thing being referred.  The best we may manage is to have a map of the thing, a pointer to the data, or a token to identify it.  The relativist says that since this is all we have, then this must be all that there is, and since the map is relative (by virtue of its abstractness), then it must be that since the map is all we have then everything is relative.But if this was really the case, it would stand to reason that there would be absolutely no agreement between your map and my map, and his map and their map.   And, this is not what we observe.  We observe rather that for all the differences we may have in units, scale, details, points of interest, and symbols employed, that we are all basically trying to map the same thing.  And we also observe that some maps are more functional than others.  The fact that we observe these things strongly suggests that there is some objective truth we a struggling to describe.This is most easily seen in things that are tangible.  It's quite possible to believe that brick walls aren't solid.  You can even make a rational argument for the physical insolidity of brick walls based on the sparce density of atoms in the space they encompass and the experience a nuetrino might have with brick walls.  Yet, all that is just so many words because however much you may believe that the wall isn't solid, or whatever you may say about it, no one tries to act as if it isn't solid and if they do, they soon get a severe headache.  The functional map, 'brick wall = solid', seems to work alot better than any other sort of map, and this suggests that there is some reality to their solidity.I probably should add to this that I'm often a little mystified that this subject comes up so often when discussing RPG's, which are, for the purposes of pretty much everyone here - a game.   And, as a game, what's principally of interest about them is, I would think, that they be enjoyable.  And, I would think that of all the things that are probably subjective, the one to which we'd get the widest agreement that it is probably is subjective is the group, "things I enjoy".  Yet, invariably, on almost every thread at EnWorld, if it goes long enough we end up in the debate of subjective vs. objective.   At one time I just thought this was symptomatic of the larger culture war the gaming culture finds itself in the midst of, but now I'm not so certain.  I'm also rather disinclined to accept the easy explanation that its just a matter of people doing the natural human thing and demanding that everyone else enjoy and appreciate the things that they enjoy, although I admit that for the moment this is the most obvious explanation.   Still, I'm curious as to what it is about RPG's in particular that provoke the need to debate this question.</blockquote>

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