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SET Asylum Single Ended Triodes (SETs), the ultimate tube lovers dream. |
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In Reply to: RE: Variability and context--Key point posted by Joe Roberts on October 2, 2015 at 08:06:20:
"I don't think there is an "objective." We perceive and experience the world though cultural filters. These are subjective. There is no outside stance."But what *is* objectively testable is a person's claim to be able to discriminate between two configurations. Suppose someone tells me he can see the difference between a card coloured red, and a card coloured green. I will be inclined to believe him, because it is within my own experience of what I also can do. But I could also set up a double-blind test (well, not literally, of course!), to check whether he can indeed tell the difference between the two colours. And I can thereby now objectively determine whether his claimed ability is genuine or not. In this extreme example, the test will almost certainly confirm his claim, of course.
Now, suppose that he asserts that he can see the difference between the colours of two cards that look, to my eyes, to be identical. I can again conduct the double-blind tests, and determine whether his claim is valid or not. I don't see any way I am imposing any "subjective cultural construction" on him. It's a simple question; can he tell the difference or not?
We are all, I presume, happy with the use of a testing procedure to determine whether the person can tell the difference between the red card and the green card? In fact, it can be rather important to know whether someone is red/green colourblind or not. This is not a subjective cultural question; it is a simple matter of fact.
I would maintain that in fact the way that we determine the thresholds of detection in all the human senses is by means of experiments along the lines of the card-colour tests; how similar must the two colours be before the human eye is not able to discriminate between them? Likewise, we could ask questions such as how close do two audio frequencies have to be before we cannot discriminate between them. These thresholds are not cultural constructs, they are objective facts. Of course, the thresholds will certainly differ as between one person and another, and maybe they can change for a given person, depending on all sorts of factors like age, tiredness, mood, etc. But for the given test subject, at the given time of the test, the outcome is an objective fact.
Coming back to the rather absurd wire-direction example, as I said before I would have no problem with the person who claims the ability to hear the difference conceding that their abilities were sometimes better and sometimes worse, depending on the time of day, their mood, etc. But if they ended up having to concede that they could in fact *never* hear the difference when they were tested in a double-blind test, then I think it would be legitimate to conclude that the alleged effect was in fact entirely in their imagination.
Chris
Edits: 10/02/15
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- RE: Variability and context--Key point - cpotl 08:49:53 10/02/15 (0)
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