"Audio Without Numbers" by Herb Reichert

[christopher3393]

This little broadside just popped up on Audiostream:

 

https://www.audiostream.com/content/audio-without-numbers

 

I'd love to see intelligent critical responses  rather than angry venting or ridicule.

 

[christopher3393]

26 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

It seems Audiostream is trying to come up with more and more imaginative ways to troll those who they apparently perceive as a threat.  While it appears that you and Herb might share some affinity for "feeling" rather than "knowing", this looks to me like you're trolling this forum on ML's behalf.

 

Not trolling. I'm not sure what to make of this piece yet. My initial response is more critical than appreciative. The invitation at the end to "walk together" seems an odd conciliatory gesture at the end of a broadside. Again, first impulse, some arguments seem weak.

[christopher3393]

11 hours ago, adamdea said:

I have for years been of the view the terms “objectivist” and “subjectivist” have neither  any coherent meaning nor any practical use in identifying fundamental issues in dispute. If anything I regard them as the philosophical analogue of the sort of vague sciencey-sounding verbiage that appears in marketing copy.

I will at most concede that it may be legitimate to look at them as terms in actual use and labels which some people use to self-identify. 

As far as I can see

-there is no coherent epistemological or ontological system represented by the word “subjectivism”;

-the expression “objectivist” is used to apply to a person who considers that audio engineering and hifi listening should be informed by and analyses by conventional scientific thinking. I see little evidence that those who take the opposite view have any particular reason for doing so (as a group).  Some have a sensible desire to keep a senses of proportion and a well- rounded amount of “who gives”. Some are hippies, some are arts graduates with a chip on their shoulder about not understanding maths, some are not very reflective, some use too many long words and some are plain stupid.

 

 It’s not an -ism

 

Elevating all of this into objectivism and subjectivism does nothing but obscure the issues and play into the hands of the intellectually vain. 

 

 

Wow. 

 

Yes, not much on the "isms", although you might be surprised at how they pop up now and again. I've found that by shifting the searchlight just a bit there is all sorts of juicy material. Just explore "objective" and "subjective" or "subjectivity" and "objectivity" and you'll find lots of modern and contemporary discussion. Imo, after Kant, thinkers in various disciplines started using this language in ways that lead to where we are now.

 

It's my impression that people are more likely to have implicit rather than explicit philosophies that can gradually be drawn out and named more explicitly.

[christopher3393]

On 4/6/2018 at 2:18 AM, adamdea said:

I have for years been of the view the terms “objectivist” and “subjectivist” have neither  any coherent meaning nor any practical use in identifying fundamental issues in dispute. If anything I regard them as the philosophical analogue of the sort of vague sciencey-sounding verbiage that appears in marketing copy.

I will at most concede that it may be legitimate to look at them as terms in actual use and labels which some people use to self-identify. 

As far as I can see

-there is no coherent epistemological or ontological system represented by the word “subjectivism”;

-the expression “objectivist” is used to apply to a person who considers that audio engineering and hifi listening should be informed by and analyses by conventional scientific thinking. I see little evidence that those who take the opposite view have any particular reason for doing so (as a group).  Some have a sensible desire to keep a senses of proportion and a well- rounded amount of “who gives”. Some are hippies, some are arts graduates with a chip on their shoulder about not understanding maths, some are not very reflective, some use too many long words and some are plain stupid.

 

 It’s not an -ism

 

Elevating all of this into objectivism and subjectivism does nothing but obscure the issues and play into the hands of the intellectually vain. 

 

 

On 4/7/2018 at 3:28 AM, adamdea said:

Thanks 

All good points. Don’t get me wrong, it can be fun to play a sort of “what if” thought experiment about this stuff, but I don’t think that objective/subjective tags correspond to anything much in philosophical terms and tend to obscure the issues. One of my hobby horses is that the physics/metrology  side of the debate is largely a misdirection as, if you try hard enough you will always find some difference; the other is that the issue is not the infallibility of experience as such but an assumption that rather  the reliability of “intuitive” causal explanations. And a third is that subjective/objective as traditionally (and more accurately) used do not map. 

The only connected use of obj/subj I am aware of is that of Ayn Rand.

In general the use of this sort of tag just helps people to make empty, pointless statements which sound clever to them. Best avoided if possible. 

 

Well, I did a little digging and found a few things, some familiar, some new to me. I do think they are relevant to the discussion, albeit somewhat circuitously at times with lots of labor involved. Here are just 3 examples. There are plenty of others.

 

Kant's Radical Subjectivism: Perspectives on the Transcendental Deduction

Dennis Schulting

 

 

Here's a review that provides a very good summary: https://virtualcritique.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/robert-watt-on-dennis-schultings-kants-radical-subjectivism/

 

This also raises the interesting issue of "epistemic humility", which one could simply define this way: "If our knowledge of the world is always filtered, interpreted and (in important ways) ‘constructed’ by our a priori faculties then we can never know things as they truly are and we are forced to accept a degree of humility with respect to our ‘scientific’ pronouncements."

 

German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 

Frederick Beiser

 

 

A review that emphasizes "the struggle against subjectivism": https://commons.pacificu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1137&context=eip

 

Aesthetics and subjectivity: from Kant to Nietzsche

Andrew Bowie

 

 

From the intro: 

"The new focus of philosophy on subjectivity established by Kant accompanies the complex and contradictory changes wrought by ‘modernity’: the rapid expansion of capitalism, the emergence of modern individualism, the growing success of scientific method in manipulating nature for human ends, the decline of traditional, theologically legitimated authorities, and the appearance, together with aesthetics as a branch of philosophy, of ‘aesthetic autonomy’, the idea that works of art entail freely produced rules which do not apply to any other natural object or human product. From being a part of philosophy concerned with the senses, and not necessarily with beauty – the word derives from the Greek ‘aisthánesthai’, ‘perceive sensuously’ – the new subject of ‘aesthetics’ now focuses on the significance of natural beauty and of art. Reflection on aesthetics does not, though, just involve a revival of Plato’s thoughts about beauty as the symbol of the good. The crucial new departure lies in the way aesthetics is connected to the emergence of subjectivity as the central issue in modern philosophy, and this is where the relevance of this topic to contemporary concerns becomes apparent."

 

 

 

 

 

[christopher3393]

 I could just suggest what I think may be a fruitful direction: Kant's subjectivization of aesthetics, which he couldn't have and wouldn't have argued before writing the Critique of Pure Reason. So, in terms of Kant, the third critique, The Critique of Judgement. Especially the effects it had. Before Kant, we don't have the subjectivization of taste. After Kant it gradually becomes a presupposition, one that many or most here would accept, I would guess.  And this is, I think,  a kind of radical subjectivization. If aesthetic experiences and judgments are finally understood to be strictly individual, irrational, idiosyncratic, relativistic, etc., then where are we?

[christopher3393]

  Adding this extended excerpt to the discussion, in part in response to some of Archimago's statements in his recent piece, which I'd like to thank him for taking the time to write:

 

"Why, then, is objectivity so powerful as both ideal and practice? How did it come to eclipse or swallow up other epistemic virtues, so that “objective” is often used as a synonym for “scientific”? In order to answer these questions, we must first of all insist that there are other epistemic virtues besides objectivity. One reason we have focused on scientific atlas images is that only at the level of specific practices do the distinctions among epistemic virtues such as truth-to-nature, objectivity, and trained judgment sharpen. At the more abstract level of epistemological analysis, objectivity tends to be used as shorthand for all epistemic virtues — the whole of epistemology. The history of epistemology (and of science) is often narrated as if it were identical to the history of objectivity. Francis Bacon and Descartes, even Plato and Aristotle, are recruited into a lineage that has allegedly always battled subjectivity, as if the Kantian terms merely rechristened a distinction present since the beginnings of Western philosophy. We have argued that this homogenized view of the history of epistemology and of science is false. But if the view is in error, why is the error so widespread, so irresistible?

 

All epistemology begins in fear — fear that the world is too labyrinthine to be threaded by reason; fear that the senses are too feeble and the intellect too frail; fear that memory fades, even between adjacent steps of a mathematical demonstration; fear that authority and convention blind; fear that God may keep secrets or demons deceive. Objectivity is a chapter in this history of intellectual fear, of errors anxiously anticipated and precautions taken. But the fear objectivity addresses is different from and deeper than the others. The threat is not external — a complex world, a mysterious God, a devious demon. Nor is it the corrigible fear of senses that can be strengthened by a telescope or microscope or memory that can be buttressed by written aids. Individual steadfastness against prevailing opinion is no help against it, because it is the individual who is suspect.

 

Objectivity fears subjectivity, the core self. Descartes could discount the testimony of the senses because sensation did not belong to the core self as he conceived it, res cogitans. Bacon believed that the idols of the cave, those intellectual failings that stemmed from individual upbringing and predilection, could be corrected by the proper countermeasures, as a tree bent the wrong way could be straightened. But there is no getting rid of, no counterbalancing post-Kantian subjectivity. Subjectivity is the precondition for knowledge: the self who knows.

 

This is the reason for the ferociously reflexive character of objectivity, the will pitted against the will, the self against the self. This explains the power of objectivity, an epistemological therapy more radical than any other because the malady it treats is literally radical, the root of both knowledge and error. The paradoxical aspirations of objectivity explain both its strangeness and its stranglehold on the epistemological imagination. It is epistemology taken to the limit. Objectivity is to epistemology what extreme asceticism is to morality. Other epistemological therapies were rigorous: Plato’s rejection of the senses, for example, or Descartes’s radical doubt. But objectivity goes beyond rigor. The demands it makes on the knower outstrip even the most strenuous forms of self-cultivation, to the brink of self-destruction. Objectivity is not just one intellectual discipline among many. It is a sacrifice — and was often so described by its practitioners: Worthington surrendered symmetry, Robert Koch gave up three-dimensional corrections, Erwin Christeller lived with artifacts.

 

Whether they took the form of spiritual exercises as taught in the ancient philosophical schools or of regimens of observation followed by Enlightenment naturalists, lives of the mind have long aimed to shape the self as a recipient of wisdom and knowledge. The suppression of subjectivity attempted by scientists striving for objectivity went much further. Subjectivity is not a weakness of the self to be corrected or controlled, like bad eyesight or a florid imagination. It is the self.

Or rather, it is the self in a particular mental universe in which all that exists is divided into the opposed and symmetrical provinces of the objective and subjective. This mental universe in which we moderns are now so at home had its Big Bang a scant two hundred years ago." [ note: reference to Kant]

 

-from Objectivity by Lorraine J. Daston and Peter Galison, pp. 372-75.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/objectivity

 

Lorraine Daston is an American historian of science. Executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, and visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, she is an authority on Early Modern European scientific and intellectual history.

Peter Galison  is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor in history of science and physics at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. at Harvard University in both physics and in the history of science in 1983. His publications include Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (1997) and Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time. His most recent book (2007), co-authored with Lorraine Daston, is titled Objectivity

 

There is a section on "Kant and the Scientists", pp 205-216 that is germane as well. 

 

 

[christopher3393]

15 hours ago, crenca said:

 

Much could be said, but I wonder just what sort of self these guys assume...

 

Good point and good question. regarding the self:

 

https://galison.scholar.harvard.edu/files/andrewhsmith/files/quiparle.23.2.0089.pdf, pp93-97

 

http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/4607/1699

[christopher3393]

18 hours ago, sullis02 said:

From my perspective, spanning several decades of the 'Great Debate' in audio,  Reichert and HA absolutely do represent different 'sides'. And HA has done more to promote evidence-based thought about audio than pretty much any other audio-related 'publication' that isn't an actual scientific journal.

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/13273-ok-i-tried-hydrogen-audio-it-didnt-go-too-well/

[christopher3393]

1 hour ago, sullis02 said:

 

 

Uh huh.  Saw that here back in the day.  (I even posted in that thread) Apparently you think it's dispositive?  ('This' place hasn't had a stellar reputation 'over there', either, through the years.  Through threads like this are certainly in the right direction.)

 

Dispositive? No. Just a small taste of impressions gathered over a few years from those here who have spent time on HA, which you are already aware of, so no matter. You say threads like this are certainly in the right direction. Would you mind clarifying what you mean by that?