objective vs. subjective rabbit hole

’objectivity’ does not really exist.

the only thing that exists is a subjective reality experience.

Your claim is not false for sure but is not right either...

Why? because objectivity is not a "fact" and subjectivity is not a "fact" either, subjectivity is more fundamental than facts, objectivity is more fundamental than fact too, but objectivity and subjectivity are an internal and correlated external and internal consciousness process...This process which work also between the collective and the free individual exist...

The external part of consciousness is our own body, the internal part of our consciouness appear to us or is reflected as the external world through our body....Think about colors and sound sensation and perception and judgement...

 

 

Objectivity is not an individual thought experiment "of a monkey in a meat body" but first and last a COLLECTIVE thought experiment...

It is the reason why science need, democray, freedom, and education to replenish itself from individual freedom and creativity...

If not science will be impossible task...Objectivity is not an "illusion" it is a "meaning" focussing intentionality operated by a consciousness...Behind objectivity there is also an ETHICAL challenge...

Science is in no way reducible to technology... In technology we go from parts to parts in an hypothetical theoretical prepared "whole" an external conditioned whole, a map which reduce diversities to external unity as a tool ....

Science dont go from the parts to hypothetical whole ONLY through a theoretical map , but MAINLY must go from the internal whole perceived to the parts without an a priori map replacing the territory so to speak but with an onlooking internal gaze amplifying the diversities potentially there in the unity or in the perceived internal whole manifested in external indexes...It is a perception yoga intividual training, a self free educating ongoing process in consciousness...

Individual creator replenish the collective view by this spiritual creativity and self control...Not corporations and universties...

»History of science is science» Goethe

The collective knowledge possession is not science by itself , it is only the basis on which some individual able to see the parts and the diversities coming from the whole like Faraday or Goethe will describe it without prematurely theorizing it and reducing diversities to an artificial map or a mere tool ... After these pioneering geniuses others will theorize it rightfully at the right time in history and will create the basis of new technology without destroying or reducing the science to this set of tools...

But the fundamental moment of creativity in science is an individual one not a collective technological one...

 

Like the physicist Bohm student and Goethe student Henri Bortoft put it:

«This is the dynamical thinking of the participant mode of consciousness, instead of the static thinking of the onlooker consciousness. This way of seeing turns the one and the many inside-out. Instead of many different ones that are the same, we now see one which is becoming itself in many different ways. What we have here is self-difference instead of self-sameness; each is the very same one, but differently, instead of each of the different ones being the same. We now have difference within unity, instead of a unity that excludes difference. Furthermore, it is concrete instead of abstract. So instead of “unity in multiplicity” we have “multiplicity in unity,” which is the unity of the living source.»

https://www.natureinstitute.org/article/henri-bortoft/the-form-of-wholeness

 

«Faraday shared with Goethe more than merely an experimental approach. Just as Goethe made no attempt to theorize about the “hidden” nature of light, so Faraday declined to speculate about the “real” nature of electric currents and magnets. Instead, they both aimed to develop appropriate concepts for formulating phenomenological regularities and, in the process, emphasized the establishment of experimental links between simple and complex phenomena. These methodological similarities were noted by Hermann von Helmholtz in an 1881 lecture on Faraday, in which he stressed Faraday’s aim to express only “observable and observed facts, most carefully avoiding any interference of hypothetical elements,” and explicitly noted the similarity between Faraday’s and Goethe’s
approaches.16»

Exploratory Experimentation: Goethe, Land, and Color Theory by Neil Ribe and Friedrich Steinle

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.1506750

if someone doubt Goethe scientific value, read this:

Dennis SEPPER, as the sober historian of science close reading Newton’s 1672 letter and Goethe’s Contributions to Optics, concluded:

‘I have come to believe that Goethe has an ampler conception of science than Newton, that he has a sounder notion of what an empirical methodology requires and a firmer grasp on the epistemological and philosophical issues involved…2’

 

Mahgister and teo_audio,

You put a lot of words down on this topic, but in my opinion they do nothing to advance the debate. To me they are nothing but special pleading sans any justification of said pleading offering no concrete relevance to the discussion.  There is a another more apt but colloquial term that I will not use.

It is already accepted that personal preference is real, and absolutely will deviate from whatever measure of accuracy one may choose, and that single components or certain groupings of components can cause these deviations resulting in their being preferred.

The only question that remains is can audiophile detect changes that measurements say do not exist. That is a yes/no question. It will be very difficult to prove no, since negatives are rarely provable. However, the yes only requires showing that someone can do in some experiment that is considered reasonable. Increase the number of people and number of experiment will increase the confidence in the result.

I think almost all here would agree that given the nature of the music creation process before it is in our hands, that objective accuracy is a false notion and even if true, that does not over-rule preference for enjoyment.

If you cannot answer the question of whether audiophiles can truly detect differences that modern test gear says is not there, then all those multitudes of paragraphs are quite meaningless.

The measurement does not exist alone...

It exist with all other actual, and others possible measurements...

I never say that audiophile can rival any measuring apparatus in his precise realm

of application...

I only say that objective measures and subjective appreciation must always be CORRELATED... It is the basic of psycho-acoustic...

Sound perception is a complex phenomenon measurable only in a complex array of measuring experiments and not reducible to them even today...Because we dont have a universal accepted theory of hearing but many one with their complete sets of unsolved problems...

And any acoustician know that it is sometimes more easy and more fast to use their ears to assess an acoustic situation than to measure...Then acoustic learning bias have a value which cannot be dismiss in favor of mere tools only for many reasons...

Ears and measures are not enemies they are allied...

I am not a pure subjectivist audiophile nor an Amir disciple...

And philosophy can help to understand why technology cannot replace science, nor our measures tools replacing the ears/brain way of "measuring" for now in the actual state of our many hearing theories...

I am a promotor of listening experiments at home to learn basic acoustic fact and experience... It is not science, even if based on some science, it is a playful art and the only way to learn how to listen by the way with musical training...Then i dont promote gear brand name like many audiophiles , i promoted acoustic listening experiments...

 

The only question that remains is can audiophile detect changes that measurements say do not exist. That is a yes/no question.

Sorry but your simplification is perhaps good when we face a specific technological problem in design to solve but in science complex situation are not always reducible to what our tool ask for...

For the time being some human listener can assess and evaluate complex acoustic situation which we only begin to discover few years ago...( my article on limit of usinbg only Fourier analysis to explain hearing for example)

 

Then dismissing the value of subjective experience is simplistic psycho-acoustically speaking...

I dont speak here about the design of amplifier and the measures that make them good design with a predictible potential good S.Q. i dont negate atmasphere psycho-acoustically informed thesis about measurements at all...

I spoke about a larger perspective including also psycho-acoustic which cannot be reduced to narrower and goal oriented technological objective attitude nor reduced to a mere and anecdotal subjective taste and stance......

 

Being a scientist you dont like philosophy perhaps, but being a philosopher i dont like technological short-cut when we face a complex problem.... 😁😊

 

 

More paragraphs. More ignoring the singular issue which is not even in the least bit complex. Either the two equal measuring components can be identified as different through listening alone or not. Stop complicating a ham sandwich. This is not a philosophical question.