Why am I doing any of this?

Sam Harris makes the case for objective morality.

Christopher Alexander makes the case for the objectivity in the "aliveness" of built environments.

I want to get clear on the argumentative steps they both employ and see if I agree

---

Let's talk about subjectivity and objectivity.

Generally, when we say something is subjective, we mean that is your opinion and that your opinion is as valid as anyone else's.

When we say something is objective, we mean that it is true regardless of your opinion.

Sure thats fine. But I think we get a little lost when we talk about subjective experience of a thing.

Lets get concrete. Lets talk about an apple.

Generally, we'd say that the color of the apple is an objective truth. All things being equal, with a ~red apple on the table, we could both agree that the apple is red.

Emperically/objectively: The light coming off the apple can be measured and shown to contain the wavelengths of light that we associate with the color red.

Experiential/subjectively: The experience of seeing that light hit our eyes gives the sensation of redness.

We say that the color of the apple is an objective truth. We also say that the experience of seeing the apple is a subjective experience.

Uh, oh. We've tied together an experience of something to the knowlege of something. In this case, we wouldnt just let it go if your opinion was that this apple was blue. We'd say that you were wrong. We'd say that your subjective experience of the apple was not aligned to reality.

We would generally allow you to say "I dont like red apples". We wouldnt say that you were wrong. We would say that you were expressing a subjective opinion.

Oh no. So we have a collection of subjective experiences that we can say are true or false. And we have a collection of subjective opinions that we release from the requirement of agreement.

AKA we have subjective experiences that we can say express some objective truths. And we have subjective opinions that we can say are not objective truths.

With these terms in place, we can say:

Sam Harris makes the case that subjective morality can be and should be discussed objectively.

Christopher Alexander makes the case that subjective experience of built environments can be and should be discussed objectively.

Above, we tied our experience of red with the measurement of red light. We tied our subjective experience of the apple to an objective truth about the apple.

Sam must go on to tie our subjective experience of morality to an objective truth about morality.

Christopher must go on to tie our subjective experience of built environments to an objective truth about built environments.

These will be future steps we will explore.

---

Above, we are discussing two important parts of philosophy, epistemology and ontology.

Ontology is the study of what is real. Epistemology is the study of how we know what is real.

Ontology is the landscape of facts to be explored. Epistemology is the locomotion that allows us to explore that landscape.