Adequacy of Value Systems

…faced with the objective reality that life ends in an eternity of nothingness [the existentialist] is free to subjectively give meaning and purpose to a life in which no such purpose objectively exists. In such a world we can give ultimate meaning to anything; we could value money ultimately, or family, or world peace, or ourselves, or some form of deity. There is no limit to what we can ascribe meaning to; however, the point is man alone determines what is of value and this act of valuing is an act of rebellion against an objective world in which meaning and purpose are nowhere to be found.
~ Keith Walters, The Invention of Lying ― Existentialism

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

I realize now that in addition to discussing my relationship with my wife and its experiential meaning for me, I also spend a great amount of time here developing (and defending) coherent philosophic thought to frame this meaningful subjective experience as valid and relevant in an ultimately unknowable objective reality and (to a lesser extent) in a postmodern culture and society. Thus I suppose after the conversation as I had with Arius about how our subjectively limited experience of the objective world inhibits our ‘knowledge’ about the existence or nonexistence of God, well, it would be quite natural to discover an inroad to existentialism.

I usually ignore existentialism for the most part as it simply doesn’t fit my interior experience; I’ve never needed a system of coherent, meaningful, explanatory power that accommodatingly avoids the cliffs of nihilism. I’ve been fortunate to have always experienced (enough) subjective meaning in life that was real enough for me to feel it or believe it an objective enough valuating system.

And adequacy would be my first point about all ‘systems’, existentialism included. For if based on their respective system for translating subjective experience into ‘knowledge’ science (scientific method, repeatability, verifiability, falsifiability, etc.) and religion (sacred texts, community of believers, numinous experience, etc.) each make claims about objective reality, so also does existentialism make its claims about objective reality – specifically that there is, objectively speaking, no objective value, meaning or purpose to our subjective lives.

It also seems to me we only ‘know’ what we ‘value’ and we only ‘learn’ value from subjective experience – and though none will manage ’objective’ reality level ‘knowledge’, I believe we are ‘mapping’ our objective reality through our meaningful experiences. And if in the process of such mapping, within our subjective individuations, any of us experiences meaning, then that system (even existentialism) is (to me) valid for that individual.

Moreover, I do not think only ever having subjective knowledge, only ever ‘knowing’ from a subjective system, means that there is no ultimate objective meaning, value and purpose, merely that we won’t know it with absolute obective level certainty. After all while it may (may!) be we can ‘know’ nothing more than the meaning we get from the very process of living life, it seems equally possible we are in actuality mapping the objective value. This is what I meant when I wondered whether there was any innate, inherent (objective) meaning that we just happen to experience subjectively.

I don’t have an answer but I think if we are able to even raise its possibility, existentialism’s essential claim about objective reality, that there is no objective reality value, is likewise questionable. We also already know some systems would surely be better than others at some mapping certain parts of the objective reality value and that in our subjectivity we are certain to be just wrong about some parts of any objective reality value; thus there are many possible reasons we might imagine for why we do not see how it all fits together as a single unified whole.

And lastly I honestly question if that unified whole is something we ‘need‘ to see, perhaps even question whether it is something we should see. (I’m just saving postmodern pluralistic ethics for another day.) We already at least may have the meaningful process of living, learning, loving and standing tall – for the rest (to rephrase): ‘for things that I cannot speak certainly, I choose to talk about without making claims of certainty’. But then again every individual draws the line between subjective reality and objective reality based on a system of coherence and meaning that works for them. And that some should do not understand other’s ways of ‘knowing’ is of no surprise and largely, to my mind, of no great consequence.

N.B.
~ For the record I should point out that while I once identified as Christian and was quite religious, I am no longer. I have no ill feeling towards Christianity or religion in general however, and quite to the contrary I have a healthy respect for Christianity’s differentiation, codification, and organization of an aggregate of specific numinous experiences we humans certainly do have.
~ I haven’t read enough primary or secondary Wittgenstein to say I really understand him.
~ I haven’t seen the film the review quote is about either.