I don't know why you're calling it subjective, it's relative, and when reduced to two points or less it is, indeed, subjective. Three points to define length is just like using a ruler to define length. We take the ruler, put it between two points, and then use the third length of the ruler in order to define how long it is. I don't see how it would be subjective, it would be given a quantity just as much as any other dimension. This notion that there are objective qualities and quantites are what drive me mad because i cannot reconcile this with my nagging leaning towards this intuitionally appealing notion that everything is appearance and has no objective quality or quantity.

are you sure
if you have determined length ONCE relatively objectively as you say, it is still the same if you 'upgrade' your space to more dimensions
and let me add a small interesting fact about 3 dimensional space:
any collection of lines/segmenys in n-dimensional space which do not overlap/intersect can be mapped into 3-dimensional space keeping the same characteristic
(n-dimensional here being finite and more than 2)

I'm glad to hear your input on this, since you are more educated on this than me. I've heard of stereographical projections of n-dimensional shapes onto 2 dimensional space, but I've never thought about them being projected onto 3-dimensional space.

that is something different
3-dimensional space has certain characteristics which are not shared with 1- or 2-dimensional space making it quite special in being the smallest (in terms of dimensions) space into which structures from higher dimensional spaces can be projected and characteristics be maintained - so 'relative' length etc can be preserved, no need for extra points to determine 'lenght' as you claimed above
just take two interleaving but not intersecting rings/circles in 3-dimensional space and try to map that onto 2-dimensional space and you will see that you cannot do that without intersecting lines

Aetheric, can't you measure length with just one point, that happens to move at a certain rate for a unit of time?

All velocities must have a second item to compare it too. I can be flying 5 meters/second with respect to the ground, or I could be flying 23 meters/second with respect to the wind without changing my velocity with respect to either.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on May 8 2013 03:25am

True, but I did say they're "mostly" the same (among humans).



That we can't determine what is correct doesn't necessarily imply nothing is correct.

It's pretty much the Western philosophical orthodoxy as well, as far as I know, that we have no justification for assuming we are perceiving the inherent nature of objects. This is where Hume went and Kant and others followed (not that I know who was "first").



I don't know how you can know this.



There are other ways to look at this, it could be the case that these qualities we perceive are actually inherent to the objects we're looking at, and some of us are just perceiving them wrong. Perception could be filtering the sensations to some categories we've built up in our minds, but don't necessarily match with others.