Intersubjective Entities

ALSO REFERENCED IN:

  • Homo Deus –– Yuval Harari
    • [[Intersubjective Entities]]
      • ""Intersubjective entities depend on communication among many humans rather than on the beliefs and feelings of individual humans. Many of the most important agents in history are intersubjective. Money, for example, has no objective value. You cannot eat, drink or wear a dollar bill. Yet as long as billions of people believe in its value, you can use it to buy food, beverages and clothing.""
  • Made You Think –– Homo Deus
    • Concept of [[Intersubjective Entities]].
      • We tend to think of something as subjective or objective: interpretation vs. hard reality. But there is a third layer: intersubjective entities.
      • "Intersubjective entities depend on communication among many humans rather than on the beliefs and feelings of individual humans. Many of the most important agents in history are intersubjective. Money, for example, has no objective value. You cannot eat, drink or wear a dollar bill. Yet as long as billions of people believe in its value, you can use it to buy food, beverages and clothing."
      • Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning only within the network of stories they tell one another.
        • Life meaning exists only within the network of stories we tell one another.
      • Why does a particular action – such as getting married in church, fasting on Ramadan or voting on election day – seem meaningful to me? Because my parents also think it is meaningful, as do my brothers, my neighbours, people in nearby cities and even the residents of far-off countries. And why do all these people think it is meaningful? Because their friends and neighbours also share the same view. People constantly reinforce each other’s beliefs in a [[self-perpetuating loop]].
      • As we develop more as a species, and move away from the natural world into the internet, for example, reality becomes much more focused on the inter-subjective.
      • Designing for a website, for example, is not an objective reality. The quality of "design" or "writing" is inter-subjective, it has no inherent meaning.