Is truth subjective or objective?

fresco

That is also my perspective. It is why my philosophic orientation is a synthesis of the Critic of Pure Reason, Wittgenstein's Tratactus and Indagations, and Heidegger's Sein und Zeit.
As I said before, Kant insisted too much in the "noumena" and I think the reason he did that was the fear of being considered as an idealist in Berkeley's style (he has a chapter in the Critic refutating Berkeley's idealism). Schopenhauer and Nietzsche saw this problem.
The "Ding ins sich" or the thing in itself does not make a great sense: there is nothing in itself, beyond a perceiver.

I agree, Fresco, that context is all. Language is one thing but languaging (the speaking that gives reality to language) depends totally on context. I wonder if your thought about language is similar to the problem I'm inventing now of a Beethoven sonata. Is it "essentially" the written score? Is it the actual (now gone) mental experience of Beethoven? Does it exist only while it is being played? I think it is potentially all those things, but this makes sense only if we see the sonata as a multiplicity. Sometimes it's the score; other times it's the performance (and experience of the performance). These are different contexts that evoke the different realities of the sonata. Moreover, I am now invoking the idea of a Beethoven sonata (without score or performance), without even naming which one.
Is the idea of the sonata or the score similar to a disembodied sentence?

Val, my orientation is more akin to Wittgenstein's later work, that which repudiated his earlier conclusions of the Tractatus logico-philosophicus, not that I really studied either. I like what you say about Kant's noumena as a way of getting around Berkeley's idealism. Kant agreed that we only know what we see (science) with the help of what we think (metaphysics), in that sense he was a father of idealism. Was he not? I don't know. But his invocation of an unknowable, imperciptible underlying noumena seems to be no more a hedge against radical idealism, not a refutation of it.

Val and JLN,

Its Husserl tonight (Tuesday) ! I'll stir things up a bit and report back. :wink:

JLN,

I think your Beethoven thought experiment has several interesting aspects.

1. It has both private and public aspects
since every listening experience is to some extent unique, but also statistically predictable in overall esthetic ratings.

2. Music is rule governed as is language, but differs
because it lacks detailed semantic associations.

So unlike the "disembodied sentence" I would say that a "sonata" could stand alone as an agent for altering emotional states in some predictable manner, but the "sentence" usually lacks any predictive quality outside "context". However, in as much that such context could be "other sentences", the total discourse of related sentences would perhaps be more "sontata like".

(It may be of secondary interest that one of the problems of speech perception is the recognition by children of words spoken by adult voices which the child cannot tonally imitate. The simpler problem ...of the recognition of tunes indifferent keys...is sometimes studied as an "easier" option.)

Val,

It seemes that Husserl holds the noumena "in brackets". Indeed he seems to take a major step towards the essentual mutuality of observer and observed but still clings to a concept of "certainty". It is difficult to see how we can have certainty without "objectivity".

Very good, Fresco. The factor of semantic associations is an important difference between music and language. But a very young child might experience emotional alterations upon hearing vocal sounds (speech without semantic understanding) from a parent. Is that something like the effects of a sonata?

Thinking of your comment on Husserl's "bracketing" of noumena, is it also not possible that Kant, in treating the noumena as itself unknowable, was "bracketing" its meaning--treating it as non-phenomenal because it is IN PART the ground of phenomena. Here "the essential mutuality between observer and observer" consists in the equation: noumena+observer=phenomena. P cannot occur without both N and O.
Just a mind/brain wiggle for consideration.

...whereas we would tend to go for...

N=P+O or more generally N= SIGMA (P+O) ?

SIGMA="summation of"

JLNobody

The Sonata example is curious and reveals the multiplicity of meanings, according to the use we give to the proposition. I understand why you say you prefer "Philosophischen Untersuchungen" - sorry but I don't know the title in english - to the "Tractatus".
Even a specific Sonata, let's say the 7th, can have that multiplicity you proposed. There is the written partition, the words of Beethoven in the 2nd mouvement - Largo e mesto (sad) - there are my feeling to that music, my memory of it in different versions - Schnabel is very, very different from Backhaus or Kempff - the images I built upon that music, the analysis I make of it's structure. We can say there is a 7th Sonata as reference, as the object of intentional experience, but those experiences are multiple. And there is always a new sense when we experience the 7th Sonata, like know when we are not hearing it - only remembering, and that is always a new construct of experience.

Nobody and Fresco

I think that the problem of the noumena in Kant is exactly that N+O = P. If time and space are our experience conditions, and therefore we think of unity, multiplicity, causality, how can we say that there is, let's say, a "chair" in itself? Why would the noumena be multiple? The chair of our experience is not an illusion, is a real chair within the only reality we know, and that reality is the one of our experience. There is no reason to talk about a real chair external to our experience: what would be a non dimensional chair? A chair out of space and time is a chair? Is something?
The N+O = P supposes an entity in itself, N, and then we are regressing to metaphysical assumptions of non physical entities - I mean entities that we cannot experience, that cannot be experienced by any other entity at all, because if they where they would be phenomena.

val



If there is nothing in-itself there is no perceiver. Do you agree?


it.

Nice to hear from you twyvel !

On your last point I am trying bring in recent concepts of "dynamic structure" (following Capra et al) where at one level of conception we have a picture of a cell/self exhanging material/information across some sort of operational boundary. This level might be termed "wholistic existence" and it contrasts with what I would term "subject -object existence" where reality is evaluated from the point of the "structure itself". This second conception seems to be the norm in traditional philosophy whence problems of "noumena". My reformation of JLN's equation above could be another way of expressing the wholistic argument.

I admit that I'm groping in the dark a little on this, but I feel there is a potentially coherent resolution of the "ultimate observer" within the mathematical models associated with the structural dynamics involved in a the wholistic view.

This gives a compendium of related references:
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CSTHINK.html
The key names here are Prigogine, Maturana and Von Foerster.

Wow,
I am new to all this deep philosophical jargon. Here all this time I've been laboring under the delusion that truth is that which corresponds to reality as percieved by God, and objective truth does not depend upon whether I believe it or not to accurately reflect reality. Man what a simpleton I am. Even after Kant "proved" the lack of need for God in Pure Reason he brought Him back as a moral necessity in Practical Reason. If He exists He defines truth doesn't He?

Hi fresco

JohnB

Welcome to the club !

You seem to rest your case on the Berkeley view that "existence" lies in the "mind of God" which is one ad hoc solution to "the ultimate observer". However I think you will find that your key words "mind" and "reality" fall prey to a charge of anthropocentism in that they can be deconstructed as simplistic cognitive crutches withiin a "need to control paradigm". (See for example google references on Constructivist Epististemology and/or Second Order Cybernetics). Thus "truth" "knowledge" and "reality" may be no more than elements within an open ended "control structure" hence the relevence of cybernetics.

Fresco,
Thanks for the welcome.
No I do not believe that "existence" lies in the "mind of God". I believe that it is in His creation that we live and move and have our being. If believing that I owe my existence to God and would have no being without Him is anthropocentist then I guess I'm guilty. But my question is if truth, knowledge and reality are no more than elements within an open ended control structure (although I'm not quite sure what that means) then the truth of and any knowledge I might be able to aquire concerning the reality of my eternal life are nothing more than meaningless drivel unless they somehow apply to the possibility of improving artificial intelligence (assuming of course that is what cybernetics is based upon)? Man!(an anthropocentrist explitive) That's depressing! It completely destroys my whole house of cards concerning life, purpose, and reason for being. But wait, before I go jump off a cliff and end it all, isn't real truth that is that upon which I base my eternal life a little too trancendant to be a mere element in someone's idea of an "open-ended control structure"? Maybe I'll hang around a while and see how this turns out.

twyvel

I would say: if there is a thing in itself there is no perceiver.
A perceiver is also perceived, is a phenomena. We exist interacting with things.

I don't know if there is "a chair in itself". The same goes regarding God, gobblins or Fata Morgana.

val




How so?

It would seem to be the exact opposite. If there is a thing-in-itself, a world separate and distinct from observers, then there are observers-in-themselves separate and distinct from the world.

It is my understanding, following Nagarjuna, that nothing has "self-being." That is to say, nothing exists in-itself and by itself. At least this is so for anything that we can observe (Kant's noumena is beyond our understanding and perception. To me it's merely a metaphysical construction designed to fill in a gap regarding his understanding of the nature and generation of the phenomenal world). All things, I think, are the productions of interactions with some other (and ultimately ALL other) things.
My equation of N+O=P can possibly be rephrased for all I know as N+P=O and/or O+P=N. It probably is the case that in our unitary Reality everything generates and is generated by everything else. Our intellectual efforts to "select" which things are caused or generated by which things reflects either utilitarian ends or philosophical prejudices--in both cases interests are at stake. And in both cases the efforts rest upon untestable presuppositions. Our "spiritual" mission is to inquire for the sake of inquiry. It is the expression of our highest virtue.

Yes, Twyvel. It's a pleasure to have your wisdom with us. It's been a long time and, as I may have said elsewhere, it's a relief to know that you are still alive, even though non-existent.

Thanks JLNobody you are indeed generous.

tiny wisdom, Big curiosity, though probably restricted to interest and capacity etc..….



you wrote:

"nothing exists in itself and by itself"

There are two ways to read that……Nothing as void, as consciousness, as non-being-being, etc. stands alone, is self originating, from moment to moment, or atemporally.


And as no thing-in-itself.

"My equation of N+O=P can possibly be rephrased for all I know as N+P=O and/or O+P=N."


O ill defined and misunderstood. Observing without observer, even though evident, is beyond comprehension. E.g. The scent of a rose is that which smells.

P is dependent on, one with and a function of N,….. comes and goes.

N self originating and alone is real,……yet neither is real or not real, beyond being and non-being yet neither beyond or not beyond, incomprehensible. Has no opposite etc.

O = N = O = N = O


imho



non-existent yet alive………

TWYVEL

How so?
Because the concept of a thing in itself means a thing not perceived. Or, in Kant's Critic, how the thing IS, beyond our perception of it.

As for a word distinct of observers, and observers distinct from the world:
I think that is Leibniz idea of the "monad".
Kant refused it and I think he was right. Observers are in the world, not looking at it from the "outside" through a window.
And why do you say that a perceiver must be in it-self? I can only perceive myself as a phenomena, that means, in space and time, in relation with other things. In fact,that was the reason why Kant, in the "Transcendental Dialetic" - the last part of the Critic - refused traditional metaphysical concepts, like the soul. Those concepts have no possible correspondance in our experience.