Is truth subjective or objective?

Val,

In your reply to JLN it appears you are confusing "reality" with "paradigm". In essence scientific theories are neither "right" nor "wrong".
For example the heliocentic model is merely "more elegant" than the geocentric one, and all non-astronomers have the daily experience (reality) of the Sun "rising" and "setting". The choice of model is a function of the purpose of the observation. Similar remarks could apply to "falling" versus the recent "gravitational" paradigm of "curved space-time".

I go back to my claim that what we see as "reality" is that which allows us to "predict". When you use the word "thing" above, you have already set up predictive expectations by assuming repetitive properties of a nominal set. Instead of saying "apples exist" we might equally say "appleness exists" as a predicted relationship between inner (observer) and outer(observed) states.

JLN will concur that a key issue is that even though we all act/think as though there is an "objective reality" this perceptual set is transmitted and reified by "language" during the process of socialization. The structures of language involving "subjects" and "objects" as "real features of permanence" are the pragmatic spectacles with which we "experience" with the world.

Val and Ray, I did not say that Reality is itself merely a social convention, a figment of thought, of conventional thought. I said that the CONCEPT of Reality and Truth are learned conventions. I do not want to rehash at this time the issue of naive realism already discussed ad nauseum in many threads. But do we really know that objects like cars and horses (not to mention egos), exist in reality as cars and horses, or as atomic, molecular and other kinds of unseen forces (and atomic and molecular forces are concepts as well--no getting away from it)? We represent our sensations to ourselves IN TERMS OF the concepts we have inherited from our cultures. Granted, these representations are often very useful (pragmatism), allowing us to predict and control many of the events and circumstances of our lives--we will eventually discard them if they do not provide such benefits. This does not, in itself, make them metaphysically, absolutely, or objectively "true" and "real". And, I might add, even illusions are constructions of conventional thought. How about the untutored man who asked the astronomer how astronomy learned the names of the planets.

Fresco, I saw your last post after posting myh last. I always get a chuckle upon hearing people talk about the properties of an object. We say, for example, that an apple's "appleness" is the sum of its properties, roundness, redness, its weight, extension in space, taste, nutritional values, etc. When we abstract those properties from the apple we think we are left only with its "thingness", an abstract bare quality shared with all denuded objects. We never see things; we think things and see objects, in terms of their properties (which is how we distinguish one object from another object). Thingness is one of the tacit presuppositions of our culture.

fresco

I agree that the choice of heliocentric or geocentric model is a function of the purpose of the observation. In this case, the purposal is an astronomic explanation. And heliocentric theory is more adequate to astronomical experience verifications than the geocentric one.

About things.
A thing is what appears to me, in the conditions of my possible experience. I interact with it, within a set of references that, at the level of experience, have nothing to do with language. A dog also experiences things (experience things like a dog). A thing is "this apple in front of me". If I am in China and see an apple, I am unable to say its name in chinese. I may even ignore what is an apple. But there is a thing in front of me, interacting with me. I eat something that can be called an apple, or "pomme" or anything else. But the thing is there, I eat it, it is in my experience field, within the conditions that make my experience possible.

The question is different if I speak about "the apple". In this case I use a set of conceptual references, saying what an apple is. What every apples are. But in this case, I "withdraw" from the thing ("this thing"), I give it properties (although "this thing of my experience" is not entirely absent from the description I give).
It is different to describe a thing by saying what it is and to talk about what makes a thing become a thing. In this last case, it is our experience that makes a thing being a thing.

Our experience affects our perception subjectively........

Val,

The separation of observer and observed as reflected in "I" and "thing" implies separate existence of both. I am arguing for mutuality of existence.
Thus
I (state-1) interacts with Apple(state-1) resulting in I(state-2) and Apple(state-2).

Simplistically
I(state -hungry)interacts with Apple(state -whole)
resulting in I(state -sated) with Apple (state- core)

The "reality" lies in the interaction. I (state-sated) may not even "notice" Apple (state-whole) indeed "apple" may be deemed "not to exist".

As for "dogs" etc....note that frogs will starve to death if only surrounded by dead flies. Only live flies "exist as food" for frogs.

I was trying to distinguish between "thing" and "object." I relate to objects on the basis of their properties. The thingness of an object pertains to its presumed isness sans properties.

JLN,

Your point is well stated. Mine is about "properties" mirroring "needs"or "receptive states"

Fresco, simply saying that time is a psychological construct, without saying what you think is the case, is not helpful to the discussion. Furthermore, while I'm not an expert on Einstein, I'm pretty sure that while he did have a lot to say about time, he didn't make any presuppositions about psychology, which is kind of off-topic for a physicist. Are you saying that everything happens at the same time? How do you explain our seeing it the way we do? More importantly to the question, how can we cause things to exist if nothing comes before or after our consciousnesses?

fresco
I agree with mutuality of existence. But saying "I" is not the same as saying the "observer". "I" is what I am or think I am. My inner identity. I used the word in this sense, not as an artificial separation between subject and object.
I also agree with your conception of interaction. But there is something else. A thing, in the sense of "this thing" appears to me as external - not only to my senses - and I may react to it in many different ways. Hunger, indifference, curiosity, etc. And, from the multiplicity of external stimulus I receive, I choose one, or a few, and only those. When I'm writting this I see the keyboard, the screen, but I don't see the other things that surround me. THis is what Husserl called "intentionality".
So, although I agree that separation between observer and object is artificial, my experience can never be separated from my being, my intentional experience.

About frogs. Well, I suppose frogs have their own experience conditions, like we have our human experience conditions. It would be curious to know what a man may be in the experience existence of the frog.

Rufio,
Your use of the word "simply" as your second word is too great a level shift for me to deal with.

Val,

Point taken that "I" is whole other ball-game than simply "an observer". Relative to the "subjectivity objectivity" question however, unless we evoke universal consensus of "I's" then "truth" seems to be always subjective, and even "objective truth" if there were such a thing would be "species specific".

Val, I see your point about "I" having a qualitative dimension (i.e., the properties of identity), but it also seems to me that subjective experience (or intentional focus) on those properties has the tacit function of distinguishing "I" from "it." We do not escape the subject-objective structural dimensiosn of ego-self.

Nobody

You are right: by saying "I" we suppose already the existence of the difference, the other, the "it" (that's one of the mistakes of Descartes, as I have pointed).
But that was not the question. Obviously I accept an I and an it. I am not you, nor this keyboard.

I will try to explain more clearly my position.
In the western philosophy since Plato, many philosophers understood the subject as an entity separated from the experience. That's why they talked about the "essence" of the being. Then, they talked about the world, as object, as if it was beeing seen from the "outside". Plato, Descartes, the french materialists of the XVIII century. All those philosophers think the subject as something that can be described in itself, with his own essence facing the world of objects.
Then they describe that world of objects as an objective world, as something that has its own characteristics, independent of the subject.
Only in a third phase, they tried to study the situation of the subject in the presence of the object - the traditional question of knowledge.

It is that tradition that I refuse. I see the beeing (the I if you want) only within a relation with the it. There is no essence external to the presence in the world. In other words: a man is in the way he lives, not an abstract entity to be described isolated from it's experience.
And, what is a thing? Can we talk about a thing without talking about us? We are evolutionary entities, adjusted to some external conditions: that adjustement is what makes our experience, the way we interact with things.
An apple is the configuration I give to external stimulus. A snail will give it another configuration.
I see things because, due to evolution, I have organs that can be stimulated by compatible external factors. To a blind fish in the ocean, light is not part of his experience - because those external factors cannot stimulate him, they are not compatible with him - but he has some other organs that allow him to acceed to other levels of stimulation that we have not.
The "I" is nothing if we take him from is experience conditions. And the same with the "it".

Fresco, if "simply" doesn't come into it, than perhaps you could explain how you came to this conclusion in another manner.

rufio,

I suggest you refer to Val's posts which seem pretty comprehensive to me.

Val,

I particularly like your "historical" discourse which is a very effective way of establishing your postion vis-a-vis dualists. JLN and I tend to bypass such introductions because we seem to have said it all before/elsewhere.

Val, thank you for a very clear historical summary of the foundations of positivism. Your perspective on the ontology of the subject-object distinction is excellent.

So, you are saying that what defines you as a person is that you can see something this fish can't?

Fresco, I'm not asking you to outline some grand master pretentious philosophical theorum of yours. I'm asking you how you think we (and the rest of this three-demensional world) can exist outside of time such that one does not need to preceed something to effect it. In fact, I have trouble understanding how your theory has anything to do with this conclusion, since you always seemed so adamant before that we couldn't exist independantly of ANYTHING, and that there was no such thing as cause and effect. But perhaps I'm just misremembering.

Rufio,

You are asking questions similar to "How does a wave define itself independently of the water which composes it". You need to step back and critically examine all the terms you have used like "existence" "dimensions" and even "we". Your terms are at present locked into a "incestuous" relationship.

I claim no particular success in establishing such a vantage point, but I do extol the benefits of occasionally glimpsing the wider vista in my attempt, and the reading of attempts by others. A good example can be found in the reference to "cognition" in the last section of this link.

www.tcd.ie/Physics/Schrodinger/Lecture3.html

A wave is, by definition, somewhat more than just the water that it is made up of. You, on the other hand, seem to want to define the ancient past with reference to the present, but deny that part of what makes us (by which I mean all human beings)what we are is the fact of time, which, like the law of gravity, I'm not sure you have grounds to question.

I repeat Rufio (since you have problems with English),

You are asking questions similar to "How does a wave define itself independently of the water which composes it". You need to step back and critically examine all the terms you have used like "existence" "dimensions" and even "we". Your terms are at present locked into a "incestuous" relationship.

I claim no particular success in establishing such a vantage point, but I do extol the benefits of occasionally glimpsing the wider vista in my attempt, and the reading of attempts by others. A good example can be found in the reference to "cognition" in the last section of this link.

www.tcd.ie/Physics/Schrodinger/Lecture3.html

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