I agree. One shouldn't rely on consensus building in his/her own exploration in life. One explores and shares with the skills they were born with (memory of the past) and nourished (evolving memory).

I agree with Thomas Nagel that "Objectivity is a view from Nowhere".

I think this issue comes up most prominently in issues about mental states and who can be an authority on mental states.

I also think trying to undermines someones confidence in their own judgement is unhealthy.

Eliminative materialism and Daniel Dennet's "heterophenomonology" are examples of this.

So it seems coherent to me that one person can have insight into reality based on their own experiences even if they can't express this to others. I have ideas I find it hard to express or convince people of myself but they can be dismissed based on the idea they go against majority consensus or their failure to convince people for whatever reason. — Andrew4Handel

I don't believe that consensus or convincing anyone is necessary. Of course often other people's opinions are of interest, maybe pointing out missed aspects of things. So one can learn from others, but when it really comes down to it, consensus or convincing others doesn't matter.

Michael Ossipoff

I don't believe that consensus or convincing anyone is necessary. Of course often other people's opinions are of interest, maybe pointing out missed aspects of things. So one can learn from others, but when it really comes down to it, consensus or convincing others doesn't matter. — Michael Ossipoff

Convincing seems unavoidable even if we think it doesn't matter. We're all trying to convince someone of something. The economy, and the masses who participate in it, convince us that a $5 is more valuable than a gallon of water, and for the most part most people are successfully convinced of this, which is why it's called a fiat system.

The trick is in learning how to convince one another of right things. :)

So it seems coherent to me that one person can have insight into reality based on their own experiences even if they can't express this to others. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, it seems like this has to be true, and the truth of it covers a lot of our experience.

However, we do not want to get "locked in" to our own subjective experiences. Your admission that you have ideas that you can't express to others is useful. We all have this difficulty at times, and by groping through the problem, we may discover the means to communicate what was previously "untranslatable".

But the question was about philosophical matters.

Anyway, as for societal matters, that's entirely hopeless anyway.

Michael Ossipoff

You wrote:

I think this issue comes up most prominently in issues about mental states and who can be an authority on mental states.

The last bit of this is rather interesting to me personally. I know that there are many who think/believe that that type of pursuit leads to nowhere. However, I wonder...

Rather than frame it in terms of who can be an authority, why not frame it in terms of what mental states consist in/of?

But the question was about philosophical matters. — Michael Ossipoff

Ahh, philosophical matters. Good to get that straight. :p

However, we do not want to get "locked in" to our own subjective experiences. Your admission that you have ideas that you can't express to others is useful. We all have this difficulty at times, and by groping through the problem, we may discover the means to communicate what was previously "untranslatable". — Bitter Crank

I grew up in a strict religious household where you were never allowed to question. I suppose there was a notion of absolute truth as well. So I had a lot of private (solipsistic) reflection.

I think you need to create en environment where people can express themselves without censure. Free speech seems to be the first thing clamped down on by a dictatorship or autocracy etc.

But I think there are many forms of censorship and I think I have felt powerless or trapped for most of my life.

Rather than frame it in terms of who can be an authority, why not frame it in terms of what mental states consist in/of? — creativesoul

I think phenomenological analysis is valuable where you give a detailed analysis of your experiences (this can even inform physics in defining who time and space etc appear).

I feel there is an excess of objectivity in academia and that is kind of dictatorial and negating experience and promoting conformity.

I think that it if we fully explore and respect other peoples inner lives we may have a more respectful society. I think defining mental states could be a process of objectifying them to make them tools for more societal persuasion or coercion.

Persuasion and/or coercion will happen(or not) regardless of our notions of mental states.

I would agree that if we fully explore and respect other people's inner lives that we may have a more respectful society. However, the ground for cultivating such mutual respect must be strong, undeniable...

Phenomenology doesn't have what it takes.

I grew up in a strict religious household where you were never allowed to question. I suppose there was a notion of absolute truth as well. So I had a lot of private (solipsistic) reflection.

I think you need to create en environment where people can express themselves without censure. Free speech seems to be the first thing clamped down on by a dictatorship or autocracy etc.

But I think there are many forms of censorship and I think I have felt powerless or trapped for most of my life. — Andrew4Handel

There are, indeed, many forms and locations of censorship. The work place, foremost among them.

Once in high school I wrote an enthusiastic essay about Thoreau's views on civil disobedience. The teacher told me that it was OK to think about stuff like that, but one shouldn't take it seriously. I did take it seriously, still do. It was one of the many forms of censorship and thought policing.

The best defense against censorship is to speak up, speak openly, and speak often. There may, at times, be some costs associated with saying certain things, but that's a cost of freedom. (Unless one thinks freedom means "nothing left to sell".

Phenomenology doesn't have what it takes — creativesoul

I have spent long periods of time looking after my profoundly disabled brother. (I lived with him for a few years) Now he can only communicate by blinking. During the times I have been looking after him I have never assumed I know what it is like to be him or tried to enforce my my own regime on him. I just always do what he wants (sometime protesting).

I can't think of a better method of helping someone than listening to them. I think this is a fairly new model of health care now guided by the patients feelings and consent.

It is not a phenomenological analysis so to speak but it is respecting the phenomenology of others. How would feel about being paralysed? I don't know but I can't safely impose that speculation or model on someone else.

The integrity and vividness of a persons internal world is one thing that has led me to antinatalism. I don't see humans as a herd of animals to be directed but individuals with vivid inner lives.

The best defense against censorship is to speak up, speak openly, and speak often — Bitter Crank

It is hard work and there are some real threats. Also I think people individual conclusions can be incompatible. In a way it seems apathy is what presents us constantly fighting. Everyone relaxes their standards pragmatically.

I have recently become an Uncle four times over four years by my religious younger brother who petitioned against gay marriage in the UK on Facebook. I have to avoid getting into conflict and negotiate being a gay uncle who can't fully assert this. Negotiating can be exhausting.

Sorry about your brother. I totally understand not getting into conflict here. Most of my nieces and nephews (and grand nieces and nephews) are more tolerant than their parents or grandparents are. My sisters and brothers (6 in all) managed to accept me and my partner, but their acceptance doesn't extend any further. A brother-in-law has been totally unaccepting. As they get older (we're all on social security) they are getting more conservative and intolerant.

There are, indeed, real hazards in speaking freely against the dominant paradigm. I've been fired a couple of times on the basis of expressing my opinions. As a gay man, socialist, and non-believer (or at best, rather heretical) I know what is like to be in the extreme minority.

There was an editorial in the New York Times about how people used to just disagree; now they send death threats. People don't just disagree, quite often. They want to go farther and destroy the careers or lives of people they don't agree with.

It is not a phenomenological analysis so to speak but it is respecting the phenomenology of others. How would feel about being paralysed? I don't know but I can't safely impose that speculation or model on someone else. — Andrew4Handel

I have not undertaken this kind of heroic task. If I was in your brothers condition I would want someone who didn't just decide what I was feeling, what my existence was like.

I think a lot of people are frightened by my brothers illness and are imagining how terrible it must be. But ironically he has not been depressed but I have. So essentially people can impose on both of us how they think we ought to feel. Mental health is a particularly difficult area because it has limited correlation with physical symptoms (although they have found a some brain region differences).

I think the whole ofones approach to philosophy can be about asserting ones self not just regurgitating old philosophers but learning how they explored their reality and how we can.

On the gay issue I think the more people have proper interactions with gay people the harder it is for them to assert their prejudices. So this is another example of the value of lived experience over theory. I think theory should always be treated as such and not made into dogmas or reified. That said I do suffer from a lack of decision because I haven't found a solid framework for being.

I think conformity is Okay if it is conformity that is in the interest of peoples welfare and not conformity solely to assert power.

What is the nature of your brother's illness, if I may intrude?

My partner died of cancer some years back He made it 12 months after it appeared. The cancer was painful and disfiguring (a tumor in a salivary gland, to start with). Treatment appeared to be successful but was arduous and took about 4 months. (surgery, radiation, chemo). Unfortunately, the cancer had metastasized to the spine, in the first few vertebrate. Paralysis from the neck down ensued, and hospice was the only option.

I thought he seemed reasonably content -- he knew the prognosis, he knew about how long death would take, he could eat (he had to be fed) and could talk. His hospice care was first rate. We spent a lot of time together, talking, holding hands, sharing food. Then he began to slip away, and died quietly one morning. He had not been conscious for several days.

Despite our talks, I have been haunted by the question of what those long days might have been like for him. He did have quite a few visitors (more in those three months than in 5 years previous). I know he liked that. But what was his interior reality like? Bob had never been much interested in philosophy; I'm not sure he would have found a discussion of his reality interesting, helpful, or maybe even tolerable.

It seems to me that in order to understand anything you have to do it personally. I don't know how objectivity is being defined these days, but at bottom to know something, you have to know and understand something personally. For example 2+2 =4 may be meaningless to someone who hasn't studied maths.

Lot of ambiguities, like difference (in kind) between physical and mental ways of doing and understanding. You don't really get a feel for riding a motorcycle unless you have ridden on one, but you can understand the principle of riding a motorcycle without actually get on one and you can imagine the thrill of riding.

Same with 2+2...line up the apples and ask someone who never studied math, but who loves eating apples a lot...try to short change them.

People obviously have private knowledge for example if someone is alone in the house and breaks a mug, at one stage they are the only person who knows this.

So it seems coherent to me that one person can have insight into reality based on their own experiences even if they can't express this to others. I have ideas I find it hard to express or convince people of myself but they can be dismissed based on the idea they go against majority consensus or their failure to convince people for whatever reason.

Translation is possible between all existing branches of mankind. Our bodies are similar enough to force us to understand the world in similar ways, sufficient enough to enable us to understanding the world and others in a similar manner and be able to relate our private experiences to others. If something cannot be translated, expressed, or alluded to, if it can't be put into words, sounds or symbols then I doubt its existence.

I think objectivity is conventional agreed upon, established by the cultural norms where you are.

My brothers illness is the unremitting form of Multiple sclerosis that just gradually gives you less and less muscle control.

When I first started looking after him it was I suppose because I could imagine what it might be like for him spending a lot of time lying in bed with little company. He did have carers and visitors but I used to visit and he was alone so eventually I moved into a house with him. At that stage he could still eat and move his arms to operate his wheelchair. That was about 13 years ago.
Then about seven years ago he could no longer eat independently and had to have a tube inserted directly in his stomach. That did depress me a bit because I couldn't imagine never tasting food again or drinks. Then he kept on getting pneumonia and had to have a permanent tracheotomy. He now has to be moved by other people and has been washed by others for most of illness. So he is a situation I couldn't begin to imagine.

I think we can share quite a lot about our internal states but I think we need to respect the validity of peoples personal accounts where as some trends are to try and objectify everything. But I spoke to when one of his doctors once about the phenomenological method of analysis which she wasn't aware of. But she said doctors rely significantly on self reports from patients.

Maybe there are some phenomenological states associated with say kidney disease that are commonly reported experiences then you can ask a new patient "Did you have this .. burning sensation there?" or "did you have this feeling".

If something cannot be translated, expressed, or alluded to, if it can't be put into words, sounds or symbols then I doubt its existence. — Cavacava

Why?

It has taken unusual geniuses to try and explain some phenomena. We are not all Einsteins.

If some Phenomenon are hard to describe for Einstein then that suggest it is quite possible there are phenomena beyond description. I don't think something starts to exist for certain only once it has been adequately described.

Same with 2+2...line up the apples and ask someone who never studied math, but who loves eating apples a lot...try to short change them. — Cavacava

There are cultures apparently that have languages with only words like "one" and "many" and random number references. There have been different mathematical systems based on how numbers are conceptualised. I don't see how that is mind independent. understanding the external world can require a mind. I imagine Einstein spent lots of time solely caught up in thought. He famously enjoyed thought experiments.

I think we can credit this to advancements such as modern philosophers like Hume and N.T. Wright providing logical reasons for the advancement of personal knowledge and belief.

to know something, you have to know and understand something personally — Andrew4Handel

I very much agree. There is a huge difference between knowledge and understanding. Sometimes we come to understand things within ourselves that we did not know about before, and sometimes you can know something for a long time before truly understanding it.