I've been struck by the lack of clarity in several recent discussions revolving around subjectivity, objectivity, truth and belief. — Banno

Me, too. It really is very simple, but philosophers tend to muddy the waters with their use of language.

Certain statements are labeled subjective because they set out an individuals taste or feelings. In contrast, other statements are called objective, as they do not set out an individual's taste, feelings or opinions. — Banno

Right. In other words, subjective statements are value statements. They associate some notion of "good" and "bad", or "right" and "wrong" to some aspect of the world. Subjective statements are similar to a category error in that a person associates the feeling with the object - as if it were an objective feature of that object that everyone would agree with.

Banno prefers vanilla ice to chocolate — Banno

Is it not a fact that Banno prefers vanilla ice to chocolate, regardless how anyone feels about that, including Banno? Is that not an attribute of Banno?

Now, if Banno were to say, "Vanilla ice cream is the best ice cream", then that is a subjective statement because Banno is attributing "best" to vanilla ice cream, as if vanilla ice cream has this attribute called "the best". This is a category error. "The best" is not an attribute of vanilla ice cream, it is an attribute of Banno's feelings of vanilla ice cream.

Here's a simple test you might use to check if some fact is objective or subjective. Ask if it can be said in the first person. — Banno

Can you say "the cat is on the mat" in first person? (or, yes, any person) — Banno

It seems to me that one can have a perspective without being able to put it into words. The cat has a perspective but can't speak English. Speaking is a human behavior that communicates one's feelings and perspectives, just as a cat can communicate it's feelings and perspective by purring, hissing, or laying on a mat (the cat finds the mat comfortable, however I prefer my bed).

What about infants, or the Man Without Words (https://vimeo.com/76386718), who have perspectives and feelings that may differ but can't communicate them via speaking a language? This line of thinking just complicates the distinction between subjective and objective and it is simpler to stick with defining subjectivity as it relates to one's feelings and personal preferences, and the objective as what is the case regardless of anyone's feelings and personal preferences.

It appears to have been established above that the words "truth," "belief," "subjective," and "objective" are about propositions/statements - hereinafter just propositions (for present purpose, propositions are assumed to be well-formed, to be capable of "holding" meaning).

The form of any proposition is either sound or symbols, neither of which has any meaning in itself. Any meaning a proposition has is assigned. No assignment, no assigner, no meaning.

No one has yet defined "meaning." Maybe for the sake of argument we should. But it seems the question of what meaning is, is better approached than asked outright. Improvement here welcome:

1) Where is meaning? In mind. Where else could it be? If this be so, then to say that propositions (themselves) have meaning is just shorthand for saying that propositions occasion some activity of mind.

2) Does meaning have any accidents? It must seem that for a proposition to be meaningful (i.e., can stand as something in which an assignment of meaning can "dwell"), it cannot at the same time mean anything at all or everything. Meaning, then, is a constraint and restriction of possibility. And it must be durable and consistent.

3) So far. Meaning itself is a state or activity of mind occasioned by sounds or symbols, that tends both to consistency and endurance. "Meaning" can refer to particular meaning or meaning in general, or the phenomenon of meaning.

The words "truth," "belief," "subjective," and "objective," then, are further activities of mind in assessing - assigning further meaning - to meanings.

To say, then, that any proposition is true or subjective or believable or objective is an attempt to nail down an aspect of enduring consistency that will hold in and across multiple minds - or to acknowledge that aspect.

To claim that any proposition is meaningful, or true or subjective, & etc., is to make a claim of expectation on other minds.

Fortunately, this game has some rules. People who do not follow the rules are usually kicked out of the game sooner or later, sooner usually the better.

Some of the rules are implied in "truth," "belief," "subjective," and "objective." It then becomes a matter of setting the meaning of these words, establishing or reaffirming the rules. It emerges as a corollary that it is useless and at best a waste of time to "play" with people who will not acknowledge the rules. That, or understand it's a different game.

Next is to assign the meanings of "truth," "belief," "subjective," and "objective."

that belief and truth are not the same. One can believe stuff that is not true, as well as disbelieve stuff that is true. Believing something does not imply that it is true, and being true does not imply being believed. I mention this because it is a simple, but ubiquitous error, and may well underpin other problems. — Banno

This does for truth v. belief. The problem of defining truth itself has burned up hundreds of pages on this site, and thousands of pages in books. But what of "belief"?

A belief is a meaning taken to be true for efficacy's sake for a specific application, but that the actual truth of which is not claimed (except in error). If true, it would be true. We can all think of arenas in which belief holds sway.

"Subjective"? "Objective"? Anyone?

Can something objectively subjectively be the case? — StreetlightX

Chalmers is famous for hoping that one day we'll have a theory of consciousness that would allow us to predict the experience of a bee.

That would allow us to be objective about subjectivity.

It might have practical significance. What if the equation in question controls a piece of machinery, and getting it wrong means the machinery fails? Rocket fails to launch, bridge collapses, patient dies. That kind of thing. I think I would be correct in saying that it then becomes a matter of objective fact. — Wayfarer

Right. But does this necessitate the concepts of truth and falsity? Don't all statements refer to objective facts, even the so-called "false" or "subjective" ones?

What if we interpret an engineer's words as being necessarily correct whatever he says and whatever happens as a consequence of his words? In other words, we understand an engineer's words in the same way we understand a photograph generated by a camera, that is to say idiosyncratically as a snapshot of the time and place the words were uttered.

To my understanding, the philosophy of trivialism understands falsification in terms of miscalibration; a person's words can be taken-wrongly by a community as a consequence of the person disobeying a linguistic convention. And his words are taken-rightly by community once it identifies the causes of his words.

Apologies for lowering the tone, but on the subject of subjective truth, I was reminded of a John finnemore joke.

"I see you've brought your ridiculous dog with you".

"My dog is not ridiculous"

"Well then whose dog have you brought?"

The problem with this is that there's a name for it: it's the argumentum ad populum fallacy.

The only thing that's the case due to agreement is the fact that there was an agreement. — Terrapin Station

It's quite deeper than that. The majority may believe that some specific thing is going to happen at some point in time, and to them it would be truth. If they end up agreeing later on that what they predicted would happen didn't happen, they would agree that their belief was false, and they would adopt another common belief as a result, a different truth. The only thing that made their old truth not truth, is that they replaced it with another one. Had they kept the old one, their old belief would still be truth.

How could they have kept their old belief if what they predicted didn't happen? Well, it is always possible to invoke some unknown phenomenon or some additional hypothesis to save a belief that is apparently contradicted by observation. Say we make some experiment to detect dark matter, we predict we're going to detect it, and yet we don't detect it, does that imply we must change our belief that there is dark matter? No, we can say that the dark matter has properties that makes it undetectable to the experiments we performed, and we devise some new experiment, while keeping the belief that there is dark matter, while seeing it as truth that there is dark matter. It is only when we eventually end up agreeing that there is no dark matter, that we will say the belief there is dark matter was false, that we will adopt a different truth.

You can look at this from afar, and judge after the fact that well their old belief wasn't truth because it is now truth that there is no dark matter! But it will only become truth that there is no dark matter when the majority of people (or authorities on the subject) agree and believe that there is no dark matter. So essentially it's not that they were wrong and later on became right, that their old truth was a false belief and their new truth is an objective fact, it's just that the new truth is objective fact because they agree on it, just like their old truth was objective fact because they agreed on it.

I don't see any objective fact or truth completely safe from being challenged and replaced by a different one.

It's quite deeper than that. The majority may believe that some specific thing is going to happen at some point in time, and to them it would be truth. If they end up agreeing later on that what they predicted would happen didn't happen, they would agree that their belief was false, and they would adopt another common belief as a result, a different truth. The only thing that made their old truth not truth, is that they replaced it with another one. Had they kept the old one, their old belief would still be truth. — leo

?? Nothing "deeper" about any of that. It's simply an argumentum ad populum that something is correct just because it's agreed upon.

I'm not saying that people don't accept whatever they accept as true or false. And someone could accept something as true or false because they're influenced by the crowd. But that has no bearing on any facts aside from the fact that they agree with each other, the fact that they assign "T" or "F" to whatever they do.

"I prefer...", if stated sincerely, is objectively true - its truth is not dependent on anyone's opinion. — ChrisH

Isn't it dependent on the opinion of the speaker?

Chalmers is famous for hoping that one day we'll have a theory of consciousness that would allow us to predict the experience of a bee. — frank

Imagine the buzz.

What if we interpret an engineer's words as being necessarily correct whatever he says and whatever happens as a consequence of his words? In other words, we understand an engineer's words in the same way we understand a photograph generated by a camera, that is to say idiosyncratically as a snapshot of the time and place the words were uttered. — sime

I don't know if the faculty of reason can be explained in other terms - whether pattern recognition or adaptation or stimulus and response. To try to explain reason is already to undermine it; reason is what we look to for explanation, not what we're explaining. And secondly reason is one of the principle tools used in determining what is objectively the case; engineers whose bridges stay up are objectively superior to those whose bridges collapse. But even so, reason and objectivity still have limits, they're not all-knowing. I think that comes up in subjects like history and jurisprudence, as well as leading edge science, where it is difficult or impossible to determine objective facts, as you might have contrary accounts which both appear to be valid, and no way of saying which one is finally true.

You see what you call a cat on what you call a mat, how does that make it not a subjective statement? Other people might disagree that what they see is a cat or a mat. You would only consider it an objective fact if people agree with you. But if you consider it an objective fact even if people don't agree with you then you consider your subjective experience to be what determines objectivity or truth, if you see something you see it as objective fact or truth even if other people don't see it. — leo

In what way does "The cat is on the mat" set out the speaker's feeling or taste?

Now, "I believe that the cat is on the mat" sets out an opinion, and hence is subjective. But "The cat is on the mat" and "I believe that the cat is on the mat" express quite distinct things.

I think that there is some philosophical over-thinking in your approach. I do not think that we would only call a fact objective if people agree about it. I can see no reason why there can't be something that is true, and yet believed false by most folk. I's not hard to think of historical examples.

In short what you say here is an example of the lack of clarity to which I referred in the OP.

If we consider two subjects, and they are sitting in the same room, they indeed share a common or public experience, from which we can possibly draw some objective facts. Yet the individual subjects as such are private entities - they can never be shared in common, nor can they ever express the truth of their subjective existence. — Merkwurdichliebe

Here's a use of private and subject that is quite problematic.

They share a common experience and yet the supposition is that they can never really share the experience.

What is it that is not shared? Tell me. Say it. What exactly is it that is inexpressible?

And of course you cannot. It is, after all, inexpressible.

I think that what is going on here is a confused use of words - "the truth of their subjective experience" is a hapless concatenation. Disengaged gears spinning without doing any work.

However showing remains. Art, poetry, and some philosophy.

Sure. Worth noting.

What I find of value in considering such things is the difference between a proposition and the belief in a proposition. In logicians parlance, belief ranges over propositions.

SO "The cat is on the mat" and "It is true that the cat is on the mat" are each only true if the other is true.

In contrast, "The cat is on the mat" and "I believe that the cat is on the mat" are quite autonomous. Each can be true or false, independently of the other.

This point seems lost in so much of what is said in these forums.

Hu?

Sure. And going by that, in the context of ethics, it is a subjective fact that you judge murder to be wrong, and "murder is wrong" is unwarranted, because moral objectivism is unwarranted. You assert that the latter is a fact, but you fail to reasonably demonstrate it as such, so your assertion can be justifiably dismissed.

You make bare assertions which indicate that you're a moral objectivist, but you don't identify as one for some reason.

It is only by linguistic convention that the shared expressions of our beliefs are said to refer to the same object, and our conventions fools us into thinking that "right" and "wrong" have deep epistemological significance. — sime

Those linguistic conventions are presumably shared expressions of our belief. And here I am trying to use your terms.

Are you suggesting that we cannot have a conversation in which we both talk about the same thing?

Because I know that's wrong.

But it is only the case because it is believed to be so by a sufficiently large number of people to form a language community.
— Isaac

No; it is only so because the cat is on the mat. — Banno

If we're talking about the statement, "The cat is on the mat", then I agree with Banno.

Banno
5k
↪Frank Apisa
Sure. Worth noting.

What I find of value in considering such things is the difference between a proposition and the belief in a proposition. In logicians parlance, belief ranges over propositions.

SO "The cat is on the mat" and "It is true that the cat is on the mat" are each only true if the other is true.

In contrast, "The cat is on the mat" and "I believe that the cat is on the mat" are quite autonomous. Each can be true or false, independently of the other.

This point seems lost in so much of what is said in these forums. — Banno

Yup.

What I write next is tangential, but related.



The wording of comments in a philosophy forum should be rather exact.

Here is a thing I have raised in several fora. These are honest statements about myself...my position on a particular question:

I do not "believe" that any gods exist...

...and...

...I do not "believe" that there are no gods.

Those are NOT contradictory statements...although at first glance people will insist they contradict each other.

A second one:

I do not believe any gods exist...

...is not the same as...

...I believe there are no gods.

It is not a fact of the world that 'cat' means what it does, it is merely a fact of collective belief. — Isaac

A fact is a fact. That "cat" means what it does because of common usage doesn't do anything in the broader context of what Banno is getting at. What do you think pointing that out achieves? It is objective in the sense that it isn't an opinion, and it is subjective in the sense that the meaning depends on common usage by subjects.

And you mentioned truth as collective belief. Truth is not collective belief. Collective belief is just collective belief.

What is it that is not shared? Tell me. Say it. What exactly is it that is inexpressible?

And of course you cannot. It is, after all, inexpressible. — Banno

Subjectivity is not shared. What is inexpressible (viz. rendered objectively) is actual subjective existence.

There, I said it, I referenced the inexpressible without actually expressing anything about the inexpressible.

And indeed it is a confused use of words when you misquote someone by confusing existence with experience. Perhaps you reduce those terms to the same meaning...looks like a case of engaged gears doing alot of work, but nothing's spinning.

OK, money and other institutional facts.

I was impressed by Searle in The construction of social reality. The name is a play on The social construction of reality, with which it is to be contrasted.

Here's my claim, from the OP:

Before commencing the main argument, it may be worth pointing out that belief and truth are not the same. One can believe stuff that is not true, as well as disbelieve stuff that is true. Believing something does not imply that it is true, and being true does not imply being believed. I mention this because it is a simple, but ubiquitous error, and may well underpin other problems. — Banno

Do social institutions such as money show an error in my claim?

Searle perhaps avoids this using his distinction between an individual intent and a group intent. He claims, and I agree with him, that there is a different intentionality in "I am going to win the game" than in "We (the team) are going to win the game". But I am loath to use that here; it would be far off topic, and too contentious.

Instead I will argue that the answer is to do with direction of fit.

Here are two true statements:
"The cup is purple"
"I will make some chicken stock"

In the first, the statements is made to fit the way things are. In the second, the world is made to fit the statement by my making chicken stock.

This is a distinction found in Anscombe and elsewhere.

In the case of money, we make it valuable by acting as if it has value. Our belief in the value of a note is what brings that value into being. We change the world to fit our belief.

In this thread I am talking about the other sort of direction of fit, in which our beliefs are changed in order to match the way things are. We change our belief to fit the world.

So, Isaac, I take your point, and contend that while there are cases where our belief brings social institutions into being, those are not the cases to which I was referring.

It becomes a matter of objective fact if people agree that the rocket fails to launch, or that the bridge collapses, or that the patient dies, it is the agreement that leads us to view it as objective fact, as truth. Without the agreement, there is only your subjective experience against that of others. — leo

Nu. Even if we agree, we might all be wrong.

I think this is a classic example of a philosophical problem which dissolves when one looks closely at the language. If one say "anchovies are disgusting" I don't think they are making a claim about anchovies at all, they're making a claim about their state of mind, it just sounds like they're making a claim about anchovies because the words are arranged in a similar manner to "anchovies are fish". But look closely at the role such claims actually play in life, they play the role of a claim about preference, and since we have no external cause of meaning other than the role expressions play, we have no cause to think it means anything other.

So "anchovies are disgusting" is just as much an objective claim as "anchovies are fish" because "anchovies are disgusting" means "I don't like anchovies".

"abortion is immoral" is more complicated because there may be implicit in that the proposition that there are external moral codes, but even so, if you look at the job the expression does, it's still really saying "according to my moral code, abortion is immoral", which is an objective claim. — Isaac

I agree with all of that. I'd just point out that they're also subjective in a sense, because that can mean dependent on a subject, or more specifically their judgement, values, principles, etc.

That this text is written in English is not dependent on my own taste or feelings. Hence it is an objective truth.
— Banno

Truth there can't have the property of being objective because the relation in question only obtains via an evaluation that an individual makes, based on how they assign meanings to the words/sentence in question, relative to what they're making the judgment with respect to--that is, a judgment about that meaning and its relationship to something else. Those are mental events, and hence on the definition of subjective as mental phenomena, we're talking about a subjective property, not an objective property. — Terrapin Station

It's an objective truth in the relevant sense. Bringing up a different sense doesn't change that.

Those linguistic conventions are presumably shared expressions of our belief. And here I am trying to use your terms.

Are you suggesting that we cannot have a conversation in which we both talk about the same thing?

Because I know that's wrong. — Banno

How is disagreement possible if we really are talking about the same thing?

By "the same thing" I include any intuition or phenomena that the observer experiences as a result of their mental state. So if we look at the same sky and disagree about tomorrows weather due to having had different past experiences, we aren't looking at the same thing by my definition.

Suppose someone says "Only the sky we share before us is objective, and our private intuitions are subjective and irrelevant". This isn't a deep epistemological statement about the world we experience, this is merely a statement about a linguistic convention that ignores the private facts of each person.

Words are used all sorts of ways, by all sorts of people. There might be an individual who uses "cat" to only refer to what most of us call "dogs," for example. Saying that the most common way to use a term is somehow "true" (or correct, etc.) by virtue of that fact is the argumentum ad populum fallacy. — Terrapin Station

No, because that's just what meaning, generally speaking, is. Idiosyncratic use is irrelevant to meaning, generally speaking. A cat is not a dog. And it makes perfect sense to state that a cat is not a dog. It makes perfect sense because of how meaning generally works.

No one has yet defined "meaning." — tim wood

Meaning is use.

Apologies for lowering the tone, but on the subject of subjective truth, I was reminded of a John finnemore joke.

"I see you've brought your ridiculous dog with you".

"My dog is not ridiculous"

"Well then whose dog have you brought?" — Isaac

Both funny and salient.

Terrapin and I disagree on a bunch of things.

"Subjective" refers to mental phenomena per se. "Objective" things obtain independently of mental phenomena. — Terrapin Station

While it is true that some philosophers use these meanings, I think it causes more fog than clarity. it's what I am disagreeing with here. This use is an example of the sort of misappropriation Wittgenstein exposed in PI.

"Truth" isn't the same thing as "fact" or "state of affairs." Truth is a property of propositions. — Terrapin Station

Sure - except that "Property" is a bit too much reification for me. I'd say it was a predicate over propositions. Basically the same.

Propositions are the meanings of statements. — Terrapin Station

"Propositions" is a bit too fuzzy for my taste. I prefer 'statement', because it is comparatively simple to set out what a statement is using grammatical rules, A proposition is supposedly what "it is raining" has in common with "es regnet"; saying it is the meaning derives from that. That woks to some extent, but one ought not let it run off. Better to think in terms of use than in terms of meaning.

All three previous sentences are standard in analytic philosophy. — Terrapin Station

Sure, but that does not mean they are not contentious.

More controversially, meaning isn't objective. Meaning is a mental phenomenon. So propositions aren't objective. And as an upshot of this, the truth relation isn't objective, either. There are no truths that aren't believed, but truth isn't coextensive with belief--many beliefs have nothing to do with the truth relation. — Terrapin Station

And here we really disagree.

I think the word "objective" here leads to much confusion. So, if meaning is not objective, it is subjective, a question of taste or opinion. Moreover, if meaning is a metal phenomena, then it happens in each mind, independently; and you and I can never talk about the very same thing.

That strikes me as wrong. Meaning is shared. Indeed, I think it better not to talk about meaning at all, but instead to look at what is being done with the sharing of words. Sentences (propositions, for Terrapin) are not mere mental phenomena.

Hence one can reject the counterintuitive notion that there are no truths that are not believed.

What I find of value in considering such things is the difference between a proposition and the belief in a proposition. In logicians parlance, belief ranges over propositions.

SO "The cat is on the mat" and "It is true that the cat is on the mat" are each only true if the other is true.

In contrast, "The cat is on the mat" and "I believe that the cat is on the mat" are quite autonomous. Each can be true or false, independently of the other.

This point seems lost in so much of what is said in these forums. — Banno

Sometimes the acknowledgement of that gets lost, and sometimes the bigger picture gets lost. In meta-ethics, the application of that would lead to something like error theory. All moral statements would be false or at least unwarranted. Between error theory and moral relativism, the latter seems better. Some people don't end up with this conclusion, though. Some people are dogmatic, and so assert moral objectivism without justification.

I can go by that interpretation. I can apply it. But, in ethics, it doesn't result in moral objectivism.

I like anchovies.