Arbitrary observations cannot be used for the purpose of validating scientific theories. It is not possible to establish causality between input and output without strictly controlling input. — alcontali

How do you address my comment about subatomic particles, are you implying scientists strictly control subatomic particles?

Furthermore, other researchers must be able to repeat the experimental tests in order to verify the claim. That is why only observations in a laboratory setting may be used in such experimental test reports. — alcontali

That doesn't address what I said. Sure researchers can see repeatedly that stars do not move the way they should according to Einstein's theory, that doesn't imply dark matter exists. If you say it does, then people can equally say that such or such repeated observation implies that God exists, because they have a theory that says that we wouldn't make this observation in the absence of God.

Your views are far outside what is supported by the scientific method. — alcontali

I don't agree there is such a thing as "the scientific method". Whatever method you have in mind, there are plenty of examples of scientists who didn't follow that method when they built their theory (yet their theories are considered to be 'scientific'), or there are plenty of examples of theories/practices that follow that method and yet are considered to be 'unscientific'.

Sadly it seems that you misinterpreted a lot of what I said.

1. What are the implications of holding this view ? — Amity

I mentioned several in my previous post, and I mention some in this post.

3. Yes. It can be frustratingly circular. However, not always and it is important to get a fix on which best describes your point. — Amity

My point was precisely that it is always circular. If you look up the definition of a word (let's call it W), and that definition is made of words W1, W2, ..., Wn, and the definition of W1 is made of words W11, ..., W1n, and the definition of W2 is made of words W21, ..., W2n, and W11 is made of words W111, ..., W11n and so on and so forth, at some point one of these words will be W, and so W is always defined circularly.

What breaks the circularity is associating a word with a mental image, but the fundamental issue is we can't know whether the same word elicits the same mental image in different people. And that becomes obvious when we attempt to discuss what a given word means to us, people come up with all kinds of different stories.

4. I think language is a necessary tool to progress best understanding of another person's perspective.
We don't need to keep a dictionary in our pocket to do this. Most words in common use are understood.
The difficulty lies in giving clear answers to some difficult questions. That can take time and patience.
Not knee-jerk responses. — Amity

Again I feel you misinterpreted me, see my answer to 3. Using the same definition for a word doesn't solve the underlying problem. The same word can elicit different images, different feelings, different thoughts in different people, even if they're using the same definition. The words I say do not convey what's in my mind, they convey your idea of what's in my mind based on what the words mean to you.

5. Hmmm. So, what do you mean by 'reality' ?
My own view is that we are all part of the same world but we have different perspectives and beliefs.
Part of this is examining what exists (what is going on), or what we imagine is the case. — Amity

By one's reality I refer to everything that a given being experiences. Your reality is everything you experience, my reality is everything I experience.

What's the difference between imagination and reality? You classify some experiences as 'real' and some experiences as 'imaginary', what criteria do you use to make that distinction?

There are plenty of things that people used to see as 'real' that they now see as 'imaginary', and plenty of things that people used to see as 'imaginary' that they now see as 'real'. There is this idea that there is a separation between the two, but imagination influences reality and reality influences imagination, they influence one another, they are a whole rather than two separate things. People arbitrarily decide what they call reality and what they call imagination, experiences do not come with a label that says 'real' or 'imaginary', people apply that label themselves.

6. People attempt to do that all the time. Story telling. Just as you have done. — Amity

I was referring to experiences that are very different from others, for instance spiritual experiences. If you've never had them, you wouldn't understand them based on your own experiences, in a similar way that a blind person doesn't understand the experience of color. Many people dismiss spiritual experiences as hallucination or imagination, in other words as something that doesn't really exist, because they haven't had them.

8. Is that your experience ? It's not mine. Not everyone is so quick to stick labels on people. — Amity

It's not what I do, it's what many people do, it's what society does all the time. If your idea of what's 'real' doesn't match the social consensus on what's 'real', then you are deemed to be delusional. People get locked up and forcefully drugged because they are 'delusional'. People's experiences are dismissed as hallucination/imagination if they do not match the consensus 'reality'. Examples are everywhere.

9. Even if we agree that everyone has their own perspective, it doesn't follow that we would listen more to each other. Close listening and wish to better understand is an interpersonal skill important in effective communication. Not everyone is capable of putting their own views on backburner until this is established. — Amity

Again I feel that my point is missed, lost somewhere in the space between you and I.

Many people believe they have access to the one 'reality' that applies to everyone, to "the way things are" that applies to everyone, and use that as a justification to impose things onto others, to tell others what to believe in and what not to believe in, to ridicule those who believe differently or to label them as mentally ill, to force them to agree with "the way things are" because that's the way things are, no matter what they might say, if they protest and refuse to submit then that's because they're really sick or really stupid, and if they don't agree that they are objectively inferior beings then that's all the more reason to force them into submission, because how can they not see the one reality in front of them? Well, it's not that they don't see reality, it's that they don't see your reality.

Granted people could agree that others have a different reality and still not care about the reality of others, but I think it's easier to listen when we don't pretend to know what others experience and what they don't, what's real and what isn't.

As a matter of interest, what have you experienced or read on the subject that gives rise to your issues ?
I haven't read much. However, you have piqued my curiosity. — Amity

They aren't really my issues anymore since I have stopped assuming we see things as they are independently of us, but I think there are issues in believing we see things as they are.

As to how I came to this view, it happened progressively. I think it started when I noticed that we interpret words differently, we don't assign the same meaning to the same word, a given word gives rise to different pictures in different people. For instance what I said to someone would be totally misinterpreted (even though my words were heard correctly), or sometimes we would disagree on something and later on realize that the only reason we were disagreeing is that we interpreted words differently, while deep down we were in agreement. Or sometimes it's the other way around, we believe we agree while under the hood we don't.

I started thinking that if we all used the same definition for each word then there wouldn't be a problem. But then I realized the problem: each word in the dictionary is defined in terms of other words, which themselves are defined in terms of other words and so on and so forth, so fundamentally each word is defined in terms of itself, and using the same definitions doesn't suffice if we don't already have the same picture in mind for the words that make up the definition of a word.

So language cannot tell us what others perceive and think, it only generates an idea in us of what they perceive and think. And there is plenty of evidence that we perceive differently, be it colors, sounds, tastes, smells, but also what we see in a scenery, what we see happen, how it makes us feel, what we focus on. So the more natural assumption would be that we all have our own reality, rather than us all experiencing the same reality.

And then I realized, if someone has an experience that I've never had, how could they communicate it to me? They could try to explain it in terms of experiences I've had, but if it is too different from them all then I wouldn't know what they are talking about. In a similar way that a blind person doesn't know what colors are. And then I thought, if we were all blind except for a few people, and these people tried to communicate to us what they see, wouldn't we label them as crazies, as delusional, as hallucinating?

We're quick to label what we don't understand as hallucination, or delusion, or imagination, and I think there's some danger in that. I think we'd be better off assuming that others have their own reality, that there is not one single reality out there that we're all seeing. And then we would listen more to each other, attempt to understand what others see and think, instead of imposing our own reality onto them, which gives rise to all kinds of conflicts.

There's no difference there. "A particular location at a particular time" is always some location, some thing which is the point of reference. A brain is as good as anything there. — Terrapin Station

But I think there is something you're not taking into account.

If each brain has its own perspective, that not only depends on where it is but also on what brain it is, then you can't know what it's like to be another brain. Even if you somehow self-measured your brain activity and matched it with what you are experiencing, you wouldn't know whether your measure of another brain's activity would match what that brain self-measures, and so you wouldn't know whether the idea you have of what that brain experiences is really what it experiences.

And so even if you see a rock, another brain might see something else at that location, and then why say that the rock you see exists independently of you and of other brains if other brains might not even see it?

There are things that could exist for some people and not for others. And if you agree with this, then saying "we see things as they are from our perspective" reduces to saying "we see what we see", but that doesn't tell us whether others see what we see or even whether what we see exists independently of us. We see what we see, but not what it's like independently of us.

God's existence is considered not a scientific question, in the sense that the scientific method cannot reach it in order to justify an answer. — alcontali

I mentioned above how that idea is flawed. Any observation has to be interpreted in order to say whether it is evidence of something. Scientists would say that the existence of subatomic particles is a scientific question, even though they don't see these particles, they only interpret observations in terms of these particles, while assuming their existence. They could very well interpret observations in terms of God, while assuming his existence, they simply choose not to, based on their personal desires/beliefs.

Still, I am interested more on the Philosophy of Science, I want to understand more the activity we call Science, why hypothesis like God's existence are not considered scientific. I do not feel confident to read Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery, but, after all, what is actually science? — Jorge

It depends who you ask, different people give different definitions for science. I'll try to explain why as best I can.

Many people have attempted to define precisely what science is, to find precise criteria that allow to say whether a hypothesis or theory or practice is scientific or not. But all the definitions they have found fail in some way: either they classify as 'scientific' some hypotheses or theories or practices that are widely considered to be unscientific, or they classify as 'unscientific' some hypotheses/theories/practices that are widely considered to be scientific. This is known in the philosophy of science as the "problem of demarcation".

Popper's criterion of falsifiability fails in that many theories which are widely considered to be scientific are in fact not falsifiable. This is because when an observation appears to contradict a theory, the theory doesn't have to be considered falsified, rather the theory can always be saved by assuming that the difference between observation and theory is due to an effect that wasn't accounted for in applying the theory. For instance, when Uranus was found to move in a way that didn't match Newton's theory of gravitation, Newton's theory could have been considered falsified, or it could be assumed that there was an unaccounted-for effect, an undetected planet that was responsible for the difference between prediction and observation.

As it turns out that undetected planet was eventually detected, it's called Neptune, but even if no such planet was ever found, it could still be assumed there was an invisible undetected planet that is responsible for Uranus' unusual motion, so even if that planet wasn't found the theory wouldn't have been falsified. We have a similar situation these days: stars in galaxies do not move in the way that Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts, but that doesn't falsify the theory, because the theory can be saved by assuming there is invisible matter that is responsible for the discrepancy, and this is what was done: they call it dark matter. And that invisible matter has never been detected.

So when you take that into account, you realize that it's not precise criteria that determine whether a theory is falsified or not, it is people themselves, so-called scientists, based on their own desires: if they want to continue working on the theory then they can always save it from falsification, and if they want to stop working on it they call it falsified and they move on to some alternative. Theories that are called scientific cannot be falsified if scientists decide to not consider them falsified. So if we say that a scientific theory is a theory that can be falsified, and an unscientific theory is a theory that cannot be falsified, then that means it is scientists themselves who decide whether a theory is scientific or not, not based on precise criteria but based on their own desires!

And so the state of affairs is that we have a group of people, who call themselves scientists, who decide more or less arbitrarily which hypotheses/theories/practices are scientific and which aren't, in other words which ones are worthy of consideration and which ones aren't. Which is quite far from the scientific ideal that is sold to people, wherein supposedly science is this precisely defined thing that has authority over non-science because it follows precise principles that non-science doesn't follow.

And then to answer your other question, the hypothesis of God's existence could be considered scientific, but the community of people who call themselves scientists choose to consider it unscientific, because they choose to consider that no observation or experience can be interpreted as evidence of God's existence. On the other hand they choose to consider the hypothesis of dark matter's existence to be scientific, because they choose to interpret some observations as evidence of it, even though one could very well choose to consider that no observation can be interpreted as evidence of dark matter's existence. There is a double standard there.

People who call themselves scientists choose to believe in dark matter but not in God, not because there is evidence for dark matter and not for God, but because they choose on their own to interpret observations as evidence of dark matter and no observation as evidence of God, that's all it boils down to. Then these people use their position of authority to tell others what to believe and what not to believe in, and to ostracize/ridicule those who believe differently. That's the scientific attitude.

You're confusing different ideas, seemingly based on a weird "literal" reading of "seeing things as they are."

No one is saying that we see "everything about everything," from every perspective. The very idea of that is incoherent. First off, any observation (in the scientific sense of that term, where it's simply referring to interactions of things) is going to be from a particular perspective or "reference point" and not from other perspectives (reference points). There are no perspective-free or reference-point-free perspectives/reference points.

The perceptions and thoughts of others are like perceptions and thoughts from the reference point of being the particular brain in question. If you're not that brain, you're not going to observe it from that reference point. — Terrapin Station

It seems to me you're the one confusing things. There are some who seem to believe they have a "view from nowhere" about reality, a perspective-free idea of reality, but I'm not even restricting my discussion to them, my point applies more generally to all who think they see things as they are from a given perspective.

For instance you think that you see a rock as it is from your perspective, and then if you move around it or take it in your hand you're perceiving it from other perspectives, and presumably you think that if you perceived this rock from every possible reference point then you would see everything about this rock.

Now replace rock with brain. If you perceive a brain from various perspectives, if you measure its temperature, density, electrical conductivity, electrical activity, nothing tells you there that this thing perceives or thinks anything at all, even if you somehow observed it from all reference points.

So we're not seeing the perceptions and thoughts of others from a perspective, we're not seeing them at all, at least not with our eyes. Yet our perceptions and thoughts make up our whole existence, so we're missing something huge if we say that we see things as they are from a perspective.

Now you could say that a brain is how perceptions and thoughts of others appear to us from our perspective, but then our perspective shows us a tiny part of what's there, and looking at a thing from all possible reference points is still showing only a tiny part of what it is.

If by "reference point" we mean a particular location at a particular time, then if you looked at a thing from all possible reference points, you still wouldn't see all of it. And if you consider that the brain itself is a reference point, then "reference point" is not characterized by location and time alone but also by the brain present at that particular location and time.

And then if we make a model of reality where we see things as only depending on space and time, we're missing one dimension of reality, the brain, the mind, or however we call it. If we don't take into account the brain dimension, we're only modeling reality from the reference point of a particular brain, or from a set of brains that agree with each other.

And if we treat the brain as a dimension that makes up a reference point, then other brains have perspectives we don't have or can't have. And then it seems quite premature to classify a particular reported experience as some hallucination or delusion, rather than as an observation from a reference point we don't have.

In other words, we don't see things as they are from a particular location at a particular time, we see things from a particular location at a particular time from a particular brain. And that brain dimension is missing in physics and in the minds of those who think they see things as they are from a particular location and time.

But we can communicate with one another to some extent, so let's make use of that ability to learn about what others see from their reference point, rather than dismiss everything they say that doesn't fit our own perspective, which is sadly what most people seem to do, and which in my opinion is responsible for a lot of the wrongs in this world.

But, what is the antinatalist really telling us? — Wallows

In my view, he tells us about his suffering and how he views his life.

It all points again to the idea that we shape our own reality, that we do not witness an objective state of affairs but we are involved in the subjective reality we see. Whether life is seen as a net positive or a net negative is a subjective interpretation based on one's beliefs and experiences.

There are beliefs that lead to have a more negative view of existence than some others. For instance the belief that we are biological machines blindly obeying unchanging laws, or that nothing comes after death, or that procreation is a selfish act to perpetuate one's own genes, or that suffering is more negative than happiness is positive, these seem to be beliefs shared by many antinatalists. But we can equally hold the opposite beliefs and have a rational justification for them too.

Rather than imposing on others what they should or should not do, maybe we should just listen more? Maybe the antinatalists could listen more to the natalists to hear about what makes life good for them, and maybe the natalists could listen more to the antinatalists to hear about their suffering and think about how to relieve it. Really listen.

Yes, go on, what do you mean by something separate from the self? — Wallows

Something that is not the self. If there is only self then there is nothing that is not self, nothing separate from it, nothing independent of it, nothing outside it. If there is only self everything is part of it, everything is connected.

If there are two parts of the self that seem always disconnected, then we could say that the self has not managed to see the connection, or we could say that there is something besides the self.

We could see all of us as part of one self, seemingly disconnected, but connected in a way we have not quite uncovered yet.

Propositions are true, or false, regardless of what you say is true. Justifications are for beliefs, not truths. — Banno

What makes a proposition true? That it matches a 'fact'? What makes the fact a fact, how do you know it's a fact, and then how do you know the proposition matches the fact? Therein lies the issue with the concept of truth.

It could be said that there is more to the self that one's knowledge of the self at a particular time.

As an analogy, if you consider that a lucid dream stems from a self, then there are things you can doubt within a lucid dream, but that doesn't imply in itself that the lucid dream stems from something outside the self. Then continuing with that analogy, to a solipsist everything is a lucid dream, so doubt doesn't imply something outside the self, but only that the self doesn't know itself completely.

We don't have to assume that the self would have to know everything about itself. Then it's a matter of interpretation whether we see the unknown as something separate from the self or as an unexplored part of the self.

A limitation in this kind of discussion is that our language and concepts stem from what we experience, so for instance the very concept of doubt stems from our experiences, and then if you assume that doubt cannot exist if there is only a self then you conclude that there is something separate from the self, but if you assume that doubt is a normal part of the self then it doesn't follow that there is something separate from it.

Giving people land won't work. Most people don't want to build their own house or grow their own food. This is not a realistic alternative for the great majority of people. — T Clark

But you agreed that the great majority of people want decent housing, healthy food and health care, so people want these things but they don't want to work for them directly, they prefer to do something else?

If you focus on people who love their job and earn decent money in a society where they are constantly stimulated to buy the latest shiny thing, watch the latest movie, play the latest game, take care of their persona on social media, then sure they don't care about building their own house or growing their own food, other people can do that for them.

But when you focus on people who hate their job and earn just enough money to pay for rent and food, and have a poor health because they're constantly stressed because of the job they hate that they have to go to every day, and 40 years later they're still not owning a house and they live in poor health or die because of it, I think these people would have liked to have the opportunity to work on building decent housing for themselves and grow some of their food and take care of their health, making use of what they would have learnt in an education that taught them to take care of themselves.

It's misleading to look at what I'm saying through the prism of our current society and our current education system, our education system doesn't teach us to take care of ourselves but to become a useful tool doing some specialized task, so then by the time we become adults who don't own any land, who don't know anything about building a house or growing food, and who have to pay rent, what other choice do we have besides taking a job serving as a (more or less) useful tool for others? By that point building our house or growing our food doesn't seem like an option at all, we feel like we wouldn't have the skills nor the time, and if we hate our job then that takes a toll on our physical and mental health that cannot be reverted by simply trying to take care of ourselves on the weekends. And then some decades later people wake up asking themselves, where has my life gone?

So yea if you love your job and your kids love their job, giving a job to everyone seems like the solution. But when you look at all the people who hate their job and all the negative consequences that has, more jobs doesn't solve the underlying problem.

What is needed is a way for every able-bodied person to have a job which is safe and which pays them enough for them, and their families, to live a decent life with decent housing in a reasonably safe neighborhood, good healthy food, health care, good education for their children, etc. etc. Let's do that. Then we can worry about boredom. — T Clark

Decent housing, healthy food, health care ... wouldn't it be nice if our education was actually focused on teaching us how to create decent housing for ourselves, how to grow healthy food for ourselves, and how to take care of our health?

We do care about housing, food, health, but we often don't care about our boring job, we just do it to get indirectly the things we care about, so I see a huge inefficiency here, I think we would be much more productive if we were directly working for those things we want, and we would be rewarding ourselves accordingly.

And it would be even nicer if each family was given at least a small plot of land, we all inhabit the Earth yet it is seen as normal that a few own most of the land, which leads many to be forced to get a boring job or end up homeless.

I think just those two measures would eventually improve the lives of many people. In the current system there are plenty of bullshit jobs and jobs that make the lives of others worse, which induce huge inefficiencies, so I don't think giving a job to everyone would improve things that much. Able-bodied people rather ought to be given the opportunity to work for themselves, to build their house, grow their food, take care of their health, that work would not be effort wasted.

A theory of physics is fundamentally a method that allows to make predictions from observations. We don't have to see mathematics as an underlying necessity to formulate these methods, we can simply see it as a tool, a tool of thought (I think it should be possible to construct accurate methods that do not rely on mathematics as we know it, but say on pictures or on videos).

A given method can be formulated more simply in some mathematical formalism than in some other, that is using some tool rather than some other, so in that sense experimenting on mathematics can sometimes make it easier to carry out the method that turns observations into predictions. But then I wouldn't ascribe to mathematics some more profound significance than it being a tool of thought, I know some see mathematics as the language of the universe but I don't agree with that view.

Occasionally experiments in mathematics might indirectly lead to new breakthroughs in physics, for instance if the simplicity of a formalism allows to look at a problem in a way that was not possible using a more complicated formalism. But I think that also brings its fair share of potential problems, because when we focus too much on the mathematical formalism we become removed from the physical experiments, and then we forget what made the formalism useful in the first place and we start reifying it as having primacy over experiments.

For instance enormous thought resources have been spent in trying to unify general relativity with quantum field theories, with a focus on mathematics, and not so much on attempting to account for experiments in a different way than through these formalisms. Physicists mostly build on top of the mathematical formalisms of previous theories, instead of starting afresh and attempting to explain experiments without the mathematical baggage of the previous theories.

Allow me to offer again something on this subject.

If we say that something is true, by what method have we arrived at this truth? And why is it true that that method gives truth, and why is it true that the explanation for why that method gives truth is true, and why is it true that the explanation of the explanation ... and so on and so forth.

So from this I think we can agree that truth is problematic, and that it might be better to forgo truth altogether, and just speak of beliefs or assumptions instead?

Earlier in this thread it was mentioned that doing away with truth could be dangerous, because then for instance we can't say it's true that parents shouldn't give rat poison to their children. But I argue that the statement "parents shouldn't give rat poison to their children" doesn't stop working just because we don't assign a truth value to it, even as a belief we can act on it, people act on their beliefs all the time, and then it could be argued that when people act on truth they act on what they believe is true.

In practice I would say truth is treated differently than belief, truth is not seen as belief but as "what ought to be believed". But then there is coercion implicit in the concept of truth, what we consider to be true is not just what we believe, but what we think ought to be believed.

Thoughts?

This is very deep and disturbing. Deep because why then should we favor one theory over the other since the criteria for discrimination can't be truth. Why reject God for instance?

Disturbing because it undermines the foundation of all knowledge. Do we really know anything at all? — TheMadFool

I think ultimately it is our will that determines what theory we favor. And that because our will shapes what we know then our knowledge is impermanent, what we will also is impermanent, but that doesn't have to be disturbing, we can see ourselves as creators of knowledge, as shapers of the world, rather than as passive meaningless slaves obeying to unchanging laws. Many claim to adhere to the Cogito, and yet the rest of the time they behave and think as if they know other things, even if there is no foundation to support them besides their will.

That said, I also think the theoretical perspective he appears to be arguing for can be taken too far. It's in finding the middle ground that things get complicated -- but also, I have some hope, extremely productive. That's why I would like to write a more serious reply. Hopefully sometime in the next week I will. — Theologian

I happen to believe that the perspective I presented can't be taken too far, that it goes all the way, that any theory is ultimately a story we tell ourselves, that if we so wish any theory can be never verified nor falsified. This may lead one to feel dizzy and lost at first, without anything concrete to hang onto, but on the contrary I believe that perspective is liberating: we create our own stories, we create the world we live in, and we can hang on to our stories.

But if you do happen to find a middle ground that puts a limit to that perspective, I would be happy to hear it, because it would mean there is something I haven't taken into account, and I see finding the limits to one's view as the fertile ground for subsequent discoveries and breakthroughs. Take your time though, no rush :)

The usual view is that there is an objective distinction between scientific and non-scientific theories, that there are objective criteria that can demarcate between the two, but finding the limits to that view lies in realizing that it is people's subjective desires that determine whether a theory is classified as scientific or not, rather than there being an objective demarcation between science and non-science. This is known as the demarcation problem, but that problem disappears when we stop assuming that such a demarcation exists independently of us creating it.

Then without that distinction in mind there aren't scientific and non-scientific theories, there are only theories. Theories that tell a story, about what we are, where we come from, where we are going, what's possible and what's not possible, what's going to happen. Stories that shape what we see, how we feel, what we think, what we create. What one story interprets as hallucination, or delusion, or imagination, another would interpret as something concrete, something meaningful. When one story interprets the outer world as primary and the inner world as a byproduct, another story interprets the inner world as primary and the outer world as a byproduct. There are stories that do not care about creating more powerful technology, about sending space vessels to lifeless places, about controlling others and nature, they find relevance and meaning elsewhere.

In one story there is the idea that an asteroid could wipe us out, that the Sun will die, and in that story only more powerful technology could save us, more accurate predictions, but in another story it is that powerful technology that will destroy us because we are not ready to use it, and in that story if we evolved spiritually the asteroid and the Sun would not be a threat anymore.

There is the sense that we do not only create, we also discover. But maybe what we discover is what others have created?

I will. I've come a long way, I deeply care about people and about the world, so when I'm told that I don't, when my intentions/feelings/thoughts get misrepresented repeatedly, when my ideas get ridiculed without being properly considered, I end up reacting like that.

I used to think like you that there is objective truth, but I've found too much that doesn't fit that view. That doesn't mean people can't agree on things, that doesn't mean it's fine to let people suffer, in my view we are responsible for how the world is, we are responsible for how we treat others, we are responsible for how we educate our kids. And obviously there are some who don't agree with that, so why should I say that my view is objective truth? Many don't live by that view. It's my truth however.

I see the concept of objective truth as responsible for a lot of suffering, because people who believe they hold objective truth are not able to listen to others anymore, they attempt to impose their truth onto everyone else, because they feel justified, no matter the consequences. And they don't feel responsible for what they do, because they see themselves as being guided by something independent of them, rather than by their own will.

On the other hand I don't see the concept of personal truth as dangerous in itself. What's worse, parents who believe it is their personal truth that rat poison is good for their kids, or parents who believe it is objective truth? In the first case you might change their minds, in the latter case you can't.

And people's points of view will clash whether they call their point of view personal truth or objective truth. But again, if they see their point of view as personal then they can listen, if they see it as objective truth then they see the other side as wrong anyway.

It seems it was objective truth to you that those who don't believe in objective truth are fine with chaos and murder and suffering and letting people do whatever without interacting with them in any way, and in my view that's why you wouldn't listen to what I said, you specifically said "I don't buy your claimed motivation", you couldn't hear me over the sound of your objective truth, and that's what I see as the real danger.

We don't see with our eyes what others perceive and think, but we can learn about it by listening to them, not just hear the sounds they emit or read their words but really listen, attempt to understand their point of view, put ourselves into their shoes, and in my view that's how we can realize the world is much greater than the one we see with our eyes. While if we believe that we have objective truth we just live within our own bubble, we are disconnected from one another and from nature, and then we destroy one another and nature.

You just keep going on with your misconceptions about my point of view.

I don't see much point in continuing to clarify my view to you, because indeed you really don't care to understand what I say, your self-righteousness has taken over. If you cared to read the thread I already addressed what you believe makes my position incoherent.

In my view we share a common reality to some extent, I believe I am right about what I'm saying about you, and I believe you and I don't interpret words differently, that's my personal truth, and I act on it. Maybe others would have a different point of view about the situation, but I have my own. My idea that there is only personal truth leads me to be open-minded, to listen and try to not impose my point of view onto others. However if you shit on my point of view, if you don't change your course despite my warnings, then expect consequences, I am nice but not too nice. Not much I can do on a forum (maybe mods could warn you?), but in other conditions your incessant arrogance wouldn't get you far. But I think you know that, I happen to believe from our previous exchanges that you know very well what you are doing.

And before you characterize me as a tyrant, I am very open to discussing things calmly and respectfully, when I'm disrespected not so much. In my view you understand that you are disrespecting me, so stop pushing, when I've seen enough you have to deal with me. Then maybe at that point you'll tone down the self-righteousness and start listening a bit more. Others who believe in objective truths that don't match yours might not be as nice as I am with you.

We can continue this in private if you want, you're just shitting on the thread otherwise.

I don't see the mere existence of disagreement as a problem. Some people think their heads are made of glass. They are wrong. No problem there. — PossibleAaran

They are wrong to you. Maybe they don't mean the same thing by "glass". Or maybe they mean to say that they have a bone disease such that their head is fragile like glass. Maybe they have experiences where their head feels like it's made of glass. And so they think their head is made of glass, because to them it describes better what they experience than saying it is made of a skull and so on.

Here is the interesting part. I don't think my thoughts and perceptions depend on reality in some "unknown way". Its actually very well understood. See the biology of perception. Any way, even supposing that my perceptions do depend on reality in some unknown way, it does not follow from this that my perceptions don't show me the way things are. The way that they depend on reality might be compatible with them revealing the way things are.

Do you have an argument in mind for the claim that we can't tell how things objectively are? Perhaps you could make it clearer? — PossibleAaran

Your thoughts and perceptions do not model yourself, they model your thoughts and perceptions of yourself. I think you can agree that with your eyes you don't see yourself as you are, you see a perception of yourself. When you look at other people, you don't see what they perceive or what they think, so you don't see them as they are, they do not reduce to their body, you see an image of them. So when you attempt to model how their perception works, you're not actually modeling how their perception works, you're modeling your image of how their perception works. That's why I say you don't have access to the way things are, you model things within your perceptions and thoughts that do not show you the whole picture, so your models are not models of the whole picture.

Otherwise if you think your perceptions show you the way things are, then you should believe that other people do not perceive nor think anything, because otherwise you would see their perceptions and thoughts in your perceptions.

You’re just axe-grinding against ‘religion’ — AJJ

not wanting to believe in God — AJJ

pretending people who do are looking to “torture people” who believe different — AJJ

It shouldn’t need pointing out that evil isn’t exclusively done by religious believers. — AJJ

Your attitude seems to be we should let people do what they like, including murdering their children, so long as they can provide an excuse. — AJJ

with the world crashing down around you - you say, “Well it’s not actually crashing down,” — AJJ

get upset with anyone who tries to re-establish some order. — AJJ

All of this is in your mind, not mine. You're the epitome of the problem I see with objective truth. You believe your idea of what I think and what I feel is objective truth, rather than your own projections and your own misconceptions. You don't know my intentions. You know nothing about me, you just have what you believe. And I think self-righteous narrow-minded people like you are responsible for making the world I see a worst place to live in, so I won't stop pointing out that your beliefs are not objective truth, they are your point of view. And regarding what you say about me, your point of view is pure crap, because even if I don't know objective truth, I at least know what I think, whereas you don't.

Also I think it's worth pointing out that there is a lot of fudging in so-called scientific theories, in the sense that scientists decide what requires explanation and what doesn't. For instance it seems physicists would claim to have a theory of everything even if their theory doesn't explain how perceptions and thoughts can arise from matter, qualia would be in their eyes something that doesn't require an explanation. Or experiences that do not fit into their theory would be put into the box of hallucination, or delusion, or imagination, as something that doesn't require an explanation.

So then what's the difference between a scientific Theory of Everything where scientists decide arbitrarily what doesn't require an explanation, and a theory of God where people decide that a lot of things do not require an explanation because it's God's will? Both could be said to not explain everything.

So it isn't clear that we could ever get a scientific Theory of Everything in the sense that everyone agrees it explains everything. The only advantage such a theory would have over a basic theory of God is that it makes predictions that turn out to be observed, but again even these predictions could be integrated into a theory of God.

So I see the ToE and God as two different points of view, and people simply pick the one they want, or even another one because as I said multiple ToE's could be formulated, depending on how the theory explains things and on what is assumed to not require an explanation.

The answer is simple: a scientifically valid ToE makes concrete predictions about what will happen. It successfully explains everything only so long as those predictions are never proven wrong.

I'm reminded of Popper's contrasting of Einstein's theory of relativity with Freud's psychoanalysis. What renders relativity impressive (and scientific) is that it says exactly what will happen. If something different ever happens, the theory will have been proven wrong. Psychoanalysis, by contrast, seems capable of telling some kind of story about events no matter what happens.

The same problem exists with God. Or at least, with many formulations of God. — Theologian

That's the story scientists tell themselves, but that's not how it is. Popper didn't say a theory is proven wrong, but that it is falsified. And even if he didn't realize it at the time, falsified doesn't mean proven wrong, roughly it just means scientists agree to stop working on it.

At first glance what you say seems reasonable, if a prediction of the theory doesn't match what is observed, then the theory is wrong. But a theory has variables, degrees of freedom, there is a very wide range of observations that are consistent with a theory (actually strictly speaking all observations can be made consistent with a theory). So it is with Einstein's general relativity, there are plenty of observations that do not match the theory's predictions when we take into account the known and inferred matter-energy in the universe (galaxies, black holes, stars, planets, dust ...).

At that point the theory could have been considered falsified, but scientists chose to save the theory by assuming that there is invisible matter and energy that makes up most of the universe, not invisible because it is hard to see like interstellar dust but because it doesn't emit any light, because it doesn't interact electromagnetically, that invisible matter could be right next to you or going through you and you wouldn't detect it. And there is no independent evidence for it, it was just made up to fill the gap between the theory's predictions and observations. No matter the observations we can adapt the dark matter and dark energy distributions so that the theory fits what we see.

So Einstein's general relativity tells a story all the same. It does make predictions that fit observations without always having to tweak the variables, but these predictions could be integrated in a theory of God and we could say that the regularities we find in the universe are God's will.

The Holy Grail would be a theory that explains everything in the simplest way without having to constantly tweak variables as we make new observations. But even then we can ask ourselves, why would a simpler theory be more true than a more complex one if they make the same predictions? Presumably if the theory claims to explain everything, it would have to explain why it is the correct one rather than all the other ones that make the same predictions. Or each of these theories could be said to be one way of looking at things, and that there are always a multiplicity of points of view.

Maybe it’s easier because you think you can do no wrong. — AJJ

No, it's easier because you don't feel like your point of view is more important than everyone else's.

The parents are feeding rat poison to their children. The children are dying. The parents, however, believe it’s true the rat poison is harmless and they’re actually looking after them. According to you they’re not wrong. — AJJ

According to me they shouldn't do that. I wouldn't say they're objectively wrong, because what if it's not rat poison? What if the children aren't dying? What if these children have such a peculiar metabolism that it isn't bad for them? What if the parents have found that mixing rat poison with something else is actually good for health?

If I believe the children are dying because of what their parents feed them, as I mentioned I would react, I would go talk to them, attempt to clarify the situation, see if I haven't misinterpreted something, attempt to understand the motivations of the parents. I wouldn't storm in and torture them because supposedly I have access to objective truth and I can't be wrong.

You're assuming it is objective truth that they are feeding them rat poison, that the children are dying, and that the children are dying because of what they're being fed. Isn't it possible that you could be mistaken about any of those? Or are you so better than everyone else that you have access to objective truth? Are you God maybe?

You take this holier-than-thou attitude with your appeal to emotion using an extreme example, but I'm more worried about all the other more frequent situations, where you would impose what you want onto others because you are convinced you are right and others are wrong. Silencing or locking up or torturing people you see as heretics because they have beliefs or practices that don't match yours.

The thing is you can oppose tyranny and believe in objective truth, and you can be tyrant who believes there is no objective truth; so I don’t buy your claimed motivation.

If it’s not objectively true rat poison harms people (barring some peculiar exceptions maybe), then there’d be no problem arbitrarily feeding it to children. Its harms might be true to you, but not to the parents feeding it to their kids. So there’s no problem with them doing that, right? — AJJ

I think it's harder to be a tyrant when you see that your point of view is a point of view, rather than when you believe it applies to everyone everywhere for all eternity.

Feeding rat poison to children would be a problem to me, it wouldn't be a problem to these parents feeding it to their kids, otherwise presumably they wouldn't do it. At that point I would ask them why they do it and why they believe it's not dangerous, and if they believe it's dangerous then why do they want to hurt their kids. Maybe it will turn out that what I thought was rat poison was something else, or that they mistaked it for something else, or some other reason that doesn't necessarily imply they were trying to kill their kids. Not believing in objective truth doesn't mean we can't interact with people, or that we can't agree on some things. I don't know about you, maybe to you it would be objective truth that the label on the container meant it really was rat poison and you would torture these parents without asking them anything.

humans must work together and agree on some things in order to make a society work. Common values is important to some extent. — christian2017

Some humans already agree on some things. What about those who don't agree, what should we do in your opinion? Force them to change their mind? Lock them up? That's not the dream society I have in mind. That's a society ripe for totalitarianism, tyranny. Sure, tyranny seems fine when you're the tyrant.

I’m afraid, or troubled anyway, by you lot; because I think you’re motivated in your belief by a desire to avoid right and wrong. — AJJ

Speaking for myself, that's not the desire motivating me. I'm rather motivated by the desire to combat those who carry out and justify the worse atrocities in the name of objective truth, while it's only their truth, they pretext they're doing it in the name of some higher principle and so they aren't responsible, supposedly the culprit is not them it's something outside of them, but they are responsible. Impose your truth onto others, silence all who disagree, and your truth becomes objective truth, something that people must not and cannot question. Then kids grow up into a world where they are made to accept the truths of tyrants.

You are responsible for how you treat others, regardless of whether you call it right or wrong. Saying truth is personal is not a pretext to go around making others suffer, you create your truth doesn't mean something outside you is forcing you to create a truth where making others suffer is fine. You participate in shaping the world, you decide how you want to shape it. If you decide to shape it in a way that you enslave others and kill for fun, that says more about you than about those who don't think there is such a thing as objective truth, beyond a concept in the mind of those who want to impose their truth onto everyone else.

What I was saying was you can’t live consistently as if there’s no objective truth. You have to behave as if certain things are objectively true, such as that rat poison affects the body differently to aspirin. — AJJ

You can behave as if certain things are true to you, you don't have to behave as if they are true independently of you, because that leads you to want to impose it onto others. Let's say you think it is objective truth that aspirin is good to give to people who suffer, then you give it to someone and they suffer even more, well turns out that wasn't objective truth, back to the drawing board. That something works for you in some way doesn't mean it's gonna work the same way for everyone else. Or you've never had spiritual experiences and you think it is objective truth that spirituality is bullshit, some mass delusion, well that's your truth, not objective truth.

So you think that everything interacts with everything else.

Does a pencil on someone's desk in Japan necessarily interact with a glass in my cupboard in New York? — Terrapin Station

You frame your question in a way you're already implicitly assuming that there is such a thing as a pencil having independent existence and a glass having independent existence.

With that assumption sure, if suddenly everyone dies and the glass gets swallowed in a volcano then it hasn't had a chance to interact with the pencil.

This whole thread is about seeing how that assumption is not warranted, so if you are not willing to tentatively let go of this assumption this discussion with you won't lead anywhere.


In another attempt to clarify, there are many people like you who believe that many things exist independently of minds. They wouldn't say for instance that a pencil in Japan interacts with a glass in New York, but they would say that the pencil interacts with the desk it is on, with air molecules to some extent, photons that reach it and so on, they do say that things interact with their surroundings. And that these surroundings interact with their surroundings and so on. In that view it could be that the glass and the pencil cease to exist before their influence reaches the other, however the glass and the pencil wouldn't have popped out of existence, they would have changed or dispersed into something else, into some other shape or some other dispersed molecules, and those would be influenced by what was previously the glass and the pencil.

But then even though the pencil is influenced by its immediate surroundings, its immediate surroundings have been influenced by their surroundings which were influenced by their surroundings and so on, so if we say that the pencil is only influenced by its immediate surroundings we're missing a big part of the picture: the pencil is influenced by what has occurred before, even far away. In that sense, when you say things such as the existence of a rock doesn't depend on us, that it will keep existing independently of us after we die, I don't agree, what exists and how it exists will depend on what we did. Same goes with all the other things, and so everything is interconnected, not through the present but through the past.

So I don't see that pencil and that glass as having independent existences, they are there as a result of chains of events that depended on one another, that particular glass could not exist without that particular pencil also existing. They don't interact in a physical sense or in the sense instantaneous action at a distance, but in the sense that one couldn't exist the way it does now without the other existing the way it does now, they are connected in that way. The world is not a sum of independent existences.

This is just one part of my point, but apparently this required clarification. Hopefully you can make some effort to try to understand the rest, that is if you care at all about my point of view, otherwise I'm not gonna keep making long replies to clarify everything that you misinterpret. Words can be interpreted in various ways, but if you interpret too many words differently than I do we'll just keep talking past each other, any attempt at clarification will use words that you interpret differently and we'll never get to the point that you see what I mean.

So the assumption of a 'whole" is just the disguised assumption of an independent thing, which is what you were trying to get away from in the first place. Dismissing "independent thing" for "whole" does nothing for you because a whole is necessarily an independent thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

The whole is the interdependent things, there is no sense in saying that these interdependent things are independent, independent from what?

I don’t want the confusion to disappear. Knowing what’s true is important, and so is being unsure of things. It doesn’t seem coherent to say there is no objective truth, and I assume it can be known; I don’t know how a person could consistently live otherwise. — AJJ

If you assume it can be known, then how? Can you give any example of such objective truth?

You can live consistently by your truths, that's what people do. Some believe in a higher truth that doesn't depend on them, but again I simply see that truth as their truth.

Is it objectively true that the Sun won't suddenly disappear tomorrow? How could you know? I don't live by objective truths I cannot know, I live by my own truths. And in my view others do the same, it's just that sometimes they believe their truth applies everywhere, to everyone, for all eternity, regardless of whether others disagree with them.

What I wonder is why do you so badly need a truth that doesn't depend on you? What are you afraid of?

if i say nothing matters and then i have somethings that i hide that are in fact important. That is a contradiction. — christian2017

To say that in my view there is no objective truth is not to say that nothing matters, it is to say that some things matter to me, and what matters to others is not necessarily the same as what matters to me. Why would something not matter to me just because it doesn't matter to everyone?

Nevertheless a common denominator is that free will is the ability to choose without influences that we can't control.

My question is is the statement "Free will exists/doesn't exist" an empirical claim or not? — TheMadFool

The problem is it can always be said that there are influences we can't control even if we don't notice them. Even if we thought that there is no influence we can't control, it could be said that there might be something we can't control that influences our thoughts and we don't notice it.

What we can check empirically is whether we notice any influence that we can't control. One example of such influence is that when we jump upwards we always seem to get brought down to the ground, we can't seem to choose to keep going up. So in appearance at least we don't seem to have complete free will, there are some influences that we can't seem to control. But then it could be argued that maybe it's possible and we just haven't found out how yet.

Also I think that whether we have free will or not is a personal view: if you don't care about having superpowers, and whenever you make a choice there is seemingly no influence you can't control that is leading you to choose one way or another, then you could say that you have free will regarding what matters to you.

Another thing to consider is that we share the world with others who have a will of their own, and their will could be seen as an influence we don't have complete control over. But then if we had complete control over what they will then they couldn't have free will, if anyone had complete control over what others will then they couldn't have free will. But our will is a limiting factor to the free will of others only to the extent that we prevent them to choose something.

I wonder why there is such a need to know what reality independent of us is like. We're part of the reality, so it isn't independent of us, so why think about what reality would be like if we weren't there, what's the point? We're there.

We're shaping reality, so I think it would be more productive to think about how we're shaping reality, and how we can shape it, rather than about what it would be like without us. It's like we want to believe we don't exist, that we have no influence, that we're just passive observers, as if we were already dead, but we're alive, so let's think and act like it.

Because the thing they’re matching is not in a person’s mind. I’ve been asking the whole time: What role does a person play in correspondence, beyond thinking up the proposition?

Checking whether a proposition matches is beside the point. What I’m saying is they can match whether anyone checks or not. There’s an independent reality in play; if a proposition conforms to it then it’s true regardless. A proposition conforming to reality would mean it described a specific event, such as a particular cat being on a particular mat, with that event being a reality. — AJJ

Do you believe that objective reality can be known in any way or not?

If not, what point is there in talking about what conforms or doesn't conform to it?

If yes, how? If your thoughts and perceptions belong to that objective reality but you don't know in the first place how that reality influences your thoughts and perceptions, how can you know whether your thoughts and perceptions conform to objective reality?

It seems to me we can't know anything about it, so if we stop thinking about what reality independent of us is like then the conundrum disappears. Instead we only talk about what we experience, and when what we say conforms to what we experience according to us then that's our truth, and when it doesn't conform then that's a lie. Doesn't all the confusion disappear that way?

No. Tyranny can also be when war lords rise up due to a power vacuum caused by a corrupt society that isn't willing to be tamed to some measure. Standards are very often a good thing. War lords don't care about wishy washy touchy feely viewpoints of spoiled brats, they seize opportunities regardless of people's philosophical viewpoints. — christian2017

War lords can rise precisely when society is willing to be tamed. They are the ones who impose standards on you to tyrannize you, and they don't care whether you like these standards or not. You're not gonna stop one with a neat set of moral codes, your rules will be replaced by his.

Excessive drugs have problems, extreme sexual perversion has problems (not homsexuality but extreme sexual perversion), offending others is something everyone does even sometimes when we say nothing at all (life is extremely complicated). — christian2017

Excessive insistance on moral codes has problems too. If you force others to abide by moral rules, that's oppression, it could even be tyranny, and many people wouldn't agree to a set of moral codes in which oppression is morally acceptable. In my view ultimately it is the will of people that is responsible for how the world is, not the existence or non-existence of agreed upon moral codes.

Instead of fearing excessive drug usage or extreme sexual perversion, we can help people to change, try to understand them, without forcing them to change. In my view when people do these things and it's a problem for them, it's because they're escaping something they perceive as worse.

I would hate to think that I am dependent upon something just because I perceive it — Arne

How else could it be? Do you see yourself as unchanging within a changing world? You depend on the thing because it changes you.

If no one is claiming that there's anything that interacts with nothing, then why would we not only point out that it's not the case that there isn't anything that interacts with nothing, but essentially start a thread arguing against the idea?' — Terrapin Station

You misunderstand my point. People don't claim that anything interacts with nothing, they claim that there are things that do not interact with some other things, that's what I'm arguing against.

If we say that two things exist independently, we're saying that one can exist without the other, in other words they do not necessarily interact. I disagree that such independence exists.

Assume there is an objective reality and you belong to it. You do not see things as they are independently from you, you're involved in the act of observation, a perception results from an interaction between a thing and you. Your perception of a rock requires you and a thing to be there. Your perception of a rock is not the thing, it is your perception of the thing. You never see independent things, as in things existing independently of you.

But even if you believe that you do see independent things, that your perception of them somehow doesn't depend on you, when you model that world you realize that these things interact with one another and with you. So there is no independence here, if one thing stops existing it has an influence on everything else, and so the everything else is not what it was before, it has stopped existing, it has changed into something else.

Which is why I say that everything is interdependent, if you remove something from the whole everything changes, the whole is not the sum of its parts, because these parts all influence one another.

And so modeling a part of the whole and generalizing it to the whole is not modeling the whole, it is modeling something else, it is missing something essential. The current laws of physics model a part of the whole, their validity does not extend to the whole. They can't be used to say what happens to our mind when we die or how the whole will be in the future (cosmologists talk of the heat death of the universe as if their laws applied to the whole).

Another implication is that since our minds belong to the whole, then they have an influence on it. Our thoughts, perception, imagination have an influence on the whole, they are not only influenced by it, and they do not abide to the laws of physics.

If Post Modernism was correct, i feel that there would be no real lasting basis for ethical conduct and morality. Lets say we some how proved that post modernism is the logically correct, i believe society would quickly collapse due to people no longer agreeing on moral principles. — christian2017

What is the real lasting basis for morality that the widespread materialism offers? In that philosophy you're gonna die, everyone is gonna die, there is nothing after death, while you live you are an aggregate of particles that obeys unchanging laws, your thoughts and feelings are determined by these laws, what moral basis does this view possibly offer?

What is it that prevents most people from going around killing others? Themselves. There is not some higher agreed upon principle that's stopping them, they simply don't want to do it.

If people can willingly disagree with whatever moral principles others come up with, then it's not moral principles that hold society together, it is the will of people.

If you can explain a theory in one way, and then in a totally different way, they are just thought experiments and "just so" theories and don't really tell us much other than the answer can be thought of in various different explanatory models. — schopenhauer1

But any finite set of observations can be explained in many totally different ways. Our current mainstream theories are not the only possible explanation, they are simply the commonly accepted explanation.

If we dont mean the same thing when we use the same word then we are talking past each other. — Harry Hindu

That's what I implied, you don't understand me.

Delusions would be just as true as any deductive conclusion, which is preposterous. — Harry Hindu

Preposterous in your own view, indeed. The funny thing is you elevate deductive conclusions as more true than delusions, but you can't deductively conclude what is a delusion and what isn't, so your stance is preposterous to me.

So you're misusing language by implying that you are talking about other's views when you're really talking only about your view. So you're really talking past everyone who talks about their views or about a mind independent world. What is the point of having such a conversation? What would it be about? — Harry Hindu

I'm not misusing language, I made it clear several times that I am talking about my own view, I'm not gonna start every sentence with "to me", "in my view", it's implied. I also talk about what the view of others is in my view. To me, others are only talking about their own view as well, that doesn't mean I find what they say useless, because as I mentioned, in my view again, our realities intersect partially, and we can communicate about our realities through speech to some extent.

Another misuse of language. You're misusing the term "reality". — Harry Hindu

I'm using the term "realities", to refer to the idea that we don't have access to the supposed objective reality, rather each person has their own reality, their own set of experiences, truths, facts. You could see it as a neologism, seeing it as a misuse of language is, again, your own point of view, not an objective one, and not mine.

I wouldn't talk about hallucinogens had I not already had the experience of taking them. — creativesoul

They do not have the same effects, have you tried the one I mentioned? Also the effects can be different on different people.

If it doesn't make sense or is not profoundly enlightening when you're sober, then it doesn't make sense when you're not... the writings, that is. The only reason it seems to make sense when under the influence is because you're under the influence. — creativesoul

That's not my point of view. If you are blind and you take something that makes you see, would you call it an hallucination? The only reason you wouldn't call it an hallucination is if what you saw is part of the socially accepted reality. If most people were blind, colors would not be part of the socially accepted reality, then if you saw a world of colors others would deem you to be hallucinating. In my view, what we call a reality and what we call hallucination is a social convention.

If you are blind and you take something that makes you temporarily see, and you write about what you see, when you become blind again what you wrote doesn't make as much sense, not because your thoughts have become clear again, but because you don't have access anymore to what you were seeing. That's how I see it. What I saw was real to me, as real as anything else we call real, but I didn't see with my eyes, I was seeing some other way. If you can't relate to what I'm saying, then again to me that means you haven't had the experiences I've had, you try to rationalize what I say so it fits your world view, but your rationalization doesn't explain what I experienced, only to you it does. Using a common language is not sufficient to understand one another, words can't communicate experiences that the other hasn't had.

So, again, we have different realities, there is only a problem if you force the assumption that you have access to objective reality. The problem I see with your rationalization is that if you were blind, you would explain away reports of visual experiences the same way you explain away my experiences. Unless the majority disagreed with you, in which case you would probably go with the majority and accept that others see while you don't.

As I use the phrase, to say thay something is objectively true is to say that it corresponds to the way things are, and this may hold whether or not anyone agrees that it does. — PossibleAaran

The problem is how can you tell the way things are? You can tell the way things are to you, if others disagree with your idea of the way things are what then? Who is right?

If you belong to an objective reality, you don't look at it from the outside, you are within, your thoughts and perceptions depend on that reality in some unknown way, so you don't have access to the way things are, your thoughts and perceptions do not show you the way things are, they show you something that depends on the way things are. If we can't tell what's objectively true then what's the point of using the concept?

But that problem disappears if we stop assuming we have access to an objective reality, rather each of us has their own reality. If we want to assume there is an underlying objective reality, then we can say that our realities stem from the objective reality, but we can't say what the objective reality is, so there's no point in talking about objective truth.

the people at the air craft control tower need to agree on objective truth — christian2017

They share a truth. There are some aspects most of us agree on, and there are some aspects where most of us disagree. If you only focus on the agreements you get the idea that we share the same reality, but when you focus on the disagreements you realize that it's not so simple.