I'm positing six realities. Objective, subjective, liquorice-flavoured, upside-down, yellow, and Iranian.
I infer, DrK, that you think I'm plucking the category of consensus reality out of thin air.
I'm not, really. It's a perfectly respectable philosopical concept, which unlike 'liquorice-flavoured reality', has an entry in wiki; that entry gives a definition and explains its use in understanding materialism, objectivism and idealism, the tools we are using in this discussion to analyze beauty.
I introduced the concept to possibly resolve a specific ambiguity in the previous part of the discussion.
I saw the source of confusion as residing here:
Previously, 'objective' was defined EITHER as
"That which is true, irrespective of any observer",
OR
"That which is true, according to all observers".
(I have no problem with either definition: the first dictionary I went to made the same distinction :
existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality;
of or pertaining to something that can be known)
What I have been trying to do is to point out that these are two radically different definitions, (the second requires observers, the first doesn't), and failure to distingush between them leads to confusion.
And I then pointed out that some philosophers, many years ago, decided to attach the label 'consensus reality' to the second definition, in order to make the distinction clear, and thereby improve communication.
So it wasn't an arbitrary categorization, DrK, it was a labelling of a distinction that already existed.
And the reason that it is a useful distinction is that it creates a place for science ie the 'facts' produced by observers, to exist; 'facts' of greater reliability than our subjective opinion.
Scientific knowledge cannot belong in the objective category (in the first sense of 'irrespective of any observer'), because as you put it in your example "time and space are completely separate and not observer-dependent, a statement that we now know to be completely wrong".
Agreed. Science requires observers, right ?
And so if we're also hopefully all agreed that science doesn't belong in the subjective category (as opinion, as you put it, Moby), then it makes sense to me to put it in the 'consensus' category.
And this categorization/labellng seems to accord with what I quoted before from wiki, that the 'facts' of science are not facts but hypotheses, provisional truths liable to disproof.
In other words, these 'facts' are not objective truths.
As flimflam confirmed (my bolding)
That I am not sure about anything in objective reality does not mean that I doubt specific things in objective reality; it means that I doubt everything in objective reality. This doubt is based upon the question of whether my subjective experience is in any way a reliable representation of objective reality
Agreed, flimflam. Solipsism cannot be disproved. We might be brains-in-vats, or a computer simulation, or someone else's dream.
Therefore, I cannot be absolutely certain of even simple scientifc observations such as the Earth goes round the Sun, because at any moment I might be woken up in my brain-vat to discover that not only does the Earth does not go round the Sun, but the Earth and the Sun never even existed in the first place.
Until that happens, I'm happy as I'm sure all of you are, to go along with appearances, and to go along with the provisional truths that science provides, and that the world and the universe operate as science currently tells us they do, until proven otherwise - not to do so would be crazy, as someone else said.
I hope I've been a bit clearer.
And I apologize to those who think I'm been going off-topic, but in my defense I thought I was just carrying on a particular strand of the thread which was still of interest. Which it does still seem to be.
What exactly
is the topic, anyway ?
And I can only swear, with my hand on my heart, that there is no significance in the coincidence of my arrival here with BF's departure.
By the way, I've written a little paper on the relationship between Subjective, Consensus, and Objective, which for short I call SCO012, perhaps some of you might be interested in.... (
wilts under immediate onslaught of rotten fruit from the audience, retires in ignominy)
Gnu.
PS I still want to respond to some comments on the beauty aspect of this, but only if I'm welcome to, and if people are interested. No problem if not, I'll be quite happy to sit here with my photographs of AJ and do a bit more 'research.'
