What is truth?

[Hobbes' Choice]

It is not even wrong.

You are not saying anything at all.
You are saying objectivity is obvious

You'd have to try to explain why "Objectivity is not obvious" is meaningful but "Objectivity is obvious" is not. (Although I doubt we'd agree on philosophy of meaning, so that will probably just turn into a mess, but you can try to explain it and maybe we can avoid a philosophy of meaning discussion.)

that which is obvious is objective.

That part I don't agree with.

But you are not saying why you are replacing the word objective when you mean obvious.

And I don't know why that would seem to be the case to you--that it seems like I'm doing some sort of word replacement. You said, "Objectivity is not obvious." I disagreed and said, "Objectivity is obvious." So the question is then how we figure out who is right.

That is not the question.
The things you observe are not objective, because without the reflexion in what is subjective; objectivity means nothing.
When you see a tree there is nothing here about the object/subject dichotomy. It's just a tree.
That you see a slightly different tree to me is a negotiation about our subjective experience and the commonalities and that is objective. This is not the complete tree, not the thing in itself. But nothing more that what we can agree is in fact before us.
`That's why I said you are not even wrong.

[Terrapin Station]

That is not the question.

It's the question I'm interested in. That you won't address it makes me not very interested in attempting a conversation. Both because that's what I'm interested in, and because if there's no give and take re interests it turns me off.

[Hobbes' Choice]

That is not the question.

It's the question I'm interested in. That you won't address it makes me not very interested in attempting a conversation. Both because that's what I'm interested in, and because if there's no give and take re interests it turns me off.

Your problem is that you really have no idea what is meant by objective and subjective.
As a result you don't really have a question. You have not engaged with what I have said.

"Who is right?" is meaningless. It's what you can share in common from your experience and sensation.

[Terrapin Station]

Your problem is that you really have no idea what is meant by objective and subjective.

Well, I know what I mean by the terms of course. If you mean that I don't know what you mean by the terms, that's probably true if you mean something different than I do.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Your problem is that you really have no idea what is meant by objective and subjective.

Well, I know what I mean by the terms of course. If you mean that I don't know what you mean by the terms, that's probably true if you mean something different than I do.

What makes something obvious, objective?

[Terrapin Station]

Your problem is that you really have no idea what is meant by objective and subjective.

Well, I know what I mean by the terms of course. If you mean that I don't know what you mean by the terms, that's probably true if you mean something different than I do.

What makes something obvious, objective?

Re the way I use the terms: what makes something obvious is that it's either literally or figuratively "right in your face"--figuratively if we're talking about something inutitive or whatever, and where it's difficult to make sense of how one could deny whatever it is.

What makes something objective is that it's not mental phenomena.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Well, I know what I mean by the terms of course. If you mean that I don't know what you mean by the terms, that's probably true if you mean something different than I do.

What makes something obvious, objective?

Re the way I use the terms: what makes something obvious is that it's either literally or figuratively "right in your face"--figuratively if we're talking about something inutitive or whatever, and where it's difficult to make sense of how one could deny whatever it is.

What makes something objective is that it's not mental phenomena.

But you can not know anything else, which pretty much screws you from the start.

[Terrapin Station]

But you can not know anything else, which pretty much screws you from the start.

Anything else other than mind I'm guessing you're saying.

So again, when I say, "You can know something other than mind," the way we show that I'm mistaken and that we can't know something other than mind is by __________ ?

[creativesoul]

Hobbes' is conflating belief and truth.

Nope.

If you think you have identified an issue then explain, otherwise remain silent.

That's waaay too rich coming from you Hobbes'. I've already explained. You ignored it. It's clear, belief is insufficient for truth. Belief can be false. Truth cannot.

[creativesoul]

Hobbes' is right Terrapin. Best to drop the objective/subjective dichotomy. It is fraught...

[Hobbes' Choice]

Hobbes' is conflating belief and truth.

Nope.

If you think you have identified an issue then explain, otherwise remain silent.

That's waaay too rich coming from you Hobbes'. I've already explained. You ignored it. It's clear, belief is insufficient for truth. Belief can be false. Truth cannot.

Thanks, but. 1) I'm not that stupid. 2) It's not relevant to the topic at hand.

[Hobbes' Choice]

But you can not know anything else, which pretty much screws you from the start.

Anything else other than mind I'm guessing you're saying.

So again, when I say, "You can know something other than mind," the way we show that I'm mistaken and that we can't know something other than mind is by __________ ?

We interpret things outside out mind, true. They are constructs; a negotiation between the mental and what you can infer is outside your mind. This is the essence of the subject/object dichotomy. For objective statements to be made it always requires comparison and reference to other's view points.
Until your construct is compared with members of your language community you have no objectivity.

[Londoner]

That's not my view of course, but on your view, you have absolutely no grounds to believe that you have eyes, hands to put in front eyes, and so on. Any argument you'd attempt to give in support of believing such things would work just as well for believing that there are trees that are independent of you, etc.

And on your view, where objectivity is obvious, I can know for sure that I do have eyes etc. And on examining them I find that they work by sending electrical signals along my nerves. Therefore, I know the things I see like trees must be reconstructed in my brain from these electrical signals.

Nor is it a question whether things are independent of me. I can posit (because sensations arise against my will) that there are things that exist independent of me, but that is not what we are discussing. We are discussing whether these sensations are 'objectively obvious', that they directly represent those independent things. In other words, it is one thing to posit that the pain in my toe was caused by something external, it is another to assume my idea of that cause is identical to that pain. And indeed, we don't.

Me: Objectivity is not obvious because we know we can be mistaken about it.
You couldn't possibly know that you could be mistaken about it if you believe you can't access it. You need to be able to access it to know you've gotten something wrong.

I do not need to know that. To know I can be mistaken all I need to note is that those things I take to be objective contradict each other. I have given one example above; that my idea that my eyes somehow admit external objects directly into my consciousness is contradicted by an examination and testing of how the eye actually works.

And of course, there are many other examples where we know that what we might take to be 'objectively obvious' is mistaken, not because we have access to an indubitably objective truth, but because they are inconsistent. That is why we are obliged to select. At its crudest, do we simply think that 'seeing is believing'? No; it is only one of the things we take into account when building our ideas of the external world, the point being that we do the building, we are not passive receptors.

[Scott Mayers]

[* All that 'validity' means is that given true premises, the conclusion must also be true.]

Bullshit. Validity refers to correct inference. An argument is valid if the conclusion follows from the premises and invalid if not. An argument can have true premisses, a true conclusion, but be invalid(if the conclusion doesn't follow). It can also have true premisses, a false conclusion and be invalid(must be in that case). Thus, what you say above isn't correct...

Given true premisses and an invalid argumentative form, the conclusion is not necessarily true. The only time a conclusion 'must' be true is if it follows from true premises(if the argument has both true premisses and a valid argumentative form).

It is precisely as I said. For any argument to be 'valid' only means that AT LEAST given true premises, the conclusion MUST be true as well. To assert that they must 'follow' connectively, this is part of "soundness". This is for LOGIC in general. If you limit this to ONLY formal deduction, then we use the extended 'soundness' between the connective premises as part of that validity. BUT BECAUSE logic also extends to INDUCTIVE arguments, then the least qualifying factor is that to whatever the conclusion states, it has to be at least based on ONE premise to be either in whole or part, of that conclusion.

"Truth" is just an IDENTITY concept that relates two or more things to exist simultaneously in one universal, as a precondition.

[Terrapin Station]

Hobbes' is right Terrapin. Best to drop the objective/subjective dichotomy. It is fraught...

Well, that's certainly a persuasive argument.