That's intersubjectivity, not objectivity.
>I'm not at all sure staying subjective yields any insight at all about
>anything, as much as I enjoy Beckett- objectivity gives us the language
>to discuss things. Science is the great sharer- in search of a single
>language- its unique position amongst knowledge systems.
Who said anything about "staying subjective"? My point, or
one aspect of it, is that no matter how objective in your
thinking you become, you still really see things only from
one point of view at a time, in practice. That doesn't
prevent us becoming more realistic, it just denies the
possibility of absolute realism -- which any scientist
should be happy about, because they know that no theory is
above and beyond refutation.
>If you didn't have the objectivity to think that there was a guy here
>named Wade willing to respond to you, well, where would we be?
Your use of "objective" and "objectivity" is woolly in the
extreme. But to answer your point, how do you know that I'm
not just pretending there's a guy called Wade over there,
for fun, without really believing it?
>Ultimately, I'm arguing against omphaloskepsis. Ultimately, I'm arguing
>against any need this universe might seem to have for an observer,
>regardless of the fact that we can't know it without observation.
The answer to that is so obvious, I guess that by making it
I'm just getting onto a roundabout, but here goes anyway:
granted this universe looks like it probably doesn't need an
observer -- but that proposition is untestable, and therefore
unscientific.
>But really, the argument here is yours, isn't it? Isn't the onus on you
>to show us what subjectivity is, and in what way it cannot be encompassed?
I wondered when you'd ask that, instead of just wittering on
about your own somewhat idiosyncratic concepts of subjectivity
and objectivity. But Tim has already given one of the best
answers to this: no understanding of a phenomenon can substitute
for experience of it (unless of course you take "understanding"
to imply "having had the experience").
-- Robin