Thank you for this. It's corresponding with some things I've been thinking about for a while and is helping to give those things some more academic framing.
That we are subjectively aware of states of mind we call ‘experiences’ does not imply that what those states of mind are about, their meaning-content, is real or true. The sense of truth/reality is a normative principle that our states of mind are subject to, or else it would hold trivially for all subjective content, therefore would not be normative about the distinction between true/false, real/unreal, therefore meaningless. Another way, our subjective states cannot be subject to a normative principle if the principle is subject to our subjective states. Consequently, the idea of ‘subjective truth’ is equivalent to ‘subjective objectivity’, logically inconsistent, non-sense, and must be rejected. Our truth-claims and subjective ascriptions may be validated and thus made objective only by relating to the subjective states of others in a way that makes common, integrated sense. For this reason it can be said that there can be no monadic, alienated consciousness, experiences or phenomenality, which are properties that are meaningful only for a multiplicity of conscious beings vis-a-vis one another.
I think you are conflating different meanings of truth in your statement above, and also don't address some of the claims in my piece above that I think are important to this discussion.
Note that a claim about the immediate facticity of a given immediate qualitative state is not about "what those states of mind are about, their meaning-content", but simply a question about whether that state occurs at all. So, for example, even if I am dreaming or having a hallucination, I am still having the experience, I am still experiencing the qualia, even if those qualia don't correspond to any objective reality "out there". So, the question is about whether the qualia occur, not whether they represent any objective state other than themselves. This is essential to Kant's noumenal/phenomenal distinction, and Husserl's bracketing.
And any discussion about a "normative principle" is, I think, putting the cart a few miles in front of the horse. The question I pursued in my post above was about different ways of approaching questions of reality, but *not* about which claims would actually end up being regarded as true—I was asking basic methodological questions, not trying to develop a finalized system of knowledge. An effort to ground some normative principle of truth, before we even know what kind of question we are asking, or what kind of evidence would even qualify in our quest, or how we might achieve confidence, is, I think, rather premature.
Your claim about subjective states simply being meaningless without some kind of objective verification is, I think, begging the question. You have begun by assuming that only objective truth claims, verified by a community, are valid, and so have concluded that subjective truth claims can't be valid (and note, again, I'm not sure "truth claims" are even what's at stake above, but rather a more fundamental question of access to any relevant data to begin with). But you would need to show *why* some idea of objective truth had exclusive claim to veracity first. But it seems to me this is what you are assuming, rather than anything you can prove to be necessarily the case.
This is all further complicated by the fact, as I mentioned above, that any objective claim is made *through* our subjective experiences. We make claims about the world only after we have sense impressions, conceptual formations, etc. While we can regard these from an objective standpoint (say, through neurology), that is not how we know them, and, again, any such claim would present itself through the mediation of phenomenality itself. The very thing it seems you want to eliminate is the foundation of the mode of reality or knowledge you prefer. I don't think this is epistemologically tenable.
I do not deny that we have subjective states (experiences); this is self-evident as consciousness. I also do not deny that these subjective states are already meaningful; this is presupposed in identifying them as anything at all. I am saying rather that nothing follows from our subjective states about ‘truth’, apart from the necessary implication of subjectivity that ‘I am’. The truth of subjective states is not in dispute (we all accept it of one another); but what makes its meaning content true These are different categories. I argue that objectivity is a property of the multiplicity of subjects, and is established by means of language, which is already a property we have in common, and is subject to the laws of sense (which are intrinsic and therefore objective for all instances of sense).
Truth is a normative principle by definition (it implies the distinction between true vs false, it makes a claim about something according to common rules), and insofar as you speak a language you are committed to the common sense of its terms. If you want to extend the sense of a term you may not simply contradict the common sense, or the sense of your speech collapses.
Thank you for this. It's corresponding with some things I've been thinking about for a while and is helping to give those things some more academic framing.
That we are subjectively aware of states of mind we call ‘experiences’ does not imply that what those states of mind are about, their meaning-content, is real or true. The sense of truth/reality is a normative principle that our states of mind are subject to, or else it would hold trivially for all subjective content, therefore would not be normative about the distinction between true/false, real/unreal, therefore meaningless. Another way, our subjective states cannot be subject to a normative principle if the principle is subject to our subjective states. Consequently, the idea of ‘subjective truth’ is equivalent to ‘subjective objectivity’, logically inconsistent, non-sense, and must be rejected. Our truth-claims and subjective ascriptions may be validated and thus made objective only by relating to the subjective states of others in a way that makes common, integrated sense. For this reason it can be said that there can be no monadic, alienated consciousness, experiences or phenomenality, which are properties that are meaningful only for a multiplicity of conscious beings vis-a-vis one another.
I think you are conflating different meanings of truth in your statement above, and also don't address some of the claims in my piece above that I think are important to this discussion.
Note that a claim about the immediate facticity of a given immediate qualitative state is not about "what those states of mind are about, their meaning-content", but simply a question about whether that state occurs at all. So, for example, even if I am dreaming or having a hallucination, I am still having the experience, I am still experiencing the qualia, even if those qualia don't correspond to any objective reality "out there". So, the question is about whether the qualia occur, not whether they represent any objective state other than themselves. This is essential to Kant's noumenal/phenomenal distinction, and Husserl's bracketing.
And any discussion about a "normative principle" is, I think, putting the cart a few miles in front of the horse. The question I pursued in my post above was about different ways of approaching questions of reality, but *not* about which claims would actually end up being regarded as true—I was asking basic methodological questions, not trying to develop a finalized system of knowledge. An effort to ground some normative principle of truth, before we even know what kind of question we are asking, or what kind of evidence would even qualify in our quest, or how we might achieve confidence, is, I think, rather premature.
Your claim about subjective states simply being meaningless without some kind of objective verification is, I think, begging the question. You have begun by assuming that only objective truth claims, verified by a community, are valid, and so have concluded that subjective truth claims can't be valid (and note, again, I'm not sure "truth claims" are even what's at stake above, but rather a more fundamental question of access to any relevant data to begin with). But you would need to show *why* some idea of objective truth had exclusive claim to veracity first. But it seems to me this is what you are assuming, rather than anything you can prove to be necessarily the case.
This is all further complicated by the fact, as I mentioned above, that any objective claim is made *through* our subjective experiences. We make claims about the world only after we have sense impressions, conceptual formations, etc. While we can regard these from an objective standpoint (say, through neurology), that is not how we know them, and, again, any such claim would present itself through the mediation of phenomenality itself. The very thing it seems you want to eliminate is the foundation of the mode of reality or knowledge you prefer. I don't think this is epistemologically tenable.
I do not deny that we have subjective states (experiences); this is self-evident as consciousness. I also do not deny that these subjective states are already meaningful; this is presupposed in identifying them as anything at all. I am saying rather that nothing follows from our subjective states about ‘truth’, apart from the necessary implication of subjectivity that ‘I am’. The truth of subjective states is not in dispute (we all accept it of one another); but what makes its meaning content true These are different categories. I argue that objectivity is a property of the multiplicity of subjects, and is established by means of language, which is already a property we have in common, and is subject to the laws of sense (which are intrinsic and therefore objective for all instances of sense).
Truth is a normative principle by definition (it implies the distinction between true vs false, it makes a claim about something according to common rules), and insofar as you speak a language you are committed to the common sense of its terms. If you want to extend the sense of a term you may not simply contradict the common sense, or the sense of your speech collapses.