RE: subjective reality

From: Lee Corbin <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 08:49:53 -0700

Bruno writes

> Le 07-août-05, à 21:24, John M a écrit :

> > Reality is supposed to be something independent from
> > our personal manipulations
>
> Srtictly speaking I do not agree. Some satellites of Earth are human
> made, and local "physical reality" can depends, at least locally, on
> us.

Sure, but maybe John didn't really mean that. After all, any
action I take affects the physical world.

> > Once we 'subject' it to our personal 'mind' and its
> > own distortions it is "subjective", not objective anymore.
> > So it looks like "subjective reality" is an oxymoron.
>
> I'm afraid you do some category error.

Oh, come on. It's clear that he just wants to use words in
this way :-)

> "subjectivity" is not anything you want to be true. The simplest
> example is "Mister X suffered from headache (that day)". It could
> be a subjective reality, for Mister X, independently of our current
> ability to verify that fact.

That is one way to speak, and an efficient one for daily use,
but in a careful discussion, it's more productive to focus on
the objective facts of the situation: Mister X complains of a
headache, and there are undoubtedly physical processes going
on in his brain that account for this.

(True, we can also extend sympathy by believing it to be utterly
true that he is experiencing pain, but I think that John and I
(and many) are simply not comfortable with introducing a "reality",
namely, "subjective reality" to cover this simple situation.)

Lee
Received on Mon Aug 08 2005 - 11:49:46 PDT