All human observations are subjective. I already know we don’t agree on this and have no desire to argue with you again, because your arguments don’t make sense to me and are repetitive and unconvincing.
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Yes, I thought about this more than I should have in an undergrad epistemology class. The thing is when our observations are in agreement, then it’s possible there actually is an object there, and that certain properties with that object are real.
The metaphysical discussion begins with our agreement about an objective world. I also think this supposes a theory of time that has the beginning of the world in the past. But this is still a work in progress.
There is no such thing as a subjective fact.
Following this back through the discussion with @Dale and @Paulm12 made me wonder if the word salad was a side dish or the main course. Thus I am brought to the start of it, where an objection could be made to clear up some of the muddle…
Although I agree with the second sentence, I think the first goes too far, and we lose science in this direction. Perhaps the first part just needs more careful wording, which is only lacking because it wasn’t the focus of the discussion.
Our contact with reality is subjective. But to equate reality itself with this is to limit ourselves to the mentality of infants and monkeys. The fact that we have no perception apart from our beliefs is balanced by the fact that we can alter our beliefs to fit objective discoveries. Objective discoveries exist because we can write down procedures which give the same results no matter who follows them and no matter what they believe. Thus even though our perceptions engage our beliefs, this doesn’t mean our perception is limited to our beliefs in a static way.
And the fact is that can discover that our naïve experiences are not the limit of reality itself – so much so that objective discoveries can clash starkly with our expectations and worldview. In this way we can know that there is an objective aspect to reality. I believe this can also be taken too far… for there is no evidence that reality is exclusively objective. Thus I advocate a middle road between these extremes… for a reality which is both objective and subjective.
Perhaps this is a use of the phrase “absolute truth” which has no meaning for me. The only meaning I can attach to the relative/absolute distinction is to compare the truths we adopt as a matter of mere convention with those we accept for good reasons. Accordingly I see room for both relative truths and absolute truths. Sometimes conventions are unavoidable when it is more important to have a determination than what the determination is precisely.
I think it mostly means we need to re-examine our terms when this happens to find more meaningful uses for the words with definitions which are more productive. Deconstruction will not lead to nothing for me because I can always fall back on a pragmatic foundation for truth… according to the effect of believing in things.
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Why does it have to be A vs B and not A and B?
The physical universe and our existence in it is temporal, but in even this temporal universe there are the hints of another universe of consciousness as Theories of Relativity and Quantum Physics show us time is relative and reality is influenced by conscious observance. This points to the co-existence of theory B.
Theory A would say that things occurred or will occur in a “Once Upon a Time” context.
Theory B says rather things always existed and will exist forever - “Always Upon Forever” context.
Interesting in how the bible’s explanation of man’s relationship with God fits this concept quite nicely. And indeed seems to support the reason why God is in three persons - the Father is in all times and the Son enters into the temporal world to guide us, while the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son to do what God wants done. Yes Quantum Physics suggest multiple and indeed infinite time cones and possibilities, but in my opinion only one is observed by a consciousness that transcends time. Is this oversimplification of a complex question? Perhaps but it makes sense to me anyway.
That’s not the usage of obective vs subjective though. I don’t disagree, but what you say doesn’t make our observations objective in the sense of the English word. We can have consensus about reality and describe reality while acknowledging our access to truth about reality is inherently subjective.
Not when it’s our access. Your access or my access is inherently subjective. But when it’s accurately or definitionally described as our access, it is no longer inherently subjective.
I don’t think we disagree. I just think even our most objective, scientific descriptions of reality are inherently framed by our human abilities to interact with that reality, and as such are subjective and incomplete. The fact that we see and hear and touch as opposed to some other sensory capabilities we can’t comprehend because we don’t have them determines what we believe reality consists of.
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Being incomplete, like the things we can’t yet see in the world, doesn’t mean that what we do see isn’t really there.
I would not use the word “determines.” I would use the word “informs” or even say it is “the foundation” of our understanding of reality. We can go beyond what we can see and hear (or the lack of other senses) by the use of our rational faculties. That discovery of psychologists that perception is not independent of our beliefs has multiple consequences. Yes our perceptions are not as objective as we presumed and the philosophy of empiricism is shown to be flawed. But it also means that our perception is not limited to our senses and by reason we have expanded our perception so much farther and deeper than ever dreamed of before.
Consider for example those who are blind or deaf (or both), lacking some of the senses we all have. Are their beliefs determined by the lack of these senses. Sure the communication of others about what these sense tell us has a lot to do with why they don’t, but isn’t that an example of how we can transcend the limits of our senses by the use of our rational capabilities?
P.S. Perhaps you can at least see why some of your word choices has caused so many to object to what you say.
Of course not. Which is why I clarified that I think our constructs of reality can be true and we can reach consensus on what it real.
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Sure. Language is limited by our subjective experiences with words. 
I guess my point is that if we had bodies like jellyfish and lived in water, we would have different concepts space and movement, of left and right, up and down, forward and backward. Our reality would be different. The fact that we have those spatial concepts is due to the particular way we are embodied and our life on land with gravity. This discussion started about time. The way we are embodied and the life we live on earth determines our capacity to conceptualize time. Our descriptions of time are informed by our experiences yes, but I don’t think we can get beyond them purely by rational will and imagine how time would be experienced by creatures fundamentally different than ourselves with different sensory capacites. Or how time is experienced by God. It’s beyond our conceptual reach in many ways.
Very much so, but we can still marvel and be thankful for his providential interventions into the lives of his children, whatever. And be obedient in remembering them and recounting them.
If they are not part of our ‘subjective experience’ it is not illegitimate to desire and objectively seek them!
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That works for me, but I’d say that is what objectivity looks like.
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It is not a matter of “rational will” but of rational analysis and discovery. I am also not so satisfied by such traditional rhetoric about imaginary inscrutabilities. What we do not know about what we do not know is simply not known and is a poor excuse for imagining vast gulfs. The surprise of future knowledge within our current horizon is not only one of unguessed complexity but also a good portion of unexpected simplicity. Our understanding of time has already changed a great deal from our instinctive experience and I see little reason for these to mislead and more reason to think these actually can inform us of how time is experienced by God.
After all, I believe us to be in a parent-child relationship with God. It may take an eternity to understand all there is but I think we are made to understand everything.
We can also employ similar assumptions that we don’t recognize, but which predispose us to agree on “reality,” while another group with their own shared assumptions would see reality differently. Each groups’ subjective experience is different, but feels objective to the members of each group, because someone else, maybe someone who sees most other aspects of reality differently, “agrees” with them.
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This becomes a splendidly fascinating conversation among different groups when one group believes reality to be an illusion. Which goes back to my previous point about how the discussion about metaphysics begins with an agreement about an objective world. Which presupposes (I am still working on this) a world which begins in (or is determined by) the past.
If we don’t agree there is an objective world, there’s no point talking about it.
Einstein believed in a B theory. He had a well-framed model of space+time which he applied to the actual universe, with the whole of time present in his model. But, that does not in itself make it true. Probabilies seem to take place in one dimension in time, fowards not backwards, and Einstein in particular did not believe in quantum probabilities - he was unorthodox in this respect. Most physicists in practical life make use of a direction in time as built into their work. A thoroughgoing B theory would have to explain or explain away how the past can influence the future but not vice versa.
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What I am talking about, and I think Christy is as well, is not whether objective reality exists. I think an objective reality is a given. The subjective part is our perception or conception of objective reality, which is all we can know of it.
I think there is disagreement about how “close to reality” our perception of reality can be — what all lies between what we think of as reality, and ultimate reality itself. But there is some distance. Within that (metaphorical) space is where our subjectivity becomes involved.
To restate this understanding, as some have and continue to do, in ways like: “There are no objective facts,” is a misconstrual of the view and often used as a straw man. It’s part of what I found so frustrating about Doug Groothuis’s book Truth Decay and his (mis)charactarization of Postmodernism.
To your point about the existance of an objective world or reality, there might be some people who say it doesn’t exist; I don’t know them. There are others, I think, who say that we are so subjectively distanced from actually knowing ultimate reality, that the idea of ultimate reality is irrelevant (Perhaps Rorty), that there is no point in acting as if it does exist.
I find the first view (that there is no objective reality at all) is silly, but how could I possibly “prove” my position? The latter view, that ultimate reality is absolutely unknowable and is therefore irrelevant feels extreme to me, but I think does make sense.
None of these positions, though, as far as I can imagine, would be helpful to an apologist, who must rely on a provable, agreed-on ultimate reality. There are things that I think can be agreed on, as @mitchellmckain has pointed out, but things like the existence of God, for example, cannot be worked out from within our subjective perception of reality, because it varies from person to person, culture to culture, history to history.
[I think that’s everything I was trying to get in there.]
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- The B Theory of Time in science is very “Postmodern”; it goes like this:
- All perspectives are valid, but some are more valid than others. Although there is no Absolute perspective, yours is still wrong."
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