Posted: May 17, 2012 5:34 pm
amkerman wrote:Reality can be objective regardless of whether one's access to reality is objective or not. The reality is objective, the reference is subjective.
I have never argued against this. You keep misconstruing what the argument is.
If one believes they are referencing objective reality through consciousness they necessarily believe consciousness is objective.
No. This is just false.
Their reference is necessarily subjective. I.e. if I'm looking out my window and paying attention to a tree, nobody but me has access to the information of where my attention is, if Pete is looking out the same window at the same view, his attention might be on the Bench, Claire's attention might be on a squirrel.
The reference is what you can claim to be subjective, the reality you've told us nothing about at all.
A materialist will hold that that the reality is objective, i.e. that it displays properties like object permanence - objects behave exactly as they would if they had independent existence rather than only exist when you look at them; persistent behaviour under gravity - all objects accelerate towards the Earth; continuity - to get from A to B an object must traverse a course of points between A and B etc. etc.
It is not that I don't "get" your argument, it's that you're making a bald statement that is a non-sequitur. If one believes they are (subjectively) referencing objective reality through (subjective) consciousness they do not necessarily believe consciousness is objective.
amkerman wrote:If you believe consciousness is subjective you have no rational grounds for then believing that you are referencing an objective reality. It is logically incoherent.
Nope, and merely asserting this over and over without listening to or understanding why it's not the case is one of the most close minded types of post I've ever seen.
amkerman wrote:It is possibly case that there is an objective reality and consciousness is subjective and fails to reference. I might be a brain in a vat. This is an irrational belief given the almost complete intersubject agreement as to what constitutes reality.
The degree of accuracy is not the definition of subjective. Subjective means "varies from subject to subject". E.g. My favorite colour is Turquoise, Billy's is Blue, Andrew's is Red. Therefore favorite colour is subjective. Whereas the answer to "what is 2+2?" is not subjective "2+2=4" regardless of someone's knowledge of it. I have subjective access or reference to the world because my access doesn't match yours or anyone else's. You don't know what I'm seeing now, you don't know who my first kiss was with and I don't know these things about you, because our access is different, you can't access my memories, or my visual field, I can't access yours. They vary from person to person, they are subject dependent, i.e. subective.
However, dozens of people were at the party where I had my first kiss, it is (in principle) a matter of historical fact. It is objectively true that it happened. Similarly if you walked into this room, you could ascertain whether my claim that I can see a blue pen and a black pen is true or false, you can use your subjective reference to compare to mine and as many other people as possible, if they all match then we have good evidence that this objective model of pens on desks is accurate to some reasonable degree.