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To: PatrickHenry
"Blue" is something we can objectify. What literally goes on in your mind when you see blue is something experienced only by you, but it can be demonstrated that you're reacting to a very real something. And this kind of objectification is lacking when we are experiencing only the functioning of our own minds.

Yet ideas are very real somethings, Patrick. And they can be "objectified" as words that can be communicated to establish shared meaning. We don't get spectography read-outs; the output we get is language, theories, poetry, etc. Which are empirically real enough.

153 posted on 05/11/2004 10:55:54 AM PDT by betty boop (The purpose of marriage is to civilize men, protect women, and raise children. -- William Bennett)
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To: betty boop
Yet ideas are very real somethings, Patrick. And they can be "objectified" as words that can be communicated to establish shared meaning. We don't get spectography read-outs; the output we get is language, theories, poetry, etc. Which are empirically real enough.

Yes. But that's not what I'm trying to say. To go back to my Joan of Arc example ... she heard her voices. She acted on what those voices told her. She could have kept a diary and transcribed the content of her conversations with her voices. So the experience she was having (hearing voices) could have been converted into something objective. No problem. Anyone can write about his mental activities, and thus generate something objective. My point was that the voices themselves couldn't be objectified, which is very different from the stimulus that causes us to see blue. Her voices were a purely subjective experience. Only Joan could hear them, so one else could be persuaded by objective evidence that they were more than a delusion. This is the essence of the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity.

155 posted on 05/11/2004 11:13:04 AM PDT by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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