when a subjectivist makes an argument against the possibility of ‘objectivity’, and believes that if i can make sense of it, i’d agree with it, then he is working under the assumption that the truth (its sensibility) of the argument isn’t just something he can subjectively know, but also something i can know too. now here is the problem; if understanding of the argument’s sensibility is only a matter of subjectivity, i shouldn’t be able to understand it. if, on the other hand, i can understand it sensibility, and do believe the argument is true, there is at least one objective truth now… and that is the thing the two subjectivities agree on. ‘objective’ now means ‘true for more than one person’.
a simpler way to put this point is to just say that if the statement ‘there is no objective truth’ is true, then it is false, and there is now at least one objective truth… and that’s that such a statement is false.
here’s the secret. what stands ‘objectively’ at all times are not truth ‘things’ in the world, but the truth ‘form’ of the rule following. the attempt to argue that there can be no objective truth beseeches itself of the rule following which it employs in itself, and therefore becomes nonsensical. the logical rules of language are not some metaphysical things that drop down and force themselves on language, but are actually fashioned after a mirroring of the physical world - logic is embedded in existence - and then become active when we begin to speak of things. the problem with ‘subjective’ arguments that try to dispose of this rule-following convention in language - it’s logical form - is that they use the very logic they are seeking to deny the possibility of.
elsewhere i wrote:
"the question of ‘objectivity’ is about when we suppose the existence of a world independently of our experience of it, and a problem arises when we ask if we are able to make truth statements about that world that are not conditioned by personal prejudice, preference, bias or opinion. and this problem is not solved by dividing statements of facts from statements of value, as even some statements of impartial fact are dubious; what is the true color of the ball, for instance. neither do deductive statements tell us anything about the world. sure, it is objectively true that all bachelors are unmarried men, but such a statement doesn’t tell us anything about bachelors and unmarried men… only that these two terms are synonymous.
the resolution of the problem of objectivity really comes down to taking a radical anti-psychologistic position and claiming that not only do the rules of logic exist independently of the ‘mind’, but they are also the only ‘things’ that can be objective. so any statement about the world will conform to rules of logic which we all recognize, but will not necessarily say anything true about the world. in that case, it would be incorrect to say that the world consists of ‘things’ which can be named in speech (for how can we be sure our statements actually represent such things?). rather, the world consists of ‘facts’… which means, our language reflects and expresses the logical form which truth statements take, not the things in the world about which the logical statement’s are made.
you might say that our language reflects the logical structure of the world, but not the world’s content. because of this, language can’t be representational… its meaning must be derived from its use, and this use-meaning is bound up in an inexplicably complicated ‘way of life/language’ (wittgenstein) which conforms to various kinds of rule-following."
here’s a drill for yas. joe and bob are arguing over whether or not there can be objective truth. if before they can enter into this debate, they would be required to provide corollary definitions for every word that they used, they’d never begin arguing, because there would be no terminus to this process of defining. moreover, if to understand any single premise in the argument would require an understanding of the entire set of premises (which would never be reached for lack of terminus), no single premise could be proven by what conclusion followed.
while all this is going on… or not going on, rather, there is only one feature that stands throughout, and that’s the rules of logic used in the formation of the incomplete subset of arguments. these rules are objectively present at all times and for everyone who shares the language.
logic tells us nothing about the world. only statements do that, and they will always be dubious. that’s why we can’t rely on statements about ‘things’ to show us objective truths. we know of ‘objectivity’ by the general rules that oversee particular statements… and statements can even be nonsensical while still being logical:
some dizzlewopters shlup if all disnits wellop.
all disnits are welloping
therefore some dizzlewopters are shluping
certainly nothing is objectively true about this syllogism - if we mean by true, representing things in the world - except for its logical validity. see what i mean? logic can even prevail when talking nonsense.
logic is all around you. it tells you what’s dope and it tells you what’s whack. and if you ever try to argue that truth values are only subjective… that’s whack.
subjectivism belongs to ethics… to value statements, precisely because value statements can’t be true or false. they reflect nothing in the world. the statement '‘it is wrong for ecmandu to listen to rob stewart’ is equivalent to the exclamation ‘boo at ecmandu!’ or ‘oh hell no, fuck that!’