ext_361198 ([identity profile] spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] talkpolitics 2011-02-18 10:37 pm (UTC)

Re: Ironic Icon is Ironic

Neither, because such an event would obliterate any contexts(namely, moral beings such as humans) in which such terms have meaning.

I think maybe the problem is in terminology: you can have subjective facts, which depend upon the specific mind perceiving them, or objective ones, which are true irrespective of the perceiver, but you can also have intersubjective facts, which are true according to the aggregation of many subjective facts.

One example of intersubjective facts are the meanings of words. Any good linguist will tell you that the dictionary's job is not to produce word definitions, it is to document the definitions which already exist in popular usage. In this sense, the word "left" has a clear, definite meaning, which doesn't depend upon the person interpreting it.

Likewise, there are some unifying moral facts which are true by virtue of being sufficiently popular, and by virtue of being consistent with the collective self-interest of the subjective entities in question.

I suspect that enders_shadow is trying to talk about intersubjectivity, not objectivity.

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