Let me pose you a little conundrum which might have you rethinking about the usefulness of the subjective/objective split: what is the status of your experiences and language use? Are these merely "subjective" such that they have no objective important? Are we prevented form saying it is true you are experiencing something else? More to the point, how does anything we might talk about, which is a "something of our experience" true if our subjectivities don't constitute something which is true and can said to report truth?

Not only would it seem the "in here" is much more related to the "out there" than the split would seem to want to imply (given all our understandings of the empirical world are something else of experience, but it would seem that the "in here" is entirely public. Just as we know about the tree in our backyard, it would seem we can know when subjective experiences exists and their character.

Else, we would have no "in here" to speak about. We couldn't talk about present experiences which did not exist and had no consequences for true statements. Really, subjectivities (that is the presence of states of experience) are objective in the way assigned to "out there" in split. They are, in fact, "out there" so to speak. If I experience happiness, that happened is an "objective" fact of the world just like the presence of a rock would be.

I think eliminativism could mean that the folk terms used to describe our experiences aren't suited to a laboratory because they are rough stereotypes/social constructs. That is plausible because a lot of times I struggle to describe a feeling and then just adopt terms already in existence to describe it. The fact though I can do this shows that the experiences are making a physical impact on the world. And science is supposed to investigate all things physical.
Btw it speaks to the victory of materialism/atomism/ reductionism that our direct experiences can be considered spooky when they are still our access point to the world.

I think a good reply here would ask what counts as properly philosophical. One could say that the philosophical work is exactly in sorting out how we want to denote this or that -- in your example, the acceptable boundaries of use for the words "objective" and "subjective", or whether these or other terms are better. After all, what in the split needs resolving? What would it mean to resolve the split? Aren't the words "objective" and "subjective" simply being put to use, and insofar that we agree on their usage we have nothing more philosophical to talk about?

That's mostly my imagination talking from an imagined role, and not something I really believe. But what I think is of disagreement in talking about whether a philosophical issue is substantive or not is over what counts as philosophical. Funnily enough it seems to me that depending on how we answer that question every example thereafter will affirm our original belief :D

I experience a subjective and an objective world, not just one or the other. — Marchesk

Me too. Problem solved. :grin:

I don't think the objective/subjective split can be resolved by just looking at the words being used. That's because while we experience being part of a world with other people, life, objects and events, we also experience a world of inner dialog, imagination, dreams, memories and being in our own skin that nobody else can experience. Others can often infer some of our experience, and we can relate part of it to them in language, which is public, but it is still our own alone to experience. — Marchesk

Looking at the words used here, it is, however, interesting that you use the first person plural. You don't refer to 'my' own skin but 'our'. You refer to 'we' not 'I'.

Of course this is a rhetorical device. But to me the device in this context does appeal to a commonality of experience even as it insists that one's own is unique. There's something paradoxical going on. Your words propose that I will understand what you're proposing because I will experience things that way too. And I do!

To me then this whole paragraph adopts not a subjective nor an objective approach, but a sort of mutual approach, and that's often how we are. Look inside my mind, here: see, this is how it stands in here. I wandered lonely as a cloud. Know what I mean?

Of course this is a rhetorical device. But to me the device in this context does appeal to a commonality of experience even as it insists that one's own is unique. There's something paradoxical going on. Your words propose that I will understand what you're proposing because I will experience things that way too. And I do! — mcdoodle

Right, and I'm not a solipsist. We do understand a lot of each other's experiences. But not all. We also misunderstand. I don't know to what extent I can walk in someone else's shoes.

It becomes more difficult when we think about other animals. Thus the what it's like to be a bat question, and how difficult it is for us to figure out whether dolphins and whales really employ language.

I think it helps a lot that as humans, we have similar experiences, and can put that into language. We can also read each other pretty well.

but it would seem that the "in here" isentirely public. Just as we know about the tree in our backyard, it would seem we can know when subjective experiences exists and their character. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't know how experiences can be entirely public. I have to tell you about my dreams or inner dialog for you to know anything about them. Unlike the tree in the backyard, you can't just go look.

what is the status of your experiences and language use? Are these merely "subjective" such that they have no objective important? Are we prevented form saying it is true you are experiencing something else? More to the point, how does anything we might talk about, which is a "something of our experience" true if our subjectivities don't constitute something which is true and can said to report truth? — TheWillowOfDarkness

We're able to express our subjectivity in language, to an extent. I can't relate to you exactly what it feels like to be me, but since you're human and we probably share a similar enough culture, then you can relate in a lot of ways.

One could say that the philosophical work is exactly in sorting out how we want to denote this or that -- in your example, the acceptable boundaries of use for the words "objective" and "subjective", or whether these or other terms are better. After all, what in the split needs resolving? What would it mean to resolve the split? Aren't the words "objective" and "subjective" simply being put to use, and insofar that we agree on their usage we have nothing more philosophical to talk about? — Moliere

Sure. Linguistic analysis would be good for that. We might want to get rid of "in here" and "out there" in philosophical language because it can be misleading. Replace it with something better. Maybe point that the container idea of mind is also misleading. Or whatever. Maybe we don't know how to think properly about how the mind interacts with the world, and linguistic analysis can point that out. Also, ongoing research in science can help clear things up. But it doesn't make the subjective and objective distinction disappear.

I think eliminativism could mean that the folk terms used to describe our experiences aren't suited to a laboratory because they are rough stereotypes/social constructs. — JupiterJess

I'm sympathetic to that. Notice that in these cases ordinary word use is based on faulty assumptions, and so getting clear would actually mean eliminating terms.

However, the laboratory settings is still objective, regardless of what better terms we come up with to use in place of the folk ones.

And from reading and hearing enough of philosophers like Dennett, it's clear that the goal is to eliminate the subjective as a real category, which is a lot stronger than replacing words.

Btw it speaks to the victory of materialism/atomism/ reductionism that our direct experiences can be considered spooky when they are still our access point to the world. — JupiterJess

That's a good point. However, the subjective/objective split still leaves transcendental idealism on the table.

Science, having an objective methodology, is not suited to explain the subjective — Marchesk

Yes. As I have said in other threads, natural science begins with a fundamental abstraction that fixes attention on the objects of the physical world to the exclusion of the knowing subject and its correlatives. Those it is bereft of the concepts and data required to related what it knows of the physical world to consciousness and other intentional operations.

Due to the various issues this split tends to raise — Marchesk

I think it is a mistake to think that there is any subject-object split in reality. The only split is mental or logical. Subjectivity and objectivity are invariably linked. There is no knowing subject that is not knowing an objective reality, and no actually known object that is not known by one or more knowing subjects.

Yes, what we experience in dreams and imaginings is not intersubjectively available, but presumably, the content experienced is encoded in objective neural states -- so even here the inseparability of the subjective and the objective is maintained.

Why don't we live in a philosophical zombie universe? Why would there be subjective experience at all? — Marchesk

This is not an answerable question. We might say because God chose to make it so, but we can't reduce the phenomena to more fundamental experiences. From a human perspective, it is simply a contingent fact of experience.

In fact, unless there were subjects in the world, there could be no experiencing subjects and so no experience or consequent knowledge.

How could it spookily emerge from the dance of matter and energy? — Marchesk

Who says it does "emerge from the dance of matter and energy"? This assumes that nature consists only of the phenomena we have chosen to assign to natural science in making the fundamental abstraction. Why should the data natural science has chosen to fix upon explain the data it has chosen to neglect? I can think of no reason it should.

I don't see how this is fundamentally an abuse of language issue. — Marchesk

I agree.

Really, subjectivities (that is the presence of states of experience) are objective in the way assigned to "out there" in split — TheWillowOfDarkness

I agree that our interior experiences are as real as anything in physical reality. So, I don't think the proper dividing line is between "in her" and "out there." It is between the poles of the subject-object relation. Being a knowing subject is distinct from being a known object, even though neither can exist apart from the other.

Btw it speaks to the victory of materialism/atomism/ reductionism that our direct experiences can be considered spooky when they are still our access point to the world. — JupiterJess

I always see "spooky" in this context as a sign of prejudice and closed mindedness. The person asserting it is denigrating a set of solutions before giving them a fair hearing.

Aren't the words "objective" and "subjective" simply being put to use, and insofar that we agree on their usage we have nothing more philosophical to talk about? — Moliere

No. Once we distinguish the subjective and the objective we have to consider their nature. We have to consider whether or not there is an epistic gap between subject and object. We have to consider if any experience/knowledge can be purely subjective or purely objective. The list goes on.

what I think is of disagreement in talking about whether a philosophical issue is substantive or not is over what counts as philosophical. — Moliere

I think that the issue of being substantive was defined in the OP without exploring the nature of philosophy. It is whether the problem is due to an abuse of language or whether it is about the nature of reality.

To me then this whole paragraph adopts not a subjective nor an objective approach, but a sort of mutual approach, and that's often how we are. — mcdoodle

Yes, we need to form a consistent understanding of the full range of human experience.

That's not actually true. To know your dreams, like anything, I just need the right concept. I could know what you dreamt without you even speaking to me. All I would need is to have the right experiences, to exist knowing the concepts which reflected your dreams.

Sensations also have a similar relationship. I can know what someone experienced in the sense of "what it felt like." I just have to exist with similar experience of sensation. You can relate to what it feels like to be me. Exist with the right experiences, you"ll feel the same.

In terms of knowledge and feeling, subjectivities are entire public. Sometimes people just have difficulty having the right experience. (but then again, many times they don't. Those proposing subjectivity as a "mystery" seem to forget we know about people's experiences and share feelings all the time).

Science, having an objective methodology, is not suited to explain the subjective. Why don't we live in a philosophical zombie universe? Why would there be subjective experience at all? How could it spookily emerge from the dance of matter and energy? What is the world anyway? Is it a shadowy world of mathematizeable structures divorced from any secondary qualities, with exception of certain patterns of neuronal firings? Can we know this world, or only as we evolved to interact with it? — Marchesk

Thomas Nagel has written a lot about this; see The Core of Mind and Cosmos.

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (pp. 35-36)

This is also discussed at length in The Last Word and The View from Nowhere. (Good to see you considering these issues, by the way.)

I always see "spooky" in this context as a sign of prejudice and closed mindedness. The person asserting it is denigrating a set of solutions before giving them a fair hearing. — Dfpolis

It's because the whole issue is supposedly settled; it's in a locked box, and one we don't want to open again or even acknowledge.

You can relate to what it feels like to be me. Exist with the right experiences, you"ll feel the same. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yeah, but I don't exist as you, so I don't have the same experiences.

To know your dreams, like anything, I just need the right concept. I could know what you dreamt without you even speaking to me. All I would need is to have the right experiences, to exist knowing the concepts which reflected your dreams. — TheWillowOfDarkness

But you can't know this without being told.

I can know what someone experienced in the sense of "what it felt like." — TheWillowOfDarkness

There are limits. I can't know what it's like to give birth, since I don't have the right kind of body for that, and no concept is going to allow me to have that exact experience. I also don't know what it's like to be blind from birth. It gets worse as we go from the differences between humans to other animals.

But you do raise a good point about language allowing us to have the same or similar experiences, within certain limitations.

I think it is a mistake to think that there is any subject-object split in reality. The only split is mental or logical. — Dfpolis

However we wish to categorize the matter, even in reality there is a difference between subject perceptions of the world, and subject-generated experiences independent of perception. Dreams exist in the real world, but they are still different from perception.

That's a catergory error.

I'm not you. If I want to know what you felt like, I am always going to be using my experiences. That's the entire point. When we are speaking of knowing the subjectivity if another, our point is only every we have thought or felt like another.

To claim or insist we must be another is entirely beside the point. That would never by my knowledge.

I can know without being told. If I think the right concept, I will know. It works like many of the other instances when we encounter someone who thinks like us, without us ever telling them anything. It's outright false to say otherwise. If I think concepts reflective of the content of your dream, I'll know it.

There is no "right kind of body" because that always just an idea of what a body will do. A body may always violate this. It may give experiences reflective of thoughts and sensation produced by a body which is never yours. Some our best art does exactly this, inspires thoughts and sensations reflective of bodies which are never ours.

However we wish to categorize the matter, even in reality there is a difference between subject perceptions of the world, and subject-generated experiences independent of perception. Dreams exist in the real world, but they are still different from perception. — Marchesk

Yes, there is a difference between perception on the one hand and imagination or delusion on the other. I just don't think that it is philosophically interesting. Maybe I'm missing its importance.

If I want to know what you felt like, I am always going to be using my experiences. That's the entire point. — TheWillowOfDarkness

And your experiences are unlikely to ever be exactly the same as mine.

If I think concepts reflective of the content of your dream, I'll know it. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You can't know that it was my dream, or even a dream, without me telling you. And this also depends on the extent that concepts are capable of faithfully reproducing experiences.

I'm sympathetic to that. Notice that in these cases ordinary word use is based on faulty assumptions, and so getting clear would actually mean eliminating terms.
However, the laboratory settings is still objective, regardless of what better terms we come up with to use in place of the folk ones.
And from reading and hearing enough of philosophers like Dennett, it's clear that the goal is to eliminate the subjective as a real category, which is a lot stronger than replacing words. — Marchesk

To be clear, I was referring to the Churchlands in that post. I can't find the video but Paul was specifically critical about language being something other than a way to talk about mental content.
But anyway, yes, the point is to turn the subjective into objective physical terms. Instead of saying: "I am sad" you will say "my dopamine levels are low" using more accurate scientific terminology to pinpoint each mental term into an objective set of events.

Dennett does seem to be an eliminativist about consciousness but I don't really care for him.

. I could know what you dreamt without you even speaking to me. — TheWillowOfDarkness

It's empirically demonstrable you would not be able to know their dream until they told you. He's simply saying the mental content (or at least one form) is completely private until he makes it known via language so forms of behaviorism and Wittgenstein (Quinean)-esque elimination are false.
There is no need to overcomplicate that fact.

Science, having an objective methodology, is not suited to explain the subjective. — Marchesk

What about psychology and the impact pharmacology has on the "subjective"?

The very fact that I can drive down the road on autopilot while I daydream about a day off at the beach is testament to the objective/subjective split. My hands, eyes and ears and nervous system are all still perceiving the road, but I'm experiencing something else, something not out there, but something generated by me. — Marchesk

This is an example of your ability to multitask. You could not drive and daydream at the same time had you not gone through the effort of focusing your consciousness into learning how to drive. Learning anything is a conscious effort (and maybe an explanation as to why it evolved) and is another great example (along with pharmacology) of the causal link between the "external" and the "internal".

And yes, there is an out there and in here, in the sense that out there is the public, empirical space, and in here is the stuff created by my mind, even though both are part of the same, larger world. We can quibble over "out there" and "in here" being misleading metaphors, but it doesn't change the fact that my mind produces experiences which are not part of the public space, and thus there is a subjective world, and an objective one of our experience, however we wish to denote them. — Marchesk

From my perspective, your "in here" is "out there"" - part of that empirical space you mentioned - but, so are wavelengths of EM energy. I experience colors, not wavelengths. I experience your body and behaviors, not your mind.

If there really is a causal link, which I think the evidence is clear that there is, then why wouldn't science not be able to eventually explain the link?