Materialism is logically imposible

[Noax]

Noax Palin: "This isn't an argument, It's just contradiction!"
attofishpi Cleese: "No it isn't"

Trying to get beyond that.

[attofishpi]

No. Its a bit more like this:-

Tell me why the robot doesn't feel pain. All you're doing is asserting it in all caps. That doesn't make the point stick any harder.
I'm looking for a statement of the hard problem, not just an unfounded assertion that there is one.

So are you asking why a rock does not feel pain?

Rocks seem not to feel pain. Neither does a pinball machine, since it is merely detection illegal motion which might put the machine in danger. But it otherwise relies more on armor. It does not directly detect attempts to break into its coin box for instance.

So the laptop and hunger is a far better example. A rock requires no fuel, so it doesn't feel hunger. A candle does require it, but it doesn't detect low fuel. It just eventually starves. Mayflies similarly do not experience hunger. Does that make my laptop more conscious than a mayfly? Only if the consciousness experience is defined solely as knowing hunger.

No, because you laptop does not have anything remotely close to consciousness. Machines have 0 degree of consciousness, as much consciousness in fact as a rock. Your laptop merely has the ability to advise its user - someone who is conscious that he\she needs to plug in the charger.
A machine only mimics 'intelligence' - binary data stored in silicon chips in no way shape or form permits consciousness.

[Londoner]

If that were true, then to say, as you do, "Objective truth is like a squared circle" is also a nonsense statement. The noun has no referent in reality, according to you. Moreover, it's not objectively true: it's just a statement of subjective feeling.

Yes, in both cases 'squared circle' and 'objective truth' they have no referent. We seem to be stuck with your taking that to mean 'there is no object that corresponds to them'. But I am saying they do not have a referent because they do not refer. I could add 'X' additional' or 'metaphysical alternative' to that list.

No, it's not meaningless. Both words have meaning. It's just that they contradict. That's quite different from being meaningless....

Again, that is incorrect. "Square circle" is meaningful, but a contradiction. Whether "objective truth" fits in any similar category is a matter to be established by you. But if you succeed, you fail: for then you would establish it as an objective truth....

The problem just won't go away. And the burden to show that objective truth cannot exist cannot be met by pretending the question doesn't make sense. That's just presuming the conclusion. But proving is even more problematic; because as I say, if you succeed in it, you fail....

I do not think words have any meaning in isolation, they only have meaning in use. If I said 'fetch me the squared circle' what would you bring me?

Or do you consider every combination of words is meaningful?

Me: ...it defies a law of logic...

I thought you said it didn't defy anything? Now you say it does. I'm pretty sure that's a contradiction too.

That is an example of how we have to take the meaning of a phrase from its use in context!

The phrase takes it meaning from the rest of the sentence which reads: By asking me the question, you are giving 'square circle' a form of existence; 'square circle' is now the name of a thing with a property - it defies a law of logic. Thus we have slipped into treating it as meaningful, with a secondary question of 'does it exist?' meaning 'are there any examples of this thing?' (emphasis added)

So you don't believe the assertion, "Objective truth is unreal," or "Objective truth is absurd"? Because anything like that IS an assertion...

It is in the form of an assertion, it resembles an assertion...

The cogito is a verb of action. The sum is a verb of being. The implication is that the action would not exist without an agent to enact it. And that's perfectly logical, as a deduction.

You have not introduced a subject, an agent, only two verbs.

If the 'sum' just refers to the 'cogito', then it was already there when you said 'cogito'. 'Thought (is)'. But we want it to say that there 'is' something other than the 'thought' i.e. 'thought and a thinker'. But then we need a separate argument to explain the thinker, as distinct from the thought, what it is and how we know. In Descartes, that will involve God.

Objective truth is a statement accurately conformable to reality. As such, it is epistemologically binding for anyone who considers that particular aspect of reality.

For example, "Londoner is writing" is an objective truth about Londoner, if indeed he is writing; Londoner experiences it, but it is not merely subjective to Londoner -- it is also a truth that is relevant to anyone who is wondering who is writing, or what Londoner is presently doing. It's objective for all who may be concerned with the question, for any reason.

Does that help?

I asked what the 'objective' bit of 'objective truth' added to the phrase. Wouldn't that 'a statement accurately conforms to reality' be the 'truth' bit?

However, the problem now just shifts onto the word 'reality'. That it is a problem is evidenced that you write of 'anyone who considers that particular aspect of reality.' If 'reality' has aspects, such that I might consider one aspect and you consider another, why isn't there more than one 'objective truth'?

Surely, if a statement is to be 'epistemology binding' it must be because only one aspect is correct. But how do we determine which one? What would be 'the truth about truth', and how could we verify we had found it?

For example, "Londoner is writing" is an objective truth about Londoner, if indeed he is writing; Londoner experiences it, but it is not merely subjective to Londoner -- it is also a truth that is relevant to anyone who is wondering who is writing, or what Londoner is presently doing. It's objective for all who may be concerned with the question, for any reason.

You say it is a truth, but also that it may not be the truth. It might be that I have delegated this post to somebody else, but more importantly 'Londoner is writing' was not true when you wrote it. Thus its meaning turns out to be more complicated than a straightforward pointing to a thing in the world.

Nor does 'Londoner is writing' mean the same thing to you as to me; as 'Londoner' my experience of writing is a subjective one, it contains elements that are not accessible to you. 'Writing' does not mean the same thing to both of us. And so on.

The problem is that we can never equate language to objects in any direct neutral (objective) way. We are never a neutral observer, language is created by social use, every word is part of a system, every particular belief we have is related to the totality of our beliefs.

[uwot]

A bunch of stuff is subjective in my view--namely, anything that only exists/occurs as mental phenomena and doesn't occur outside of minds.

I'm not particularly skeptical myself, but Descartes had a point that the only thing we know for certain is that there are mental phenomena. Call it a fact, or the truth, but everything else is theory laden; it is all subjective interpretation. It is 'true' that some phenomena are objective, insofar as everyone experiences the same thing, for instance, if we measure the acceleration due to gravity on Earth, we all find that it is equivalent to 9.8mss, but there are any number of hypotheses as to what the cause of gravity is.
So, in my view, there are empirical 'facts', which are demonstrable and repeatable. And while I think the most plausible explanation for all the phenomena that suggest that there is a universe made of some stuff is that there really is some stuff the universe is made of, it is only an opinion. As Kant argued, we only have access to the phenomenal world, any cause we ascribe to phenomena is necessarily in our mind. Who knows? Maybe Berkeley was right.

[Londoner]

It is 'true' that some phenomena are objective, insofar as everyone experiences the same thing, for instance, if we measure the acceleration due to gravity on Earth, we all find that it is equivalent to 9.8mss, but there are any number of hypotheses as to what the cause of gravity is.

I would say the phenomena, my experience of falling bodies on earth, is always subjective and particular. I never experience the objective description '9.8mss'

In order to get that figure, we have to pick out certain features of the phenomena we experience and ignore others. So that number is not a brute fact in the same way as the experience, it is a consequence of the selection I made. If I selected different aspects then I would get a different number.

And also, when we quote such numbers, it includes other notions. For example, it incorporates the assumption that if something appears to be regularly the case, then we can assume it is always the case.

It is fine if we want to reserve the expression 'objective truth' for some particular way of thinking, like science. But I am doubtful if we could ever draw a firm line around our choice, such that we can clearly distinguish it from everything else we think of as 'true'.

[Immanuel Can]

No, it isn't. I'm not saying that anything is an objective truth. There are objective facts, however. I keep explaining that I'm using the standard analytic philosophy distinction between truth and fact. Truth is a property of propositions ONLY.

Well, I'm waiting for the payoff of all this. If I take your claim at face value, it looks like you are saying two things:

1. There is no such thing as objective truth.

2. That is objectively true.

Maybe you should tell me which of the above you're NOT asserting.

At this point I'd have to conclude that you're incapable of learning. Why would you think I'm claiming 2? I never said that, and I've rather said exactly the opposite at least a handful of times.

Then you are claiming that the statement "there is no such thing as objective truth" is not itself objectively true. It is not a statement that anyone (rationally, not morally) should believe, except to the extent you are describing your current feelings or wishes. It describes no state of reality outside of you.

Well, I can certainly grant you that.

[uwot]

I would say the phenomena, my experience of falling bodies on earth, is always subjective and particular. I never experience the objective description '9.8mss'

Well, it was conditional: "if we measure the acceleration due to gravity", but yes, like all phenomena, it is subject to the problem of induction.

[Terrapin Station]

A bunch of stuff is subjective in my view--namely, anything that only exists/occurs as mental phenomena and doesn't occur outside of minds.

I'm not particularly skeptical myself, but Descartes had a point that the only thing we know for certain is that there are mental phenomena. Call it a fact, or the truth, but everything else is theory laden; it is all subjective interpretation. It is 'true' that some phenomena are objective, insofar as everyone experiences the same thing, for instance, if we measure the acceleration due to gravity on Earth, we all find that it is equivalent to 9.8mss, but there are any number of hypotheses as to what the cause of gravity is.
So, in my view, there are empirical 'facts', which are demonstrable and repeatable. And while I think the most plausible explanation for all the phenomena that suggest that there is a universe made of some stuff is that there really is some stuff the universe is made of, it is only an opinion. As Kant argued, we only have access to the phenomenal world, any cause we ascribe to phenomena is necessarily in our mind. Who knows? Maybe Berkeley was right.

I've always felt that the desire for certainty was odd. And in my view, there's no requirement for knowledge to be certain. It just needs some sort of support or justification.

Regarding the way I use the terms, subjective/objective have absolutely nothing to do with agreement or a lack of agreement. I use them as location terms--subjective refers to something in or of minds, which on my view means in or of brains functioning in mental ways, and objective is the complement. Objective things obtain because not everything is our brain functioning in mental ways (and after all, it wouldn't make any sense to say that all there is is a bunch of brain parts or aspects in a vacuum; brains need blood and the rest of one's nervous system which needs bodies which need environments and food and shelter and so on).

I also don't see all experience as theory-laden. I'm a naive realist on phil of perception.

A lot of people assume that I'm probably something like an idealist because I stress subjectivity on so many things. I'm not at all an idealist. It's just that some things only occur in brains functioning in mental ways. It's not as if EVERYTHING is just a brain functioning in mental ways, and alternatively it's not as if NOTHING is. Some things are. Some things are not. I don't see it as any different than noting that, say, some things in a house are in the refrigerator; some things are not. Again, I use subjective/objective merely as location terms, so it's quite analogous to inside/outside of a refrigerator in that sense.

Further, it's never seemed to me that there's any good argument for idealism. We experience things like trees and rocks and lakes, etc. There's no reason to assume that all of that stuff is mental-only. To even get to the idea that it's mental-only one has to posit that there are minds separate from other things, and that we can only access minds. But by positing that, we're refuting the idea. Likewise, arguments for idealism or representationalism or anything like that that appeal to scientific data--such as data about brains and how they work, etc., undermine themselves by positing that we can access scientific data that's not just something imagined--in order to know something about brains and how they work, we'd need to be able to observe something other than our minds.

[Terrapin Station]

Then you are claiming that the statement "there is no such thing as objective truth" is not itself objectively true.

Correct. For any statement I make, I'm not claiming that it's objectively true, because there is no such thing as objective truth. The very idea of that is a category error. Truth is a judgment that we make about propositional relations. Judgments do not occur outside of minds. They require sentient beings to judge the relation in question.

Re propositional relations, what I'm talking about (assuming that we'd be using the correspondence relation) is the relation between "The cat is on the mat," as a proposition--that is, as a statement, a sentence with meaning attached, etc., and a cat being (or not being) on a mat--that is, as objective facts-in-the-world. Truth is a judgment about the relation between "The cat is on the mat" and the cat being (or not being) on the mat. All I'm saying is that that judgment as such does not occur extramentally. (And if one were saying that it somehow DOES occur extramentally--well, where does it occur? What is it a property of? etc.)

By the way, that truth is the relation between "The cat is on the mat" and the cat being (or not being) on the mat (the relation per correspondence, that is) is not anything unusual or controversial in analytic philosophy. That's the standard way of parsing what truth is a la correspondence theory. Where my view differs is that rather than leaving just how the relation obtains unanalyzed, as if often done, OR alternatively figuring that somehow (just how is never specified) the relation obtains extramentally, I'm claiming that there's no way for the relation to obtain extramentally. Aside from mind, "The cat is on the mat" is only a set of marks on paper, or soundwaves, etc. Extramentally, there's no way for those marks or sounds etc. to "map" or be mapped to the fact-in-the-world of the cat being on the mat. I'm rather noting that what makes or breaks the relation is an individual's judgment about the relation between language-as-meaning and the facts in question.

You could say that I'm doing "ontology of epistemology." Ontology of epistemology is usually ignored. These issues are usually only approached functionally as epistemology. I think the ontological basis of it is important, however, and shouldn't simply be ignored.

It is not a statement that anyone (rationally, not morally) should believe, except to the extent you are describing your current feelings or wishes.

You feel that "One should only accept things that are objectively true." I do not.

It describes no state of reality outside of you.

That doesn't follow. Truth in no way amounts to description. Truth is also not a "name" of a fact or anything like that. Truth is a propositional relation, such as correspondence, coherence, consensus, etc. There are objective facts. We can name objective facts, describe them, point to them, etc. That doesn't imply that the names, descriptions, etc. are objective (well, or at least they're not insofar as meaning is attached to them). You can't conflate pointing and what it's pointing to.

All I'm saying is something akin to this: imagine we point at the moon with our finger. I'm noting that the finger is not separate from a body. The moon IS separate from a body. A bit more complexly/abstractly, I'm also noting that parsing the finger as referring to the moon is not separate from a body. In other words, if there were no minds, nothing would make it the case that a body with an arm and finger in that position somehow amounts to a reference to the moon. That requires minds. It requires people thinking about the finger's relationship to the moon in that way. Otherwise it's just those materials in their respective positions, and reference is nowhere to be found.

[Immanuel Can]

If that were true, then to say, as you do, "Objective truth is like a squared circle" is also a nonsense statement. The noun has no referent in reality, according to you. Moreover, it's not objectively true: it's just a statement of subjective feeling.

A "pink elephant" has no referent in reality. But "pink" is a coherent concept, as is "elephant." It's the combination that has no referent in reality. Likewise, "square" and "circle" are coherent ideas with referents in reality. It is only the combination that is problematic. And in that case, it's problematic in a very particular way: not that the parts have no referent in reality, but in that they contradict.

Now, do the words "objective" and "truth" have no referents? That seems implausible, especially since we're talking about them, but also because they are widely used in other contexts, such as "subjective truth" or "objective facts." So whether or not they fail to have a referent in reality is an empirical, not conceptual problem. I know of no conceptual analysis that shows objective truth conceptually cannot exist: all critics insist that it does not empirically exist.

That's an important caveat. The question of objective truth cannot be settled by appealing to a merely alleged incoherence of the term "objective truth." It can only be solved by empirical demonstration that no such thing exists. But if we ever succeeded in empirically proving it, we would thereby disprove it in exactly the same stroke.

So now we have very good reason to doubt that the critics of the concept of objective truth are blowing smoke. They rely on conceptual critique for something it simply does not deliver.

I do not think words have any meaning in isolation, they only have meaning in use. If I said 'fetch me the squared circle' what would you bring me?

Or do you consider every combination of words is meaningful?

No, it depends on whether the words themselves can be said to be meaningful, and whether their combination makes sense. Empirically, there are no square circles, and this is a result not of a deficiency in the words per se, but in the contradiction their combination entails. Again, the problem that ensues is empirical: no such thing can exist because of the inherent contradiction.

But we have no reason to think "objective" and "truth" are similar. We would have to demonstrate by way of reason or empirical fact that they were, before we could expect to be believed.

That is an example of how we have to take the meaning of a phrase from its use in context!

I agree...but it won't erase a contradiction if that's what we state. Maybe we need more explanation there, to clarify that the first statement was not intended to be categorical. It was worded that way.

So you don't believe the assertion, "Objective truth is unreal," or "Objective truth is absurd"? Because anything like that IS an assertion...

It is in the form of an assertion, it resembles an assertion...

It is one. It may be a true one, it may be a false one, or it may be an irrational one...but if it's in the form, then that is what it is, no?

You have not introduced a subject, an agent, only two verbs.

The existence (verb 2) of the subject is deduced from verb 1.

I asked what the 'objective' bit of 'objective truth' added to the phrase. Wouldn't that 'a statement accurately conforms to reality' be the 'truth' bit?

I accept that.

If 'reality' has aspects, such that I might consider one aspect and you consider another, why isn't there more than one 'objective truth'?

I think it's true that people see things from different perspectives. But to say so runs the danger of being overly impressed with the variance, and under-impressed with the commonality. You and I may look at a chair, and I see the north side and you see the south: but the resounding fact is that we both see the chair. To emphasize our perspectival uniqueness too much obliterates the obvious and essential fact that we are in substantial agreement on the nature of the object.

So while perspective is a reality of perception, which I'm happy to acknowledge, we ought never to overlook the massive importance of the fact that our eyes stare out on a common world. And were it not so, all communication, sharing, deal-making, and consensus would be utterly impossible. That they are possible -- and indeed routine -- is a most remarkable observation, one we'd do well to emphasize much more strongly than any subjectivist variability.

Surely, if a statement is to be 'epistemology binding' it must be because only one aspect is correct.

No, I think it must be because we share a common world, and that statement reflects well that common world for both of us.

You say it is a truth, but also that it may not be the truth. It might be that I have delegated this post to somebody else, but more importantly 'Londoner is writing' was not true when you wrote it. Thus its meaning turns out to be more complicated than a straightforward pointing to a thing in the world.

You missed the conditional in my wording. I wrote "IF INDEED he is writing." I did not say that it would be true IF he were not, so I think perhaps the objection is off point.

The problem is that we can never equate language to objects in any direct neutral (objective) way. We are never a neutral observer, language is created by social use, every word is part of a system, every particular belief we have is related to the totality of our beliefs.

There's a lot in this paragraph that needs unpacking. The first claim is unclear but possibly true, the second is true, the third is conditionally true, and the fourth and fifth I would say are quite right in very important ways. But I'm not sure we're on the same page there. I would have to ask you a bunch of stuff in order to know.

[Immanuel Can]

Then you are claiming that the statement "there is no such thing as objective truth" is not itself objectively true.

Correct. For any statement I make, I'm not claiming that it's objectively true, because there is no such thing as objective truth.

Now I'm perplexed: for why should I believe you?

By your own claim, what you say above is not the truth. There's a chance it's your subjective view of the situation -- but I cannot even be sure that's so, because there is no objectivity to the "truth" about what you have said...so you say. What you have reassured me is that it is not THE truth. It is not something I can rely on in my understanding of how the world actually is.

What am I to think of your utterance, then? I can't even be sure it's perlocutionary, since the content...the assertion of what I should believe about your actual view...is also not objectively true, as you say....

Where my view differs...

Your REAL view? Objectively differs? Will you be upset if I don't believe you? But how could you be, since you're only making a subjective statement, and one you declare to be of uncertain veracity...

You could say that I'm doing "ontology of epistemology." Ontology of epistemology is usually ignored. These issues are usually only approached functionally as epistemology. I think the ontological basis of it is important, however, and shouldn't simply be ignored.

I'd say the same of ethics. Ontology precedes ethics, in every case. At least, that has to be the case in any grounded, non-arbitrary ethic.

Truth is a propositional relation, such as correspondence, coherence, consensus, etc.

I don't think that's quite right. I think propositions are true or false, but I don't think they are themselves a relation. They are a product of a relation between the facts and the locutionary act, without themselves being that relation; and that's why they can be judged as to objective veracity.

There are objective facts. We can name objective facts, describe them, point to them, etc. That doesn't imply that the names, descriptions, etc. are objective (well, or at least they're not insofar as meaning is attached to them). You can't conflate pointing and what it's pointing to.

True, but this seems to me to overlook what truth-utterances, or even utterances that merely pose as truth-utterances, are for. Their entire effect is derivative. The recipient must believe that they are articulating an objective truth, or they simply do not function for any purpose the speaker has. If he's trying to tell the truth, he's trying to say what is so in reality; if he's lying, he's trying to present a falsehood AS IF it were a truth. But absent the recipient's believe in the objective truth of the proposition uttered, such an utterance simply does nothing.

Kant understood this clearly. It's why he thought lying was universally wrong. It is actually parasitically dependent on the idea of truth, and cannot exist without that parasitic relationship. That makes it inherently self-defeating and irrational, Kant thought, so a rational person ought to understand that the truth has a deontological status that no lie can have. Universalize lying, and lying ceases to function at all. Universalize truthfulness, and we might get a strange world, but at least it would not be rationally self-contradicting. It could exist. A world of universal lies could not.

The upshot is that subjective "truth" is simply parasitic on the concept of universal truth. If all truth is merely subjective, then there IS no truth, and thus no subjective truth either. The word truth doesn't apply to anything at all anymore.

All I'm saying is something akin to this: imagine we point at the moon with our finger. I'm noting that the finger is not separate from a body. The moon IS separate from a body. A bit more complexly/abstractly, I'm also noting that parsing the finger as referring to the moon is not separate from a body. In other words, if there were no minds, nothing would make it the case that a body with an arm and finger in that position somehow amounts to a reference to the moon. That requires minds. It requires people thinking about the finger's relationship to the moon in that way. Otherwise it's just those materials in their respective positions, and reference is nowhere to be found.

I see what you're saying, and you're onto something here.

As a Christian, of course, I believe that "mind" is not exclusively -- or even primarily -- a property of human beings. They have minds, it's true; but those minds are a secondary product of the Divine Mind, a pale reproduction of that greater Knower. Thus, such perceptions are flawed and finite: but of course, if God exists, there's no reason to think His have to be.

Now, were I in your worldview, I confess that perhaps I would be very drawn to your theory. For then there would be nobody but human beings, and all of them flawed, finite and partial, to say what a thing was, or to define the truth. And that's maybe the core of our variance. My position seems to you outrageously self-confident about truth, because you're thinking about it within the worldview that says only human beings can ground truth. However, I am thinking about yours from the context of thinking of truth as established by the Divine Mind, and am conscious that all our fallible and partial efforts to know are, at the end of the day, measured as to their veracity against what God Himself knows is so.

Were I saying that I was in possession of the truth and you are not, and working from within your worldview, then that would indeed be unconscionably arrogant. However, I am quite cognizant of my own fallibility, and that of all humans, and agree with you entirely as to that point. But I don't believe that my failures have to be taken into any complete definition of truth; there is always an objective, eternal Standard that knows and establishes what truth is. And on that, I, and the definition of truth itself, am quite dependent.

To bow to the ultimate truthfulness of God, and thus to the existence of objective truth, seems to me not at all arrogant -- indeed, the opposite -- it takes quite a vacating of human pride. But it does seem, from my worldview, quite excessive for anyone to reject that and insist that he is the writer of his own truth. To do so, he would have to obliterate the knowledge of God, and install himself as the arbiter of truth. He would have to believe he was the cornerstone of truth himself. But consider how limited, provisional and uninformative such a "truth" would then be...personal only, unobligatory for anyone else, of dubious relation to any set of facts, easily deluded and destined to perish with death...does such "knowledge" even deserve the name "truth"? I would think not.

So in the end, it is indeed a matter of ontology. If God exists, things are quite different than you describe. If He does not, then they might be as you describe: but it seems to me that truth effectively perishes with any such paradigm.

[Immanuel Can]

Noax Palin: "This isn't an argument, It's just contradiction!"
attofishpi Cleese: "No it isn't"

Trying to get beyond that.

"I told you once..."

[Terrapin Station]

Let's do a little test to see just how well you're paying attention to my comments (I'm doing this by the way because at this point, I'd largely be repeating myself by answering everything in your last post):

Where my view differs...

Your REAL view? Objectively differs?

What is the location of my view?

[Immanuel Can]

What is the location of my view?

I think you're going to say it's in your head. If it were anywhere else, then there would have to be an objective commonality of suppositions with the person to whom you were conveying it.

The question is, is it even "objective" there? Can even you say for sure what you think? For all truth is subjective, I'm told...and subjective means not merely "personal", but also "not necessarily even true."

[Terrapin Station]

What is the location of my view?

I think you're going to say it's in your head. If it were anywhere else, then there would have to be an objective commonality of suppositions with the person to whom you were conveying it.

The question is, is it even "objective" there? Can even you say for sure what you think? For all truth is subjective, I'm told...and subjective means not merely "personal", but also "not necessarily even true."

I gave the definition I use of objective/subjective.

"Subjective" refers to things that occur in minds, or we could say that it refers to things that are "of minds." (And we can leave aside the ontological question of just what minds are for the moment--that doesn't matter for this definition.)

"Objective" refers to the complement of "subjective"--so everything that occurs that doesn't occur in a mind, or that's not "of a mind."

That's it. That's ALL that I mean by those terms.

So if my view occurs in my mind, then my view can't be objective, right? Subjective, after all, refers to "in a mind."