Talk:Intersubjective verifiability

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[edit] Intersubjective Verifiability (IV)

Interested editors: The following note was placed on my talk page, and my response follows. Placed here for consideration by participants in this article's development...Kenosis 16:52, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Kenosis, I see from your edits that you share my concern about empiricism, objectivity, science, etc. However, I did not understand your edit of IV. I don't doubt that it needs clean up; as the creator of the page I knew it was just a beginning and needed to be developed and edited by others. If I could see what was needed, I would have written it differently and/or edited it already. So, your view of what needs to be changed is something I need to understnd. But could you be more specific, as the generic clean up tag gives me no clue as to what you think specificially needs work.

Also, I don't think "intersubjective" in IV = "objective." Objectivity (which as you aptly realize is THE goal of IV) is only obtained by subjectivities engaging in the intersubjective process of comparing their descriptions and observations, i.e., by IV (meaning the whole term, not just the I part). I think you are getting at something but I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to clarify. Kriegman 12:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello: you make an excellent and very important point more readily grasped by those with a firm handle on the core philosophy issue than among those just familiarizing themselves for the first time. It is indeed only roughly akin to "objective verifiability" in that the expectation is for a set of terms that can be readily shared without constant confusion and wrangling over the meaning of terms for which a standard is required to be meaningful. Since I linked to the IV article from the Pseudoscience article, my concern was creating further confusion upon possible half-understanding or partial understanding (the old "know enough to get into trouble but not enough to get out of it" problem)-- hence the cleanup tag. I agree the tag's debatable and will remove it. Thanks for being in touch...Kenosis 14:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The word "objectivity" is a medieval term, brought forward contemporarily only because people do not understand the historical context of it. Objectivity means "object" or "true object", such as being within a set of true discreet objects. A person's speech or description is considered objective if such matches whatever underlying true discreet object, which is a farce because there is no such thing. But people in those days, and many people today, still use rationalism as their base philosophical view. They do not understand this because it is culturally based. Plato started it, and subsequent religion reinforced it. Science today has a blended view. Platonic Realism is the base view almost exclusively, but, empiricism gives us the best attempt view of what objective reality really is. This is why religion cannot be completely pried away from science. Subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and intersubjective verifiability have nothing at all to do with objectivity in its historical context, but if objectivity is used as a goody goody word like most people use it, then everything means everything and it doesn't make any difference. McDivitt Sep 30 06

I will take a shot at integrating the material in the IV article for more accessibility in the opening sentence or two of the article as soon as I get a chance; at that point it may be helpful to review it and determine if it is properly explanatory for all the needed slants, including those who only quickly pass through without dwelling in the Sartrean barbershop mirrors or the Cartesian-type solipsism--honestly, as you must know from your practice, folks do get lost in this stuff upon cursory analysis...Kenosis 14:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite lead

I've rewritten much of the early article to improve the clarity of the concept being communicated, improve Wikification, add a few wikilinks, fix up grammar, etc. Still a lot to improve, but at least it'll give readers a better understanding of the basic idea now. -Silence 14:38, 1 July 2006 (UTC)