I never once stated this? You gotta see my other poll on the way our minds work …
Anyway I simply stated that what exists in reality can be validated, objectively…That doesn’t seem to make any sense. If it’s true, than it can be objectively shown to be true. It can be validated. Otherwise, it’s a theory or a hypothesis or whatever else you care to call it. A belief.
I think we are using different meanings of the word “objective”. By objectively true, I mean “is a feature of actual reality, as opposed to reality as we perceive it,” or perhaps “is true regardless of who is asking the question.” In this sense, whether empirical science, or any other particular method, or even any method at all, is capable of discovering the truth of a statement is completely irrelevant to the truth of the statement, and all statements that are not statements of preference etc are objective.
The ability to answer a question is certainly NOT irrelevant to how we act, of course, and I’ve said as much (though perhaps before you started reading my posts). But I would say that we act based on our subjective perception of reality, and that we use all the tools available to us to try ot make our subjective perception of reality agree with objective reality. Thus while Catholicism is certainly objectively true or false in the sense that in the actual reality it is either true or false, each of our subjective views of reality may contain different answers to the question. But my solution here is not to wave away such areas where our subjective perceptions differ by saying that the
question itself is inherently subjective, but rather to fight it out. There is an objective reality. In that objective reality, the statement is true or false. We should try to determine which.
It seems to me that by objective you mean (and please correct me if I’m wrong) “indisputable by reasonable people with access to certain types of information and thought processes,” or perhaps, using my definition of subjective, “common to the subjective perceptions of all or nearly all reasonable knowledgeable people.” This is a much more narrow version of the word and is not terribly well defined, because it is not clear what counts as reasonable, what information must be accessible, and what methods of processing this information into other information is allowed.
In the sense of “indisputable by reasonable people”, this requires an that we be able to tell who is reasonable, which I think is tricky. In the sense of “common to (nearly) all subjective perceptions,” the nearly needs to be well defined. I’m happy to leave them fuzzy for the must part, and I will agree that in either of these senses of “objective,” only parts of morality are objective in this sense. So again, and in this sense only, I would agree that there is no objective morality. I would then be forced to make up a new word for the sense of “objective” I used above (I’d probably use the word true) and I’d say that there is a true morality which is not “objective.”
However, if we define “reasonable people” to be “people who always reason perfectly” (a group which contains, I would say, absolutely no one), then I think we would end up with a type of objective morality much closer to the sense of the word as I tend to use it. I would argue that reason and logic, if applied perfectly, can answer (without recourse to revelation, should such exist) very nearly every moral question (that does not involve things that mention revelation, should such exist, and probably some that do depending on how they do). This is what we tend to refer to as Natural Law.
But, given that “reasonable people,” in the loose sense of “people who are not insane,” disagree strongly on what perfect logic leads to, I’m not sure you’d consider the results of perfect logic to be objective. This is the reason why I prefer my version of objectivity - anything that perfect logic implies is true is actually true in the true reality (even if said reality contains things which perfect logic cannot prove to be true), and so everything that logic
actually shows to be true is in fact true, and objectively so. Regardless of who, if anyone, has discovered, will discover, or can discover that logic leads there.
(And obviously, I would argue that logic, together with history and observation, shows that Catholicism is true. Otherwise there wouldn’t be that “Catholic” next to my screen name.)
thewanderer:
I really don’t think theres much point in trying to talk with Iron Donkey about this because he ← this one]/she is unwilling to take a step back to find common ground, principles you both agree on and so it isn’t really going to be possible to have an actual discussion and exchange of ideas, the two of you will just end up bashing your heads together until one of you gets fed up and leaves.
I think you might have misunderstood what I was saying. I am perfectly willing to back up to common ground. I imagine the impression that I am not came from statements along the line of “Catholicism is right, and if you disagree then you are wrong,” which of course I believe to be true, but keep in mind that I was making such statements not because I expected others to work off them but because I was trying to show that religion is objective. That statement, true or false, is (in the sense of “objective” that I have been using, and also in the sense that you seem to be using) is an objectively true or false statement.
All I was trying to do was get the point across that the truth or falsehood of a religion is a feature of actual reality, independent of what any person thinks about it. While I would love for all people to suddenly accept my religious views, I was not trying to say that they must for the conversation to move forward.
