Thanks Glen, Yes, is interesting.
It’s funny: I have an allergy to terms like “metaphysical commitment”. Yet, if you were to grant me a neologism, like “mental posture” that I take on while saying or hearing some statement, I would mean what amounts to the same thing, but not mind, because it would lack the pomposity of “metaphysical commitment”. Interestingly, I (at the moment) suspect that I don’t want this “mental posture of taking a meaning as objective” to entail the “existence" of predicates, signs and objects (or equivalent collections of them) in that same “objective” sense; but the posture is that I am thinking and behaving as if I take such things to exist, whether or not I am in possession of any of them, and even if I know I am not or may not be in possession of them. Again: I might use predicates, signs, and object terms I am in possession of “as if” they were those, while at the same time knowing that it’s all provisional, and the things I am using that way might not be reliable in that use. It feels like there ought to be some formal-language way, using some representation for self-reference, to articulate what it means to (said objectively) “be in a posture of” treating the state of discourse “as if” it entailed these affordances-from-the-objective, while acknowledging that the whole thing is self-referent within a system that could be free-floating. It’s (mildly) interesting to me (aka tedious), how many readings are present in any assertion. I said I wouldn’t go off on the migraine aura thing, but it’s hard not to do so. Suppose I were to say “Nick is experiencing his own migraine aura.” Meaning, me-as-I-think-and-speak says that sentence. I won’t make claims for what somebody else would be doing while saying the same thing (though of course I have presumptions of similarity for anybody else doing it). That allows me to self-report (with all the hazards of that). I think that: 1. the use of “migraine aura” is an objective one. I am supposing there is a meaningful category of actual phenomena “in the world” for that term to refer to. That it is something brought into existence with people’s brains etc. 2. But the nature of these migraine auras — a property of that category — is that there are no disembodied instantiations of them, and that each instantiation is in some particular body. That’s what the “his own” installs in the sentence. There is no way to get at whether an instance is being realized without checking-in with that body (by asking Nick, by taking an EEG, a PET scan for blood perfusion; however). But that determination has some stability intersubjectively: everybody can listen to Nick’s report, can read the EEG, etc. 3. Whatever sensation, or state-of-awareness the arising of a migraine aura induces in Nick, draws all of its reference-terms from our discourse concerning awareness or experiencing, and in that sense, the sensation is by its nature of a subjective type. Even if we (switching frames again) regard the naming of that subjective type as being an objective assertion, meaning that typical people-with-brains will be able to take on similar-enough states-of-awareness that a language can grow up around them to coordinate people on them. Given the above, I would definitely agree, that even under the extreme similarity among people, we can perform some coordination, but probably don’t have any very high-quality “understanding” of the situation that makes it possible. The more similarity we sacrifice, the less performance we have, and the even-less claim to understanding we should suppose. I think it is Mike Gazzaniga who is on a kind of crusade against people’s ascribing their own mind-state terms to non-human animals. (Sort of, anti-Franz deWaal.) Even though I strongly suspect there are places it is right to do that, since there is enough similarity. For instance, I am fairly convinced that dogs have a certain sense of what belongs to them and what they are owed, or what is “fair” and should be respected as theirs, and that they get offended when that is violated. I also think the nature of their offense has enough similarities to a person’s, that empathy between the two is possible. For many other things, even at a comparable level of compositeness, I would not make a similar claim. Something like that works for intersubjective stabilization of states of knowledge. Many years ago I read an article on gaze-following, studied in dogs and also in people. One of the article’s claims is that having a snout makes a big difference for dog performance. Dogs’ following of the writer’s gaze was marginal to poor when just done by faces. (I think the writer was also the researcher; and if I recall it was a man, maybe an English man.) The writer put on a cone-snout, like a kids’ birthday-party hat, and then used the head direction to indicate gaze, and the dog’s performance improved a lot. To me, those kinds of performance differentials are enough to support talking about the basic structure of building up intersubjective shared views of what is the case in any given situation. The converse of this would be how often none of it is possible even between people. Eric > On Nov 21, 2025, at 10:12, glen <[email protected]> wrote: > > This is useful. Thanks. However, I'm worried that it doesn't translate across > different types of *subject*. Obviously, we're talking about ordinary humans > with fingers, toes, eyes, whole brains, and language. But what about, say, > social insects? Or, to make the problem a bit easier, Japanese macaques? > > Would things like shared genes (identical twins?, kin?) be a foundation for > intersubjectivity? Or, at the other extreme, perhaps does all > intersubjectivity require some sort of settling-in process/transient? E.g. I > can't be intersubjective with someone with whom I haven't negotiated shared > context. In between might be something like the zeitgeist. Maybe the degree > of intersubjectivity is higher between those who share language/culture? > > If "objective" carries extra premises and "intersubjective" is graded, then > it seems to me the only extra premise is the existence of some perfect > hash/index such that predicate, sign, and object can be fully expressed > uniquely in that index. (Or, maybe there is polysemy or ambiguity, and there > are interchangable classes of predicates, signs, and objects. But those > schema can be - even if only lazily/eventually - fully expressed -- But then > the classes would be something like intersubjectivity. And the only way to > resurrect objectivity would be the requirement that those equivalence classes > be "unrollable" into a perfect hierarchical index.) > > The very use of the term "objective" would then be a metaphysical commitment. > > > On 11/21/25 3:59 AM, Santafe wrote: >> I guess this thread is stale by now. And EricC gave a response that I agree >> with and that is probably sufficient for anything that needs to be said. >> But still I wanted to comment on this at the time, and have not had an >> allowance to do such things for the weeks since then. >> I will clip; not to take out of context — I won’t go off in the direction of >> the use-case of migraine auras — but to get to the main point: >>> On Nov 7, 2025, at 20:31, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> I wonder what the difference is between intersubjective and objective? >>> >>> Nick >> I find it interesting that, when I took in the conventions for using these >> three terms from the common language, it was as if subjective/objective were >> alternatives, or a basis for a dichotomy. And in that sense — in the >> haphazardness of common speech — they would have to be values within some >> category that they have in common. >> But everything about my own use of them increasingly says they are distinct >> categories, and not alternatives or a basis for a dichotomy at all. >> My own approach is, I guess, what one might call “a perspective from >> discourse”. Something about deciding what “kinds of meanings” characterize >> my various states of mind. >> I think I am willing to argue that any assertive sentence is “about >> something”, and here, by its target, I don’t necessarily mean “an object”, >> but whatever “meaning” the sentence is meant to carry from speaker to hearer. >> We can then ask, how much we need to know, to even assign that meaning. >> If I say something is “subjective”, then I need to know not only what is >> being said, but by whom, or in relation to whom, because the assertion >> itself is about some kind of relation of the subject to whatever aspect of >> the experience is being asserted. It is not that which subject asserts it, >> per se, is important, but at least that without reference to the fact that >> it is the kind of thing a subject asserts, I am not even capturing what the >> meaning is. >> If I say something is “intersubjective”, then I can declare a meaning >> without respect to whoever-in-particular happens to say it, or to how the >> experience is conveyed to one or another informant. >> But if I say something is “objective”, I am including in the discourse a lot >> more premises. I am saying that I assume there is “something that is the >> case” “about” “a world” — all those being somehow placeholder terms, but >> nonetheless terms to which other things besides this assertion get attached >> — and that “the case” affords this assertion to be made (to be packaged in a >> sentence somehow). Not only is the sentence itself not inherently about a >> relation to an experiencer, and not only does it not matter which >> experiencer is the informant, as is true of the inter-subjective; but the >> affordance to make such assertions is now assumed as part of my imputation >> of meaning, whether or not any experiencer ever takes advantage of it and >> makes the statement. The Earth went around the Sun, the same as now, in the >> billions of years before there were people to talk about it; that kind of >> thing. >> Relations between the intersubjective and the objective are built up by some >> much more indirect sequence of deliberative reasoning, which is a >> scaffolding for the system of meanings, but not really within their basic >> types. >> My three-type characterizations above aren’t fundamentally about how stable >> these assertions are, or how one chooses to keep making them or to change >> them through time, which I take to be the pragmatist’s concern, but rather >> just about what-all goes into attaching a “meaning” in the cognitive-state >> sense to using such sentences. From that perspective already, it seems to >> me that they are of qualitatively different kinds, for the types of meanings >> they characterize. >> Eric > -- > ¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ > ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω. > > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... > --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,oqjlqHIhnB7CDo-Oa_ASFkdXrt0oxd-Sl9OCs6wxIXX3WR4eUSKhYQDxkBJD9nfpJ7t66wqmcBQvweOPUaZCmcIm-90ubBjdKdBgU3q52l58iHZFMoSo9So,&typo=1 > to (un)subscribe > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,FQkrE0AbjTCPjDJa2GKkfLzpzz8XPRmRwcjbpK11wQfnM327QTMSLNGpy888B3iiw4uLzreEwUkyylyveZ_MZEbUX8cVF5VhyWmeO0kYx3M,&typo=1 > FRIAM-COMIC > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,q7aTj6IgeCBViCoKJLM5I4RAbSjMVGsPx8MUDEV_dPaDRKVn42FEqinp5uRBIgX_TAwR0v_-tWC-31ZpNUD-Z2gm9-sVO2W5Jc5HLhnyKuPR&typo=1 > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,y52OCXSPyZOLmCV9D_qQODhOOJBTk0_-sa6_1-aiUfzpJqEY_b9cG9GQx3UQyw35jYr_2mGYGLh7SGWbpeXYKWWu4PEP5o7HhJyolhRN1GlfrKsR2A,,&typo=1 > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. 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