Fido, kennethamy,

An essential property of the physical world would be a necessary proposition. Those who believe in the reality of essential properties are implicitly asking us to believe in 'universals'. Those who refuse to believe in universals are pragmatists (or positivists, or language and logical analysts) who however, must accept the incompleteness theory of logic and mathematics. And more importantly the incompleteness of the physical sciences. Pragmatism implicitly priviledges the perceiver without due grounds of justification upon a non-theoretical, anti-intellectual frame-work.

A non-pragmatist who accepts the inherent incompletness of the physical sciences while maintaining that necessary propositions (or essential properties) about the world are not a priori 'universals' are called naive realists with good reason.

Philosophically speaking, there can be no essential property that is also a material property unless you have a proof of the Theory Of Everything.

--

I did not claim that there are essential properties. However, it seems to me that an essential property of gold, for instance, is an atomic number of 79, and an essential property of water is H20. Nothing could be water which was not, H20.

But all this is irrelevant to whether objects like leaves are green. I suppose you agree, then, that leaves are green?

H3O is water. Leaves are commonly green and not essentially green.

I did not say that being green is an essential property of a leaf. Even if H30 were water, it would not follow that only H30 was water. Gold must have the atomic number, 79, and mammals must be warmblooded. That is why whales are mammals, and not fish.

Fido, Kenneth, etc.:



The green colour of a leaf is a subjective quality

--Pyth

What sort of quality is a subjective quality?

What sort of quality is a subjective quality?

Any quality that can not be absolutely grounded or proven would seem to me to be a subjective quality. If you can't provide truly independent grounds for the existence of some knowledge then it's truth remains relative only to the methods and aims of the subjective perceiver(s).


Only knowledge which is assigned a universal validity or postulated as 'innate' in the mind can be said to posess an independent validity.

Rationalists believe that there is such a thing as a universal reference point by which we come to truly know things in nature. Theologians, of course, believe in universals too, but they base their beliefs upon religious foundations.

The key question seem to be, if we do know things then how do we come to know things as they are in themselves? Empiricists, such as David Hume and Bishop Berkeley, believe that knowledge arises from sense experience alone, while rationalists, such as Plato and Leibnitz, believe that knowledge arises from 'innate' ideas which correspond to an external state of affairs.

Hi Everybody

Is not apparent, reality relational reality, the object is relative to the subject in that, the subjects perception of object is how the said object effects the subjects biology. So apparent reality is biologically based, biologically determined, biological precieved as certain effects upon the subjects biology, apparent reality is a biological readout. The object is information of which a individual organism as subject, knows only part of the totality of the language.

"The ultimate test of knowledge is not in veracity, but in utility."

It is a coevolution of subject and object, relative always relative to ones biology.

Any quality that can not be absolutely grounded or proven would seem to me to be a subjective quality. If you can't provide truly independent grounds for the existence of some knowledge then it's truth remains relative only to the methods and aims of the subjective perceiver(s).


Only knowledge which is assigned a universal validity or postulated as 'innate' in the mind can be said to posess an independent validity.

Rationalists believe that there is such a thing as a universal reference point by which we come to truly know things in nature. Theologians, of course, believe in universals too, but they base their beliefs upon religious foundations.

The key question seem to be, if we do know things then how do we come to know things as they are in themselves? Empiricists, such as David Hume and Bishop Berkeley, believe that knowledge arises from sense experience alone, while rationalists, such as Plato and Leibnitz, believe that knowledge arises from 'innate' ideas which correspond to an external state of affairs.

I would not say color is subjective because as far as most colors there is general agreement and it is measurable. Now, the measure of color involves reliance upon some thing external to perception and to the people perceiving. But knowledge is something apart from verification. Our knowledge is our reach which will always exceed our grasp of what we can prove. What we prove after all is what we know, or think we know. Even while we do this as a negative, by trying to disprove what we think we know the actual result is the same: certainty.

Are you not confusing meaning with being? Meaning is what value we give to reality in relation to our own lives, and it will always seem subjective to others, and objective to ourselves.

It would be nice to have an instance or two of a subjective quality so that we have a fixed target to discuss. As Kant wrote, "examples are the go-cart of the intellect".

Well, some people (on this board, I think) have said that "colors are in the head" and that objects "really" have no color. So that is why a suggested a color as an instance of a subjective quality. But if you would not say that color is a subjective quality, then why not give me an example or two of an subjective quality. It would make matters much simpler if we knew the kind of thing we were talking about. Philosophy is abstract enough. Most of the time when we philosophize we are far above the Earth (as Aristophanes pointed out in his spoof on Plato in, The Clouds) Sometimes even in the stratosphere. A few examples help to tie us to Earth. As Wittgenstein once put it, "Back to the rough ground!" So, if color is not a subjective quality, what is?

First; knowledge of colors is in the head. Monkeys may see the same qualities we do without the name, or the knowledge, to speak of it after seeing it. Knowledge is not just cause and effect. Sure, what colors an object absorbs and refects has something of cause and effect to it; but knowledge that is, on the one hand, passive recognition -on the other hand allows active intervention by letting us cause effects, which we can begin to do when we talk as though outside of our reality . The same is true of imagination in that it allows us passively to recognize what we know without seeing all of the object, but actively to reconstruct, and so re-create our reality out of sight of the object. I think if we are to suggest a truely subjective quality it is one that arises from imagination. An example of this is any thing we conceptualize without an object. Infinities large and small, existence, and God are examples. We cannot demonstrate these things as things. We have no certainty that if you say the words, even an approximation of the same meaning of the word comes to mind as when I say them. God is subjective, and only people give God reality.

Hi Fido,

All organisms have a standing relation to the physical world. Meaning is simply a biologically based evaluation of the relation between subject and object. The perception of something involves something as object, its qualities are biologically determined by the sense apparatus of the subject. When somethings is said to be hot, it is hot only in relation to a biological state, biological body . If something is said to be true or false, it is not true or false in and of itself, it is true or false of the relation/relationship to a senseing, knowing body/subject. Meaning is an evaluation of the relationship of subject and object. I am unsure that I have answered your concerns about meaning and being. Perhaps it is enough to say, subject and object in fact are not separate entities, they are one. Our senses are not only enabling but limiting as well. We are only capable of deriveing meaning from the objective world though our senses [limiting as that is] and what is true or false, is true or falsehood of a particular relation/relationship, not of the object itself.

I wrote that some say that colors are in the head, not that knowledge of colors is in the head. But, what is "knowledge of colors"? What does that mean? Are we talking about whether we know that the ball is red. That was my example. (And, by the way, you still have not given me an example of a subjective quality. Have you forgotten about that?)

I am not sure what you mean when you tell me that knowledge is in the head. Belief, I suppose is "in the head" in the sense that I can tell whether I believe some proposition is true by introspection. But why is knowledge in the head. I cannot tell whether I know by introspection. I can tell whether I believe I know, for instance, that Quito is the capital of Ecuador by introspection. But I cannot tell whether I know that Quito is the capital by introspection. To tell whether I know whether Quito is the capital, I will have to look it up in some authoritative source like the World Book of Facts. That is why belief is a subjective state, but knowledge is not a subjective state.

Hibackatcha.

I think I get what you are saying about the corespondence between senses as determined, and reality as perceived. I am not saying subject and object are necessarily different, but in our case, we have a consciousness, and today presume that what we sense has none. This was not always the case. Animists or naturalists believed nature and animals had spirits. Why? It is only because to presume otherwise was no gain. Now we think we see the deer and the deer sees us. Primitives once talked about deer and presumened upon their own abilities and observations that deer talked about them. Deer are intelligent enough, and extra sensitive to their environment. But they have evolved to their environment as have we. I do not expect that they have other senses than we because if there were something beyond sensation that were substancial it would often kill people and deer for seemingly no cause. If there is something beyond our senses it is not particularly dangerous; but that does not mean it is not fatal. Perhaps our senses are lagging behind our ability to creatively destroy ourselves. Perhaps we need to evolve geiger counters and chemical detectors.
I hope this tangent does not take you too far from your point.

Look, even though we can only be informed through our senses does not mean what we know is false. Sure, senses are limited, but for that we can compensate. Sense is the beginning of science, and science builds ever more sensitive devices that are no more than better eyes, ears, touch, taste, smell, etc. Philosophy has come to deal with realities that cannot be sensed, and are thought of as subjective even while they have objective effects arrising from them.