Much of your criticism is based on a strawman because you’re misunderstanding what I’m doing. I’m not saying there’s no difference between objectivity and subjectivity, nor am I saying we shouldn’t speak of objective truth. Rather, I’m questioning the naïve conception of objectivity, so I’m raising the question of how we should explain the difference between objective and subjective truth. And I’m replacing the naïve conception with a pragmatic one.
As I say in the article, “But indeed, there’s likely some relatively objective relation between life and nonlife.” And I say towards the end not that scientific and philosophical truths aren’t at all objective, but that they’re not objective “in the naïve sense.” Also, this is only one of my articles on pragmatic epistemology. There are lots of others that elaborate on what I’m talking about (some links below).
I don’t think we have the same thing in mind when we’re talking about pragmatism since you say, ‘Pragmatic is to say: "Astronauts walked on the moon" is objectively true because we have tons of objective evidence that it happened.’ For me that’s empirical rather than pragmatic. The relation between evidence and epistemic justification is logical rather than pragmatic since it doesn’t emphasize the social conditions or background agendas.
The pragmatic attitude towards “Astronauts walked on the moon,” rather, would lead us to say that the whole regime of logic, of scientific testing of hypotheses, and of the application of knowledge with working technology serves a human purpose. It’s not a mirroring relation between symbols and facts, but a process that unfolds, an instrumental use of means to achieve an end. And the philosophical story about that underlying process, in turn, isn’t purely factual or absolutely objective, but is an existential narrative (as I say towards the end of the article).
Indeed, there’s intersubjective agreement about candles being hot. So, there’s a real pattern there which we all track. Indeed, we know also that we evolved to move away from intense heat since that sensation causes pain which triggers our reflexes. So, we know not just that candles are hot, but why we react to that heat as we do. And yes, all that knowledge is relatively objective rather than subjective. I don’t dispense with that crucial distinction since I don’t advocate postmodern relativism or any chaotic free-for-all.
The question I’m raising instead is whether that knowledge of the candle is perfectly, absolutely objective in the naïve sense, having no subjective component at all (beyond just the choice of notation).
What would absolute, pure objectivity look like? Wouldn’t we have to be perfectly passive and neutral in downloading the information, without imposing any merely human conception in understanding the meaning of the symbols that are being used to frame the knowledge of the candle? Ultimately, what is heat and what are candles, not from a mere human vantage point but from the universe’s, as it were? Pure objectivity couldn’t help but be ultimate since any restrictions on the nature of reality via conceptual models that generalize and abstract from the full truth would belong to the subjective side of the ledger.
Again, I have a couple of upcoming articles that will delve into this further.
