I mean, what’s there to debate here? He did do what he did. The police caught him in the act. Due process is, rightly, for the courts, not absolutely everything. His employers know he stalked his ex from states away and rammed into her car with his own. Cut this psycho.

And looking at the context for how this started, I do believe it’s either one of those positions for those who are disagreeing with that poster, including Mr. Rutherford. Beside that, again, even speaking on the nature of individual scientific judgements, that would still objective fallibilism.

I don’t know what they have in mind. But you write as if online mobs ratio’ing people have never been wrong before. Maybe *they* misunderstood the original poster. Or maybe many of them do reject objective epistemology — that *is* still a relatively popular view in progressive circles.

But I feel our discussion is at an impasse. As with the other user, all I can due is recommend the authors who I believe explain my position best. David Detmer’s “Challenging Postmodernism” and Paul Boghossian’s “Fear of Knowledge” are two of such books on the subject.

Mind-dependence does not mean that. By your definition, objectivity could not possibly exist in any subject matter, even regarding our disagreement here. Mind-dependence means the truth of something / its accuracy depends on if you believe it is so. It’s objectivity that requires evidence.

Objective statements require interpretation. No idea how you could think that they wouldn’t. Because those interpretations could be wrong? Again, that implies fallibilism, which implies objectivism. If these were subjective interpretations they could *not* be true or false / accurate or inaccurate.

This entire discussion is about the philosophy of science. With all due respect, this is why I think the misunderstanding in our discussion is on your part. You’re trying to argue philosophy when it seems you don’t really engage with the subject matter to know what the terms mean.

The only thing I can say is this is nothing new or controversial. If you want to get a better idea of what I’m arguing, my position is similar to that of what David Detmer argues in his “Challenging Postmodernism” and Paul Boghossian’s “Fear of Knowledge”. (2/2)

For someone who is an associate professor, you sure are rather mean for no reason in a discussion that is purely intellectual, and in which I have given you no disrespect while you’ve been condescendingly smug and dismissive. Maybe I’m not explaining my position well enough. (1/2)

The problem is subjective claims can’t be fallible. Only objective claims can be fallible b/c fallibilism holds that we can be, and often are, wrong about what we claim. But subjectivism holds that we can’t be wrong, we can only fail to live up to our own standards — its “truths” are mind-dependent.

Ok, first: “Objects that capture reality with degrees of accuracy”? This describes the an objective claim. Second, you’re conflating “objective claim” with “objective truth” itself, which I never said. But what I did say is that science is fallible, which is what you’re confusing with subjectivity.

Also, you keep trying to say I’m wrong about objectivity. Is this an objective claim of yours that I’m wrong? Or is it just your subjective opinion? Either you concede my point that I’m right about this, or you admit that your claim that I’m wrong is equally as valid as my claim that I’m right.

Not sure what you mean by that first bit. You’re still unclear. And again, scientific models of what? To make predictions in what? The external world. An objective claim. Of course, scientist think they can make claims about reality, just never with 100% certainty.

I’d recommend David Detmer’s “Challenging Postmodernism” and Paul Boghossian’s “Fear of Knowledge” if you’re interested in what analytic philosophers generally think of this position: most analytic philosophers are objectivists about this topic. Dennett likely was too.

With all due respect, what are you talking about? Our debate is entirely conceptual. Did you even read what I said. As I’ve said before, I think your disagreement is due to misunderstanding what the words in question here mean.

Additionally, I have no idea how someone explaining something as being “mind-independent” can possibly be interpreted as being a “long winded way” of calling something “subjective” just in the face of it. The whole point of the word “subjective” is to indicate dependence on the mind.

No, I explained how it’s the opposite. The only way to believe it isn’t is to confuse the meaning of terms or to redefine the terms in a way that isn’t useful and will cause confusion. For instance, is “That is a very long winded way of saying not objective” an objective claim or a subjective one?

Youre confusing fallibilism with objectivism. An objective method to determining aspects of the external world can be fallible while still being objective. Again, “objective” just means that the truth of the claim at hand is mind-independent. Statistics is fundamentally about making those claims.

Data of what? Analyzed to say what? Something of the external world. Yes, this requires a subject to interpret, but then if that’s what was meant by “subjective”, then nothing could be objective. By that standard you’d have to agree that I’m not wrong now since our disagreement would be subjective.