meaning v existence

[ray gonne]

andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk responded:
> 
> > 2) the explication and/or explanation of facts is always subjective
> 
> LudWit would disagree with you on this one too. A fact is probably one
> of the definitive, one might say canonical, examples of something
> objective. Hence explanations of facts (correct ones) must also be
> rooted in that same objectivity (can't use a subjective argument to
> correctly establish an objective fact now, can we). Explanations are
> fundamental to the establishment of the objective, so this is hardly
> surprising. I (and IMHO LudWit) would advise you to crank down your
> notion of what objective means, though. It's a status people grant to
> things - not without forethought, reason and the possibility of
> revision of course - grant not by saying yes to some proposition but
> by adopting expectations and undertaking actions which grant an
> objective status to the thing in question.
> 

**warning--subjective take on ideas about objectivity (ie i'm leaving
wittgenstein out of this, which is not to say his ideas are objective
ones)**
i take issue with the last statement here, in particular the (imo)
fallacious formulation that works out to "grant an objective status."
you seem to contradict yourself ("can't use a subjective argument to
correctly establish an objective fact). objectivity IS, if at all--it is
not granted or decided upon. i think the problem lies in the difference
between meaning and existence; for example, one could announce that the
novel Gravity's Rainbow exists objectively, but WHAT it is, beyond book
or novel (which is perhaps a bit of a stretch as an objective
designation), is a question of meaning, which is necessarily a
subjective question. ie it exists, but what is it? it exists is an
announcement of fact, something as close to objective as one can get,
methinks (tho get me in an out there mood and i'll be more open to the
philip k dick-ian idea that perhaps it's not there, a la <time out of
joint>); what is it is a question of detail that begs interpretation,
opinion, perspective, which leads to a theory of meaning. if we could
all agree that GR is about war or rockets, which i am certain we cannot,
we could maybe believe it was the objective truth--in fact, tho, i would
call it an artificial objective truth, since it would be a consensus of
subjective perspectives. pk dick (perhaps you have caught me in that
mood) might have argued that one can not distinguish objective truth
from mass hallucination, if even there is a distinction. to put it
another way, we agree upon arbitrary labels for sensory phenomena, but
as our trade in labels complexifies, we enter the realm of fiction where
actual drops away from figurative and there's no telling what's real and
what's imagined (cf osbie feels "movie," <doper's greed>, on page 534 &
535 of GR:  Rathbone sees the midget sheriff and says "that can't
possibly be real, can it?" then goes on to say "I know what's real, and
what isn't real." his companion, sakall, retorts, "vell, ve're both
seeing him. that means he's real." to which rathbone sez "joint
hallucination is not unknown in our world, podner.").