I can claim objective for the lot, and I can claim subjective as an individual, so objective ... although experienced subjectively remains an objective reality (truth), observable and evident across the larger spectrum. I don't know that the universe is fair, but I can observe that the universe operates via laws, namely physics and there's a reason or process for everything that takes place in it. Fairness is a subjective value determination. The universe can be known only inasmuch as we capable of observing it through our subjective lenses, which change and develop through the processes of life and adaptation. We advance our capabilities in other words. Experience is truth, or rather experience is real. The truth part of the equation can be misleading. The shadow from the tree and the howl of the wind looked and sounded like an angry wolf. It wasn't. It was frightening, but it was also unwarranted. Why?
It was just a shadow. The experience was real enough to feel frightened, though.
Hello a newbie to this, scrolling through the thread. I stopped here. Reading the above, something came to mind regarding the oppositions subjective vs objective, experience vs truth (in a sense) as in the above example of the shadow and the fearful experience of it etc.
As you'd probably agree, sensation, speaking briefly, needs correcting when we're trying to establish the externally real. In addition to the shadow illustration, there are other sensory experiences, real in themselves of course, that may also instill what turn out to be unfounded emotional reactions, but anyway illustrate the oppositions raised above and what I mean by correction.
Aboard a ship we literally see the shore moving. This is the unanalysed data. And we see the sun moving, and feel and see a flat world, and the stars as tiny and so on. This is the absolute sensory data.
By reasoning we correct these subjective experiences. 'Correct' is shorthand for a long story which isn't relevant now. But anyway by reasonably corrected sensation we establish what's really the case outside our bodies in the world we get to know (again 'know' is shorthand, irrelevant now). That is, since, other than internal feelings, sensations come upon us involuntarily and sense we must, naturally we seek the source and this ends the immediate question until it arises again. That is, we explain why we had the sensations, establishing that the ship is in reality moving, the sun stationary, the earth spherical, the stars massive etc. The case, in reality, we say.
Of course I've missed out the middle step that the question arises usually because sensations, often through instrumentation, are had which conflict. We step off the boat and sense the ground is still. But already we've passed beyond mere immediate sensations, memory coming in and the thinking process.
On the other hand, one is sometimes amazed at how far pure reasoning goes with really scant sensory data. Einstein's thought experiments are a case in point, even contradicting the apparently obvious - a mark of so-called genius I suppose.
Sensations are true in the one sense that they exist just as a delusion is truely, i.e. really had. However in the other sense above, uncorrected by reasoning about extra- sensory causes, they're often untrue and even considered unreal, as is the paradigmatic mirage of water in the desert.
I've probably belabord the point and I definitely haven't acknowledged all the points we agree on. And I've limited experience to sensations and thinking for this initial response. Basically I wanted to introduce reason and it's interaction with sensory data, and to comment on the issues above, e.g. reality, truth, objectivity, subjectivity etc. I felt systematic thinking explaining experience wasn't broached, at least not in this particular post. Cheers