Mike Leghorn:

>Part of the problem is that there is no point where the subjective world
>and the objective world meet.  For example, you and I might be moved to
>tears by the same passage of music, but there is no way to tell if we
>really felt the same.

A third person in a position to observe us both might be inclined to say
we did--enough for descriptive purposes anyway.  Why isn't it enough that
we are moved to tears by the same passage? And if we are mutually aware
of that, can there be any greater fellow-feeling than this? Does it really
matter if there is some unknowable difference in the seemingly comparable
emotions of two people? What would this even mean? There is no way to tell
if any two people ever feel exactly the same about anything--or if they
don't.  Personal feelings are profoundly private; that is the human
condition.  But two or many people can share a common occasion, a musical
performance for instance, and they can focus on that music, which has
describable characteristics.  That is one place where the subjective
world and the objective world meet.

In "The Problems of philosophy," Bertrand Russell writes about "knowledge
by acquaintance and knowledge by description." The latter may strike you
as more "objective" but as Russell convincingly notes, acquaintance is
more fundamental, immediate, and the basis for any descriptions.  Here
is where they meet again.

>Another example:  what if we had the technology to build robots that
>perfectly mimicked human behavior.  We still wouldn't know if those
>robots had inner experiences like we humans do.

There is no reason to think they would, though if you want a nice fictional
account of this, try Marge Piercy's He, She and It, based on the Golem
story.

Jim Tobin