Let’s start this post by trying to define “meaning”, a daunting task since thousands of volumes have probably been written on the subject over the last 400 years. Think of a word as being like a bag and its meaning as the contents of the bag. If you overfill it, the bag will burst and become useless.
I think that some confusion has arisen over what the words “objective reality” mean. If you can see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, or kick it, it’s objective reality. In general for us and in most cases, whether it’s red, loud, rank, sweet, or hard are subjective. There are things (like gravity) that don’t fit into the definition but they’re real, too. If you don’t believe me, jump off your front porch. You’ll come to the same conclusion. Yes, I’m over-simplifying.
How you feel about something, however strongly that might be is not “objective reality” Neither are my, your, or anybody else’s motives. They’re real enough all right but they’re completely subjective. Thinking of them as objective is like over-filling the bag.
You can quibble about all sorts of things like the imperfection of our senses or of language or about how our experiences of reality are mediated by our interpretations of reality but it’s pretty difficult to avoid over-filling the bag that way. Pretty soon you end up denying the possibility of communication and that flies in the face of our everyday experience. You might find that philosophically satisfying but it’s just not how we live our lives. When you’re run over by a car while crossing the street, you’re just as dead however imperfect our senses or language are. And if we’re going to communicate we need to limit the “objective reality” bag to things that are, well, objective and real.
So, if you start a sentence with an invocation of objective reality and then launch into a diatribe on somebody’s motives or virtue, tread carefully. Your views might be real but they’re not objective.
