Ok. So, even if everybody says "the universe exists", that doesn't it exists because not everybody _mean_ the same thing by saying those words, correct?
I can see the above. And that the assumptions and problems in languages shape our thoughts and view of reality (the universe).
But, like I said before, instead of tackling what the sentence _means_ you tackle it's tools and execution (language and it's use). I find it like facing a a physics equation and starting to question "what is lightspeed 'c'?", "why is it in m/s?", "why is it base 10?".
Scientific inquiry isn't the same as scientific I think that's what you are struggling with.
In philosophy, these are _the_ questions you ask because you are trying to go the foundation.
But even in science "what is lightspeed" and why is in m/s ARE relevant questions not to do the science but to establish the tools for doing the science.
Sure. But those tool are estabilished (given the constrains of language that we use to formulate them and communicate them).
I'm finding it hard to see how you adopt such a way of thinking in a macro level.
Example: Person A says to me X. It is impossible to me to assert anything about it because I cannot _know_ the intent, meaning and reasoning by A to get to X. And even if I could totally and completely "be" inside A's mind, there would be problems involving language (for structuring thought) and sensory perception.
1 - Does this mean that X is totally unqualifiable? (true/false, valid/invalid, etc)
2 - If 1 is true, how does that that not fill you with epistemological dread? Anything can be anything. And anything can be or not be. Everything can be reduced to nothing including our own consciousness/ego.
And I'd like you to answer this previous point:
>> But "the universe is" is just tautological I.e it doesn't help you understand the universe any better...
> So what matters is not what something _is_ but what something _means_?
(And since this is getting big, could you point me to some resources to learn more about postmodernism? And maybe continue our discussion via email?)
You don't adopt it on a macro level you keep it in mind just like when you apply the falsification principle when doing science.
If you believe the world is flat you aren't exactly right but you are right enough to get from village A to B if they are close enough to each other.
Newton wasn't exactly right but his understadning of gravity was good enough that it was useful to us.
Einstein wasn't exactly right but he was right enough for classical physics (just not Quantum Mechanics).
In other words, we believe in things all the time that are useful while not necessarily true.
That's the point. you don't need universal truth to be locally right. The models have their limits, Us and our ability to establish them. They are an interpretation of reality not reality itself. I.e. our experience of reality and reality is not in a 1 to 1 relationship. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do science or we shouldn't make assumptions about whether something is good or bad or better or worse or right or wrong we should just know that we are really just playing word games in the grand scheme of things.
Postmodernism doesn't say we can't make assumptions on macro level it's indirectly saying we ARE making assumptions and these assumptions are the frame of references but are limited by the language we use to express them. So we can't really know the true interpretation of something just the reduced version that our perception and vantage point allows us to establish.
In other words we are ultimately the axiom of the available perspectives of reality.
I have linked to a few things in another discussion.
Tautologies are semantic and thus bound by the axiom of language itself. I.e. "universe" is an assumption, an axiom.
So no it doesn't really eliminate "everything is subjective" it fits perfectly into the postmodern critique of language itself.