Dear sir or madam,

Dear sir or madam,

Dear sir or madam, I have a question about language, epistemology, and truth. When I make the statement "it's hot in here" is that a statement about external reality or my internal perception? Is this an objective claim (i.e. there is such-and-such temperature and that qualifies as "hot") or simply my perception of an occurrence (i.e. I don't like how hot it is.) The former explanation seems compelling since we can argue about that statement: you can claim that it's not hot in here; I simply came inside from a room with air conditioning, so I *think* it is hot and am mistaken. On the other hand, the latter explanation makes sense since we are only perceiving the heat in the room and not taking any kind of empirical index. But, if this explanation is true, why do we use objective language about the room rather than our experience of the room? It seems to me like this might be a kind of "in-between" claim: based on my experience of the room and my understanding of the experience that would likely elicit in most other persons, there is an excessive heat for the subjective experience of a significant portion of the population. Is this an adequate explanation and if so, what do we make of these "in-between" truths? Do they have any value or do they really communicate anything? In some ways, I suppose this question is parallel to questions about emotive language in ethics. Thanks for your time, -JAK

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