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The main issue in this dialogue is about the development of objective knowledge in the [1] Sciences and [2] Arts. Piaget's argument about [1] was in terms of objectivity being due to a "publicly verifiable method". For example: Proposition 47 in Euclid's Elements, Book 1 is the Pythagorean theorem [PT] in Euclid's system, and it is valid in that system. It does not follow from this that PT is valid in other systems of geometry, eg: non-Euclidean systems. Nor does it follow that all putative [proposed, conjectured] theorems are valid; the 4-colour solution in my other email used to be disputed territory, and maybe still is. All the same, validity is demonstrable in many cases.?This can be re-run for the natural sciences in that objective knowledge is possible based on experimental data. Piaget captured this in the requirement that objectivity requires a public method that was either algorithmic [mathematics etc] or evidential [physics etc]. In turn, a public method was normatively specifiable in terms of a framework [aka structure, system] required for the method user to understand the method, where?framework F1 had a different characterisation from framework F2. In particular, his account enabled objective knowledge to be possible and open to development, namely by using frameworks that were hierarchically more complex, where the complexity could be normatively expressed. The problem about [2] is that neither type of framework [algorithmic, evidential] applies in the same way: there is no objective knowledge there; but neither is there rank subjectivity ¨C more on this later. Joe's proposal is in terms of a phenomenological approach central to which [this is required] is his "(i) do you think the dog actually smells something". Now in general, any account has to say something about the extent of the knower's contribution, i.e. the person who has experiences. For Popper, no contribution is required from this department; for empiricists such as Locke/Hume, that is all that is required from this department; for Piaget, a middle course was taken in that the nature of the knowing subject S has always to be taken into account ¡ª otherwise nothing can be known. But S's experience alone is not enough for a well known reason: experience is necessarily the experience unique to each S. Unless there is a publicly verifiable method "behind" the experience, we are in a Tower of Babel, what Piaget wisely called?"collective monologues". In particular, even if all knowledge has its [a] origin in experience, the open question is how to [b] constitute it, how to ensure that what has been accessed or acquired is legitimate. Without [b], pseudo-rationality, pseudo-concepts may always be what was accessed under [a]. This is where [i] fails: it reduces [b] to [a]. For more on this distinction between [a] and [b], see my 2009 paper. Joe might reply: experience is experience of objects and so objective. But that is a notoriously ambiguous position. Plato's forms were objects in a platonic heaven; that is a direct road to realism, where realism and constructivism are contraries ¨C you have to choose between them.?Husserl's essences were objects eidetically intuited; Descartes' clear and distinct ideas [representations] were consciously mental objects. And there's the catch with this reply: yours is yours, and mine is mine, and never the twain shall ¨C nor even could ¨C meet. That's why [a] is never sufficient, even if it is necessary. Joe might also reply: the unit of analysis is a frame. But what exactly is a frame? How is frame1 to be demarcated from frame2? Piaget had an answer to the question about frameworks, which is why he provided a logical description of, eg, the structure of formal operations is explicitly and publicly different from that of concrete operations in terms of its internal normative relations?¨C each is characterisable through specific norms. But to repeat: what exactly is a frame? How is frame1 to be demarcated from frame2? The open question is?[2]. My proposal is that objectivity is not available in [2] in the way it is available in [1], but intersubjectivity is. Crucially, subjectivity in different sense is contrary to each under an argument due to Frege. Intersubjectivity interpreted [following Frege, call this IF] requires there to be a self-identical proposition or principle common to different knowers. Piaget's frameworks secure this, including contexts where S1 and S2 use the self-same framework F3 so as to disagree.?Note well: IF is not ¨C repeat: not ¡ª merely socially based interaction [call this IS] which can amount to "collective monologues", "dialogue of the deaf" and worse.?Actually, the experience of any individual S and the culture of any social group are such that both are in the same leaking boat based on IS ¡ª the leaks are egocentrism and sociocentrism respectively due to total reliance on [a]. But staying with Neurath's boat analogy, it can be rebuilt without sinking under IF combined with [a] + [b]. On [a] and [b], see Smith, L. (2009). Piaget's developmental epistemology. In U. M¨¹ller, J. Carpendale, & L. Smith (eds.). Cambridge companion to Piaget. [pp. 64-93]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. On Frege, see Smith, L. (2006). Norms and normative facts in human development. In L. Smith & J. Von¨¨che (Eds.) Norms in human development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, L. (1999). What Piaget learned from Frege. Developmental Review, 19, 133-53. Smith, L. (1999). Epistemological principles for developmental psychology in Frege and Piaget. New Ideas in Psychology, 17, 83-117. Smith, L. (1999). Eight good question for developmental epistemology and psychology. New Ideas in Psychology, 17, 137-47.