ok, upon finishing my affirmation of the correspondence theory of truth, i am intent on going one step further by proving that all knowledge is objective and that realism is the correct schema of reality. so, i will address each of realism's opponents and dissect their arguments, revealing why they are flawed and must ultimately be rejected.
anti-realism: anti-realism can basically be reduced to the statement: "all knowledge is subjective." in order for this to be true in all cases -- all knowledge -- "all knowledge is subjective" must be an objective statement, which means that not all knowledge is subjective. it is a self-refuting statement *unless* you do an ad infinitum of sorts, in which case your knowledge of subjective knowledge is subjective, and the knowledge of that knowledge is subjective, etc. the two options here are that you either embrace realism and accept its limitations and consider its subjective aspects to be negligible, or you enter this trap where it is an endless spiral of self-defeating epistemology, and it is pretty obvious that only the former option is viable.
idealism -- there are numerous formal criticism's available on wikipedia, but my personal take on the matter will be presented here. the problem with idealism is that it is impossible to establish a knowledge base among a group of people unless you 1) assume they are not philosophical zombies (which goes against the mentality of idealism since you, in your first-person mental point-of-view, can't access other people's minds directly from their first-person perspective), and 2) assume that they assume what you are assuming (ad infinitum). #1 isn't a difficult obstacle to overcome except that it goes against the mentality of idealism. #2 demonstrates that either the probability of establishing a knowledge base among a group of people using idealism's mentality is infinitely small and a sheer coincidence if it does occur, or it points to the likelihood of an external reality existing that is a point of reference and means for communication exchange among people in a group.
"some knowledge is subjective" -- first of all, if this were true, one would still have to believe that objective knowledge is superior to subjective knowledge. since the objectivity/subjectivity of knowledge is epistemologically determined, then it would seem that objective knowledge is knowledge one has 100% certainty of, and subjective knowledge is knowledge one has certainty of somewhere between but not including 0% and 100%. but why would we be certain of some things but not others? if we can objectively test something in "external reality" and come to the conclusion that we are 100% certain of it so that it is objective knowledge, then it must mean that 1) we believe the metaphysics is 100% correct and 2) that our epistemology's correspondence to that metaphysics is 100% correct. it seems that the only way we can be less certain of something in "external reality" is if we objectively test it and the metaphysics is not 100% correct. if our epistemology's correspondence to that metaphysics is not 100%, then 1) we are denying the correspondence theory of truth for all cases, and 2) in doing this, we are denying all objective knowledge. the only way we can claim that the correspondence theory of truth for some, but not all cases, is if our epistemology becomes altered for some unknown reason. an example might be a scientist conducting an experiment while being intoxicated with hallucinogenic drugs. however, i would say that this means there is faulty methodology involved, in which case the knowledge gained from the experiment is not subjective, but is instead "incorrect".
"all knowledge is subjective but we approach objective truth asymptotically" was suggested as a solution by a friend. i believe there are two plausible interpretations of his statement, with the second one being more likely the one he had intended to communicate.
1) we expand our knowledge base with the objective truth as a goal, and the more we expand our knowledge base the closer we get to that goal. however, more subjective knowledge doesn't help us get closer to the objective truth; we are looking for quality, not quantity, and subjective knowledge only provides the latter. furthermore, subjective knowledge implies a lack of ability for objective measurement, so we don't know which knowledge has been gained in good-faith or not, and even if we knew this, we are making the assumption that knowledge gained in good-faith is closer to the objective truth, which is a faith-based approach, not a fact-based one.
*or*
2) building subjective knowledge upon previous subjective knowledge helps us approach the truth asymptotically because the new knowledge is less subjective than the previous knowledge. but unless knowledge is becoming less subjective due to an inherent system wherein the greater the knowledge base, the less the subjectivity -- the mechanism of which would be a mystery -- it seems that the greater the knowledge base, the closer we are to "objective truth" means the closer we are to a "complete, objective truth". as such, all knowledge is objective, but incomplete, although building a knowledge base helps fill in some of the gaps and makes our knowledge base more complete. the only way that "subjective" could be interchanged with "incomplete" is if the truth could only be realized through a complete, whole ontology that we can never attain because "subjective" (epistemological) and "incomplete" (metaphysical) are interchangeable, and thus no progress can be made on assessing our reality; reality is either a quagmire (subjective and incomplete) or a perfect ontology (objective and complete) with nothing in-between and no explanation for how it is possible to change from one to the other or if it is even possible at all to do so -- perhaps whichever reality you start with is the one you are stuck in forever.
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