Is truth subjective? (part two)
My opening comments can be read here.
And Epiphanie's rejoinder can be read here.
So here's my part two...
Epiphanie (I think) thinks reality is mind-dependent because: it's mediated by minds; the word itself has a beginning; and the word has multiple usages.
Some kneejerk responses:
- Can reality mind-independently slap you in the face (say you believe you can fly, then find out you can't)?
- Even if it's mediated, isn't there still an it? Does Epiphanie confuse reality and perception?
- Is it true that reality didn't exist prior to 1400?
- Is it impossible for Epiphanie and me to agree on what "reality" means, in order then to discuss it? -- Is the term hopelessly vague?
Kneejerks aside, the (in my opinion) most intriguing and most important part of Epiphanie's response is her first sentence: "While I sometimes utilise metanarratives to make my work seem more accessible... I have no interest [in] my words being interpreted as 'objective'."
On my understanding, this has affinities with Eastern thinking (Buddhism, Taoism...), with Spinoza's intuition of God, with Heidegger's contemplation of pure being.
And compare Wittgenstein:
| My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless... He must... throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up...
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. |
Within the truth game, truth can't be subjective: "truth is subjective" itself claims objectivity.
What the Wittgensteinian approach amounts to is a refusal to play, a radical investigation of language's limits. And what it achieves is stripping you of speech -- its very conclusion is inarticulatable.
Well, I actually do have a lot of sympathy for this view. But if this is where Epiphanie is coming from, I don't think she's proven that truth is subjective. Proof and disproof, possibility and impossibility, belong to the realm of the sayable.
Doesn't Wittgenstein simply leave the room?
The quote is from CK Ogden's 1822 translation of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Do read Epiphanie's response in her Postmodern Critic blog.
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Comment by Damo
The whole problem is not one of what is possible but we can prove.
Even if truth is objective how do we demonstrate it? Where does someone begin? Can someone know objective truth without some kind of subjective leap of faith?
"Just messing with ya head"
Comment by KylieW
Celebrity Obsession
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Re possibility and provability... Often these are connected. Many proofs are reducitiones ad absurdum. For instance, the proof that truth is objective: "If all truth claims were subjective, then this truth claim would also be subjective. But this truth claim is objective. It is impossible for this truth claim to be both objective and subjective, therefore not all truth claims are subjective."
About how do demonstrate truth is objective... I think it's probably true that you can only ever prove something in terms of your audience's beliefs. For instance, if you don't believe in God, I can't use God in my proof.
But if you have a concept of objectivity I can use, and a concept of truth, and logical laws, then it might be possible for me to demonstrate that truth is objective. No leap of faith is necessary.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Comment by Damo
Here is the problem with truth.
Even if I sucribe to the concept of Objective Truth,
Even if I can demonstrate it to myself,
Even with overwhelming evidence,
How do I convince someone else?
Does it matter?
And what good is an objective truth that everyone else has rejected?
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Well, I suppose the plain answer is that you need to appeal to what they already have -- "you can only ever prove something in terms of your audience's beliefs".
That is, if you want to convince them rationally.
There are other forms of persuasion, like emotional manipulation, or mindwashing.
Well, it's possible that some objective truths might never be useful to anyone. For instance, some of "pure mathematics" might fall into this category.
But I don't know if most objective truths fall into this category. I suspect most will be the sorts of things that are relevant to you, and do affect your life, even if you don't believe them. This means that it's probably useful to know them, though it's also very possible (Nietzsche would have suggested this) that lies are often more useful than truths.
I suppose, it's also worth mentioning that even if everyone in history has failed to find an objective truth, that doesn't exclude the possibility of it being found in future.
Comment by Damo
Or is trying to say that only some people should be allowed the truth?
Or is he justifying lies for the sake of personal gain?
Regardless of what his reasoning is, the notion that lies are ligitmate is the opposite of seeking truth.
The quote I had about objective from an anon source was:
Right is right when nobody is right and
Wrong is wrong when everybody is wrong.
Meaning even if the whole world rejects the truth it will still exist and The consequenes will be the same.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Personally, I think he's sincere, and, what's more, that he's correct. And, to the latter, I think I could persuade you to agree.
Consider, for instance, the lie of Santa Claus. This seems to be more useful for keeping children innocent and happy, though one could debate whether that reason makes it preferable to the truth (I'd personally tell my kids Santa Claus was bullshit).
Or consider telling your child that their finger-painting is beautiful, and hanging it on the refrigerator, instead of telling them that it's crap. You use the lie to, among others things, motivate them.
Or consider where telling the truth hurts people. Classic example is when the Nazis come to your door and ask if there are any Juden hiding out. The lie is more useful, in terms of saving lives, thwarting the Nazis, than the truth.
The opposite attitude is that truth is always better than a lie, and always more effective in terms of achieving whatever goal you might aim at.
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
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*rofl*
Truth is everywhere both subjective and objective, isn't it? It resides in the great silence - the place where Wittgenstein storms off to... perhaps it would be better to ask if expressed truth were just a personal attempt at explaining the actual truth contained within silence.
Oh what do I know?
*going off to ponder with Wittgenstein, in silence*
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Hey Lilla, I want to lead you down one train of thought. I don't necessarily agree with this myself, but I think it casts light on the discussion.
Firstly, what sorts of things do you call "true"? "Truth" seems to be a quality of things like sentences and beliefs (not horses and apples). (You don't say "That horse is true" though you might say "That horse exists".)
Okay, well under what conditions do we say that things are true?
And the common response is something like: if it matches up with reality. The statement "You're reading this" if true if it matches up with a state of affairs in the world, namely that you're reading this.
Now, if you took this sort of approach to truth, then I don't think it woudl be true that it "resides in the great silence". Rather, truth would need words -- it would lie in the correspondence between words and reality. Beyond words, there would be no question of truth.
Depends what you mean by subjective and objective.
By "objective" you might understand "regardless of what anyone thinks" or "mind independent".
On an everyday view of the world, there are some statements that are true regardless of what anyone thinks. For instance, "2 x 2 = 4". Or: "The Holocaust occurred." It's common to think that if you don't believe this, you're simply wrong; your belief or disbelief doesn't change the truth of the matter.
But even on some non-everyday view, it seems to be impossible to use descriptive language without appealing to a base level truth. When you write "Truth is everywhere both subjective and objective" -- well, this statement itself claims to be objective, doesn't it? So there is at least one objective truth. Isn't it saying "It is true that truth is everywhere both subjective and objective"?
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
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thanks the short answer is, yes... the longer one may take me a minute or two...
Comment by Lilla
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A collective conscious truth is perhaps objective,
whereas personal truth is subjective?
What I'm saying it's both is that whilst my subjective truth of the Holocuast may be that it was "wrong,' my overall objective truth is that it "did occur."
I can hold the two, as one truth. I guess that's what you mean when you say that words are needed to exress truth and yet hide other truths.
So it is both then, at the same time, subjective and objective?
?
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I can hold the two, as one truth.
Well, I don't think that they're one truth -- I think they're two separate beliefs; one about the morality of the Holocaust, and the other about whether it did or did not happen.
Now, there's a question here over whether moral claims are truths at all (some people believe there are moral facts; some don't). And there is a question over what counts as a subjective truth (whereas Epiphanie wants to argue that all truths are subjective, I'm tempted, at the moment, to argue that NO truths are subjective; but there are different ways to understand "subjective").
I guess the main point I want to make is this: that the truth of whether the Holocaust occurred doesn't depend on anyone's beliefs. Perception of truth should be distinguished from truth.
If it's true that the Holocaust occurred, or that 2 x 2 = 4, or that God exists, etc, then these things are true regardless of what anyone thinks -- whether people believe them or disbelieve them or have no thoughts on the matter. The Holocaust happened even if there arises a Fourth Reich that takes over the world and rewrites the history books. And that's what I'm meaning by "objective". Statements that are true regardless of perception.
I find it hard to understand Epiphanie's precise arguments, but I think the basic issue is that she denies that there are statements that are true regardless of perception.
Comment by Lilla
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Comment by Uula Limanski
Thinking The World
I've commented in an older post, but anyway, i'm writing again to be sure it gets to you...
here's the way i see it after our old sources:
- since we can't be objetive about nothing that is "real" (coming from Kant: we can't have access to noumena, and thus we're bound to discuss phenomena), what's the point of discussing if truth is subjective or not? We can't be nothing other than subjective..
- Another way to comment on your question is using Nietzsche: how can we say that we got to the truth? How can we know that there is nothing deeper inside that, and that what we found is another mistake (as they do in physics all the time..)
From my point: truth is what is "real". Since we can't have access to "real", we can't access truth. That doesn't mean that truth is subjetive, it's just something we don't have access to. So i understand Epiphanie when she concludes that "truth is subjective" but i don't agree. Truth exists, but we'll never know it.....hehe
Cheers, Uula
Comment by Uula Limanski
Thinking The World
I've commented in an older post, but anyway, i'm writing again to be sure it gets to you...
here's the way i see it after our old sources:
- since we can't be objetive about nothing that is "real" (coming from Kant: we can't have access to noumena, and thus we're bound to discuss phenomena), what's the point of discussing if truth is subjective or not? We can't be nothing other than subjective..
- Another way to comment on your question is using Nietzsche: how can we say that we got to the truth? How can we know that there is nothing deeper inside that, and that what we found is another mistake (as they do in physics all the time..)
From my point: truth is what is "real". Since we can't have access to "real", we can't access truth. That doesn't mean that truth is subjetive, it's just something we don't have access to. So i understand Epiphanie when she concludes that "truth is subjective" but i don't agree. Truth exists, but we'll never know it.....hehe
Cheers, Uula
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
That was a nice distillation. Kant and Nietzsche were very appropriate to mention. (And if you happen to have a copy of Human All Too Human, have a look at Aphorism 16 -- where Nietzsche talks about the distinction between appearance and thing in itself.)
Now, your final paragraph seems to be what Epiphanie is sometimes saying. But I think, at other times, she seems to want to deny the mind-independence of truth and reality completely! -- for instance, when she speaks about the historicity of the word "reality", or when she disclaims that any claim she makes is objective. At these times, what she is doing could be, like Wittgenstein, a matter of cynically playing within the rules in order to demonstrate the inadequacy of the rules -- using language to point beyond language.
To the idea that we'll never really know reality, I think there's no reply! All sorts of skeptical possibilities are possible. It's possible we're living in the Matrix, it's possible that we're programs on a computer mainframe, it's possible that you and Descartes are the only two people that exist. -- I don't deny the difficulties. -- There's no response to these things except a sort of pragmatism. I mean, these hypotheses are a question of whether they have any implications for your behaviour and how you operate in the world.
Is there any point discussing reality if you can never have access to it? Well, we still live in it; reality still effects us. So we might as well try, with our feeble intellects, to model reality as well as we can. We might as well try to form empirical theories, to observe regularities, etc.
Regarding a radical questioning of truth and reality (or existence)... Well, this, to me, is the more interesting move, and provokes numerous questions. For instance,
-- Is it possible to use language without using a concept of reality or existence at all? (And, for that matter, what is a concept?)
-- And is it possible to give up on the concept of reality and the correspondence theory of truth without giving up on truth?
Comment by Uula Limanski
Thinking The World
concearning Epiphanie, i take your 2nd paraghraph as a good conclusion for the matter. If she thinks that "real" is not "mind-independent", the argument you use is pretty enought to convince me that she's not right.
As for the idea in the 3rd paraghraph on, i solved this problem in my head in the following way: the best way to discover if what we are "feeling" is the "real" or not would be to commit suicide.... If what we are "feeling" is real, then we'll be dead. Otherwise, we'll wake up and discover a new "source of information", a new "real"... Well, i'm not in the mood for killing myself, so i'll accept my actual "source of information" as "reality"....
Taking from Camus: "Il n'y a qu'un probleme philosophique vraiment serieux: c'est le suicide." (since i don't want people to think i feel they're oblied to know french: "There is only one philosophical problem really serious: it's suicide.") hehehe...
Cheers.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Well, if you die in the Matrix, you also die in real life. So maybe suicide doesn't prove anything!
A friend was saying to me recently... Objects don't have colours. Rather, what's happening is: light bounces off them and reflects into our eyes and then subjective experiences are somehow created.
So, if you accept this theory of vision, then whatever we perceive of the world is not the real world, but it IS some sort of guide to it...
Comment by Anonymous
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Let me know which idea you disagree with.
-- I'm treating "subjective" to mean "mind-dependent". I'm not treating it as meaning something like "can't be decided".
-- I believe the one thing can be both mind-dependent and mind-independent.
-- I think that there is no truth without language. Here's two ways to express this thought: (a) truth is a property of sentences; so no sentences, no truth; (b) truth claims are wedded to concepts; you can't express truth without concepts; and concepts require language.
-- I also think that there's no language without minds, though I can't give you a good argument for this here -- but would you disagree? At any rate, that's one of the reasons I think truth has to be mind-dependent.
-- Now, you also write:
Well, firstly, if by "objective" you mean "mind-independent", I do believe truth is to some extent mind-independent, so we don't disagree there.
But assume for a moment that truth IS in some sense mind-dependent -- why couldn't it still have a place in life?
For instance, it's arguable that things like pains are mind-dependent. If you didn't have minds, you wouldn't have subjective experience; and if you didn't have subjective experience, you wouldn't have pain. But this doesn't mean that pains don't have a place in life, or that they're not useful.