I Believe in Objective Truth
I have heard it all. “Everything is relative”, “Let people believe what they want to believe”, “We cannot know the truth”, “Truth is written by the victors”, “Truth can only be proven by science or mathematics”, “God is the truth”, and so on and so on. What I have observed from all these positions is that they fail to get at the root of the matter. They generalize the topic of truth through a lens of no analysis whatsoever, and fail to provide a meaningful answer. We must try to figure out what truth is all about.
The question at hand is “What is objective truth, and why don’t we care about it?” Perhaps it is easy to accept that 2+2=4, since that is a simple fact of counting. It is easy to look at a red thing and say “that is red”, as the vast majority of people have the same perception of red. But when we get to moral claims, or claims of right and wrong, we are suddenly dealing with a more unclear territory. Suddenly, all sorts of bad opinions can be qualified as saying “that is my belief, we cannot debate this as it is personal to me, let’s agree to disagree because there is no way to figure out the truth here”. On the other hand, there’s also a clinging to certain opinions with dogmatic stubbornness, and that creates huge problems for discourse.
Surely, you can see the dilemma of a society that affirms certain things to be true and false while simultaneously denying the need for objective facts. What I mean by ‘objective facts’ in this case is the philosophical exploration of what we are, how we exist, and why we are doing what we do. Facts are needed because they establish a groundwork for navigating the world, vis-a-vis the help of assertions, observations, and evidence. Yet one can as easily, with no evidence at all, make all sorts of claims about what’s right and wrong, and the only thing stopping them would be common sense.
This is true of complex debates wherein two people may have vastly different levels of knowledge about the subject, different biases, and/or different levels of intelligence. Though such a debate could certainly be interesting, it is much more likely to be subjective and unproductive. It is sensible to say that the purpose of debate should be to progress human knowledge and understanding, not to prove some point or to humiliate the other person. Yet a brief look at Facebook and Instagram debates would have you think that we are all primitive, dogmatic, backwards idiots.
Presumably, most people get their moral/ethical stances from something given to them, i.e. the insights of authority figures. In my opinion, this is nothing more than a foundation, and should not be the root of what we think and believe to be true. I personally think people should be scientists in all contexts, no matter what is being discussed, because that is the only way to comprehend reality honestly. Most philosophers write up a complicated system of thinking, and reach some profound and worthwhile conclusions, but they still have a goal in mind, which is to prove something. The objective truth needs no proving, for it is already here. We are tasked with testing everything until we find the right answer.
I believe some effort should be made towards the proper analysis of what’s true and false, but this demands detachment from one’s own biases. In some sense, we are always biased, as we are not computers, nor are we programmed to think objectively. However, there must be some way to channel our biases towards the pursuit of objective truth — there must be some mode of being in which we are better able to understand highly difficult, oftentimes metaphysical questions. It is all well and good if 10 people can define and explain Kant’s categorical imperative, but of those 10 people, how many actually know how to implement it and justify it as superior to other ethical stances? Even if they do, would they be right?
For it seems that we often make many difficult decisions without reference to anyone else’s moral/ethical philosophy. We have our own unique mode of being, wherein our “dealing-with-problems” process usually accords with our psychological attitudes. That is to say, you could be a Kantian, or a Hegelian, or a Marxist, but fundamentally, you are still an individual dealing with unique problems, many of which require a variety of possible approaches. How is this formed, if not by experience and inference from experience? And our faculty of analyzing experiences is based upon our temperament, as well as the way we choose to use our reason.
I will assume here that all people can and do draw inferences from their experiences. However, many of those inferences are subject to being wrong, seeing as they come from our mind. If we were objective beings, we would simply think about everything in the abstract, without any mediation. The consequence of our being ‘subjective’ beings is such that we are participating in our experiences, and develop personal notions about them, such as those of fair/unfair, good/bad, right/wrong, etc. This, and all other biases we may face, can prevent us from harnessing objectivity.
My argument, therefore, is primarily focused on the self and its role in understanding our totality of experiences. This incredible thing we all have, the self, is simultaneously living in the world of facts and opinions. This necessitates the need to study both, so as to find the ideal unity. We cannot be ignorant of facts, but it would be difficult to exist without opinions. This is why we have no choice but to strengthen our opinions, both by knowing more facts and improving our ability to argue. Let no one confuse you into thinking that truth cannot be realized. None of this nonsense about ‘relativism’ makes any sense when reality is happening right before our eyes. We must dutifully participate in the truth.
Thank you.
