Is Reality Objective or Subjective?
“We suffer more from imagination than from reality.” — Seneca
We are in an age of misinformation. Some skeptics claim all so-called knowledge is just manipulative narratives. Others claim they have their own reality, and anyone who questions it commits “violence” against their identity.
What makes something real?
The objective/subjective distinction — whether something is mind-independent or mind-dependent — may help us address this question.
Nobody can know anything without a mind, but that doesn’t mean all knowledge is subjective.
There were numeric facts before there were minds capable of conceptualizing them; e.g., water is two parts H, one part O (H2O). It takes a conceptual mind to know that there are 15 apples, but they exist independently of any mind, as an objective fact.
Two ways phenomena can be objective
David Hume reasoned that there are two ways phenomena can be objective: they can be matters of fact or relations of ideas.
The following is a factual claim:
It is raining now in Philadelphia.
Factual claims can be either true or false, and can only be known by observation. The following is a logical claim:
Either it is or is not raining now in Philadelphia.
Its truth is not determined by observation, but expresses a logical relationship that obtains for every possible claim, namely:
A claim is either true or false, but not both.
Whereas one may look out the window to determine whether it’s raining, anyone anywhere can know whether a logical claim is true without looking anywhere.
Hume’s test for differentiating between factual and logical claims is called the negation test. If one can negate a claim without producing a contradiction, then the original claim is a factual claim. E.g., you can negate the following claim without producing a contradiction thereby:
Claim: It is raining now in Philadelphia.
Negation: It is not raining now in Philadelphia.
To establish the truth of either, one makes an observation: one looks outside in Philadelphia now. However, if one negates a logical claim, as below, that yields a contradiction.
Claim: Bachelors are not husbands.
Negation: Bachelors are husbands.
Contradiction implied: Bachelors (non-husbands) are husbands.
Hume concluded that all claims that are neither factual nor logical are subjective. Their truth cannot be established by observation or by logic. One cannot determine by observation or by logic that a musical score is beautiful.
Hypothetically, however, if a musicologist argued successfully that musical beauty entailed certain objective sonological features, e.g., rhythm, melody, harmony, etc., and that a certain score exhibited them, that might support the claim that the score was objectively beautiful.
But if so, that would just increase the number of things that are objective — it would not undermine the objective/subjective distinction.
Sounds and color are not proof of subjectivity
The distinction is nuanced, however. The vibrations that ears detect as sounds existed long before ears did, but sounds arguably did not. Likewise, the light wavelengths that eyes detect as colors existed long before eyes did, but colors arguably did not. Sounds and colors, however, are precisely how ears and eyes register vibrations and wavelengths of light.
Nor, arguably, were there tastes, smells, or touch sensations before tongues, noses, and skin. What causes these cognitive phenomena existed long before there were sense organs, but the mere fact that our senses register them as tastes, smells, etc. does not make the following claim subjective:
Snow is white.
This is established by eyes, and we can negate it without producing a contradiction. Color perception correctly enables us to perceive shapes, which enable us to differentiate between objects and their backgrounds. Beings with these abilities have evolved to successfully survive, navigate, and thrive within their ecological niches.
Our perception does not make reality subjective
Some skeptics have argued, however, that evolution has facilitated various species’ reproduction by developing the sort of cognitive apparatus that selectively attends to only those features of their environments that are relevant to their reproduction, cordoning off all other environmental information, thereby reducing their exposure to reality.
They argue that our perceptions resemble computer desktop illusions, presenting us simplified models that make it easier for us to get around, the same way an icon of a folder on a computer monitor enables user-friendly access to complexly-configured data the average user doesn’t understand in terms of how it is actually coded, literally behind the scenes, in the system.
By analogy, the ultrasound monitor on which the expectant mother sees a moving image of her fetus is not a window peering directly into her womb, but a user-friendly simulation.
The corresponding skeptical claim is that all perception is like this, and thus that there is no objective reality, or if there is, it is unknowable, for we can never step outside our cognitive apparatus to see if what is real is correctly mapped by our mental models, as we might when we compare a photo against the person photographed.
However, for this argument to seem cogent, we need to ignore much else of what it implies and of what we clearly do know (since we can compare ultrasound and actual fetus, photo and person photographed, and countless other valid correspondences).
If there is an indefinitely large amount of information in our environment that our senses are not registering, our species’ long-successful flourishing entails that such information is not survival-relevant, and thus our evolved capacity for restricting cognitive energy to survival-relevant information is a cognitive feature, not a bug.
Further, we do not perceive only our perceptions: we perceive reality through them, and our reason extends our knowledge far beyond them. Scientific and logical/mathematical knowledge has grown far beyond what evolution designed our cognitive apparatus for: hunting, gathering, avoiding predation, and reproduction.
We can measure with great precision, for example, the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation that cause our visual system to perceive the colors of the rainbow. It does not matter if our visual cortex manages that by projecting user-friendly-type colored-shape impressions onto the surface of a lemon.
The expectant mother is not philosophically naïve in thinking her fetus resembles the ultrasound display. The fact that our perceptual experiences are mediated user-friendly representations of what we perceive is irrelevant to their validity, relevance, and objective reality.
However, subjective matters differ importantly. I say broccoli is delicious; Kathy says it is disgusting. The epicurean quality of broccoli is relative to the person, subjective.
If subjectivism entails that all subjective claims are true, then the following claims are both true:
1. Broccoli is delicious.
2. Broccoli is disgusting.
But (2) entails (3):
3. Broccoli is not delicious.
And (3) contradicts (1). Subjectivism can avoid this implication if it qualifies its claims as follows:
1A. Rick thinks broccoli is delicious.
2A. Kathy thinks broccoli is disgusting.
Problem solved, for these claims are not contradictory. As the saying goes: in matters of taste, there is no dispute — to each his own. Rick and Kathy no longer have any disagreement: both accept claims (1A) and (2A). But these claims are about Rick and Kathy: they tell us little about the epicurean qualities of broccoli.
Standpoint epistemology is subjective
There is an attempt in recent years, however, to elevate subjectivity to a privileged status, as if the mere fact that one is experiencing something a certain way, relative to their standpoint, is enough to grant it the status of objective truth. This approach is called “standpoint epistemology”.
Epistemology is the philosophical study of the nature of knowledge. One argument for “standpoint” epistemology asserts that victims of oppression are uniquely situated to perceive discrimination in ways others who have the privilege of not being discriminated against are not. While anyone who has experienced anything is probably better able to recognize it than anyone who has not, that does not entail that personal experiences are automatically valid.
However, standpoint epistemology implies the following two statements can both be simultaneously true:
1. A gave B a dirty look because of B’s racial identity.
2. A did not give B a dirty look because of B’s racial identity.
Standpoint epistemology entails that if B honestly asserts (1) and A honestly asserts (2), then both can be true. But both cannot both be true, as they contradict each other. Standpoint epistemology resembles subjectivism in this regard. If it entails both claims above are true, it cannot work. But if it qualifies them, it can, but then it loses any objective character:
1A B thinks A gave B a dirty look because of B’s racial identity.
2A A thinks A did not give B a dirty look because of B’s racial identity.
Both claims can be true, and A and B can both believe both, but neither says anything about whether a dirty look was actually given on the basis of racial identity.
In this misinformation age, too much of what is proclaimed as if it is objective fact is, on analysis, no different from claims about the taste of broccoli.
We would be well-served in this regard to apply the above analyses to sort out claims that capture objective reality and claims that disguise subjective personal experiences and preferences as if they do.
Thinking doesn’t make it so.
About the Authors:
Rick Repetti: Professor of Philosophy at CUNY, Vice President at the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA), and Chief Philosophy Officer at Knowledgecoin.io.
Mark Gleason: Mark Gleason is a Chief Enterprise Architect, Venture Capitalist, and Board Member at Knowledgecoin.io.
