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RE: Blind men and the elephant: Objective truth versus subjective truth

in #truth7 years ago

Part of the difficulty working with objectivity and subjectivity is that they are overloaded philosophical terms. The Internet Encyclopedia does a pretty good job of introducing the main usages. http://www.iep.utm.edu/objectiv/

Part of the problem with your analysis above is that you seem to be sliding back and forth between objectivity/subjectivity with regard to knowledge and objectivity/subjectivity with regard to judgement. For example, when a blind man describes an Elephant as a sofa because he deduces from his experience that it is a sofa, he has not stated a subjective truth in terms of knowledge. Epistemologically speaking, it is an objective falsehood.

Now contrast that with, say, the blind man's determination that the sofa he's feeling feels pleasant. This feeling he has is epistemologically subjective. So what's the difference between mistaking an elephant for a sofa and thinking the sofa/elephant feels nice to touch?

In principal, the elephant/sofa is actually one of the two because it actually is one of the two out there in reality. In other words, it's the way that it is grounded that makes it epistemelogically objective. Conversely, the feeling that it's pleasant to touch the sofa/elephant is true BECAUSE the blind man is experiencing it. The fact that he is experiencing it makes it is necessarily true. In fact, the only way it could be false if the the blind man wasn't actually feeling it.

"Dude. I said it felt nice, but it really just creeped me out."

A nice shortcut for this: things that are mediated are objective and things that are not mediated are subjective.

I think what leads us easily astray is that the man who touches the elephant is dealing with an objective world when he debates whether it's an elephant or a sofa that he's touching, but the stimulus that mediates his interaction with that object is subjectively true.

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think what leads us easily astray is that the man who touches the elephant is dealing with an objective world when he debates whether it's an elephant or a sofa that he's touching, but the stimulus that mediates his interaction with that object is subjectively true.

I'm glad you ended with that. it's a good summary.

we have:
objective truth -> all intermediating factors (senses, biases, previous experiences, etc) -> subjective truth.

Since I don't think that we can "see" the complete Objective Truth, I claim that we really only need to see enough of it to make rational decisions about what I called the Common Truth, and only then when those decisions involve real repercussions.

I'd say "our" task is to teach enough critical thinking skills to remove as much as the intermediating filters as possible to make the best decisions possible in that framework, while realizing that missing data can still have an effect on those decisions.

Good comment, when I revisit this blog, it will aid me in making my point cleaner

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