Can humans ever be objective? Or, is it all just a bunch “alternative” facts
Can humans ever be objective? Or, is truth always and inevitably relative? It is an age old question A long time go, answering it was easy. A long time ago, we scientist types thought you just had to pay attention to “reality” in a “scientific” sort of way, and the truth would, err, help set you free… or something like that.
But then, way way back in the 1980s, this thing called postmodernism happened. Postmodernism was a movement in art, architecture, and philosophy that said all truth was relative, even the scientific kind. Postmodernists said that it did not matter how perceptive and smart you were, or how sophisticated your methods, you had a particular standpoint, a particular perspective, and that perspective inevitably biased your view.
The classic illustration of this idea of postmodern standpoints, at least at the university I attended when I was a boy, was the postmodern parable of the car accident. As the parable goes, if twelve bystanders see the same accident, not one of them will give an identical account. They will all have something different to say. From this, the postmodern conclusion was simple and sensible: truth is relative and it is impossible to have an objective view.
For postmodernists, the parable of the car accident was a clear demonstration of the reality, ubiquity, and even necessity of relative truth. It was not even a question of nefarious intent, although as demonstrated by the current American executive branch and their weaponization of postmodern thinking, that can certainly factor it. It was simply a question of perspective. Twelve witnesses to a car accident could not give the same account because they did not see the accident from the same angle of view.
The lesson for everybody was simple: objectivity was impossible because truth came filtered through somebody’s individual and subjective experience.
The postmodern position seems eminently sensible and grounded, but to be honest, I always had a problem with it. I simply never accepted the lesson of the parable. The parable points to standpoints, that is true, but it does not prove truth is relative, or there is such a thing as “alternative fact.”
In fact, exactly the opposite is true.
While it is true that twelve witnesses to the accident will give you twelve different accounts of what happened, not a single witness will tell you that a plane has crashed. If a single witness says that, they will be labelled intoxicated, dysfunctional, and perhaps even insane by the people who can understand and see with their own eyes.
In other words, the parable of the car accident reinforces the existence of objective reality. Clearly, reality is not a relativistic crap-shoot.
Of course, even though we can reject the inflexible relativism of the inflexible postmodernist view, surely we can see that truth is still relative to a degree. After all, there are twelve different accounts of that car accident, right? Despite the objective car crash, each person gives you their relative view.
But, even so, as we have seen, this does not mean there is no such thing as an objective account of the accident. It just means that if you want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you cannot just walk up to the closest person to you and ask what they saw. Not to be too banal about this, but if you want the full truth, you have to ask the white male and the black female, the corporate executive and the working class Joe, the Muslim and the Christian, the Jew and the Gentile, the priest and the heretic.
That’s the only way.
When you do that, you will get to the bottom of things. If you don’t do that, you are doomed to the eternal hell of solipsistic standpoint subjectivity. And I’m sure that is not what “this” is all about.
So to conclude, yes there is objective truth, but it is not as straightforward as all that. There are serious challenges to getting at the objective truth, not the least of which is how to manage and be fair to multiple perspectives. But surely, getting at the whole truth is not impossible. In fact, it seems altogether quite simple. If you want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you have to talk to everybody. If you want to know what’s really happening, you got see it from everybody’s view point.
This is the lesson of the postmodern parable of the car. The lesson is not that reality is relative, truth is subjective, and you can pick and choose whatever truth you want. The lesson is that our best chance of getting at the truth (and saving this planet, I might add) is to realize that if we want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we need to include all rational and grounded voices in the conversation, all of the time.
As for the crazies that truly believe a plane has crashed, or a just lying to serve their own interests, therapy might be their only hope.
