Objectivity and Subjectivity

[sdi]

A crucial corollary, I think, to my proposed model of Truth, Wisdom, and Intelligence is to demarcate the boundaries of the objective and the subjective.

Does objective Truth exist? Yes, but it is fundamentally inaccessible to individuals—even gods—because individuals are inherently subjective: they have Wisdom, not Truth, and they can only access Truth by giving up individuality. I think, therefore, that Truth is analogous to Time—we all perceive it, vaguely, but at varying rates and in our own ways; this doesn't mean it does not exist, but it also doesn't mean we can pretend that there are things upon which we can all agree even in theory.

This is as damaging to the foundations of Science, with it's assumption of an underlying objective reality which repeatability can access, as it is to, say, philosophies which base themselves on a set of universal Common Conceptions. It is also, however, just as damaging to nihilism—just because we can't access Objective Truth in all its glory doesn't mean it isn't there and that we can't, like the blind men and the elephant, make some kind of limited assessments about it.

What can we draw from this in practice?

• Humility is crucial: our truth isn't the Truth and never can be.

• One should always be up front about their axioms, since there is no fundamental set of universally-acceptable axioms. Discussions must take these into account if they are to be honest.

• We should suspend judgement. There is much—indeed, infinitely much—that we do not know and will never be able to as individuals, whether we are human, hero, dæmon, or god.

• We should probably teach basic Bayesian statistics in school as soon as children understand arithmetic. ;)

Comments

[jprussell]

Why wait that long? :)

https://www.alibris.com/booksearch?mtype=B&keyword=bayesian%20probability%20for%20babies

[sdi]

That's awesome :D