And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right
And all were in the wrong!

A parable originated in India (or thereabout) in which blind men attempt to describe what an elephant is by relating their physical contact with it. As each man had contact with a different part of the elephant, each man thus gave a much different description of the beast.

This is a perfect parable to explain objective truth versus subjective truth.

What is "Objective Truth"?

I am going to simplify things. "Objective Truth" is what is. It has nothing to do with beliefs or wishcasting or personal interpretation. It doesn't matter what i think it is, or what you think it is. It simply is.

If you'd like to see some eggheads scrambling in the dark trying to define it, then Wiki's article on Objectivism can point you to intellectual blind men feeling up the elephant of reality.

If you are getting the feeling that I think that trying to define "Objective Truth" is just academic masturbation, you just might be right.

Note that I am not claiming there is no such thing as "Objective Truth"; I am stating that there is no way for us to grasp it.

Subjective Truth is so much easier to explain

It's how you see things versus how others see things.

In the above picture, if you had another guy at the top and bottom of the image, they would have different ways of describing the 69 as well.

Returning to the elephant parable, each of the blind men is describing his subjective truth about the elephant.

We are limited in the way we see things. We have two main ways to acquire new data; either from our own personal experience, or from the descriptions of others.

• The way that we see things is tainted. We only have 5 senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch). Anything that may exist outside those senses is something we can not experience. There is a whole blog post (or 100) that can describe how our brain interprets the outside world, and discussing how that perception can be interfered with by defects.
  In addition to how our brain interprets these incoming signals, we also have feelings that can affect how we see what is going on around us.
• Cognitive biases and heuristics are mental short cuts. Beyond physical and mental defects which can distort the signal coming into our brains, the way that we process that data can be diverted from "Objective Truth" by the way we analyze the data.
• Range of experience means that you as an individual have not experienced everything. You can not have walked around and molested the entire elephant of life on your own. There just isn't time to have done this; REQUIRING the input from exterior sources of data...other people.
• The problems of bias and experience are multiplied when we are taking in information second-hand, or from the experiences of others. I'd like you to watch the following video from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia; as it demonstrates this perfectly. It was a bit of serendipity that I watched this episode while I was 'acontemplating this blog.
  

"Objective Truth" versus Subjective Truth...how about a "Common Truth"?

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.

Donald Rumsfield took a lot of dishonest crap for this statement, but when we look at it rationally ( see the Johari window), it makes a lot of sense, and meshes with with our discussion so far.

The fact that a perfectly sensible statement became a "controversy" highlights that our Subjective Truths clash quite frequently.

If I use the Imperial scale to measure the length of a stick, and you use the Metric scale to measure the same stick, we are going to have different numbers we record...these are different Subjective Truths.

The damn stick is still the same length regardless of the number of units we use different measures for. But, we can both measure the stick at the same time, and look at each others scales, and make a comparison of our measures to create a conversion scale. That is a common truth.

I won't say the length of the stick is an "objective" measure...maybe I was high, and I hallucinated the stick, my measure of the stick, you, and your damn Metric system. Frigging brain artifacts ;>

That doesn't matter either, as long as I am in my hallucination with you and we agree on a Common Truth about the length of the stick. Now we can use that stick and many others like it to build a football stadium.

And the definition of football as an American sport in which the ball is oblong and the game is determined by violent contact is an Objective Truth. We all know that the reference to the inferior European game as soccer as "football" is a Subjective Truth, and not worth referencing ;>

So what's the point?

I joke about football not being soccer; it is a clash of Subjective Truths to argue about the semantics of the name of a game. It has no impact on a common truth.

You might then ask:
If there is no "Objective Truth", Steve, then why do you bloviate so much about critical thinking, cognitive biases, scientific method, logic, blah, blah, blah?

Because there are Common Truths that affect us all...whether or not we allow our Subjective Truths to acknowledge those Common Truths or not!

Rape rates in Sweden have shot up; the offenders have been predominately Muslim immigrants.
This becomes a political issue due to the fact that so many people have built their Subjective Truth around their own perception of a morality. This morality a priori states that it is good to bring in Muslim immigrants and bad to point out any crimes that the immigrants have committed.

The failure of Subjective Truth to acknowledge Common Truth is the point of critical thinking. In some cases, it doesn't matter. Who gives a shit about what we call football?

In other cases, where bodies are left behind, where economies are destroyed, and where women are abused, it matters very much.

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