Objective vs. Subjective Truth🇬🇧🇳🇱

Today I’d like to engage in a bit of a thought experiment.

For a moment, let’s presume that all of Truth can be divided into two categories: Objective Truth and Subjective Truth. And then let’s pretend I just made up these words, because surely such abstract ideas wouldn’t apply to common sense, right? As I just made these words up, I now need to define them, so that you understand what I’m talking about…

Objective truth is that which is observable and/or provable. Science operates in this domain, because science relies on observation and proofs. If science can determine something with certainty it is an objective truth. But even if science cannot determine something, it still may be an objective truth. So long as it is observable and/or provable, then theoretically a sufficiently advanced science can determine it, and therefore it counts as objective truth.

Subjective truth is the rest. What we experience is subjective, because we cannot prove our personal experiences are real. Our opinions are subjective. Even our consciousness is subjective.

Materialists state that subjective truth doesn’t really exist, because everything can ultimately be derived from objective truth. The position itself is an unscientific one however, since it cannot be proven. Personally, I also believe it’s highly improbable.

Idealists meanwhile state that objective truth doesn’t really exist, because it’s all ultimately an interpretation or projection from subjective truth.

But I’m a philosopher, and as philosophers we also need to consider the possibility that both views are wrong. Or if we want to go truly meta, that maybe both views are right.

As you see, the problem with philosophy is that it’s all so darn non-decisive. We can always ask more questions. We can always consider more possibilities. The key to staying sane is that at some point we have to make a decision. And then we’re back to common sense.

What common sense tells us is that even though we know a lot, we never truly know anything with 100% absolute certainty. And that’s fine. We cannot answer all the questions. Some of the questions don’t even make sense.

You might even say that it’s an objective truth that we cannot know everything. Except that we can’t prove this, so it’s actually a subjective truth.

We cannot prove the existence or non-existence of objective truth or reality. And that’s a subjective fact. Ergo, subjective truth exists. Maybe objective truth does too, but we don’t really know.

“Ah! but we do know that objective truth exists,” says the person with common sense. And of course they’re right, because we see it all around us. We even managed to build the entirety of science upon it.

But the person with common sense had a critical advantage over the philosopher: They weren’t partaking in some stupid thought experiment, so they held a different definition of objective truth all along. After all, if we simply interpret objective truth as the truth that we agree on, there was never a problem in the first place.

Bloody idealist, I know.