Objective Knowledge Is Not Possible

Imagine that you and I are sitting across from one another in a cafe. You observe that I am wearing a shirt which appears red. Now imagine that I am 3,000ft below the ocean’s surface in a glass-bubble submarine that is only illuminated by the available light filtered through thousands of feet of water. I’m in the sub with someone who was asleep when I boarded. I’m wearing the identical shirt that you observed as red, but when they wake they see it as blue or purple.

My shirt cannot be objectively red because color is subject to the wavelengths of light available, my ability to see color, and my upbringing which taught me that (255,0,0) in the RGB scheme is red.

There are two terms that we need to keep in mind both because they are interesting and also because many of us use these frameworks daily without realizing it.

Ontologically objective is a phrase that describes the nature of existence that doesn’t depend on human or animal experience. The general argument is that a mountain is a mountain independent of human experience.¹

Ontologically subjective, then, is the domain of those things that are dependent on human or animal experience. This is a much easier domain to understand because it encompasses essentially everything. To say that vanilla ice cream is delicious is an ontologically subjective statement. For those who are allergic to dairy, vanilla ice cream may be disgusting.

Making sense of it all

If you’re still with me after that, I applaud you. Those are heady concepts. While we give little thought to those ideas, collectively, they are the subject of lively debate in modern philosophy.

Categorization, while not unique to the human species, is something humans are particularly good at. It is one of the primary mechanisms we use to make sense of the world. It is also at the heart of ontological subjectivity. As we categorize things, we must, of necessity, draw on our own experience to categorize them. In short, a thing cannot be that thing without someone to define it.

What is a dining room table?

• The creation of a woodworker

• A place where families gather to eat meals

• A place where an individual sits looking out a window longingly

• A place where homework is done

• A tree that is no longer alive

• A fire hazard

The list could go on. A dining room table can be categorized as all of those things, one of them, or none of them. To the philosopher, it may be nothing more than a collection of molecules.

Even with these minor examples, I think you can begin to see how frustratingly difficult (maybe even impossible) it is to have objective knowledge about anything. That is, truth that simply is, independent of the humans who embrace it.

If you take this line of thinking far enough, you may be led to a point where you consider that lies are not a problem because if there is no objective truth then neither can there be lies. Thankfully, most people have a conscience and who don’t want to invest the mental effort in trying to objectify the known world.

Here’s the point: the world and the universe. They’re open. Characterization makes things subjective, and that’s not a bad thing. A table can be a place to gather for meals and can be a collection of molecules. The two are not — and cannot be — mutually exclusive.

All we need to do is remember to hold the world in a way that enables each of us to become something and simply to do.

Thanks for reading!

¹This is a real brain-buster because the mountain cannot be described in any framework that is not subject to human experience. In the strictest sense, therefore, the mountain cannot be ontologically objective. We have to allow it, however, or we might go crazy.