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Searle vs Lawson: After the End of Truth - part 1

Is there such a thing as objective truth?

Issue 39, 31st July 2015
| American philosopher noted for his seminal work in the philosophy of language and mind.
1,250 words
Read time: approx. 6 mins

Read the alternative perspective on the existence of objective truth from post-realist philosopher Hilary Lawson here.

I have been a professional teacher of philosophy now for 60 years. One persistent philosophical confusion I have discovered is the temptation among intelligent undergraduates to adopt a conception of relativism about truth. It’s not easy to get a clear statement of relativism, but the general idea is something like this: there is no such thing as objective truth. All truth statements are made from a perspective and the perspective is inherently subjective and the result is that truth is always relative to the interests of the truth-staters. So what is true for me is true for me, and what is true for you is true for you. Each of us has a right to our own truth.

Part of the appeal of this view is that is seems both empowering and democratic. It is empowering because I get to decide what is true for me, and democratic because everybody else has the right to decide what is true for them.

I think this view cannot be stated coherently, and what I want to do is to expose its incoherence.

Let us start with objectivity and subjectivity.  These notions are ambiguous between an epistemic sense and an ontological sense, where “epistemic” means having to do with knowledge and “ontological” means having to do with existence. If I say Rembrandt was born in 1606, that statement is epistemically objective because its truth can be settled as a matter of fact. If I say Rembrandt was the greatest painter that ever lived, well that is a matter of “subjective opinion;” it is epistemically subjective. Underlying this distinction is a distinction in modes of existence. Mountains and molecules have an existence that does not depend on being experienced by a human or animal subject; they are ontologically objective. Pains, tickles, and itches exist only insofar as they are experienced by a subject. They are ontologically subjective. Given this distinction, we can now state the thesis of the relativity of truth with a little more precision: granted that there is a reality that exists independent of human beings, all statements about that reality are made from a subjective point of view, and hence all statements are epistemically subjective. The ontological subjectivity of statement-making is sufficient to guarantee the truth of relativism. All statements are epistemically subjective because all claims are made relative to the point of view of the statement-maker, so there is no such thing as objective truth.

It should be apparent already that there is something fishy about relativism because it is confusing ontological subjectivity with epistemic subjectivity. All statements are indeed made by conscious subjects from their ontologically subjective point of view, but it doesn’t follow that the statement made is about something ontologically subjective, nor does it follow that the statement made is thereby epistemically subjective. In a word, perspectivalism does not imply relativism. Every statement is indeed made from a perspective, but relativism does not follow.

John Searle
Issue 39, 31st July 2015

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Zlatko Zvekic 11 January 2017

Reality is not a democratic process where people vote for their favorites and elect representatives. It is something that we, human and other living beings, have evolved thru. All brutality and necessities have crystal clearly cut out and enabled many features that supported our survival as a specie. That is reality. Our senses have evolved to give us ability to protect and defend from the perils. That is real. We have learned to build shelters, grow food, love, and hate. Real. We have developed language and we are capable of communicating about events that have happened, that are happening as well as those that may happen. That is reality. The most interesting concepts, fantasies, and possibilities are part of the inventory of our thoughts and guess- works and speculations. As if by talking about reality we could change it to fit our wishes.

mickofemsworth 9 November 2015

If you take the view that relativism debunks the idea of truth, then the question of whether relativism is true is a silly one. Similarly, why should incoherence be the ultimate sin? It gives one's perspective that little bit more flexibility. Philosophy is the business of finding convincing reasons (in the sense that they do a good job of convincing other philosophers) for what one is determined to believe anyway. I think that quantum mechanics (the two slit experiment, etc) demonstrates the incoherence of the idea of objective truth. It's a useful working hypothesis in many contexts but over-extending it is just silly.

blank 30 October 2015

'the fact that there is a reality being described from that point of view and that indeed, from that subjective point of view we can make epistemically objective statements.'

In plain English he's saying that we can say things that everyone who is now living understands, even though in the long run these facts are arbitrary. It means rationality is the rationality of this society, the essential concern of us who are now living. But the mere fact of knowing that what is relevant now won't be in a billion years is of crucial importance for philosophy, it means philosophy is defective, and no ultimate truth can ever be established.

Ergo, the practical situation is largely indifferent to this discovery. Except that if it is learned that that is what the most serious students of the matter think, if that becomes known, as it is, it changes the atmosphere of human life. As it has.

Searle is making an argument that was accepted by Nietzsche over a hundred years ago, Searle simply does not care about truth in the ultimate sense.

Raoul Adam 11 August 2015

Subjective and Objective are entangled 'opposites' on a loop of consciousness. One can only defeat the other by consuming so much of it that it ends up looking like the very thing it claims to have defeated. This is not middle ground fence-sitting fluff - it is the recognition that the truth lies simultaneously and co-definitively at both extremes. It's the rabbit and the duck and everything in between and beyond them. The real struggle is not between sophisticates likes Searle and Lawson; the real struggle is between Searle and Lawson and those who appropriate Subjective or Objective from an exclusively binary oppositional position that admits no phenomenological meanings or relational truth. Lawson appreciates the essence of objectivity because he appreciates the idea of better and worse metaphors to describe and construct reality. He argues that it was hyper-rationalism that led him to see the constructedness of all reality. Perhaps it's time to look at the brilliance of both philosophers and the longevity of the philosophical struggle and to wonder if there may not be more encompassing and productive ways to conceptualise 'who' is right? For me, the onto-epistemological truth is that the coordination of subjective and objective is one of life's defining developmental tasks in complex mental terrains. As Dr Suess reminds us, 'be dexterous and deft and never mix up your right foot with your left'.

jeremyholmes 9 August 2015

Relativism may appear 'democratic', but in fact it is individualistic -- if implies a word full of solipsistic -- albeit aspirationally politically correct -- relativists. It is objectivism that is democratic -- the way we overcome relativism is through the 'wisdom of the crowd' -- when a whole lot of relativists come together to discover that their 'relativistic' truths correspond one with another -- then we have reached epistemic truth. This all starts in infancy: the baby has 'epistemic trust' vis-a-vis (literally -- lots of eye contact) the mother and although they are looking at the same object -- e.g. the family cat - from different perspectives, and it subtends different images on their retinas, depending where they are standing (i.e. it's relativistic), when the baby says, looking at mother "Meaow...?", the mother says "yes, cat" they have arrived at epistemic truth.

Maximilon Baddeley 8 August 2015

Then what for ontological objective statements?

mebigguy 7 August 2015

Anyone not believing in objective truth needs to wonder about what hold airplanes up, how the voice of their mother could be coming out of that tiny box that they carry around. They should hit themselves in the head with a hammer, hard. There's no excuse for such nonsense in a world dominated by scientific understanding of the world we live it. Why is this tolerated in academia?