Truth From Dialog
This article employs the term “dialog” as the exchange of opinion between two or more people with the goal of discerning reality or truth. Truth and reality are synonymous. As we experience reality, we experience truth. Our perception of truth is filtered through the re-presentation of reality which occurs in our mind. These re-presentations are subjective by nature. Societally constructed frameworks of thought (Habitus) have been imposed upon us and without the deconstruction of these frameworks, it is likely to misinterpret these re-presentations of reality.
While I am by no means a post-modernist thinker, I am going to use post-modern terminology in this article. Without being a deconstructionalist, it is simple to come to the conclusion that our mode of discernment is not without outside influence. It is only by careful examination and subsequent stripping away of those influences that we may be able to discern The Truth. In other words, we must think about how we think. While a deconstructionalist comes to the conclusion that Truth is unreachable and therefore non-existent, I argue that Truth is attainable but obscured by each step we take further from Reality.
A common example of a thought process that has been imposed upon us is the belief that because something is said to be true, by one possessing social/institutional capital, that it is true. Believing a statement about reality because it is formally written down in a newspaper or peer-reviewed journal is an appeal to authority. Without assessing the epistemological justification for the claim, the belief in said claim relies on not only the subject’s discernment, but also the discernment of the authority making the claim.
I must now go on a tangent about the nature of peer-review. Assuming that peer-review actually satisfactorily performs its function without bias, deferring to a panel of experts for truth is merely an appeal to the consensus of authority. Without actually discerning the fact for yourself, it would be better to remain agnostic. This is not a call for throwing out all knowledge, rather a call for being doxastically open. As we are speaking about peer-review, it is reasonable to bring up the scientific method. One who relies on the scientific method, or at least defers to “experts” who do, would benefit from a modicum of scepticism towards those who claim to be the arbiters of truth (as well as scepticism towards the scientific method).
The actual nature of peer-review is a lot less generous. Research requires grant money. Grant money is doled out by those with institutional capital. Those with institutional capital believe that they are the arbiters of truth. Those who defer to the arbiters of truth have affirmed their belief and have made it so. If a research topic would threaten those with institutional capital, they do not need to provide grant money for the research. If the findings of funded/non-funded research threatens those with institutional capital, they can peer-review the research out of existence. The researcher is then forced to either publish his paper in a non-accredited journal, thus solidifying his position as non-truth in the eyes of those who appeal to the consensus of authority; or worse, post his findings online and risk being called a “conspiracy theorist”.
The examination of this imposed thought structure has been quite kind as it assumes that those who take the formally written word as truth actually read the peer-reviewed studies. The act of reading scholarship requires one to know how to read scholarship in the first place. This is a skill that is generally relegated to those who have been trained to understand methodology, the historical and contemporary context of the matter discussed, a grasp of the primary and secondary sources cited, the political stance of the writer and the institution he is associated to, the political stance of the journal that published the article, etc. And even with all of that knowledge, the reader may not be able to determine whether the result or argument of the article has merit. This is why deferment to peer-review is blindly accepted as necessary. The masses simply do not have the time or skill-set to understand every field of knowledge so we must take peer-review as truth.
Peer-reviewed thought is necessarily then filtered through another layer of authority: the news-media. Because the majority of people are unable to become experts themselves and therefore are unable to understand peer-reviewed articles, it is necessary for the “truths” that are uncovered by the consensus of authority to be further distilled via propaganda. By the time the experts have delivered the truth, it has been mutated by the writer’s re-presentation of reality, the grantor’s re-presentation of reality, the peer-reviewer’s re-presentation of reality, the new anchor’s re-presentation of reality, your high school teacher’s re-presentation of reality, and finally to yours. And this method is deserving of truth because the arbiters of truth said so. And because the masses have bestowed this power to the arbiters of truth, it becomes True.
This issue is compounded by the prolific doxastic closedness of contemporary society (we live in a society). Doxastic closedness in this article refers to the unwillingness to revise one’s beliefs when confronted with contrary evidence. Those who trust the Science ironically believe they are more doxastically open than those who employ epistemological methods other than the scientific method. But when the epistemological justification for Science and Logic is in question, faith based oppositions are employed by the scientist. If Logic exists outside of the mind, and is a constant, how does the materialist worldview prove that logic exists when their whole methodology relies on the existence of logic? Sounds like a leap of faith to me. Okay I am getting off topic. My point is, those who “trust the science” are often doxastically closed as they appeal to the consensus of authority for truth and when that authority is questioned at a fundamental level, they are unwilling to revise their belief in that authority. The Scientism group is obviously not the only group that falls into this trap, but they are the most confident that they are not trapped so it is amusing to mention.
It is at this point in the article that there will be readers asking me for sources about all these claims. Why must one provide a source for truth claims in dialog? Is the opposition unable to discern the truth without an appeal to authority? If one comes to dialog with sources: (1) this has ceased being a dialog and has morphed into a debate (which is less about understanding reality, and more about winning); (2) the sources are not going to change the other’s mind because they are already so doxastically closed they are unable to consider a concept without it being scaffolded by authority; (3) I have already outlined why we should be sceptical of peer-review; and (4) if I bring sources they are going to support my argument, not yours. What benefit do sources have other than to be held as some sort of certification that I hold ideas approved by those with institutional/cultural capital? The moment I provide a statistic, it can easily be dismissed by appeals to emotion: “I just do not feel like that statistic aligns with my sense of reality”; or appeals to societal reasoning: “Sure that might be the statistic, but it is actually due to X while you think it is due to Y and I believe this because I have another peer-reviewed study that is different than yours”. This is not dialog. This is not an attempt to understand reality, it is a game of Yu-Gi-Oh! in which we pull from a deck of pre-approved ideas and lay them on a field to do battle for us. Surely it would be more valuable for both parties to speak freely without being weighed down by source material. Maybe some actual progress in thought could happen.
The worst response when providing a source, particularly a statistic, is being hit with an anecdotal response. Example: on average Asian people are shorter than African Americans. Yeah, well I know a really tall Asian guy. It is as if the presentation of the average is threatening to erase one’s reality. Of course there are outliers to the average, this is why it is called an average. An anecdote is not a fact to be broadly employed against reality. It hardly contributes to the conversation and seems to be to be typically employed as a defense mechanism when one’s world view becomes threatened.
Threatening someone’s worldview is important to discuss. When actively discerning the truth in dialog, it is common to come to a disagreement on truth. When one feels their understanding of reality has become threatened, and is thus facing some sort of ego death, it is only natural that their response must be defensive. They are protecting their sense of reality, and thus protecting themselves, as it is common for one to view themselves as the singular subject, and reality as the object (where is your source for this, bro?). If their understanding of reality is threatened, they themselves are threatened as the subject can only exist in relation to the object. Therefore, in dialog, it is important for the safety of your partner, as well as for the benefit of understanding the truth, to ensure that claims about truth are not so forceful as to cause someone to resort to self-defense. Rather it is better to facilitate dialog in a manner that will allow both parties to present their understanding of reality calmly so that when the dialog has ceased, further reflection can occur without negative memories of an argument. The goal is to discern truth, not to hurt people.
This only furthers my point that we must think about how we think. If we were without imposed thought structures, surely miniscule differences in how we understand reality would not result in the threat of an ego death.
How can you gauge the sensitivity of the person you are engaging in dialog with? I have a few methods that are pretty non-intrusive. My favorite is to say something so absurd that a rational thinker could only either laugh about or engage honestly with the point. My favorite absurdism is saying something like “I think space is fake”. A rational thinker will most likely ask what you mean by “space”, is it the space around us, the space outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, space outside of our galaxy. If this is the response you can just begin arguing this absurd position as much as you want and it will result in just a funny conversation. On the other hand, someone who is doxastically closed will short-circuit. Thoughts of flat-earth and conspiracy theories will buzz through their mind and they will be unable to engage with you. You are just a nut-case who rejects their Science. And maybe you ARE a nut-case, but what is wrong with that? It is just relative anyway, right? You are just trying to see if this person is down for dialog. If they aren’t you can just have a good time talking about the banal.
Does objective truth exist? Objective truth is obvious as the opposite claim “Everything is subjective” is an objective statement. If you believe that everything is subjective, your scaffolding for reality is based on an objective framework. This does not mean relativism and subjectivity cannot exist, but it can only exist in an objective world. Things like preferences and taste are subjective, but the actual quality of a food item or merit of a piece of art is objective.
Imposed structures of thought hinder out ability to understand reality as they obscure objectivity. The more filters of re-presentation you must churn truth through, the further you get from grasping it. The simplest way to attain truth is through stripping away all imposed structures of thought. This will foster a deeper connection with the self to the forces of reality. Logic and Morality exist outside of the human mind (reflect on how this is possible). They are objective truths that we utilize. Whether or not we are Moral or Immoral, Logical or Illogical, our thoughts and actions can still be analyzed through these objective ever-present principles.
Do you dread the fact that Truth is easily attainable? It means that you must hold yourself accountable for all thought and action. And if you choose not to hold yourself accountable, you will at least be able to lucidly weigh your thoughts and actions against these principles. It is easy to let thought structures think for us. Not because it simplifies the process of thought, but because it allows us to hold ourselves unaccountable.
Dialog is necessary to realize this. You must reason with yourself, but also with others. You are probably wrong about numerous presuppositions that you have blindly accepted. I am also probably wrong. The only way to discern this is through speaking what you currently think is true, and listening to other’s reactions to your current understanding. Maybe these reactions are meaningless, maybe profound. But in aggregate, you will begin to notice thought structures imposed on others, and thus on yourself. If these thought structures are not beneficial towards understanding the Truth, then discard them.
My whole life has been dedicated to banging my head against the wall until I break through the other side. Some people attain the Truth effortlessly, some never do, some need to toil at it. I have preferred toil as it results in a deeper understanding of who I am in relation to Reality. I have come to the conclusion that I ought not promote one path over the other as one’s journey towards the Truth is the correct journey for them. Instead, I rely on dialog in order to refine my understanding and hopefully help others refine theirs.
