I’ve tackled these questions before but they never cease to inspire me. Now I have an opportunity to reinvent my answers on ageofreason’s tumblr page, and who knows, perhaps get a good conversation going.

The hardest part about answering whether “objective truth exists” is knowing what we mean when we use words. Someone uses the word “objective” and maybe we think of pure descriptions of nature, or the ability to have access to an unmediated reality. To introduce the term into conversation is to want to know what reality is like when no one’s looking. Well for starters, we can’t escape our biology. We all filter the world through imperfect goggles, so to speak. However, despite how incorrigibly subjective the appearance of nature is, I believe we can know about nature itself in a responsible way, with proof, and not just our personal descriptions of it. What counts as evidence or proof, however, is not based upon a fixed method or of a fixed theory of rationality. All methodologies, even the most rational ones, have their limits. Therefore we turn to other more existential philosophies to understand objectivity.

For example, proof and evidence must always be accessed on grounds that include but go far beyond factual accuracy. In other words, the truth (and therefore utility of a claim) is not merely a matter of indexes (i.e. correspondence between theory and observation). Truth also gains its meaning in relation to the quality of goodness it inspires in others. Ergo, that which is genuinely good is true! Few intellectuals understand this, and even fewer scientists appreciate this. While we must include truth among our deepest values, its pursuit in the abstract must always, always, always exist in relation to an even more pressing—and unavoidable—concern: “How shall I live in this moment, this day?” A true acquisition of objective truth comes in recognition of this fact, which may appear a bit paradoxical: it is only when we ascribe functions in nature which are defined in terms of furthering a set of values we hold meaningful that we become committed to figuring out how we humans might fit into the story.

Indeed, if science has nothing to say about humans, it will have little to say to most humans. Science must therefore join the ranks of helping us understand those abstract monsters, such as Obligations, Duties, Morality, Beauty, and even God. Understanding the objective part of truth is not a matter of removing us from the picture, as if to suggest we do nothing but tincture it with falsehood and chimeras. It is a matter of taking into careful consideration the influence we have on the world. In fact, the accomplishment of objectivity is not in escaping our own point of view (because that is impossible) but in understanding our point of view.

This kind of objectivity is based on articulating and comprehending the human influence on observation, and this can result in knowing which features of the appearance and description are in fact in the world, even though both contributions, from the knower and the known, are in every view of the world. Such knowledge is an objectivity based on principles, not people or personalities. In this light, the man who understands himself and his influence in the world is not demoted or deprecated in the least; he is still very much at the center of a vast, cosmic adventure.