#subjectivism

If you define a "triangle" as a "three-sided polygon", you can objectively prove that a given polygon is a triangle or not, but you cannot prove that it is objectively true that "a triangle is a three-sided polygon"; you cannot prove that the definition itself is objectively true.

It is conventionally and universally true [among English language users] that "a triangle is a three-sided polygon", because everyone accepts the definition and takes it for granted, but that is not sufficient to make it an objective definition, because you cannot derive the definition from first principles:

- Jane Freeland (December 21, 2020). "The Allure of the Archive: On Frustration and Comfort in the Historian’s Craft." German Historical Institute London Blog.

Objectivism, when contrasted with subjectivism, is the philosophical stance that certain truths or values exist independently of individual perspectives, feelings, or cultural biases. Objectivism posits that reality and knowledge can be grounded in an objective, external framework, allowing for universal truths or principles that apply regardless of subjective interpretations.

Here’s an overview of key aspects in objectivist philosophy:

1. Metaphysical Objectivism

Reality as Independent of Perception: Metaphysical objectivism holds that reality exists independently of our perceptions, beliefs, or consciousness. There is a world "out there" that is structured and consistent, irrespective of individual viewpoints.

Contrast with Subjectivism: Subjectivism argues that our experiences shape reality, while objectivism asserts that reality remains unaffected by individual thoughts and emotions.

2. Epistemological Objectivism

Objective Knowledge: Objectivism asserts that knowledge is possible through reason, observation, and empirical evidence, and this knowledge can be universally applicable. Objective truth is something that can be approached and verified through logical and scientific methods, rather than being dictated by personal or cultural biases.

Universal Standards of Truth: Objectivist epistemology holds that through rational inquiry and consistent methodology, individuals can come closer to objective knowledge that transcends subjective perspectives. For example, scientific inquiry is often seen as an objective process, seeking truths that hold regardless of who performs the experiment.

3. Ethical Objectivism

Objective Moral Standards: In ethics, objectivism argues that moral truths exist independently of individual opinions. Ethical principles are seen as objective standards that apply universally, rather than being based on personal or cultural preferences. For instance, some argue that principles like "do no harm" have objective validity beyond subjective interpretations.

Contrast with Ethical Subjectivism: While ethical subjectivism argues that moral values are shaped by individual or cultural perspectives, objectivism claims that some ethical truths can be discovered rationally and apply to everyone equally.

4. Aesthetic Objectivism

Standards in Art and Beauty: Objectivism in aesthetics suggests that beauty and artistic quality are not merely “in the eye of the beholder,” but can be judged by objective standards, such as form, symmetry, and harmony.

Critique of Aesthetic Relativism: This view challenges the notion that art and beauty are purely subjective experiences, proposing instead that some aspects of artistic appreciation are universally recognizable.

5. Objectivism in Politics and Rights

Natural Rights and Universal Principles: Objectivist theories often emphasize natural rights or universal principles that should guide society. This includes beliefs that individuals have certain inherent rights and that laws and systems should reflect universal standards of justice.

Rejection of Relativism: Political objectivism opposes relativistic views that claim rights and justice vary between cultures, proposing instead that certain political ideals, like individual freedom or justice, are universally applicable.

By: Stephen Eide

Published: Dec 30, 2024

The idea of “lived experience” exerts wide sway across many areas of social policymaking today, from homelessness to mental illness to addiction. Those crises have deepened in recent years, even as lived experience’s influence has continued to grow.

Task forces, nonprofit boards, conferences, and congressional committee hearings frequently reserve slots for people in recovery, formerly incarcerated or homeless individuals, and “consumer survivors” of psychiatric care. Federal agencies request that grant applicants include people with lived experience in decision-making. Even the Department of Justice solicits people with lived experience for service as grant application reviewers. “Nothing about us without us” is the rallying cry of the disability rights movement.

The premise behind using “lived experience” as a policy approach is that social programs fail when they don’t listen enough to their beneficiaries. To many, that idea will come across as innocuous. “Prison abolition” and “defund the police” are dangerous but frank ideas. When we debate them, we know the stakes. Lived experience is more subtly fraudulent. It tends to elude critical analysis, but its influence comes at a cost. It promotes divisiveness in social policy debates and counterproductive individualism in the design of social programs.

To begin, lived experience runs into empirical problems. Social scientists must abide by the replicability principle, which holds that any approach to a problem must produce consistent results to be considered “evidence-based.” The replicability principle ensures maximum rigor for findings in experimental results, but lived experience cannot meet the replicability standard. After all, humans respond differently to adversity. 

Some people are more resilient than others. Some discover resilience only after numerous cycles of relapse. Some addicts say that getting arrested set them straight; others say that arrest accelerated their downward spiral. When evaluating the appropriateness of parole, a convicted murderer who has served decades of hard time will often bring his experience to bear in a directly opposite way than the family members of the victim after decades of trauma. Developing coherent policy lessons from experience thus requires recourse to a plane other than experience.

Proponents of lived experience claim that “no one size fits all” in social programs, but more custom-tailored service systems are not always more effective. When you take the time to ask them, for example, some mentally disabled Americans will say that they prefer institutional living (which disability rights groups try to explain away as false consciousness). This selective application of the concept—“lived experience for me, but not for thee”—reveals its limits.

Moreover, public systems require a degree of simplicity to be navigable. That’s especially so when they serve people with serious mental illness. “Fragmentation” is the classic criticism of public mental health in America. The more programs a government has on offer, the more confusing a system will become, and the less it will deserve to be called a “system.”

And fetishizing individualism in the crafting of social policy conflicts with the harsh reality that a successful health and human services system cannot be absolutely deferential to human autonomy. Too much deference to autonomy leads to abandonment, as attested by the streets of San Francisco and subways of New York. All of us have benefited from coercion. All of us have, at times, been dissuaded from a mistaken course of action by authority figures who applied force to redirect us toward better behavior whose benefit we did not initially appreciate. We should thus all be sympathetic, at least in principle, to the use of coercion to benefit schizophrenic people—even if we ourselves have no lived experience of schizophrenia. With behavioral health disorders, motivation for recovery can be an effect of treatment. It need not always be the cause. 

One philosophical lesson we seem to have forgotten amid the advance of lived experience is the elusiveness of self-knowledge. Yes, each of us, as individuals, has unique access to ourselves. But by the same token, each of us also has a unique attachment to ourselves. Self-love enables cloudy thinking. Say what you will about the pioneer of psychology Sigmund Freud—he had no truck with the idea that self-knowledge can be cheaply bought. Freud taught that we are naturally strangers to ourselves and that overcoming that condition required long, probing, often painful self-explorations. Self-knowledge is not our birthright, and we are constantly dishonest with ourselves. But a reflexive deference toward the lived experience of others can’t account for the possibility of their self-deception.

Plus, deferring too much to lived experience makes it hard to develop “lived expertise.” Good clinicians and social workers help people make better decisions. Such professionals use nudges and incentives to run programs in a space set between abandonment and physical coercion. Examples include drug courts and “contingency management” addiction programs, which pay addicts to stay sober. All effective clinicians recognize that there are such things as too much empathy and insufficient reserve. The psychiatrist-blogger Scott Alexander has written about how doctors and their patients will sometimes diverge in their opinions of how recovery is going because the former must go by “outward signs” whereas the latter emphasize “internal feelings.” “It is pretty universally believed that doctors spot signs of recovery in patients long before the patients themselves think they are recovering,” Alexander writes.

We’d have better social policy debates if we took more care to keep lived experience in check. One way to do so would be to make more of an effort to invoke narratives of overcoming and restraint to counter those of trauma and autonomy. We need to give more power to psychiatrists and other service providers with “lived expertise.” We need to restore a sense of proportionality to subjectivity, which is now being asked to bear more weight than it can support.

Addiction, homelessness, and mental illness are urgent problems that require a public and therefore collective response. But any debate over what to do can’t be on the level if one side has no personal experience of the problem in question while the other side does and thereby insists only its position is legitimate.

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