People can fail to use objective thinking out of ignorance. If you have had no education at all you are vulnerable to superstitions, prejudices; all kinds of irrational behaviours.
Much more alarming is a failure to use objective thinking from having too much education of the wrong sort. Very clever people can end up thinking and doing very stupid things.
Ideas, good and bad, don’t emerge from nowhere. Respect for individuals and trust in objectivity are universal values, in that they apply at all times and all places, but they also arose from a particular tradition in a particular time and place.
We saw in the early chapters that it is hard to prove the existence of ‘objective knowledge’, or ‘objective truth’. In truth, I don’t think it can be done. In Physics, we have seen in the 20C how the seemingly rock solid edifice of Newtonian Physics has been undermined by the discoveries of quantum physics (i.e. how particles behave at the tiniest level).
Philosophers of Science have given up the idea of absolute proof but join with Karl Popper in focussing instead on the idea of ‘falsifiability’. It may not be possible to prove a scientific theory but to be a valid theory it must be falsifiable.
If over a long period of time and in extreme conditions the theory consistently has predictive value then it can be taken as true even if not ultimately proveable.
In addition the idea that there is such a thing as a totally neutral ‘body of knowledge’ or ‘body of science’ has also come under question. Scientists, economists and others are human beings with their own interests and biases.
Karl Marx was one of the first to raise suspicion about these motives. He pointed out that members of the wealthier classes are unlikely to welcome ideas which endanger their own privileged situation in society.
Later followers of Marx including thinkers of the “Frankfurt School” in the 1930s, Derrida, Foucault and the “Structuralists” and “Post-Structuralists” of the 1970s+, Linguistic Philosophers from the 1920s+ and recently “Social Constructionists”, radical Feminists, Intersectionalists and many others have given the idea of objectivity a sustained intellectual battering.
Many institutions and customs that were previously taken to be ‘objectively true’ can be shown rather to be ‘socially constructed’, the product of a particular way of thinking at a particular time. To such thinkers the only truth we can aspire to involves seeing through the illusions weaved by our morally compromised, self-serving bourgeois society to open up the possibility of creating a new and better way of being human.
To do justice to all the intellectual movements that have challenged the idea of objectivity is way beyond the scope of this book. I have no reason to question any of these thinkers’ good faith or motivation beyond a search for truth, and I agree with them to the extent of saying that our subjective thinking, which is completely coloured by our life experience and situation, is the dominant form of thinking for most of us most of the time.
Unfortunately though the justified challenge to the idea of perfect objective knowledge has extended to challenging and then denying the very possibility of objective thinking.
In my view what has happened is that the very clever writers and intellectuals in our society and universities who have thrown out the bathwater of ‘objective knowledge’ have also thrown out the precious baby of objective thinking.
In effect, they have claimed that all thinking is emotional or subjective thinking.
Yet it is easy to show that this is not the case.
If
a = 2 + 2
the value of a does not depend on my mood, gender, socioeconomic background, ethnicity or anything else. Once you have established the meaning of the symbols ‘=’ and ‘+’ and the concept of number, the answer a = 4 is true for all time and all places, (and even, theoretically, no time and no place).
Yes, it is certainly true that what scientists study is determined by all sorts of factors, particularly economic ones: they study what someone will fund them to study. Yet in carrying out an experiment scientists seek to remove all traces of personal bias. If they are caught out fiddling the results then their credibility as scientists is destroyed.
If you accept the reality of objective thinking, you look for ‘facts’, evidence and reason, even if emotionally you wish reality was different. The existence of objective thinking is a weaker claim than the existence of objective knowledge, and it can be defended robustly. We can be aware of our natural, emotional biases and seek to remove them by applying logic and the empirical method.
If you believe that all reality is ‘socially constructed’ a vacuum appears. What is the method to determine what is true or false? Inevitably something has to fill this vacuum. Normally this seems to be the belief that some views are more ‘correct’ than others. Inconsistently, it is believed that certain ‘social justice’ ideals are ‘objectively’ better than any other, even while the existence of objectivity is being denied!
Many commentators have observed that there is something of a ‘culture war’ going on, with the main battlefields being Academia and the Media. It seems that this culture war is different in kind from what has gone before.
There have always been and will always be arguments as to how society should be organised. This is natural and to be expected. But what’s happening now is different in nature. It is, in part, between those who accept objective thinking and those who deny it exists.
If you believe all reality is ‘socially constructed’ then it is not clear where to go to arbitrate a difference of viewpoint. In contrast, if you accept objective thinking then you look for evidence and logic.
Are there biological differences between men and women? Which economic policies best help the poor get out of poverty? Which sources of energy are least damaging to the environment? Has any good ever come out of colonialism (eg when the Romans ruled Britain?)
If your response to these questions is to look for the evidence upon which to develop a rational argument, then you are accepting objective thinking. But if your answers are predetermined then no amount of conflicting evidence will make you change your mind.
In Academia, subjects like Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Coding, Computers and Business are relatively immune to the culture wars. They remain strongly rooted in objective thinking (although even here there are moves to make appointments based on gender or skin tone rather than competence and track record).
Biology, Psychology and History are at the centre of the battlefield. If you follow the biological evidence that there are differences between average brains, bodies and psychological traits of men and women you should expect a lot of grief. Likewise if you believe the evidence shows that many good things arose out of Western civilisation alongside the bad things you are unlikely to have a quiet life.
Marx, famously, said
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
Eleven Theses on Feuerbach and inscribed on his gravestone
Some have deliberately undermined the very idea of objectivity in order to further a particular political objective: others in a genuine search for academic truth. From whatever motivation, there has been confusion over the nature of thinking itself. Once it is seen that there are three kinds of thinking, and not just one, the paradoxes can be resolved.
The foundations of objective thinking are as solid as they have ever been: they are rooted in reality itself.