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u/Unlikely-Ad-7242 Critical Theory 15h ago
I don't think this is a rabbit hole. The premise of each argument is "truth is subjective". Nothing is being dismantled; every line of this argument is proving itself, rather than denying the previous line of argument. Nobody argued that truth is objective. This is just equivalent to saying the same line over and over again. No antithesis existed, so I don't think dialectics really exist in this place.
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u/Unlikely-Ad-7242 Critical Theory 15h ago
so even if truth is subjective, it itself might be a foundationalist argument.... kind of proves anti-foundationalism has foundations (like "I think therefore I am")
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u/TraditionalDepth6924 12h ago
No, by challenging “your prerequisite might also be subjective” — the later commenters are suggesting that each statement above is not objective, therefore initial stability undermined as “fake” or “pointless” i.e. can’t function as ultimate ground of “winning the argument”
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u/bigstu02 6h ago
Antithesis is always imminent to the thesis though. It's not some external statement that contradicts the premise, it's the premise failing to support itself due to its own inconsistency.
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u/epochpenors 15h ago
The caveat is that when I believe it, it becomes objective
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u/Immediate_Song4279 6h ago
I too am the personal arbiter of reality.
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u/NotAFishEnt 2h ago
That's mainly because you're the only person who's real. The rest of us are figments of your imagination :)
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u/Immediate_Song4279 2h ago
Damn it, here I was thinking it was the other way around and I was the figment
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u/Huckleberrry_finn Hey,girl Mark's can't lack-on.... "sniff's" 14h ago
Suppose if truth is a woman then all philosophers are incel. Duck dialectics
- NTZ.
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u/Cautious_Desk_1012 Supports the struggle of De Sade against Nature 8h ago
What a fucking way to start a book lol
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u/TheApsodistII 13h ago edited 11h ago
The great insight of Kierkegaard is:
Subjectivity is Truth.
Truth is Subjective =/= Truth is not, or that Truth is many, one for each subjectivity; however all subjectivities in their utmost authentic subjectivity, reaches Truth.
Objectivity is like seeing the surface of the water. But the fish swims in it.
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u/TraditionalDepth6924 11h ago
I relate with this approach, but the problem seems to be: how could this “Truth” then function objectively, since everyone would claim their own subjectivity is truth?
Since Kierk was Christian, for example: what about the universal “criteria/standard” for all the countless Christian sects to succumb to?
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u/TheApsodistII 11h ago
A very good question. Kierkegaard was less concerned with this question as he was not a systematic metaphysician.
This actually has some similarity to Plato's cave, but with layers: people gradually discover Truth by going up a level in the cave, but for those who have done so it is almost impossible to convince those still in the lower levels. No objective standard can explain some truths to those who have not perceived them yet. Truth is mystical in the truest sense; aletheic.
For what it's worth, I find the treatment of Dasein in Heidegger very useful in this regard especially as it relates to authenticity, falenness, the they.
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u/pluralofjackinthebox 6h ago
The whole idea that you can “win” an argument is premised on the idea that one person’s argument is stronger than the other, not necessarily that one argument is true and the other is false.
If the Roman Senate is arguing whether they should kill Julius Caesar or attack Carthage, winning isnt necessarily about truth conditions — though strong argument often will marshal many objective facts (ie Caesar’s army illegally crossed the rubicon, Carthage controls the trade routes near Sicily.) But you need more than brute facts to make a strong argument — you need logic, rhetoric, etc.
Repeating “truth is subjective” or any phrase over and over however is a very weak argument, at least for anyone over the age of six.
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u/ALCATryan 15h ago
Oh hey! That’s me! I mean there’s no way out because there was never a “way in” or anything to begin with. It’s like the posts where the comments are all saying the same thing. It’s just a bunch of people repeating “truth is subjective” over and over. If the statement “truth is subjective” is subjective, I don’t see how that devalues it.
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u/N3wW3irdAm3rica 9h ago
You can follow this “turtles all the way down” until you hit physical reality. All the logic in the world won’t get blood from a stone
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u/Aggravating_Fill_630 Dialectical-Materialist 3h ago
Claiming this is Dialectics proves y’all need to read a Book
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u/anustart147 14h ago
There has to be objective truth or we’re all stuck in the pit. Observable, measurable reality creates common ground we can all exist in, even if it might not be the entirety of the truth of existence.
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u/Nuclearmayhem 3h ago
To further refine this. No measurement can ever discover any objective truths. Measurement can only ever approximate the objective truth. Science is an endless cyclical process of further approximation of these objective truths. However, despite this inherent impossibility of truly discovering objective truth. An approximation is far more useful than merely asserting any claim can be true, even contradictory claims.
And also don't forget claims based on reason rather than measurement can be know as true with certainty aka 2 + 2 = 4.
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u/Complex_Package_2394 10h ago
If you view "truth is subjective" as: every opinion is equally valid and there is no objective reality, than this will destroy every possible discussion because it's the end-it-all argument and therefore: a non-argument. It fits indiscriminately to everything, losing any sharpness or topic-relatedness it could've.
It's the philosophical version of "yeah, I don't care" which isn't an argument either, just a 'I'll retract myself from this discussion and act like it's solved that way'
If you view "truth is subjective" as: opinions are formed on experience, truths are individualisticly derived from those opinions, so personal truths are the summation of personal experience, it's a valid argument. It doesn't say "there is no objective reality" but rather "everyone's personal POV of that objective reality is colored with our own personal filters" leaving room to actually explore and understand those filters, possibly leading to a more objective personal truth than before.
The first POV leads to endless "yeah but that subjective" non-sense discussions, the second POV (with genuine discussion partners, not people that only want to solidify their already set world view) possibly leads to "I view it this way, because of X" and some understanding about X.
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u/Even_Media_4686 9h ago
The Bayesian Average of their combined subjective experiences is what creates Objective truth. 🤷🏻♀️
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u/cefalea1 15h ago
Exactly why dialectical materialism is superior.
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u/TraditionalDepth6924 12h ago edited 12h ago
In what way in your view?
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u/cefalea1 12h ago
"To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth(...)It is unconditionally true that to every scientific ideology (as distinct, for instance, from religious ideology), there corresponds an objective truth, absolute nature. You will say that this distinction between relative and absolute truth is indefinite. And I shall reply: yes, it is sufficiently ‘indefinite’ to prevent science from becoming a dogma in the bad sense of the term, from becoming something dead, frozen, ossified; but it is at the same time sufficiently ‘definite’ to enable us to dissociate ourselves in the most emphatic and irrevocable manner from fideism and agnosticism, from philosophical idealism and the sophistry of the followers of Hume and Kant"
Thats Lenin, because it grounds you in the material world, there is matter that exist objectively regardless of human perception, matter that has internal laws that govern its behavior, laws that can be learned (however partially) through careful study and experimentation.
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u/TraditionalDepth6924 12h ago
But, and I challenge you here:
(1) “Matter exists objectively” is itself an idealist leap: how do you know it does?
(2) “It is certain because it is sensory” — isn’t that a naïve return to typical empiricism (Locke, Hume, Bacon, Berkeley)?
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u/cefalea1 12h ago
Because that's what science has proven, as much as something can be known we know that matter exist. We know we are made of cells, we exist in a planet, surrounded by a star, composed of atoms. All science, including social sciences have an underlying assumption that reality is material, that's good enough for me. It's good enough to change the world and I don't really need it to be more than that.
It's the best quote I could find in my book, dialectical materialism is not empiricist and does not rely solely on sensory experience, otherwise it would be useless to analyze something like capitalism, which is a social process that exists objectively, but we can't see or touch.
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u/TraditionalDepth6924 11h ago
No, science does not prescribe such a metaphysical leap, as long proven in modern philosophy: it only concerns with matter in terms of its content, not how matter in its entirety as such should apply its authority over subjective worldviews — so once again, you’re in fact grounding your prerequisite in idealism
You only said “not solely” and didn’t answer what otherwise it then relies on
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u/ComplaintHealthy1652 10h ago edited 10h ago
There’s some miscommunication here. I think ‘objective truth’ is perhaps being used to mean something which would more accurately be communicated as ‘concrete truth’.
The question of truth in dialectical materialism is in itself the seemingly unending contradiction of the subjective and the objective - all human knowledge, perception and thought is composed of both subjective and objective forces. Objective reality is the basis of the human brain and all processes and experiences involved; the subjective is the mind which interprets and acts upon the objective world - abstracting patterns from perceived reality and combining them into a network of relational knowledge. Without objective reality the subjective would not exist, and without the subjective there would be no means to perceive and interpret reality.
The objective world (which goes beyond matter with advances in science since dialectical materialism was named) exists as a concrete truth. “The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse.” - Karl Marx, Gundrisse. Concrete truth still retains an inevitably subjective element, however through a concentration of determinations (I get hungry and weak if I do not eat, other creatures can be observed to die without access to food, I have learned from other people that I must consume food to stay alive -> I will die if I don’t eat and biological beings need a source of food/energy to live) there is patterned truth that can be abstracted and concretised through multitudes of interactions between the mind and the world. This is also the basis of the scientific method in a way, reproducibility is a vital part of proving something.
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u/Totorline 15h ago
Truth aint subjective at all but you aren’t brigth at all by saying that hence saving time for everyone. Do not argue with fool or retard .
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