“Post-truth.” “Post-fact.” “Fake news.”
These are terms I hear flying around lately, and I feel obligated to step in.
Talk to this guy about formal and objective reality.
There are and have been philosophical debates on truth and reality for centuries.[1] Is truth only what is verifiable? Is it correspondence? Is it coherence? Is reality only the material reality through which the natural sciences are practiced? Is reality always already filtered through a subjective, phenomenological perspective?
Truth and reality are messy concepts, because truth and reality are created, defined, and evaluated by human-made standards.
Truth isn’t one thing. The truth of an event isn’t “what actually happened,” because when anything happens to a person that particular experience is happening to someone with a perspective. And with any perspective comes bias. Bias from actual limitations of human sensing, pattern recognition, and comprehension, but also bias from socialized beliefs and bias from a personal agenda, all of it.
You are biased.
