The Life of Facts I: Their Nature and Construction

Static Objectivism: Technical Rationality

We have proposed that there are two different perspectives regarding the nature of Facts and, more basically, the nature of reality. One of these perspectives, objectivism, is based on the assumption that there is a reality out there that we can know and articulate. Our fact-checker (Jim Fingal) is holding this position. As Fingal and other fact-checkers (especially scientists) have noted, there are universal truths or at least universal principles that can be applied to the improvement of the human condition, resolution of human conflicts, restoration of human rights, or even construction of a global order and community. Donald Schön (1983) suggests that this stable (and static) perspective emerges from and remains closely associated with a tradition that he calls “technical rationality.”

We are also witnessing a parallel emergence of what we may call “bio-centrism”—this is an objectivist perspective defining human beings as an objective and stable reality. From this static and objectivist perspective, we begin with the assumption that our identity and our decisions are “wired in” to our neurological structures and basically pre-set at birth. While we certainly should acknowledge that we are not a “blank slate” at birth (Pinker, 2002) we also must realize that much occurs after birth and the environment impacts in a profound manner even on neurological development prior to birth. Furthermore, neuroscientists (cf. Rose, 2005) are coming to realize that the level of complexity in neurological structures and processes make it very difficult, if not impossible, to equate mind with brain. There is a level of analysis that moves well beyond neural structures and well beyond the “wet-mind” (biological base of mind) to a “dry-mind” that is transcendent and perhaps even spiritual in nature.

The bio-centric, objectivist perspective has served us well for several centuries. It has enabled us to make great advances in medical and cultural science; however, this perspective has also created many problems with which we now live. From a bio-centric objectivist perspective, the human body, included the brain, was (and is) perceived as an advanced machine that can be altered and repaired. This perspective can be retraced to the central principles of modernity: determinism and progress.

While there is a tendency to view the world from this perspective when we are doing our own “fact-checking”, this is a very limited (and limiting) approach to the analysis and use of Facts—especially when our notion of “self” is evolving. “Being” becomes a verb rather than a noun. Attending the potential for maturation and improvement comes the potential for a shift in our sense of reality. Facts are “becoming” somewhat different from what they were in the past and they are likely to “become” somewhat different in the future (or at least will mean something different in the future). Jim Fingal’s fact-checking is likely to look a bit different ten years in the future (actually Jim left this business and became a designer of software—which probably requires some imagination and constructivism).

Dynamic Objectivism: The Platonic Ideal

While many of the critiques of static objectivism are products of late 20th century and early 21st century thought, there is a much earlier source: Plato offers a dynamic objectivism through his allegory of the cave. Let’s briefly visit this cave. According to Plato, we are all living in a cave and never gain a clear view of reality, but instead view the shadows that are projected on the walls of the cave. We live with an image of reality (shadows on the wall of the cave) rather than with reality itself—which makes our sense of reality quite dynamic and a source of considerable tension. Plato, an idealist, notes that we have no basis for knowing whether we are seeing the shadow or seeing reality, given that we have always lived in the cave. Plato thus speaks to us from many centuries past about the potential fallacy to be found in a static objectivist perspective regarding the world—since we can never know whether we are living in the cave or living in the world of reality outside the cave.