The truth is what we should believe. According to realists, we should believe in reality. According to realists, truth is objective. According to soulists, we should believe in whatever’s useful. According to soulists, truth is a choice and we have a responsibility to make a good choice.
It sounds like They describe soulists as arguing that the truth is unknowable, so believe nothing and simply use the most helpful assumptions as a guide.
And elsewhere it sounds like They’re saying soulists delude themselves into fully believing those most helpful assumptions as objective truth
Soulists definitely don’t believe in an objective anything. I wrote the article, and I can’t see any part of it where I said soulists believe in an objective truth.
Let’s take this theory into the practical. “Trans women are women.” Is that an objective truth? No, women don’t objectively exist. It’s a subjective truth. But it’s a very important subjective truth that everyone needs to agree with and genuinely believe in if we’re going to have a free society.
Ah okay, so it is me who’s having trouble with the word “truth”.
To me, the default definition of ‘truth’ is objective truth, but in this context it’s more broad than that, right?
So when You said “usefulness decides truth”, I read it as “usefulness decides objective truth” (which I see now is not the correct way to understand what You wrote).
“subjective truth” just seems like an oxymoron to me, though I see it’s a fairly hot topic now that I’m looking into it
Regarding Your practical example, I would argue that “woman” is a social construct which objectively exists. Though I get what You’re saying and I agree
Thank You for sharing your article and discussing it with me btw (also I really enjoy Your writing style)
Thank you. In the spirit of this article which says that everyone naturally thinks like a soulist, please allow Me to argue that you’re already familiar with the concept of subjective truth. “Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father.” That’s not an objective truth either. Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker don’t exist. Star Wars isn’t real. It’s just a story. Yet, the vast majority of people in our society can all agree that Vader is Luke’s father (unless they’re making an argument that Anakin and Vader are different people). It’s a truth culturally ubiquitous. Everyone knows it.
You already intuitively understand how to navigate the concept of fictional truth. You might be familiar with the term “canon”. You know how to make arguments about what is and isn’t canon, and you have opinions about canon, which you’re capable of defending. There is no objectivity in fiction. It’s all made up. If we all decided that Luke is Rey’s father, it would be true. The truth is whatever you can convince people to believe. And you know how to navigate these kinds of situations. You don’t need objectivity in order to work with truth. You never did.
When I say “Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father”, the rest of the sentence “in the fictional Star Wars universe” is implied. When you consider the implied part, the statement is an objective truth. The objective truth in a work of fiction is either decided by the creator or is unknowable.
In other words, the implied statement that I don’t say out loud because it’s unnecessary and pedantic is “The character ‘Darth Vader’ is, according to the creator, George Lucas, the father of the character ‘Luke Skywalker’ in the fictional ‘Star Wars universe’.”
Are other people not implying that part when they say things like that? I’m autistic and this is a genuine question.
Edit: to be clear though, I do understand ‘subjective truth’ when it comes to things like interpreting art and such- like I get why that’s a term
Edit #2: I remember there being a user on Lemmy that uses capitalized pronouns. Is that You? Should l be capitalizing Your pronouns? (Asking bc of Your username)
Are other people not implying that part when they say things like that? I’m autistic and this is a genuine question.
I’m not implying that part. I’m making a statement that applies to Luke Skywalker, the fictional character, on the universe’s own terms. I might even make a statement about the philosophy of the Force that conflicts with George Lucas’ vision. I might say that two Jedi and two Sith is balance, and that George Lucas misunderstood his own fiction. I might say that JJ Abrams is a hack writer and substitute My own headcanon as a preferred subjective truth, according to the principle of useful truth, because I think My story is better and does more interesting things with the fiction and philosophical themes.
In fact, if all the fans disagree with the author and agree with each other, the owner of the work might even retcon it to say the fans were right. In the new Star Wars lore, light and dark exist in natural balance instead of light alone being balanced. That’s because everyone agreed that George Lucas doesn’t understand Star Wars very well.
Huh- so if You make a statement like that, and a pedant says something like “akshually, [thing] doesn’t really exist so that’s not objectively true,” Your response to that is “It’s a subjective truth” rather than- as I would say- “That’s implied- it’s objectively true within the implied context”?
Having written that, I realize we’re saying the same thing lol. Before this conversation, however, I would’ve said “obviously that’s implied” because I didn’t realize that isn’t the way other’s think about these things. Is this still “thinking like a soulist” though?
Everyone agreed that George Lucas doesn’t understand Star Wars very well.
Lol that’s so funny. (And valid)
Edit: I think I figured it out. I’m treating “objectivity” like a subjective thing, because that’s what makes sense to me, but that’s not how others think of it, and Your point is that it doesn’t exist at all (which I think is the same thing I’m saying- because if objectivity is subjective, then it isn’t objective, and therefore doesn’t exist)
What I’m noticing is that you keep saying objectivity exists in fiction because objectivity is the will of the author. That we can say the author objectively said XYZ. But a soulist doesn’t believe anything is objective. Not the existence of other people, not our interpretations of their work, and not their ownership of canon.
We don’t actually know that other people exist. It just seems as though treating others with kindness is an important part of living a good life, whether or not they exist. I like playing evil characters in RPGs quite often, but everyone needs to play games where they’re a good guy, and playing life as an evil character seems like too much for anyone’s conscience to bear. Plus, jail and other consequences.
Second, we can’t treat the words of others as objective. We misunderstand the words other people say all the time. We misunderstood Lucas’ intention with the word “balance”, and we’ve misunderstood a lot else. The entire concept of words doesn’t have any objectivity. They’re just shapes on a screen or on an auditory waveform. We choose to give words meaning because it’s useful. That’s soulist thinking too. The word “gubernatorial” isn’t possessed of an objective meaning, it means something because we choose to believe it does.
Third, an author’s ownership over a work is kind of a recent capitalist invention. Copyright law was only invented after the printing press, in order to guarantee businesses would earn the same revenue in a printing world as before. (Or perhaps much more). Nobody acts like Homer owns the Iliad. It’s a cultural myth. Stories used to belong to everyone. Copyright introduced ownership of the means of production to stories. It made myth capitalist. Soulists are anarchists, and we hate that. Writing fanfiction is anarchist praxis, copyright be damned. It’s even more absurd with entities like Disney which appropriate or buy old stories and then claim to control them. Disney shouldn’t get to decide the “canon” of The Avengers or Cinderella.
In all three of these cases, derived from a single statement, belief in objectivity blinds us to the complexity of the world and our agency in building it. Soulists take responsibility for what the world is and how it can be made better. We don’t pretend the world is happening to people, we encourage people to build a better word.
The truth is what we should believe. According to realists, we should believe in reality. According to realists, truth is objective. According to soulists, we should believe in whatever’s useful. According to soulists, truth is a choice and we have a responsibility to make a good choice.
It sounds like They describe soulists as arguing that the truth is unknowable, so believe nothing and simply use the most helpful assumptions as a guide.
And elsewhere it sounds like They’re saying soulists delude themselves into fully believing those most helpful assumptions as objective truth
That’s an important difference
Soulists definitely don’t believe in an objective anything. I wrote the article, and I can’t see any part of it where I said soulists believe in an objective truth.
Let’s take this theory into the practical. “Trans women are women.” Is that an objective truth? No, women don’t objectively exist. It’s a subjective truth. But it’s a very important subjective truth that everyone needs to agree with and genuinely believe in if we’re going to have a free society.
Ah okay, so it is me who’s having trouble with the word “truth”.
To me, the default definition of ‘truth’ is objective truth, but in this context it’s more broad than that, right?
So when You said “usefulness decides truth”, I read it as “usefulness decides objective truth” (which I see now is not the correct way to understand what You wrote).
“subjective truth” just seems like an oxymoron to me, though I see it’s a fairly hot topic now that I’m looking into it
Regarding Your practical example, I would argue that “woman” is a social construct which objectively exists. Though I get what You’re saying and I agree
Thank You for sharing your article and discussing it with me btw (also I really enjoy Your writing style)
Thank you. In the spirit of this article which says that everyone naturally thinks like a soulist, please allow Me to argue that you’re already familiar with the concept of subjective truth. “Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father.” That’s not an objective truth either. Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker don’t exist. Star Wars isn’t real. It’s just a story. Yet, the vast majority of people in our society can all agree that Vader is Luke’s father (unless they’re making an argument that Anakin and Vader are different people). It’s a truth culturally ubiquitous. Everyone knows it.
You already intuitively understand how to navigate the concept of fictional truth. You might be familiar with the term “canon”. You know how to make arguments about what is and isn’t canon, and you have opinions about canon, which you’re capable of defending. There is no objectivity in fiction. It’s all made up. If we all decided that Luke is Rey’s father, it would be true. The truth is whatever you can convince people to believe. And you know how to navigate these kinds of situations. You don’t need objectivity in order to work with truth. You never did.
This just feels like funny semantics?
When I say “Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father”, the rest of the sentence “in the fictional Star Wars universe” is implied. When you consider the implied part, the statement is an objective truth. The objective truth in a work of fiction is either decided by the creator or is unknowable.
In other words, the implied statement that I don’t say out loud because it’s unnecessary and pedantic is “The character ‘Darth Vader’ is, according to the creator, George Lucas, the father of the character ‘Luke Skywalker’ in the fictional ‘Star Wars universe’.”
Are other people not implying that part when they say things like that? I’m autistic and this is a genuine question.
Edit: to be clear though, I do understand ‘subjective truth’ when it comes to things like interpreting art and such- like I get why that’s a term
Edit #2: I remember there being a user on Lemmy that uses capitalized pronouns. Is that You? Should l be capitalizing Your pronouns? (Asking bc of Your username)
Yes, I use capitalised pronouns. https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/introduction-to-capitalised-pronouns-f5140e722b48
I’m not implying that part. I’m making a statement that applies to Luke Skywalker, the fictional character, on the universe’s own terms. I might even make a statement about the philosophy of the Force that conflicts with George Lucas’ vision. I might say that two Jedi and two Sith is balance, and that George Lucas misunderstood his own fiction. I might say that JJ Abrams is a hack writer and substitute My own headcanon as a preferred subjective truth, according to the principle of useful truth, because I think My story is better and does more interesting things with the fiction and philosophical themes.
In fact, if all the fans disagree with the author and agree with each other, the owner of the work might even retcon it to say the fans were right. In the new Star Wars lore, light and dark exist in natural balance instead of light alone being balanced. That’s because everyone agreed that George Lucas doesn’t understand Star Wars very well.
Fixed! Thanks for the link- another good read
Huh- so if You make a statement like that, and a pedant says something like “akshually, [thing] doesn’t really exist so that’s not objectively true,” Your response to that is “It’s a subjective truth” rather than- as I would say- “That’s implied- it’s objectively true within the implied context”?
Having written that, I realize we’re saying the same thing lol. Before this conversation, however, I would’ve said “obviously that’s implied” because I didn’t realize that isn’t the way other’s think about these things. Is this still “thinking like a soulist” though?
Lol that’s so funny. (And valid)
Edit: I think I figured it out. I’m treating “objectivity” like a subjective thing, because that’s what makes sense to me, but that’s not how others think of it, and Your point is that it doesn’t exist at all (which I think is the same thing I’m saying- because if objectivity is subjective, then it isn’t objective, and therefore doesn’t exist)
What I’m noticing is that you keep saying objectivity exists in fiction because objectivity is the will of the author. That we can say the author objectively said XYZ. But a soulist doesn’t believe anything is objective. Not the existence of other people, not our interpretations of their work, and not their ownership of canon.
We don’t actually know that other people exist. It just seems as though treating others with kindness is an important part of living a good life, whether or not they exist. I like playing evil characters in RPGs quite often, but everyone needs to play games where they’re a good guy, and playing life as an evil character seems like too much for anyone’s conscience to bear. Plus, jail and other consequences.
Second, we can’t treat the words of others as objective. We misunderstand the words other people say all the time. We misunderstood Lucas’ intention with the word “balance”, and we’ve misunderstood a lot else. The entire concept of words doesn’t have any objectivity. They’re just shapes on a screen or on an auditory waveform. We choose to give words meaning because it’s useful. That’s soulist thinking too. The word “gubernatorial” isn’t possessed of an objective meaning, it means something because we choose to believe it does.
Third, an author’s ownership over a work is kind of a recent capitalist invention. Copyright law was only invented after the printing press, in order to guarantee businesses would earn the same revenue in a printing world as before. (Or perhaps much more). Nobody acts like Homer owns the Iliad. It’s a cultural myth. Stories used to belong to everyone. Copyright introduced ownership of the means of production to stories. It made myth capitalist. Soulists are anarchists, and we hate that. Writing fanfiction is anarchist praxis, copyright be damned. It’s even more absurd with entities like Disney which appropriate or buy old stories and then claim to control them. Disney shouldn’t get to decide the “canon” of The Avengers or Cinderella.
In all three of these cases, derived from a single statement, belief in objectivity blinds us to the complexity of the world and our agency in building it. Soulists take responsibility for what the world is and how it can be made better. We don’t pretend the world is happening to people, we encourage people to build a better word.