I am sure you have heard someone say, "This is my personal truth.", "This is my lived experience.’’ or "You do you." You probably have said these yourself. But won’t you agree that there is an objective truth external to all of us? A neutral plane and a great leveller of all our incompatible philosophies? If we all agree on this great leveller, what do we mean when we talk of personal truth and does our personal truth trump the objective reality of which we are all subjects of? To get close to answering the questions posed, we would have to establish a commonplace from which we can base our discourse. At this point, I would like to lay my cards on the table. I am not providing answers, but ramblings. And possibly more questions. The next few sentences are my own posits, vulnerable of my own biases but here goes: "Oh my ramblings" I start my rambling with a thought, that communication breeds community and it is through community that we can cooperate and thrive. As humans, we do not always effectively communicate with each other. With billions of people having different life experiences, dispositions, environments and cultures, how do we make sure we agree? Should we agree? What should we agree on? Discussion and debate is one faculty of communication. Usually at the start of a debate, the common ground of the partakers is outlined. This is to establish any groundwork from which a debate and discussion can launch. "Should we agree? What should we agree on?" The consensus between those in discussion is that reason is a tool that can used to evaluate whether arguments brought forth are weak or strong. We use reason to logically form judgements and conclusions from gathered data. On the other hand, we also use reason to justify our behaviour and choices afterwards. Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber put forth in their book The Enigma of Reason that we justify our actions for purposes of being social. That is, people retrospectively justify their behaviour and choices for social reasons. Being a rationalist gives you a good reputation in the society and reasoning enables social interactions and collaboration. Whether the reasons we provide for our actions are valid or not depends on culture. The good thing about reason holding weight in social settings is that, in interactive reasoning such as in a debate, our reasons can be challenged. This forces us to reason better. But, does providing [seemingly] weak arguments for our actions disqualify us from being heard and considered? Especially in arguing for complex social issues? And especially if the exercise of providing excellent reasons is strenuous, because it means arguing for your own existence? "We engage in retrospective reasoning (as opposed to prospective reasoning) to enable social interaction." Could we be lenient or rather open-minded that in general terms, what we really mean when we refer to our personal truth, as reasons for our behaviour and choices, is that our personal truths are the best guess we can offer? That it is the beginning of a discussion rather than the end. Just because our personal truths are subjective, they nonetheless should not be invalidated or tossed out as non-reason because they offer a place of inference in debate and discussion. By being familiar with someone else’s subjectivity, you can better convince them of the fallacies of logic in their reason or better yet, you can leave the discussion enlightened of someone else’s lived experience and having some of your own fallacies and baseless assumptions exposed. I think. References 1. Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, The Enigma of Reason, 2017
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Rea Zwane"I am just trying to live it up with a big God" Archives
April 2022
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