On Reality

When I drop a ball from a building, its acceleration would be around 9.8 ms^2. Is that an objective fact or subjective? Most people would say objective. I wonder what the opposing side would say. If reality is truly subjective, how could it be that gravity is different for everyone? Well—maybe there are some subjective elements that influence this fact’s existence. After all, the existence of this fact is based on a body of people, who are subjective, being specifically interested in the acceleration due to Earth’s gravitational pull. Bodies of scientists have continually updated the information we have found with substantial arguments and disagreements over time. Even though the fact itself may not be subjective, the surrounding culture and entities that study it and build off from it are, indeed, subjective.

This subjectivity is more prominent in the social sciences more so than the traditional “hard” sciences. It’s hard to disagree about the acceleration due to gravity, but it’s much harder to say there is one objective social reality. If someone experiences racism everyday as a black man, that is a different experience than a white man. Their sense of reality in social life would be quite different. The black man would feel degraded and threatened by the racism he faces while a white man may not even consider the possibility of being mistaken for a criminal and shot down.

Reality as subjective or objective depends on what subject area you wish to enquire about. Differences in social reality often come about due to structural inequities. While one may taken for granted being able to freely run down a dark street at night, another would consider it a death threat. Other information like the facts about gravity are less debated, but the true mysteries lies in between fields or the meta-level questions of science. Who gets to define what life constitutes? How are things categorized and why? What constitutes enough evidence for something to be considered true? All of these questions challenge us to think deeper about facts. There is more to the world than pure positivism.