Objectivism
Name(s):
Dependence on objectivity
Fraudulent distraction
Spurious objectivity
Nature
Objectivism is the mistaken belief that natural and social systems can be understood and acted on objectively, as if people are not part of the system they are understanding and changing.
Claim
Our standards of evidence, our current scientific theories, our philosophical, and scientific generalizations are all equally human productions, got up for certain practical, intellectual, emotional, cultural, moral purposes. Few philosophers of science nowadays believe man has a handle on objectivity, but many intellectuals persist in assuming a mechanical universe based on presumed objective results of science.
2. The errors generated by assuming mechanism are compounded by assuming objectivism. People and how they think, value and organize things are clearly part of the coevolutionary process.
3. The total loss of objectivity in which we feel quite objective, treating reality as a fantasy, is an irony. For it is the diverted energy involved in the ruthless control necessary to keep up a facade of control or normality, which makes it possible to do the nominally impossible -- not to experience what we experience. The activities of this self-deception are sufficiently consuming of time, attention and energy to leave what is happening to us at the periphery of apparent importance at the very same time as the importance is being continually attested to by the wilful engagement in distraction....The desire for spurious objectivity stems from the desire to escape one's condition and point of view...Objectivism is a distorted and damaging degradation of objectivity and springs from the feeble wish to have the advantage of a position or view, a way of knowing or an involvement without taking the position or using the view,; employing the way of knowing, and not standing up to and for the risks and embarassments of the involvement. (Max Deutscher. Subjecting and Objecting, 1983).
Counter-claim
1. The world does not appear to mould itself in conformity with human hopes and dreams. In matters of health, of personal achievement, of interpersonal relations, and the like, what people are really convinced of does tend to come true. But even in those cases faith is frustrated more often than not by unyielding realities. The only faith that has proved profitable is to give up hope of magic and submit ourselves scrupulously to the hard laws of nature and govern our lives in accord with those laws, without any expectation of any yielding by nature.
2. The "creation of reality" thesis leaves open the door for wishful thinking and self-deceptive thinking at their worst. This is the chief barrier to the advancement of humanity.
3. People can bear only so much reality. it is a less than fully objective understanding of one's recognitions, which insists on an expression of them with precision, accuracy and specificity which drives oneself or others near mad with anxiety, fury, guilt, depression, swollen headedness or humiliation...our personal objectivity requires a permanent and accurate sense of one's limitations as a subject in dealing with the object at hand. (Max Deutscher. Subjecting and Objecting, 1983).
Broader
Aggravated by
Strategy(ies)
Value(s)
Type
(F) Fuzzy exceptional problems