Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Objective Truth
Professor Tyson is very fond of the phrase "objective truth." He's a crusader for objective truth. And I applaud him for it. He understands the standards by which it is assessed, how it is known and confirmed, what it means to know it. And yet I wonder what the word "truth" gains from the qualifier "objective"? What is lacking in the notion of truth that is completed by the notion of objectivity. I would have thought that truth was truth and needs no qualifier to make it, I suppose, truer. Because if truth needs something more than itself to rise to the level of an object, if it weren't already an object, it must be lacking something. It must be somewhat less than true. But maybe I'm overthinking Maybe it's useful to add this qualifier, merely useful, not essential. I suspect it is deployed to distinguish objective truth--true truth--from subjective truth. But subjective truth isn't truth at all, but merely opinion. Well, it may be tru...