The Notion of Objectivity

Question

It seems to me that one of the most fundamental concepts in philosophy is "objectivity" since trying to find an answer for a question of any sort would ultimately depend upon the answer of the particular question of "Is there an objective thing?", and naturally/logically then "Is there an objective truth?" There are some philosophical/psychological views based on statements like "There is no objective thing at all". It seems that the following arguments show that such statements are intrinsically self-refuting or contradictory:

1 - If there were only subjective things and henceforth only subjective minds and ideas, how is it possible for someone to imagine the notion of objectiveness? In fact, during the course of such an imagination he could only conceive a relativized version of "objectivity" which, by definition, is ultimately forced to be subjective! However, our intuition suggests and actually supports the idea that we all can understand what objectivity means (something whose existence/being is independent from any specific subject). In the same line of ideas, when we are able to imagine the notion of independence, this conception cannot be dependent!

2 - If there were nothing objective independent of our minds, how is it possible for us to understand each other's speech? The situation becomes more difficult if we consider people from different cultures and histories, with different languages that are still able to understand each other. (For example, an archaeologist speaks about concepts that people of ancient times were thinking about).

Are there some arguments that can satisfactorily answer the above objections against the hypothesis of non-existence of an objective thing/truth?

Answer 1

I think one should be careful in defining objectivity, not as "something whose existence is independent of the subjects" but rather as "something whose existence is independent on the specific subject." One can argue that things that don't exist independently of subjects are objective, as long as all the subjects necessarily agree on them.

For example, mathematical concepts are arguably cannot exist independent of subjects (although platonists would disagree); however, multiple subjects would agree on those concepts. Sometimes mathematics is even defined as "the study of mental objects with reproducible properties."

IMO the above mentioned reproducibility is the key for deriving objectiveness from "relativized objectiveness." Objective truths are those on which multiple subjects agree that they are true, with the caveat that the truth should be appropriately defined, including the existence of logos, etc.

Answer 2

I think a clearer notion of objectivity is needed here. Objectivity can't just mean "independent of any thinking or observing subject", because the idea of something being dependent on a thinking or observing subject for its identity is a massively controversial aspect of the philosophy of mind - we don't want to commit ourselves to some kind of substance dualism, or even more conservatively a supervenience thesis about the mental on the physical, to say that some matter of fact is an objective one or not.

A more useful notion of objectivity might be derived from Michael Dummett's thoughts on Realism in the philosophy of language. To say that Realism about the material world holds is on one hand to say that the notion of Truth is evidence transcendent (that whatever we might hold to be the ontological structure of the world, the notion of what is True to say about the world is not fully settled by appeals to what kinds of pieces of evidence are available), and on the other to say that it is also classically logically bivalent (that whatever we might have to say on the subject is either true or false - there is no room for contradictions or intermediate or fuzzy truth values in the material world). Maybe these two theses might come apart in interesting ways, but the idea that "objectivity" is supposed to capture both sounds like a reasonable suggestion.

This avoids a lot of scrambling around in hypothetical "real worlds" without begging the relevant questions about whether there is indeed any such thing to form a basis for a constructive debate. And also, when the problem becomes a matter of standards of Logic and Evidence, we have a number of different formal technologies available to us to present, explore and consider various ways we might make progress in resolving disputes about whether such and such a phenomenon or hypothesis is properly sensible.

Answer 3

Paul Ross in his answer has said:

I think a clearer notion of objectivity is needed here.

Rather than answering the full breadth of your question, I think it fair to editorialize in regards to the scope of modern notions of objectivity, in which case coming from a naturalized epistemological position, which is philosophy that contains a fair amount of contemporary secular support among professionals, we hold scientific objectivity (SEP) as the golden standard. Thus to get to the bottom of the objectivity, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity questions, we need to understand what it means to be objective in science. This, naturally, is a lifetime of pursuit, since it is a core question in the study of the philosophy of science. From the SEP article:

Scientific objectivity is a property of various aspects of science. It expresses the idea that scientific claims, methods, results—and scientists themselves—are not, or should not be, influenced by particular perspectives, value judgments, community bias or personal interests, to name a few relevant factors. Objectivity is often considered to be an ideal for scientific inquiry, a good reason for valuing scientific knowledge, and the basis of the authority of science in society.

Of course, you can find an easier read with WP's article on the objectivity of science. From the article:

In science, objectivity refers to attempts to do higher quality research by eliminating personal biases (or prejudices), irrational emotions and false beliefs, while focusing mainly on proven facts and evidence.1 It is often linked to observation as part of the scientific method. It is thus intimately related to the aim of testability and reproducibility. To be considered objective, the results of measurement must be communicated from person to person, and then demonstrated for third parties, as an advance in a collective understanding of the world. Such demonstrable knowledge has ordinarily conferred demonstrable powers of prediction or technology.

If you get those two articles under your belt, then you'll have a good idea of how you can defend the notion of objectivity. Certainly, as Paul Ross has noted, there are a variety of meanings and contexts. Being familiar with a survey of them will go a long way to understanding what 'objectivity' means.

Answer 4

The short (if unsatisfying) answer here is that objectivity is an aspiration, not an actualization.

To go around the long way, let's start with the idea of the world-as-such. Most philosophical perspectives hold that a world-as-such exists, and that the human problem is perceptual: how thoroughly, how well, and how accurately we perceive the world-as-such. To make that concrete, say we are all siting in a circle looking at a flower. Whatever our philosophical leanings, we are all likely to agree that there is something there at the focus of our perception. We may not all agree what it is, we may all perceive it somewhat differently, we may have different words for it, but there is (for lack of a better phrase) some semi-stable confluence of energy we interact with that our minds translate as an object in the world at that position. Some philosophies tend to be very object-oriented, asserting that there is a close correspondence between what we perceive and what exists in the world-as-such; others are more mentalistic, holding perceived objects to be human mental constructions imposed on a largely holistic and undifferentiated world-as-such. It's just a question of how much translation and interpretation the mind is doing when it converts perceptions of the world-as-such into internal (mental) representations.

It's rare to find any philosophy that discards the world-as-such entirely, because such positions have a hard time explaining the non-arbitrariness of the world. Even Descartes postulated a demon who fed us delusions which were consistent, persistent, and coherent; that demon is his world-as-such.

The fact is that the notion of 'objectivity' is natural (almost unavoidable) because our perceptions are consistent, persistent, and coherent. If we see a fireplug in front of our house, we will always see that fireplug when we go home, unless someone removes it or a car hits it or something. If we lived in a universe where sometimes we saw a fireplug, sometimes a tree, sometimes a statue of Taylor Swift, and sometimes nothing at all, then we'd have no reason to believe there was an 'object', and thus no reason to think about that aspect of the world objectively. But that's not the universe we have. And by the same token, this consistency, persistence, and coherence allows us to have common language. You and I can talk about the fireplug in front of the house because it's always there and always the same. We may not see the same thing, mind you — what looks like a fireplug to me might look like a statue of Taylor Swift to you — but we'll use the same word for it because we can both point at it and agree on a word.

This obviously gets a bit more tangled when we talk about concepts, but the same principle applies. Terms like 'love' and 'beauty' point to consistent, persistent, and coherent sociocultural phenomena.

So the upshot is that as long as we carry this sense that the world-as-such exists (whether or not we think we can 'know' it in any complete sense), we will harbor an aspiration for objectivity: for a fair and accurate representation of that world-as-such.

Answer 5

The confusion seems to arise from the muddling of two notions of objectivity.

From the preface: some philosophies assert: There is no objective thing at all. This is an absolute. It doesn't refer to any subjects. I take this to refer to the idea that we can not know absolute reality, which I think is reasonable.

The author then comes with two objections, but notice that the author also slips in a new definition: an objective thing is something whose existence is independent from any specific subject. This is a different definition. Here an objective thing is not absolute, but simply independent from any specific subject. If all subjects agree on something, then that something is objective. It is independent from any specific subject. They all agree. They can have a language. The argument then assumes that this is evidence of objective things or objective truth. This is contradictory with the assertion in the preface that there is no objective truth.

These two different and conflicting definitions of objective things are the reason why the two objections of the author against the hypothesis of non-existence of an objective thing/truth do not hold and are not valid.

Answer 6

To me there is no answer to this under the current mode of thinking/language; Furthermore, under any other mode I think the concept of question/answer might as well be lost. You're seemingly trying to adopt an objective perspective by saying "If there were only subjective things" and "If there was nothing objective" all the while trying to say that all is subjective in an objective way. This seems like an endless loop and hence the language/thinking doesn't seem to quite grasp the phenomenon. Isn't this the road to Absurdity? There is neither Objectivity nor Subjectivity nor this sentence or the words I used to formulate the idea, while they nevertheless remain there.

Answer 7

Objectivity is tied up with the notion of observer independence. This is problematic because objectivity's definition requires the objective existence of other observers to validate objectivity (i.e., not merely imagined characters in our purely subjective, mental existence). How can we know there is even one more observer than ourselves?

We need to start from a position that our senses tell us something about the world "out there" (external world) - that content externalism is true. There have been many attempts to logically prove its denial false but none would force a dedicated "brain in vat" skeptic to change their view.

So let's say we take our sense data and intrinsic "common sense" as the starting point, if only because we cannot have another starting point without entering into regress. The prima facie conclusion we get from our senses includes:

• There are sensations/experiences that we appear to have no mental control over (e.g., we unwittingly step on a thorn and our toe hurts, we cannot jump 100 feet in the air by ourselves, salt doesn't taste sweet)

• Some of these experiences exhibit persistent properties that we call "objects" (e.g., the thorn), such that we infer these objects exist and interact even when we are not aware of them (as opposed to emotions and thoughts).

The simplest explanation for these appearances is that the causal arena doesn't begin and end with our particular subjectivity, but encompasses experience-generating processes that exist independently of our subjectivity.

We call this the external world, and by implication our senses are telling us something about it (almost certainly partial and fallible knowledge).

With that, we now have a decent scaffolding on which to define "objectivity" as being true for every observer. "Chocolate is delicious" fails the objectivity test. "Chocolate is not a type of insect" does pass the objectivity test. "Milk chocolate emits a spectral distribution of XYZ when illuminated with light of spectral composition ABC" is also objective, whereas "Milk chocolate is brown" is not objective (theoretically) but practically is given common light sources on Earth.

However, there is a sense in which all of this supposedly objective knowledge is still subjective, but at a higher level. It is knowledge that is peculiar to human sensory processing and cognition.

Would an equivalently intelligent species that evolved, say, near a black hole, have anything like our sensory systems or common sense intuitions? Would classical logic make sense to them, or would they use some other system? Even on earth we've come up with multiple logical systems, so who knows what a non-human intelligence would consider "logically obvious".

If we hold to the theory that there is a external world, then perhaps the most global form of objectivity is the existence of morphisms between conceptual systems that preserve local objectivity:

Let obj(x,s) mean that "x is locally objective in conceptual system s".

Then we can define global objectivity (Gobj) of a fact (x) as Gobj(x) to be the case iff there exists a mapping M between any two conceptual systems s, s' such that "obj(x,s) ↔ obj(M(x),s')".

More precisely:

∀s,s'[∃ M: s → s': obj(x,s) ↔ obj(M(x),s')]

Answer 8

The OP asks two questions wrapped into one phrase. "Is there an objective thing?", and "Is there an objective truth?" This answer will take the two in turn.

Question 1 is about the existence of a mind-independent reality made of (mind-independent) "objects". IMO it's quite straightforward to answer by the affirmative. Most of us conclude very early on in our development, around the age of 2 or so, that objects tend to continue to exist even when you don't see them and don't mind their existence. It's called "object permanence".

There's a bit of a complication when one realizes that objects are always distinguished from other objects, and defined or conceived as different from other objects, by a subject. Supposedly, without subjects trying to analyse the world and categorize the stuff around them, there would be still an objective reality "out there", but not necessarily segmented, or contrasted the way we see it. For all we know, the universe may be just one big whole, every thing connected to everything else. So there's a valid argument that we (subjects) do the segmenting of the universe into distinct objects by looking at it analytically. In this sense, objects are not totally mind-independent: their are always objects of one's attention in a way. But they are mind-independent enough, in the sense that once you delineated them as distinct from the rest, objects behave mind-independently. "The mountain" will be here tomorrow and the day after, reliably so, even though an objective limit is hard to find between "the mountain" and "the valley".

Some objects -- usually smaller than mountains, say one's keys -- can get lost. They can "go missing", that is. When that happens, most people do not assume that their keys have just vanished into thin air while they were not being looked at. Even philosophers, even idealist philosophers look for their keys when their keys "go missing". They look in their pockets, in yesterday's trousers, in the washing machine, etc. and often enough, ultimately they do find them.

Even when they don't find them, most folks, even some solipsists I know, tend to think: "I must have misplaced them" or "something happened to them", something consistent with the principle of object permanence, that is. Rare are those who would conclude that their keys have just stopped existing.

Even things that we would wish stopped existing tend to keep on existing, against our wish. Object permanence (and hence some degree of mind-independence) does seem to hold up, as a general principle.

Question 2 is a bit thornier. In summary, "truth" is a property of statements, specifically of those statements that pretend to describe the world or part of it, like "the cat is on the mat", aka so-called synthetic statements. If the statement accurately describes or corresponds to a given state of affairs, then it's deemed true.

(At least that's in broad brush one of the meanings of the word "truth")

The problem with speaking of "objective truth" in that sense of the word "truth" is that the word "objective" then must mean something else than "mind independent", because a statement by definition needs to be stated, otherwise it's not a statement. A statement is always stated by someone, some locutor, and usually for the benefit of someone else, for some audience. So a statement cannot be seen as mind-independent: by necessity, it comes from a mind and goes to another.

Fortunately, that's not really what people mean when they say things like "it's an objective truth that the cat is on the mat." They don't mean that "the cat is on the mat" is a statement stated by no one and for the benefit of no one. Instead they mean that anyone and everyone put in the right context (in that room with the cat) would agree that there appears to be some cat on some mat.

Objectivity, when applied to statements, generally implies near-universal intersubjective agreement about some statement describing some (mind-independent enough) state of affairs.

And in that sense of the word, there are objective truths. Perhaps reassuringly, people do tend to agree on factual statements about cats being located on mats. It's a pitty they disagree about pretty much everything else.

Answer 9

The questions you raise are central to debates in philosophy, particularly in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. Here are some ways philosophers might respond to your objections in defense of the idea that there may be no objective things or truths:

1. On the Nature of Objectivity and Its Conception Your first argument claims that the very idea of "objectivity" presupposes its existence because subjective minds cannot conceive of something truly independent of themselves. However, defenders of a more relativistic or constructivist view might counter as follows:

Conceptual Independence Does Not Imply Ontological Independence: Relativists could argue that the idea of objectivity arises as a product of intersubjective agreement or as a cognitive construction. While we can conceptualize the notion of "objectivity," this does not necessitate the actual existence of objective truths or entities independent of human perception. Humans have the capacity to imagine abstract concepts (e.g., infinity, perfect circles) without these necessarily corresponding to anything in the external world.

Subjective Definitions of "Objectivity": Some argue that objectivity itself might be a useful construct created by humans to organize and systematize thought, rather than a reflection of any intrinsic feature of reality. The imagination of "independence" might be an emergent property of human cognition and language rather than evidence of an independent reality.

2. Understanding Speech and Shared Meaning Your second argument raises the challenge of how communication and mutual understanding are possible without objective referents. Defenders of subjectivity might respond:

Intersubjectivity vs. Objectivity: Communication and understanding do not necessarily require objective truths; they require shared conventions or intersubjectivity. Language and meaning may emerge from communal practices, rather than being grounded in an objective reality. Ludwig Wittgenstein, for instance, emphasized the role of shared "language games" and forms of life in creating meaning.

Interpretation and Contextuality: Understanding across cultures and times might not depend on objective truths but on the shared capacity to interpret signs, gestures, and texts within a particular context. Archaeologists, for example, reconstruct meaning through frameworks that are themselves contingent and revisable.

Relational Knowledge: From a constructivist perspective, mutual understanding does not require knowledge to refer to objective realities but can be explained as a relational process where different perspectives find a workable coherence.

Additional Philosophical Responses to Your Arguments Pragmatism: Philosophers like William James and Richard Rorty argue that the usefulness of concepts like "objectivity" does not require their correspondence to a metaphysical reality. Instead, truth and objectivity might be seen as tools or practices that facilitate human flourishing, rather than absolute entities.

Postmodernism: Thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida question the very idea of stable, objective truths. They argue that truth is shaped by power structures, language, and historical contingencies. From this view, "objectivity" may merely reflect dominant cultural narratives rather than an independent reality.

Phenomenology: Philosophers like Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty might argue that the perception of an "objective" world is rooted in our shared, lived experiences. The objectivity we experience is not separate from the subjective but arises from the interplay of subjects engaging with the world.

Challenges to the Defenders of Subjectivity While there are robust defenses of the idea that "objectivity" is a construct, your objections highlight critical tensions:

The Problem of Infinite Regress: If all meanings are subjective or intersubjective, then each explanation depends on further subjective conventions, potentially leading to a lack of any ultimate foundation. The Intuition of Transcendence: As you suggest, many people intuitively feel that objectivity must exist to make sense of certain experiences (e.g., the laws of logic, mathematics, or causality). Ultimately, the debate depends on how one defines objectivity, the role of language and cognition in shaping reality, and the assumptions one brings to philosophical inquiry.

Answer 10

The Notion of Objectivity

Excerpts from the question:

--------—————-

… "Is there an objective thing?", and naturally/logically then "Is there an objective truth?"

1 - If there were only subjective things and henceforth only subjective minds and ideas, how is it possible for someone to imagine the notion of objectiveness?

2 - If there were nothing objective independent of our minds, how is it possible for us to understand each other's speech?

Are there some arguments that can satisfactorily answer the above objections against the hypothesis of non-existence of an objective thing/truth?

—————

Hypothesis: There exists no objective truth.

The short answer is The Law of Identity: A is A; whatever is, is.

Let’s try a thought experiment: deny the truth of the Law of Identity. New Hypothesis: Some A are not A; Some things are not what they are; Sometimes whatever is, is not.

This alternate hypothesis disposes immediately of the second question, concerning mutually intelligible speech. The new assumption renders interpersonal understanding impossible. If Person A says "a duck," Person B cannot be certain that the word "duck " refers to a certain type of bird. Rather, Person B might picture a different bird, or a palm tree, or a steam engine. There is nothing in the new assumption that requires focus on what Person A actually meant.

But the two people could agree on a meaning for purposes of talking to each other, right? No, because such a scenario only lifts the uncertainty to another level. Each person in the agreement could never know what the other one meant by a using a certain word.

Now let’s consider the first question, concerning imagining objectivity in a subjective world.

I find this question much harder to answer. The question apparently makes unspecified assumptions about how humans perceive reality and think. It assumes, without stating, the methods by which humans imagine things.

Also, the first question assumes that there are only "subjective things,…minds and ideas" and asks how, under those circumstances, the notion of objectivity could be imagined.

I suppose that the answer is that objectivity could not be imagined because there would be nothing to imagine. Human perception would be consistent with the world it lived in.

J D, you pose an interesting set of questions. But before I chase the first one any further down the rabbit hole, I ask that you be more precise about what you mean.

Answer 11

Re. "2 - If there were nothing objective independent of our minds . . ."

Plato's true world is the supersensory world of ideal forms. This is where the "objective things" exist for the cave dwellers who only see shadows of the things — the place where the "things-in-themselves" (noumena) exist, of which we see only the phenomenal projections.

The truth of Plato's world was superseded by Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" which relocated certainty to the mind. However, Descartes posited a worldless existence. Of it Heidegger says

If the 'cogito sum' is to serve as the point of departure for the existential analytic of Dasein, then it needs to be turned around, and furthermore its content needs new ontologico-phenomenal confirmation. The 'sum' is then asserted first, and indeed in the sense that "I am in a world". As such an entity, 'I am' in the possibility of Being towards various ways of comporting myself—namely, cogitationes—as ways of Being alongside entities within-the-world. Descartes, on the contrary, says that cogitationes are present-at-hand, and that in these an ego is present-at-hand too as a worldless res cogitans. GA2 211

Heidegger's existential position has Dasein and world as a "unitary" fundamental, to be taken a priori.

Dasein is an entity which, in its very Being, comports itself understandingly towards that Being. In saying this, we are calling attention to the formal concept of existence. Dasein exists. Furthermore, Dasein is an entity which in each case I myself am. Mineness belongs to any existent Dasein, and belongs to it as the condition which makes authenticity and inauthenticity possible. In each case Dasein exists in one or the other of these two modes, or else it is modally undifferentiated.¹

But these are both ways in which Dasein's Being takes on a definite character, and they must be seen and understood a priori as grounded upon that state of Being which we have called "Being-in-the-world". An interpretation of this constitutive state is needed if we are to set up our analytic of Dasein correctly.

The compound expression ‘Being-in-the-world’ indicates in the very way we have coined it, that it stands for a unitary phenomenon. This primary datum must be seen as a whole. GA2 53

Furthermore this world is a world that is shared with 'the Others'. Other Daseins are in each Dasein's world. Or at least, if on a desert island Dasein's world is still a 'with-world' in which other Daseins can be with it if they turn up. This is all part of the existential a priori that Heidegger lays out.

Dasein's world frees entities [i.e. gives them free rein] which not only are quite distinct from equipment and Things, but which also—in accordance with their kind of Being as Dasein themselves—are 'in' the world in which they are at the same time encountered within-the-world, and are 'in' it by way of Being-in-the-world.¹ These entities are neither present-at-hand nor ready-to-hand; on the contrary, they are like the very Dasein which frees them, in that they are there too, and there with it. So if one should want to identify the world in general with entities within-the-world, one would have to say that Dasein too is 'world'.²

. . . This Being-there-too [Auch-dasein] with them does not have the ontological character of a Being-present-at-hand-along-'with' them within a world. This 'with' is something of the character of Dasein; the 'too' means a sameness of Being as circumspectively concernful Being-in-the-world. 'With' and 'too' are to be understood existentially, not categorially. By reason of this with-like [mithaften] Being-in-the-world, the world is always the one that I share with Others. The world of Dasein is a with-world [Mitwelt]. Being-in is Being-with Others. Their Being-in-themselves within-the-world is Dasein-with [Mitdasein]. GA2 118

So now having established the fundamental way in which one person is in the world with others, when we assert the notion that "Earth is bigger than the moon" and duly measure it we have established an objective fact of the world. This is not in Plato's supersensory world of "things-in-themselves". It is the world of Dasein, established a priori. The objectivity is found in the way that independent Daseins can take a notion and verify it as a fact of the world.

"2 - If there were nothing objective independent of our minds . . ."

So our minds are in a shared world in which there can be objective truths.

Answer 12

The best way to describe the concept of objectivity is from the subject-object dialectical perspective.

Entity

Philosophically, an entity is very difficult to define (what is the lifecycle of an entity? where does it exist? how? etc.), so, let's leave such problem aside, stating just that an entity is a rational concept. That is, it is metaphysical, not physical.

Interaction

An interaction is an exchange of some content (something) between two entities. Feynman diagrams depict interactions (mostly between two entities). Buying a book is an interaction between a person and a library. Loving is an interaction between the self and another person, etc.

In essence, when you buy an apple (interaction), there is an exchange of contents: you get the apple, the seller gets the coin.

Knowing the basics of interaction, the subject is the one who interacts with the entity, and the object is the entity.

Objectivity vs. subjectivity

So, objectivity represents the attributes of the object in an interaction, and subjectivity represents the attributes of the observer.

Objectivity is shared subjectivity

The moon is not white. White is an attribute produced by the mind. But not only colors are subjective products. Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason suggests that the object is defined by the subject. That is, if the moon is solid is because the subject (the body and the mind) defines the threshold between solid and non-solid. If the moon is made of minerals, it is because we humans define what is mineral and what is not. So, the moon is something out there, radically and totally different to the notions we share about it.

However, given that we humans share the subjective perceptions that the moon is solid, the moon becomes objectively solid. So, objectivity is always shared subjectivity. Because we cannot know the truth of the universe, we call objective to every knowledge we happen to share.

Physics vs. Metaphysics

Both the subject and the object in an interaction can be considered physical or metaphysical. For example, I can have a list of things I love, where I write "1. The moon, 2. The music of Keith Moon". So, I (me-subject) am making multiple interactions here: among them, a metaphysical entity -the moon observer- who observes the moon -a physical entity-.

However, when I play football, I make physical interactions with other players (object and subject are physical). Someone can bend to its knees to pray (a physical object interacting with a metaphysical entity).

Answer 13

I think we all need an objective reality upon which we can reflect our ideas. The reductionist particle physicist will see a reality that differs from a physicist taking the holistic road. The former looks at Nature on the highest energy scales (shortest distances) and considers everything reducible to the processes he observes in mega-sized accelerators. The latter sees the whole structures as the basis for Nature and think any attempt to reduce to be unrealistic or meaningless.

Likewise, every culture has its own reality. The gods exist, God, Allah, JWHW, and Buddha exist. The dreamtime exists. heaven and hell, Nirvana, Walhalla, etc. Take your pick.

It would be very strange not to believe in the true existence of the things one believes in. The subjective needs the objective and vice-versa. More objective I can't get.