Perception, Reality, and Failed Epistemology

Someone shared a post on Facebook. It’s one of those half-thoughtful pieces of writing from a website that make its living getting clicks that lead to them betting paid for the ads that dominate every page.

In this case, the article was more substantive than most, because it dealt with the way photos can manipulate public perception. In this case, they show a series of images in the article (it isn’t actually one of those annoying slide shows) of people apparently too close together in a line, except a different angle shows that the people are really about 6 feet apart. Then there are people that are “obviously” sitting closely together, but another photo shows they are actually a reasonable distance apart.

The purpose of the article is to show that images can mislead. And it does demonstrate that photographic evidence can misrepresent the actual circumstances. Good enough, as far as it goes.

However, the title and the first line of the article reveal a radical failure in epistemology (i.e., how we know things) that I believe is too common and is problematic. The fact that the article got through whatever editing process shows that someone actually thinks that reality—not simply our perception of it—is flexible.

Failure in Epistemology

The title of the article is wordy in that attention-grabbing inconclusive way: “Photographer Takes Pics of People in Public From 2 Perspectives and It Shows How Easily the Media can Manipulate Reality.” Unlike many titles it actually communicates the gist of what the post tries to argue. But the assertion that you can actually “manipulate reality” is the problematic phrase.

The article opens, “Everyone knows that reality is subjective. Our perception may change in an instant depending on how much and exactly what we know.”

The second sentence is exactly correct. Our perceptions will change radically depending on the facts that we are given. But “perceptions” in sentence two functions as a synonym for “reality” in sentence one. That is an epistemically horrifying statement, which is reinforced by the miserable generalization in the first line that “Everyone knows that reality is subjective.”

Given that this is a click-baity website post, I’ll forgive the Valley Girl tone of the piece. In fact, I am thankful for this little piece of unsophisticated folk-epistemology, because it reveals what I believe to be a commonly held perspective.

Reality is Fixed, Perception is Subjective

The authors of the article in question understand the rudimentary fact that reality is fixed, even though they state the opposite. “Everyone knows that reality is subjective” makes no sense as a statement in article whose point is that camera angles and lenses can be used to misrepresent true reality. Reality isn’t subjective, it is objective. The camera angles show how the misunderstanding can evolve.

But the subjectivity of reality, as it were, is a basic tenet of contemporary epistemology. It shapes the way many social sciences present their findings. It is the foundation of so many movements that center around identity.

“My perception is reality,” is the battle cry of social media, which has largely shaped our view of the world.

Early in the Corona Virus pandemic a medium sized Twitter-mob was mobilized by a video claiming that a white woman was racist, because she covered her face and moved away from an African-American man (we presume, based on who posted it and claimed to film it) who was filming her and began coughing in her vicinity. His caption stated that she was a racist and provided the video to prove it.

Knowing nothing about the person who took the video or the woman in the video, I have little to go on. She may, in fact, be a KKK member on weekends. But that video provided no evidence of it. In fact, all that is showed was that an exceptionally nasty individual was attempting to ruin someone else’s life by making accusations without evidence.

The video showed someone covering her face and moving away from someone who was coughing. It isn’t clear where or why that would qualify as a racist act in the middle of a pandemic.

At the point when we understood very little of how the virus spreads, it was wise for someone to cover their face and move away from someone coughing, when the subway was mostly empty and there was plenty of room to spread out.

But the “reality” of the Twitter-mob was shaped by their false perception created by the words over the video. She was a racist because (a) she was white, (b) because the videographer said so, and (c) because she moved away from someone when there is significant concern over life-threatening airborne pathogens. That was the scenario that lead to hundreds of people commenting on the video about the bodily harm they would like to inflict on the woman, how much they hate white people, racists, and anyone who might think to disagree.

Many of these people have been conditioned to believe that perception is reality. Thus, when the national news posts a picture of an activist beating a drum in the face of a teenager in a MAGA hat and tells us that the boy is harassing the elderly activist, there are some people that truly believe that, despite other photos, video evidence, eye witness testimony, and personal statements from the activist that contradict that initial reading. Perception is reality, especially if that perception supports my prior assumptions.

Or, consider the nakedly false assertion by Planned Parenthood and its supporters that the Center for Medical Progress’s undercover videos that exposed them selling dismembered parts of babies is deceptively edited. This narrative is conclusively believed because it has been asserted by a favored group (who is deeply invested in arguing that point), despite the posting of the full, unedited videos online for anyone to verify. For many people, perception, especially if it supports the right conclusions, is reality and nothing can shake that.

This is an epistemic nightmare that has been inflicted on society by people seeking to change society—sometimes for the better–– but has come to be adopted by the majority of the culture regardless of party affiliation or place on the political spectrum. Reality is not subjective. Our perception of reality is, though.

The Fruit of Bad Epistemology

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are reaping the fruit of this bad epistemology.

There is legitimate confusion about a new disease, possible preventative measures, potential treatments, etc. The confusion isn’t necessarily the result of a failure on anyone’s part, it is often driven by people drawing early conclusions from insufficient information. Sometimes its just the best guess from what we know. Leaders are trying to make decisions to protect people with very little information, which may (and does) get contradicted by new information that comes weeks or even days later. It’s an unenviable position.

But as confusing information gets promulgated to a population primed to believe that reality is subjective, it is no wonder that different groups choose their preferred understanding of reality. That is exactly what the culture has conditioned people to do.

If feeling oppressed is the essence of oppression, even apart from any evidence of personal or systemic bias, then protest over a feeling of oppression is just as legitimate as anything else. If there is conflicting information or data from different settings that supports a desired action, then we have been told we can believe that absolutely as long as it is the politically preferred version. If labelling someone as racist or pathologically afraid of a sexual minority is enough to make it true, then excluding expert testimony that is based on the best data available is permissible if it comes from someone that can be labelled as part of the non-preferred group.

A large percentage of the major intellectual institutions have invested the past decade trying to convince people that obvious physical observations about sex and gender can be overridden by the approved intelligentsia with questionable pseudoscientific studies. It’s little wonder that now, when it comes to life and death, people have come to accept that epistemology. This time it’s working against many of those who want control and may, in fact, be working against the common interests of our communities.

Society has invested a generation or more in teaching people that reality is subjective. Now that it matters, we’re reaping the fruit of that position. We are due for an epistemological revolution.

Hope for Recovery

The answer is not to revert to the very modern idea that we can absolutely know objective truth.

The closest we can get to absolute truth is divine revelation, which still requires interpretation and systematization. Absolute truth exists and we should pursue it, but we’re not going to get it this side of glory.

One of the failures of modernity was that it presented an epistemology that ignores the position of the observer. There are roots to this perspective in ancient history, but, in part, they took off because of a shift toward placing humanity at the center of all knowledge during the Enlightenment. The Modern folk-epistemology that developed out of that teaches that reality is objective and that we can know it absolutely and objectively.

Post-modernity brought some blessings in that it reminded us that we are subjective people with biases. We stand in a particular place to observe. There is no way for us to totally step outside of our own viewpoint to see things perfectly as they are. This is helpful, because modernity often steamrolls those who view thing outside the accepted perspective.

But many people take that helpful revelation of post-modernity too far and argue that their viewpoint is reality. That is the folk-epistemology evidenced in the BoredPanda article that inspired this post. Thus, the media can “easily” “manipulate reality.” That leads to an even more unlivable society than the strictures of modernity.

We need a more incredulous people who are willing to question their assumptions before grabbing the pitchforks and torches or undermining millenia-old understandings of the world. We also need more honest curators of the news that make a faithful attempt to present reality as it is, rather than trying to score clicks and political points. Until our world has a better epistemology, we are in for perpetual conflict. We may also be in danger of an enduring pandemic because of deeply faulty epistemology.

Finding Purpose

Q. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

This is where human purpose is found. Not in our sex lives, our hobbies, our careers, or our citizenship. Human purpose is found in our position relative to a holy, just, and powerful God.

Our purpose is not to find greater success in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While we are blessed to live in country that reasonably enables the opportunities to pursue prosperity, economic and physical well-being is not the purpose for our existence.

FINDING MEANING

Francis Schaeffer helpfully reminds his readers of this truth. He writes,

“Today, people constantly ask, ‘Does man have a purpose?’ In some areas of the world man is told that he has meaning only in reference to the state. In other places he is told that he has meaning only in his sexual life. . . . But all of these turn into sawdust in his hands. The Bible gives us a quite different answer: The purpose of man—the meaning of man—is to stand in love as a creature before the Creator.” (Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time)

Modernism encouraged pursuit of objectivity to a fault. The idea was that a human could absolutely know what was objectively true.

Post-modernism rejects the notion that humans can know objective truth, and in its more virulent forms it rejects the idea that there is objective truth. The first rejection is warranted, because a flawed, finite human can never know truth fully and objectively. The second rejection is cause for despair, because never will there be opportunity to firmly plant ethics on something that matters.

More, by Vern. Used by Creative Commons License. http://ow.ly/ZDEFL 

When I say “ethics” many think of the ability to evaluate situations to determine what should be done or should have been done. That is certainly part of the ethical task, but it falls far short of a robust understanding of the role of ethics, particularly in the Christian life.

Ethics is worship. It is the way that we evaluate future and past decisions to determine what we should do and whether it will fulfill our main purpose, or our chief end, of glorifying God and delighting in him. It entails assessing decisions, but even more significantly it requires comparing them to a standard.

WE NEED A STANDARD

When it comes to our perception of the world, we can recognize that we always have a bias, which usually entices us to redefine truth to our advantage. On the other hand, in order for that sentence to have any meaning, there must be a truth to be redefined.

Humans need a purpose in life that they can be oriented toward. When humanity rejects the objective truth of the Creator, they reflexively invent something else to judge themselves.

As John Calvin notes in his Institutes,

Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.... Man's mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God.... To these evils a new wickedness joins itself, that man tries to express in his work the sort of God he has inwardly conceived. Therefore the mind begets an idol; the hand gives it birth.... Daily experience teaches that flesh is always uneasy until it has obtained some figment like itself in which it may fondly find solace as in an image of God. (1.11.8)

When humans abandon the idea of a Supreme Being against whose justice our lives our judged, we will find purpose or meaning in something else. Schaeffer includes sex on the list. He also includes the human relationship to the state, by which is is not simply indicting excessive nationalism, but also socialism that sees all human rights as granted by the state.

We were made for more than that. However, when an objective moral order in the created order is abandoned because the idea of their being a Creator is rejected, humans cannot live with the void that is created. They create something new to anchor their hopes and aspirations in and to judge their actions and the actions of others.

The human heart is an idol factory. When God is rejected, the void must be filled by an undefined notion of “love” or the good of the state. There is always something in reality.

Philosophers may claim that there is no objective truth, but human reality demands an external reference point. When we reject the true objective reality, the human heart or society will create another.

CONCLUSION

As an apologetic, this essay will fail. It isn’t an apologetic, but a reminder of where most people live—with a false reality—and what we need to resist as Christians.

The world will constantly pull us away from our chief end. It is the task of the Christian to continually come back to the central purpose of our lives: to glorify God and enjoy him forever.