Reduction of the concept “objectivity”
“Objectivity” is a concept designating the relationship of knowledge to reality and existence in a certain manner to help to assure that our higher-level conceptualizations and principles are in fact based upon reality and not a fantasy or a floating abstraction. Too often, individuals take up a concept or a supposed principle without grounding it in reality, because they get it from others without thinking it through all the way. Certain factors of knowledge make it possible to remain objective, and that is context and hierarchy.
A concept or a principle has a context – those aspects of cognitive items related to it that modify or confirm the meaning of the concept or principle. For example, if I say, “He is blue,” you don’t know if I am talking about him being a certain color or if I am talking about him being sad. One needs more information regarding this claim or more context. So, if I say, “He just broke up with his girlfriend, and he is blue,” one is more assured given the rest of the information that he is sad and not a particular color. On the other hand, if I say, “I saw Dr. Manhattan of the movie ‘Watchmen,’ and he is blue,” and you see that he is that color, then you are more assured that I am talking about his color rather than his mood.
Hierarchy denotes the fact that certain items of knowledge are logically based on prior knowledge, that is the idea that knowledge is formed in steps. For example, one cannot have the concept of “animal” until one has conceptualized those items that are logically prior to it, such as “mouse,” “dog,” snake,” grasshopper.” This is necessary because the concept of “animal” is a mental integration of various types of conceptualized living beings who have mobility; rather than, say a mental integration of trees, bushes, and grass (which have no mobility). Without the prior conceptions, “animal” would not be grounded to any other knowledge, and would thus be floating without connections.
To keep one’s concepts from floating, one needs to go through the process of reduction, which means keeping the context and working backwards in the hierarchy until one reaches something one can point at in reality. Sensory perception is unquestionably our tie to reality and existence; it is our means of being aware of existence, which is where all knowledge starts. So, any real knowledge must be traceable back to that which started the knowledge – what one observes in reality.
The overall method of keeping the context, hierarchy, and reducing one’s knowledge is logic. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification of the facts of reality as given by observation. It is not simply a non-contradictory identification of a handful of items in a cognitive array not connected to anything; to follow both context and hierarchy one needs to make sure that all of one’s knowledge is non-contradictory, and ultimately non-contradictory to existence – or that which we perceive with our senses.
Objectivity denotes the fact that we can tie our knowledge to the perceptually self-evident using context, hierarchy, and logic. This makes all of one’s knowledge one integrated whole and tied to reality.