 Have you ever heard this one? You can never know objective truth because you are stuck inside your own mind. I've heard this argument many times. Supposedly we cannot know anything about the world because we cannot get outside our own minds to verify whether or not the claims we make about the world are true. The argument goes like this. We live in a subjective mental bubble and therefore we're restricted from ever knowing what lies outside the bubble. On its face, this seems quite plausible. After all, our minds are inescapably tied to our own personal perspectives. All of our experiences are fundamentally subjective. Think about it. What would be required to know with certainty that the chair you're sitting on exists? Now you might think it exists because you feel like you're sitting on it, but can you know for sure? Well to answer, you'd have to accumulate evidence. You could look at the chair, you feel it, sit on it, smell it, kick it, whatever. You could gather all kinds of sensory information about the chair that shows that it exists. But what if your data gathering tools are flawed? If you've been hallucinating for hours, for example, then your senses might not be very reliable. Somebody with poor vision sees a blurry world and without glasses all of their experiences suggest that the world is a blurry place, but it isn't. It just appears that way because of faulty equipment. Well how can we know that our minds aren't faulty equipment? What experience could we possibly have to prove that our minds have access to external reality? Do we trust our senses simply because our senses tell us that they're trustworthy? Now that seems problematic. If our minds are fundamentally flawed, that means all of our tools for verification are flawed too. Thus the radical skeptic concludes, our minds cannot judge whether or not our minds are good judges. Therefore we have no access to objective truth. But this extreme skepticism is fatally flawed. Our minds can know both logical and metaphysical truths with certainty. Now this is a profound claim and it has many implications so let me make the argument. First of all, the idea that we have to get outside our minds in order to verify claims about the world is inaccurate. It's a false epistemological requirement. Metaphysical questions are about what exists in the universe. We exist and we have eyes, and our perspective is sufficient to give us some direct metaphysical insight into the nature of the universe as I will explain. Now second, there's a conflation of the subjectivity of a person with the subjectivity of truth. A subjective mind can know objective truth. These things are not mutually exclusive. I like the analogy of being in a cave. Imagine that you find yourself in a pitch black cave and the only tool you have is a flashlight. Without the flashlight you couldn't see anything. When you turn the flashlight on the walls of the cave become illuminated and you can see. Are you prevented from seeing the real walls of the cave because you have to use a flashlight to see it? No, the flashlight is just illuminating what's there. Does the flashlight somehow create the walls around you? No, of course not. The real nature of the cave doesn't remain veiled just because you have to use a tool to see it. And the same is true with the human mind. You must use a mind, a tool, to make sense of the world. But that doesn't mean that somehow you're incapable therefore of understanding its nature. And finally our minds are not only limited to their subjective perspective and in fact one of the essential functions of the mind is to evaluate truths from an objective perspective. Let me give you my favorite example of an objectively certain metaphysical truth. Perception is a real phenomenon in the universe. Perception happens and I have direct knowledge of it. Now this doesn't mean that perception is accurate, it might be illusory perception. Everything I see might be a hallucination for example, but that doesn't matter. The phenomena of perception happens regardless of the accuracy of the perception or the cause of the perception. Now this truth has a number of unique qualities as I've talked about before. For one, it's not a mere logical necessity. It isn't a necessary truth. We can imagine a universe where perception isn't a real phenomenon. And it isn't a linguistic convention, I'm not defining perception in some tautological way. It's a certain truth and yet it's about metaphysics. And philosophically speaking that's a very remarkable combination. Take one more concrete proposition. I am experiencing writing. This is also a certainly true statement and I can reference this phenomena both subjectively and objectively. I can say, quote, within the universe there exists at least one experience of writing. And in fact this is true for all of the contents of my experience. Everything that I experience has some kind of real metaphysical existence. Now I call this unique principle the objectivity of subjectivity. In other words the mind can recognize both the internal truth of my experience which is what something subjectively feels like and the external truth of the experience, i.e. that it is an objectively existent phenomenon in the universe. This is a reflection on the nature of the human mind. It is necessarily inescapably capable of recognizing an understanding objective truth. To deny this results in a contradiction, take the sentence, quote, the mind is trapped in an impenetrable subjective bubble. But this is quite clearly an objective claim about something in the universe. It's saying, quote, there exists such things as minds which attempt to evaluate the accuracy of propositions but given their nature they can never know the truth, therefore they are epistemologically stunted. But notice this is a claim about what resides in a bubble from an outside the bubble standpoint. Our minds are inescapably tied to both the subjective and the objective perspective. We can see both sides of the coin at the same time. We can take any subjective truth and immediately turn it into an objective one. Take the sentence, chocolate is the best flavor of ice cream. Now from the personal standpoint this might be a truth that is subjective but all we have to do is rephrase the sentence and it becomes an objective truth. So chocolate is the best flavor of ice cream turns into, quote, at least one mind in the universe evaluates chocolate as the best flavor of ice cream. The first sentence is a subjective truth but the second is an objective metaphysical truth and you can know the answer with certainty if your mind happens to think that chocolate is indeed the best flavor of ice cream. So just by being aware of your perceptions you have a connection to certain objective truths. Now the natural follow-up question is to ask, well hang on a second, how does the mind do this? How does it have access to both the subjective and the objective? And I don't know the answer but I do know that the question is secondary. What is primary is first establishing beyond a shadow of a doubt that our minds do have this ability and contemplating one simple proposition will demonstrate this to anybody. Subjective experiences are part of the universe. If you like these ideas make sure to subscribe and if you want to help create a more rational worldview then please head over to my Patreon page and you can support content like this for $1. To read this article or to learn about my books check out stevedashpatterson.com