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.