Book Club

Why not discuss objectivity v. subjectivity? I see the whole book as Winston's struggle to maintain his slipping grip on the little objective truth he still has- and his search for it. I know I am skipping ahead, but the whole part about trying to find out whether the past is unalterable is a search for objective truth.

The regime has a subjective truth contrary to the real thing.

The major theme I am taking away from my course thus far this semester is the multitude of ways a researcher can "tweak" data to get a model to work so they can make inferences about it to a larger population. While this isn't completely new info to me, I never studied it in depth until this semester when I got to learn about some of the voodoo going on behind the scenes before results are being reported.

As the tired old joke goes - 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Lol well I get your point, but I could say I am not good at baseball because I have not played it in years and even when I did I was a lil kid and even then not good at it by way of comparison to my friends. That's my personal truth both subjectively and objectively. We could even put it the test and I could fail the test with flying colors thus proving my lack of skill in baseball.

As for 1984, subjective and objective truth isn't really blurred at all. Having subjective or objective truth in 1984 is totally rejected. It shows in the three contradictory maxims.

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength.

It is better for you in the 1984 society to be ignorant of truth whether it is your personal truth or the truth of society, whether it is subjective or objective. The 1984 society is based totally on lies, and it cannot bear with truth in any form.

My question would be, if they have to tweak the model- then how can they trust the inferences? I took statistics in college as an undergrad, and the professor said something like "lies and d---- statistics". So, he acknowledged his subject could be manipulated to support "facts" or "alternate facts".

We, as readers, know this. As someone in 1984, "your truth" isn't really yours, but Big Brother's. The thing is, Big Brother's truth is contingent upon its whims ─ vis-à-vis, subjective truth. Said truths, however, are to be taken as gospel, right? I.e., objective truth. This is how I see it as being blurred.

It's intriguing the way this sort of parallels the notion that not all of our thoughts are really our thoughts, knowwhatimsayin'?

That is interesting. Also, you made my night with "alternate facts."

Lol I get what you're saying. However, Big Brother doesn't tell truth though, heck, Big Brother might not even be real. Big Brother and his counterpart Emmanuel Goldstein might just be lies made up by the Party. There are no actual laws in 1984. There's just lies and contradictions. To go against the lies and contradictions is thoughtcrime.

I think we have to understand what Subjective and Objective mean. You can have both truth subjectively and objectively. All subjective means is with personal opinion, bias, experience, etc. Objective is without personal opinion or bias. So in the 1984 world, there is no room for truth subjective or objective.

Winston's thoughts are subjective, they are his thoughts. Winston noting on reality is objective, no matter his thoughts the objective reality remains such as with him having to play Super to the rundown slummy Victory Mansions in Mrs. Parsons flat. Both are thoughtcrimes because they go against the grain of what the Party says. The entire Party and society of Oceania is built purely on lies and contradictions. This is the meaning of Ignorance is Strength.

Oh yeah?? Well... you suck at baseball.

Lol thoughtcriminal!

Ah, isn't that the $64,000 question? Trust in data. I wonder sometimes if researchers (and I place myself in this category because of the substantial research project I am overseeing to completion) place more emphasis on the numbers spat out from a computer program and being able to properly state their meaning in a peer-reviewed journal than they do simple logic that says what their number means is only really "good" for the sampling population they looked at. I think statistics very often disregards the actual variability in thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of people and tries to distill human thinking and human emotions into what can be measured on a Likert scale.

...but, but, but...the p-value is smaller than any reasonable alpha level...but, but, but...Cook's D is much greater than 1 so the independent variable has high leverage on the slope of the regression line. Bunch of phooey.

I won't pretend to understand your last line, but I was a psychology major, so I do know what a Likert scale is. I don't think many statistics can be trusted- although I think longitudinal studies or studies with metadata analysis are more reliable. It stands to reason.

Truthfully, I don't fully understand it myself, and I don't believe it either. Unfortunately for me though, I have to fake my way through it and pretend I have confidence in statistics so I can successfully jump through the hoops set before me to get through my final defense of my dissertation. So, as I have had to do may times in the past and will no doubt need to do many times in the future, I will speak the lingo I need to in order to get along.

I hope no one who dropped reading this with us takes offence to what I'm about to say

I'm still on chapter two. Because life. And I haven't forced myself to just read it. I caught up on the thread now and I'm going to try to sit down and just read the entirety of the book in a few sittings because i think I'd process it best that way.

But, I wonder if the hopelessness of Winston has anything to do with the amount of people who have dropped the reading. If we read something with a happy plot, likeable characters and circumstances, and didn't evoke a sense of dread or fear....I wonder how many people would have more free time to read. Not picking. If I didn't have to read the book I'd just forget about....and read something I enjoyed lol.

I agree. But I was afraid that would sound dramatic

Because objectivity vs. subjectivity is not the same as truth vs. untruth if we're going to split epistemological hairs.

Winston is searching for truth and that quest for truth in the way men are wont to do. Not only by trying to find documented differences between the historical record/geopolitical reality and the state narrative, but also grasping and experiencing life and love. Rich experience the State deprived him of.

Ingsoc doesn't propagate subjectivity. It propagates lies.

I think subjectivity IS lies. Truth is objective only. I don't believe in subjective truth. I see this as the whole theme of the book- truth is objective only.

If we believe in subjectivity, we are saying that truth is not absolute and is subject to perception. I think Orwell is saying just that: truth is objective- it stands outside of people and perception. It is external- not internal. As Christians, we believe in objective, absolute truth. There is no such thing as subjectivity in Christianity. What is truth? It is Christ- external, not subject to our perception.

I am jumping ahead but I want to quote these passages to demonstrate my point that I think Orwell is arguing against the idea of subjectivity. That's what doublethink is, making truth subjective.

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows his that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies- all this is indispensably necessary."

Subjugating objective truth and making it subjective.

"Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self- evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind that can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal."

Reality, truth, is objective and outside perception. Truth is not subjective nor can be. If it is subjective it is no longer external.

Maybe I am in the minority, here, in believing truth is always objective- but I think that is what Orwell is saying. It is objective and not open to manipulation, whether anyone believes it or not.

"Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull."

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