What if Truth and Subjectivity are separated? Usually one would think that Truth includes Subjectivity, and so that Subjectivity is just a slice that goes to merge into a Big Picture we call Truth.

This was part of a number of comments I wrote over at Bakker blog to explore the idea of lesser, relative truths. Like a kind of dualism of Ontology. But trying to explain that without resorting to abstraction or philosophy.


Let’s say I put you to sleep. In a definitive way. So you’re like a coma patient on a bed, forever, with no possibility of waking up again. You know nothing of this new condition because you lost all memory of what happened or of your previous history.

Then you start dreaming.

Without any perception of the outside, this new dream reality, Thomas Covenant-like, is all that exists for you. A Reality. A fantasy world you’re trapped in, as detailed and complex as the real one.

This is the error. Your partial information and Subjectivity, a perspectival closure.

But instead *for me*, since I’m out and looking at you, you are effectively in error because I know the truth of your condition. I know you are dreaming, that your Reality is imagined.

Now let’s say we have a way of communicating (BBT). So I can tell you some of the truths. I can demonstrate and persuade you that you are indeed just in a coma, and dreaming. That what you perceive, see and live is just an illusion.

Yet, this knowledge doesn’t awaken you. You’re still trapped in subjectivity and the fantasy world. That world is still your Reality. Your truth. That is your ultimate truth as long it’s true that you can’t awake anymore. As soon you understand you cannot return, the Reality becomes absolute.

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