The Truth Zone

and the ideal of Impartiality

The way I look at it, impartiality is an ideal to be approached, not a virtue to be self-conferred. But I think it’s crucial to prize impartiality as an ideal, in order to uphold a common standard of judgement. To do otherwise is to implicitly accept the view that there’s no basis for viewing one bias as more flawed or ungrounded than another. It’s a similar situation to the pursuit of Truth as an ideal; just because Truth can’t be fully known doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to approach it, by winnowing facts from falsehood on the basis of sound reasoning. I realized something the other day that I found really clarifying: the existence of objective Truth is implied by the consensus on how to detect its counterfeits—the claims tainted by Logical Fallacies. All of the lists of logical fallacies share roughly common agreement on how they’re defined and the specifics of how they twist language to manipulate arguments and conclusions. Tools for the unscrupulous to exploit, or impediments that enable self deception. Verbal trickery.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=logical+fallacies+list&ia=web

Some of the lists offer more detail, and add a few more categories or subcategories. The examples given to illustrate the definition are different. But the basics remain the same. There’s no serious dispute to be found between any of those lists. There’s no separate reality where some logical fallacies are understood as clear and coherent supporting elements of a position. So while I comprehend the incompleteness of subjective viewpoints in apprehending ultimate Truth, I think there is such a thing as the Truth Zone. The Truth Zone is where access to the facts is incomplete and may not be sufficient for confident conclusions, and the importance given to the facts may arguably differ as a matter of interpretive weighting—but there’s no trickery. No deception—including no self-deception. Because the rules of logical fallacy detection need to be applied to all positions. Preconceptions, prejudices, preferences, wishful thinking, hopes, fears, skepticism itself—they all have to be put through that mill. What passes the tests is the Truth Zone.