Group Subjectivity

There is a myth exalted in some circles, particularly those full of people who want to fit into a community of others who assume that scientific epistemology gets one anywhere beyond one's own subjective sensory perceptions, that multiple people are more likely to come to the truth about something when together than they are left to themselves.  This is all the more ironic when these "epistemological collectivists" dismiss logical truths accessible to every individual while failing to see that a group of individuals working together to investigate something like the external world or social constructs have not left subjectivity behind.  Objectivity is found in reason and spills over from there; subjectivity of emotions, sensory perceptions, and desires is an inherent feature of these things that can only be understood thanks to the objectivity of the laws of logic.

A group of people cannot overcome even a single epistemological limitation of each individual member; it does not even matter how large or diverse the group is!  Yes, one person can share information about their own thoughts and feelings or about sensory experiences they have had that their companions have not, but not one epistemological limitation has been transcended.  After all, what is unprovable is still unprovable, and the core logical truths (axioms) that any willing person can recognize directly are not made accessible by social experiences, but by reason itself.  Reason is the metaphysical and epistemological source of objectivity, while scientific collaboration does absolutely nothing to escape subjectivity.  Group subjectivity just has more people involved--not that other minds, and therefore experiences other than one's own, can even be proven to exist to begin with.

Logical truths, one's own consciousness and its contents and perceptions, and subjectivity itself can all be understood perfectly as they are by anyone at all who simply looks to reason out of genuine concern for truth--it does not matter how young, old, socially respected, or socially misunderstood they are or how many philosophical mistakes they have made in the past.  Adhering to the laws of logic, not using the scientific method, is the only way to embrace true objectivity.  All else only offers the illusion of objective certainty at best.  Even scientific laws and inquiries, though, are not about what other people say.  The delusion that discussion between different people is necessary for scientific realizations is just that: a delusion.

Not group discussion or psychological unity or scientific collaboration can deliver anyone from their epistemological limitations.  No words or actions of others can change the fundamental metaphysical truths that anyone can immediately reflect on by focusing on logical axioms and their own existence as a mind.  Each individual person must look to reason themselves, taking no aspect of epistemology for granted in the way that anyone who thinks science perceives the external world as it is must do.  Otherwise, at best a person is not only focusing on things that do not pertain to either the core of reality or the most important parts of philosophy, but they are also mistaking group subjectivity for objectivity.