§ 22 Confusion and the manifold
Either way, analytical constructions of concepts and their inferential possibilities, as held in a proper understanding of properties in the form of wholes and their working parts, are objectifiable.1
In this sense, and only in this sense, can truths as inferential outcomes of a legitimate reasoning process be called objective; they can be shown to fit together in a working relationship that is not dependent on purpose or use from a particular perspective.
Analysis is, as far as this is possible, perspective-less, or rather, if we want to pursue the analogy a little more resolutely, analysis works backwards along the lines of sight; it allows the world to present itself to our understanding of it without the human-centred Brunelleschian perspective of purpose and use, but happily at play within the Cartesian space of objectified trajectories and implications.
As a result, disagreements about analytical models of the world can be resolved by sorting out whether we truly speak the same language and use the same dictionary, whether our frame of reference has the same structure and breadth, whether our concepts have the same wealth of ascribed properties, whether these are, on the basis of empirical observations, legitimately ascribed, to what extent and where our spaces of implications overlap, and whether we have made legitimate moves in the game of giving and asking for reasons.
This is also true of critique, except that a further level of reasoning is required, namely, one relating to use and its judgment in terms of a virtue that needs to be defined each time, relative to situations that may be unique.
Why this is difficult is that so few uses can be adequately universalised without all sorts of complicating factors related to the specific configuration of each context, situation, personal circumstances, stakeholders, and so forth, making each instance of use acquire a unique fingerprint identity.
For example, the workings of bleach can be described adequately and objectively; its uses and misuses, however, are numerous, and all of them are sensitive to context and situation.
The most important aspect of use is that many uses and purposes force socialisation, by which I mean the simple fact that if I do something, it may well affect someone else, who will then take a stand regarding my using.
My purpose may even involve the deliberate use of other creatures, which increases the pressure.
How can I ensure the people I want to use for my purpose are used well and do not mind being used in that way and for that purpose?
This is a basic question of critique, demanding an ethically satisfying answer, preferably with regard to considerations of consequence, (the special concern of consequentialist ethics) character (the special concern of virtue ethics), the rule of law and the sense of duty (the special concern of deontological ethics) and the notion of care (the special concern of the ethics of care).
Where analysis can often be solved through linguistic tinkering, questions of critique require an empathic ability, an ability to place oneself in the (unique) situation of another to try to understand the implications of that personal situation relating to a person who is different to you, genetically, physiologically, bio-chemically and biographically.
So, whereas analysis is the activity of questioning and clarifying, as Wittgenstein suggested was the purpose of philosophy, critique requires that, as a foundational exercise, as well as the vicarious recognition and understanding of the other’s situation and perspective.
It requires us to give an account of our usings that others can understand, because they can see how it fits their own situation.
Analysis seeks harmony within our conceptual apparatus as well as with reality; critique seeks a careful mapping between perspectives to allow empathic overlap.
Critique convinces on the basis of empathic comparison and works by recognition.
It is for this reason that fiction is of such value to learning and the development of an emotional intelligence; novels exercise our empathic capacity, good ones do so beautifully and truthfully. In fact, empathy is one of the most important tools for any designer.
An objective analysis of the world, if it accurately overlaps with empirical observation, yields a body of knowledge that is extremely reliable within the limits of its scope.
The unrelenting rigour with which the scientific protocol must be maintained to arrive at an objective description of the world in the form of wholes and their working parts demands a huge investment of energy and intellectual vigour.
To be interesting to us, it must promise an increase in causal and modal competence.
Each of these analytical models is personally held, even though we can test them against objective criteria. Nevertheless, every person upon this earth acquires a personal frame of reference of concepts, and each of those concepts is enriched with properties to the capacity of that individual, who can play with them in a personalised space of implications, again limited to the capacity or efforts of that person.
The nice thing about analytical models is that each person can acquire them by following the same steps. This is not true for critical models.
If we could assume that all people are honest in their intellectual dealings with others, we could begin to see how countless conceptual worlds, all of them individually held and partially understood and each of them with their own unique frame of reference and inferential structures and each of them corresponding more or less accurately to reality, could live alongside each other in this one reality we all participate in.
The honesty would allow us to begin the work of critical comparison. Dishonesty makes things several levels more complicated.
Because each of our frames of reference is unique to us, we do not need to presuppose multiple realities in the model regarding analysis and critique that I am introducing here. We only need to assume one reality, one universe. This can be held on to, even though each of us necessarily has to create their own twin-world modelling of reality.
Everything in the universe carries information, and everything can be seen as a sign. This information, semiotically pregnant, is nevertheless difficult to access in a homogeneous and accurate manner. That is because each sign can be read differently, and each reading, within the particular shape of a subjectively held frame of reference, can lead to different outcomes.
And because a frame of reference when acted upon by a subject is necessarily subjectively held, the universe is understood by each human being in their own unique way.
Even so, positing more than one reality, as some people are fond of trying, poses far too many real problems, problems that Spinoza had already answered and to which Kant acquiesced.
We may assume, for the sake of the possibility of scientific rigour in analysis, a single coherent and consistent perfect universe, in which even Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem will have to toe the line and perform a coherent and consistent part by being systematically inconsistent.
But the possibilities of approaching that single reality conceptually and inferentially are countless, and not always easy to critique properly.
After all, different and even contradictory truths appear possible, offering their own representations of reality if those truths are the legitimate outcomes of different frames of reference, each with a different space of implications.
A truth is here reserved for the logical or rational outcome of a reasoning process based on an indeterminate but always limited conceptual framework and its inferential possibilities, that is, a single frame of reference, whether empirically tested or not.
Hence, one person’s truths, held as a conviction that something is just so, can sometimes be dismissed as an absurdity by another and yet continue to exist as an honestly held conviction.
Truths to which people commit themselves with their heart and soul can be held side by side with completely contradictory truths based on different frames of reference and with differently shaped spaces of implication and thus lead to conflicts, silly, violent conflicts, especially in cases where those ‘truths’ are the product of paltry and inaccurate representations of reality without any empirical basis.
Truths become false when their rationality is called into question by an expanding or changing frame of reference, by the contradiction of empirical observation showing that framework to be inadequate, etc.
That offers hope.
We can spend time tending the garden of our frame of reference, its hedges and walls, its ha-ha and its flower patches, its vegetable patches, its borders and lawns and its ponds and compost heap, expanding, maintaining, and repairing all the concepts that form a frame of reference and allows inferential moves to be made in the game of giving and asking for reasons.
We can encourage others to do the same.
Concepts held by one person can be inferentially poor, whereas someone else may have inferentially rich concepts. Some might not be aware of the madness of their ideas. Through the art of open conversation and the activity of Theoria, we can improve our view of the world.
What I am trying to say is this: We put all our hope on objectivity, but the joke is that objectivity is no more secure than subjectivity because knowledge is held individually and requires a community of knowers to be held alive and kept at a level of sophistication that transcends the capacities of a single knower.2
However, for a situation to be acted upon, a knower can act only on what he trusts to be so. And, most importantly, objective knowledge has not yet been made useful by a using subject.
To use something, we need to subjectify it by seeking its affordances and dispositives, and relate them to uses and purposes, values and norms, perspectively organised with regard to that use and that purpose, and the stakeholders involved.
That re-subjectifies everything, placing that knowledge in relation to us and our doings. Use and purpose cannot be easily objectified, even if many uses and purposes can be shared communally, and some of these even universally, within the population of human beings.
© Jacob Voorthuis, 2026. Please cite Jacob Voorthuis as the author, The Theoria Project as the title and the page address as the location. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, under the following terms: No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
- A slightly older version of this paragraph was first published in Jacob Voorthuis, Theoria, use, intention & design, a philosophical reckoning; Analysis & Critique: Gardening in the metaphysics of the beautiful, the true, and the good, AHT, TU/e (2024) ↩︎
- A phrase of Charles Sanders Peirce, Complete Works, 5.311 and in many other places in his writings. See also Joseph P. DeMarco, “Peirce’s Concept of Community: its development and change”, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 7. No. 1 (Winter 1971) pp. 24-36. ↩︎