"Some noted the divide between science and math classes and those in the humanities. Less than 65% of grades in economics, mathematics and chemistry, for instance, were A’s or A-minuses, compared to more than 80% of grades in English, African American studies and the humanities."
This from an article in the New York Times says to me that there is a different standard between "truth requirements" in hard and soft science areas. In business, hard science, and even math, it seems obvious to everyone that there is a truth "outside" our subjectivity. It seems obvious. But it does not seem obvious in the humanities. In ethics, for example, it wouldn't occur to anyone to see a math-like precision. Even though this is suggested by many philosophers, this idea of objectivity escapes them.
Is it true that in "thinking" and in abstract ideas there is a lack of objectivity, while in the real world this objectivity seems obvious?
Isn't it possible that philosophical ideas separated from science centuries ago (see Hume) and as such, separated from reality? If this is true, our subjectivist stance on ideas relegates them to obscurity and irrelevance. This is what thinkers meant when they wrote that philosophy would be lost to the masses (see Reid and even Rand).
The place to start might be your own thinking about ethics. Is there an objective core? If not, can ethics even exist? Hume considered that it did not. But many thinkers, Kant included, thought that this idea, that ethics was real, is demonstrated by everyone's committment to it. Our ethical thoughts, even our "moral sense," demonstrates that no matter what we say, we do in fact believe in it as a reality.
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