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Short abstract

This paper proposes a theory of ground truth as fiction, building on Sylvia Wynter's analysis of how Western modernity mistakes its particular map for the territory itself.

Long abstract

This paper proposes a theory of ground truth as fiction. We argue that machine learning's "ground truth" datasets continue this operation: naturalizing situated, partial vision as universal reality—overrepresenting specific ways of seeing as if they were the only way to see.

In the 1750s, German Art Historian and archeologist Winckelmann established pure white marble as Greek sculptural ideal. Modern analysis proves Greek statues were painted, yet this fiction persists. Winckelmann's operation, mistaking his map (weathered marble) for the territory (Greek aesthetics), established a pattern that is replicated until today in visual analysis, even in machine vision.

Through art historical genealogy spanning neoclassical aesthetics to contemporary machine learning, we trace how we repeatedly mistake our maps for the territory. Following Gil-Fournier and Parikka's argument that ground truth has shifted from physical ground to the "ground of the image," we examine how each visual regime produces this cartographic fiction. Photography positioned chemical trace as objective reality while encoding racialized standards. Aerial reconnaissance literalized "ground truth" through imperial surveillance. Machine learning datasets like ImageNet naturalize Western visual taxonomies as universal training foundations. We are still mistaking maps for the territory.

Art historical methods reveal ground truth's constitutive operations: singular claims erasing plural ways of seeing, partial apparatus positioned as neutral observer, power relations encoded as objective categories. When painted statues violate expectations, when facial recognition fails, glitches expose the gap between map and territory, revealing we have been using maps all along. What pluriversal alternatives does ground truth's singular overrepresentation continue to foreclose?