One consequence of the dominance in our intellectual culture of subjectivism and intrinsicism is that people tend to assume that there is an inevitable gap between theory and reality. Thus we often hear: "X should be true in theory, but it does not (or would not) work that way in practice." This theory/practice dichotomy, as will be seen in Section 3, is especially prevalent in attitudes toward ethics.

Certainly a particular theory may depart from reality. Such departures, however, expose the theory not merely as impractical, but also as bad theory. Thus one cannot consistently claim, for instance, that "socialism is a great theory, but it always fails in practice." (Either socialism can work in practice, or else its theory is fundamentally flawed.) There is no difference between "theoretical" and "practical" truth; there is only truth. The notion of such a distinction is an unfortunate legacy of the analytic/synthetic dichotomy (), accepted by both the subjectivist and intrinsicist schools of thought.