Dialogue on Subjectivity and Objectivity, or, How I Learned to Do Battle With Immanuel Kant

This is a minor paraphrase and distillation of an interesting Facebook conversation I had some time ago. Names changed.

Status

Henry is trying to be relatively objective.

John

It's impossible to know whether you are being objective, because you would first have to be objective before you could objectively determine your objectivity.

Henry

The question is, can we be completely objective, or simply more objective than we were previously? If the latter, then we would be relatively objective.

Matthew

Are we always observers? Yes. Are our observations coloured by our position and our previous experiences? Yes. Is what we observe real rather than fake? Yes. So there is wisdom and folly, experience and ignorance, reason and unreason, but there is no sound contradistinction between subjectivity and objectivity.

John

In answer to your question, Henry, it depends on the possibility of objectivity. Your ability to answer the question "can we be completely objective?" depends on being objective enough to answer the question.

Henry

Then how can we know the amount of objectivity we have? Or can we not?!

Matthew

Henry, I have just one word of advice for you, and two axioms; what follows from them you must find on your own.

Don't try to distinguish between objectivity and subjectivity. You will be forced in the end to deny one or the other entirely, and then you will have lost everything.

Aristotle: There is nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses.

Aquinas: Being and good are convertible terms.

Henry

Thank you! I will think on those things, and see where the implications lead.

John

To me, the discussion of objectivity comes much later in the epistemological "time-line". We have to construct our perspectives on things that are true, that we know to be true, regardless of our degree of objectivity. Self-existence, the laws of logic, and other a priori knowledge is not changed by the degree of objectivity. Thus, in a way, two perspectives or "ways of thinking about the world" develop in each person. We cannot found everything we think about on pure reason, I'm not saying that. But every thought that we have a posteriori must be compared to the perspective of pure reason. Our lack of objectivity does not change the fact that we can know that 2+2=4, for example.

Henry

That makes sense. I still have questions about how this would play out practically in one's mind, but I can try to figure them through.

Matthew

Actually, John, that's an incorrect statement of fact. The distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge in fact comes later than the discussion of objectivity and subjectivity (the latter not in those terms, but for sure implicit). The discussion of objectivity/subjectivity really gets going after Descartes. Once Decartes introduced the idea that a philosopher had to have mathematical certainty to call a thing knowledge, you had many saying many things, including Hume, in 1740, that "power and necessity...are...qualities of perceptions, not of objects...felt by the soul and not perceived externally in bodies." Immanuel Kant introduced the a priori/a posteriori distinction to rescue certainty from Hume's critique.

You say we can know 2+2=4. But I don't think that's the kind of objective knowledge Henry is interested in.

John

I'm not talking about the historical "time-line" of epistemology. I'm talking about the "time-line" as in the mental, internal process of how we come to know things.

I'm not postulating that mathematical knowledge is necessary as a basis for any other kind of knowledge. I'm saying that mathematical knowledge is an example of objective knowledge.

My point (and this is the reason I used the phrase "to me" meaning that this is my position: not quoting from a book) is that it is unfruitful to ask the question "am I being objective in reference to this thought?" until one has a epistemic foundation of absolute certainty, by which to critique the degree of objectivity regarding the thought. In the same way that a person would need to know the truth about a situation to know if a person were telling the truth or not about the situation.

On the subject of the mental time-line, what I mean is that "in the real-time process of making truth claims about external facts and internal mental processes" the question of objectivity can only be asked (or only becomes a useful question) if one has truth (beyond critique) about the thing under consideration. This point is simply that no one can know if he/she is being objective (about anything) unless he/she first knows that he has/knows truth relevant to the topic that would be unaffected by the degree ofobjectivity.

A person born blind has no concept of color.

Matthew

Thanks for clarifying. Nevertheless, it seems to me that in your own understanding as expressed in your statements here, you are using other people's ideas: you are using the notion of a priori as a defense against the possibility that we are always merely subjective, which is just what Kant did.

I think you are quite right to say that we can only claim objectivity if we have true knowledge beyond critique of the matter at hand. You are also right to say that we cannot have pure objectivity about everything. But I would warn you that the search for meaningful objective knowledge is a hopeless one. The bulk of Kant's magnificent achievement I think (and most scholarship would agree with me) does not survive the critique of the linguistic subjectivists. Try deducing the material world from objective knowledge, or God, or love. Also if you dig deeply enough, you will discover that Descartes' famous proof of his self-existence itself depends on a fallacy, and that the rules of classical logic themselves are capable of being logically broken in certain special circumstances. The search for objectivity leads to despair. I don't recommend it.

John

I don't understand what you mean when you say "The bulk of Kant's magnificent achievement I think does not survive the critique of the linguistic subjectivists." or " Try deducing the material world from objective knowledge, or God, or love." Could you explain? I'm not asking you to prove anything, I just need to understand what you are saying before I know if I agree or disagree.

I don't see how Descartes proof logically breaks down. It's acctually a very simple, in some ways, empirical, inferential statement.

I agree that the search for *complete* objectivity leads to despair (complete as in universal for all things or comprehensive for any one thing) No one can overcome all bias. However, my point has been that there are some things we can know (actually, a lot of things), the validity of which *cannot* be changed regardless of our bias and I used mathematics as an example of this. That's why I was saying that a discussion of objectivity is only significant if you can first establish that you know things, for certain, about the matter at hand. We may disagree regarding how much can be known in this way of it can really be known beyond critique, but that is a very long discussion that is almost impossible to carry out in hypothetical and abstract formats.

Matthew

The cogito can be attacked in two directions:

1) it assumes that "whatever thinks, exists." But this assumption does not resist the perfect doubt that Descartes applied to his knowledge before he looked for what he had left.

2) It presupposes the existence of "I". Descartes begs the question in the very terms of the argument. He should rather have said, "thinking is occuring." But there is no way to get from this statement to an "I."

Interestingly, Descartes himself anticipated these arguments. That is why he reformulated the position in a later book of his, the Meditations. He writes, "after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that the proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind." Here he makes clear that he is not inferring from one statement to another. Rather, in the act of thinking, the proposition, "I exist" is clear and distinct in his mind.

In other words, he has No Ability to doubt such an idea. The 'clear and distinct' grounds for knowledge is one of his best contributions to philosophy. It works especially well in mathematics, and to know 2+2=4 is to know 'objectively' precisely because the idea is Obvious to us, and to any rational person who thinks about it.

But how can we know that what is clear and distinct to us is really true? Descartes also recognized this problem. He writes later in the Meditations that God guarantees the truth of clear and distinct ideas, because God is not a deceiver. And yet he proves the existence of God by an appeal to the clarity and distinctness of certain ideas. This is a circular, fallacious argument.

I am not well-versed in nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy. However, I know that the Vienna School logical positivists' attack on the meaningfulness of language itself has destroyed the possibility of an absolute undoubtable certainty with regards to the relationship between our perceptions and the moral, spiritual, and material world we perceive.

I challenge you demonstrate to me a single moral truth which does not depend upon one or more assumptions that I can theoretically, even reasonably, doubt.

If you want objectivity, you are going to have throw out Descartes criteria of doubtlessness. You are going to have to redefine it. There are good ways of doing this. But I think the old quest has already been show to end in failure. The task of twentieth century philosophy was to demonstrate this, and to show us how to live with this unfortunate fact. With its eyes now opened, this is where twenty-first century philosophy must start from.

Finally, even if you have a small body of perfectly objective knowledge, what are you going to do with everything that stands outside that body? You will be forced to concede that it is merely subjective. Do you want that? Or will you say that other things like the material world, love, God, are a mixture of subjectivity and objectivity? In that case we must surely be able to sift between them, and then we are back where we started.

Henry

Okay, I feel bad for not contributing to this conversation since it is on my status. What you're saying is a bit over my head for me to add to, but it is good, and I can learn from what you're discussing.

Matthew

I hope you can learn something. This discussion really shouldn't be on your wall. We're using short-hand words and phrases to indicate whole arguments. Unless you're familiar with the 'code', as it were, you won't be able to follow our arguments. That's not your fault.

Henry

Well, I can look up the short-hand words and phrases. Though perhaps condensed, it is not fruitless in this medium.

Charles

Matthew, have you ever heard of the concept of a 'philosophical axiom'. A foundational assumption which simply exists? It seems like you're asking for a moral statement that depends on a philosphical axiom; a good and solid one which can't be doubted.

"I challenge you demonstrate to me a single moral truth which does not depend upon one or more assumptions that I can theoretically, even reasonably, doubt."

I would argue that elements of morality are one of those philosophical axioms. You want a moral truth that doesn't not depend upon an assumption that can be doubted, but what if the moral truth itself was an assumption that one could not reasonably doubt? Have you considered the possibility that a, I'm not saying which, statement about morality could be one beyond reasonable doubt? A foundation itself?

Matthew

Charles, thank-you for your challenge. But you have mistaken my intent. I made that challenge to John (and it remains open) because it washe who claimed that 'objectivity' depended upon having an "epistemic foundation of absolute certainty". I have denied that such a condition is possible, but I have nowhere asserted any criteria of my own.

But since you draw me out so well, I will tell you just a little of what I think. It so happens I do not think that absolute certainty can be founded on 'epistemic' grounds. I think it must be founded on metaphysical grounds, which is precisely what you suggest. The first axiom is: Being Is. The universe really exists. Being Is Not Nothing. The second axiom is: Being Is Good. This is of course also a moral truth, which is also just what you suggest. There are many truths which follow from these. But there is also the interesting mental 'time-line' that shows that we are led up to these axioms.

They are not Obvious to us until we learn them. As children we did not know them, even as grown men they are not obvious until after a great deal of study. This reveals something marvelous: man has the capacity to receive the knowledge of axiomatic truth through his experiences - through his senses, to be precise. And that means there is something in every man which is essentially trustworthy. This thing we call his reason. The capacity of the mind to know, and the capacity of the world to be known, have a relationship called 'truth'. That is why logicians say that truth is always 'in' the mind. Truth is the mind's stance towards the world. To know a true thing is to be able to see it properly. This is clearly both objective and subjective at the same time. That is why I don't like the false distinction between the two. I would rather speak of knowledge and ignorance, reason and unreason, wisdom and folly.

Henry

Okay, I want to read through this, and if possible add to it, but at the moment I am snowed under with homework. However, I will (Lord willing), come back to this, decifer it, and go from there.

Charles

"This reveals something marvelous: man has the capacity to receive the knowledge of axiomatic truth through his experiences - through his senses, to be precise."

By this statement, don't you forfeit what it is to be an axiomatic truth? If it requires any logical process, then it's not an axiom. We all know experience alone cannot bring truth, but rather there has to be some sort of critical thought behind the experience. If it is a thing known through experience, that means that your axioms are not axioms at all.

How can you have a metaphysic without beginning with an axiom?

Matthew

Tell me, could just any 12-year-old independently come up with the axioms of Euclid? Could a 20-year-old? Could a 40-year-old? No, I think. To discover them it took genius plus a mind devoted the study of mathematics.

I do not say that we are led up to an axiom by a 'logical process', but though our experiences, by our senses, in our reason. I say that if axioms are axioms, then they are built into the structure of the world, and that to know them (not just accept them as the 12 year old does, but really know them) we live in the world, and let our senses lead us up to them, since we cannot see them at first, but once we see them, they explain everything else. Does the sight of a palace prove a king? No, but it suggests it. The sight of a guard in livery? The sight of his attendants? No again, but one is led towards the great truth, and so sees the king, and all before is made clear, though you could never have derived the king from a logical process of your former sights.

All this is pure Aristotle. Allow me to quote at length from Book I Chapter 4 of the Nichomachean Ethics, translated by Joe Sachs:

"And let it not escape our notice that arguments from first principles differ from those that go up toward first principles. For Plato rightly raised this question, and used to inquire whether the road is from first principles or up to first principles, just as, on a race course, the run is either from the judges to the boundary or back again. One must begin from what is known, but this has two meanings, the things known to us and the things that are known simply.* Perhaps then we, at any rate, ought to begin from the things that are known to us. That is why one who is going to listen adequately to discourse about things that are beautiful and just, and generally about things that pertain to political matters, needs to have been beautifully brought up by means of habits. For the primary thing is that something is so, and if this is sufficiently evident, there is no additional need for the reason why. And such a person either has or easily gets hold of the things that come first. If one niether has them nor has it in him to get hold of them, let him harken to Hesoid:

"Altogether best is he who has insights into all things,

But good in his turn is he who trusts one who speaks well.

But whoever neither himself discerns, nor harkening to another,

Lays to heart what he says, that one for his part is a useless man."

Sachs' footnote: "* In Bk. I, Chap. 1 of the Physics and at 1029b 3-12 of the Metaphysics, Aristotle discusses this distinction at more length. What is "known to us" is first for us because it is familiar, but it hardly deserves the name knowledge; what is "known" in the simple or proper sense comes last in the order of our inquiry, but is first in the order of things, making everything else known. Dialectical inquiry begins where we are, rather than attempting prematurely to reason from clear and distinct first principles."

"Being is good" is likewise an axiom of this sort, standing square in the middle of Plato, Aristotle, and the Thomist tradition. But do you suppose everyone really knows it? Do you not know that a majority of the so-called philosophers of the twentieth century actually reject it? Do you happen to know that there are intelligent mathematicians who reject even the axioms of Euclid? So there are your axioms, gutted and left for the vultures by intelligent men.

They are only reached by the right sort of education. In other words, as I said before, we are led up to them through our experiences in our reason.

My epistemology comes from my metaphysics. But my metaphysics comes the vast intricacy of my relationship with the universe.

Finis. Hooray for Thomas Aquinas!

The Lamb of God Who Takest Away the Sins of the World

When Jesus the Christ was crucified, the slain lamb of the Passover, he was already defiled under the Rabbinic law, and, had he been living that evening, would have been prohibited from sharing the passover meal with the rest of his people, precisely through the fault of the high priest, who arranged the defilement. Yet another aspect of his alienation, and the greater glory of the new law of grace, for now we feed of that once-defiled Lamb. It is very beautiful.

John 18:28: "Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover."

and then

John 18:33: "So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, 'Are you the King of the Jews?'"

So Jesus, presumably under Roman guard, has entered the headquarters with Pilate, and, unlike the servants of Caiaphas the high priest who wait outside, is now defiled.

The Transmutation of Desire, Or, Loue's True Alchymie

The boy is fraught, fraught with a vesselled cargo,

Rhine-laden, with choice meats and grape-crushed wine,

Pleasing to the eye and good for food,

Promising a rare conjuction of the breast

And the best of man, eros unblinded,

Wisdom beyond belief. Shall he take, and eat?

------

Superior:

The night is young, the heart impure

His motive clung to base allure.

Let him pant for salty waters

Let him chant for Memory's daughters

Master:

Kneel, raise thine eyes

To the starry rose

Lingering in the skies.

Hold the foremost thought

In the folded throes

Of thy heaving sighs.

Craft a cradle wrought

Of musical repose

For the queens thou caught.

Novice:

O Loveliness, terrible tamer,

Who draws me!

O Urania, wonderful secrecy,

Who bore me!

O Sin-Bearer, bloody comfort,

Who mends me!

O Clio, old friend,

Who feeds me!

O Symphonia, countless magnificence,

Who calls me!

O Sacred Virgin, pensive, harmonious,

Who hears me!

O Thalia, laughing lover,

Who mocks me!

O Leaping-Poise, studied and supple,

Who charms me!

O Calliope, oldest and wisest,

Who arms me!

My own Demeter, wandering mother,

Who decimates me!

O bright-eyed goddesses, my captors,

Free me!

God! shall the weave of passions be unknit?

The lion with the lamb lie in discourse,

The lioness forgot? Why do I sit

Down with dotards, these drunkards, weary source

Of drab serenity? Oh! Why this game

Of wit-play with these toffs, these dandies, all

Unbosomed of their first, their manful aim,

Museum-butchers! only fit to crawl

At the feet of her I'd love, and wed.

Lady, to Parnassus, fly with me!

We'll crown each-other in a laurel bed,

Souls coenflesh 'til maid made mother be.

Superior:

His ecstasy has tuned the pitch,

Summon we th'alchemic witch:

That he seek far through murky fire

The Morning Star of man's desire.

Master:

Hierophant of light

Guide us to the east,

A Saviour in the night.

Graces teach this flock,

Starving for the feast,

The highway of delight.

By your voice unlock

The captive unreleased

For

Novice:

Mirth who moors me,

Mock me!

Love who moves me,

Make me!

Plenty who plays me,

Prive me!

Love who plauges me,

Prove me!

Beauty who blinds me,

Bless me!

Love who binds me,

Blisse me!

These mordant flames that shrivel up my gaze,

And wrap my soul in heaven-bound billowing smoke,

Have robbed the coal that taught my lips to praise,

And suffocate the self-same breast they stoke.

Lines parallel converge before my eyes,

Three circles spin into a cubic city,

The feminine is myst'ry in disguise,

These stars foretell we'll dance an epic ditty.

Ah! Transmutate this all-too-human love,

And make a saint or statesman of this mote,

That nor I'll faint when on the block I prove,

Nor myth not names my leap down the sea's throat.

Transcendent zeal consummates in Now,

For all is weal, though weeds uproot the plough.

------

A model of the cosmos, miniature and simple as the cosmos,

A magus of the Nile brought to Kent, beautiful, to puzzle the prognosticators

Who sought its power but missed its meaning:

Through the golden haze entrapping, midst the golden figures dancing,

Quick now, here, now, always, flies the Fool.

For all is well. Therefore take; eat; drink.

Constitutionalism

The constitution of the United States, like that of all great nations, changes over time. The document from 1787 was a sensible organization of already existing features in colonial politics - a normative text and a descriptive text woven together in prudence. Since then, certain critical features have changed - this could be a long list - such as degree of loyalty felt towards the individual states, the quality and bent of general education, the position of the United States in international affairs - not least the constant waging of war, the extinction of free and fertile land for prospective settlement, the extension of bureaucracy which goes along with an aging legal system, and more. All these things are factors which go into making up the constitution of a nation.

The old document does not solve the problems presented by these new features; the injustices perpetrated by modern governments are, it seems to me, apart from instances of intentional evil, best understood as a failed attempt to solve the modern problems, which begins by struggling to find the answers to what is new within the answers to the old, and ends by throwing out the old altogether in a fit of frustration. The Constitution indeed has no specific answers to the modern problems, but rather asks us to solve them ourselves within certain proven boundaries. In this request, the Constitution argues at the same time for both its sufficiency and its insufficiency. If, then, we are to call for the restoration of strict constitutionalism, it must be on the grounds of prudence in relation to the current factors, not on the grounds of dogmatism about an old, problematic philosophy. Perhaps we might appeal to it on the grounds of inherited tradition. But I should guess that the founding fathers would think that to be an odd appeal.

It seems to me that my argument is these days understood to be true even if it is not acknowledged. How do you explain the contradiction between the ferment of complaint about the government and the jesting about violence, and, when you press any serious person, the reluctance about staking their lives on an attempt to restore a strict 1787 Constitution?

Post-Script: an unwarranted political prediction:

I am persuaded that, given the tremendous development of traditional powers over the 223 years of the existence of this constitutional system, an successful restoration of 1787 principles could only happen by revolt and revolution against the Federal government. Our current federal system is simply totally unlike what it once was. But a newly created state would die very quickly, because it would have cut itself off from its history and lost the old spiritual and theoretical energies, and would be absorbed back into a modified Federal government which by that time will have followed more openly imperial instincts.

Limits - Part 1

The Philosopher wrote in his Metaphysics that a particular branch of the Pythagorean school, adapting the original teaching of Pythagoras, taught that the first principles of the cosmos were ten, divided into the following table of opposites:

limited–unlimited
odd–even
one–many
right–left
male–female
rest–motion,
straight–curve
light–darkness
good–evil
square–oblong

Now I've already written about straight lines and curved, and a little about females, but this list will give up a few more mysteries before the ancient body is entirely exhumed. It ought to give you pause. First of all, is each column related, or are they in reality unorganized pairs of independent principles? From what we know elsewhere of Pythagorean thought, the latter proposition, unmodified, is out of the question. The square, the odd, and the one are all related, in fact, by the construction of number using the gnomon, or carpenter's square. It's a fair bet that the other seven principles in the table are likewise related. If they are related, is there a primary principle that governs the others, along the lines of the possibility that the forming of a "more perfect Union" is the governing principle within the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution? If so, are the rest of the principles ranked? Our modern eye will pick out two immediately, male-female and good-evil, as being important. We might think that the good-evil pair is the most important of the lot, and governs the rest - that is to say, we might interpret the table to mean that there is something good about light, and evil about darkness. But perhaps the Pythagoreans didn't think in this hierarchy at all. Perhaps they thought there was something oblong about evil, and something odd about male.

For some reason, growing up with my algebra, I always thought that even numbers were stronger, more 'male' if you will, than odd numbers. I didn't like negative numbers a bit - my homework was always in a war, and we won if the total was positive by the end of the lesson. But the even still was better. I think I liked the strength of the number two, in which all the other even numbers shared. But reflecting back after many years, it's obvious that if strength is conceived as independence, the strongest are the prime numbers, and the odd numbers share in the primes most fully (although the number two, the principle female number, also shares in the primes).

If the Pythagoreans were to have proposed a hierarchy, almost certainly the governing principle would have been not that of good and evil, but that of the one and the many. The study of ethics, questions of good and evil, was a specialized investigation of the principles of action in rational animals. Important for humans, yes, but what does Jupiter care? But as far as we can judge, the Pythagoreans avoided the question of a governing principle by claiming that the principle of being was nothing more than precisely the opposition of each to the other. As for Modern Philosophers, after disagreeing for centuries about the problems raised by particulars, universals, and their unwashed cousins, they came to the conclusion that the question was insoluble, though these days they're not so sure. The Philosophers might find that this old table relieves them of a great deal of labour (though this argument from leisure would not appeal to Immanuel Kant), if only they were to consider the relationship of the One with the Straight, the Odd, and most importantly, the Limit.

Symbolism in American Politics

There is a strong element of the French imagination which is part of the American spirit. It is an imagination which cares about symbols as much as it cares about policies and results.

In 1871, Henri, Comte de Chambord, ultimately refused to take up the throne of a restored constitutional monarchy in France because he refused to reign over a state that flew the Tricolour, while those desirous of a restoration of the monarchy refused to bring back the white flag of the Bourbons.

Conservatives would do well to be aware of this element, not to dismiss its significance, nor to look upon it with contempt. Since the Third Reich, we have been taught that all symbolism is mere propaganda. This is not true.

Critics like to say that Mr. Obama was elected because he ran on a hypocritical manifesto of low taxes and bureaucratic reform. This is only partly true. Self-interest explains only so much. He won the African-American vote because he was a symbol of emancipation, and the votes of countless other groups and individuals because he was a symbol of progress. These facts ought not to be dismissed as mere childishness. They should be taken for what they are, homages to the place of passion and poetry and things of the spirit - think of Yeats - in the hearts of countless peoples, passions that must be moderated but that cannot and ought not be silenced.