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!

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.

Thought for the Day No. 7: Justice and Mercy

I think that if, at the end of my brief life (hopefully longer than Keats's), I should have contributed anything to the great body of Western political philosophy, it will have been an exposition of the following principle:

Justice for all, mercy for each.

Belloc Wednesday - The Shotgun Approach to European History

From Belloc's Europe and the Faith, New York, The Paulist Press, 1930.
The book has a motto appended: 'sine auctoritate nulla vita'
The introductory chapter is entitled 'The Catholic Conscience of History'
The introductory paragraph made me laugh in admiration:

"I say the Catholic "conscience" of history - I say "conscience" - that is, an intimate knowledge through identity: the intuition of a thing which is one with the knower - I do not say "The Catholic Aspect of History." This talk of "aspects" is modern and therefore part of a decline: it is false, and therefore ephemeral: I will not stoop to it. I will rather do homage to truth and say that there is no such thing as a Catholic "aspect" of European history. There is a Protestant aspect, a Jewish aspect, a Mohammedan aspect, a Japanese aspect, and so forth. For all of these look on Europe from without. The Catholic sees Europe from within. There is no more a Catholic "aspect" of European history than there is a man's "aspect" of himself.

[But I must carry on recording his bold and glorious riposte]

Sophistry does indeed pretend that there is even a man's "aspect" of himself. In nothing does false philosophy prove itself more false. For a man's way of perceiving himself (when he does so honestly and afer a cleansing examination of his mind) is in line with his Creator's, and therefore with reality: he sees from within.

Let me pursue this metaphor. Man has in him conscience, which is the voice of God. Not only des he know by this that the outer world is real, but also that his own personality is real.

When a man, although flattered by the voice of another, yet says within himself, "I am a mean fellow," he has hold of reality. When a man, though maligned of the world, says to himself of himself, "My purpose was just," he has hold of reality. He knows himself, for he is himself. A man does not know an infinite amount about himself. But the finite amount he does know is all in the map; it is all part of what is really there. What he does not know about himself would, did he know it, fit in with what he does know about himself. There are indeed "aspects" of a man for all others except these two, himself and God Who made him. These two, when they regard him, see him as he is; all other minds have their several views of him; and these indeed are "aspects," each of which is false, while all differ. But a man's view of himself is not an "aspect:" it is a comprehension.

Now then, so it is with us who are of the Faith and the great story of Europe. A Catholic as he reads that story does not grope at it from without, he understands it from within. He cannot understand it altogether because he is a finite being; but he is also that which he has to understand. The Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith."

The Strange Consequences of Berkeleianism

When Decartes divorced the mind from the body, metaphysics split into two basic schools, those who thought that the evidence revealed that we could only be sure of the mind, and those who thought that the evidence revealed we could only be sure of matter. Most of what you know about the post-Cartesian history of philosophy comes from the second school. But the first school was for a long time equally dominant, the father of which was George Berkeley. He thought that 'matter', rather than 'mind' was an abstraction, since all perceptions as experienced (and therefore truly known) are mental states, not physical states. (To actual historians of philosophy, apologies for my gross simplification.)

In and since the nineteenth century tumult of scientific discovery, Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Einstein, his ideas have been rather lost to the respectable public. But, though I don't know enough to trace their particular history, they pop up in an extraordinary place. In 30s and 40s Oxford, amongst the Inklings, no less, who were steeped in questions of parapsychology and elevated consciousness, and took oriental philosophy very seriously. Some of even C.S. Lewis' shorter stories are explorations of these psychic questions. I had always thought it strange that the most clear-thinking of the twentieth Christian apologists and poets should be fascinated with such an obviously unchristian and moreover absurd idea, but I discover just today that Anthony Flew (of There is A God) lived and studied at Oxford at the same time, had the same psychic interests, explicitly attributes his early philosophical ideas to Berkeley, and strange to say possesses precisely the same clear-thinking argumentation and prose style I find in the Inklings. It can't be a coincidence.

Edit: What matters most here is the similarity in the argumentation and prose style. I'm pretty sensitive to the feel of the prose I'm reading - the intellectual sensation, if you will - and Flew's style reminds me of nothing so much as those essays I've read by the Inklings, and not just Lewis. It could be just that Oxford intellectuals from the 30s and 40s in general wrote in that fashion. I'd have to read more widely to know. But the connection to Idealism is very interesting. If it's real, it would be worth a semi-popular book.

Thought for the Day No. 4: Dialogue in England

The average Englishman or woman exhibits a terrible indifference to common sense moral philosophy, which indifference often runs over into contempt. I wonder whether this is partly a consequence of the schools and universities for too long taking the analytic tradition dogmatically. For contrary to the established analytic procedure, common sense moral philosophy operates in both the deductive and inductive directions at once.

Pipes, Fire, and Philosophy

Tonight I successfully smoked an entire bowl of my briar pipe after one lighting. This was no light accomplishment. I have been at it for two months, ever since we performed the Taming of the Shrew. Vincentio, the brisk and kindly old man whom I played, desperately needed a good prop if he was going to convince the audience of his age, and so the pipe that Raymond Spiotta had generously given me, several months before, came out of my closet. Packed full, it produces a wonderful head of smoke, but I found I had to wait to light it till just before I went on stage, because it would go out after five minutes.

Up till now, it did no different, but a few days ago a simple and obvious thought struck me: what I carried in my hand was not a smoking mess of tobacco, but a fire. If it was to burn, I had to treat it as such. So with a little practice, I've learned how to pack the bowl so as to fit the greatest amount of fuel possible while allowing for air to flow easily through it. After all, fire works off of an exothermic reaction - biomass + oxygen + Heat = smoke, hydrogen + More Heat. So I needed more oxygen. After that, I learned how to breathe in gently, not fiercely, but fairly continuously, how to guard the heat of the bowl with my cupped hand, and of the importance of cleaning the pipe to rid it of moisture. Thus success. Hurrah!

Then it occurred to me that this very practical and obvious idea was the very same thing that explains what makes the pipe a philosophical thing, a thing of beauty and of delight, and that which made A. A. Milne write, "a pipe in the mouth makes it clear that there has been no mistake--you are undoubtedly a man." When a man holds a pipe he holds FIRE in his hand. It is the secret knowledge rescued by Prometheus, it is reason symbolized, it is that which Heraclitus thought to be the ordering principle of the universe; on the sixth day of creation fire was breathed into dust and there was Adam. When a man smokes a pipe, he communes with his own mind, which is the beginning of self-reflection, and thus the beginning of knowledge. What is more, the pipe is fire clothed, knowing good and evil, and it represents man redeemed in his fallen nature: upright, and unashamed.

I shall return only grudgingly to the naked promiscuous cigar, and even more grudgingly to the dim excuse for intelligence that is the cigarette.

I have some friends, some honest friends,
And honest friends are few;
My pipe of briar, my open fire,
A book that's not too new;
My bed so warm, the nights of storm
I love to listen to.

Robert W. Service - Ballads of a Bohemian