Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four

Wayfarer

The current subject of many animated philosophical debates is whether we humans are able to see ‘things as they truly are’. At issue are the perennial philosophical questions: What is real? and How can we come to know it? These are questions fundamental to philosophy and science alike.

For most, it seems natural to assume that whatever the truth might be, it must be objective if it is to matter. What is objective is understood to be just so, independent of your or my or anyone’s ideas about it. ‘Reality’, said Philip K. Dick, ‘is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.’ This outlook naturally aligns with a scientifically-oriented society. Science, after all, is occupied with discovering and understanding the nature of objective reality, something in which enormous strides have been made since the 17th century. Accordingly it is easy to presume that to question objectivity is to be anti–scientific.

Subjectivity, on the other hand, is the domain of experience and interpretation, shaped by individual minds and cultural context. While respect for the individual may be foundational to Western culture, because of the significance given to objectivity, the subjective is generally not considered when arriving at judgements of what is truly so. Allowing for the subjective, it is said, results in relativism and subjectivism — ‘what is true for you’ is the dismissive description.

Yet questions linger, some of them thrown up by science itself. Cognitive science has provided ample evidence for something that philosophers have long intuited, which is the way in which the brain creates or constructs what we instinctively take to be a purely objective reality — meaning that we, as subjects, have a role in grounding the very objectivity that we might assume is completely independent of us. Along similar lines, philosophers of science, such as Thomas Kuhn¹ and Michael Polanyi², have demonstrated that tacit knowledge and personal perspectives shape even the most rigorous of scientific practices.

Drawing on an inter-disciplinary perspective, I will argue that objectivity, while indispensable in science, must be complemented by philosophical detachment to arrive at a greater insight into the nature of existence.

The Cartesian Division

The central role of objectivity was crucial to the emergence of early modern science, which distinguished it from the intuition-based, introspective theorizing of the medieval and ancient world. So it is not coincidental that the first uses of the word ‘objectivity’ began to appear in the early 1600s.³ Objectivity in this modern sense emerged alongside Galileo’s new physics, and his conceptual division between the primary and secondary qualities of objects — the primary being figure (or shape), size, position, motion, and quantity, while the secondary included color, taste, aroma, and sound. The secondary attributes were said to inhere in the subject, creating a division that was foundational to the emerging scientific worldview.

This division created the framework for the modern, mechanistic view of the world, which Descartes further entrenched with his separation of mind (res cogitans) and body (res extensa). This was, in turn, set against the backdrop of a universe devoid of teleology (action for a purpose). Given these background assumptions, the foundational worldview of early modern science begins to emerge: the individual ego contemplating exact ideas, in a clockwork universe driven by mechanical forces, amenable to precise description in the language of mathematics. (Notice, however, that while the individual ego may be ostensibly bracketed out in this worldview, it remains implicit as the locus of observation and measurement.)

As philosopher Thomas Nagel described it:

Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise, quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatio–temporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand — how this physical world appears to human perception — were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind — as well as human intentions and purposes — from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop⁴

.

This is where the primacy of the objective stance begins to appear. It aims for the elimination or at least suspension of all traces of subjectivity, so as to arrive at an understanding built solely on the basis of these ‘spatiotemporal primary qualities’, those things that are objectively measurable, and believed, furthermore, to be objectively real, above and beyond any opinion or conjecture. They are what is truly there — which helps us to understand why physics became paradigmatic for the scientific outlook, generally, at the outset of modernity.⁵

The difficulty with the strictly objectivist approach is that it leaves no room at all for the subject— for us, in fact, as human beings. Viewed objectively, instead, h.sapiens is a fortuitous by–product of the same essentially mindless process that causes the movements of the planets; we’re one species amongst many others. As Friedrich Nietszche foresaw, this portends nihilism, the sense that the Universe is meaningless, devoid of any purpose or value save what the individual ego is able to conjure or project. It was an intuition that the great Erwin Schrödinger was well aware of:

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.⁶

Of course, none of this is exactly news, there has been massive commentary over centuries of how the objective sciences rob the world of meaning. The point is, for all of its objective power, science also contains a fundamental lacuna, a gap or an absence, at its center. How, then, can we expect it reveal what is truly so? What kind of ‘truth’ are we left with, if we ourselves are not part of it?

This tension between the objective stance and the role of the knowing subject raises profound questions about the real nature of existence — questions that go beyond the purview of science and into the domain of philosophy. ...

---

1. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press; Fourth edition, 30 April 2012
2. “Modern philosophy is characterised by a concerted rejection of tradition. In its stead rose the view Polanyi calls ‘objectivism,’ a view embracing a completely detached ideal of knowledge. … The Cartesian ideal of achieving a God’s eye view (what Descartes calls The Archimedean Point), from which to survey all objects of knowledge independently of prior assumptions, is an impossible (and ultimately harmful) dream.” (Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, cited in Mark T. Mitchell, Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing.)
3. https://www.etymonline.com/word/objective
4. Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Oxford University Press, 2012, Pp35-36
5. Subject of another of Thomas Nagel’s books, The View from Nowhere, OUP, 1986
6. Erwin Schrodinger, Nature and the Greeks, Cambridge University Press, 1996

Extracted from Scientific Objectivity and Philosophical Detachment (Medium)

...to be continued

Tom Storm

↪Wayfarer

Nicely written and reasoned.

As Friedrich Nietszche foresaw, this portends nihilism, the sense that the Universe is meaningless, devoid of any purpose or value save what the individual ego is able to conjure or project. It was an intuition that the great Erwin Schrödinger was well aware of:

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.⁶ — Wayfarer

I have no significant commitments to any particular perspective except that my intuition and observations suggest (to me) that life is intrinsically meaningless. But we do generate contingent value and meaning collectively and individually through experience.

But it seems to me the role of emotion is the missing piece in many discussions. We are emotional creatures. It seems to me that our reasoning and preferences are shaped by our affective relationships with the world, and we then construct post hoc rationalizations.

The things science struggles with - delight, love, joy, purpose - are, needless to say, emotions and these are in the end what "cause" us to act and hold beliefs.

It also seems to me that philosophy and other intellectual endeavours are attempts by us to reconcile our emotional lives with the way things seem to be.

Janus

We are emotional creatures. It seems to me that our reasoning and preferences are shaped by our affective relationships with the world, and we then construct post hoc rationalizations. — Tom Storm

Do you think we all do that, or do you think rather that we all have a natural tendency to do that; a tendency which can be overcome by critical reason? I see broadly two types on these forums and in my experience of philosophical discussions with my university friends: there are those who want things to be a certain way and spend time and effort marshalling evidence to support their biases, and there are those of a more scientific spirit, who are open to changing their minds if they find reasons or evidence more compelling than what they have been aware of.

Wayfarer

my intuition and observations suggest (to me) that life is intrinsically meaningless — Tom Storm

Well, we are creatures of our times. I am trying to show that this is a natural implication of the 'cartesian division'. Which reminds me of the phrase I often quote, that of the 'Cartesian Anxiety':

Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other". — Richard J Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis

Vervaeke says that this division is a fundamental aspect of our 'cultural grammar'.

Janus

I have no significant commitments to any particular perspective except that my intuition and observations suggest (to me) that life is intrinsically meaningless. But we do generate contingent value and meaning collectively and individually through experience. — Tom Storm

But you do think that some worldviews are more plausible than others, no? For example, why should we think that life is inherently meaningful in some overarching way, when there is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case, and no logical reason why it should be the case?

Of course, life is not meaningless to individual humans or other animals—we all have things that matter to us.

Leontiskos

...to be continued — Wayfarer

I think this is a helpful and concise outline of your project, Wayfarer. :up:

In general, though, I am always left with the question of what exactly your thesis is. I would like something clear, like, "Scientism says X, but I say ~X," or, "I say X and Scientism would altogether disagree with me."

Because very often it seems that we are left with a wide-ranging modus tollens. For example:

1. If X is true, then "we ourselves are not part of [the truth we know]."
2. But that can't be right.
3. Therefore, X must be false.

X could be Scientism, or Realism, or some variety of Objectivism; but whatever it is, this overarching argument rebukes it. Now this isn't actually such a bad argument, but most all of your opponents are going to reject (1). I think the key is therefore to find an X such that a proponent of X would not reject (1). On my view this would be a thinker who says that humans are capable of objective knowledge despite the fact that humans possess no special capacity to know truth (e.g. some varieties of eliminative materialism). More simply: that humans are capable of objective knowledge and are no qualitatively different than the lower animals. More generally: that humans are capable of objective knowledge and yet are themselves opaque to investigation. This niche is where I agree with your project, but I disagree when you go farther and make X = Realism.

Let me add that the reason it is not a bad argument is because (2) is persuasive, namely because self-knowledge should be epistemically accessible. But it is worth adding at the same time that self-knowledge is also difficult and elusive, and therefore the fact that X abandons the difficult task is in some ways understandable.

Mww

↪Wayfarer

(ever-so-slight nod, from the back of the room)

↪Wayfarer

Very good OP (Part 1), thank you.

The difficulty with the strictly objectivist approach is that it leaves no room at all for the subject— for us, in fact, as human beings. Viewed objectively, instead, h.sapiens is a fortuitous by–product of the same essentially mindless process that causes the movements of the planets; we’re one species amongst many others. — Wayfarer

In fact, this might be two distinct difficulties. First, as you say, subjectivity appears to be left out of scientism. But we could still view homo sapiens as merely one (mindless) species among many. The additional difficulty is that, without an account of subjectivity, nothing homo sapiens may allegedly learn about the world and themselves can have any claim to justification -- there can be no reasons, since reasons are not part of the objective world. This seems to rule out any view of h. sapiens that purports to be true. At best, we could point to the physical factors that cause us to have the opinions we have. But that circles us back to the first difficulty: What does it mean to "have an opinion" if there is no subject to judge?

Tom Storm

Do you think we all do that, or do you think rather that we all have a natural tendency to do that; a tendency which can be overcome by critical reason? — Janus

I don't know. Sure, some people change views, but then people also fall in and out of love. I'm not confident that it is reasoning that crystallises choices and values. And some people are just more obvious about their process.

Well, we are creatures of our times. — Wayfarer

I am happy to be a creature of my times, if that's what it amounts to - I quite like the times we are in. And I don't have a preferred nostalgia project myself - "things were better before we lost..." etc. This is what MAGA probably has in common with Vervaeke. We took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and need to go back. Obviously there are sophisticated and rudimentary versions of this trope.

But you do think that some worldviews are more plausible than others, no? For example, why should we think that life is inherently meaningful in some overarching way, when there is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case, and no logical reason why it should be the case? — Janus

It certainly is experienced that way by me. But critics will simply say we've inherited the godless secularism of our age. We're in that fuckin' cave, Cobber.

That said, I think there are better and worse ways to live, subject to contingent factors. If you value honesty, you probably wouldn't work in advertising, say. But such values are context dependent.

Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other". — Richard J Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis

I personally don't long for certainty or truth, which to me seem to be the secular version of god. I have never taken a big interest in science, but I do believe its application has achieved more than prayer or crystal channeling.

My interest in philosophy is modest, not global. I am not particularly interested in some big picture of how the human race ought to proceed. My intuitions and experience suggest that this is answerable. For me it comes down to personal relationships and experiences and what one does about them. You seem to be more interested in trying to solve a global problem via a countercultural view that the mainstream is lost in some way. I don't have that ambition. But I remain very interested in your posts here.

But that circles us back to the first difficulty: What does it mean to "have an opinion" if there is no subject to judge? — J

Good question.

Wayfarer

I think this is a helpful and concise outline of your project, Wayfarer. — Leontiskos

Thank you!

In general, though, I am always left with the question of what exactly your thesis is. — Leontiskos

Well, it's only part 1!

I would hope that the reach of the argument is more than simply 'scientism', although that is certainly as aspect of it. I question the way you're interpreting it. The point about objectivity first appearing in the early 1600's is significant. It is the beginning of a different kind of awareness or consciousness with the beginning of the modern period. It's by no means a bad thing, but it has a shadow side, which is precisely that sense of outside-ness, otherness, alienation or disconnection. Max Weber wrote of the 'great disenchantment', to describe the character of a modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society. In Western society, according to Weber, scientific understanding is more highly valued than belief, and processes are oriented toward rational goals.' (Wikipedia) That is also the subject of the New Left's criticism of the 'instrumentalisation of reason'.

This niche is where I agree with your project, but I disagree when you go farther and make X = Realism. — Leontiskos

We'll get to that.

without an account of subjectivity, nothing homo sapiens may allegedly learn about the world and themselves can have any claim to justification -- there can be no reasons, since reasons are not part of the objective world. This seems to rule out any view of h. sapiens that purports to be true. — J

Hence - nihilism. Nothing is true, nothing really matters, and so on. I don't think nihilism always manifests as something dramatic or obviously awful. It can be a shrug, a 'so what?' Also very big part of the shadow of modernity.

I guess that gets us into philosophical anthropology - what is man (sorry for the gender specificity) in the greater scheme? We'll get to that, too.

Janus

In fact, this might be two distinct difficulties. First, as you say, subjectivity appears to be left out of scientism. — J

I'm not sure what you mean by "scientism" here. Do you just mean science or the obviously incorrect idea that everything about humans and other living beings can be explained by physics?

I think that subjectivity is rightly left out of science (unless you count sociology, psychology and phenomenology as sciences (and even there it would depend on what you mean by 'leaving out subjectivity'). Also 'objectivity' in my view should be taken to mean nothing more than 'lack of bias'.

What does it mean to "have an opinion" if there is no subject to judge? — J

There obviously are subjects (individuals) who make judgements, so what's the problem? Are you worried about the human lack of absolute certainty? Why does the reality that our ideas and beliefs are neural processes rule out the validity of giving and asking for reasons? I've never understood that view, and I've never heard a reasoned argument to support it. It seems perfectly obvious that our ideas and beliefs are both neural processes, and that they are held for reasons both valid and invalid, sound and unsound, and that they are all defeasible.

It certainly is experienced that way by me. But critics will simply say we've inherited the godless secularism of our age. We're in that fuckin' cave, Cobber. — Tom Storm

Yes, but is there any reason to think such a criticism is not tendentiously self-serving? Why should we give credence to arguments that lack evidence or logic to support them; arguments that are not really arguments at all, but mere polemical cultural tropes that are often in the service of misplaced moral crusades.

The modern critical mind has dispensed with God because there is no need for it other than for those who, on account of childhood conditioning or insecurity in the face of the knowledge of suffering and death, cannot rid themselves of the comforting fantasy. Why should we wish to live in thrall to tradition, as Hegel said, "Under the aegis of tutelage"?

As you no doubt know I have no problem with people's personal faiths, but they have no place in philosophical discussion just because there is no critical, evidential or logical support for them. When people delude themselves that their personal faiths must be objectively true, then the door to fundamentalism has swung open. Ideology is the greatest scourge of humankind in my view. In extremis, people will kill and die for ideologies, and that really is absurd.

Wayfarer

What does it mean to "have an opinion" if there is no subject to judge? — J

This is addressed in the subsequent sections.

Apustimelogist

↪Wayfarer

So what is your solution in all this!!??

Wayfarer

↪Apustimelogist

This is Part 1.

JuanZu

↪Wayfarer

Subjectivity is never outside science. It is always in its genesis. What happens is that subjectivity is neutralized by phenomena such as repetition. That is, someone once invented the Pythagorean theorem, but through different mechanisms: language, writing, and repetitive processes that lead to its fulfillment, the theorem went from being the subjective invention of a person to a broader field of existence. It is a process of objectification. The same happens with sciences such as physics where experimentation becomes repetitive and theories are confirmed over and over again transcending the subjectivities always necessary to make the experiments.

In this sense objectivity is not simply the theory that corresponds to reality, but the theory that reaches an ontological degree in which reality and subjectivity are immersed. So we must even say that the theory of relativity transcends laboratories and experiments and reaches an ontological degree of its own. But of course nothing without these moments of neutrality of the particularities and thus to transit on the way of infinite universality and objectification.

Leontiskos

It seems perfectly obvious that our ideas and beliefs are both neural processes, and that they are held for reasons both valid and invalid, sound and unsound, and that they are all defeasible. — Janus

The way that the modern period in its progression has encountered the perennial problem of universals seems to be as follows:

1. If knowledge is objective, then it isn't subjective.
2. If knowledge is subjective, then it isn't objective.

(KO → ~KS)
(And the bijection also tends to hold)

What happens is that on this view in order to secure the objectivity of knowledge one must never talk about the subjectivity of the knower, and the subjectivity of the knower thus becomes a black hole. This neglect of subjective realities such as belief, intention, and conscience leads to the erosion and opacity of those realities in these philosophical paradigms. For example, Klima's paper on Anselm is more about this than what was actually discussed in the thread, for the inability of modern logic to conceptualize parasitic reference is a direct consequence of its abandoning subjectivity and intention. See also Simpson's critique of Wittgenstein.

Note too via Klima's paper how parasitic reference (and an explicit recognition of subjective intentionality via ampliation) secures rational commensurability between interlocutors, whereas the opacity of subjective intentionality and theories of reference that can't account for it lead very quickly to incommensurable gulfs between interlocutors. That is but one of the problems with the lack of subjectivity in the modern period: an inability to reckon with disagreements between subjects; for disagreement brings out the crucial fact that subjects are involved, and it does this in an especially quick and potent way.

Janus

The way that the modern period in its progression has encountered the perennial problem of universals seems to be as follows:

1. If knowledge is objective, then it isn't subjective.
2. If knowledge is subjective, then it isn't objective.

(KO → ~KS)
(And the bijection also tends to hold)

What happens is that on this view in order to secure the objectivity of knowledge one must never talk about the subjectivity of the knower, and the subjectivity of the knower thus becomes a black hole. — Leontiskos

I don't get this. It's like the 'blind spot of science' argument. I just don't think anyone who has really thought about the question denies that science deals with the world as it is perceived by us. I've asked the question many times as to what 'including the subject' could look like in the sciences that investigate the non-human. The subject is simply not the subject of inquiry in those sciences, but of course the inquiry itself is carried out by humans (subjects).

Wayfarer

Subjectivity is never outside science. It is always in its genesis. What happens is that subjectivity is neutralized by phenomena such as repetition. That is, someone once invented the Pythagorean theorem, but through different mechanisms: language, writing, and repetitive processes that lead to its fulfillment, the theorem went from being the subjective invention of a person to a broader field of existence. It is a process of objectification. The same happens with sciences such as physics where experimentation becomes repetitive and theories are confirmed over and over again transcending the subjectivities always necessary to make the experiments. — JuanZu

That's an interesting analysis, although I don't think that 'subjectivity is neutralised by repetition' really holds water. As for the Pythagorean theorem, the age-old question is, invented or discovered? I believe it is the latter. The theorem concerns something that would be true, even it were never discovered.

So I suppose what you're saying is that when only a single subject has such an insight, then it's subjective, but that as it becomes more and more widely known and accepted, then it is seen as objective. That is an interesting way to consider it. I'll think that over.

Janus

Do you think we all do that, or do you think rather that we all have a natural tendency to do that; a tendency which can be overcome by critical reason?
— Janus

I don't know. Sure, some people change views, but then people also fall in and out of love. I'm not confident that it is reasoning that crystallises choices and values. And some people are just more obvious about their process. — Tom Storm

I did say "can be overcome by critical reason". I didn't say that biases commonly are overcome by critical reason. I think a clear and general view of human life would quickly disabuse anyone of the latter idea.

Leontiskos

I've asked the question many times as to what 'including the subject' could look like in the sciences that investigate the non-human. — Janus

And I gave you two examples: the novelty of parasitic reference in modern logic and the yielding of Schopenhauer's dynamism to Wittgenstein's mirror. Russell, Quine, and (early) Wittgenstein are examples of the neglect of subjectivity, and the two papers in question underline that point.

Janus

↪Leontiskos

It seems I'm talking about science, and you are talking about philosophy. I haven't claimed that philosophy can ever become an entirely objective endeavor.

Even science can only be objective in regard to what is actually observed. Theoretical explanation of what is observed are another matter.

JuanZu

That's an interesting analysis, although I don't think that 'subjectivity is neutralised by repetition' really holds water — Wayfarer

How does it not? When two persons perform the same proof of the theorem both are neutralized and it can no longer be said that they are the raison d'être of the theorem. Subjectivity no longer justifies the nature of what has been proved although it has participated in its genesis. In this sense the theorem has been invented but has reached a degree of objectivity. In general we consider that something invented is not objective; my point is to show that something can be objective even if it is invented.

So I suppose what you're saying is that when only a single subject has such an insight, then it's subjective, but that as it becomes more and more widely known and accepted, then it is seen as objective — Wayfarer

Kinda. But not only because it is known but because in the construction of the theorem there are different realities involved in the matter. But what is important is repetition as a means of a virtually infinite induction that transcends, transcends subjectivity, transcends cultures, transcends subject, trasciende experiments and so on ad infinitum.

The theorem transcends and become "objective" by repetition and neutralization of particular genesis.

Wayfarer

When two persons perform the same proof of the theorem both are neutralized and it can no longer be said that they are the raison d'être of the theorem. — JuanZu

I think it's a mistaken notion of 'subjectivity'. Subjectivity doesn't only pertain to what is specific to a single individual. Later in the essay I distinguish the subjective from the personal:

we must... differentiate the subjective from the merely personal. The subjective refers to the structures of experience through which reality is disclosed to consciousness. In an important sense, all sentient beings are subjects of experience. Subjectivity — or perhaps we could coin the term ‘subject-hood’ — encompasses the shared and foundational aspects of perception and understanding, as explored by phenomenology. The personal, by contrast, pertains to the idiosyncratic desires, biases, and attachments of a specific individual.

Leontiskos

Even science can only be objective in regard to what is actually observed. Theoretical explanation of what is observed are another matter. — Janus

So are you claiming that theoretical explanation is not within the purview of science?

It seems I'm talking about science, and you are talking about philosophy. — Janus

I think there is all manner of bleed between the two spheres.

Wayfarer

The theorem transcends and become "objective" by repetition and neutralization of particular genesis. — JuanZu

So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that objectivity isn’t just about consensus, but about how an insight is tested, repeated, and confirmed across different contexts until its original, subjective or cultural genesis is no longer relevant. In that sense, objectivity emerges when a claim is validated to the point that it 'transcends' individual perspectives and particular origins. Would you say this is close to what you mean?

Joshs

↪Wayfarer

The current subject of many animated philosophical debates is whether we humans are able to see ‘things as they truly are’. At issue are the perennial philosophical questions: What is real? and How can we come to know it? These are questions fundamental to philosophy and science alike. — Wayfarer

Certainly we are able to see things as they truly are. There is no way the world is ‘in itself’ The world shows itself to us in our practical engagements with it. This world that we are already deeply and directly in touch with is the only world that will ever matter to us.

philosophers of science, such as Thomas Kuhn¹ and Michael Polanyi², have demonstrated that tacit knowledge and personal perspectives shape even the most rigorous of scientific practices. — Wayfarer

Kuhn’s paradigmatic model does not rely on personal perspective in the sense of a subjective representation of reality. Rather. it is based on practices of DOING THINGS with the world.

Wayfarer

↪Joshs

Good points.

JuanZu

Subjectivity — or perhaps we could coin the term ‘subject-hood’ — encompasses the shared and foundational aspects of perception and understanding, as explored by phenomenology. The personal, by contrast, pertains to the idiosyncratic desires, biases, and attachments of a specific individual.

It is difficult for me to understand this. Isn't it some kind of a big mind or trascendental ego? By the way, The essential structures of a transcendental ego are essential because they are discovered in an eidetic reduction of psychology. In such a case we are talking about an essence that belongs to every human being. But there is a continuity with what I am saying: the reduction is the product of an imaginary variation (method of phenomenology). It is a process that leads us to a repetition, finding this structure in all people, don't you think? It is something that we discover as repetition through a neutralization (imaginary variation).

This is too deep in fenomenology, you can ignore me.

JuanZu

↪Wayfarer

Yes.

Apustimelogist

↪Wayfarer

So when is part 2?

kazan

Could the state of play (position being taken by the contributors), so far, be summed up in the following way?

Objectivity only exists if a subject exists to promulgate it. But that which is being objectivized may exist (have independent reality) without subjective explanation/inquiry and hence without objective explanation.

Maybe too simplified?

trying to keep up smile

Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four

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