Isn’t the opposite also true, objectivity is an artifact of human constructivism, culture, language and values? Objectivity perhaps being a shared subjectivity. Perhaps we could even say objectivity is a contradiction inside subjectivity? — Tom Storm

Yes, definitely. I wouldn’t say that objectivity is a contradiction inside subjectivity, because subjectivity has not contradictions, not because it is perfectly consistent, but because it is not based on consistency. It would be like talking about contradictions in art. Art doesn’t care about contradictions.

to what extent are any patterns we observe “in the world” or are they a co-created outcome of human interactions? — Tom Storm

It depends on what we mean when we say “co-created”. It seems to me that this concept has been inappropriately exploited by someones, reinterpreted in a metaphysical way, so as to reply that we do not create reality, we do not create mountains, we haven’t created the sun or the planet earth. If we clarify that this creation that subjectivity operates is not a metaphysically realistic creation, but an interpretation of our experience, then yes, I think that everything in this world can be considered as created by us.

However, in this experience of things that we create, we also experience some hardness, that is things, that sadly impose themselves in our experience as if they existed in a strongly, irresistible realistic, objective and metaphysical way. We can think of our human experience of death and suffering as an example.

I’m going to try it, although this very attempt is like a bizarre contradiction against what I have wrote in this thread. However, I will try all the same, otherwise we should just be silent.

A very simple idea of subjectivity and objectivity is when we talk about temperature. If I say that I feel cold, this is subjective, because other people might feel hot instead. If we say that temperature is 37°C, this is objective: it is not cold nor hot, it is just a precise temperature.

However, this is just science. Philosophy goes further and we can consider that, even when we measure temperature with scientific instruments, a human interpretation is involved. We can try to include human interpretation among the elements that introduce precise and measurable interferences, the same way as 37°C may have a different meaning in different universes, but this would just widen a cage that is anyway a closed cage. The moment we try to master and control the interference of human interpretation, this operation is itself already under the interference of human interpretation. As a consequence, we are forced to admit that we can talk about objectivity only inside some limited fields, such as science. We cannot talk about objectivity in an absolute way, because it is impossible to us to think of anything without making this thought instantly, automatically distorted by our human way of thinking.

However, at this point the discussion is not ended. If we consider, from a “relatively objective” point of view, that in this world there are many people, which means many perspectives, many points of view, this takes us to the problem of not being able to share each unique perspective, because, the moment we try to do it, through some kind of language, we automatically filter and select those aspects of subjectivity that can be shared, communicated by language. This way, what is exclusive in each perspective gets always automatically excluded from communication, exactly because it is beyond the shared field of language.

This make me deduce that true subjectivity is that part that is impossible to express, that part that remains in each personal experience, that everybody can feel inside themselves, but cannot be communicated because, since it is unique, we should create a dedicated specific word for each unique experience that otherwise is inexpressible. In opposition to this inexpressible part of subjectivity, every other aspect of subjectivity that we are able to express is just an objectification of subjectivity, which means a false concept of subjectivity, that gives us the illusion that we are talking about subjectivity, but actually we aren’t, we are just talking about some shareable aspects of subjectivity, cutting out what actually is the essence, the true experience of subjectivity.

Now you can understand why your question seems to me rather impossible to solve. Wanting “to clearly and carefully define what subjectivity and objectivity are” means cutting out from our discussion exactly the essence of subjectivity. What kills everything is when we say “clearly and carefully define”. Each of these three words sends us to the world of precision, accuracy, control, which is the world of objectivity. But the world of objectivity is completely unable to make a concept about each person’s unique inner experience of their subjectivity. It’s like asking Da Vinci or Picasso to clearly and carefully define what they wanted to express with the Mona Lisa, or Guernica, in order to have a serious conversation about their works. Does it mean that the Mona Lisa or Guernica are not so serious works?

My intention was to explain that we become objects not only as objects of understanding, but also as enquirers, questioners. When I make a question, apparently I am a subject who makes a question about an object. Actually, as a questioner, I become an object as well. This means that, when we make questions, we are automatically objects that make questions about other objects. You cannot make a question and keep being a subject at the same time. The very action of making a question turns you into an object that makes questions. This happens because it is impossible to make a question without projecting ourselves outside ourselves, trying to imagine a point of view from outside ourselves. When you ask "What is this stone?", you are automatically putting yourself outside your unique perspective, you are going to adopt a social perspective, because questions exist exclusively as social phenomenons, because they are based on languages and languages do not exist except as social phenomenons that force you to put yourself into a social perspective instead of your unique inner subjective perspective. This phenomenon has political consequences for sure, but its origin is not political, it is structural. It doesn't come from bad administration, but from inevitable objectification that happens as soon as you try to communicate.

I agree. I think that objectivity is unavoidable and necessary. For that reason I think that the ideal is not trying to be as subjective as possible, but trying continuously to build and cultivate a dialogue between subjectivity and objectivity.

I agree.
In this context I think that what I have said is consistent, because I have not said "there is a contradiction and there is not a contradiction", I have just said "there is a contradiction".
About the specific contradiction I am talking about, I can further explain it the following way.
Let′s consider that objectivity has no contradictions inside itself. I consider myself as an object as well, a part of the bigger general objectivity. As such, I think I am able to communicate everything about me. What I find in me is shareable, not unique, I am just like a number and that's why I can communicate myself. It′s like a mathematical system, where any number has nothing exclusive, there are no secrets and everything can be communicated and shared.
At a certain point I discover that there is something in me that I cannot communicate, is not shareable, I feel it as unique and is not objective. It is my subjectivity. In theory it is just another thing, which, being another object, should be understandable and shareable, but actually I cannot describe it even to myself. I feel it, definitely, but I am unable to say anything about it. I would describe this phenomenon as objectivity that looks at itself and discovers inside itself something stranger, something that is not objective, that is absolutely unique and, as such, cannot be described; it is even impossible to find any evidence of its existence. That′s the contradiction: non-objectivity gets discovered inside objectivity, as a strange product of objectivity.
It is as if inside the objective system of maths I see that I am number 5 and I feel myself not just as an objective number, but also a unique perspective from where I can reinterpret everything else, a perspective that, as such, has a perspective even towards itself, which is a kind of self consciousness, that is impossible to explain or to see in objective terms.
This is in my view the contradiction between subjectivity and objectivity.
It seems to me a process similar to Fichte′s I that posits the non-I, while in this case objectivity discovers non-objectivity, which is subjectivity, inside itself, as a part of itself.

You are right, but I think that philosophy can deal with topics beyond the limits of logic. For example, are suffering, injustice just logical things? Is it just logical that this world exists? Should philosophy discuss about art just as a logical phenomenon? Is philosophy itself free from contradictions? How can we know it with certainty since, whatever answer we find, it is conditioned by ourselves? How can we know the meaning of contradiction and non-contradiction, since anything we do to know it is already conditioned by them?
I have made these questions not to discuss them, but just to show that in my opinion philosophy needs to deal with topics more widely than just caring to keep itself in a strictly logical frame.
From the point of view of my initial topic, your message could even be interpreted as just another attempt of objectivity to reduce subjectivity into the realm of objectivity, another attempt to neutralise the dangerously rebellious character of subjectivity.

I agree, but this would reduce the topic just into a sociological frame. I (like to) think that what I am talking about has a wider and a more radical importance. I would even say that this is the fundamental nature of being. Heidegger said that being is being towards death, Parmenides said that being is, non being is not, as a principle of non-contradiction. I would say that being is a continuous event of contradiction between subjectivity and objectivity. It acts at all levels of existence and reality. I agree that my attention is very taken by some final effects of what I say, but my interest is not just to understand things that happen in our relations. To me is like a topic to meditate on, about what my existence is, how it articulates in this world, with other people, and so on.

I think it is good to clarify that the main perspective of what I wanted to express, since I opened this thread, is a subejctive one. This means that, even when I use such words like “objectivity”, “contradiction”, “subjectivity”, the meaning I give them is from my subjective perspective. This way, “objectivity” means “objectivity as seen, as percepived, from a subjective perspective”, “contradiction” means “contradiction as it is perceived from a subjective point of view” (which in my case is my one), “subjectivity” is “subjectivity as I perceive it from my own experience of subjectivity”. Otherwise we will end up looking for exact definitions of what contradiction means, what objectivity exactly means and so on.

I have no intention to establish if the contradiction I have talked about really exists ultimately. My intention is to check how you perceive what I said from your subjective point of view, from your instinctive, emotional, spontaneous feelings.

Obviously this is at high risk of not knowing what we are talking about. Well, what I want to talk about is ourselves. What I have said is an expression of my feelings, expressed through a philosophical hypothesis about how things seems working to me. I don’t want to know if they really work this way. I want to know if what I have said has some resonance in what you feel.

Think of what I said as a pair of coloured glasses which I am suggesting you to put on and try. I know perfectly that coloured glasses give us a distorted picture of things, making us seeing reality like having colors different from what we can see under pure sun light. But sometimes distorting glasses can reveal certain elements that are not so evident if you look without distorting glasses. It’s like colouring substances that sometimes are used in medicine, by introducing them in our body, or in physics, so that we can see certain things that otherwise are invisible.

I think that contradiction exists from the point of view of subjectivity, which in my case is my personal point of view. Objectivity eliminates every contradiction as soon as it incorporates it inside the bigger frame of objectivity. When you say that there is no contradiction, to me it means that, to write that sentence, you have adopted the point of view of objectivity, and I agree with that. But my subjectivity sees a contradiction, even more than a contradiction, a conflict and even a tragedy.

I agree, but I think this happens because the moment we discuss subjectivity, since we automatically put it into words, into the frame of language, this means that we put it into the system of objectivity. This way we objectify subjectivity. This means that, when we talk about subjectivity, the way how the word “subjectivity” works inside our objectified model does not reflect how subjectivity works in reality. In a language system, words work as repeatable objects and concepts. That’s why we can understand and share them. In the system of reality each subjectivity is unique: there is not another Angelo in the world. That’s why I will never be able to communicate how it feels being Angelo, in a similar way how, according to Nagel, we can’t understand how it feels being a bat.

This means that actually, even now in this message, the moment I have used the word “subjectivity” I have automatically objectified it as well. In this context I just shouldn’t even try to talk about it, because “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”, as Wittgenstein said.

But I think that, about this question, another contradiction happens.

It is true that in language we make use of shared and repeatable words and concepts. But let’s compare this situation with the idea that the world and every component of it is actually a unique event. We know that, when we have two identical objects, actually they are not 100% identical, because this would imply them being not two, but just one object. The same happens to physical phenomenons. We are able to find scientific laws because we observe repeated phenomenons, but actually each phenomenon is unique. This means that, every time we communicate through language, we use repeatable words, but actually, every time a word is used, that is a unique event. This means that, when you receive a word of mine, you are not receiving just a repeatable word, you are also receving the unique presence of me in that moment. This means that my true uniqueness is still carried in that repeatable word. I think Wittgenstein missed this fact.

As a consequence, when subjectivity gets objectified into the objective system of language, actually this objectification is not total, is not the whole of what happens. As an objectified item into the system of language, subjectivity is free from contradictions, but, since each event of language is also unique, uniqueness means impossibility to totally reduce it to equivalent events.

This means that each word we say in a language is, on one side, understood because it is repeatable, shared, belongs to the system of language. But, on the other side, since each word, the moment it is used, becomes also a unique event, this makes it impossible to totally understand, because uniqueness means that we have nothing to compare it with.

Impossible to understand does not mean impossible to receive. I cannot understand your uniqueness, but still, in the event of communication, it flows to me and I receive it, beyond my understanding.

This is, I think, one way how the general contradiction between objectivity and subjectivity happens.

I am aware that all I have said comes from inside my subjectivity. I have shared my thoughts not as truth, but as a perspective.

doesn't mean at all that there's a conflict — ssu

I am aware that there are so many topics involved in the discussion I have opened. I am going to better explain my personal idea about the reason why the relation between subjectivity and objectivity is conflictual.

Subjectivity introduces ways of thinking based on instinct, emotions, spontaneity, feelings, art. This works as a provocative challenge against minds based on precision, numbers, conclusions, schemes. I think this is connected with mechanisms of society. Society is essentially based on objectivity because it is based on communication. Communication means language made of shared meanings. Shared meanings means objective meanings. If I have a feeling inside me and I can’t find words to share this feeling, I cannot communicate it to society, it remains entirely enclosed inside my subjectivity.

In the history of societies we find frequently individuals who propose concepts that are beyond the shared meanings that circulate in their society. It is easy that concepts that society feels incomprehensible are felt also as dangerous. As a consequence, it has happened several times that an individual has been opposed or even killed by their society because they were introducing concepts hard to share through the traditional concepts that circulated in that society.

I interpret this as objectivity killing subjectivity.

I would interpret this way even the oppression that historically has been suffered by women all over the world. In the perspective of this scheme, women come out as having a way of thinking more open to emotions, feelings, connection to our body, affection, while men have developed systems of thinking (including philosophy as we traditionally know it) based on rigid schemes to allow control, power, understanding, grasping. In this perspective men have seen women as a challenge to the traditional male way of thinking and have reacted with the same stupid violence that ignorant societies have used against some geniuses that were born inside them. Obviously history and facts are always much more complex, they can never be reduced to such a simple scheme. I just find this scheme of objectivity, that has a structural tendency to kill subjectivity, as revelatory of certain mechanisms working in history.
In this context objectivity is, by its nature, always closed minded compared to subjectivity, the same way certain people can’t understand most recent art, music, literature: it happens because subjectivity uses art to introduce new perspectives, which society by definition cannot understand properly, because society is based, as I said, on communication, which is based on objectivity.

The photo you attached to your answer looks very symoblic to me: those people, who are taking photos of the Mona Lisa, in that very moment they are killing the work of art, because they are trying to pull out violently that image from its subjectivity, which is uniqueness, the uniqueness of the original painting, that you cannot take home, and tranfer it into the world of power and control, the world of smartphones, that is a world of objectivity.

This shows also that we cannot do without objectivity: we need to take photographs to make some study possible, to share something about works of art. This means that somehow we, as members of societies, are condemned to kill, to some degree, subjectivity. This doesn’t mean that I justify killing and violence. We need to try to redeem ourselves from this bad mechanism, but, until we do nothing to improve the situation, we are exposed to be killers, even unintentionally and unwittingly.

In my opinion the concept of “understanding” is not a good friend of subjectivity and spirituality, because it is based on analysis. I think that spirituality, rather than understanding, is strongly based on experiencing. The value of understanding, when applied to spirituality, gets tranferred into the experience of a progressive and infinite understanding, rather than the value of conquering definitions; definitions would be like weapons to control and dominate spirituality.

I think that, from a psychological perspective, the attitude of wanting to understand, to analyze, to define, to build clear structures, can be accused of being like walls that we try to build to hide our vulnerability, our frustration for being humans full of imperfections, confusion and competition.

A humble attitude could be conceiving understanding and analyzing not as tools to reach strong conclusions, but as games, which we acknoledge that we practice just because we like to play, we need to play, because playing is a psychological need of us.

Once we clarify this, I think that discussions about consciousness become automatically better. Consciousness will always defeat and even ridiculize attempts to understand it because this concept is strongly connected with the exclusive experience of consciousness that each of us has about our own experience of being conscious of our own thinking, our own being ourselves. This cannot be understood by definition, because “understanding” means translating something into shared concepts, while instead consciousness is intimately connected to a side of experience that is exclusive to each of us. “Exclusive” means exactly “not shared, not shareable” and, as such, there cannot be words to express it, because words are based on sharing. This impossibility happens when we want to understand consciousness, but understanding is not the only thing we can do with consciousness and with words. We can share our consciousness by doing things instead of talking about them. This way consciousness becomes instantly shared. If we conceive “understanding” as a game or a music that we like to play, rather than something serious and strict, then understanding spirituality becomes instantly possible, we start immediately touching it, while previously it was like something continuously escaping from our efforts to understand.

I think that such a discussion is at high risk of betraying its topic since the very beginning, the same way it is betrayed in most discussions and even academic research about it.

I think that NotAristotle has touched the very core of the question: the deep bond and mix between objectivity and subjectivity.

The betrayal I have talked about is when we deal with the question in analytical ways. An analytical approach means talking about spirituality with a mind, a language, that looks for objectivity, schemes, structures. This is the perfect way to talk about non-spirituality. It is similar to talking about music without listening, without experiencing it. This example actually doesn’t work so much, because music, despite being a very subjective experience, is very compatible with objective analytical talking. I think that spirituality, in this context, goes further: it is not just a subjective experience that can be analyzed with objective structures; more than that, it is radical criticism of every objectification, every analysis. You can describe a melody while still keeping in mind your memory of its acoustic effect produced last time you listened to it. Something similar can be done with spirituality, but I think that, in the case of spirituality, the risk of derailing towards a profound oblivion of the original ongoing experience is much more radical. In other words, I think that subjectivity and objectivity can have a dialogue between each other, but they are also somehow enemies to each other: objectivity has some tendency to drown subjectivity and subjectivity doesn’t like this. The history of religions and spiritualities is a history of conflicts to defend and protect subjectivity from the invasion of objectivity. Analyzing spirituality is a job that needs to be done, but, according to what I said, it needs extreme carefulness, it needs some degree of mistrust towards analysis.

Obviously, subjectivity, on the other side, is highly exposed to ambiguity and even dishonesty, that’s why it needs a dialogue with analysis, but it’s like building a dialogue between two people that a moment earlier have been fighting violently with each other. Both of them have wounds now, they are vulnerable and need attention, patience and respect. Diving too confidently into analysis means repeating again a history of oppression against the extreme delicacy and vulnerability of spirituality.

I think that a good way to deal with this question is by acknowledging, since the very beginning, our awareness and even our intention of keeping spirituality, subjectivity, as an interlocutor that sits at our same table of discussion, rather than as an absent person that we talk about; acknowledging that pure and clean analysis, actually, does not exist, we are always conditioned by our subjectivity, even when we are apparently strictly analytical. I think that, instead of trying to be more and more analytical to avoid confusion and ambiguity, we should instead aknowledge that we are always conditioned by our subjectivity and give it space so that it has its talk, its voice, its free expression.

Perhaps it’s good to consider that, for example, what I am writing now, while writing this post, is just the “outcome”, “what comes out”, “the external result” of something that has been inside me. In this situation, this forum, exactly because it is a forum, made of written words, has a huge issue: we discuss about the words that we read and write, with a strong tendency to forget that what is most important is the persons and the experiences that are behind these words. It is true that words and the activity of writing can reveal things of us that we didn’t see before writing, but, still, what they reveal is something behind, what is important is the revealed thing, not the revealing word, that is just an instrument.
In this context, we are strongly tempted to discuss about the mechanisms triggered by the words we read, by the logic instantly triggered by the rules of language and of thinking. Somebody writes a post, like throwing a stone, which triggers a lot of mechanisms intrinsic to those stones, and we debate about these stones, thinking that we are debating about objectivity, reality, while actually we are completely loosing sight of the incommunicable, of which our words are just a translation, which as such will never be faithful to what it translates.
In this context, the problem is not the forum, but the phenomenon of communication itself, even when I try to communicate with myself.
If language is not the author, but is always an instrument for authors, why does philosophy, especially analytical philosophy, concentrate so much on language, this way loosing sight of authors?
We can object that language is what we have, what we can work on. This is true, but it becomes an excuse to completely forget that there are always authors, so that we concentrate just in the mechanisms triggered by language. Shouldn’t philosophy face this challenge of taking into consideration the inexpressible author, without whom no language would exist in this world? I think that this is the problem, the trick, the illusion: we think that what we have and what we can work on is just the product, the outcome, that is language, so we think that the most effective way to reach the author is by working on language, but I think that it is quite evident that language contains in itself a strong tendency to attract our entire attention towards itself, making us forget too much the importance of the inexpressible author.

I think that, at this point, an essential tool to reach the author, is our subjectivity: I must try to reach the author of a message by using my subjectivity, my humanity, my being another author, like the author of the message I am reading and interpreting. I can understand a lot about the other author because I can find in myself, as an another author, a lot of similarities. If I ignore myself as an author and the other author as well, and I reflect just on the mechanisms and logics contained in the produced object, that is the message, the language, how can I expect any good understanding between me and the other author?
I agree that this ideal of a direct contact author-to author, peer-to-peer, is exposed to a lot of misunderstanding, criticism, lack of reliability, but isn’t the activity of enclosing, encapsulating our analysis just around language and logic, even worse, even less faithful to what we should try to understand?

This means that the relationship author-to-author should be studied as a fundamental positive methodology of understanding things, instead of being just considered a limit of subjectivity, so that it gets completely ignored, with the result that philosophy and other disciplines have concentrated their studies on objective languages, logics, structures and mechanisms. I think that my subjectivity, my being an author, should be used as a fundamental dictionary to interpret and translate the messages I receive, while currently, in philosophy, we use just objective dictionaries that make us forget the presence, the existence, of both authors, which is me and the other person.

Of course they do, but isn’t this concern already just another way of deflecting towards this so strongly need of understanding and building strong and clear concepts? I think that a perspective that looks for objective concepts is the worst way of dealing with subjectivity. From an objective perspective, I am sure that the very existence of subjectivity can be radically questioned and I am happy with this. I am not even interested in finding any strong evidence of the existence of subjectivity. I think that now a correct way to talk about subjectivity is doing it from inside our subjectivity, our feeling of who and what we are. Obviously this opens a lot of difficulty in communication, because our traditional philosophical mind quickly feels again and again the need for some clarity, otherwise we can ask and ask again at any moment: what are we talking about? Well, I think we need some courage of diving into this different language, that is the language of art, of subjectivity, of poetry, a language that wants to escape from too much control, but is, instead, made of fragility and vulnerability. I think that, if we as philosophers are perpetually scared of diving into this, it works like a psychological wall that we keep to protect our refusal of acknowledging our vulnerability.

I believe that philosophy takes a stand against common sense. Philosophy must question our most deeply rooted certainties. In that sense, philosophy is there to sadden us, as Deleuze would say, and make us realise our stupidity. Philosophy today has the task of teaching us counter-intuitive things. — JuanZu

Perhaps this point that you have expressed is not so neutral, so innocent, so positive. I have perceived several times, in philosophical discussions here and in other forums, that a topic that initially was interesting, becomes quickly lost in the myriad of objections, different perspectives, questioning, raising issues, scattering, dispersing. As a starting principle, I consider myself a supporter of criticism, comparison of different perspectives and widening of horizons. But more recently I am considering that this kind of work can be done easily, mechanically, it can be even done by a machine, systematically. The final result of this methodology of reasoning and discussing is an emptying out of any content, a fragmentation and pulverization of any content and topic. I don’t think that philosophy can be proud of such results. This way philosophy becomes a destroying machine, permanently ready to demolish, pulverize and make devoid of content and interest any discussion, any topic, any thought.

I think that, starting from this point, we can better understand the deep point of the initial post of this thread: it contains a need to connect philosophy to life, to humanity, to us.

Perhaps a precise reason can be found behind this pulverizing job continuously done by philosophy. We can notice that criticism, questioning, “teaching us counter-intuitive things”, are activities based on understanding and knowing. In opposition to an initial situation of philosophy practiced as an experience, a spiritual experience, as Hadot has shown us, there has been a quick shift towards philosophy perceived as knowledge, awareness, understanding. It is from this conception that philosophy has turned into being criticism. As I said, I favour criticism, because it protects and vaccinates us from deception, contradictions, it reveals a lot of hidden bad mechanisms. But what shall we do once all mechanisms, bad and good ones, have been deconstructed, revealed and pulverized? This is a final effect of analytical philosophy, of enquiring about the smallest units of our reasoning, which is language, in a sense.

As I said, I liked a lot Ciceronianus’ joke

So much for consistency and clarity. What a relief it is to dispense with them! — Ciceronianus

but it seems that, after all, there is something more serious at stake in appreciating too much consistency and clarity: consistency and clarity are obviously necessary and good, but they are also a symptom of philosophy fundamentally conceived as understanding rather than experiencing.

So, if it is true that “philosophy must question our most deeply rooted certainties”, what about the courage of challenging this deification, this sacredness of understanding, fanatically pursuing clarity and consistency as if they were our new secret Gods?

I think that this challenge is what is exactly hiddenly raised by the initial post: what about trying to reconnect philosophy to our so fragile, so vulnerable, so exposed to criticism humanity?

Now we understand that we should shun the road of asking what humanity is, what humanity means, otherwise we fall again into the mentality of worshipping our God named “understanding”. Understanding and criticism are necessary, but not as the primary ground and purpose of philosophy, but rather as medicines. Medicines are necessary, but you can’t have breakfast or lunch by eating just medicines, just pills and capsules. We are humans and, as such, we live, or should live, primarily on food, not on medicines, otherwise medicines become the sickness to be healed from, rather than a healing tool.

In other words, I think that philosophy should face the challenge of appreciating subjectivity as something much more important than we usually think. Normally we think that subjectivity means limits, narrow horizons, being conditioned, being relative. This is true, this is what makes subjectivity fragile and vulnerable, but it seems to me that vulnerability and fragility can be rediscovered now as extremely positive and valuable elements, elements that probably we can learn a lot from women, this way understanding that all I have said has strong connections with philosophy as an activity that so far, symptomatically, has been practiced mainly by men.

:grin: That's really a nice one!

The opposite aspect could be worth positive consideration: fortunately wrong reading is unavoidable, so that life and creativity is possible. I am aware that this way we end up to total confusion, so it might be useful to keep it in a human context to avoid such confusion. This means that both understanding and misunderstanding could be managed in such ways to promote what we humans perceive as some kind of good, of progress, especially if it includes self-criticism.

Ethics in Action: How do you personally resolve ethical contradictions that arise in your everyday life? — Astorre

I think that the origin of the problem is not the contradictions, but the concept of ethics. The world, existence, everything is contradictory. We try to find consistencies, but just because our brain needs to simplify things to be able to get some understanding. I think there is no reason why the world should be consistent rather than contradictory. As a consequence, in my everyday life I try to find harmonizations between this naturally contradictory world and my personal need to make some sense of things, in order to live my humanity.

Coping with Life's Challenges: Does your knowledge of philosophy help you deal with life's difficulties, losses, or existential anxiety? — Astorre

Yes, I would even say that philosophy is my life, that’s why I call it spirituality, following Hadot’s orientation. This does not mean that philosophy mitigates my difficulties. I don’t think that using philosophy this way gives us an advantage. On the contrary, my philosophy tells me that this world, from a human point of view, is essentially evil and we just need to let our human nature exist at its best, which we don’t know what it means, but we can try to explore.

Balancing Depth and Superficiality: How do you find a balance between your philosophical mindset and the superficiality you encounter in others? — Astorre

My perception is that superficiality is not just in uneducated people, but also in 99.99% of philosophers and intellectuals, which includes me of course. I think that what we need is some art of listening, which modern and contemporary philosophy doesn’t teach us so much, because it is made of enormous efforts to define, understand, express, instead of listening. I think that Hadot has shown us that philosophy as a spiritual exercise meant, to a large degree, philosophy as an activity of listening, meditating, contemplating, rather than wanting to get in control of reality and being. This way I can better get, receive, the hidden philosophical language that comes from those people who are commonly considered, even by themselves, uneducated.

Does philosophical thinking change your approach to relationships, friendships, and love? If so, how? — Astorre

Yes, definitely. On one side it makes me perceive a lot of people as shallow, tragic victims of mass standardization, on the other side my philosophical thinking is largely based on self criticism, which means that one thing that philosophy should teach me and itself is being silent, renouncing to think, to understand, to define, and being more open to what cannot be expressed by words, which is always the source of our words, thoughts and definitions.

Wittgestein said that “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”. I disagree. I think that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must, if it is needed, force language, even make violence to language, make it contradictory, absurd, surreal, to make our best attempts to communicate all the same the incommunicable (which is everything in this world). In this context I think that whenever language looks consistent and clear, it is just a bad illusion, a clever trick that we have created to impose our dominion.

I think that this discussion swings continuously between a human, experiential perspective on silence, and another perspective that tries to be as objective as possible, although this second one cannot avoid being human as well.
The first perspective, the one that tries to pay attention to our humanity, our human experience of things, connects silence to a universe of meanings, depending on cultures, situations, contexts. In this context there would be an infinity of things that we could think and say about silence.
The second perspective, that tries to be more realistic, tries to practice some acceptance of what silence is: silence is just silence, which is nothing, no thoughts, no perspectives, no feelings, no meanings. This perspective on silence can be scaring, because it suggests death, no hope, no possibility, loneliness, no help.
Given this swing, I think that a good philosophical way of dealing with silence is a criterion of listening: listening to our humanity and to the tragic nature of silence, that are in a dialogue and also in a continuous conflict with each other. Listening is similar to silence, in that it means making space for something positive to happen, but at the same time it means killing it, because, humanly, we cannot listen without framing, without imprisoning things into our perspectives.
In this context, silence works as a good revelation of what our humanity is: we are able to do marvellous things with silence, but at the same time, in that same moment, we cannot escape killing it. This is also what silence makes to us: it is able to elevate our spirit, but it can also kill it, putting us in front of the tragic nature of absence of meaning, absence of thinkability.

This sounds to me like deconstruction. Deconstruction is a good thing, but it seems to me that it leaves us without any positive suggestions. It deconstructs, but it doesn't construct anything, it is just demolition.

I think that a reason cannot be found and we even shouldn't look for it. Since this topic is all about the purest roots of subjectivity, it would be like asking why we want to practice art, music, poetry, or even philosophy, or even why we should exist. None of these things is ultimately needed for some objective reason. We just find ourselves existing, a lot of people like music, other people don't. I just like to explore such things like my unexpressible subjectivity.

I think you are in the perfect context by connecting what I said with Kierkegaard and Nagel. Thank you for these references. But it seems to me that both of them fall in the problem they want to avoid: by talking about subjectivity they automatically objectify it. I think that true subjectivity is not the kind of subjectivity that we all share: since it is shared, it is an objectified subjectivity. I think that true subjectivity for me in this moment is exclusively the unique subjectivity that I can feel, I can perceive in myself. Other people's subjectivity can never be, for me, true or pure subjectivity, because I cannot think of it without objectifying it. Actually even now, the moment I talk about my unique subjectivity, I have automatically objectified it, so that what the word means is not anymore my true subjectivity even to myself: I cannot think about my own unique subjectivity without objectifying it, because even just thinking means objectifying. I can feel my subjectivity, I cannot think or talk about it.
I think that there are two ways to escape this impossibility to think and talk about it. One way is forcing language, which essentially means doing art, which is talking in artistic, subjective ways, hoping that listeners will be able to find in themselves what I am talking about. The other way is considering that subjectivity has connections with objectivities; by talking about these connections we can hope, again, that listeners will find in themselves their unique feeling of subjectivity, instead of being distracted by the connected objectivities I am talking about.

Can you please explain better how "both consider uniqueness as possibly irremediably subjective"? it souds very close to my idea, but at the same time I am afraid there could be some important difference. Moreover, I am not so expert about both of them, so I am not even sure which books of them I should look at.

why do you think mysticism is inherently radical? — Tzeentch

I think that mysticism in inherently radical because I conceive mysticism as a spiritual experience that connects with its content with an intimacy, depth, strength, superior to any other kind of spiritual experience. So, for example, a Roman Catholic mystic experiences the content of his/her religion in such a way that these things become to them like daily food, emotional fulfillment, the source of each moment of their life. This way, a dogma like the doctrine of the Trinity could be something exposed to many perspectives to a theologian, or to a normal believer, but to a mystic it becomes something so strong, so deep, that can be compared, emotionally, to a sexual intercourse. This means that the mystic will experience the dogma of Trinity in an extreme radical way, not in ways so open to discuss different perspectives.

That’s why I said that mysticism today is difficult, but not impossible. I agree with you, but I think that what you said represents some kind of theoretical mysiticsm, not what really happens. What you said is true in theory, but in practice an orthodox Catholic, for example, cultivates a strong intimacy with God conceived as Trinity, God incarnate in Jesus Christ, God who is the founder of the Roman Catholic church, that is meant to be as the only authentic place where you can experience the sacramental presence of Jesus Christ. Whithout these things, a mystic can be a mystic, but not a Roman Catholic mystic. In this situation he cannot, as you said,

say the same thing about the mystical as a non-theistic Taoist — Fire Ologist

.

I think that, even from a Roman Catholic context, what you said is possible, but only with enormous efforts, difficulties and problems, which make it possible just in theory.

I think that today genuine mysticism is more difficult than in the past, because it cannot escape the challenges coming from radical criticism about our categories, conditioning, connections between different religions and spiritualities. How can you experience today a really deep mysticism, experiencing a strong closeness to God, while, at the same time, having to admit that there are other religions, other Gods, other theologies, criticism about metaphysics? I am not saying that it is impossible, but a today's mystic person cannot just adopt the same mystical attitudes and ways that were adopted by the mystics of old times.
Today we have to admit that too radical mysticism is equivalent to fanaticism or naivety, unless it takes seriously the challenges I have talked about. But a mysticism that is not radical and not deep is just not mysticism: what makes mysticism is exactly radicality and depth. This makes mysticism difficult today.

And it may well be the case that -- again, uniquely to this problem of subjectivity -- what we think about the self constitutes the self. — J

I think that there is a risk in every attempt to describe the self: turning the description into a rule. This creates the premises for racism, violence and dictatorship. If we say "the self is for sure this and that", the automatic consequence is that those who look like having a different concept or experience of the self are at risk of being conceived as less human, less conscious, less intelligent, deserving less respect. When I try to describe my being lost in the sea of my experience of myself, other people might tell me that they do not perceive at all all these intriguing thoughts and feelings. Think, for example, of Buddhists, who think that our self has to disappear in the unity of the whole, of the universe, although I am not sure that now I am describing properly Buddhist ideas about this. Or think of extroverts, who find themselves happy and fulfilled not when they think deeply about their self, but when they experience other people's living presence, connections, relationships. Or think about languages (I am not sure about this, but I have heard something like this) that don't have at all the first singular person pronoun "I", or perhaps "you" as well.
In this context I think that any kind of philosophy of the self should be conceived like a special branch of art, like, for example, the music of Mozart. Mozart is a marvellous, great and fantastic musician, but if someone tells us that they don't like Mozart, they rather like Haydn and Beethoven and they find Mozart meaningless and boring, there is nothing we can complain about, despite Mozart being universally recognized as one of the top musicians of all times.
This is one more reason, in my opinion, why we should be skeptical about attempts to find scientific or quantum explanations of our experience of the self, consciousness, or of the self of other people.
On the contrary, if these things are framed in the much freer mentality of art, they can become great points for reciprocal dialogue, exploration, with a mentality of openness, interest and respect towards those who have radically different ideas and experiences about the self.

it's that there is nothing useful to say about them — T Clark

is not interesting and valuable — T Clark

I think that, by referring to usefulness and interest, you have touched an important point. I think that an essential reason why philosophy today is in a crisis is because it seems not useful nor interesting. I think this is a result of becoming more and more technical, professional, scientific, precise, this way becoming so abstract that even professional philosophers can't clarify what this clarity is supposed to be used for, once it is (hypothetically) reached. Today's philosophy has become less and less human, less and less related to life, to the human experience of existence. I think that attention to experienced subjectivity, even at the cost of renouncing to some control, power, clarity, precision, has an ability to recover philosophy to life. We would just need to work on it, especially to make it in a dialog with the precision of analysis.

Consciousness can be studied just as much as oranges can — T Clark

I think that my perception of the situation of consciousness can be compared to a house inhabited by ghosts. Science can see the house and it says “Here is consciousness: we can see the house, we can study it, that’s all”. My feeling is that there are ghosts in that house, but, since they are ghosts, I have no way to give any evidence of them. On the other side, science cannot say “There are no ghosts in that house; the whole is the house, there is nothing else”. In other words, science cannot say that what it cannot study does not exist. It would be easy to object to this: how do you know that something does not exist, since you acknowledge that you cannot study it? In this situation the conclusion is that no dialogue is possible. It is similar to the question about the existence of God: it is impossible both to prove that God exists and to prove that does not exists. Science cannot claim that consciousness can be entirely reduced to what science is able to study of it. How can you know that you have exhausted all that is possible to know about any topic? So, I think it is more correct to say that science can study some aspects of consciousness: this is clear, provable. But, once science has given evidence of those aspects of consciousness that it can study, how can it say that there is nothing more?

Despite this situation of impossible dialogue about ghosts, I like to explore possibilities, if something more can be clarified, if some kind of dialogue is possible yet.

Perhaps a point of dialogue is the concept or experience of uniqueness.

Science can study what is shared, repeatable, measurable, but is completely unable to understand things that are absolutely unique. In every object of study and knowledge science selects things and aspects that are shared and studies them. About consciousness, science can study what is shared, repeatable, measurable. Every single object has its uniqueness, obviously, but normally this doesn't make it specially interesting. For example, a flower might have tiny shades that make it unique, actually every flower has its unique aspects, an identical flower will never exist again, but this doesn't make it specially interesting. The unique moments and aspects of consciousness and subjectivity are different, because they are what makes us feel that we exist and we are not just working machines.

If I think of myself, I get lost in the question why I am in this body and not in another body, in this period of history and not in another one. From a scientific point of view there is a quick answer: you feel yourself in your body because your atoms and molecules do not coincide with the atoms and molecules of other people. This answer can give me an idea how my brother can feel different from his friend. But both my brother and his friend have an essential aspect: no one of them is me. I feel myself in a completely different situation from my brother and from his friend, because I cannot command either of their bodies, but I see that I can command my body. When you say that I am me because of my atoms, this assumes a perspective that can be the perspective of my brother, or the perspective of his friend. But, if I consider seriously my perspective, the special fact that I am inside it, from my perspective there is something special in my situation. I cannot tell myself that I am just one like a lot of other ones. If this was true, why don’t I feel me in the body of other people? Why does my perception of myself have this special feeling, that I feel in me, inside myself and not inside anybody else? If I pay attention to my feeling of myself, it is impossible to me to tell myself that I am just another one: I would lie to myself. My brother’s friend is just another one, both he and my brother are “others”. But I am not “other” to me: how is that? How is that all other people are all “others” and I, instead, am not “other”, but me? Why am I not just another one to me, the same way, from my perspective, his friend is another one to my brother? Instead of being I in these years, in this body, it could have been somebody else, so that my perspective would not exist, the same way it didn’t exist in the past. Somebody else might have been born in my body, so that today there wouldn’t be me feeling me and exploring these questions. Why there is me now here? What makes me be and feel me? It would be easy to say that I feel me because there are mechanisms in me that produce this feeling. The problem is that this answer ignores the inevitable speciality that my perspective has to me.

I think that oranges are different from consciousness, with reference to this discussion. I think that oranges are not very subjective. That's why science is able to say a lot about orange, a lot of strong, measurable and very unquestionable things. About consciousness, science is even unable to determine if it exists and what it is exactly. The reason, in my opinion, is that our experience of our subjectivity here and now is almost entirely coincident with the concept of subjectivity itself. I think that our experience of subjectivity that happens in the present is the most subjective thing that we can think of. In this situation, wanting to objectify subjectivity, to be able to study it, is like wanting to put a kiss or a hug in a slide to be able to observe it with a microscope.

I didn't mean that real things are different from the study of them. Of course everyone knows that studying an orange is not an orange. What I meant is that they think that they are studying subjectivity, they think that subjectivity, or consciousness is what they are making their research about. Against this thought, I oppose that they do not study subjectivity, they do not study consciousness. This criticism of mine, obviously, can be applied to everything, if we generalize it. Obviously, a lot of work of physicists who study the stars, for example, is not strictly and directly connected to the real stars, but to our ideas of them. This is inevitable. However, I think that certain topics can be objectified more easily, while other ones are more exposed to completely losing any connection with them. I think that objectifying stars, for example, is not a big issue. On the contrary, I think that science is so powerful and so valuable exactly because of its strong objectifying methodology. But objectifying subjectivity sounds to me like wanting to answer to a hug and a kiss with a mathematical lecture. I don't deny that even hugs and kisses can be reduced to maths, although infinitely complex maths. But I think that the task of philosophy is not just reducing and understanding. As I said in my opening post, I think that, for some topics, the criterion of wanting to understand is wrong even in philosophy. I think that philosophy can relate itself with topics in ways different from wanting to understand, to reduce, to explain. We know that philosophers, especially the ancient ones, were not all just thinkers and "understanders": philosophy was to many of them a style of living.

Essentially I agree: I think that it impossible to get rid completely of objectivism, both in our language and in our ideas. But this doesn't mean to me that objectivity is the world, is reality, is where everything ultimately ends up to. What I do is an effort and I think that this effort is condemned to be unable to give any evidence about itself, about its own existence. On the other side, I am sure that objectivity is condemned as well to be exposed to criticism, because it is unable to give evidence of being independent from subjectivity.
I think that the best way is trying to build a dialog between subjectivity and objectivity. This sounds very similar to me to the dialogue that, at the end, "analytical" and "continental" (or postmodern) philosophers have tried to elaborate.
In this context, personally, I have a tendency to favor subjectivity, relativism, postmodernism.
I also agree, essentially, about the problem of questioning and self-questioning. It is never possible to give evidence about our questioning being really radical: it can always be accused of being just hypocrisy. Still, I think that efforts are worth doing: if nothing can be proven, not even questioning, we can at least make attempts. I think that this criterion of "making attempts" is very useful to avoid getting stuck in infinite and sterile polemics.

Emily Dickinson is provocative, critical, rebellious, of course, and I appreciate this. I agree that the very act of doing philosophical research about consciousness can hide an attempt to assert a specific concept of consciousness that wants to meet or even impose the specific expectations of a specific society. In this context I agree that even what I interpret in myself as an instinctive perception, feeling of my present self, could be nothing but a result of what my society has been able to introduce into my way of thinking and perceiving myself.
However, it seems to me that my feeling myself as a living perspective, as a point of view present here and now, still deserves consideration. After all, I make no metaphysical claims of being somebody. My feeling me is just a feeling and I take care not to want to understand it, as I think that trying to understand is not a faithful approach to this feeling.
I think that my concept of self feeling in the present can help to have respect of others, not only people, but also plants and animals.
In this context I even think that, probably, my feeling I and Dickinson's saying "I am nobody" are almost the same thing, despite looking like the contrary of each other, because both of them are against a metaphysical understanding of the I, rather taking the way of humility, criticism and self-criticism.

From a humorous point of view, I find this topic very similar to this one, that is about knowledge rather than language.
In both cases, a thought comes to my mind: so you think that human language (or knowledge) is now so advanced, so great, so powerful, so perfect, that now the problem is not about finding its possibilities, but about finding its impossibilities! So, now our difficulty is about finding what is not perfect in our language or knowledge. We have serious difficulties at finding limits in our language and knowledge! In other words, we are discovering that we are gods and now, just out of curiosity, we would like to see if there is something able to show that we are not exactly 100% gods!

Epistemology includes criticism about the limits of our scientific knowledge and it warns us against the idea that we can get ultimately objective knowledge. So what does it mean "epistemically objective"?

Actually, from what I said, we can deduce that nothing can be expressed by language. When I say "your subjectivity", I guess and hope that you will be able to find in yourself what I mean. Actually this happens continuously whenever we communicate and use language, even when we communicate with ourselves, which is when we just think.

I think that the idea that, by definition, you cannot express by language, is your subjectivity. When we express things by language, we objectify them. That's why we can talk about subjectivity in general: because we objectify it. But your specific subjectivity cannot be expressed. If we try, we are objectifying it, it isn't anymore your subjectivity. This also means, of course, that by saying "your subjecivity" I cannot know what I am talking about. What I am talking about is actually my hope that you will find inside yourself something similar to what I consider "my specific subjectivity".

The example of Daniel Dennett shows that we don't need to be believers to be human. It's the same debate when atheists show that they are able to have humanity, sensitivity, empathy, without needing a religion or a metaphysical morality. I agree with them. When I say that, once we limit ourselves to objectivity, nobody is suffering when someone is tortured, I don't imply that attention to our inexpressible subjectivity is necessary to be human. This would mean posing subjectivity as the basis for a new dogmatic religion. Rather, I think that attention to subjectivity should be considered like art. If someone doesn't have the spirit of a musician, or can't see anything interesting in Van Gogh or Shakespeare, it doesn't mean that that person is a beast ready to kill and torture anybody. Attention to subjectivity is not something that we need, it's not the salvation of humanity. It is just something that some people talk about, refer to.
In this context I think we should acknowledge that there is no way to definitely, strongly, ban violence from human behaviour. This is the confusion contained in the New York declaration. They want to define a scientific ground to ban violence from humanity, but violence is subjective, you cannot avoid it by taking science as your weapon against violence. Dennett was a good hearted person, he didn't need to add anything to his objectivistic mind to be a generous heart, but that's all. The New York declaration is an attempt to go beyond this: they try to turn science into the necessary thing that religions and morality have been revealed unable to be.
This is, I think, where attention to subjectivity can not only do something, but especially show the correct methodology: the correct methodology is integrating in a dialog acceptance of unprovable arguments, of which subjectivity is the main one, and science.
The mixture, the messing up of references to subjectivity and objectivity in the New York declaration is not a completely bad thing: attention to subjectivity and objectivity need to go together, but in a clear dialog, aware of their different characteristics, rather than just in a confused mix, where science is surreptitiously tempted to fill the place that has been left empty by the deconstruction of religions.