What is subjectivity?
Some philosophers question the very concept of subjectivity as deeply flawed. The Christian tradition--which science participates in--uses subjectivity as the site of truth.
Sometimes called inner experience, it is supposed to make the reality of humans unique, which other things in the universe do not have.
The error is that only humans can have or use intelligence. Thus intelligence is a function of the human mind and the subjective.
Sometimes called inner experience, it is supposed to make the reality of humans unique, which other things in the universe do not have.
The error is that only humans can have or use intelligence. Thus intelligence is a function of the human mind and the subjective.
Comments (75)
Subjectivity is that which, generally speaking, pertains to the 1st person experience of an individual. I think science actually denies any such truth in its methodology: it necessarily approaches empirical knowledge from the perspective of 3rd person as a methodological approach.
I am not sure how science participates in (1) christian tradition or (2) subjectivity: with respect to the latter, it tries to eliminate it into 3rd person light and with respect to the former I see no relevance whatsoever.
I think both more materialist and idealist minded people would agree to this. Even if one is reducible to the brain, that doesn't eliminate the real 1st person experience.
How is this a flaw? Ideally, what would constitute as "without flaw" then?
Same metaphysics. Science needs to treat subjectivity as an opposite.
Up-down, left-right, cold-warm, old-new, big-little, intriguing-boring, violent-peaceful.
Yes. Notice the fruitless debate between science and religion. They need each other to protect their knowledge domains.
This is true of every metaphysics that even hints at any kind of "subject" / "object" divide. This has no specific reference to Christianity and science. Moreover, to perform scientific investigation, one must, at a minimum, adhere to methodological naturalism, which is not required for one to practice Christianity. Likewise, most scientists tend to be also ontological naturalists, which is incompatible with Christianity. The metaphysics is drastically different, but not necessarily mutually exclusive. In other words, their metaphysics (in totality) is not even remotely close.
This did not originate nor is specific to Christianity, so I am not understanding why you are specifically comparing the two. Likewise, this doesn't entail that two metaphysics are equivocal in virtue of sharing some particular aspect. Science and Christianity do not depend on one another.
How so? Science and religion are not yin and yang. They are not the same as cold/hot. Yes science needs "subjectivity" to assert "objective facts", but that has nothing to do with religion. Religion is not the source of the concept of "subjectivity".
Same reason the greeks didn't have such a thing as "mental illness", instead they attribute it to contact with a god: during their time the knowledge they had suggested no such thing as brain malfunctions. We are heavily influenced by the context of our era.
I am not sure what you are trying to imply in that question. They were self-conscious back then, but that has no bearing on whether such a term or any notion of it existed back then. Contextually to us, mentally ill people existed back then, even though it didn't "exist" for them (in their context, it was a god of some sort inflicting or supplementing the person). Nowadays you hear God, you are schizophrenic, back then it was divine experience. Nowadays a psychedelic trip is simply the manipulation of neurotransmitters, but for them you were meeting god(s).
I think they did. They had doctors.
"Psychological and mental illnesses were viewed as the effect of nature on man and were treated like other diseases.Hippocrates argued that the brain is the organ responsible for mental illnesses and that intelligence and sensitivity reach the brain through the mouth by breathing. Hippocrates believed that mental illnesses can be treated more effectively if they are handled in a similar manner to physical medical conditions"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4263393/
This seems to be your anthropocentric "error".
Undefined words, thus an incoherent sentence.
Get lost.
I thing that is wrong or vague. That we have experience can be define as the subjective, but our experiences themselves are not merely subjective.
My point is that this notion of subjectivity reifies inner experience and makes it a form of epistemic solipsism.
No, you are right, something has to be said for the consistent nature of the objective world. It wouldn't be so reliable if there was nothing really out there. But we never get to actually see the objective world. We will always be limited to our subjective viewpoint. We spend our entire lives making a really-good approximation of what is real, but we never have the chance to prove it undeniably.
Science claims only physical particles are real. Christianity claims the spirit is real. Thus science is the outer and Christianity is the inner. A dialectical relation.
What is the objective world?
A shared subjective account. :wink:
What Hume would call convention, or custom.
Sure. Or social constructivism.
:lol:
Have you ever taken a philosophy class?
Where?
So, you never took a philosophy class. It shows.
The stuff we call "inner" they called divine. They thought the universe was alive with lust and arrogance.
We say those things only reside between our ears.
Who knows how our descendants will describe it.
No.
Example? And please don't cite Homer. We are talking philosophy.
We're talking about their worldview. That's Homer, not Aristotle.
Of course it is Aristotle.
You're ignorant of the facts.
You have stated none.
I don't think this really contended with anything I wrote. The main point was that the reason "self-consciousness" didn't exist back then for the greeks is simply because contextually they didn't view it that way. Another example is still mental illness: I was speaking predominantly not in terms of one particular. The greek mythology clearly indicates a lack of "mental illness" in greek culture. That's why plato isn't writing in those terms (nor in terms of self-consciousness in that sense). One person paving the way towards acknowledging mental illness does not negate what I was trying to convey.
Not at all. That is ontological naturalism and, by extension, materialism, which is not synonymous with "science". The only requirement to partake in science is methodological naturalism.
"spirit" is not necessarily equivocal to "subject". Moreover, there's a multitude of religions which claim there's a spirit. Hindus claim it is all one spirit, is that also something science is dependent on?
Not at all. One can claim there is a "subject" or "subjects" without ever subscribing to Christianity. One can even scientifically posit a "subject" without invoking any religion. There's no dialectical relation here between Christianity and science: at best, there is a relationship between positing 3rd person knowledge and 1st person knowledge, that's it.
You're confusing methodology with ontology.
Your arrogance inhibits your capacity to learn. You're not a tenth the philosopher 180 Proof has proved himself to be.
Quoting Jackson
For what it's worth, in the 1970s, Julien Jaynes wrote "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" in which he claimed that people were not self-conscious in the same manner that modern people are until about 3,000 years ago in Greece and later in other parts of the world. Before that, voices in the head we attribute to consciousness were attributed to gods. I have oversimplified his thesis. It's not one I buy, but it wasn't laughed out of the house either. The evidence he uses includes passages from Homer.
Quoting Bob Ross
I am confused by the terminology that is used when discussing the human experience of reality. When I talk about it, I usually call it "introspection." A lot of what I understand about reality, reason, perception, emotion, and other mental processes comes from observing and trying to understand my own experience of my own mental processes. That can be reinforced by other peoples reporting of the results of their own introspection and also the results of more objective scientific observations.
How does that differ from "subjectivity" which is the subject of this thread? According to Wikipedia:
[Subjectivity] is most commonly used as an explanation for that which influences, informs, and biases people's judgments about truth or reality; it is the collection of the perceptions, experiences, expectations, and personal or cultural understanding of, and beliefs about, an external phenomenon, that are specific to a subject.
And that brings us to "phenomenology." From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.
The language used in discussions of phenomenology; e.g. intentionality, aboutness, embodiment, what-is-it-like, qualia; is completely different than the language I use when I talk about my own or other people's experience gained through introspection or empathy. I can't see how the ideas included in the study of phenomenology help me understand my personal experience or other's.
What is this?
You are confused about everything.
get lost. sick of you.
I have studied a lot of Greek thought and I find Jaynes' theory to be wrong.
And what is naturalism?
What to make of the 'know thyself' impetus in Plato? Our existence as evidence of some kind.
What do you make of it?
The first thing it suggests to me is that the investigation of what consciousness is did not start with a 'Christian' idea of the subject. Plato talks a lot about what we cannot verify for sure. His confidence that he can rely upon himself to decide is an affirmation of sorts. He may not know much but he affirms that he is someone who could know.
You don't mention Descartes, but it seems like he would be the exemplar of what you object to. He put the personal experience of the 'real' directly against what can be verified. Is that a Christian thing in your understanding?
Descartes exemplifies the Christian metaphysics. To be clear, I am talking metaphysics and not theology.
Nah. Medieval Christians thought hell was underground because of volcanos and they thought heaven was a rigid dome up above us: the firmament.
What about my suggestion that thinkers have been struggling with 'consciousness' well before the Middle Ages?
I think that was my point.
Again, I am not talking about theology.
That was their metaphysics.
No...but this is a dead end.
Perhaps you could expand upon that since you put so much emphasis on subjectivity being a 'Christian' thing.
The ancient he called natural consciousness. The modern he called self-consciousness. Natural consciousness does not mean 'naturalism' but treating everything as an object. Christianity invented the idea of subjectivity, that reality is a function of self-consciousness.
This great idea of mental illness came from letting go of the idea that crazy people are possessed by demons. Again: the mental was original thought of as divine and as concrete as fire, water, air, and earth.
Ancient Greeks had doctors and were not mystics.
How is that related to what I said?
Then I did not understand what you said or why.
I think you're wedded to the idea that there is one “Christian" metaphysics (unless I'm misunderstanding you.)
Early Christians lived in the so-called "age of essence.". Think Plato. Christians just absorbed the science of the day. They didn't really bring any new innovations to it.
That era gave way to the "age of mechanism.". Aquinas was in on that as he inducted Aristotle into Christian thought.
Mechanistic metaphysics died when Newton introduced the idea of gravity, and again, Christianity went along for the ride.
With all due honor and respect to Hegel, I think sometimes he was trying to do something that doesn't really fit the facts.
I think you are.
I never heard of St Thomas being referred to as a mechanist. Will you explain that?
Hegel wrote a History of Philosophy. One can dispute his claims, but he knows the history of philosophy.
Certainly traditional Christianity is dualistic, but at some level most every belief system is. That is, everyone acknowledges we experience things and most acknowledge there are things. The debate typically centers upon how we explain the experience versus the object.
My point here is that there is nothing particularly Christian and contrary to science or physicalism about claiming there is a phenomenal state apart from the object.
My understanding of the high regard for subjectivism among Christians (as in Kierkegaard's famous line "subjectivity is truth") relates to the idea that truth is found in the experience of living life, of obtaining meaning and understanding by having the experience.
Saying you need Christianity (or religion or God generally) to address inner states doesn’t give science its due.
:sweat:
Yes. I saying experience is objective.
Then what is subjective?
That is the topic of the thread. I am saying the subject--object dichotomy is false. I gave reasons why.
Quoting Jackson
Quoting Jackson
I don't see how these 3 quotes from you are consistent.
What is inconsistent?
:snicker: Corrected!