Objective and Subjective Knowledge

Objective and Subjective Knowledge

We must first make a firm distinction between objective and subjective facts, on the one hand, and objective and subjective conceptions of facts, on the other.[1] That is, we must distinguish the application of these terms to the world (objects, properties) from their application to mental representations of the world (perceptions, thoughts, knowledge). A subjective fact would be something like a belief or state of consciousness; a subjective conception would be a subjective representation of a fact. Thus, there can be subjective and objective conceptions of subjective facts, and similarly for objective facts. For example, there might be subjective and objective conceptions of shape, this being a type of objective fact; and there might be subjective and objective conceptions of pain, this being a type of subjective fact. I will not here be much concerned with subjective and objective facts, but rather with subjective and objective conceptions. What, then, is that distinction? Roughly, it is the distinction between representations from a particular point of view and representations that prescind from any particular point of view—that are independent of point of view. Just to fix initial intuitions, we can distinguish the point of view of a dog from that of a human, given the sensory and cognitive differences between them (smell, hearing, etc.). Each species has its own distinctive point of view—there are many types of subjective perspective—while the universe itself has only one inherent reality. Subjective conceptions are subject-relative, multiple, and idiosyncratic. By contrast, objective conceptions (if such there be) are absolute, singular, and universal. There are many subjective points of view on the same objective reality, but objective points of view converge on reality itself. We will have more to say about this distinction later; for now, I am just trying to mobilize intuitions along familiar lines. The subjective reflects the nature of the subject; the objective reflects the nature of the object. We can think of the world subjectively or we can think of it objectively (or so it seems). I want to ask which domains of knowledge fall into which category: what do we know objectively and what do we know subjectively?

We already know that we can’t read conception off from fact: an objective fact can be known objectively or subjectively, and a subjective fact can be known subjectively or objectively. It depends on the manner of knowing not on the nature of the object known. Thus, we can’t infer that physics is (conceptually) objective because it deals with (ontologically) objective facts; and we can’t infer that psychology is (conceptually) subjective because it deals with (ontologically) subjective facts. In fact, I think it is the other way about: physics is subjective and psychology is objective—or the latter is more objective than the former. The reason is that our knowledge of physics reflects our subjective modes of apprehension more than our knowledge of psychology does. The latter is less subjectively mediated than the former. This is simply because physics is known via perception, but psychology isn’t; that is, we know the nature of the subject matter of physics on the basis of our sensory evidence, whereas we know the nature of the subject matter of psychology non-perceptually. Mainly we know physics via vision, but we don’t know the natural kinds of psychology by seeing them; we know it introspectively or “intuitively”. Our conception of the mental is thus closer to its intrinsic nature, and hence more objective (object-centered). This is implicit in traditional epistemology, particularly empiricism, because of the doctrine that knowledge is derived from sense experience. The content of physical theories is supposed to derive from the character of sensory experience, especially visual experience. But vision is par excellence subjective, i.e., relative to the perceiver; it is the original home of perspective. How the world is seen and perceived generally is relative to the species in question. So, the physical world will be apprehended via sensory experience, which is to say subjectively (“the cause of these experiences”). At the least our grasp of physics will be subjectively infused, from the very large to the very small. This is a familiar observation, which need not be labored. The interesting point is that the same thing is not true of our knowledge of psychology: our grasp of the nature of mind is not visually mediated; it is more an example of direct objective knowledge. We know just what pain is, objectively, not merely how it sensorily seems to us. We immediately apprehend its essence, to put it in old-fashioned language. Consequently, psychology contains more objective content than physics; it is less subjective. Its conceptions are less subject-dependent, idiosyncratic, species-relative (consider what an intelligent dog’s physics would be like). Aliens with radically different senses from ours would conceive the physical world differently from us, but they would have much the same conception of the contents of minds (assuming objective psychological constancy). Pain seems the same to anyone who has it, but motion seems different according to one’s mode of perception of it (consider a blind animal).

I now want to put forward a bold conjecture: a priori knowledge in general is more objective than a posteriori knowledge. The reason is clear: a posteriori knowledge is sense-dependent while a priori knowledge is not. The former is “based on experience”, but experience varies from subject to subject; while the latter is not so based and hence not so variable. I mean to include logic, mathematics, and ethics: these are characterized by an absence of sensory foundation, and therefore do not partake of the subjectivity of the sensory. In a sense, our knowledge of them is more direct, less mediated by perception, and hence less beholden to the varieties of sense experience. Our conceptions of the a priori will have more in common with those of alien subjects precisely because they are not based on perceptual experience. You can vary the senses but leave the a priori intact conceptually. Thus, ethics is more objective than physics in the sense explained (there may be other senses in which it is less objective). Logic, for its part, is manifestly more objective than physics (or chemistry, geology, astronomy, etc.), precisely because its epistemology is not dependent on the senses; we don’t think of entailment visually. Of course, physics and astronomy were once highly subjective in that motion was taken as relative to the stationary earth, because of our naive perception of it; but it is also hard to deny that our picture of the physical world is determined by our perception of it. This is not true of logic or mathematics or ethics. The a priori stands above the senses, or apart from them; the a posteriori, by contrast, is up to its neck in perceptual subjectivity. Accordingly, the objective facts of physics are conceived subjectively, at least in part, while the a priori sciences are proudly objective in their mode of conception. The concept of gravity, as we have it, is more subjective than the concept of logical entailment, say. Folk physics is more subjective than folk logic (or folk ethics); and the same may be said of more professional brands of physics, these being rooted in folk conceptions. Phenomenology too is more objective than physics in the intended sense, because of its freedom from the tyranny of the visual. Physics is skewed in a way the a priori sciences are not (including phenomenology).[2]

[1] For background the reader should consult Thomas Nagel’s discussion of objective and subjective in The View from Nowhere, chapter 1.

[2] I take this point to belong to that peculiar philosophical genus, the shocking truism. Physics is perhaps the most subjective of all subjects!