A Program Delineated

A Program Delineated

I laid out the general form of a philosophical program in “Philosophy of Objective and Subjective”; here I will enumerate some instances of how this program might be pursued. Please don’t expect much beyond the suggestive and superficial, indeed list-like. The main aim will be to identify the possible subjective basis of a given concept (with the emphasis on “possible”). Generally, we look for a perceptual state or process that might serve as a subjective platform for concept creation; it isn’t the concept itself but only a preconceptual perceptual means of initiating conceptualization. An example might be the concept of necessity as represented by possible worlds: this provides the kind of perceptual representation that comes naturally to us as perceiving creatures—a kind of space populated by discrete objects. It need not be the case that necessity is such a fact; rather, it is a way of thinking that conforms to our representational preferences. It will appeal to us as an account of how things are, because it fits our natural point of view as supplied by our perceptual (visual) nature. It could exist alongside a less subjective representation that comes less naturally to us. In the case of space and time we could likewise rely on our perceptual faculties to provide a congenial foundation: how we experience these things, as opposed to how we might abstractly describe them. Similarly for the self—a kind of substance akin to the substances we routinely perceive (yet different). An exceptionally naïve individual might actually picture the self as a body within a body (a homunculus).

Logic, mathematics, and ethics pose stiffer problems of subjectivization (if I may coin such a word), but here too it isn’t hard to find subjective counterparts to them that linger in our thoughts. Thus, logical consequence might be represented as a type of psychological compulsion. The sophisticated reasoner might well officially repudiate such a conception, but that doesn’t mean it plays no psychological role; it might have been a childhood prototype for what later became the more objective concept of entailment. In mathematics it is easy to see the fingers as providing an entry point into the abstractly mathematical; we think of numbers initially as corresponding to digits (note the word). Geometry is surely initially understood by means of seeing concrete figures, and this association may linger. In the case of ethics, we may appeal to feelings of sympathy or fear of punishment; ethics surely has its earliest basis in such subjective attitudes, and may not get much beyond them in many adults. What is notable is that when the subject tries to get beyond such primitive subjective facts, he is apt to become vague and lost for words. He doesn’t quite know that whereof he speaks (a theme of empiricists like Hume). The crutches thus never get completely thrown away. It is as if we are condemned to be subjective, even against our better judgment.

What about language? Clearly, we experience it, actively and passively. It is hard to deny that this experience shapes our conception of what language is, though it doesn’t exhaust it. We have a kind of double conception of language: as we perceive it and as we think of it in the abstract (a finite system of symbols combinable into an infinity of meaningful sentences). A totally objective conception of language would be difficult to acquire and completely unnatural. Language has a phenomenology. Linguistics has both a subjective and an objective department. Psychology is much the same: we have a subjective view of our own minds as well as scientific knowledge of mind. These may compete with each other as systems of understanding. Our concept of action likewise oscillates between the subjective and objective: the point of view of the agent and the “view from nowhere” of the disinterested observer or theorist (first-person and third-person).

More technically, Strawson’s analysis of definite descriptions is more subjectively influenced than Russell’s: Strawson is impressed by how the utterance of the sentences in question strikes us, while Russell wants to know the structure of the fact considered in itself. The true justified belief analysis of knowledge takes the point of the knower more seriously than reliability theories of knowledge. Wittgenstein’s view of games is more subjectively influenced than Bernard Suits’s analysis, given that it emphasizes observable features, while Suits adopts a more abstract approach. We might say that subjectively Wittgenstein is right about the concept while objectively Suits is right. Description theories of names adopt a first-person point of view, while causal theories take an objective standpoint. We see the attractions of a given theory by adopting a subjective or objective perspective. The subjective-objective contrast runs through many a philosophical issue.[1]

[1] Of course, this idea was a main theme of Thomas Nagel’s The View from Nowhere.