Subjective and Objective

The distinction between subjective and objective is often used in philosophy, but it is less often articulated, still less analyzed.[1] I will do that. The task is not particularly difficult, though there are glitches to be ironed out. The distinction is well-founded and its basic nature easily understood. We can begin with the dictionary (OED) definition: for “subjective” we have “based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinion; dependent on the mind for existence”; for “objective” we have “not dependent on the mind for existence; actual”. For philosophical purposes, the second definition is the appropriate one, not the definition in terms of personal feelings etc. Many things count as subjective without being based on feelings, tastes, or opinions (see below). The main limitations of the mind-dependence definition are (a) specifying what kind of dependence, (b) saying what is meant by “the mind”, (c) the lack of any positive characterization of the objective, and (d) the restriction to the mind as the sole source of subjectivity. We don’t want to say that logical inference produces subjectivity simply because the premises of an argument are beliefs (states of the mind) on which a conclusion depends. Also, the mind is a very various thing, so what specifically generates subjectivity? Is it anything mental or only some mental things? But more important are (c) and (d). First, let’s make it explicit that we are talking about mental representations and their content: we want to know what makes a representation subjective or objective—a perception, a thought, a sentence, an item of knowledge. Then question (c) is what a mental representation is dependent on when it is objective, granted that it is not dependent on the mind (whatever that is taken to include). Also, must the subjectivity-producing fact always be a mental fact? Can it ever be a physical fact?

The answer to the first question must surely be: the world, what exists outside the mind. For simplicity, let’s just speak of the physical world: then we can say that a representation of the physical world is objective if and only if it depends on the physical world. To be more precise, it must depend on the physical world beyond the subject’s body—ordinary objects surrounding the subject. These cause instances of the representation to occur; they explain the occurrence of the representation. In short, objective representations are dependent on external objects, while subjective representations are dependent on internal states of the subject. I say “internal states” because I want to lift the restriction to mental states, for several reasons. First, a mindless zombie could in principle have subjective representations, given that it allows its representations to be influenced by internal physical states just like those occurring in someone with genuine feelings etc. Second, an eliminative materialist can make use of the subjective-objective distinction while denying that minds exist at all, so long as internal states of the subject exercise control over the formation of representations instead of external facts. Third, illness or injury could induce the subject to form beliefs that are not appropriately sensitive to external facts but stem from internal physiological pathologies—these need not be mental. Representations can be subjective just by virtue of their internal causation, whether mental or otherwise; what matters is their detachment from external reality. We might even say that the dictionary has it the wrong way round: a belief about the external world is objective if and only if it is appropriately caused by that world, while a subjective belief is one not so caused (being caused by an internal state of the subject, mental or physical). What matters, intuitively, is what led up to the formation of the belief—external objects or internal states cut off from such objects. Is the belief object-generated or subject-generated? Is it held because of the facts it concerns or is it held because of certain internal perturbations? That is the crux of the distinction.

With these glitches taken care of we can now turn to classifying philosophical positions as subjectivist or objectivist: does our definition capture the intended notions? First, color (and other secondary qualities): perceptions of color are subjective in that the origin of such perceptions lies within the perceiver, and similarly for beliefs about color. The cause of color perceptions is internal to the perceiver (according to subjectivist views), so they come out as subjective by our criterion. Perception of primary qualities comes out as objective, since it is external features of objects that cause these perceptions; exogenous not endogenous causation. Colors come from the subject; shapes come from the object. Likewise, hallucinations stem from within, whereas veridical perceptions stem from without, so the former are subjective and the latter objective. In the case of perceptual constancies, objectivity arises when (for example) the retinal image is corrected in the direction of veridicality; the image is an aspect of the organism, and it can create subjective impressions of things that belie the objective facts.[2] Image and object are out of sync and objectivity requires correction of what the image suggests. Constancies are the result of amending the proximal retinal image to fit the distal objects, i.e., removing subjectivity from the visual output. Ethical subjectivism is precisely the doctrine that values originate from inside the subject: desires, inclinations, emotions. Ethical objectivism, by contrast, claims that moral judgment is responsive to facts external to the subject. So, this pair of doctrines tracks the definition I have proposed. The same goes for aesthetic values: if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then it is in the subject, not in the object: hence aesthetic subjectivism and objectivism. Questions of taste obviously follow this model: what you happen to like is a fact about you not about the object, and therefore subjective. According to Kant, space and time are in us not in mind-independent reality; hence, representations of space and time are deemed subjective (mere appearances). Indexical representations rely on the location of the subject in space and time, so they too will count as subjective, as opposed to non-indexical representations which reflect the condition of the object represented without reference to the subject. It is all a question of whether the representational content owes its allegiance to something within (or about) the subject, or to the nature of the object represented.

We should not confuse subjectivity and objectivity with subject and object as such. All representation (intentionality) involves subject and object: a thing representing and a thing represented. So, every act of representation is both subject-involving and object-involving. There is no such thing as a view from nowhere (a subject-less view), and there is no such as a view of nothing (an object-less view). Subject and object are locked inexorably together (that is the logic of intentionality). But it doesn’t follow that all such acts are both subjective and objective; it all depends on the generation and composition of the representing content. Does it owe its existence to the world or to the mind (strictly, the internal)? The picture we have is that the external world exerts some control over how we represent it but that our inner nature also shapes how we represent things. Thus, we speak of the “subjective” and the “objective”. On occasion, both coexist in the same representation, as when we see both color and shape. Sometimes the subjectivity is undesirable, if it leads the subject into error (e.g., misperceptions of size when size constancy breaks down); but sometimes it is beneficial to the subject (e.g., in food selection or color vision). Both traits can be defended; neither is exclusively correct or useful. The search for an “absolute conception” is motivated by the reasonable ambition of expunging ourselves from our maximally objective picture of reality, but it would be misguided zealotry to try to eliminate all subjectivity from our modes of representation. Subjectivity has its uses, its virtues. Subjective and objective both deserve a place in the sun.[3]

[1] For background, see Colin McGinn, The Subjective View (1983) and Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (1986).

[2] For a discussion of objectivity and perceptual constancy see Tyler Burge, Origins of Objectivity (2010).

[3] Setting aside technical issues of formulation, I take it that what I suggest here is not particularly controversial; indeed, it might be thought not terribly exciting. I agree, but sometimes it is nice just to have something obvious for a change. And clarity is never a bad thing.

Is Causation Necessary?

I don’t mean to be asking Hume’s question about the need for necessary connection in the causal relation; I mean to be asking whether causation (causal power) is a necessary feature of things. Granted that something has a causal power, does it necessarily have that power? Are its causal powers part of its essence? Kripke’s table is necessarily made of wood, given that it is actually made of wood, but does it necessarily have the causal powers it actually has? Are there possible worlds in which that table exists and lacks the causal powers it has in our world? Could it have the causal powers of a jellyfish instead, or a vacuum cleaner? Does it have no causal powers in some worlds? Some objects have zero causal powers (e.g., numbers), so could this table be like that in a possible world? Could the situation be reversed—numbers have causal powers in some worlds and tables don’t? Let’s agree that space and time as such have no causal powers as things actually are; could they nevertheless have causal powers in other possible worlds? Our physical universe has a wide range of causal powers, but could it (that universe) lack such powers? Is causality necessary or contingent to things? Is it like composition (necessary) or is it like spatial location (contingent)?

The first thing to be said about the answer to this question is that it is not clear. Our intuitions are not univocal on the matter. On the one hand, it seems imaginable that the very same object should exist and behave differently from the way it actually behaves, or not behave at all. The case is analogous to pain and C-fiber stimulation: we can apparently conceive of possible worlds in which C-fibers are correlated with another type of sensation, or with no sensation at all. C-fibers don’t dictate pain, don’t make it inevitable. Likewise, the shape and composition of an object seem contingently related to its causal profile—they don’t dictate what the object will do (as Hume famously argued). The one thing seems separable from the other. That very object could still exist even though it has had its causal powers stripped from it, as it could have its color and spatial location stripped from it. Causal powers are something superadded, conjoined, not something internal to its being the object it is. A type of causal dualism thus seems indicated: causal powers are something over and above other properties of the object like shape and composition (“distinct existences”, as Hume would say). But, on the other hand, such dualism offends our intuitive sense of unity in natural things: for how could the causal powers of an object transcend its actual properties—how could what it does float free of its actual make-up? So, our intuition of contingency (and hence causal dualism) must be mistaken; there must be a deep necessity at work here. Thus, the case resembles the mind-body problem in respect of modal questions: we are torn in opposite directions, subject to conflicting pressures. We are confronted by a deep metaphysical problem—the causation-body problem (where body here is understood as the totality of properties the object has sans its causal properties). We might even want to say that the causal is mysteriously connected to the non-causal; the connection is not pellucid, not even properly intelligible (by us). Maybe we don’t really know what causality is, or what ordinary properties are for that matter. We are intuiting in the dark, never a good place to intuit.

Let’s step back and try to get our bearings. How does causality fit into the grand scheme of things? Is it a necessary feature of the universe—this universe or any conceivable universe? Could God have created a causality-free universe—either one containing matter and mind or one made of very different materials? Certainly, some philosophers have been eliminative with respect to causality: it does not exist in the mind-independent world, nor in the mind itself. It is pure projection, sheer fantasy: the course of history is mere accidental sequence devoid of causal power (compare eliminative materialism). But even without such a radical anti-realist position, it seems conceivable that causation might someday disappear from the universe like a bad smell, rendering it static and unchanging. The connection between mass and gravity is notoriously lacking in perspicuity, so that the idea of massive objects with no gravitational causal powers appears perfectly intelligible. If we press the question, in virtue of what does matter have the causal powers we attribute to it, we come up empty handed; it seems brute, inexplicable. We are thus faced with the usual choice between three unpalatable alternatives: dualism, reductionism, or eliminationism. If causation is the “cement of the universe”, then it is an alarmingly elusive cement. We can’t even say whether Kripke’s table (which is nothing special) is necessarily combustible or stable or solid, though we know it actually has each of these attributes. We can’t say whether retaining these attributes is required for the table’s continued existence (or existence in a possible world). What looked like a local puzzle about tables and the like turns out to reflect a wider aporia about causation in general—about whether it is a real trait of the universe, or whether it is contingent to reality or necessary to it. The concept of reality, even concrete reality, does not logically imply causality—hence Platonism about numbers and epiphenomenalism about the mind.[1] Such anti-causal doctrines are not simply contradictory. But it is unclear whether material reality must be causally imbued: causality seems superadded to matter (extension, spatial occupancy), and yet it is hard to accept that just anything can be superadded—as if a table could act like a jellyfish! Could God have created the universe just as it is now and at the last minute decided not to add any causality to the mix? Could everything be just as it is except that it is all a causality-free zone? The causality-world problem is wide open and extremely confusing.[2]

[1] It would be useful to compile a list of all non-causal entities so as to see how they differ from causal entities, though the question is not without controversy. Thus: numbers, geometrical forms, space, time, colors, moral facts, qualia (?), spatial points, propositions (?), and infinities. Some would say that nothing has causal power save that injected by God’s will, counting themselves metaphysically sober; causation always comes from outside the object.

[2] What would we think if we came across a pebble on a beach that had none of the usual causal properties of pebbles despite its similarity to causally endowed pebbles? Would we put it in a museum and label it “The World’s Only Non-Causal Pebble”, as if it were just a natural curiosity?

Attitudes to Memory

Let me distinguish memories from our attitudes towards them. Memories, though changeable, are relatively static compared to our emotional response to them. The memory may fade or disappear with time (or it may not) but our feelings about it are quite plastic and can even reverse valence. A painful memory can become affectively neutral or even quite pleasurable in the light of later developments. What was once serious can become amusing. This is because we mature with time, gain perspective, see the bigger picture. It is attitude that determines trauma not memory content as such. Two people could have memories with the same content but vary in their emotional attitudes towards that content. Childhood events that were emotionally difficult at the time no longer seem so in retrospect. Proust was the master of this psychic domain: how we feel about what we remember not what we remember. The affective aura of a memory is separable from the memory itself. Memory affect is detachable from memory content. This means that a memory could be fixed and immutable while its affective charge is plastic and variable. We might not be able to rid ourselves of certain memories, but we may be able to alter their emotional force. In principle, we could change our emotional relation to memories at will while remaining completely powerless to change the memory itself. In practice, we could lessen the negative impact of a memory while leaving the memory intact. When people speak of “letting go” of the past or “moving on” from it, they mean lessening its emotional hold on them not lessening the presence of the memory itself. They mean something like remaining tranquil in the face of the memory not abolishing it altogether. The impossibility of the latter does not imply the impossibility of the former.

I mean this point to apply to the feasibility of rebirth therapy. Someone might object that simulated rebirth will leave memories intact, so not provide a way of freeing oneself from their malign influence. But this conflates memory retention with memory influence: you could retain the memory but not its affective charge. The affect could be reduced or neutralized without needing to get rid of the memory trace itself. A machine or drug could alter one’s attitude to a memory without altering the memory per se; similarly, the rebirth procedure could have the same kind of effect. So, it is no objection to the efficacy of the procedure that it leaves memories intact, because it doesn’t necessarily leave their affective charge intact. The question, then, is whether, empirically, such a change can be brought about by the procedure, given that it will do nothing to erase the memories as such. By finding, or creating, a new self within oneself, in the act of rebirth, it might well succeed in altering the emotional power of memories—as already happens with the normal passage of time and experience. If we can tap into the pre-trauma childhood self, we might be able to distance ourselves from the memories laid down by negative life experiences. Death abolishes all trauma, and birth begins with a pre-traumatic blank slate.[1]

[1] Rebirth therapy exploits a discontinuity in the removal of trauma: first, simulate death in order to abolish trauma; second, simulate birth so as to encourage the formation of a new untraumatized self. The time gap between these two phases allows the psyche to gather its forces after symbolically annihilating itself. There is something of existentialist psychology in this conception—the idea that we have the power to re-shape ourselves, to create a new facticity (as Sartre would say). I see also elements of Freud, Maslow, Goffman, Laing, and others.

Philosophy of Skill

There is no such thing as what the above title describes. We have philosophy of knowledge, perception, thought, emotions, imagination, and action—but not philosophy of skill (except for some scattered remarks). You can’t take a course in philosophy of skill in a typical philosophy department. So, let’s create the subject—let’s put it on the map. We will begin with some good old-fashioned ordinary language philosophy—what we would say when and why. The OED sets the stage: for “skill” we read “ability to do something well; expertise or dexterity”. This is admirably terse, but it needs some expansion. I can walk well, but would we say that walking is a skill? What about breathing or excreting or sitting down or picking one’s nose? The bit that’s missing from the dictionary definition is difficulty and value: a skilled action is one that overcomes or minimizes a difficulty—it isn’t something easy and automatic—and it should be something that is valuable or worthwhile or good. We don’t say that an action is skilled if it is easy and of no account, however well done it may be—say, chucking mud over the neighbor’s fence for the hell of it. We don’t see competitions devoted to such activities, or public esteem for their agents. Expertise and dexterity help, but what kind of expertise and dexterity—not in mere mudslinging (or nose picking). The paradigms of skillful action include piano playing, surgery, and tennis—where we recognize that these are worth doing and require much dedication and practice. I will therefore say that skill involves overcoming obstacles to the achievement of a goal, as well as merit in the goal achieved (we don’t say “Jones is a skilled bullshitter” or “Wendy is a skillful annoying guest”). Synonyms for “skillful” include “talented”, “accomplished”, “adept”, “adroit”, “competent”—all positive terms of evaluation. So, a skill should require for its mastery some degree of training and effort and be directed to something meritorious. A skilled surgeon is properly so described, or a skilled craftsman. We admire skill precisely because skill requires dedication to an esteemed outcome in the face of obstacles to success. Skills are learned, acquired, honed, refined—all in the service of something good. This is the difference between skilled labor and unskilled labor (or simply being a thief). The idea of a skilled torturer sticks in the throat because it lacks the latter while it might conceivably involve the former; and the idea of a skilled food purveyor lacks the element of expertise and training. We are now moving towards an analysis of skill in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions: Xis skilled in doing A if and only if X can do A despite obstacles to doing A and A is a worthwhile thing to do.[1]We might add to this barebones analysis the further condition that X has to learn to do A by training and practice, and that worthwhileness can take many forms (so we can include surgery, tennis, and piano playing under the proposed definition). I will leave it to the reader to think through such examples as “skilled lawyer”, “skilled politician”, “skilled policeman”, “skilled chess player”, “skilled detective”, “skilled weightlifter”, “skilled philosopher”, “skilled predator”, “skilled postman”, “skilled butter-spreader”, “skilled lover”, “skilled thinker”, “skilled perceiver”, “skilled salesman”, “skilled cashier”, “skilled alcoholic”, “skilled gossip”, “skilled TV watcher”, etc. Which of these locutions sounds right and which wrong, and why?

Is talking a skill? I mean ordinary chatting about this and that, not public speaking or thespian performance. I think not: because we can all do it easily and without practice and training—it’s like eating or walking or avoiding pointy objects or biting your fingernails. There is no skill involved; this why no one is paid to do these things and there are no sports involving them. Writing is a skill, even if done poorly, because it has to be acquired by effort and it has merit; but mere talking isn’t. Swimming is a skill, but floating isn’t, or jumping into the pool. Playing a musical instrument is a skill, but singing per se isn’t—unless you take voice training lessons. Dancing may or may not be a skill, or mountain climbing. Talking is indeed an ability, a type of competence, but it isn’t really a skill—though it is like a skill such as speaking in a foreign language. Dropping a ball isn’t a skill, though throwing one is. Talking is like dropping a ball—it comes naturally, effortlessly. Animals are not usually spoken of as possessing skills, except metaphorically by comparison with human skills, because animals don’t generally work at improving their motor capacities; where they do, the term is appropriate. It would be strange to say that birds are skilled flyers or sharks skilled swimmers—though they are both good at these activities. They don’t admire other members of their species for their (ordinary) flying and swimming skills (as we don’t admire other humans for their bipedal walking skills). No obstacles had to be overcome by these species; they were born this way. Animals are generally good at excreting (they had better be), but no one thinks to congratulate them for their skillful acts of excretion. Talking is like excreting in this respect (as in other respects). Nor are perceiving, remembering, and thinking skills, though they may be involved in the exercise of genuine skills. The concept of skill is quite specific and is not to be identified with the concepts of ability or capacity or competence. It would be quite wrong to say that a blind man lacks the skill of seeing, since seeing isn’t a skill, though seeing can be described as an ability. I don’t see the cup in front of me skillfully.

Are some kinds of skill paradigmatic while others are so described only by analogy? The OED tells us that “skill” is primarily used to ascribe “manual or physical” skills. This is exactly right: hands are the primary locus of skill, with feet coming second, and other body parts following along, the mental kind of skill being a distant runner-up. The pianist and the carpenter are the paradigms—they are “good with their hands”. The skilled agent has skilled hands above all (footballers may loudly protest, but they are an unusual case). Hand skill is not the same as hand strength or endurance or sheer flexibility; it is a matter of fine-tuned dexterity—a word that covers a multitude of talents. For dexterity comes in many forms that don’t transfer much from one to the other: you can have finger dexterity in one domain but not in others (e.g., throwing a ball with spin versus playing the violin). The brain, of course, is centrally involved, but the hand is the part of the body where the skill shows itself. It is our skill with our hands that sets us apart from other species, and which led to our species dominance.[2] The human hand is designed for skilled action, because of its powers of gripping and its team of adaptable digits. A skilled lawyer or politician can handle difficult situations, quickly, nimbly, effectively; he or she can mend fences, hold people together, keep a firm grip on things. Lawyers and politicians tend to use hand gestures a lot when they speak, as if exhibiting their strong (but gentle!) hands—so caressing, so reliable. They are not inept or clumsy; they have the world in the palm of their hands. They won’t let you slip. And they are always shaking people’s hands—they are skillful at that. The skilled laborer, for them, is the salt of the earth, the repository of all that is good and wholesome: the skilled hand is the good hand, the virtuous hand, the industrious hand. Manual skill is something to be admired and prized. The more a man approximates to that paradigm the better he is thought to be. Thus, skill comes to occupy a position of social and political centrality. A man who does not work with his hands is hardly working at all (he is an egghead, a brainiac, a pencil-pusher, an “intellectual”). In any case, the concept of skill is centered on the hands and derivatively elsewhere. Not “In the beginning was the deed” but “In the beginning was the skilled hand deed”.

The concept of skill has been neglected by philosophy (analytical philosophy anyway—too closely associated with the laboring classes), but it has not been neglected by other disciplines. I am referring to economics and psychology, in which skill has always had a central role. In the case of economics, the concept comes in via the focus on labor as the engine of production—skilled labor being of paramount importance to an economy. It is skill that primarily drives economies, where manual skill holds pride of place. When the economist speaks of the contribution of labor to productivity, he really means skilled labor—the greater the skill of the workforce the greater the economic progress. What is called the division of labor is really the division of skill, in which each worker specializes in a particular sub-skill (say, nail sharpening in Adam Smith’s famous example). The more that different skills are parceled out to different agents, the greater the productivity, and hence the greater the wealth of the society. The philosopher could contribute to this subject by employing her specific kind of intellectual talent (skill?) to clarify the concept of skill. In the case of psychology, the study of skill has been there from the start; not behavior as such but skilled behavior. How are skills acquired? What learning methods work best? Are there transfers of training between skills? But philosophy, which borders economics and psychology, has had little time for the concept of skill, preferring to focus on the cognitive and the phenomenological. Even cognitive science has shied away from skilled motor performance (perception and reason being the favored subjects). There is nothing objectionably behaviorist about studying skilled action, which has its roots in the brain after all. So, I suggest making the philosophy of skill part of the philosopher’s regular agenda. Enterprising graduate students could specialize in the philosophy of skill (not much literature to read).[3]

[1] This may remind us of Bernard Suits’ definition of a game in The Grasshopper (1978).

[2] See my Prehension (2015).

[3] Whole dissertations could be written on the different skills (piano playing, wood carving, knife throwing). Interdisciplinary work could be undertaken. Journals could be founded (Skill Studies, Hand, Quarterly Journal of the Society for the Study of Human Skilled Behavior). Bitter controversies would ensue.