As a first approximation to our goal, I will examine my online “Marriam Webster.” Skipping the uses of “subject” that are political or grammatical, such as in “the king’s subjects,” or “the subject of the sentence,” we arrive at the following: “3a: characteristic of or belonging to reality as perceived rather than as independent of mind: PHENOMENAL compare OBJECTIVE.”
Notice that this definition blithely assumes an highly debatable thesis: namely, whether or not in our normal perception we are or not in direct contact with an independently existing reality. Nevertheless, we are given a useful synonym for “subjectivity,” namely, “phenomenal,” and a useful antonym, namely, “objective.” “Subjectivity” and “objectivity” are I believe opposites or contraries. We say we are speaking “objectively” when we are considering strictly the “facts” of the matter independent of feelings or emotions or peculiarities of our sensing organs; that which exists, we might say, “independently of mind.” Bertrand Russell introduced the notion of “public” objects in the sense of objectivity in question. A “public” object is one that may be perceived by more than one observer, as opposed to “private” entities that are unique to a single individual. Thus there are senses of “public” and “private” that are roughly synonymous to “objective” and “subjective” as here construed.
On the other hand, Immanuel Kant, considered the empirical or external world to be phenomenal through and through, insofar as humans may cognize or experience that world. Thus all the disclosures of sensation or perception were “phenomena” and that included the distinction between subjective and objective as used here. The world “in itself” existing independent of mind, and which he considered unknowable, he called, “noumena.” Sartre makes a similar distinction between “Being-for-itself” (etre-pour-soi) and “Being-in-itself” (etre-en-soi). Schopenhauer too considered the every day reality we perceive to be totally “phenomena”- a kind of mind dependent, subjective construct- while he called the “thing-in-itself”- the noumena or what I am calling the mind independent objective world, to be Will.
Be that as it may, before we further consider the flights of the philosophers, let us further consider Webster’s mundane dictionary definiens. There we are given additional senses of “subjectivity”: “3b: relating to experience or knowledge as conditioned by personal mental characteristics or states…4a: peculiar to a particular individual: PERSONAL…b: arising from conditions within the brain or sense organs and not directly caused by external stimuli…”
The lexical definition clearly gives the impression that any phenomena to which we attribute “subjectivity” necessary entails (1) the existence of a “mind” or “brain” (2) the unique sense in which such phenomena are “private” or “peculiar” to the particular mind or brain considered. In other words, “subjectivity” is a relative notion, relative or dependent on mind or mental processes. Richard Wollheim, in “On the Emotions” says subjectivity is a characteristic of “mental states” or “mental phenomena” and by these terms he means those “transient events which make up the lived part of the life of the mind, or,…’the stream of consciousness’…” As examples he gives perceptions, sensations, dreams, moments of “despair, boredom, or lust; flashes of inspiration; recollections; images seen in the mind’s eye, and tunes heard in the head; and thoughts, both thoughts that we think and those uninvited thoughts which drift into the mind.” In addition, there is the “mysterious way” in which you may say of your mental states or conscious experiences, that they are “mine, totally mine,” and this refers to the absolute privateness of the subjective. In this sense, the subjectivity of an event is opaque to the “other.” One cannot literally feel another person’s feelings, such as pain or joy, or literally look through another person’s eyes, or take another’s consciousness. It is this strange private, first person, aspect of subjectivity that is so hard to understand if “mental states” are identified with public, objective phenomena like brain events.
Yet in spite of the pervasive subjective nature of our lives, we have words such as “compassion” or “sympathy” or “empathy” that refer to experiences in which we “feel for the other” and feel or share in another person’s pain or joy or suffering. So just as “subjectivity” is a “characteristic” of our lives, “inter-subjectivity” is a positive characteristic of our relations to others. After all, it makes communication and the public world possible. This instinctive feeling of deep concern for others is taken to the highest levels when it gives rise to such expressions as “We are all one.” This may involve a metaphysics that considers individuality and the subjective ego as a kind of illusion masking the truth of our basic oneness. For example, Thomas Merton says, “At the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion…My dear brothers we are already one. But we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.”
It remains a mystery how subjectivity and compassion coexist in our shared world. Yet it only through reaching out in empathy to others that we have hope for the salvation of the individual and the human species alike.
Puzzle
1. John received a six-digit pin number from his bank. Then he forgot it. However, he remembered the first digit was a “1” and the last digit was a “4”. He also knew that if he took the last digit and moved it to the front of the number, changing nothing else, he would end up with another six digit number that was exactly four times the original number. Could you help find the original number?
Answer to last week’s puzzle
1. 2/3 (two-thirds).
