Objectivity is shared subjectivity Everything we perceive is dependent upon our biological nature and reality has meaning only in what our sense and perception biology provide us. Real for me is only what I perceive to be real. Someone said that objectivity is shared subjectivity; this phrase resonates for me; really. What we can say about reality is based upon our shared objectivity, it does not say anything significant about reality in-it-self, except in its constancy, but it is significant in that we humans share it universally; it is reality-for-humans Each different comprehension of a situation provides a commitment to what is real about a situation. Each such real commitment is a version of a commitment to truth. The arts and the sciences endeavor to discover and communicate to the world the meaning of reality. There came a time in the evolution of the human psychic when we became semantic creatures; we discovered the power of symbolic representation of events. Art focuses on the inner reality of the subject whereas science focused on the reality that was external to the subject. “From this traditionalist standpoint information and the perception of meaning in the information is the central content of both arts and sciences. Hence when we speak of progress in the arts and sciences we can really refer to only one thing, namely that progress is taking place as long as the sum total of meaningful artistic and scientific statements waxes.” “The Coming of the Golden Age” by Gunther Stent What we mean by “real” is what we need to postulate conceptually in order to be realistic, i.e., in order to function successfully to survive, to achieve ends, and to arrive at a workable understanding of the situation we are in. (Example—“verb”, “concept”, “image schema”, “energy” “charge”—none can be directly observed but play a crucial role in our understanding). “Philosophy in the Flesh”
Coberst: You Kantian son of a bitch! I am going to Hegel you till you scream! But no, actually: Welcome and good post. But I have two replies. One my own, the other semi-Hegelian. First, my own: Your ideas themselves speak only of empirical matters. Yet all things are not emprical, there is also the logical/analytical. In fact, this is where we can find -necessary- truths, when we consider such things as the Law of Identity, the Law of Non-Contradiction, et cetera, et cetera. From this, we can discern a myriad of necessary things, which are not necessary merely from human matters, but from all things. Consider, for instance, necessary truth as analyzed on this statement: There are no absolute truths. Now what would this mean? Well, if there were no absolute truths, would not this statement be absolutely true? Would not the affirmation of such essentially deny what it is saying? So then in order for it to be true, it must be false (and not as in the Liar's Paradox). Yet on the other hand, what abouts its inverse? "There are absolute truths"? Well "there are absolute truths" if true would not self-violate, correct? "There are absolute truths" would, in fact, be an absolute truth, vindicating its notion from at least that point. And if false, then we'd go back to the fallacy of "there are no absolute truths". Therefore, it seems that it is necessary that absolute truth exists. Moreover, this is entirely independent of sense. This is completely a priori - sensual objects are completely out of the picture here. Accordingly, the senses are not the only source of truth. Now the Hegelian answer: To know of the thing-in-itself is to know it. You claim that we can only know "reality for humans". Yet you also speak of it, even if you disregard we have access to it. But if we have even a conception of it, we are in fact accessing it, and to think that our "objectivity" is simply because of our humanity is thus then deeply flawed.
Prince James We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. “Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement.” It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals. This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind. The three major findings of cognitive science are: The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. “These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects. First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real.” All living creatures categorize. All creatures, as a minimum, separate eat from no eat and friend from foe. As neural creatures tadpole and wo/man categorize. There are trillions of synaptic connections taking place in the least sophisticated of creatures and this multiple synapses must be organized in some way to facilitate passage through a small number of interconnections and thus categorization takes place. Great numbers of different synapses take place in an experience and these are subsumed in some fashion to provide the category eat or foe perhaps. Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories. Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”. P.S If we take a big bite out of reality we will, I think, find that it is multilayered like the onion. There are many domains of knowledge available to us for penetrating those layers of reality. Cognitive science is one that I find to be very interesting.
