The Subjective and the Objective
(Methodological Considerations)
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he Terms ‘Subjective’ and ‘objective:[1] These terms are, of course, relative and vague, and also ambiguous. First off, we can say that what is limited to me and my point of view and not necessarily shared by others may be called ‘subjective.’ Generally what is shared by others, but not susceptible of measurable or objective observation is sometimes called ‘inter-subjective’. What then is ‘objective’? We generally mean by it something which is ‘out there’, not just my opinion about what it is like, something that is tangible, measurable and perhaps also quantifiable. In that sense, since feelings, experiences, personal thoughts, etc. are not quantifiable or measurable by other people, they are considered subjective or inter-subjective. This is so even if they are claimed by others. It’s their subjective feelings and experiences.
Since the so-called observable world is also subject to the points of view of different people (as they come up with different reports, observations and measurements of the same phenomenon not necessarily consistent with each other), what I observe would be part of my subjective world, although as the objective world (or the object side of my subjective world). For all practical purposes, as far as I am concerned, this is not just my world, but the world. In other words, there has to be some sort of bracketing here: since I can never go ‘out of my skin’ and know what is ‘out there’ (Kant’s ding an sich), the world I observe is, phenomenologically speaking, my world. In this world, other people are included, as well as what they say and what they say as to what they observe, and their reports about what I say and what I observe, as well as the dialogues I have with them, and so on. They are all part of my ‘object world.’ And I take other people’s worlds (and their claims about them) as meaningful only to the extent they have common references to associations with something I myself have experienced in my past.
Within this world of mine, I make all sorts of distinctions and divisions and call some of them subjective and some objective. For instance, what I observe in this world, I call it objective. But then when I introspect on my perspective, my responses and feelings and attitudes toward this world, they are all on the object side of my ‘subjective’ world, in as much as they are peculiar to me, except when they are shared by others, in which case they would be inter-subjective. This division between the subject and the object sides of my experience can be extended further and further, to higher and further higher levels, as I reflect on each of them, subjecting them to first, second and third, and so on, orders of reflection. The subject side in these reflections always remains the unknown except when it is itself reflected upon as what I was earlier -- my previous experience, thought and so forth -- which at that previous time was ‘me’, i.e. the subject. The content of the subject can perhaps be exhausted when all the ‘subject’ side content -- my points of view, beliefs, intentions, motives, feelings, thoughts etc. -- can become an object of my reflective process. At that stage, in my consciousness or awareness, there is, perhaps, neither the subject nor the object, but a mere awareness, which is neither subjective nor objective. There are no divisions here. Of course, all this could be viewed as subjective by other people or inter-subjective.
Reflection can also come up with results that may rather be viewed as ‘objective’, although they are arrived at by introspection: take for instance, Hume’s theory of the self, viz. that it is nothing a bundle of impressions or ideas. This is quite similar to the Buddhist theory that the self is nothing but a ‘put together’ of ‘aggregates’. Hume claims this theory on the basis of his reflection by saying that “I look into myself to find what I might call myself, what I find are only bundles of impressions, perceptions, ideas or feelings; I never find anything which I might call the ‘self’.” In such reflection one is not making any assumptions about what one perceives, but restricts oneself to what he or she merely perceives.
The Subjective and the Objective View: It’s well known that these two points of view collided in the area of body-mind relationship, resulting, as is well known, in theories such as idealism, physicalism, behaviorism mind-body interactionism, mind-body parallelism, double-aspect theory, phenomenalism, epiphenomenalism, and so forth. From the purely external or objective point of view, minds seem to be somehow just a way of behavior or an aspect or product or derivative of the brain, or localized somewhere in the brain. On the other hand, from the purely introspective or subjective point of view, the body (and indeed the world) is a mere idea of the mind, or at any rate, a construct of the mind. It seems like this division naturally flows into discussions about what constitutes the person, and especially what constitutes the self. The following essay spells out the problems and shows the interplay between the two points of view.
The Subjective and The Objective are Complementary: Not only objective investigations have to be confirmed by the subject’s reports (which are subjective), but they are meaningless unless they are interpreted (given meaning to) and applied to subjective experiences, or at any rate people’s behavior and lives. Similarly, more often than not, I trace the source of my thoughts, feelings, emotions etc. not only to objects or situations in the objective world, but also states or parts of my body, such as glands, speech movements, positions of the body (e.g. how I sit, stand or lay down).
The subjective and objective views both present themselves to us as thoughts, with the difference of pints of view. Subjectively, for instance, I may look at my present aches and pains and blues as something horrendous, insurmountable, leading to panic, self-pity, and so forth. But when I switch my point of view to the objective and take a more dispassionate approach, or a ‘third person’ point of view, and I could have the ability to see these as nothing but transitory, caused by this or that, needing nothing more than an aspirin, and so forth. I can realize my past ‘making mountains out of mole hills’ approach and become relieved of my needless anxiety. This switching of points of view is something that often takes place in our reflective process and it’s all presented to us in the form of thoughts.
The Subjective and Objective Worlds: Objectively speaking my world may be nothing but a bunch of images, thoughts and sensations, but from my point of view these, by virtue of intentionality, they appear to me as things, people and situations and the interactions among them. This is how ‘intentionality’[2] plays out in the mental world. When I think, for instance, I am not aware of my thoughts merely as thoughts, but as what I think about these things. My thinking, say, problem solving, for instance, is my movements within these things where I am picturing the problem as a starting point and I move toward a situation where the problem is solved or resolved. Of course, doubts, questions and solutions do arise within this area, although they are elements within my mental world which can only be resolved by appeal to the objective world. In this ‘objective world’ we have thermometers, stethoscopes, blood pressure monitors and various other instruments which I or other people can use to ‘objectively’ to diagnose or otherwise determine my body or mental state, and I ultimately rely on these to relate them to my ‘feelings’ (such as a feeling of satisfaction). Also, I test my own ideas or guesses about things about myself, about others and events in the world by means of what makes ‘sense’ to me, how things ‘add up’, or what ‘fits’ in the context -- a sort of coherence theory of truth. In fact, in intersubjective communication too we use such a test, sometimes further verified by instruments or events in the world, and what people say or do which may ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ our hypotheses or guesses.[3]
The processes of thinking and problem-solving are not essentially different between the subjective and the objective. The main difference is that within the subjective realm we more often than not use feelings such as of satisfaction, feeling of ‘making sense’, and ‘fits’[4], whereas in the objective realm, although these are the bases of our conjectures, the final appeal is to facts, observations, verification and such.
The standards of satisfaction, however, are different between the subjective and the objective approaches, although they often overlap. Subjectively, we are happy to see minor results, and keep our hopes up for further (future) confirmations, and when they are not forthcoming, we abandon our guesses, or stick to our hypotheses to the extent of being superstitious. Indeed, we can see here the basis our dogma, fanaticism, religious faith, magic and the occult.[5]
We often compare one element of our experience with a previous experience and attribute the difference to various possible causes and then form our guesses. On the basis of these comparisons we make various correlations. This aspect is not very different from what we do objectively.
Just because they don’t lend themselves to strict quantitative treatment, we can’t say that they don’t form the basis of knowledge, at least so far as our personal needs and living go.
The satisfaction on the objective side, on the other hand, is obtained by verification, and/or further confirmation, and when our predictions are not borne out by future experimental or other results, we abandon our guesses and move on to formulate other hypotheses. And of course, this aspect may indeed coincide with some of what we do subjectively.[6]
Even on the objective side, not all science is treated quantitatively, unless we are ready to relegate disciplines such as psychology, sociology, psychotherapy, political science, and perhaps some biological disciplines to the realm of non-science. Besides, the subjective symptoms, such as how one feels, hot, cold, short of breath, irritated, sleepless, and so on, form part of any objective investigation into a patient’s illness. Symptoms such as these are more often than not supplemented, complemented or confirmed by clinical observations.
Even personally I often need to confirm or verify my subjective feelings with measurements such as a – thermometer, a blood-pressure monitor, and so on, or experiments with myself. However, we cannot remain with subjective impressions and feelings lest we may end up being hypochondriacs, or get lost in daydreaming, fantasizing, paranoia, even delusions and what not.
We cannot ignore the subjective and mental worlds: When I have a great surge of affection or something else, I feel a certain twang. If the neuroscientist translates this as the neural equivalent of what I feel, does that somehow change its validity as a feeling? No one would say that. But isn’t everything I experience ultimately nothing but these neural changes? Then where does that leave us? Just suppose I am nothing but all these neural changes? What place is there in such a scheme of things for relationships, experiences, people, wars and conflicts, caring or not caring and so on? This question arises from taking a purely objective description of what takes place in the human being, ignoring the subjective side totally. It’s just plain reductionist. Although, the neural elements are the physical or physiological basis of the human being, he is also the subjective aspect. We can only ignore the one at the expense of the other at our own peril.
Indeed, if we are deprived of the (subjective) mental world, the world for us would be devoid of any values. Not only life and our existence would have no meaning or purpose, but also our relationships and endeavors would be pointless. Just imagine that sort of a world! The world indeed may be so, and we may be nothing but organisms in the world whose primary purpose, as UG would say, survival and reproduction. If we were merely that, unfortunately we wouldn’t be talking about any of this. In all such descriptions, the ‘I’ or ‘self’ would be totally missing, and again any value considerations beyond survival and reproducing would also be missing and will be replaced by objective descriptions of a person’s identity whether it is physical or behavioral or legal. The subjective would be somehow reduced to, or at least described in, objective terms.
The human being is not exhausted by either one of these descriptions exclusively. That’s why the subjective and objective approaches are complementary.
The Dilemma between the subjective and objective views of the self: Viewed subjectively, life is a mixed bag of its joys, pleasures, pride, humility, love, hatred, pains, suffering, guilt, fears and so on.
Take, for instance, my experience this afternoon: I was laying down trying to take a short nap while listening to the beautiful classical vocal music of Ranjani and Gayatri on the Youtube. It was only less than 20 minutes long. But in such a short time, I was simply transported to another level of existence, the body vibrating to the nuances of the singing with its violin accompaniment, wavelike motions surging throughout the body, and the mind responding to every note and movement of the music. It was plain ecstasy.
Contrast this with looking at the same experience from an objective point of view. Obviously endorphins or some other chemicals are released in the synapses in my brain, the nervous system is in a relaxed state, blood pressure is lowered, and there are electrical changes in the brain, and so on and so forth. Furthermore, view this as physiological and neurological changes in the organism that happen when it listens to music. And all such changes have to ultimately result ultimately in the decay and death of the body.
Sometimes I cannot help myself look at the same myself objectively, as a mere organism, the mental life I go through as nothing more than an interplay of the neurons in my brain, all ultimately leading to death and destruction, annihilation, and nothing but ashes, and worse, perhaps energy patterns and waves and particles in the universe. Life loses all meaning. I cannot help switching between these points of view and that leaves me with utter exhaustion, despair and psychological death. I cannot reconcile these two conflicting views of looking at myself. And yet the switching between the two cannot but throw me into a total state of instability and perhaps turmoil.
[1] One could call these ‘internal’ and ‘external’. But any terms we use could have problems. Things don’t divide themselves neatly into these categories. One of the points of the essay is to just to point to such possible confusions.
[2] See below for a discussion of intentionality.
[3] This discussion is continued in Chapter 16, Some Final Thoughts.
[4] The notions of ‘fitting’, ‘making sense’, ‘satisfaction’ and so on are not only subjective, i.e., vary from person to person, but they change in the different contexts for the same person. I think all this appears against some background of our previous knowledge, none of which can really be specified on any specific occasion. I note that the neuroscientists too would appeal to background knowledge. But that idea of ‘knowledge’ or background has to remain vague. I don’t know if it is possible to go into the specifics, given our present limitations of the instruments of investigation in neuroscience, such fMRI and EEG.
[5] Hasty generalization, for instance, is one good source of superstition. Someone has had a bad experience with something when he ran into black cat, and he hastily concludes that black cats cause bad luck. This is not too unlike insufficient sampling in surveys, tests and trials.
[6] When others don’t agree share the results the scientists’ reports, the results are indeed construed as subjective, as they are limited to that scientist.
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