The Importance of Subjectivity on Objectivity
I keep on thinking on the powerful words Amable said “¿Cuánto puede el sueño? ¿Cuánto puede la idea?” And it makes me reflect of all the ideas and dreams that human beings have accomplished. If you stop and think about it deeply, it’s overwhelming the amount of what we’ve evolved and progressed. Even though we can’t pop-out our system as Hofstadter says, we can get to know ourselves and really know what we value and what we stand for. It reminds me of Don Quixote’s advice to Sancho: get to know yourself, it’s the most important and the most difficult thing one can accomplish. I think the difficult part is to accept who we are, but once we are aware of whom we really are, we can start evolving and making changes to improve. I’ve always admired how Don Quixote fights and would die for his ideals. I know that many people who have changed the world did that as well, for better or for worse. And many of these ideals or ideas were born because of the intellectual climate that was taking place in different periods. The environment is a very crucial and essential aspect for an idea to be born.
Copernicus, for instance, developed his heliocentric theory while there were many changes and innovation in politics, religion, etc. I think that somehow our context shapes our ideas and our thinking process. In some occasions people had this “shared meaning” that Bohm writes about, because it was the cement that held societies together for many centuries. But was there really a pure shared meaning? Maybe not, and maybe we don’t have it yet in many societies. By shared meaning I mean what Bohm means, a coherence of meaning among the group/society/country. Generally speaking, we haven’t evolved much in sharing meaning with others. Many people still eagerly defend their opinions and assumptions. And that have caused a lot of wars, deaths and serious problems. The ideal is that the group becomes “one mind”, people who think together as a whole. I mentioned before that individuals truly fight for their ideals (of course I’m talking of the people that have changed the world for a better place) now just imagine what a group could accomplish if they had shared meaning. What about humanity? And by that, human reason could solve all the problems in a peaceful and understanding way. It sounds as a utopia, but I really believe it can be possible.
Also, another thing that is necessary to achieve shared meaning is to understand that we don’t know. To understand that all we know are approximations to truth. To take the explorer attitude, as Bohm mentions. This is a great challenge. This week I experienced the vow of silence, and it really was a challenge to avoid listening to my own thoughts and taking the Zen mode. What Hofstadter says it’s true, we cannot pop-out our own thinking. However on the other side, Bohm says that we can think about our thinking, the problem is that we approach the situation in a mistaken way. It’s to be self-aware, as I mentioned on my previous essay. I wonder why is it so hard for human beings to listen to each other? Why are we born thinking that we are right? I dare to say that we learn to listen; we don’t do it naturally.
And it makes me wonder once again about our nature. What makes us be who we are? It reminds me of Plato, in Meno, where they discuss the nature of virtue. Where does virtue comes from? What’s that spark that makes some human beings be virtuous or good with others? Why some people isn’t that way? That pure question reminds me of the inexactness of the social sciences, which is mentioned in Popper’s essay. There is uncertainty in social sciences because we can’t predict how a human would act in a given circumstances, there had been a lot of experiments in which a person reacts totally different from the other one. And also subjectivity has an important role on social sciences, which lead me to the question: are physical sciences really objective? Ferguson says that there’s always a bit of subjectivity on the theories of scientists because they see things from a point of view. They can’t help it. Also, in the Copernican Revolution, Kuhn mentions that nature speaks to us objectively, however the theories or conceptual schemes of the scientist depend on his imagination, which is the subjective part. And Kemeny also talks about the importance of assumptions while taking a direction; in order to take one you have to assume something. So, after all we do need to think that leap of faith.
So is there really anything objective? I think that outside our senses, there is an objective truth in the universe. However, interpreted by us there will always be some subjectivity because of our limits. I was very optimistic on my first essays about getting to know the objective truth, but now I doubt it a bit. Of course, I do believe that we’ll approximate more and more, but are we going to be able to grasp it all? One way or another, the subjective part is really important to find truth. Copernicus, for instance, made the heliocentric theory because of a matter of aesthetics, which was the subjective part. And the work he made cause a revolution and made human beings more approximated to the truth. So, in a way subjectivity is very important. Everyone perceives things differently, and that has lead us to the impressive amount of things we know nowadays. Without that subjectivity many discoveries wouldn’t have existed. We have a vast array of thoughts, ideas, opinions and ideals that have made us see the world from many different perspectives. Those perspectives have broadened our knowledge about our universe and ourselves. Maybe we do need subjectivity to find objectivity, and shared meaning takes an important role as well, in order to explore without constraints the canvas of our universe.
Copernicus, for instance, developed his heliocentric theory while there were many changes and innovation in politics, religion, etc. I think that somehow our context shapes our ideas and our thinking process. In some occasions people had this “shared meaning” that Bohm writes about, because it was the cement that held societies together for many centuries. But was there really a pure shared meaning? Maybe not, and maybe we don’t have it yet in many societies. By shared meaning I mean what Bohm means, a coherence of meaning among the group/society/country. Generally speaking, we haven’t evolved much in sharing meaning with others. Many people still eagerly defend their opinions and assumptions. And that have caused a lot of wars, deaths and serious problems. The ideal is that the group becomes “one mind”, people who think together as a whole. I mentioned before that individuals truly fight for their ideals (of course I’m talking of the people that have changed the world for a better place) now just imagine what a group could accomplish if they had shared meaning. What about humanity? And by that, human reason could solve all the problems in a peaceful and understanding way. It sounds as a utopia, but I really believe it can be possible.
Also, another thing that is necessary to achieve shared meaning is to understand that we don’t know. To understand that all we know are approximations to truth. To take the explorer attitude, as Bohm mentions. This is a great challenge. This week I experienced the vow of silence, and it really was a challenge to avoid listening to my own thoughts and taking the Zen mode. What Hofstadter says it’s true, we cannot pop-out our own thinking. However on the other side, Bohm says that we can think about our thinking, the problem is that we approach the situation in a mistaken way. It’s to be self-aware, as I mentioned on my previous essay. I wonder why is it so hard for human beings to listen to each other? Why are we born thinking that we are right? I dare to say that we learn to listen; we don’t do it naturally.
And it makes me wonder once again about our nature. What makes us be who we are? It reminds me of Plato, in Meno, where they discuss the nature of virtue. Where does virtue comes from? What’s that spark that makes some human beings be virtuous or good with others? Why some people isn’t that way? That pure question reminds me of the inexactness of the social sciences, which is mentioned in Popper’s essay. There is uncertainty in social sciences because we can’t predict how a human would act in a given circumstances, there had been a lot of experiments in which a person reacts totally different from the other one. And also subjectivity has an important role on social sciences, which lead me to the question: are physical sciences really objective? Ferguson says that there’s always a bit of subjectivity on the theories of scientists because they see things from a point of view. They can’t help it. Also, in the Copernican Revolution, Kuhn mentions that nature speaks to us objectively, however the theories or conceptual schemes of the scientist depend on his imagination, which is the subjective part. And Kemeny also talks about the importance of assumptions while taking a direction; in order to take one you have to assume something. So, after all we do need to think that leap of faith.
So is there really anything objective? I think that outside our senses, there is an objective truth in the universe. However, interpreted by us there will always be some subjectivity because of our limits. I was very optimistic on my first essays about getting to know the objective truth, but now I doubt it a bit. Of course, I do believe that we’ll approximate more and more, but are we going to be able to grasp it all? One way or another, the subjective part is really important to find truth. Copernicus, for instance, made the heliocentric theory because of a matter of aesthetics, which was the subjective part. And the work he made cause a revolution and made human beings more approximated to the truth. So, in a way subjectivity is very important. Everyone perceives things differently, and that has lead us to the impressive amount of things we know nowadays. Without that subjectivity many discoveries wouldn’t have existed. We have a vast array of thoughts, ideas, opinions and ideals that have made us see the world from many different perspectives. Those perspectives have broadened our knowledge about our universe and ourselves. Maybe we do need subjectivity to find objectivity, and shared meaning takes an important role as well, in order to explore without constraints the canvas of our universe.