Is everything subjective?

[unir 1]

Very confuddled on the matter of objectivity and subjectivity.

This is a very traditional philosophical question- one of the big epistemic questions.

It is useful to understand how we come to know things. How may we know, and what can we know? Are there boundaries to knowledge? Is knowledge always explicit, or may it be tacit?

The common view is that rational, scientific inquiry may yield an 'objective' view of the world. Although the scientific community knows there is no such thing as objectivity anymore, they instead reach for the term 'inter-subjective', in which reality is a shared set of agreements upon observed phenomenological experiences. No matter what you study today, in any seriousness, will most people claim that there is a complete objective truth (the exceptions being positivists, and objectivists who have heavily modified their theories in order to 'survive' this criticism.)

Knowing is dependent upon the body in which we inhabit. There is a particular paradigm that humans rely upon to come to understand the world. Let's take, for example, the viewing of a person's face.

You may know this person's face as your friend, or family member. You can point out the particulars of their face, i.e. their nose type, their lips, shape of face, hair color etc. Do any of these particulars 'make up' this person? No, they are simply a part of the whole, of which we integrate all particulars into a meaningful 'object', in this case a human being. It's clear that we can identify a person by integrating these particulars into a meaningful whole, but we are at a loss to name each particular that belongs to the whole. How is it that we may look at many faces, even if they are similar, and almost instantly pick out the one we know?

This type of knowing is clearly tacit. It is a realm of knowledge that is unspoken because it cannot be said, but it can be known by our body. Similarly, we may ask, how do you ride a bike? How do you do a backflip? While these actions can be 'broken' into particulars, one must integrate these particulars ('sets of rules') into a whole. You do not teach by telling someone to do something, but rather, by letting them doing it. They come to 'dwell' within that experience and integrate the particulars into a meaningful whole. It's not simply the mind that knows, but the body has a way of knowing too.

This can be said not only of bodily knowing (physionomic), but of abstract knowing as well. These relate on different 'orders'.

Our physical order experiences is the base-level of our knowing. e. g. we pull away from a fire due to our body 'knowing' that it is harmful to us, this 'knowing' is chemical-physical.

Our awareness is the basis for knowing questions such as 'how' or 'why'- the philosophical order proper. It allows us to reflect upon the lived-experience, the 'world out there'.

Our consciousness is a particular type of self-awareness. It allows us to reflect upon our own awareness. It relies upon the physical order to lay a 'foundation' for it's existence in this particular manner. That is to say, the physical order 'constrains' but also 'opens up' the possibilities for consciousness. Our awareness further refines this order, by holding all of our memories, thoughts, integrations of such experiences. It constrains us to this particular type of physical body, that of a human being, but that also opens up the infinite possibilities to act upon this body in anyway we wish. The order of self-awareness operates on a different set of rules, but the foundation of which is awareness, and further below the physical order.

(A simpler example is as follows: A piece of writing has a 'style', this style is composed of grammar, the grammar upon the words, the words upon the alphabet, the alphabet upon utterances. Each of these 'orders' or 'levels' operate upon the level below it, but their realities are separate. That is to say, utilizing proper grammar is not a matter of knowing the rules for spelling a word, or knowing how to say it (although that is part of it), but the realm of grammar has it's own set of 'rules'. In the same way, style has it's own set of 'rules' which rely upon grammar, but knowing the rules of grammar does not give us insight into how to have a style, nor how to begin understanding it. It is on another 'order' or 'level' of understanding.)

So we can see that there are 'orders' of systems of tacit knowing in which create the 'background knowledge' we rely upon every day when we experience and analyze the world. Meaning is 'upward facing', i.e. the rules and skills of lower level orders determine that which is above it, but we cannot understand the world 'looking down' the chain of meaning. We cannot understand the rules that apply 'above' a particular order, although we may have 'hints' of meaning. It's precisely these 'hints' that come from lower-level orders that allow us to understand another 'level' of meaning.

In this sense, all of our understanding of the world comes from these hints of lower-level orders of experience. We understand consciousness by exploring the physical order (neuroscience, biology, psychology etc.) but this cannot yield an account of consciousness in full, because the rules that govern it are not made explicit in the lower-levels, it operates on it's own level.

In the same sense, objectivity and subjectivity is a matter of how we come to know the world. We know it through our body, through the memories in which compose our 'background knowledge', the hints and intuitions we find through focusing on the particulars of the level right 'below' what we seek to understand.

This has particularly interesting meanings for the culture of science- all science and knowing is permeated by personal experience, by our human condition, and of the our history as a race. It's therefore a very biased, culturally conditioned way of thinking that can only yield an understanding of the levels of which it finds. Science can only find that which belongs to the order of the rational, and even then, what it finds is what we seek to find through it. In the same way, all ways of knowing gives us hints in particular ways, in particular orders.

There is no 'objective' or 'subjective' reality, there are many layers of realities that are ever emerging and converging through particular sets of rules. Crossing these realities is a skill of knowing, of knowledge of their operating orders, of their boundaries, of their functions. Obtaining this skill allows us to access certain realities, and share them with others, but this sharing must be shown. Just as one has to learn how to ride a bike through trial and error (experience), all other forms of knowing are the same. We may show the way, but it is up to you to 'open the door' so to speak.

Perhaps that gives you food for thought on the nature of objectivity/subjectivity.

Interesting, what you say of the orders/levels. I perceive from what you've stated that we, as the conscience, pierce only 1 level of the knowledge we focus on, though we can pierce many by being aware of the operation of the orders. If you, or anybody, has seen a video on YouTube titled Fourth Spatial Dimension 101, I am compelled to share the belief that a 4th dimensional entity is open to all dimensions of the knowledges. This would be theory, based on the information you've provided and the video. Anyways, I digress.