theread.me/_posts/2021-10-29-inherent-subjectivity.md

---
layout: post
title: "On Inherent Subjectivity of Some Things"
subtitle: "An Alternative Definition of Objectivity for Rigid Scientists"
date: 2021-10-30 12:57:46
permalink: alternative-objectivity-and-inherent-subjectivity/
categories: philosophy
---

As a computer scientist and someone who loves
[mathematics](/mathematical-induction-proving-tiling-methods) and
[abstractions](/typoclassopedia-exercise-solutions), I was obsessed with the
idea of rationality, that is, an _objective_ and absolute rationality, however I
ended up in a philosophy course that showed me the opposite.

I somehow stumbled upon Eliezer Yudkowsky's [Rationality: From AI to
Zombies](https://www.readthesequences.com/) about 4 years ago, and it took me
two years to go through it all but I was absolutely fascinated by this book. I
_knew_ how to be rational now, and I could _prove_ it using mathematics, what
else could I ask for!

The book basically looks at the world as a probabilistic system, and everything
that happens can be assigned probabilities, and using mathematical theorems such
as Bayes Theorem, we can predict outcomes of certain actions and then decide
between them. There is a lot of focus on [cognitive
biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) as well. I was
particularly very interested about these biases, and so I set out to learn more
about them, and that's how I found my current course: [Cognitive Science at
University College Dublin](https://cogsci.ucd.ie).

So I enter this course with this mindset: we can objectively analyse the world
around us using probability and statistics (mathematics), but we are limited by
our cognitive biases, so I want to learn about these cognitive biases: where do
they come from, how can they be resisted to allow us to act more rationally and
so on. These questions would mainly fall under the umbrella of psychology...

However... I found myself to be more and more interested in the philosophy side
of this course than the psychology side, hell I even started to not like the
psychology side anymore, but fall in love with the philosophy. This is where I
found the opposite of what I had come for: an alternative definition of
objectivity, and an inherent subjectivity of some things. This is mainly
inspired by Thomas Nagel's What Is It Like To Be A Bat {% cite nagel1974like %}.

What is Objectivity Anyway?
---------------------------

This is probably the main question here. What is objectivity? I don't think
dictionary definitions are particularly authoritative when it comes to
philosophy discussions, but I found this dictionary definition interesting to
open the topic with:

> the quality or character of being objective : lack of favoritism toward one
side or another : freedom from bias. {% cite objectivity-merriam-webster %}

This definition itself has ambiguous phrases such as "freedom from bias", what
does that mean? When can we say that we are free from bias? Let's look at how
bias is defined in the same dictionary:

> an inclination of temperament or outlook {% cite bias-merriam-webster %}

But... is it really possible to have no inclination at all in our temperament
and outlook? Let's look at the definition of subjective, that will help us here:

> relating to the way a person experiences things in his or her own mind {% cite
subjective-merriam-webster %}

Is it possible for us to have a view of something without it being part of our
experience? It seems not. All that we do, all our views and expressions and our
interactions are part of our experience as a person, and it relates to us on an
intimate level, which means that everything that we do as individuals is
subjective. In that sense, it seems impossible for any individual to be
objective, since they will always have some form of inclination about
everything.

What does this leave us with then when we ask what is objectivity? A better
definition of objectivity in my opinion is one given by Thomas Nagel:

> It may be more accurate to think of objectivity as a direction in which the
understanding can travel. [...] The process of reduction is a move in the
direction of greater objectivity, toward a more accurate view of the real nature
of things. This is accomplished by reducing our dependence on individual or
species-specific points of view toward the object of investigation. We describe
it not in terms of the impressions it makes on our senses, but in terms of its
more general effects and of properties detectable by means other than the human
senses. {% cite nagel1974like %}

In this sense, there is no black-and-white distinction between subjectivity and
objectivity, but rather it is a spectrum, a line on which we can walk from
subjectivity towards objectivity.

![Subjective-Objective spectrum: On Subjective side we have Individual perception, in the middle Agreement with others, and on the Objective side Agreement with other apparatus](/img/inherent-subjectivity/subjective-objective.png)

We start with our individual perceptions as the most objective view and
description, we then move towards descriptions that allow us to agree with other
(human) beings, and finally we move towards descriptions that can be verified
and agreed upon by other apparatus, although it is important to understand that
even the apparatus that we may use to describe things are not necessarily free
from bias, since they are created by biased individuals and groups. By now you
may notice that if a measuring device is made to be agreeable between a large
group of people, it is already more objective than a device made by a single
individual! However, absolute objectivity, which we may call "a view from
nowhere" may not be attainable by us, because we will always be viewing things
from our own perspectives, even if it is a large, collective perspective that we
agree on, it is not a view from nowhere.

![Subjective-Objective spectrum: A single person says a ball is 10cm radius, 1/4 objectivity. A group of people say it's 10cm radius, 1/2 objectivity. A group of people with a ruler say it's 10cm radius, 3/4 objectivity](/img/inherent-subjectivity/subjective-objective-example.png)

Inherently Subjective Things
----------------------------

With our definition of objectivity in place, now let's see: is there something
that we cannot move towards objectivity about? Yes. That is our personal
experiences.

See, if there is an attempt to give a more objective description of _my_
personal experience, there will need to be either an agreement among a group of
beings about this description of my personal experience, or there should be an
apparatus that we can agree on that measures my personal experience. However, my
personal experience is personal exactly because it is completely dependent and
originated from my perspective alone, and no one else's; and as soon as you try
to move towards objectivity by trying to describe this experience in a way that
moves away from my person-specific and species-specific standpoint, towards a
more agreeable and general description that even non-human beings or apparatus
can agree with, you lose the initial personal experience in the process, so you
end up with a non-personal description of the experience which misses the point
of the actual subjective experience I have.

So, you can come up with _some_ description of my experience, but you can't
actually describe the subjective experience of being me as it really is. The
walk towards objectivity requires you to drop the subjectivity of my experience,
and hence, some inherently subjective things such as our personal experiences
can't be objectified.

This is how Nagel puts it (I think this may be a bit hard to read without
reading the whole paper):

> Experience itself, however, does not seem to fit the pattern. The idea of
moving from appearance to reality seems to make no sense here. What is the
analogue in this case to pursuing a more objective understanding of the same
phenomena by abandoning the initial subjective viewpoint toward them in favor of
another that is more objective but concerns the same thing? Certainly it appears
unlikely that we will get closer to the real nature of human experience by
leaving behind the particularity of our human point of view and striving for a
description in terms accessible to beings that could not imagine what it was
like to be us. If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible
only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity that is, less
attachment to a specific viewpoint does not take us nearer to the real nature of
the phenomenon: it takes us farther away from it. {% cite nagel1974like %} 

So What? (Or: Why is This Important?)
----------------------

This realisation means that objectifying people's subjective experiences is not
possible, we will never be able to decipher someone's subjective experience of
something. This does not mean we should not try to _understand_ people, rather,
it means we should always consider that our understanding of someone's
subjective experience will never be objective, it will always be merely our
perspective of it. When it comes to people's personal experiences, we can't be
sure that we are right, the way we are confident we are right after measuring a
distance using our agreed-upon metric ruler; when it comes to subjective
experiences it's always only a crude approximation. "In the end one experiences
only oneself." {% cite nietzsche2008thus %}

This video was sent to me by a friend today, and it is great timing, because it
is very relevant:

<iframe class="centered" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/oRG2jlQWCsY" title="Good Will Hunting | 'Your Move Chief' (HD) - Matt Damon, Robin Williams | MIRAMAX" frameborder="0" allow="picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

References
----------

{% bibliography --cited %}