The big misunderstanding about “I”

[Angelo Cannata]

Whenever we, or any philosopher of past or present time, talk about “I”, or “subjectivity”, a big mistake is made. The mistake consists in treating it as an object. In this moment, while I am writing these ideas, I am involved in this mistake, because it is part of our language, our way of using ideas. When I say that subjectivity is so and so, I am actually talking not about subjectivity, but about an objectified idea of subjectivity. If I want to talk about real subjectivity, I must talk about my own subjectivity; if I talk about your subjectivity, I am not talking about subjectivity, but about an objectified idea of subjectivity that I have built by using my ideas. So, if you want to talk about subjectivity, you must talk about your subjectivity; if you talk about my subjectivity or about subjectivity in the abstract, you are not talking about subjectivity, but about an objectified idea of subjectivity that you have built.

But, even when I talk about my subjectivity, I have objectified my subjectivity, because of my reducing it to a communicable idea. In a strict sense, subjectivity is something impossible to talk about, because I have no way to let you enter into my own experience of my subjectivity. An escape to this difficulty is to make use of allusive language, or, at least, to make some effort to guide listeners to their own experience, rather than to the objective content of what I am saying.

By keeping in mind these difficulties, we can deduce that our effort to talk or to think about our own incommunicable subjectivity is the only way to escape from being objects. In this moment I am thinking to Heidegger, that said that man is “thrown” into the world. “Thrown” means exactly “objectified”, since the origin of the word “object” is “to throw”.

This means that any attempt to talk about subjectivity by trying to use exact ideas and concepts is automatically a betrayal of subjectivity, because being exact means just being objective. So, the best ways of talking about subjectivity are arts: painting, music, literature, sculpture, poetry. Arts express subjectivity without any claim of being exact, clear, precise. Arts allude to subjectivity, rather that define it; any artist expresses first his own subjectivity, not others’.

That means that philosophy must open a dialogue with arts (that is not philosophy of aesthetics: that would be, again, an objectification), if she wants to talk properly about subjectivity.

So, in this moment I am trying to consider what I have just written as “art of ideas”, rather than a claim of transmitting some precise, exact, clear idea.

[A_Seagull]

Whenever we, or any philosopher of past or present time, talk about “I”, or “subjectivity”, a big mistake is made.

Well, clearly you are making a huge mistake!

[Angelo Cannata]

Perhaps you didn’t read all my post: I already said it:

But, even when I talk about my subjectivity, I have objectified my subjectivity

[Greta]

It depends on the time frames. The "I" does accumulate a stockpile of experiences that point to tendencies. How true is it? That depends on what others believe and your own sense of what has happened and is happening.

The I of "now", by contrast, is just seeing, hearing, breathing, smelling, tasting, heartbeat, tingling, itching, aching - a little sensory "movie" with the thought stream acting as a "soundtrack".

[Angelo Cannata]

I think that your message is just an example of objectification of the “I”: you described its activity as we normally describe any activity of any object. The problem is that this way we completely omit to consider that whatever we say conditions ourselves, because, by talking about "I”, we are talking about ourselves, not simply about an external object.
So, I could object that what you talked about is not really the “I”, but an objectification of the “I”: you treated the “I” as it would something external to you; but this is not completely true, because you are involved in what you are talking about. This seems to mean that we can never think about the “I” in a neutral way, because we are involved, we condition, we pollute the question with our involvement.
For this reason I think that the communication operated by an artist is more coherent than the one operated by a philosopher, because the artist does not claim not to pollute the communication with his involvement. The aim of the artist is just to show his total involvement in his communication, so his communication appears to me more authentic.

[Judaka]

What do you mean by objectified subjectivity?

Also don't you feel what you are saying only applies to ontological subjectivity? Surely inherently subjective ideas such as interpretations, standards, characterisations and so on, can be shared without any problem?

[Angelo Cannata]

I will make an example to try to be clearer.

Let’s imagine a man that is blind from birth. This man knows his blindness because other people talked him about it. This man builds to himself some kind of idea about what his blindness is, what it consists on. I think that this man has no way of thinking or talking about his blindness in a real objective way. This is due to the fact that he is inside his blindness and he has no way to exit from it. He can try to deal with his blindness in some objective way by imitating the way his friends deal with blindness, the way his friends talk about blindness. So, he tries to imagine a condition of being outside his blindness, like he can experience being outside his room. But, actually, he has no way to have a consistent concept of what being outside blindness means. He can imagine some pretence about being sighted, but pretence is very, very different from being able to really experience being outside blindness. So, when this blind man imagines his being sighted, he realizes just his imagination of being sighted, that is very, very far from how a really sighted man can imagine it.

To say this in a shorter way, I just say that this man has no way to objectify his blindness, because he is inside it and has no way to be outside, that is, to treat it as a real object, that is, something that stays in front of you, outside you, or you outside it.

This is, I think, our condition about our subjectivity: we are inside it and we have no way to be outside it. Every pretence of us about talking about it as it would be something objective is exactly like a blind man trying to talk about his blindness as it would be something objective for him, that is, in my opinion, an impossible operation, if we want to be correct.

[commonsense]

What happens if the "I" examines itself through introspection?

[Judaka]

Angelo Cannata

In another forum, a member there explained this idea of epistemological and ontological subjectivity, distinctions argued by John Searle. At the time I didn't really believe the distinction was meaningful due to the context of the debate but here's a case where I think it is useful. I do agree that a blind man cannot describe his blindness to others but I wouldn't agree that we can't express preferences, for instance, such as "I like the color blue". The former example is of the ontological aspect of subjectivity; pertaining to being and feeling and the latter of epistemological subjectivity which relates to knowledge.

So while you make a valid point, the distinction here can help avoid confusion, if indeed you agree that epistemological subjectivity can be shared reasonably.

[Angelo Cannata]

What happens if the "I" examines itself through introspection?

It seems to me that any method cannot make us gain a fully objective point of view, just like any method cannot make a blind man able to have an objective idea about his blindness. Introspection means analizing, going inside, but a blind man cannot go inside the blindness he is already in; to go inside his blindness he should previously go outside it.

[Angelo Cannata]

Angelo Cannata

In another forum, a member there explained this idea of epistemological and ontological subjectivity, distinctions argued by John Searle. At the time I didn't really believe the distinction was meaningful due to the context of the debate but here's a case where I think it is useful. I do agree that a blind man cannot describe his blindness to others but I wouldn't agree that we can't express preferences, for instance, such as "I like the color blue". The former example is of the ontological aspect of subjectivity; pertaining to being and feeling and the latter of epistemological subjectivity which relates to knowledge.

So while you make a valid point, the distinction here can help avoid confusion, if indeed you agree that epistemological subjectivity can be shared reasonably.

Yes, I think that epistemological subjectivity is what we do everyday under the name of science.

[Judaka]

Angelo

How would you then characterise, subjective distinctions such as the interpretation of behaviour or with regards to morality and so on? Also, for instance, an argument between people about whether i.e defensive vs aggressive play in tennis is superior?

There's a huge spectrum of subjectivity simply missing from your vocabulary.

[Angelo Cannata]

Once agreed that these distinctions are subjective, I think that the main characterisation has been done: they are subjective. Here is the main problem, because I see that a lot of people have problems just at this point: they do not accept so a wide extension of subjectivity referred to any aspect of life.

I think that any other characterisation inside subjectivity is not a problem: it belongs to literature, rather than philosophy.

But I’m not sure that I understood the real intention underlying your question.

[Atla]

Whenever we, or any philosopher of past or present time, talk about “I”, or “subjectivity”, a big mistake is made. The mistake consists in treating it as an object. In this moment, while I am writing these ideas, I am involved in this mistake, because it is part of our language, our way of using ideas. When I say that subjectivity is so and so, I am actually talking not about subjectivity, but about an objectified idea of subjectivity. If I want to talk about real subjectivity, I must talk about my own subjectivity; if I talk about your subjectivity, I am not talking about subjectivity, but about an objectified idea of subjectivity that I have built by using my ideas. So, if you want to talk about subjectivity, you must talk about your subjectivity; if you talk about my subjectivity or about subjectivity in the abstract, you are not talking about subjectivity, but about an objectified idea of subjectivity that you have built.

But, even when I talk about my subjectivity, I have objectified my subjectivity, because of my reducing it to a communicable idea. In a strict sense, subjectivity is something impossible to talk about, because I have no way to let you enter into my own experience of my subjectivity. An escape to this difficulty is to make use of allusive language, or, at least, to make some effort to guide listeners to their own experience, rather than to the objective content of what I am saying.

By keeping in mind these difficulties, we can deduce that our effort to talk or to think about our own incommunicable subjectivity is the only way to escape from being objects. In this moment I am thinking to Heidegger, that said that man is “thrown” into the world. “Thrown” means exactly “objectified”, since the origin of the word “object” is “to throw”.

This means that any attempt to talk about subjectivity by trying to use exact ideas and concepts is automatically a betrayal of subjectivity, because being exact means just being objective. So, the best ways of talking about subjectivity are arts: painting, music, literature, sculpture, poetry. Arts express subjectivity without any claim of being exact, clear, precise. Arts allude to subjectivity, rather that define it; any artist expresses first his own subjectivity, not others’.

That means that philosophy must open a dialogue with arts (that is not philosophy of aesthetics: that would be, again, an objectification), if she wants to talk properly about subjectivity.

So, in this moment I am trying to consider what I have just written as “art of ideas”, rather than a claim of transmitting some precise, exact, clear idea.

The distinction between these two 'expressions' of subjectivity is valid, but both have their places in philosophy, why do you want to use one and discard the other?

[Angelo Cannata]

I think that talking about subjectivity in an objectified way, omitting consideration of our being personally involved in the topic from its very inside, is just a lie, most probably an unintentional lie, but it’s a lie, it means working with false assumptions. The false assumption is this one: “Let’s assume that we can talk about subjectivity leaving aside our involvement in it”.