Feb 29, 2020 03:56 AM
(This post was last modified: Feb 29, 2020 06:52 AM by C C.)
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/obs...tractable/
EXCERPT (Tam Hunt): Strangely, modern science was long dominated by the idea that to be scientific means to remove consciousness from our explanations, in order to be “objective.” This was the rationale behind behaviorism, a now-dead theory of psychology that took this trend to a perverse extreme. [See also the history of primary and secondary qualities, regarded as objective versus subjective properties.]
[...] Erwin Schrödinger, one of the key architects of quantum mechanics in the early part of the 20th century, labeled this approach in his philosophical 1958 book Mind and Matter, the “principle of objectivation” and expressed it clearly:
“By [the principle of objectivation] I mean … a certain simplification which we adopt in order to master the infinitely intricate problem of nature. Without being aware of it and without being rigorously systematic about it, we exclude the Subject of Cognizance from the domain of nature that we endeavor to understand. We step with our own person back into the part of an onlooker who does not belong to the world, which by this very procedure becomes an objective world.” (Go to page-26, Chapter-3)
Schrödinger did, however, identify both the problem and the solution. He recognized that “objectivation” is just a simplification that is a temporary step in the progress of science in understanding nature. He concludes: “Science must be made anew. Care is needed.”
We are now at the point, it seems to a growing number of thinkers who are finally listening to Schrödinger, where we must abandon, where appropriate, the principle of objectivation. It is time for us to employ a “principle of subjectivation” and in doing so understand not just half of reality—the objective world—but the whole, the external and internal worlds. The science of consciousness has enjoyed a renaissance in the last couple of decades and the study of our own minds—consciousness/subjectivity—has finally become a respectable pursuit. It’s still tricky, however [...]
We are retreating from the notion of only “objective” science being legitimate. We are now developing a new set of standards to replace “objectivity.” These new standards are based on the notion of intersubjective confirmation. This fancy term just means that we recognize that all “objective” data are data that we can discuss and decide as a community of scientists whether to regard as accurate and relevant and thus “true.” Truth is intersubjective, not objective. There is no “view from nowhere.” There is always a somewhere, a perspective, a subject.
This is the epistemological “hard problem” lurking behind the ontological “hard problem.” The former asks: What kinds of data and questions do we need to ask to figure out the nature of consciousness? How does science make sense of what has seemed to so many for so long to be a scientifically intractable problem? The latter is the now well-known reframing of the classic mind/body problem proposed by David Chalmers in his 1996 book The Conscious Mind: Toward a Theory of Consciousness.
[...] the study of consciousness requires a mapping between two very different domains: an objective (i.e., “intersubjective”) measurable world and a subjective hard-to-measure internal world. How do these worlds correspond to each other? What physical structures are associated with consciousness and why? How far down the chain of being does consciousness extend? (MORE - details)
EXCERPT (Tam Hunt): Strangely, modern science was long dominated by the idea that to be scientific means to remove consciousness from our explanations, in order to be “objective.” This was the rationale behind behaviorism, a now-dead theory of psychology that took this trend to a perverse extreme. [See also the history of primary and secondary qualities, regarded as objective versus subjective properties.]
[...] Erwin Schrödinger, one of the key architects of quantum mechanics in the early part of the 20th century, labeled this approach in his philosophical 1958 book Mind and Matter, the “principle of objectivation” and expressed it clearly:
“By [the principle of objectivation] I mean … a certain simplification which we adopt in order to master the infinitely intricate problem of nature. Without being aware of it and without being rigorously systematic about it, we exclude the Subject of Cognizance from the domain of nature that we endeavor to understand. We step with our own person back into the part of an onlooker who does not belong to the world, which by this very procedure becomes an objective world.” (Go to page-26, Chapter-3)
Schrödinger did, however, identify both the problem and the solution. He recognized that “objectivation” is just a simplification that is a temporary step in the progress of science in understanding nature. He concludes: “Science must be made anew. Care is needed.”
We are now at the point, it seems to a growing number of thinkers who are finally listening to Schrödinger, where we must abandon, where appropriate, the principle of objectivation. It is time for us to employ a “principle of subjectivation” and in doing so understand not just half of reality—the objective world—but the whole, the external and internal worlds. The science of consciousness has enjoyed a renaissance in the last couple of decades and the study of our own minds—consciousness/subjectivity—has finally become a respectable pursuit. It’s still tricky, however [...]
We are retreating from the notion of only “objective” science being legitimate. We are now developing a new set of standards to replace “objectivity.” These new standards are based on the notion of intersubjective confirmation. This fancy term just means that we recognize that all “objective” data are data that we can discuss and decide as a community of scientists whether to regard as accurate and relevant and thus “true.” Truth is intersubjective, not objective. There is no “view from nowhere.” There is always a somewhere, a perspective, a subject.
This is the epistemological “hard problem” lurking behind the ontological “hard problem.” The former asks: What kinds of data and questions do we need to ask to figure out the nature of consciousness? How does science make sense of what has seemed to so many for so long to be a scientifically intractable problem? The latter is the now well-known reframing of the classic mind/body problem proposed by David Chalmers in his 1996 book The Conscious Mind: Toward a Theory of Consciousness.
[...] the study of consciousness requires a mapping between two very different domains: an objective (i.e., “intersubjective”) measurable world and a subjective hard-to-measure internal world. How do these worlds correspond to each other? What physical structures are associated with consciousness and why? How far down the chain of being does consciousness extend? (MORE - details)