The fallacy of objectivity is the notion that science is objective in the sense that
subjectivity does not enter into the scientific analysis.
What theory of the ontological basis for
subjectivity does Whitehead espouse at this point?
Subjectivity does not equate with non-existence.
Now in our experience of our own
subjectivity we do not discover anything like the inert brute stuff into which classical physics attempts to analyze nature.
Portions of
this subjectivity do not first arise in one part of the region and then get communicated to others.
Not exact matches
But, when you arbitrarily add requirements just to exclude things you don't like, it shows your
subjectivity (i.e. a priori beliefs influencing your views).
When this is
done, no argument is needed against the real presence of a past figure, for a past figure by definition is not the present
subjectivity, is not contemporary, and is precisely one no longer subject to being presented through the senses.7 The presence of a past figure can be made intelligible and justified only by a quite different notion of presence specifically appropriate to the relation of the past to the present.
The second and third meanings inapplicable to historical events in the past have to
do with modes of presence in which something other than one's own
subjectivity is present to that
subjectivity.
Of course we can come up with situations that are exceptions to the rules but I don't see where that has to therefore infer complete
subjectivity as to morals.
People of faith and even of non-faith are all living as rented forms within collective formations ever rising and even falling with the tidal flurries regarding the many societal accolades of a changing tides bantered momentums riding ever continuing laments to rise and then fall upon socialisms shorelines to be so aligned with
subjectivities of placed regionalized variant findings dispersed yet rationed movements in the ever to so be
done fluidic moments by people of faith and also of non-faith.
Thus when modern philosophy established itself anew as a discipline autonomous from theology, it
did so naturally by falling back upon an ever more abyssal
subjectivity.
What Whitehead conceives as the
subjectivity of an «actual entity,» its self - determination, has to
do, in Aristotle's doctrine, with his principle of «form.»
Thus the subject itself can not be found outside one's own opinion as such, because a person can never escape from himself; but this
does not mean that what interests me in this opinion is the appearance of my own
subjectivity.
Theology as a practical discipline
does not invite fascination with the
subjectivity of the believer, for its primary concern is how the self should be shaped to correspond to the object of religious language.
If the reality at work is the inner creativity of God expressing himself as, among other things, the «low - level universals» of a multiplicity of «I's» or as expressing himself in the supposed
subjectivity of psychicalized cells, how exactly
does my present self - awareness derive from this?
If e functions as some sort of final cause, Mays
does not inform us how; and if it were so to function, we seem to introduce an element of
subjectivity and intentionality which Mays would eschew at the level of physical events.
Propositions can only be entertained by individual subjects, and «the world»
does not have a
subjectivity of its own.
Or put another way,
subjectivity «
does not mean a matter of arbitrary taste, but a
subjectivity which is saturated with God.»
But it doesn't include
subjectivity understood as becoming.
The criterion of repetition of common characteristics
does not imply that
subjectivity should be objectified, but together with the claim that conscious occasions are spacy it implies that individual conscious occasions must be objectified so they can be prehended by successor occasions.
Death
does not simply happen once in a lifetime, for this loss of one's own
subjectivity is a perpetual occurrence, from moment to moment.
I think that Birch's setting of the problem is essentially correct and that his solution in terms of attributing
subjectivity to all entities, even particles,
does show a necessary condition for emergence in evolution.
The meeting with God
does not rise out of «experience» and therefore out of detached
subjectivity, but out of life.
None of this proves that Whitehead
did not attribute
subjectivity and experience to all events in nature.
He recognized that these disciplines abstract from the full event, including especially its value, but he
does not say that they abstract from the interiority or
subjectivity of events in nature.
Thus, while we
do not know empirically that lower orders of reality have life and
subjectivity, there is no reason to draw some arbitrary line absolutely separating living and non-living, or subjects and pure objects.
Whitehead agrees with Metz that apart from
subjectivity there can be nothing at all, but he
does not agree that apart from human
subjectivity there can be nothing at all.
To the measure that he
does not, his
subjectivity is shallow and addicted to inner conflicts that are now being studied by clinical psychology and psychiatry.
We must be cautious of trying to explain nature by explaining it away, that is, by transforming it into that which it is not (as we
do when we represent nature as something universal, or when we make it a condition of
subjectivity).
Also machines can get knowledge and exercise the control of technology but they
do not have any
subjectivity.
While Process and Reality
does not assert any divine
subjectivity prior to PR V. 2 (and some late insertions), the fourth chapter of Religion in the Making uses language which implies it.
Consequently as regards the fundamental contention we are examining, it is not appropriate, in view of the historical associations that burden the word «material» to subsume under the term «matter» the
subjectivity which is also met with within the primordial unity we have described, because to
do so would at least obscure the equally fundamental difference encountered in that unity between the knowing subject and the object which is merely met with.
This authority
does not limit his freedom, but frees him from the prison of his own
subjectivity.
We
do so, it is true, in a somewhat paradoxical manner; that which most securely defines us — death — is that which puts an end to us, while the moral gesture which supposedly establishes our
subjectivity, and so is inalienable, involves our being drawn beyond our own boundaries.
How
does it acquire this
subjectivity?
The «relationship» and
subjectivity have all been subtle ways to control and manipulate people to
do the work of the church.
My central point now is that it is only in light of this theory of Whitehead's own intellectual project that one could
do what Lewis has now proposed
doing: show its completion or fulfillment in his own theory of God as the
subjectivity of the future, a profoundly difficult and complex notion discussed at greater length in other essays by George Allan and Robert C. Neville in this Special Focus.
For example, in order to salvage the «core» of Christian faith for the scientifically informed, Rudolf Bultmann argued that revelation has to
do primarily with God's address to the hidden
subjectivity and inner freedom of each person.
But unlike either of these hermeneutical perspectives, a «process hermeneutic»
does not reduce a text's meaning to «forms of
subjectivity,» as Kelsey suggests.
A proposition becomes part of a «form of
subjectivity» when the reader admits it as a datum within the process of self - creation by assigning to it a valuative feeling; but that
does not mean it is an «injunction.»
In interpretation, the reader entertains propositions whose logical subjects include entities in the reader's (and author's) past world; only as such
do they become components of the interpreter's «forms of
subjectivity»; so there is always an element of objective reference.
To deny all
subjectivity to cats, as Descartes
did, is just as counterintuitive as to attribute such
subjectivity to objects that have none of these characteristics.
Whereas we experience ourselves as subjects and
do not find it difficult to attribute
subjectivity to our pets, we are clear that tables and rocks are very different indeed.
Second, saying that God doesn't exist because you think the concept is childish is not logical at all; that's a fallacy of
subjectivity.
Because stories now appear to be anchorless, flowing as they
do from the caprice of a groundless
subjectivity, it is little wonder that they provide us with no solid sustenance in our own search for meaning.
Pailin's critique against divine impersonality is well - taken, but I don't see how it applies to me, once future
subjectivity is taken into account.
My second assumption, as noted above, is that the concrescing actual entity
does not have to prehend directly this objective integration of the primordial and the consequent natures within the divine being but only to prehend God's feelings toward itself in virtue of that same integration within the divine
subjectivity.
While it is easiest to grasp the prius of creativity - esse in the human case, a process metaphysics sees at least a faint glimmer of
subjectivity (which for process thinkers
does not imply consciousness!)
A collection
does not have its own
subjectivity and thus can not make its own decisions.
It
does mean, however, that while every future finite entity» will prehend and thus «know» that finite entity only as a completed concrescence, God will prehend and thus «know» the concrescence in its
subjectivity.