The Limits of Objectivity: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Existence

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How do you do that? The observer exist and cannot be entirely eliminated in choosing the problem, detremining assumptions, preparing the hypothesis, designing the experiment, funding, measuring and observing, collecting and analysing data, interpreting results, publishing results, peer review, study replication. etc.

In the case of the thermometer example, factors such as the method of temperature reading, the placement of the thermometer, the standards used to determine accuracy, the decision to measure, the operator’s technique, environmental conditions, timing of the measurement, interpretation and context of the data, the choice of thermometer type, and calibration—are done by an observer and play a role in what is considered ‘objective’ measurement.

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Don’t kid yourself. Those questions weren’t focused at all. Any point you are or have been trying to make remains opaque.

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I can only speak for myself. If someone tells me they have determined the temperature of the room is 20 degrees Celsius because they looked at a thermometer, I consider that a statement can be objectively verified as true.

If the same person tells me they watched a movie last night and it is the best movie ever made, I would consider that a subjective opinion and want to see the movie for myself to decide whether I agree. But, whether or not I do agree, I would not consider either of our impressions to be objectively true.

YMMV

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And again, we’re back to bald assertion.

As I stated above, sensory data, including that of proprioception, is “evidence obtained through sense experience”, and thus empirical evidence. It is objective data. How you felt about this sensory experience (surprised, embarrassed, or whatever) would be subjective experience.

In the same way, your visual experience of a sunrise is objective, whether you find it beautiful is subjective.

Sensory input is objective, mental reaction to it is subjective.

subjective adj Pertaining or peculiar to an individual subject or his mental operations; depending upon one’s individuality or idiosyncrasy; personal, individual.

No @LRT you are not. That is the problem. You have presented no reasoned argument for this claim. Only a bald assertion.

How is your observation of proprioception any less objective than observation of a sunset or observing the temperature reading on @Faizal_Ali’s thermometer? Yes, your sensory input would be considered an inaccurate representation of your body’s orientation. But a thermometer might likewise be inaccurate. Analysing and explaining objective results, including the sources of possible inaccuracies, is part of the objective scientific process.

But this is all largely definitional. But you should not expect science to change, just because of your own idiosyncratic definition of the boundary between subjective and objective.

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Individual organisms (including people) begin life without consciousness (unless you think fertilised eggs are conscious) and acquire consciousness as they develop.

This is not the same process as the evolution of the first conscious organism over millions of generations, and probably not the same process as how that first organism acquired its individual consciousness.

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My sense is that by excluding the law of identity, the set of provable proposition would be considerably smaller, to the point of being reduced to zero.

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This applies to mathematics. Does it have any application to knowledge about the world?

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Limiting the sort of reasoning allowed is the whole point of the rules of logic, to constrain the number of ideas that can be asserted in accordance with the rules.

I completely accept that if we removed the law of identity from our existing body of knowledge, most of the rest of that body would collapse. However, I am suggesting that this is the case because that knowledge was based on the premise to begin with, It remains a possibility, to my mind, that in a different world an equally strong body of knowledge could have been built that did not rest on that foundation. To suggest otherwise is the equivalent of saying the existence of cantilever bridges means that suspensions bridges will not stand.

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Your statement seems to contain a contradiction. In the first paragraph, you suggest that fertilized eggs are not conscious and only acquire consciousness as they develop. However, in the second paragraph, you discuss the “first conscious organism” and how it acquired individual consciousness.

The origins of life is one complex issue, while the emergence of consciousness is a separate, yet deeply connected, matter. These two topics are often debated, but they are not the same, even though they are intricately linked.

On second thought, whether we can truly separate them remains an open question, one that can only be answered based on how we define both life and consciousness.

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Origin of Life: We still don’t know how life began, suggesting that our current physical-chemical way of tackling the issue may be incomplete.

Evolution: A dynamic integration of traditional frameworks with new findings, including apparent purpose. Where will all of this ultimately take us?

Cognition: We find it all over in nature;implying that it may be a fundamental feature of life rather than an emergent property of complex brains.

Consciousness: We still don’t understand how the brain produces thought, implying that there is a very wide explanatory gap between the physical process and the mental phenomena.

Objectivity-Subjectivity: Science relies on both, while attempting to objectify the subjective through process. So is it about “objectivity” being a refined form of “subjectivity”, rather than “objectivity” as a stand alone?

Physicalism: We do not live in a purely physical world, suggesting that reality cannot be explained solely by physical matter and laws.

These ideas suggest that to fully understand reality, science may need to move beyond physicalism and mechanism. A more comprehensive approach, integrating both material and non-material aspects, may be necessary to grasp the full complexity of existence.

There may be some lack of clarity in the way I explain these concepts, but it does not affect the clarity of my initial statements..Is it really a matter of opaqueness, or is it more about resistance toward a different interpretation of things?

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When discussing objectivity and subjectivity, it’s useful to think of them as a spectrum rather than a clear line. Some things are mostly objective, some are mostly subjective, and others fall in between. For example, the amount of anesthetic given and how it’s injected are objective—they can be measured and verified. The biological effects on the nerves are also objective, following predictable processes. However, the loss of sensation in the arm, while based on these effects, becomes more subjective. Asking “Do you feel anything in your arm?” is objective, with a simple yes or no answer. But asking “What does it feel like to have no sensation?” is subjective, since it depends on the person’s experience. The more personal questions, like “How does losing sensation affect you mentally?” are even more subjective, as they reflect a unique internal experience.

In short, subjectivity is still important in science, even though the process aims for objectivity. Science can never fully eliminate subjectivity, whether in interpreting data, designing experiments, or the researchers’ perspectives. Subjectivity is not a problem but a natural part of how we understand the world, even within an objective framework.

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This has nothing to do with the limits of objectivity. The question is straightforward: Is solving the problem of the origin of life becoming easier or harder than before?

My contention is this: we are moving forward, but the goalpost is receding faster than we can advance.

The only convergence point across all theories is their focus on cells, genes, and proteins. Beyond that, the field fragments into competing frameworks, each built on assumptions that, while supported by some evidence, remain dependent on which theoretical lens you adopt. When scientists invoke analogies like a tornado assembling a jumbo jet from a junkyard, admit that “there is no consensus about what to look for, or where,” or dismiss proposed scenarios as “an appeal to magic,” these are hardly reassuring signs of progress. Rather, they suggest we are confronting problems far deeper and more intractable than initially anticipated.

Statements like this one do not help either:

“None of this precludes understanding the origin of life, but it does make competing hypotheses hard to prove or disprove unambiguously. Combine that with the overarching importance of the question and it’s clear why the field is beset with over-claims and counter-claims, which in turn warp funding, attention and recognition.”

“We have taken them apart, in centrifuges or with optical tweezers, read out the code that specifies their structures, deciphered the regulatory loops that lend an illusion of purpose, listed all their parts. And yet underneath it all, we are barely any closer to understanding what breathes life into these flicks of matter. How did they first emerge from the sterile inorganic Earth? What forces coordinate their exquisite behaviour? Do they experience any sort of feelings?”

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This is a bald assertion.

This is also a bald assertion.

Part of the problem is that you have offered no definition, let alone a consensus definition (i.e. one that others would agree to), of how to distinguish between “objective” and “subjective”. This makes it very easy for people to argue past each other.

As I have argued above, sensory data is “empirical evidence” and thus objective.

Reactions to this sensory data is pertaining to an individual’s mental operations, and thus subjective.

There might be cases where the line gets a little blurry but, in principle at least, the difference is reasonably clear.

If it’s coming into the brain from the body, it is objective.

If it is the brain reacting to something else in the brain (including things coming into the brain from the body), it is subjective.

Yes, but that is not the issue at question. The issue with proprioception is:

Asking “do you have the sensation that your arm is somewhere different from where it really is?”

This is a question about sensory data and thus is objective.

This is also what science is interested in.

Likewise, asking “Have you lost ssensation in your arm?”

You may feel that “What does it feel like to have no sensation?” is an important question, and thus one that science should be answering. But this is itself a completely subjective opinion, and one that you have completely and utterly failed to even attempt to mount a reasoned argument for.

In short, this is an unsubstantiated assertion, that appears to be a result of your muddled understanding, most likely due to your lack of clear (let alone consensus) definitions of “subjective” and “objective”.

Two steps @LRT:

  1. Define “subjective” and “objective”.

  2. Make a reasoned argument for why subjective questions are important to science. Do not simply state that subjective questions are important. Do not simply give anecdotes without articulating how these anecdotes demonstrate that subjective questions are important.

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It has. Take away identity and you have no stable objects, no stable meanings, no repeatable experiments, hence no science.

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The challenge I am having here is that your problem statements are highly vague.

For example, your origin of life statement:

We still don’t know how life began, suggesting that our current physical-chemical way of tackling the issue may be incomplete.

I see no reason why not having a complete understanding of the origin necessitates a problem with the approach to understanding the origin of life.

To use an analogy, imagine you are trying to learn how to bake a specific cake. You make not have a complete list of ingredients or steps in the recipe to produce a successful cake, but that doesn’t mean there is a fundamental problem with baking itself.

And suggesting there is a fundamental problem with baking, but not articulating specifically where the problem exists or what a possible alternative would entail is equally unhelpful. Casting vague allusions regarding lack of knowledge doesn’t help us fill in those knowledge gaps. It could be the gaps are just lack of knowledge of an particular ingredient or step in the recipe, and we just to fill in those gaps.

If you think there are gaps in our understanding of the origin of life that require an alternative approach, what are those specific gaps, what is the alternative approach you propose, and how will this alternative approach help us fill in those specific gaps?

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This is nothing more than “God of the gaps”. We don’t know X, therefore Jesus. It’s not a reasonable argument. All our lack of knowledge actually suggests is that the problem is difficult, perhaps insoluble. Perhaps the necessary data are just not there.

Anyway, what is this alternative method you propose that could make better progress on that and other questions?

There is no such dynamic integration. You are putting your faith (term used on purpose) in fringe science.

Not unless you contort the meaning of the term beyond recognition. And are you trying to make it synonymous with consciousness?

No such implication; God of the gaps again. The brain is exceedingly complex, and the tools we have to examine it are quite coarse-grained. That explains the problem without appeal to magic.

This is nothing more than wordplay. What does any of that actually mean for the practice of science, in your ideal rearrangement? Try to make a concrete proposal for once.

Your premise is unsupported. What evidence do you have for it, other than the previously stated “God of the gaps”?

No, you suggest it, but nothing you have said implies it. Perhaps science should be revised so that wanting it to be true is considered evidence?

How do you suggest we change the practice of science in order to integrate these non-material aspects? Again, try to be clear and specific.

The former. Thanks for asking.

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Non-sequitur. We used to not know what caused infections diseases like the flu. Now we know. The physical-chemical approach was completely adequate to answer this question.

We already know what accounts for this “apparent purpose.” Darwin figured it out from the start. We will, of course, learn much more about evolution. But there is no indication a radical new approach is needed.

No, we only observe evidence of it in organisms with brains. And the more complex the brains, the more complex the cognition.

True enough. But those who think the gap will be filled only with more physical processes are making far greater progress than those who think otherwise, the latter group not even knowing where to start.

Option 2.

Bald assertion. No one has so far refuted physicalism.

Prove it. Bend a spoon using this “more comprehensive approach.”

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Easier.

There’s nothing in that article to suggest that. The evidence, which you ignore, suggests the opposite.

My contention is that your rhetorical approach is absurdly shallow.

Utterly false. Just like a typical creationist, you’re ignoring the recent massive progress on metabolism. I suspect that you know nothing about it, which is why I suggested the book that you don’t appear to be reading beyond page 3.

The major unresolved question is metabolism-first vs. RNA-first vs. both-at-the-same-time. None of those three alternatives require the first thing you listed–cells. All are merely hypotheses, not theories.

No, that’s what creationists do! I do not know of a single scientist who has ever used that analogy. Do you?

It seems that you’re not reading what you’re quoting. An article about problems with the field that proposes solutions does not support your contention.

Going back to your protocol:

Please walk me through how this approach was used to support your strong opinion of OoL research. How many papers from the primary OoL literature did you read?

If you believe your approach is cohesive, how do you explain your apparent blindness to metabolism-first hypotheses, given that the first (AFAIK) was published 70 years ago?

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I would say that it also appears to be a product of relying on an entirely rhetorical, evidence-free approach that invokes multiple creationist tropes.

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There is no contradiction. The evolution of consciousness over millions of generations of organisms is not the same as the emergence of consciousness in a single modern organism as it grows and develops.

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