The Objectivity of Subjective Experience

[Christopher]

Ayn Rand held a special place in her heart for the witch doctor, namely that of a punching bag. The WD represented the individual who perceived the world through subjective experience. This contradicted Rand’s premise that reality could and should be understood Objectively (i.e. Objectivism). Rand made an excellent case against the WD, showing how subjective feelings, unique and individual to each person, could not be a basis for perception with the premise that there exists one objective reality.

Nathaniel Branden would later make the claim that emotions represented a very important aspect of self-understanding. Specifically, Branden stated in a recorded seminar that individuals must experience their emotions in order to accurately pursue their values. To this degree many Objectivists now recognize that subjective experiences are an integral part of understanding the self. What is less understood is the fact that subjective experience may indeed offer valid and accurate perceptions regarding the external world. I assert that Objectivist epistemology must include subjective experience as a variable in perception of the universe.

Rand made an excellent case against subjective beliefs and experiences in her writings. Anger, paranoia, and cultural beliefs indeed may distort perception or be founded upon principles clearly created from an imaginative context. I agree with many of these assertions against certain types of subjective experiences as representations of objective reality. However, she may have gone too far and thrown the baby out with the subjective bathwater.

Ken Wilber has already made the case that subjective experiences are interpreted through the cultural-specific symbols adopted by individuals during their development. Examples of symbols include God, angels, and Heaven. Although the symbols are subjective, underneath these symbols is the objective arising experience itself. Certain types of experiences, including those of a spiritual essence, often lend themselves to specific intuitions concerning the nature of reality.

Certain intuitions have been demonstrated to be valid. Branden once recommended to me the works of Donna Eden, a practitioner of Energy Medicine. EM is an intervention based on energies associated to acupuncture, energy meridians, and chakras. Although EM falls into the subjective category of perception, the results of EM interventions today are consistently objective. EM was thought to have originated from individuals such as witch doctors who possessed an intuition not nurtured and shared by the majority of individuals. Therefore, the witch doctor may have at times appeared magical. Evidence is now slowly accumulating demonstrating that certain energy behaviors previously intuitively predicted can in fact be verified by scientific instrument (and I don’t mean hocus-pocus machines).

A second approach to verification of subjective experience as a potential mechanism for perception of the external universe can argued through spiritual experiences. Underneath the deep religious symbolism of spiritual experience lies intuitions that call for certain behavior (e.g. compassion) and for observing causal relationships through a new system of perceptions. Such a proposition therefore argues that ontology itself is dependent upon the experiential system of the observer. Rand stated in Objectivist Epistemology that man creates concepts through the process of isolation and integration of perceptions; however, distinct perceptions (such as differing 2 red objects from 1 blue object) is considered automatic. This was perhaps too simplified.

Evidence from the field of Cognitive Psychology suggests that humans are unconsciously motivated to focus awareness on certain aspects of the environment, lending themselves to specific perceptions. Additionally, conceptual recognition is driven primarily by inferences of causal relationships (and not character-recognition) – See Rehder, 2004: Feature inference and the causal structure of categories.

First, taking the approach that 'perception is motivated by unconscious mechanisms' can be reinterpreted as motivation through values/needs. Therefore, spiritually-influenced perception can be argued to be operating according to legitimate values and needs that generally rests outside of the average person’s awareness.

Second, and far more important, given that conceptual categorization is driven by inferred causal mechanisms, then experiential state-changes that result in new and different inferences are no more nor no less valid that the inferences of the everyday individual. These intuitions/inferences arising from spiritual experiences are consistent within individuals across cultures and across history. Therefore, to state that the ontological nature of reality begins and ends with the everyday experience and cognitive processing of most individuals is a serious reductionism. Perhaps everyday individuals are to enlightened individuals as primitive and unlearned men are to everyday individuals. One day these inferences may gain enough awareness that scientists will pursue deeper testing.

Thus, Rand’s attack on the witch doctor has merit when addressing certain aspects of subjective experience. These faulty experiences include simple example (unfounded fears, etc) and marriage to cultural symbols. However, intuition has also led to demonstration of objectively-perceived influences (Energy Medicine). Further, the very nature of perceptions and cognitions upon which man’s ontological understanding is founded depends upon unconscious motivations and mechanisms of inference that go through consistent change (development?) via spiritual practice.

Here’s to you witch doctor, for everything we never understood and faultily assumed about your witch practice!

Christopher

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Christopher,

You asked me somewhere else about Ken Wilber. I like what I have read and seen so far (there is a good channel on YouTube about Naked Integral), with the only caveat that he seems to have a cult-like structure surrounding him. That is a turn-off to me, but I like many of his ideas and his approach of trying to categorize and integrate mankind's knowledge from four perspectives (interior individual, exterior individual, interior collective, exterior collective).

I believe his approach is far superior to Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis, although I do see value in categorizing and analyzing things in this manner, also (disintegrated, integrated and misintegrated). For the record, I find this to be a top-down only approach and it works wonderfully for that perspective. The problem comes when it is used for a bottom-up approach (usually called reductionism or something like that).

As for the issue of subjective experience, although subjective experience must be translated into words or something communicable for the knowledge of it to be transmitted to others, it is still information to the one who experienced it. I am all for treating it as such, within the limits of what can be verified by others undergoing a similar experience if they do certain things.

About the concept of Witch Doctor, as a political concept, I am in full agreement with the archetype and the evil it stands for. I agree with the idea that the Attila/Witch Doctor must be replaced by the Producer/Intellectual in a free society and that the pairings are accurate in terms of their respective functions and results.

Notice that even when top Producers have their own "Witch Doctors" in the form of Christian preachers, there is an enormous emphasis on practical self-improvement and fairness, which is more of an intellectual thing thing a mystical one. There is a huge difference between "Witch Doctors" like Joel Osteen and fundamentalists.

So I consider these archetypes as extreme molds that hardly any one person fits into 100%. Hell, even Hitler was a Producer of sorts if you look at building roads, etc. I think these archetypes are useful for categorizing political ideas and the causality of them, since they deal with ideas in action in a general manner. They are like standards of measurement (and large measurements at that).

But as accurate archetypes of how man's mind works, I find them oversimplified to the point of error. There is a lot more going on in our minds than ruling others, evading reality, producing goods/services, or identifying reality, which are the functions of the Attila, Witch Doctor, Producer and Intellectual archetypes respectively.

Michael