The following essay is a response to Thomas Nagel’s paper ‘Subjective and Objective’. (Nagel later wrote a book called The View From Nowhere.) How on earth is this view from nowhere achieved? How does a subject detach himself from (to use Nagel’s own words) “place, a special type of life and awareness”? Where is nowhere, and what is it like? How does a human subject stop being a “particular” and start existing nowhere?
Image from Wikipedia.
Thomas Nagel tells usof the existential situation he believed we all find ourselves in:
“Perhaps the problem takes its purest form in a sense of incredulity that one should be anyone in particular, a specific individual of a particular species existing at a particular time and place in the universe.”
The words above parallel, and broaden out, the well-known quote from Wittgenstein in which he says:“It is not how the world is that is mystical, but that it exists.”
Yet it could never be the case that we were no one in particular, or that we weren’t a specific individual of no particular species existing at no particular time and place in the universe. We do find ourselves to be ourselves as homo sapiens existing in 2025 on planet Earth.
Is this some kind of problem? More particularly, is it a problem for objectivity?
Nagel admitted his “psychological” motivation toward objectivity. He wrote:
“The power of the impulse to transcend oneself and one’s species is so great, and its rewards so substantial, that it is not likely to be seriously baffled by the admission that objectivity has its limits.”
Not many people attempt to transcend themselves. Perhaps they won’t even understand what this means. Transcending one’s species, and all its contingent factors, is even more odd. After all, the impulse to transcendoneself is a characteristics of our species.
Nagel on Subjectivity and Objectivity
Thomas Nagel in 1978. ‘Subjective and Objective’ was published in 1979. Image: Wiki Commons
Nagel told usabout the subjective situation we all find ourselves in too:
“At one end is the point of view of a particular individual, having a specific constitution, situation, and relation to the rest of the world.”
We can’t do anything about our specific constitution, our current situation and our current relations to the rest of the world. They’re given. We can change our situation and relation to the rest of the world. However, if we were to do that, then we’d simply find ourselves in another subjective situation, and with other relations to the rest of the world.
If subjectivity is related to selves/persons, their senses, emotions, etc., then Nagel believed that objectivity is achieved by moving away from selves/persons, their senses, emotions, etc. As Nagel himself put it:
“The pursuit of objectivity therefore involves a transcendence of the self in two ways: a transcendence of particularity and a transcendence of one’s type.”
Who is doing the transcending? The self. Thus, must the self transcend the same self? Can a self ever transcend his or her particularity and type? A self can question himself, criticise himself, etc. However, can a self achieve the level of transcendence Nagel had in mind?
“Objective transcendence aims at a representation of what is external to each specific point of view: what is there or what is of value in itself, rather than for anyone. [ ] And the enterprise assumes that what is represented is detachable from the mode of representation [ ].”
How is that transcendence of all points of view achieved? Nagel tells us what we should aim for, but not how it can be achieved. Saying that objective transcendence aims at a representation of what is external to each specific point of view tells us what we should aim for, not how it can be done. Nagel also tells us that we should aim at detaching what is represented from all modes of representation, but not how that can be done.
How to Abstract Yourself
Nagel’s solution to our subjective state is for the individual to involve himself in a process of abstraction. Take the following passage:
“From here the direction of movement toward greater objectivity involves, first, abstraction from the individual’s specific spatial, temporal, and personal position in the world, then from the features that distinguish him from other humans, then gradually from the forms the forms of perception and action characteristic of humans, and away from the narrow range of a human scale in space, time, and quantity, toward a conception of the world which as far as possible is not the view from anywhere within it.”
First of all, what is this abstraction from the individual’s specific spatial, temporal, and personal position in the world? How do we know that an individual has achieved such an abstraction? How do we know that we have done so?
The abstraction which particularly stands out in the passage above is from the forms of perception and action characteristic of humans. This is hard to make sense of as it stands. The words “action characteristic of humans” imply that this is an abstraction required to create an objective moral point of view. Here again, the same questions can be asked.
What would a conception of the world which as far as possible is not the view from anywhere within it be like? What is it like to have that conception of the world? Can readers even imagine what it would be like? Is it, therefore, some kind of ideal we should aim at? How did Nagel himself manage on this quest?
“It is recognised that one’s own point of view can be distorted as a result of contingencies of one’s makeup or situation.”
So how do we bootstrap ourselves out of this situation? Surely human persons will always suffer from distortions because we can never escape from the contingencies of our makeup or situation. Nagel continued:
“To compensate for these distortions it is necessary either to reduce dependence on those forms of perception or judgment in which they are most marked, or to analyse the mechanisms of distortion and discount for them explicitly.”
Is it even possible to reduce dependence on those forms of perceptionor judgment? What would the situation look like after we’d done so? And even if we did do so, it would be the distorted human person who was attempting to rid himself of such mechanisms of distortion.
We can, of course, self-correct. However, this passage is so abstract it’s hard to work out what Nagel meant. Which forms of perception was he referring to? Was Nagel attempting to rid himself of all forms of perception in order to escape into some rationalist state which gave him the view from nowhere?
And if a person were to explicitly claim he’d discounted the mechanisms of distortion, how would others know that he’d done so? How would he know that he’d done so?
Nagel on Objectivity and the View From Nowhere
Nagel suggested a means to establish a view from nowhere. He wrote:
“We must admit that the move toward objectivity reveals what things are like in themselves as opposed to how they appear; not just how they appear to one, relatively austere point of view as opposed to others.”
Readers can assume (or accept) that science attempts to achieve this move toward objectivity. Physics certainly attempts to factor out subjective appearances. (This occurs with the camera experiment. See later section).
Laypersons may wonder what the phrase “what things are like in themselves” means. For surely if such an access to things in themselves were ever achieved, it would be achieved by a human person who must still rely on appearances and a point of view.
In addition, one point of view can be partially squared with many other points of view in an intersubjective manner. It can be argued that an intersubjective point of view is still not an objective point of view. (Many have used the terms “intersubjective” and “objective” as synonyms.) Indeed, if something is objective, then it can’t be a point of view at all.
Here’s Nagel offering us more detail on the view from nowhere:
“[The objective viewpoint’s] essential character, in all the examples cited, is externality or detachment. The attempt is made to view the world not from a place within it, or from the vantage point of a special type of life and awareness, but from nowhere in particular and no form of life in particular at all.”
How on earth is this view from nowhere achieved? How does a subject detach himself from place, a special type of life and awareness? Where is nowhere, and what is it like? How does a human subject stop being a particular and start existing nowhere? Perhaps Nagel answered these questions when he continued with the following words:
“The object is to discount for the features of our pre-reflective outlook that make things appear to us as they do, and thereby to reach an understanding of things as they really are. We flee the subjective under the pressure of an assumption that everything must be something not to any point of view, but in itself. To grasp this by detaching more and more from our own point of view is the unreachable ideal at which the pursuit of objectivity aims.”
Nagel didn't really answer those questions. He didn’t say how these feats can be pulled off. It was more a case of Nagel telling us what we should strive at.
There are two phrases in the passage above which are very Kantian in nature: “an understanding of things as they really are”, and “everything must be something not to any point of view, but in itself”. What are things as they really are? How would we know that we’re “viewing” something as it is in itself?
Nagel admitted that total detachment is “the unreachable ideal”. Yet if it were truly unreachable, then why discuss it at all? It can be supposed that the answer to that question is that we can get closer and closer to such an ideal, without ever actually reaching it. Yet how would we know we were 50% close to the ideal? Or even 99% close to it? (This is similar to a problem with Karl Popper’s notion of verisimilitude.)
Scientific Instruments and Wigner’s Friend
Nagel believed that science achieves at least a level of objectivity. It does so by using scientific instruments of measurement. In detail:
“This is why scientific measurement interposes between us and the world instruments whose interactions with the world are of a kind that could be detected by a creature not sharing the human senses.”
Basically, Nagel was saying that these instruments allow scientists to forgo their human senses in order to rely on something more objective. It is obviously true that a scientific instrument of measurement doesn’t require its own senses. However, it’s still designed and made by human persons to be used and understood by human persons. This makes it difficult to understand what Nagel meant by “could be detected by a creature not sharing the human senses”.
The scientific instrument does indeed interact with the world. It even interacts with the world when no scientist is present. However, it’s still designed and created to be read or understood by scientists. Thus, indirectly the senses of scientists are still part of the story.
In a roundabout manner, the physicist Michio Kaku tackles this issue in terms of the specific case of human observers vs cameras. Kaku writes:
“Some people, who dislike introducing consciousness into physics, claim that a camera can make an observation of an electron, hence wave functions can collapse without resorting to conscious beings.”
Prima facie, the words “a camera can make an observation of an electron” seem odd. It seems anthropomorphic to claim that a camera — alone! — can observe anything. Isn’t it the case that scientists use cameras in order to observe things?
“But then who is to say if the camera exists? Another camera is necessary to ‘observe’ the first camera and collapse its wave function. Then a second camera is necessary to observe the first camera, and a third camera to observe the second camera, ad infinitum.”
This is a concrete example of the problem of Wigner’s Friend.
Kaku’s words are about a camera which is supposed to observe a cat (or a quantum system) all on its own. He also seems to be bringing up the issue of this camera’s very existence as it was before it too was observed. Or, at the very least, Kaku brings up the issue of the camera’s wavefunction itself being required in order for it to so much as exist!
On the Nagelian or objective side, isn’t it the case that the scientist’s camera still registered something regardless of any minds that later made sense of (or interpreted) that registration? (Schrödinger himself talked in terms of minds“giv[ing] it meaning”.) Some readers may question about the word “registered”. In this case at least, all “registered” means is the following:
Prior to observation, something left some kind of physical imprint on the camera.
Yet it’s still the case that what the camera supposedly registered (or “observed”) may not have any role to play until what it registered is registered (or observed) by another camera too. More relevantly, what the camera registered (or observed) may not have any role to play until it’s interpreted by an actual scientist.
To return to Nagel’s position.
The whole point of the scientific instrument is to achieve some level of objectivity. Has that been achieved? According to Nagel, objectivity
“requires not only a departure from one’s individual viewpoint, but also, as far as possible, departure from a specifically human or even mammalian viewpoint”.
Readers can suppose that a scientific instrument achieves that to some level, or at least it helps scientists achieve that.
“[S]top assuming that understanding of the world and our position in it can always be advanced by detaching from that position and subsuming whatever appears from there under a single more comprehensive conception.”
It’s hard to fathom how such a detachment is supposed to work, and how we gain a single more comprehensive conception. Thus, Nagel then detached himself (or at least raises the possibility of doing so) from this desire to detach oneself. He continued:
“Perhaps the best or truest view is not obtained by transcending oneself as far as possible. Perhaps reality should not be identified with objective reality.”
That is what Nagel had so far attempted to do in this essay: transcend himself. Yet it can be argued that one can’t transcend oneself because it’s always the self who’s transcending the same self.
The last sentence is interesting. Nagel seems to be suggesting that either there’s no such thing as objective reality, or that it can never be found. There’s even a hint at phenomenology here in that reality may actually be subjective reality. That would mean that the belief in any access to an truly objective reality is a pipe dream.
“By panpsychism I mean the view that the basic physical constituents of the universe have mental properties, whether or not they are parts of living organisms.”
One important argument (or at least it seems to solve various problems) from panpsychists is on emergence. In basic terms, panpsychists argue that panpsychism doesn’t require a commitment to any kind of emergence.
Thomas Nagel stated the problem with emergence in the following passage:
“There are no truly emergent properties of complex systems. All properties of a complex system that are not relations between it and something else derive from the properties of its constituents and their effects on each other when so combined.”
That’s a categorical and clear statement against emergence. So why do so many philosophers and laypeople believe that there is such a thing? Nagel believed that this is an epistemological issue, not a metaphysical one. He continued:
“Emergence is an epistemological condition: it means that an observed feature of the system cannot be derived from the properties currently attributed to its constituents.”
This is about a limit on our knowledge of the constituents of a system. In many ways, this isn’t surprising, at least when it comes to complex systems. In basic terms, it means that scientists can’t derive an observed feature of the system from any single property of that system, or even from the entire set of properties of that system. Nagel then hinted at panpsychism as a solution:
“But this is a reason to conclude that either the system has further constituents of which we are not yet aware, or the constituents of which we are aware have further properties that we have not yet discovered.”
Of course, it’s possible that any given system does have further constituents of which we are not yet aware. However, it’s the second possibility which interested Nagel: those constituents of which we are aware and which have further properties that we have not yet discovered. One wonders about the word “discovered” here in that even panpsychists admit that the mental properties of constituents won’t be discovered in any scientific or empirical sense. Instead, they’re metaphysically postulated as a good explanation of the observed features of a system.
Nagel then technically laid out the precise situation we now find ourselves in. He wrote:
“If the mental properties of an organism are not implied by any physical properties but must derive from properties of the organism’s constituents, then those constituents must have nonphysical properties from which the appearance of mental properties follows when the combination is of the right kind.”
Here Nagel was staying clear of saying that such constituents actually have mental properties. Instead, he was saying that they are “nonphysical”. These nonphysical properties do bring about mental properties when the combination is of the right kind. Again, it’s a strong enough claim that there are nonphysical properties. However, Nagel wasn’t saying that they are, at this stage at least, mental properties. Instead, they become mental properties when the combination is of the right kind.
“There would be properties of matter that were not physical from which the mental properties of organic systems were derived. This could still be called panpsychism.”
Again, nonphysical ≠ mental. Instead, mental properties can be derived from nonphysical properties. Despite all that, Nagel believed that his own position could still be called panpsychism.
It was herethat Nagel stressed his proto-panpsychist view, which works against what he earlier called “panpsychism in the more familiar sense”. He wrote:
“Presumably the components out of which a point of view is constructed would not themselves have to have points of view. (How could a single self be composed of many selves?)”
Those words tackle what latercame to be called the combination problem. (It was coined by William Seagerin his 1995 book Consciousness, Information, and Panpsychism.) They also hint at an emergence when there isn’t supposed to be any emergence in the panpsychist position. After all, a point of view can be said to emerge from nonphysical components, which themselves don’t have points of view. That seems like some kind of emergence.
Take an example from Philip Goff. He discusses “little subjects” actually “seeing” all the “colours of the spectrum” — individually. Then, when these little conscious subjects are taken together (as a single big conscious subject), Goff postulates that they may bring about“a visual experience as of seeing white”. In other words, we have little conscious subjects experiencing the various colours of the spectrum separately summing together to produce a big conscious subject which experiences the colour white. This big conscious subject’s experience of white is, therefore, over and above the many and varied experiences of all the little conscious subjects which constitute or (to use Goff’s term) “compose” it.
This is complicated even more when we move forward in time 34 years and quickly consider another similar Phillip Goff argument — this time about minds. He argued that there may be“little minds” (or seats of experience) in the brain, and all of them, on their own, are very simple. Yet now, of course, we have the problem of the “composition” (or “combination”) of all these little minds in order to make a big mind.
Nagel spotted an odd consequence of this distinction between components with no points of view and a whole being with a point of view. He said that the components
“would have to be recombinable to form different points of view, for not only can a single organism have different experiences, but its matter can be recombined to form other organisms with totally different forms of experience”.
This hints at a more religious and monist position in which, bizarrely, the matter of a dead animal can be reconstituted to form another being which has different forms of experience. This can go on indefinitely. It also shows that emergence hasn’t been erased from the panpsychist picture.
Nagel on Familiar Panpsychism
So which kind of panpsychism did Nagel have a problem with? Let him explain:
“Panpsychism in this [his] sense does not entail panpsychism in the more familiar sense, according to which trees and flowers, and perhaps even rocks, lakes, and blood cells have consciousness of a kind.”
To be rhetorical for a moment. It can be said that the kind of panpsychism that claims that trees, flowers, rocks, etc. are conscious gives panpsychism a bad name. Many people simply can’t make any sense of it. Nagel’s position works against certain kinds of panpsychism, such as Rudy Rucker’s and Philip Goff’s.
“[W]e now know that plants communicate, learn and remember. I can see no reason other than anthropic prejudice not to ascribe to them a conscious life of their own.”
“But we know so little about how consciousness arises from matter in our own case and that of animals in which we can identify it that it would be dogmatic to assume that it does not exist in other complex systems, or even in systems the size of a galaxy, as the result of the same basic properties of matter that are responsible for us.”
It’s not clear why Nagel stopped at the possibility of galaxies instantiating consciousness. Surely the next level up would be the entire universe… or at least a cluster of galaxies.
In any case, this is the bullet that people will need to bite if they accept panpsychism. In other words, if what is important in this metaphysical picture are the basic nonphysical constituents which give rise to consciousness, then those constituents exist everywhere. So why should they only give rise to consciousness in human beings and other animals? After all, a galaxy is almost as complex as a human being’s brain and body.
That said, in the panpsychist picture complexity doesn’t always matter — or matter at all. If we have proto-mental constituents from the very beginning, then perhaps only a minimal level of mentality is needed.
“[o]nce a model with five units, say, is to be regarded as a model of consciousness, surely a model with one unit will also yield some insight”.
At a prima facie level, it does indeed seem obvious that complexity matters. After all, many theorists have made a strong link between the complexity of the human brain and consciousness. Chalmers himself acknowledges the (intuitive) appeal of complexity. Yet he also writes:
“After all, does it not seem that this rich superposition of information is an inessential element of consciousness?”
So Chalmers rejects this requirement for complexity. An old-style (or familiar) panpsychist would say that no level of complexity is really needed, at least not for a minimal level of consciousness.
“mental properties of all matter, therefore, would have to be not species-specific but universal, since they would underlie all possible forms of consciousness”.
Thus, in this panpsychist picture, these mental properties would be roughly equivalent to electrons and quarks in physics. They’d underpin literally all instantiations of consciousness on a universal scale.
It must be noted, however, that Nagel moved (in the quote above) from talking about “nonphysical properties” to talk of the “mental properties of all matter”. This seems to go against his earlier arguments.
“There is no reason to think that all possibilities have been thought of, so there is no reason to assume that a view is correct if all currently conceivable alternatives are even more unacceptable.”
Thus, panpsychism isn’t correct simply because all currently conceivable alternatives are even more unacceptable (i.e., “the argument of elimination”). Yet it can be seen that many panpsychists assume precisely this. In other words, panpsychism is often treated as a neat and tidy solution. It’s also — seemingly — new and very different to all the alternatives. Due to these very reasons, it has become popular in recent years.
“[I]t is difficult to imagine how a chain of explanatory inference could ever get from the mental states of whole animals back to the proto-mental properties of dead matter.”
Wouldn’t that chain of explanatory inference work in the opposite direction: from dead matter to mental states? However, this difference may not make a difference. After all, Nagel is talking about explanatory inference, not any kind of physical or scientific reduction. In any case, this explanatory inference would need to be both speculative and metaphysical in nature.
