How To Achieve the Objective View From Nowhere

 

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 us of 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 transcend oneself 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 us about 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?

Nagel continued:

“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?

Nagel goes into less abstract detail about the situation we find ourselves in:

“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 perception or 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?

Kaku then raises the following problem:

“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.

Conclusion: Nagel Against Nagel

As with his essay on panpsychism, Nagel argued against his own position. [See my ‘Thomas Nagel on Panpsychism in 1979'.] Take this passage:

“[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.