Civil wars of the self

On Thomas Nagel's View from Nowhere

The Book:

The View from Nowhere
By Thomas Nagel
Oxford University Press
1986

The Talk:

In his 1986 book The View from Nowhere philosopher Thomas Nagel explores the problems that arise from humanity’s “dual vision,” our ability to imagine the world from an objective point of view even as we experience the world from an individual perspective.

In a rather elegant way, Nagel walks through the major questions of philosophy and shows how this subjective/objective divide is at the crux of each issue. How am I both a mind (inside) and a body (outside)? How do I know (inside) about the world (outside)? I feel like I have free will (inside), but I’m caused by external factors (outside). I have individual motivations to act (inside), and yet I feel like there are moral motivations to act (outside). Nagel writes:

The reconciliation of these two aspects of ourselves is a primary philosophical task of human life—perhaps of any kind of intelligent life.

Nagel’s main opponents in the book are scientific reductionists and language philosophers. Scientific reductionists believe that reality itself is bounded by what science can know, discover, and explain. Philosophers of language (of a certain kind) argue that there is no reality beyond our language. Our language is not only the limit of our knowing, but it’s also the limit of what exists at all. Nagel describes both these positions as forms of philosophical idealism, that is, the view that thought is the only reality there is.

Idealism—the view that what exists in the widest sense must be identified with what is thinkable by us in the widest sense—is an attempt to cut the universe down to size.

Nagel wants to leave open the possibility of reality beyond human knowability. Throughout the book he talks about extraterrestrials: What if there are beings who know things that we don’t know, that we could never know? Although we cannot talk about those things with any specificity or investigate them empirically, Nagel thinks it is obvious that we are not being irrational or nonsensical to conceive of the possibility.

Nagel thinks that, given our nature as limited beings, there will always be the possibility that there are truths about the world, including truths about ourselves, that we cannot access through language, science, or experience. This leaves the door perpetually open to skepticism. We can fill in the picture of reality, but we can never know if we’ve completed it. Scientific reduction and language philosophy (in the vein of Wittgenstein) attempt to complete the picture by reducing our world to the material or the linguistic. But these attempts to resolve all philosophical problems in one fell swoop are based on a false hope, says Nagel.

You really think she’s the most beautiful woman in the world?

In order to resolve this tension between the objective view and the subjective view, we may try to pick one as an approach to our lives.

For example, we might decide to live as objectively as possible. We try to detach ourselves from our personal experiences and imagine ourselves from the outside as much as we can. We imagine humanity as if we were aliens from Mars. Or we imagine the world from God’s point of view, sub specie aeternitatis. We try to behave in a way that everyone ought to behave. We try treat everyone consistently and thus fairly, justly.

We may try to be a bullet-biting utilitarian or an effective altruist. Or to live an unwavering principled life according to a universal ethic of another kind. We may try to live as if we do not have a self. Or live in a “data-driven” way, eating or exercising or sleeping according to science. Or we may simply live in a way that is deeply skeptical or cynical about humanity, mentally positioning ourselves as outside or above the crowd.

The appeal is obvious. Objectivity carries authority. Clearly, it provides us with enormous benefits. All of math and science depends on our ability to see things objectively. Our social institutions—universities, laboratories, hospitals, journalism, law courts—are all imperfect attempts at objectivity that give us powers far beyond any individual. Whatever moral progress we have we owe to our ability to stand outside ourselves and our interests and to treat others like ourselves. Surely any progress— social, scientific, technological—must be a journey out of the individual point of view toward the more objective view. That is, in effect, what we mean by progress.

And yet two facts remain:

One, there are different kinds of objectivity. As seen in the options above, a materialist might sit in the objective seat and see no meaning in the universe at all. A moralist may sit in the objective seat and see a world of moral facts. The objectivity of the laboratory seeks reproducibility and verification. The objectivity of the law court asks what a generic “reasonable person” would accept. Nagel makes the point throughout the book that we have to select an objectivity appropriate to the subject at hand. Any time someone speaks from the “objective” point of view, it’s fair to ask why that objectivity and not another.

Objectivity of whatever kind is not the test of reality. It is just one way of understanding reality.

Two, objectivity is an act of imagination. The map is not the territory, as they say. When I imagine myself from above, from the perspective of God or from “nowhere,” it’s still my idea of it. My imagined view of morality isn’t morality itself and never could be. My imagined view of nature is not nature itself. The objective view is just that, a view.

Furthermore, what is potentially lost when we take objectivity as far as we can? The me-ness of me and the you-ness of you. That feeling of being a self? Illusory. Human freedom? Non-existent. Self-worth? A fantasy. We detach from ourselves, we disengage from our own life. And in doing so—in an attempt to live objectively—we lose the plot.

Screw that negativity, man

In Nagel’s picture, objectivity is a hungry beast. It is never satisfied.

Objectivity is not content to remain a servant of the individual perspective and its values. It has a life of its own and an aspiration for transcendence that will not be quieted in response to the call to reassume our true identity.

As the world progresses, objectivity encroaches ever more upon the domains we once thought subjective. Think about the idea of “cognitive bias,” which implies that we have thoughts that are some kind pollution getting in the way between our selves and objective reality. We now externalize our thinking as not us but rather obstacles the real us (minus those thoughts) has to get around.

(In another era, we might trace a similar encroachment of morality from simply regulating your actions toward others to the regulation of one’s own thoughts, until even an impulse falls under the gaze of Heaven and is necessary to interrogate. The soul-searching of the rare Desert Father becomes the confessional of the standard medieval monk becomes the ever-present guilt of the ordinary Calvinist.)

Objectivity never gives up. It wants everything. So are we simply destined to lose our humanity (our mind, our self, our will, our value, our dignity) to objectivity?

OK, time for heroics: What if we try to quit objectivity? What does subjectivity offer us instead? Well, Nagel argues, we can’t even imagine a universe without subjectivity. We can imagine a universe without us but only one that we are looking at. But additionally, subjectivity seems to be the thing that makes anything matter at all.

Consider humanism, the view that places humans at the center. It is essentially the reversal of the objective view. Humans are special. The world is for humans. In the great big scheme of things, humanity is the proper pursuit of humanity.

Objectively speaking, this is ludicrous. But when you make humanity central, human potential is unleashed. Humans pursue their own development. And when humans go deep into the wells of their creativity they bring up the most remarkable things, things that make life beautiful and meaningful.

On the personal level, it appears that the unleashing of individual potential is predicated on the belief that one’s subjective point of view is special, important, valuable, worthy of time and attention and cultivation. From the objective view this is delusional, and yet the asserting of the ego—the pursuit of agency, desire, ambition, and expression—is how we feel alive. Engaging with one’s existence means not weighing the desires of all beings as equally important, but focusing on one’s own perspective, one’s own work. The proper pursuit of you is you. That’s what it means to be you.

This is what we love in those we love, their pursuit of themselves. And this is what we want for those we love, for them to invest even more in themselves, to become even more themselves. As Robert Frost says, “We love the things we love for what they are.”

Then again, if subjectivity takes over completely, you’re bound to hurt yourself and others rather quickly.

Between here and nowhere

And so we live our lives bobbing between the objective and subjective, engagement and detachment. Sometimes we get too involved in a situation, and then must “step back” and imagine how it would appear to a third-party observer. Other times we disassociate from ourselves, and we try to get back into our bodies and the present moment. We look for reasons to stay present in this moment and not float away into nowhere.

Of course, we also use these two positions rhetorically, too. For my friends, subjectivity. For my enemies, the objective. We criticize young people for being snowflakes. (Hey, this world isn’t about you! You’re not special! Society isn’t here to fix your problems!) Then we turn around with concern about the plight of young men these days. (Imagine what it’s like to be them! They don’t feel important! They don’t feel valuable! We need to change society to fix their problems!)

This is why some people, I believe, argue that objectivity is racist. When used rhetorically, it’s a signal, a tell. When someone says we need to “be objective” they are moving to label certain personal experiences as not introducible to the discussion. Online debates about race gravitate to statistics and data while first-person testimony is sidelined as irrelevant. If it’s not in the data, it can’t be happening. Nagel, discussing realism and antirealism, quotes Elizabeth Anscombe:

This often happens in philosophy; it is argued that “all we find” is such-and-such, and it turns out that the arguer has excluded from his idea of “finding” the sort of thing he says we don’t “find.”

Better to take the view (as scientists do) that data is one way of measuring the world while being honest about its limitations.

As for living life, Nagel believes that we cannot escape either objectivity or subjectivity because both of them are ourselves and both capture something about reality that we cannot turn away from. We cannot live in a permanent state of fully present mindfulness (as other animals do) simply serving our own appetites as they bubble up, blind to the world beyond our interests. Nor can we live in a permanent state of pure observation and distance, observing the world below, uninfluenced by our bodies, our immediate environment, and our personal history.

Our best path, as far as we are capable, is to affirm both viewpoints at the same time, what Nagel calls the “absurd” position:

These civil wars of the self result in an impoverished life. It is better to be simultaneously engaged and detached, and therefore absurd, for this is the opposite of self-denial and the result of full awareness.

We must live like it matters and doesn’t matter. Affirm our knowledge while never resolving doubts. Assert morality while not letting it crush us (or others) beneath it. Satisfactory? No. But to surrender either side is to deny part of reality, which we can never fully do.

One must arrange somehow to see the world both from nowhere and from here, and to live according.

Related:

Emotions are information: Audre Lorde vs Jonathan Haidt

What if morality is objective but not absolute?

How subjective things become objective

Kant is the root of modern evil