The pages down the right hand side comprise an essay in defence of panexperientialism and should be read in order.
Monday, 29 June 2015
Objectivity
The way I've come to think about this is that conscious experience is
constantly bifurcating, one half migrating towards a subjective pole and
the other half migrating towards an objective pole. Some aspects are
even represented at both poles, allowing William James to claim that
their subjective and objective aspects are "the same experience given
twice over" (in his essay Does Consciousness Exist?). I
would also follow a Wittgensteinian line and say we should be suspicious
about our inclination to reify notions as a result of the way we use
language, and I'm thinking particularly of the ideas of 'objectivity',
'subjectivity', and 'knowledge' here. Regarding this bifurcation and
migration process (here I'm giving a nod in the direction of Whitehead) -- is it "desirable"? It is some of the products
of this process that behave in terms of desires and aversions, so from
this wider perspective the question seems misplaced -- that kind of
thinking pertains to things that are embedded within this World of Pure Experience (James again).
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