Thanks for these reflections, I had not been too familiar with Buber and your presentation of his work definitely piques my interest.
A very interesting question is whether we can spiral the first-person and second-person (and, eventually, third-person) perspectives together into a Unity. As always, the ideas we reach about the nature of other perspectives and their similarities with our own (for ex. their pain and suffering), is always from our first-person perspective. We weave in mental pictures of their pain and suffering which are experienced from our first-person perspective. So even when we oscillate from 1st to 3rd, or 1st to 2nd, or 3rd to 2nd (which is indeed necessary to navigate life), it's more like we are exercising various degrees of freedom *within* our 1st-person perspective, the only one there is, rather than actually transitioning to other perspectives.
Through our reasoning, we easily see that our present state of 1st-person experience, at any given time, is what it is only because the rest of the World state is just the way it is. For example, our organs would not exist without the Earthly and Cosmic environment from whose elements the bodily form has been built up. Our inner life wouldn’t be what it is without the social environment of the whole human civilization. Our present thinking wouldn’t be what it is without the linguistic forms in which we express our thoughts, and without all the understanding that humanity has brought to light in time. Our memories wouldn't be what they are without the interactions of our family, friends, acquaintances, etc.
These reasoned thoughts already point to the fact that we *experience* all other relative perspectives of the Whole as being implicit within our 1st-person perspective, which is the only reason why we can communicate with them, feel empathy for them, imagine what their lives could be like, and so on. Our first-person perspective on the Whole could be symbolized as an 'interference pattern' produced by the effects of all other relative perspectives. The question then becomes to what extent can we intensify and purify this underlying experience? In other words, how can we more lucidly experience this dim intuition we steer through and condense into concepts when philosophizing about the I-Thou relationship?
You raise excellent questions here. I didn't dive more deeply into these topics in the post both because a) I need to think more on them and b) I felt the piece was already long enough!
In truth, I had begun this pair of posts mostly wanting to focus on articulating the need to appreciate the first-person phenomenal perspective. But as I wrote, it dawned on me that the second-person perspective interested—and troubled—me even further.
I find your proposal in the final paragraph above intriguing. If I read you right, you seem to be proposing that perhaps our first-person experience of objective reality is somehow generated by the intersection or interaction of our first-person subjectivity with the subjectivities of others, offering a nuanced mode of idealism (but if I have misunderstood you, please do correct me!)
I like this idea, and yet I have been mulling over perhaps a more radical possibility the last day or two: what if, instead of objective reality being formed by a variety of subjects "looking in together" and forming it, instead, each subject is itself really just a "pole" extending from a primordial second-person relational reality? I would propose this not so much as a rejection of your proposal, but simply a modification of it.
Obviously, this is just a very rough and speculative stab in the dark, a report of my musings and nothing at all systematic. But I'm curious what you think, and I hope to have something more formed to say on this in the future.
Correct, but I think we need to be very clear on what the 'intersection or interaction' is. Our common habit, based on spatial-sensory experience where things are neatly confined and delineated, is to imagine the subjects as self-enclosed bubbles of 'private' thoughts, emotions, impulses, etc., which somehow transmit packets of information through 'empty space' (or some other imagined medium) . Then we may imagine all these bubble subjects start interacting and cooperating with each other to produce the objective reality, like in a VR simulation. I think this way of thinking about it is also at the root of modern solipsism, and the reason why we feel phenomenology cannot overcome the solipsistic assumption that a subject is confined to "his own" sphere of inner experiences.
What I am pointing to is something completely different and can indeed overcome solipsistic frameworks through phenomenology. Instead of self-enclosed bubble subjects, our subjective state of being at any given time is more like a superposition of intentional activity across a whole hierarchy of beings, it is like a 'cross-section' of this whole spectrum. The vast majority of 'movements' that we experience in our inner world - instincts, impulses, life processes, physical processes - are actually the activity of these higher-order beings. Our own self-conscious activity is only the final 'overtones' of this superposition. Esoterically this is why the subject is considered a 'microcosm of the macrocosm'. Phenomenology of spiritual activity completely verifies that reality.
As we move from mere sense perceptions to thoughts, emotions, impulses, ambitions, ideas-ideals, etc., we find there increasingly *transpersonal* reality. Moral ideas, for example, are like the common 'substance' which forms the ideal 'atmosphere' in which many souls exist. So in this phenomenology we simply refrain from *assuming* that each subject has his own private sphere of inner experience, and we simply trace the perceptual contents of experience (sensations, emotions, thoughts, etc.) further and further within the experience of our spiritual activity that produces the content. There we find that the seeming unity of our "I" in ordinary experience is actually a multiplicity of many beings and their 'interfering' activity. Therefore we also overcome solipsism via phenomenology.
I hope that makes some sense and am happy to clarify anything further.
How do you know whether the entity you interact with and designate as ‘human’ is in fact a subject, another ‘I’, rather than just a body that looks like yours but without a reflexive Self inside?
This is a perennial question, and one where I don't think there can be true certainty (though there is a similar problem in, e.g. the "brain in a vat" concern as well). Emmanuel Levinas provides a good practical response to this question, though. I think this ultimately comes down to probability or, in another mode of jargon, faith.
It's also worth posing the question: why should I assume that a fellow human *doesn't* have a subjective interiority? I think most people would consider the solipsistic answer less likely intellectually and less cogent ethically as well. But of course that doesn't mean it's completely unreasonable.
By characterising an entity as a “fellow human” we already presuppose what remains to be proven (subjective interriority), which begs the question. The doubt that arises about the internal subjectivity of each individual considered separately does not entail solipsism; we may accept, as a matter of logical necessity, that other subjects exist, but only be uncertain who those agents are. This implies that the subjectivity of others is not inferred directly by phenomenological means but by analytical means, possibly based on multiple inputs of information that comes together in the right way. A good example to refute the phenomenological basis of ‘fellowship’ is to construct a robot that perfectly emulates human form and behaviour, but is merely an unconscious machine programmed to respond how we would expect other subjects to respond. And yet phenomenology of the face, facial expression as the universal first language, is one of the inputs that we use to infer the presence of other subjects, and their capacity for verbal communication is another. And both these inputs do not guarantee that we interact with reflexive consciousness; it is still up to analytical reflection to differentiate between a real ‘fellow’ and a fake, a machine. Their language and expression must make sense in a way that appears both non-deterministic and constructive of common sense, that we can generate new meaning together. I suggest that only in the act of common creation of meaning, by generating a new conception of something about our shared world, that we properly recognise one another as another Self, and that this recognition is always only reciprocal, can never be satisfied unilaterally. In the act of internalising a commonly generated meaning we conceptually (analytically) contain the subjectivity of one another as a condition of that meaning, which also sustains our individual subjectivity.
1) I agree that phenomenology cannot secure certainty about other subjects—indeed, I pointed this out in the original post above.
2) I don't think analytic or conceptual reflection can get us something if that same thing is not available to us phenomenologically, since I think any conceptual analysis necessarily occurs within the frame of phenomenality to begin with.
It may just be the case that we cannot secure certainty on many (most? all?!) topics.
I suggest that the subjectivity of others is logically implied (and therefore must be recognised) by the effect of creating new meaning in the intentional act of communication, for which singular consciousness is logically insufficient. All this can be proven analytically, but none of it is manifested phenomenologically. Phenomenality must be identified and conceptually integrated as a definite something, and this is already analytical. It then follows that what we experience as phenomena is a manifestation of intersubjective analysis, not its cause or foundation.
I'd be interested any resources that provide such a proof. I am...skeptical.
I also wonder if we are using the term "phenomenology" differently. In my usage (informed primarily by continental thought), interpretation of phenomenality is already a post-phenomenological maneuver.
It is quite possible that we use the term somewhat differently, although I base its sense on my reading of Husserl and then Nagel. I am not negating phenomenology as a crucial domain, I only do not regard it as fundamental. I consider phenomena, or things and properties that we recognise as reality, to be already a form of intersubjectively generated language. We can misread this language just like we can misunderstand sentences, and so phenomena are ‘true’ or ‘real’ only intersubjectively, never just subjectively. This free paper lays out the basic, a priori model of inter subjectivity: https://philpapers.org/rec/KOWODO, but the new book is easier to read and broader in scope: https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/announcing-book-release
Thanks for these reflections, I had not been too familiar with Buber and your presentation of his work definitely piques my interest.
A very interesting question is whether we can spiral the first-person and second-person (and, eventually, third-person) perspectives together into a Unity. As always, the ideas we reach about the nature of other perspectives and their similarities with our own (for ex. their pain and suffering), is always from our first-person perspective. We weave in mental pictures of their pain and suffering which are experienced from our first-person perspective. So even when we oscillate from 1st to 3rd, or 1st to 2nd, or 3rd to 2nd (which is indeed necessary to navigate life), it's more like we are exercising various degrees of freedom *within* our 1st-person perspective, the only one there is, rather than actually transitioning to other perspectives.
Through our reasoning, we easily see that our present state of 1st-person experience, at any given time, is what it is only because the rest of the World state is just the way it is. For example, our organs would not exist without the Earthly and Cosmic environment from whose elements the bodily form has been built up. Our inner life wouldn’t be what it is without the social environment of the whole human civilization. Our present thinking wouldn’t be what it is without the linguistic forms in which we express our thoughts, and without all the understanding that humanity has brought to light in time. Our memories wouldn't be what they are without the interactions of our family, friends, acquaintances, etc.
These reasoned thoughts already point to the fact that we *experience* all other relative perspectives of the Whole as being implicit within our 1st-person perspective, which is the only reason why we can communicate with them, feel empathy for them, imagine what their lives could be like, and so on. Our first-person perspective on the Whole could be symbolized as an 'interference pattern' produced by the effects of all other relative perspectives. The question then becomes to what extent can we intensify and purify this underlying experience? In other words, how can we more lucidly experience this dim intuition we steer through and condense into concepts when philosophizing about the I-Thou relationship?
You raise excellent questions here. I didn't dive more deeply into these topics in the post both because a) I need to think more on them and b) I felt the piece was already long enough!
In truth, I had begun this pair of posts mostly wanting to focus on articulating the need to appreciate the first-person phenomenal perspective. But as I wrote, it dawned on me that the second-person perspective interested—and troubled—me even further.
I find your proposal in the final paragraph above intriguing. If I read you right, you seem to be proposing that perhaps our first-person experience of objective reality is somehow generated by the intersection or interaction of our first-person subjectivity with the subjectivities of others, offering a nuanced mode of idealism (but if I have misunderstood you, please do correct me!)
I like this idea, and yet I have been mulling over perhaps a more radical possibility the last day or two: what if, instead of objective reality being formed by a variety of subjects "looking in together" and forming it, instead, each subject is itself really just a "pole" extending from a primordial second-person relational reality? I would propose this not so much as a rejection of your proposal, but simply a modification of it.
Obviously, this is just a very rough and speculative stab in the dark, a report of my musings and nothing at all systematic. But I'm curious what you think, and I hope to have something more formed to say on this in the future.
Correct, but I think we need to be very clear on what the 'intersection or interaction' is. Our common habit, based on spatial-sensory experience where things are neatly confined and delineated, is to imagine the subjects as self-enclosed bubbles of 'private' thoughts, emotions, impulses, etc., which somehow transmit packets of information through 'empty space' (or some other imagined medium) . Then we may imagine all these bubble subjects start interacting and cooperating with each other to produce the objective reality, like in a VR simulation. I think this way of thinking about it is also at the root of modern solipsism, and the reason why we feel phenomenology cannot overcome the solipsistic assumption that a subject is confined to "his own" sphere of inner experiences.
What I am pointing to is something completely different and can indeed overcome solipsistic frameworks through phenomenology. Instead of self-enclosed bubble subjects, our subjective state of being at any given time is more like a superposition of intentional activity across a whole hierarchy of beings, it is like a 'cross-section' of this whole spectrum. The vast majority of 'movements' that we experience in our inner world - instincts, impulses, life processes, physical processes - are actually the activity of these higher-order beings. Our own self-conscious activity is only the final 'overtones' of this superposition. Esoterically this is why the subject is considered a 'microcosm of the macrocosm'. Phenomenology of spiritual activity completely verifies that reality.
As we move from mere sense perceptions to thoughts, emotions, impulses, ambitions, ideas-ideals, etc., we find there increasingly *transpersonal* reality. Moral ideas, for example, are like the common 'substance' which forms the ideal 'atmosphere' in which many souls exist. So in this phenomenology we simply refrain from *assuming* that each subject has his own private sphere of inner experience, and we simply trace the perceptual contents of experience (sensations, emotions, thoughts, etc.) further and further within the experience of our spiritual activity that produces the content. There we find that the seeming unity of our "I" in ordinary experience is actually a multiplicity of many beings and their 'interfering' activity. Therefore we also overcome solipsism via phenomenology.
I hope that makes some sense and am happy to clarify anything further.
How do you know whether the entity you interact with and designate as ‘human’ is in fact a subject, another ‘I’, rather than just a body that looks like yours but without a reflexive Self inside?
This is a perennial question, and one where I don't think there can be true certainty (though there is a similar problem in, e.g. the "brain in a vat" concern as well). Emmanuel Levinas provides a good practical response to this question, though. I think this ultimately comes down to probability or, in another mode of jargon, faith.
It's also worth posing the question: why should I assume that a fellow human *doesn't* have a subjective interiority? I think most people would consider the solipsistic answer less likely intellectually and less cogent ethically as well. But of course that doesn't mean it's completely unreasonable.
By characterising an entity as a “fellow human” we already presuppose what remains to be proven (subjective interriority), which begs the question. The doubt that arises about the internal subjectivity of each individual considered separately does not entail solipsism; we may accept, as a matter of logical necessity, that other subjects exist, but only be uncertain who those agents are. This implies that the subjectivity of others is not inferred directly by phenomenological means but by analytical means, possibly based on multiple inputs of information that comes together in the right way. A good example to refute the phenomenological basis of ‘fellowship’ is to construct a robot that perfectly emulates human form and behaviour, but is merely an unconscious machine programmed to respond how we would expect other subjects to respond. And yet phenomenology of the face, facial expression as the universal first language, is one of the inputs that we use to infer the presence of other subjects, and their capacity for verbal communication is another. And both these inputs do not guarantee that we interact with reflexive consciousness; it is still up to analytical reflection to differentiate between a real ‘fellow’ and a fake, a machine. Their language and expression must make sense in a way that appears both non-deterministic and constructive of common sense, that we can generate new meaning together. I suggest that only in the act of common creation of meaning, by generating a new conception of something about our shared world, that we properly recognise one another as another Self, and that this recognition is always only reciprocal, can never be satisfied unilaterally. In the act of internalising a commonly generated meaning we conceptually (analytically) contain the subjectivity of one another as a condition of that meaning, which also sustains our individual subjectivity.
1) I agree that phenomenology cannot secure certainty about other subjects—indeed, I pointed this out in the original post above.
2) I don't think analytic or conceptual reflection can get us something if that same thing is not available to us phenomenologically, since I think any conceptual analysis necessarily occurs within the frame of phenomenality to begin with.
It may just be the case that we cannot secure certainty on many (most? all?!) topics.
I suggest that the subjectivity of others is logically implied (and therefore must be recognised) by the effect of creating new meaning in the intentional act of communication, for which singular consciousness is logically insufficient. All this can be proven analytically, but none of it is manifested phenomenologically. Phenomenality must be identified and conceptually integrated as a definite something, and this is already analytical. It then follows that what we experience as phenomena is a manifestation of intersubjective analysis, not its cause or foundation.
I'd be interested any resources that provide such a proof. I am...skeptical.
I also wonder if we are using the term "phenomenology" differently. In my usage (informed primarily by continental thought), interpretation of phenomenality is already a post-phenomenological maneuver.
It is quite possible that we use the term somewhat differently, although I base its sense on my reading of Husserl and then Nagel. I am not negating phenomenology as a crucial domain, I only do not regard it as fundamental. I consider phenomena, or things and properties that we recognise as reality, to be already a form of intersubjectively generated language. We can misread this language just like we can misunderstand sentences, and so phenomena are ‘true’ or ‘real’ only intersubjectively, never just subjectively. This free paper lays out the basic, a priori model of inter subjectivity: https://philpapers.org/rec/KOWODO, but the new book is easier to read and broader in scope: https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/announcing-book-release