Subjectivity, Objectivity, Intersubjectivity, and Knowledge

Slept late. Must hurry. I don't even remember where we left off on Friday. Yes, truth, lies, Lies, intersubjectivity, and thinking one's thoughts.

I don't have time to flesh out some of these ideas, so I'll trust you to use your imagination to fill in a few blanks and angry diatribes.

James has a couple of interesting posts about subjectivity, objectivity, and knowledge. Perhaps we can include them in this party while my brain is still coming on line. He points out that the distinction between objective and subjective "is not as clear as the easy use of the terms would suggest. The terms are adjectives, after all, but it's not entirely clear what they modify."

Indeed, what do they modify? What is the difference between "subjective" knowledge and "objective" knowledge? James writes that "the subjective and the objective don’t appear to be two different kinds of knowledge, since objective knowledge seems redundant and subjective knowledge impossible." Yada yada yada, he concludes with the observation that "subjectivity is more in the order to appetite than knowledge, and so would be secondary to objectivity."

Obviously, only subjects may possess knowledge. Then again, the knowledge they are able to possess must somehow be "in" the objects that are known by the subject.

It's too early in the morning for this.

I would just say that truth is the cause and substance of knowledge, and that love is the cause of truth. Hear me now, believe me later. Love comes into the picture with intersubjectivity.

I don't mean to keep harping on this, but it was one of the novel -- by which I mean kind of, you know, "scientific" even -- coontributions of my book, being that I don't know of anyone else who discusses it.

But one of the most important reasons why Darwinism cannot account for our humanness is that no matter how big a brain were produced by natural selection, it could never have gained access to humanness (which is one pole of the divine-human, which now renders the theory "unscientific") in the absence of intersubjectivity -- of human beings being members of one another. And this only occurs due to the unique circumstances of human infancy. Remove or alter those circumstances, and no subject will come into being. Or, to be precise, it will be there, but like a seed that is never given sunlight and water.

What is the sunlight and water for the human infant? Duh! It is Luv. You don't have to teach an infant anything for it to bloom. Rather, all you have to do is water him with love, and voila! You've got an annoying little narcissist on your hands.

Which is where fathers come in. Father love is quite different from mother love. I was in awe of the power of mother love, or at least pretended I was so that I didn't have to wake up in the middle of the night to take care of him. Now that he's four years old, Mrs. G is in awe of the power of father love. Each can do things the other cannot, for they are like night and day, and it would be a very loooong day around here without paternal boundaries around the Beast of Narcissus.

< insert diatribe about redefinition of marriage here >

< insert diatribe about implications of destroying unit of civilization, which is unity of male-female >

< insert diatribe about trinitarian basis of civilization, i.e., mother-father-baby: see Spengler for deep relationship between this naturally supernatural trinity and economics. Link not working. >

Now, just as it takes a subject to know another subject, it takes a subject to see beyond the appearance of objects and reach into the essence. Here again, we can only do this because it was done to us as infants. In the book, I summarize this with the adage that "if you weren't read (as in infant), then you are cognitively dead (as an adult)."

This is actually the basis of modern psychoanalytic psychotherapy. When someone is acting out their mind parasites, it is partly because they are unable to "read" them. Mind parasites always operate below the radar of conscious cognition. One of the primary tasks of the therapist is to read what the patient cannot read -- the same way the mother "reads" her infant, or "thinks his thoughts."

When a patient comes in for treatment, he always presents with a mystery. The problem is, he is a mystery to himself -- either some aspect of his behavior, or emotions, or ideas. Why am I doing this? Why do I feel this way? Why do I keep having these unbidden thoughts? Why can I not stay away from One Cosmos, in spite of myself?

This is why it is a truism that the neurotic is more healthy than the person with a personality disorder, for in the case of the latter, his pathological actions, emotions, and ideas will often be concordant with his pathological sense of self. For example, the pathological narcissist can be oblivious to his grandiosity and entitlement so long as it is mirrored by the people around him.

Thus, in his case, the absence of pain is the symptom that needs to be addressed. But since he is unaware of the pain, he will not seek treatment. Or, his treatment will consist of bolstering his narcissism -- for example, through drugs -- or else getting new mirrors -- e.g., a new trophy wife. A pathological narcissist such as Bill Clinton only feels shame after he is busted, but it's not real shame. Rather, the narcissist "suffers" from what is called "shame dysregulation," meaning that shame -- the pain of shame -- is precisely what they cannot tolerate. This is why it is no mystery whatsoever why so many politicians are conspicuously shameless, since it is their pathological narcissism that impels them into politics to begin with.

< insert diatribe about preposterous narcissism of Barry O and media enablers; media as maternal mirror of infantile grandiosity >

< conservative radio as "father media" >

< disturbing "sexualization" of president, even by so-called "heterosexual" liberals. President as penis-breast. No joke. Term of art: see zonal confusion, Donald Meltzer.

Back to subject and object. Again, only the subject can "reach into" the object and "extract" its essence, so to speak. So where is the truth in this dynamic? You could say that it is "extended" in intersubjective space, which is why the "deeper" you become, the more access to truth you will have. As it pertains to religion, this is more or less "everything," and why it is impossible to prove the existence of God to someone with insufficient intersubjective depth, for depth is the "field of God."

The two dangers to be avoided are "empiricism" on the one end, and impersonal mysticism on the other, for both are wiped clean of your humanass. The one is surface with no depth, while the other is depth with no surface. Christianity, of course, resolves this dilemma in the form of the Incarnation, through which the universal and particular, or absolute and relative, are reconciled -- again, reconciled in love, for only love could accomplish this harmonious intersubjective union between Father and Son.

Which is also why God cannot be mother and Jesus could not be wo-man, for then the whole thing would get confused with biological fecundity instead of spiritual fecundity.

< insert diatribe against feminists and liberal theologians here >

< insert comical diatribe about how President Penisbreast's wife looks more masculine than he does: first lady Phallic Mother. No joke. Term of art. Hey, I didn't bring up her appearance. I'm happy to leave it alone, while the liberal media is obsessed with it. But I question the privileged heteronormativity of men who find her "HOT" or something. >

< Tasteless. Apologize for dragging James into this. Insert this joke instead about first 101 days between Obama and liberal media >