I am now writing a book on the absolute age of exposed rocks in the Cyrenaica Basin, NE Libya

Best Regards Marc Carvallo

Dear @Mark,

Thanks for your question!

Before answering, allow me to make sure I understand well what you mean by "objective knowledge" and "subjective science".

I'm no specialist un Popper. I understand that he comes from an empiricist background and therefore demands from every scientific theory that it appeal to experience... Though not in order to verify it (which he says is impossible) but to risk falsification by it.

Thus he excludes philosophical disciplines such as logic and metaphysics as non-scientific.

At the same time, he seems to mistrust what we might call "internal experience" and "introspective science", like Adler's introspective psychology and so reduces the concept of "experience" to the knowledge of external objects, since they are not given to the "private subject" only, but to the "general public".

When you say that you are looking for a "subjective science", do you mean something like a careful and honest sharing of internal experiences which, by turning out to be common, grow into a reliable science?

Thank you!

Albert

Dear Albert,

(i) My concise explanation on what 'subjective science' is, is already sent to RG months ago. Please ask them.

(ii) Please distinguish between experience and experiment. Popper is of the latter.

(iii) There is since mid the 20th century and the begin of the 21st century a stealth flying into the mainstream science in the form of cognitive science, consciousness studies, psi-research referring to quantum physics, etc. But their tenets remain the same, those of the established mainstream science.

(iv) Your purpose is very nice for a 'subjective science' if it is based on the contemporary philosophy or humanities and arts. I would n't like to go back to the 17th (the beginning of the s.c. modern science and enlightenment/Aufklaerung) or 19th century (the beginning of the classical mathematics).

Thanks however for your nice effort! Marc.

Well, if you regard the introspective psychology of Wundt and Titchener (late 19th- and early 20th-century) which preceded the advent of objective (= capable of public or 3rd-person verification) behaviorist psychology as out of scope because that was a just historical phase, I guess all that's left of subjective science would be some variants of psychoanalytical theory (whose status as science has been disputed by established mainstream science).

Dear Karl,

Thank you for the added answer.

(i) If you know especially Wundt regarding 'experience', please send more information there about. If I am not mistaken he is one of the many followers of the natural science. (I am not).

(ii) You mention . That is very interesting! That might mean that belongs to the '3rd person science' which concerns the 'instrumental reasoning': the 'instrument' feasible to carry out the the methodological task of the '1st person science', i.e. the metaphysics or worldview.

(iii) What interests me is: What is the 1st person science of Wundt and of all followers of natural science?

Thanks for your answer! Marc.

Marc Carvallo

(i) Introspective psychology per se doesn't quite fit the paradigm of a natural science; you'd also have to put some physiology or biology into the mix.

(ii) "First person" in this context is just the grammatical category of referring specifically to oneself, e.g. "I" is a pronoun in the first-person. "We" is a pronoun in the third-person.* The trouble with introspective psychology is that the data consists of reports in the first-person. No one else has direct access to the introspections, so the reports can't be verified. Also, many of the reports were haphazard and unreplicable under similar conditions. Hence, the historical shift to behaviorist psychology, because behavior is publically observable (i.e. something we have access to, and can report in the third-person).

However, even introspective psychology must do something (analysis, categorization, generalization) with the data of first-person reports, and that would be from a third-person perspective. If the person making the reports were the only one with access to them, what are the reports for? -- one may as well just have the introspective experiences and be done with it; that might be enough for mysticism, but it isn't science. I don't really understand your conception of a "first-person science" since I don't believe science can be restricted to the first-person.

* ERRATUM: As Marc has correctly pointed out below, I should have said «"We" is a pronoun in the first-person plural.», not "third-person". Please refer to the next two answers.

Dear Karl,

Thank you for adding the answer. However, there are many questions, which I ´ll summarize as follows. First, what do you precisely mean by the concept of ´paradigm´. There are many answers upon this question. Second, we is not and never the third-person! It is the first person plural! Third, you mention ´introspective psychology´, ´data of first-person reports´ etc. What do these concepts with regard to cognitive science, consciousness studies, etc. Fourth, what do you mean precisely by the `first-person science`.

Thanks again for your going on answers. Marc.

Sorry, Marc, you are absolutely correct. I was thinking about an intersubjective perspective and got my wires crossed. I should have said something like this: a group which can refer to itself as "we" has a perspective that is not from the perspective of any particular person, but a perspective they share, so the access afforded by that perspective is not a private one, and hence is a (or their) third-person perspective in that sense. (An aside: I have claimed elsewhere that the subjective and the objective are not mutually exclusive; you've called my attention to the fact that the same must in some sense hold for plural first-person and third-person perspectives.)

I don't mean anything technical by "paradigm", just "a typical example". Natural science is typically said to consist of the biological and the physical sciences, in contrast to the social sciences. Psychology can fall in either category, or both, depending on its focus. Psychology that is based on physiological or biological explanation would be a natural science. Psychology that focuses instead on subjective states and their meaning and interpretation would be a social science. Freudian psychology was not a natural science but Freud believed that were physiological underpinnings, which, if discovered, could enable a reduction that would turn it into a natural science.

Consciousness studies is a vast field encompassing many research programs. I don't have much to say except that somewhere along the line introspective reports must be used to ensure that it is actually conscious states of whatever kind that are being studied or e.g. imaged with brain-imagining techniques; i.e. the reports are needed to at least establish correlations if not identity claims.

As for "first-person science" that was just my attempt to understand what you meant by "subjective science" which I took to be a science whose basis was first-person introspective reports about aspects of immediate experience (or more broadly in the case of psychoanalysis, of how one is interpreting one's experiences, past and present). That's the only sense I can make of your phrase "subjective science", and as I said, even science of that sort must also take a third-person perspective for it to count as science.

Dear Karl,

Thank you for adding the answer. To be short let me summarize points that interest me:

(i) By 'paradigm' I mean one of its meanings, namely the metaphysics or worldview. For other meanings, see e.g. Masterman (in Lakatos (ed). Criticism and the Growth of the Knowledge). As far as I understand her it is what we in ordinary folks-knowledge call as 'worldview', that (again) as a natural scientist calls 'the first person science' (see e.g. Heinz Pagels Perfect Symmetry, pp. 361 ff.).

(ii) Thank you for things psychological in your answer, however my own interest is not Freudian psychology nor the rather dated introspection. Please give me the more contemporary figures as Jaques Lacan in connection with the psi-research, cognitive science, consciousness studies, etc.

(iii) You mention . Please give me more examples of those techniques. I can use them for furthering my research on 'subjective science'.

(iv) There are many examples (precisely) of the 'objective knowledge' at the moment to be more 'subjective' (see a.o. the AI or AL).

Thanks again for your answers (upon the afore mentioned points). Marc.

Marc,

(i) as I said, I wasn't using "paradigm" as a technical term from some philosophical or scientific theory, but in its ordinary everyday sense. The point was simply that psychology is often regarded as a social and not a natural science.

(ii) You'll have to do your own homework there. I know nothing about Lacan et al.

(iii) https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/brain-imaging-techniques/

(iv) I think you are using expressions like "subjective science" in idiosyncratic ways. The onus is on you to explain fully the sense in which you are using such vague terms. For myself, the only sense I could make of "subjective science" was in terms of my historical examples. Maybe you also need to explain what you mean by "objective"; as I understand the term, all science is objective, but for me the subjective and the objective aren't mutually exclusive. Jeff Foss's paper might be helpful: Article Subjectivity, Objectivity and Nagel on Consciousness

Dear Karl,

Thank you for adding the answer, especially for the links about brain-imaging-techniques and Jeff Foss's paper. Please be sure, I 'll read those links very carefully. Marc.