I can cite neurology, psychiatry and after that psychology as modern (Western) sciences that tried for the first time to bring mind and mental phenomena into objective science [Freud]. Not that before these, philosophers had not already talked about it, but philosophy doesn't count much as science.

Dear Vahid,

You forget phenomenology and cognitive science scientists recently are hard at work to come out of this question.

Cheers, Marc.

Subjectivity has always been the topic of Psychology, ever since the time of its founding fathers - William James and Kurt Schneider. James was a philosopher, psychologist and scholar at Harvard and Schneider - a psychiatrist. James's tradition goes back to the British empirical school developed by John Locke and elaborated by David Hume. Empiricism entails that all our knowledge is derived from our senses and that there is no universal and preconceived knowledge (Rationalism). Empiricism fueled the development of Psychology and Humanitarian sciences, whereas the school of Rationalism produced some of the most brilliant mathematicians and logicians of its time (Rene Descartes, Leibniz). Out of the philosophical deductions of the empiricists were born the ideas of Phenomenology - the extreme end of subjectivity, entailing that there is no real existence of the objects, aside from our perceptions of them.

"According to an extreme empiricist theory known as phenomenalism, anticipated by the arguments of both Hume and George Berkley, a physical object is kind of a construction out of our experiences".

It is a radical view, because it is in sheer conflict with our beliefs, dispositions and experiences with reality, but it is nevertheless an influential view. It triggered the development of quantum mechanics and quantum theory and is brilliantly captured in Schrodinger's book - "What is life?". After all without our senses the world will be a colorless, soundless place with no meaning or structure.

Phenomenalism was pioneered by Edmund Husserl in the late 19th century, who was not only a philosopher, but an influential mathematician.

Schneider was taught in the phenomenology tradition. He was one the first psychiatrists in the beginning of the 20th century, who developed a diagnostic method for illnesses based on symptomatology, that is still influential and implemented in the DSM-5.

As the 20th century progressed the war period brought with it a demand for scientific innovations. The advent of physics fueled the progression of chemistry, culminating in the discovery of DNA in 1950. James Watson became one of the founders of a radical new school of Psychology - Behaviorism. The writings of William James and Freud were all but forgotten. But behaviorism proved to be a low hanging fruit on the quest to understand the mind. It was sufficient to explain the responses of animals trained through conditioned learning (Ivan Pavlov), but was deadly incapable at tackling some of the harder problems about the human mind, which the behaviorists simply excluded from the study of Psychology (e.g. perception, consciousness, memory). However, although the behavior maybe similar, the processes leading to it may be profoundly different. It was impossible to describe in purely behavioral terms the dynamics and products of human thought. With the death of Behaviorism there was a rekindling of interest in mental processes, culminating in the Cognitive Revolution in Neuroscience that persists to this day.

Neuroscience is a science that promises to bridge the distinction between the objective world and our subjective experience of it, or, conversely, prove that it is an unsurmountable border.

John Searle is a proponent of the view that artificial intelligence cannot be achieved without the addition of consciousness and that computers and programs posses no knowledge at all. He claims that simulation is never equivalent to experience. However, he is not from the phenomenological tradition, but is from the Analytic school that separated from the empiricists and developed in the English speaking world, most notably in America.

Some philosophers and psychologists use the term "qualia" to denote the subjective conscious experience that is inflicted on our senses and claim that science will never be able to unravel it. But I believe that it is entirely possible to produce consciousness from the activity of neurons, as the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux states: "appearing like tiny bubbles on the surface, constantly being born and destroyed".

However it is doubtful that psychology will ever be entirely free from subjectivity. After all our thoughts are the product of our brains and our brains are the product of our bodies and as such they are all subjective and unique.

I will conclude with a quote from Schrodinger, the brilliant and endlessly curious physicist:

“The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information... but it cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. So, in brief, we do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us... the scientific worldview contains of itself... not a word about our own ultimate scope or destination.”

Hope that helps : )

tl;dr

Subjectivity was first formaly defined in the philosophical school of Empiricism, but it goes back to Aristotle :)

Dear Alexandra,

First of all: Thank you very much for your long added reply. Secondly, sorry for this quite late reply.

My added reply is as follows:

(i) William James is known to me (just as Edmund Husserl and all contemporary scientists research finding the phenomenological studies), but Kurt Schneider is unknown; please more about him;

(ii) if there is a second law of thermodynamics (entropy), should then science (described by you as 'rationalism' and 'empiricism') collapse at a 'certain' moment in the future?

(iii) (ii) is my hypothesis; would it go?

Again: many thanks for your added reply. Marc.

Hello Marc, I am happy to discuss this topic with you. Forgive me if my answer isn't very elaborate.

The second law of thermodynamic states that all processes result in an increase in entropy and that if a system is isolated - "any natural process in that system progresses in the direction of increasing disorder, or entropy, of the system".

When you talk about science, I presume you are referring to the acquisition, storage and transfer of information. All information, even if it is mental, has some physical basis and is stored in a physical form - weather it is in the elaborate connections of our brains or on the hard disc of a computer. Both hard drives and brains produce a great amount of heat or disordered information - entropy. So we obey the same law of physics as any other physical object.

Perhaps I am not answering your question right, maybe you can elaborate on (ii)

I mentioned Kurt Schneider because he is one of the few psychiatrists from the beginning of the 20th century, whose ideas are still valid and form the backbone for studying disorders like schizophrenia. Unlike his contemporaries (Freud, Bleuler, Kraeplin) he championed diagnoses based on the form, rather than the content of a sign or symptom. For example, he argued that a hallucination should not be diagnosed by it's content, but by the mechanisms that produce it. He and Karl Jaspers founded the Heidelberg school of Psychiatry. After he left his psychiatric practice, Jaspers became a philosopher and a major exponent of existentialism in Germany.

I think you need to make clear if you are referring to subjectivity as a belief - existentialism, phenomenology or as a method for studying the world. Science always strives for objectivity, it's belief is that things exist, not just as appearances but as physical and law abiding entities. However we need to add another ingredient, namely - us. Whatever it is we perceive, it is because we have bodies and senses. Color is as much caused by the bending of light as it is caused by the construction of our eyes. Eyes have evolved to take advantage of the properties of light, but color is in itself subjective. The experience of gravity is subjective, the experience of speed, weight, viscosity, etc. It is a property that physical objects (like ourselves) can experience.

What is the topic that your are studying?

Regards

A funny thing popped into my head as I was going through phenomenology and existentialism. It seems that the Continental philosophy in Europe (subjectivity) - existentialism, phenomenology and idealism gave rise to the breakthrough discoveries of the 20th century in quantum physics, mathematics and relativity theory. On the other hand, the Analytic school (objectivity) - gave rise to the cognitive revolution and the development of psychology and neuroscience.

It seems that science develops along some opposing and complementary lines. The study of the mind has always been thought of as subjective, but it is objectivity and the application of new scientific methods that really allow us to unravel the secrets of the mind. Conversely, physics and mathematics are both exercises of the mind and as such they must take into account the physicality and properties of those minds. Just a thought..

Neils Bohr was influenced by Immanuel Kant and his ideas that all properties a thing might have "independently of the mind" are unknowable. Thus reality is all subjective and relative to time, space and our categories of understanding. And the next step - even spacetime is relative.

Dear Alexandra,

Thanks to my reply number (i). Jaspers is a known figure in exsistentialism; you know that existentialism is branch of phenomenolgy (particularly in the 'one-time'ness- unwiederholbarheit- of the experience); so, experience is not repeteable (as done by objective scientists); (ii) please explain me further on things and minds; (iii) and on Niels Bohr's influenced by Immanuel Kant. I know only a slice of it.

Thanks again in advance for your added reply for these three questions. Marc.

Marc,

I am not an expert and I have a general understanding of philosophy, I am mainly interested in neuroscience. My last comment is the observation I find concerning the whole debate on subjectivity. It is very difficult, and I think false, to draw a parallel between different sciences (physics, biology, neuroscience, etc.); the goal and the subject is quite different in all of them. I think your primary question was about John Searle and his comments on subjectivity. His arguments are aimed at the field of artificial intelligence and he is known to question many of the promises and methods in AI. He questions the assumption that mental processes are defined by information processing and semantic representations. He describes consciousness as a necessary requirement for human thought. He is not however a phenomenologist or existentialist. He is the complete opposite - a radical realist. So his views on subjectivity are solely confined to human thought. You need to define what aspect of subjectivity you are studying. What is the topic you are writing about?

Dear Alexandra

Sorry (again) for this quite late answer. My reply would be as follows:

(i) If human being is the 'identity' (not only the quantum parallelism) of 'materiality' (e.g. biology) and 'immateriality' (subjectivity in my own word, spirituality in faíthful's word), then the hard problem of consciousness (see Chalmers 1996) is conceivable; in this case, neural correlate of consciousness (the famous 'ncc');

(ii) If that is the case, then would the 'ncc' be the 'potentia', and the consciousness

would be the 'actus' (speaking in medieval words, as Aquinas). Is that the case?

That is the topic I am writing about. Thanks (again) in advance for your reply. Marc.