Criticism of Objectivity in Thinking
I n contrast to sensory experience, a direct connection can be made with one’s own inner activity when considering how thoughts arise.
For without one’s own thinking activity, thoughts could not arise in one’s own consciousness or would have no meaning if they were not taken up and lived through by oneself.
In this way, every thought reveals itself in its ‘complete wholeness’, since it depends on one’s own process of becoming, in contrast to sensory experience, where things manifest themselves through external processes of creation without one’s own participation.
Even if one assumes that the contents of one’s own thoughts are purely subjective in nature, the following question arises: How could contents arise in one that emerge from thought connections that depend on existing laws if the thoughts conceived for this purpose consisted of purely subjective contents?
The laws can only come into effect if the corresponding objective basis is present in the content of the thoughts conceived.
It would be an impossibility if the existing laws were to apply to the subjectively generated contents of thought, as these are naturally unforeseeable and therefore the laws that nevertheless occur could not take effect in them.
The objectivity of thought therefore consists in the fact that the laws contained in it only come to light when the thoughts within one’s own consciousness are given the opportunity or the impulse to do so.
The subjective occurrence of the thoughts, i.e. the setting: where, when, etc., is unimportant, only the (objective) content counts.
It should be remembered here that this refutes the views of great philosophers who assumed that man himself interprets into the world the laws according to which thoughts connect with each other.
To sum up, it can be said that when one’s own world of thought is captured in its immediate appearance, two sides of the same coin come to light.
On the one hand, the activity of thinking can be observed, whereby on the other hand the laws of the thinking process emerge, which in turn stimulate the activity of thinking.
Thus, in one’s own active mind (thinking), the ideal content with its laws appears directly at the same time and therefore belongs inseparably together.
Thinking, therefore, proves to be the cornerstone of all science, since every human being is directly within it and is able to extract its properties and laws.
Everything is based on the idea that emanates from one’s own thinking, and thinking is the only way to gain certainty about anything.
For, in contrast to the phenomena of the sensory world, the experience of thinking simultaneously provides information about itself and about the actual nature of the rest of the world (laws) and therefore always serves as a starting point.
The German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) fully expressed the perfection of thinking in his work and rightly presented it as the only factor of reality in his world view.
However, he went so far as to try to justify thinking as far as the physical-sensual world, overlooking the fact that thinking can only be founded purely ideationally in itself.
Even if he never explained it clearly himself, the way in which the scholarly world interpreted his statements led to major errors about the objectivity of thought.
On the one hand, because predominantly only the subjective side of thought has been considered, and on the other hand, because Hegel’s descriptions, in their overly harsh form, opened the door to discovering or interpreting inconsistencies or contradictions that were not actually there.
It is therefore time to recognise that the world of thought in human consciousness, which is mistakenly considered to be purely subjective, actually contains all the qualities of objectivity.
In fact, every human being is capable of actively setting houghts in motion within their own consciousness and thus simultaneously bringing to light the laws that connect them.
In other words, something objective is produced on one’s own initiative and not, as is usually the case, merely passively experienced.
The fact that mistakes can be made in thinking is not a valid objection to the fundamental objectivity of thinking.
Mental connections can become faulty, for example, when a content cannot be followed due to unfocussed thinking.
However, the possibility of correcting mistakes and the intersubjective verifiability of correctness, as is known from mathematical or other logical connections, make the principle objectivity of thinking clear.
“Thus everyone can intuitively see with the mind that he exists, that he thinks that a triangle is bounded by only three lines, that the sphere is bounded by a single surface and the like […]”
These words come from the great philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), when he called for this kind of intellectual, rational intuition for science at the beginning of the scientific age.
However, he did not mean what is commonly understood by intuition, namely the occurrence of spontaneous ideas, dream-like experiences or feelings that come to consciousness on their own without any effort to think.¹
Rather, he understood intuitive thinking as thinking that
“[…] can gain a certainty equal to arithmetical or geometrical proofs. […]
The question is not what others have meant or what we ourselves have surmised, but rather what we can see or reliably deduce with clear and evident intuition; this is the only way to acquire science […]
By intuition I do not understand the wavering testimony of sensory perception or the deceptive judgement of the wrongly connecting imagination, but an understanding of the pure and attentive mind that is so effortless and clearly determined that no doubt at all remains about what we recognise, or, what is the same thing: a pure and attentive mind’s undoubted understanding, which springs solely from the light of reason and which, because it is simpler, is therefore more reliable than even deduction […].”²
Descartes thus also distinguishes thinking in its purely visual function from ideal contents and the activity of thinking that makes these contents appear.
Thinking must therefore find within itself a content that does not arise from experience, and the process of this finding manifests itself as intuition.
Intuition could therefore be described as the conscious experience of a purely ideal or spiritual content.
This fact is extremely significant because it is diametrically opposed to the widespread nominalism, i.e. that, according to Kant, thoughts or concepts without sensory experience are empty, without content.³
Goethe (1782–1832) also saw through this error when he said that the researcher should see through the “eyes of the spirit” the inner law that the “eyes of the body” allow him to see externally.
In concrete terms, thinking produces an objective content (concept/idea), which is grasped with the help of intuition and related to an experience (object) given by observation.⁴
This reveals the actual power of knowledge of thinking and the fact that its activity itself is full of content.
The sources of knowledge are therefore two different things: on the one hand, what observation is for experience and, in the same sense, what intuition is for thinking.
For by merely observing the things of the world, one remains alien to them unless one finds in one’s thinking the intuition corresponding to the things, which completes the part that cannot be found in experience.
It is impossible, for example, to know from the mere sight of a crab and an elephant why the elephant is at a higher stage of development than the crab.
Only through a very specific, concrete content, which arises in thinking, can one learn something about the unequal perfection of these two animal species.
Even in the case of an observation, such as the effect of thunder on lightning, it is not clear at the same time why this is the case.
In thinking, on the other hand, the concepts of lightning and thunder are themselves directly related, because in the world of ideas they belong together by law, regardless of how far or ‘correctly’ the individual concepts have already been developed.
The unquestionable clarity of their connection arises at the same time in thinking through the formed concepts themselves.
On the one hand, it can be said of this process of conceptualisation that, unlike external processes, it cannot take place without our own intervention and, on the other hand, that it is always necessary to be able to put the concepts found into a satisfactory relationship with the observed experience.
As long as no suitable concepts have been found for an experience, any connection or law remains closed to mere observation.
This is because the concepts are not provided by the things themselves, but only emerge in connection with thinking.
Once they have been found, however, it is possible to think about an experience without observing it, so that it can be understood on a purely idealistic level and precise statements can be made about its connections and results.
All conscious intellectual endeavour in accordance with the principle of science is therefore based on observation and intellectual intuition.
It is completely irrelevant what material processes take place simultaneously in the brain during the thought process.
Anyone who still clings to the materialistic belief that thinking is a product of matter and can be equated with the physical processes of the organs, such as the secretion of bile by the liver, is very much mistaken.
For thinking, like the other things in the world, cannot be grasped by mere sensory observation, but requires, as it were, the induction of a kind of mental state of exception, which makes it possible to observe and recognise the otherwise always unconscious activity of one’s own mind.
The effort to get into such an exceptional state is fundamental for every human being in order to find a firm anchor or starting point from which all further observations of the world can be made.
[1] From an epistemological point of view, this ‘intuition’, which appears of its own accord, as an immediate given, is merely experience like other perceptions, the meaning of which must first be found through the intellectual-rational intuition outlined here, i.e. through active thinking. Famous examples from the history of science prove this, such as the ‘intuitive’ discovery of the ring structure theory of benzene by A. Kekulé (1929–1896). Kekulé recounted how he travelled through London at night on the last bus, “lost in reverie”, and saw images of moving atoms grouped together, arranged in chains, and turning “in whirling circles”:
“The conductor’s call: ‘Clampham Road’ woke me from my reverie, but I spent at least part of the night putting sketches of these dream formations on paper. That is how structural theory was born. […] Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and we may find the truth […] But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been tested by the waking mind”
(Volkamer et al., 1991. Intuition, creativity and holistic thinking. Sauer Verlag, Heidelberg).
[2] Source: Regulae ad directionem ingenii (Descartes, 1993).
[3] Read more in my post about “Biggest Prejudice About Thinking” https://medium.com/@HeimatloserM/greatest-prejudice-against-thinking-fb00ba0aad3d
[4] The difference between observation and experience: Experience is the complete process of taking in (sensory) impressions and the integrative processing of environmental and physical stimuli. Observation, on the other hand, means a deliberate, targeted intake, i.e. the experience of information or impressions.
Note: This text was originally written in German and translated into English using Deepl, because I am a native German speaker.
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