Space and the limits of objectivity
could there be a disembodied thinking of reality?
pp. 207-229
in: Roxana Baiasu, Graham Bird, A. W. Moore (eds), Contemporary Kantian metaphysics, Berlin, Springer, 2012Abstract
Objective thinking is a mode of understanding which aims to leave behind local viewpoints or perspectival engagement with the world. The enlargement of understanding through objectification can be thought of as a gradual process of progressive detachment from specific perspectives on the world. In The View from Nowhere, Thomas Nagel refers to degrees of the objectivity with which we can approach some aspect of reality. For example, he contends that the "standpoint of morality is more objective than that of private life, but less objective than the standpoint in physics'.2 He compares the process of objectification and the corresponding layers of understanding with "a set of concentric spheres, progressively revealed as we detach gradually from the contingencies of the self'.3 Nagel refers to a classical picture of the process of enlargement of understanding: this process is taken to begin with the interaction between our bodies and the world which produces sensations and perceptions in us.
