Question: Do you believe that it is possible to experience anything objectively? (Since there is the idea that our subjective experience of the world is unique and may vary from person to person?)

Lowri Evans answered on 16 Mar 2016:

Everything we know, everything we’ve touched, seen, and smelled, has been filtered through a huge amount of physiological and cognitive processes, and so it can be argued that everyone’s subjective experience of the world is unique. This is a concept known as qualia, which is the notion that our surroundings can only be observed through the filter of our senses and how we think. Essentially, we can never be without the ingrained biases and things we know (in psychology, we call these “schemas”) so how can we perceive daily events without biases? This is a question that drove the philosopher Rene Descartes mad – if we begin to question the objectivity of your senses and your mind, then some people start to feel that everything they perceive is suspect.

There’s no definitive answer about how much of our experience of reality is objective, and how much of it is agreed upon what we know and believe . We have no way of absolutely knowing what someone else thinks in the same way that they experience it, but we can observe the signs of someone else’s consciousness (brain imaging, EEG etc)

Scientists seek information – they try to create concepts and principles based on information – and they cling to the myth of objectivity. Science is based upon the notion that we are able to achieve objective knowledge, and that our schemas and expectations do not bias this knowledge that has been gained through the objective measurement of critical scientific evaluation. One achievement of the physical sciences in the twentieth century has been to prove that objectivity is unattainable – “there is no absolute knowledge…All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humanity” (Bronowski, 1973)

I hope this helps and hasn’t just baffled you even more! 🙂