#9 Subjectivity and Objectivity in Knowledge

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The Purpose of Intelligence

We are intelligent organisms. That means we can plan and solve problems regarding activities we carry out either as they are happening or as represented in thought as future or past events. Because we have re-constructed the world and actions as objects of thought we can think about reality in our mind. We can re-present it; we can think back in time about the objects and activities of our previous experiences, and we can think about future possible actions and objects. By organizing groups of objects and activities in as representations of thought, we can compare and explain them, transform them, derive their properties, solve problems, compare values, make decisions, and all the rest whether we are performing the actions on actual objects or not. Awareness of actions means constructing more and more complete representations of objects and activities by our reflective thought, and as a result giving our thought increasingly more power to regulate and organize our activities. We understand better what we are doing and its effects; and we become more thoughtful about what we are doing. Because the mind can represents reality and actions in thought, it serves as an amazing cognitive organ of human adaptation

How does the mind achieve this remarkable ability to ‘see’ and think about objects and events even though they may not be present or may no longer be present? How is it possible that the things we can ‘see’ in our mind’s eye are often located in another place, or in another time? And where does the world of possibilities we visit in our minds come from? If intelligent behavior depends on the mental capability to represent and replay either real or imagined activities and objects and activities, how does this representational world arise in human thought? Even more marvelous, the knowledge and thought we achieve can be shared and passed along to others through language. It too is a remarkable feature distinguishing humans from other species. It is a vast and complex world we are able to reconstruct in thought.

Considering the new born infant, the construction of this vast system of mental capabilities to represent things is an amazing accomplishment of every human being. How then do we explain where this wonderful mental machinery comes from? Does it come through the language used to teach young students in school? Does it come from experience with objects? Perhaps there is some kind of innate reasoning abilities that account for the ability to learn, or perhaps the innate ability actually comes from brain development and maturation. Perhaps its source is social interaction and language. Or perhaps it is seen in the ideal forms that exist and which are apprehended by seeing their approximations as they appear in the concrete world.

Understanding how mental capabilities arise, whatever their form, is the essential basis for professional knowledge upon which educational programs are designed. Fulfilling the intent of education to actively promote the development of intellectual capabilities depends on the practical value of our scientific knowledge of student development. Educators’ professional knowledge base is not based on common sense but on scientific research of how knowledge develops within students.


Number and Amount

Let’s take the simple example of number. How exactly does it arise in young students’ minds such that many of them develop complex patterns of computations and relationships about numbers? How is it they can divorce a number from the group of objects that represent a number? When we show 12 counters to the kindergartner, most can count them and match another set of 12 directly side by side. But if we disturb the arrangement, the young students think the number has changed. Even somewhat older students if the arrangement is altered will be unsure if the number has been retained and will recount the counters. And even if young students match two rows in one-to-one correspondence and insist they have the same number, if we then spread out one row they change their answers and assert one row then has more. Even more astonishing, some students a bit older actually count the two rows when one is spread out, tell us both rows have 12 counters, but then go to assert that the number is different, and one row still has more.

Or take the example of kindergarten students’ understanding of amount such as the amount of clay in a ball. Here’s is an instance of physical knowledge in which nothing could be simpler than to know that if we squish a ball of clay a bit, the amount of clay certainly hasn’t changed. We don’t add any or take any away. How could young students not see that the amount is the same? Yet that is precisely what young students sees. If we ask them how they know one ball of clay now has less, they point out that it is not as tall. It is pushed down to make it less. So they point out what is a direct fact for them, the observation that the ball clearly and simply has less clay. But, if we point out that it is wider, amazingly they simply change their views regarding the amount and say it means it has more. The contradictions bothers them not one bit.

The facts these young students see are so compelling to them that most will not believe us when we show them the amount is the same. They don’t see it that way although some will dutifully accept the adults’ ideas (but questioning or posing the problem later in time shows these students still hold their ideas that the amount changes). The evidence for these students is irrefutable; they observe that the squished ball, in fact, is shorter, and they ‘see’ that it has less. Nothing could be more obvious to them than this direct evidence they see in the objects.

The same is true of young students’ notions of number. They see that the number of counters in the line that is spread out has more than another row equal in number that is compressed. They point out that some of the counters of the long row stick out past the end of the other row of counters; that shows, they assert, that the spread out row has more counters. So these raw data the young students observe directly in the objects, the facts they see, are not only incorrect, but since they are incorrect, the facts directly observed from their experience with these objects cannot lead them to a more advanced and correct knowledge of number and quantity. This difficulty in seeing even the most basic of facts directly shown by the objects presents a serious problem. How can it be explained?


What Students See Depends on What They See With

What the developmental research reveals to us is that knowledge doesn’t arise in the students’ minds by directly receiving information the outside such as through more experiences with counters or with the amount of clay in the ball nor does it come from explanations or discussions. And it is not a product of maturation or brain development. The problem is that the mind must use its existing mental machinery, as incomplete as this understanding is, to form the meaning that they see in the situation of the clay balls or the counters. The mind relies on its mental capabilities, its conceptual buckets, by which to see and record information from outside the mind. Since information cannot be transmitted through the air, the mind has no way to directly receive information from vibrating light or air waves directly through the senses. These stimuli are not even raw data for the mind until the mind acts to single out certain stimuli out of the mass and transform them into data. To transform an interaction with objects into a representation by thought, means there must be some way, some means whereby information corresponding to the objects comes to be reconstructed, organized, and represented as a mental activity within the mind.

The mind must make its contact with the objects appear to itself as observations of the object but the mind doesn’t make contact with physical objects, only with mental objects. Since physical data cannot be directly received by the mind, these observations by the mind can only be reconstructions of the object, not direct copies. The fact that what the mind of these young students observe is actually as yet only a partial reconstruction of the objects means that these initial data that are observed are very poor, very misleading, very fleeting, and very fragmentary.

The reason for this poor quality of these data is that they must depend on the weak mental capabilities the young students’ minds are using to organize and represent the clay balls in thought. The young students mentally have nothing else available. They need the fully developed concepts of amount or of number as mental capabilities that allow them to see amount and number properly but their notions of quantity and number are still weak, incomplete, and not yet able to organize things into a coherent, rational wholes on the place of representational thought. These students don’t have the mental capabilities these two concepts of number and quantity could provide, and as a result they must still largely rely on their simple, direct perceptions of the appearance of the objects. And as these appearances change as the objects are moved or reshaped, their perceptions change. Without a mental capability that would replace perception and correct its misleading impressions, their mind has no way to reconstruct, represent, and organize the changes in the counters or clay ball; they have only an almost non-existent capability to follow the changes. All they can must is to see separate, isolated actions on the clay balls or counters.

So the appearances they perceive as observations in thought easily mislead them. They can only mentally represent what they think they see. Their minds do not yet have mental capabilities for organizing mental activity directed to reconstructing and representing the object as an object of thought. They see only simple, isolated changes in a series of separate, disconnected centrations on the changing situation so that as one row is extended past the other or the ball is flattened; these are narrow, isolated centrations on a single aspect that produce misleading observations of number and quantity. The overall impression is that the whole is getting larger, or perhaps smaller. The mental machinery of young students is undeveloped and weak, and what they see with that mental machinery is distorted.


The Students’ Facts Are Not Our Facts

The problem is that from our point of view the outside information students are receiving is wrong because of the meaning the students are attributing to the objects. What they think they are observing is erroneous. They are seeing the facts differently and distorting them in spite of the careful demonstration of amount in the clay balls. They can’t see what we see as objective facts no matter what we do. The problem lies with the internal mental capability students are using to form their understanding of the amount of clay and what they observe in the changes of amount.

Their internal mental machinery is already a complex system of all kinds of organized patterns or methods that organize what they see in their developing minds and how they think but it is still not adequate. They must further develop their mental machinery because there is no other way to objectively record the facts from the objects. The mind can’t directly receive meaning from the outside because meaning can’t fly through the air. It is not transmitted so all these young students have to rely on is their inadequate understanding and the erroneous facts they see in the clay balls. How then is better knowledge of amount even possible? It can’t come from more experiences with the objects since the facts from experience are actually misleading. And they can’t use some kind of rational processes of induction to correct errors since they do not yet have a rational logic available that would allow them to understand and reason about changes in amount. Their machinery is giving them false information, but what is worse is that they do not know their facts are wrong. Thus, development is the key.

Examples from developmental research show over and over again how powerful the distorting effects of an undeveloped internal capability are in shaping what young students see. It is not possible for young students to see simple facts directly without the prior development and use of an internal, mental capability. To see objective data, we must use a corresponding fully developed concept which makes the observation possible. The concept, such as quantity or number, shapes the kind of data we see in the situation. We use our concept of amount as a mental capability by which to make the data we see regarding amount appear to be objectively coming directly from the objects. It seems to be a result of direct observation as if it is coming directly from the properties of the object without any subjective involvement. In fact, what we observe is due to applying a concept to reconstruct a property and represent it in thought.

And over and over again, careful investigation of young students reveals that what they see in the objects as true data appear to adults to be distorted and subjective data. But in adults, their data to them appear objective and as directly due to the object. The adults observations appear to be objective without subjective distortions. So the tendency of lay people is to think our knowledge starts out as subjective and gradually become more objective as if somehow we rid ourselves of subjectivity in our knowledge. But if they don’t get rid of subjectivity, how do adults manage to see things objectively whereas young students do not? Either adults must get rid of the subjective aspect of their knowledge or their subjective aspect somehow must develop into a form that is less intrusive, distorting, and one that can produce more objective observations.

The research is clear, but only if we actually follow the development of concepts. By tracing them back and following their formation, we find that the second solution is clearly the true explanation. Mental capabilities do develop into more rational forms that lead to less distortion in the observations that make. What happens in development is not that adults gradually shed the subjective aspect in their observations and knowledge but that their subjective aspect develops into rational forms that no longer lead to distortions in the observations. The subjectivity seems to disappear because thought operates in an obviously necessary and objective manner. Adults obviously can not get rid of their notions of amount and number since these subjective instances of mental machinery are necessary in making observations about amount and number we see in objects. What happens is the simpler and distorting notions of quantity and number we held as young students develop into rational concepts that not only produce our logical reasoning about the changes we observe in amount and number but also fit more objectively with the actual physical transformations of the objects. Now since it fits so well and is so logical, our data about number and quantity seem to come directly from the objects. But this objectivity is only possible because of the development of the subjective aspect, not to its disappearance.


The Parallel Developments of Subjectivity and Objectivity

Thus, the two aspects of every act of knowing, the subjective and the objective, develop in parallel with each other. As the subjective, internal mental capabilities of concepts develop, what they ‘see’ also develops. What the mental machinery sees in objects as observations is due to the more extensive fit of the mental machinery with the objective properties of external objects. The transformations of objects are not irrational. A mind that has available rational concepts can thus make rational attributions of these transformations to the objects and thereby ‘see’ objective facts in objects. Subjectivity and objectivity develop together as the two poles of an act of knowledge.

The essential point is that subjectivity and objectivity are not static entities or states and one does not arise out of the other. They are twin processes that result from the activity of the mind as it applies its organized forms to its mental objects. It transforms objects in order to know and represent them. The subjective aspect of activity is due to the developing organization of mental activity, and the objective aspect is due to the results imposed on the activity by the objects as activity applies itself to the object. The distortions we adults see in young students’ thought comes from the subjective property of their pre-conceptual forms of organization that they use to record their observations. The distorted facts they see comes from the pre-conceptual forms they use to record those observations of the objects. Facts cannot come from objects without applying an action to the objects.

As soon as we do something to objects we can see things, their properties and forms. We can physically manipulate them but to reconstruct and represent objects in thought, we must do these actions mentally in there more form. In thought we outline objects, divide them into parts enclosed in large wholes, sequenced their various elements, put various aspects into correspondence, color them, weigh them, locate them in space in relation to other things or to space as a container, attribute meaning by actions we can use them for, etc

Knowledge of objects is composed of the totality of all the things we can do either in a practical sense or in a conceptual sense to the objects. To classify is an activity that transforms objects into classes. To enumerate is an action that transforms objects into counters or units. To enclose is and activity that outlines and transforms objects into a spatial form. To multiply two series is an action that transforms two numbers into a product. Everything we observe depends on an organized mental activity that is applied and fitted to observation it makes possible. It is true that there can be no mental activity applied to mental objects without there being mental objects, and it is also true that there can be no mental objects without there being some kind of organized mental activity that makes the mental object appear. Thus, knowledge is an activity reconstructed from sensory motor activity applied to objects whose twin subjective and objective poles fit together. They are two sides of the same activity, the one appearing as the organization due to the subject and the other as the observation that results due to the object. Thus the content and process of in an act of knowledge are simply the result of analyzing mental activity in its two aspects, the one inward directed to the subject and the other outward directed to the object of thought.

Thus, human thought does not get rid of its subjectivity, it organizes it to make less intrusive and thus to disappear, and that re-organization is the role of development. In this regard it means young students are no different from adults or even scientists in their attempts to reflect on and develop their subjective mental organization so they can better observe and represent the world. The only difference between adults and young students is in the degree of development of the subjective mental capabilities that are employed. Every act of knowledge depends on a subjective aspect but in adults that subjective aspect has achieved a form that is much more rational and logical, and so it seems not to distort the observations it can record. It produces objectivity.

In adults, the completed concept of amount and number functions in the same manner as an incomplete concept does in young students the only difference is in the organizational form that different between the simpler notions of amount and number and the more advanced completed concepts. The adult concepts produce far less distortion in the observations these concepts make possible but both adults and young students employ subjective methods in making observations of the ball of clay; it cannot be otherwise. The differences that appear are due to the fact the adult subjective capabilities of amount and number have a much longer developmental history such that they have formed into more rational, stable capabilities that better fit to their observations they can record off the objects. These subjective concepts also organize adults’ reasoning about amount to make it logical whereas the incomplete notions of young students can organize only irrational bits and pieces of thought. Thus, all knowledge results from the universal functioning of both what we see and what we see with, but "what we see with" varies in its development from simple notions into the conceptual systems of adults both of which more or less fit themselves to the properties of objects. It is the more advanced concepts of number and amount that form the subjective mental capabilities which fit more objectively to the objects and the transformations of their amount and number that we can observe.


The Subjectivity of Adult Thought

Adult thought, even though controlled by subjective mental capabilities, seems to exist only as objective entities separate from the mind that somehow are transmitted into the mind. But the existence of the facts and the logical coherence of our understanding of the facts is not due only to the objects to which we have applied our concepts, they are due to the concepts we apply to the objects and therefore the facts we see depend on the level of development of our concepts. The facts may seem so obvious as to suggest we used no subjective machinery to produce them. The objectivity of our observations seems to have no subjectivity in them. They seem to be ‘raw’ data undistorted by interpretation.

But subjectivity is involved, and it is its development into rational concepts that makes its ‘subjectivity’ disappear by no longer being intrusive into the observations or organizing a faulty logic. The subjective capabilities have not left the scene. These subjective capabilities are what correct our perceptions to see the objective facts, and, by comparison, they also let us see our differences with students. They allow us to observe students’ mistakes as subjective distortions of erroneous facts, and they let us observe the funny kinds of irrational reasoning the young students use. The students’ subjectivity shows; ours doesn’t.

Since our subjectivity doesn’t show to us (at least to most people), the kind of data we see and record as ‘raw’ un-interpreted data does not appear as dependent on the level of understanding we bring to the situation in the form of our concepts. The facts we can see and learn depend on the prior development of the concepts that are necessarily involved in the learning. The source of concepts is development, not learning. Thus, the important conclusion is that development is not the result of learning; instead, learning depends on development. There is a huge difference between educational methods which intend to promote development and those whose primary aim is learning. Since learning is not possible until there is the development of the intellectual capabilities, development is the more fundamental goal of education.