The Problem of Double Vision:Subjective and Objective Perspectives.

The problem of double vision arises when one attempts to attain an objective understanding of themselves without sacrificing their subjective self-understanding, and finds it impossible to hold both perspectives at once. Consider

Skepticism: I know I have two hands, but my perceptual processes are fallible, and I cannot see myself both as knowing and as only partly justified.

Or consider

The Gambler: He resolves to quit forever, then reflects on his history of relapse and finds that his so-called resolution is just a mental state of a notoriously incontinent and irresolute addict.

In each case a state—a belief, an emotion, a decision—can be regarded internally, as the product of our agency, or externally, as the product of causal mechanisms like bouncing billiard balls. Should we try to reject one perspective or subordinate it to the other? Or should we live uneasily with both? I argue that double vision may stick around in the case of belief, but that in the case of action we are resolving it all the time.

For Thomas Nagel, objectivity is a method: we begin with a subjective perspective on the world, then regard that perspective as a phenomenon that is part of the world and as an appearance to be explained. While I am happy to treat my tastes as mere appearances and go all in for objectivity, I encounter resistance when trying to do so for my beliefs or my ability to choose an action. We can explain the source of this tension using some distinctions from Moran’s Authority and Estrangement. A theoretical question (“Will he gamble again?”) is answered by discovering what is independently the case; a deliberative question (“Shall I gamble again?”) is answered by forming the attitude in question. If I see what I believe or intend as determined not by what I commit to but by exogenous causes, I cannot also address myself to the deliberative question: the attitude will not have been formed by my deliberation, but through some other causal mechanism. I connect Moran to Nagel by positing the Incompatibility Thesis: since we are agents, when a subjective perspective is sufficiently connected to our agency, we cannot simultaneously hold it alongside an objective perspective that regards it as an appearance and causally explains it.

I then turn to some particular instances of double vision, starting with moral beliefs. Regina Rini poses a practical antinomy: some of my moral judgments have the phenomenal character of necessity, yet each has a contingent causal history that fully explains why I feel bound by it. When we try to entertain both thoughts at once, we are alienated from the felt necessity of moral requirements, which provide structure and meaning to our lives. Her solution is social. We afford others’ claims of moral necessity a distinctive respect even when we reject them, as in the reverence many non-Protestants feel for Luther’s “Here I stand; I can do no other”. In maintaining this practice, we help one another maintain that felt necessity. Amia Srinivasan raises a similar problem in her discussion of genealogical anxiety, when one worries that their beliefs or representations have origins that are not merely contingent but pernicious. As Srinivasan observes, an appeal to genealogical luck presupposes the belief it defends, so once double vision has set in, it comes too late. Her worldmakers, who change the world by changing our representational practices, instead “speak and act as if they are genealogically lucky”: they adopt the objective perspective that shows them that representational practices are shaped by cultures and individuals, then return to the subjective perspective. Both responses alleviate double vision without eliminating it. The objective perspective is not rejected; instead, we find ways to force ourselves into the subjectivity needed to exercise our agency.

Can we escape double vision in practical reasoning? For Nagel, the answer is an unfortunate ‘no’, since we face a drive for objectivity that is doomed to fail. To make my actions more my own, I treat each intention as a phenomenon to be causally explained, until I must reassess all my ends and principles of choice—but what ends and principles do I use to decide that?

“the logical goal of these ambitions is incoherent, for to be really free we would have to act from a standpoint completely outside ourselves, choosing everything about ourselves, including all our principles of choice—creating ourselves from nothing, so to speak.”Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere

Christine Korsgaard holds instead that our practical identities stop the regress, since without one “you cannot have reasons to act”. Nagel can still press his question: why this identity rather than another? But to commit to a practical identity, on Moran’s account, is to answer a deliberative question, not a theoretical one. Nagel’s slippery slope therefore rests upon a category error: it formulates a question that only admits of a deliberative answer and then complains that no theoretical answer is forthcoming.

Thus, belief and action come apart. Thoroughgoing skepticism is possible, and may lead one to bracket one’s beliefs. In the case of belief, double vision may stick around, and we should try to treat its symptoms. But we cannot truly suspend intentions as we can suspend our beliefs: either I will do something or I will not, and to dither is itself a choice. To the degree that I am an agent, I make that choice for a reason that issues from a practical identity to which I am committed. So, far from being unable to resolve double vision, we are actually doing so all the time. As Korsgaard writes:

If you think colours are unreal, go and look at a painting by Bellini or Olitski, and you will change your mind. If you think reasons and values are unreal, go and make a choice, and you will change your mind.”Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity

If you think your ability to autonomously author your own actions is unreal, go and make a choice, and you will change your mind.

Qualifying paper, written for Shamik Dasgupta.

Questions, objections, or a better example? Write to me: patrick.pan@patrickpan.com.