The Providence of Subjectivism

Subjectivism, alongside many other -isms, is rightly frowned upon. However, the shift towards acknowledging that being human means to be in the first-person, it seems to me, was providential. Consider the classical definition of the human being as a rational animal. If some totally external third party were observing all the phenomena in the universe, it would notice that human beings were exactly like other mammals (as many scientists notice, who forget that they are not third parties) except that they behave according to reason. Hence, rational + animal. With the discovery of artificial neural networks, this same third party - in a few short decades - will observe the same rational behavior in machines as well; it may very well classify humans and robots together.

I am not making the rash claim that neural networks can reason. However, they can capture rational behavior. The reductionists would conclude that this amounts to the same thing, but this is besides the point. The point is that looking at the human being from a third-person perspective has diminishing returns; it proffers diminishing distinctness from materiality. What has endured the test of time is interiority or being-a-subject, which is irreducible.

In biblical language, we are speaking of the heart. The Catholic Church has been prophetic in calling this out. The 1965 document Gaudium et Spes states, “For by his interior qualities he outstrips the whole sum of mere things. He plunges into the depths of reality whenever he enters into his own heart” (14). The depths of his interiority are real, in fact, more real. More recently, Pope Francis wrote, “It could be said, then, that I am my heart, for my heart is what sets me apart, shapes my spiritual identity and puts me in communion with other people. The algorithms operating in the digital world show that our thoughts and will are much more ‘uniform’ than we had previously thought [emphasis added]. They are easily predictable and thus capable of being manipulated. That is not the case with the heart” (Dilexit Nos, 14).

The heart transcends the material universe and is not reducible to it. That which pertains to the heart is more distinctly human than that which pertains to behavior, even though the heart reveals itself in behavior. This is why parenting cannot be left to the State, for example. Certainly, the State could do a better job at instilling behavior, having the most productive techniques from psychology, psychiatry, and other sciences at its disposal. But the State cannot form the heart, which is formed in love and which is formed intersubjectively rather than objectively. There are already numerous drugs that alter behavior, that cause a person to become more empathetic or more calm. If there were a drug some day that guaranteed perfect temperance in all things, the human task would be no more fulfilled through it than it was without it. The emergence, development, perfection, and sanctification of the human subject is the key. After all, the human heart – this heart – is worth more than the whole world.