Editing John Searle (section)

====Ontological subjectivity====
Searle has argued<ref>Searle, J R: ''The Mystery of Consciousness'' (1997) p. 95-131</ref> that critics like [[Daniel Dennett]],<ref>''[https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1982/06/24/the-myth-of-the-computer-an-exchange/ The Myth of the Computer: An Exchange]'' by Daniel C. Dennett, reply by John R. Searle, The [[New York Review of Books]], June 24, 1982 Issue</ref> who he claims insist that discussing subjectivity is unscientific because science presupposes objectivity, are making a [[category error]]. Perhaps the goal of science is to establish and validate statements which are ''epistemically'' objective, i.e., whose truth can be discovered and evaluated by any interested party, but are not necessarily ''ontologically'' objective.

Searle calls any [[value judgment]] epistemically ''subjective''. Thus, "[[Mount McKinley|McKinley]] is prettier than [[Mount Everest|Everest]]" is "epistemically subjective", whereas "McKinley is higher than Everest" is "epistemically objective". In other words, the latter statement is evaluable, in fact, falsifiable, by an understood ('background') criterion for mountain height, like "the summit is so many meters above sea level". No such criteria exist for prettiness.

Beyond this distinction, Searle thinks there are certain phenomena, including all conscious experiences, that are ''ontologically'' subjective, i.e., can only exist as subjective experience. For example, although it might be subjective or objective in the epistemic sense, a doctor's note that a patient suffers from back pain is an epistemically ''objective'' claim: it counts as a medical diagnosis only because the existence of back pain is "an objective fact of medical science".<ref>Searle, J.R.: ''The Mystery of Consciousness'' (1997) p.122</ref> The pain itself, however, is ''ontologically subjective'': it is only experienced by the person having it.

Searle goes on to affirm that "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance ''is'' the reality".<ref>Searle, J.R.: ''The Mystery of Consciousness'' (1997) p.112</ref> His view that the epistemic and ontological senses of objective/subjective are cleanly separable is crucial to his self-proclaimed [[biological naturalism]], because it allows epistemically objective judgments like "That object is a pocket calculator" to pick out agent-relative features of objects, and such features are, on his terms, ontologically subjective, unlike, say, "That object is made mostly of plastic".