Objectivity - The Goal of Knowing

Q & A has become a well-known novel written by Vikas Swarup as it provides the plot for the Oscar winning movie Slumdog Millionaire. In this article, we see how the concept of objectivity is traced out in the novel. It is about a story of a street-boy named Ram Mohammad Thomas, who was able to win one billion rupees by answering all the twelve questions in the game show called ‘Who Wants to be A Millionaire?’(W3B) similar to the Indian reality TV show, ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’. The boy’s winning not only surprises everyone but it makes the producers of the show suspicious about his winning. And so they probe into the case in order to find out how he could answer all the questions against their script, the objective. Every TV show, including the so-called reality shows, would have a script to be followed. These game shows are only a means to increase the TRP rating and earn more revenue through advertisements. The producers would never intend that someone would win the whole prize-money and it is same in this TV show too.

However, in the case of Ram the script fails. No one could find the truth, not even Smita Shah, the lawyer of the boy, his own boyhood friend who came to help him. Everyone is perplexed with the absolute right answers of the boy. It seems impossible even for a well-educated man to have the objective knowledge in all the fields, at least the different fields that the questions pertain to in the show. Hence it is incredible that a street-boy is able to answer the questions such as the sequence of letters inscribed on the Cross or to choose the right meaning of the term persona non grata in the government foreign policy or to name the person who invented the revolver or to answer the right key that Beethoven used in his famous musical piece ‘Hammerklavier Sonta’. The question that remains here is “how could the boy have objective knowledge?”

Human knowing is not a single activity. Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), a Canadian Philosopher, presents the process of knowing as a structured set of different activities. The process of knowing contains experience, understanding and judgment that happen in a cumulative and cyclic manner. The process does not stop here but moves towards objectivity what is called really real or objectively real. It can be achieved only by an authentic subject. The criteria for authentic subject are to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible. To make it clear Lonergan distinguishes principal notion of objectivity and constitutive notions of objectivity. He explains the principal notion of objectivity, the patterned context of judgments, in this way: “through a true proposition you can arrive at an objective world.” Lonergan also provides three constitutive notions of objectivity namely Absolute objectivity, Normative Objectivity and Experiential Objectivity. Let us discuss about them briefly.

Absolute Objectivity:

Absolute Objectivity is the knowledge about something which is unconditioned by anything namely the subject, time and space. “The ground of absolute objectivity is the virtually unconditioned that is grasped by reflective understanding and posited in judgment.” A judgment or a proposition is absolutely objective in as much as its content is absolute.  All the answers given by the boy were unconditioned and were gained through his reflective understanding on his own experience. For instance, he was able to answer the question of the meaning of persona non grata in the government foreign policy, he reflects on his understanding about the term. Through his experience with a foreign ambassador who was declared persona non grata and was sacked due to the guilt of unreliability, Ram gives the meaning “that the diplomat is not acceptable”. Thus his answer gains Absolute objectivity with the absolute content.

Normative Objectivity:

This sense of objectivity is directly opposed to subjectivity. By subjectivity Lonergan means that of wishful thinking, of rash or excessively cautious judgments, of allowing factors like joy or sadness, hope or fear, love or detestation to interfere with the proper cognitional process. “Normative objectivity is constituted by the immanent exigence of the pure desire in the pursuit of its unrestricted objective.”  Moreover, the process of cognition that carries inquiry, demand for intelligibility and demand for unconditioned has ‘norms’ immanently. Therefore, Normative objectivity is to proceed in the cognitional process with the norms without any bias. In the case of Ram, the normative objectivity is the script of the producers which is inherent in the whole show. “Shows like W3B cannot be dictated by chance, by a roll of the dice. They have to follow a script …. But now this fellow Thomas [Ram] has wrecked all our plans”, complaints the producer.

Experiential Objectivity:

The third constitutive element of objectivity is experiential. Any inquiry or insight presupposes something that is given, the material about which one inquires is given to experience. Experience is the first stage in the cognitional process in fulfilling the conditions of the virtually unconditioned. As the object of cognition is a given reality it is unquestionable and indubitable in itself. The given is not an answer to any question and, in fact, it is prior to questioning and independent of answers. Hence this objectivity is opposed to what is produced at will. Givenness is extrinsic, outside the agent. While everyone was suspicious about Ram’s intrinsic knowledge about the answers, in reality he could find the answers from the facts of his own life-experience, events and struggles. One such example would be how could an ordinary street-boy name the smallest plant of the solar system? He learns the name from his astronomer neighbour. The latter names his cat as Pluto since he deems the pet as very small. The answer is given to him in this sense.

Conclusion:

He could arrive at the objective knowledge through the true propositions, the answers, which were the result of his authentic subjectivity through attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible process. The novel consists of all the three constitutive notions of objectivity namely Absolute, Normative and Experiential which we try to explain in this article.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pen, Robert. Communication for Communion: Communication as Mutual Self-Mediation in Context. New Delhi: Intercultural Publications, 2011.

Swarup, Vikas. Q&A. London: Black Swan, 2006.

Lonergan, Bernard. “The Apriori and Objectivity.” Understanding and Being. Edited by Elizabeth A. Morelli and Mark D. Morelli. Toranto: University of Toranto Press, 1995: 156-180.

Lonergan, Bernard. “The Notion of Objectivity.” Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. Edited by Fredric E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran. Toranto: University of Toranto Press, 1992: 394-409.