Subjective and objective knowledge: Persistent puzzles

Abstract

The chapters in this volume reveal the large amount of information that would be available about individuals’ biological condition with the wise use of biomarkers. An intriguing fact about this information is that it is very often (perhaps always) about oneself. This fact involves several of the studies in one of the deepest and most controversial of philosophical topics. Simply stated, it is the relation between objective and subjective knowledge. Knowledge about oneself has a special status in philosophy and carries special problems. Examples of self-knowledge that appear in philosophical discourse are different from those of interest to human biologists, but they involve intriguing similarities. This chapter will report on the present state of argument in academic philosophy regarding the relation between objective and subjective knowledge. It will then show how several of the chapters in this volume bring human biologists face-to-face with the same puzzles philosophers are currently struggling with.