Dissolving Distinctions: Subject/Object, How/Why

I think that the human world demands a unique form of explanation.  We need a new vocabulary that lets us understand ourselves and others in fuller ways.

We need a humane vocabulary that is free from the epistemological bullying of the natural sciences.

Because the distinctions that apply to thought about the natural world do not apply to the human world. With humans we cannot cleanly make the distinction between subject and object, nor the distinction between what, how, and why.

In thinking about other humans we are thinking about other minds. When our mind grasps another mind it has not grasped it as an object, but as a simulation that we have brought to life in our own mind.  Collingwood argued this point til his dying day.  John Searle, however, put it even more clearly: "The explanation of an action must have the same content as was in the person's head when he performed the action or when he reasoned toward his intention to perform the action. If the explanation is really explanatory, the content that causes behavior by way of intentional causation must be identical with the content in the explanation of the behavior" (Minds, Brains, and Science, 67, emphasis removed). To explain another person's actions is to understand their thoughts. To understand another person's thoughts is to think those same thoughts for yourself.  Thus Collingwood was able to argue, with humans "the object is enacted and is therefore not an object at all" (The Principles of History, 246). 

The distinction between what, how, and why is also blurring to me these days.  This is something I'm learning personally through reflection and attempts at meditation.  When I know what my feelings or thoughts are it is immediately clear to me why and how I have them.  The understanding that I'm trying to gain of myself is fuller than those distinctions and cannot be adequately divided into the neatness of what, how, and why.  Those questions are totally rolled together, and cannot be taken apart.

Our normal scientific language cannot be applied to humans.  There is a need for a more human language.  That language is to be found in history, philosophy, and the rest of the humanities.

The humanities.

Duh.