“Only someone who grasps what [their] beliefs imply and how [their] various beliefs hang together possesses knowledge.”
— Heda Segvic, in “No One Errs Willingly: The Meaning of Socratic Intellectualism”
what is synjectivism?
Click here for the glossary.
Synjectivism is a framework that uses “synjectivity” (a way of knowing that comes from the synthesis of objective and subjective knowledge) as a tool to understand society, morality, politics, culture, religion, philosophy, and experience.
Synjectivism holds that all knowledge begins not as objective or subjective, but as experience. On the most basic level, when we go about our lives, we do not see or feel anything that tells us directly whether an experience is “objective” or “subjective.” We just have experiences, and then make sense of them.
That doesn’t mean the division isn’t relevant—just that it isn’t natural or ahistorical! We don’t stumble upon objectivity and subjectivity. We create these categories so that we can make sense of our experiences, communicate with each other, and make effective decisions. Sometimes it is easier to label an experience as one or the other (data from a scientific study with rigorous planning) and sometimes it is harder (events of a hallucination or a lucid dream).
Objective knowledge is information that is most useful when understanding what is being experienced is more important than who’s perspective the experience is from. Objective knowledge is “strong” when it has been repeatedly experienced by many people, and can make universal predictions based on collective observation and skepticism
Subjective knowledge is the information that is most useful when understanding who is having the experience is more important than defining what is being experienced. Subjective knowledge is “strong” when it resonates strongly with the original experience, and allows people to express their experience/s in communicable terms and engage in worldview work.
Synjectivism is about understanding objective and subjective knowledge as
equally valuable
distinct ways of creating knowledge
which often overlap
and rely on each other to make sense.
The goal is not to pretend there is no difference, or to prioritize one way of knowing over the other. It is to understand objectivity and subjectivity on their own terms, and then bring those two forms of knowledge back together, on purpose, for practical use.
what is “worldview studies”?
Worldview studies is the working term for a framework to discuss beliefs, values, and belief systems. It is part of a project that aims to:
bridge the gap between “religion,” “spirituality,” “philosophy,” and “ideology,” and
create a framework that can both help people understand themselves, each other, and society better, through
the shared language of “worldview,” “beliefs,” “values,” and “practices”
This blog will specifically be about “synjective worldview studies,” which essentially means seeking knowledge by looking at belief systems in a way which synthesizes objective and subjective experiences.
what is a worldview?
A worldview (or a “credal web”) is the whole picture or system created by someone’s notions and practices, which helps them make sense of their experiences and make decisions throughout their life.
Everyone has a worldview. It develops naturally as we live, grow, and have new experiences. Worldviews are not just collections of discrete ideas, but the relationship between ideas, how they interact with and inform each other, and how they create one’s disposition.
Individual people have worldviews, but so do communities and entire societies. Understanding worldviews helps us understand both individual people and societies.
Your worldview is like a map for navigating being alive and self-conscious. We are very self-conscious animals, and consciousness is a very weird thing! So we need many conceptual tools to figure out how to make sense out of life and figure out what to do next.
Here are some questions that our worldviews help us answer, often without us even realizing it:
Who are you? What are you?
What matters to you?
Who & what are other people?
How does the world work?
How should the world work?
What is normal? What is abnormal?
What is desirable? What is undesirable?
What should you do? What shouldn’t you do?
What has happened to you? What does it mean?
What is happening to you? What does it mean?
What could happen to you? What does it mean?
What is the meaning of the universe?
What is the purpose of (your) life?
Our worldviews develop through our experiences, so they always have multiple sources. These sources can be social (coming from our communities), relation (coming from our relationships with others), and personal (coming from ourselves). These include but are not limited to:
Your personal lived experiences
Your personal spiritual/existential inclinations
Your personal political inclinations
Your family’s/friend’s/community’s worldview(s)
Your religious environment
Your cultural environment
Your political environment
Your social environment
Your environment-environment (geography, ecosystems, etc.)
The worldview(s) promoted by the media you engage with
When our worldviews are strong and productive, we are able to make sense of our experiences, make decisions effectively, and we feel secure and grounded in reality. When worldviews help us stay mentally and emotionally stable, flexible, and engaged in our lives, this is called credal competence.
But many of us struggle with credal competence because we were never taught to be active in our own belief systems—most of us weren’t even taught how to examine our own beliefs and values! The skill of recognizing, examining, and actively engaging with worldviews is called credal literacy. It is the goal of this blog to help people develop this skill, apply it to their lives, and bring it to their communities.
what are notions and practices?
“Notions” in this context, are defined as interpretations of experience. “Interpretation” refers to any time a person uses abstract concepts in their mind to make sense out of information, whether that information is sensory or emotional or intellectual. This holds true for mathematics, logic, and reason as it does politics, ethics, and religion.
Notions can take on different roles:
descriptive notions or beliefs (which describe what we think the world is like, what kinds of things there are, and how things work). These often influence our behavior indirectly, by shaping how we see the world.
Examples: “The earth is round”; “People have souls”; “America is special”
prescriptive notions or values (which prescribe to us how the world should be, what kind of things should exist, and how we should behave). These often influence our behavior directly, by advising us on how we should act.
Examples: “You should eat less”; “Lying is a sin”; “Everyone deserves healthcare”
When multiple notions build on each other and work together to make sense, these notions are threaded. These connect notions across the credal web and often show up in common trends and themes, both in our personal lives and in society.
Example: belief in sex being dirty & dangerous + virginity associated with moral purity = thread of sexual conservatism; strong value of community + belief in the functioning of political system = thread of civic engagement
Certain experiences of reality have a narrower window of useful interpretation. When it comes to mathematics or logic, for example, if you take in the experience of those problems and data (using your brain, which is physical!) the window of useful interpretations is pretty slim. You could interpret 1 + 1 as 4, but that would not be a useful interpretation because it doesn’t align well with material reality. If you rely on that interpretation of mathematics (say, when doing calculations for building a house), it is likely to fail you.
But not all experiences have such a narrow window of useful interpretation, and not all experiences can be objectively labeled useful or useless. Someone’s subjective beliefs about the nature of being has a pretty wide potential window of useful interpretations. What is most useful is highly specific to that person, their needs, their experiences, and the overall context of their live.
“Practices” are the ways in which notions guide our actions and behaviors. When our notions play a role in how we act, that is a practice of those notions. A person’s disposition refers to patterns in their practices over time, and how these patterns reinforce and/or re-shape their beliefs and values.
Examples: Voting Republican because of a belief in the danger of immigrants; Praying the rosary because of you value piety; dieting because of a belief that it will make you healthy, and being healthy is a obligatory value
why does it matter?
Everyone has a worldview. But that doesn’t mean everyone understands their worldview. Much less other people’s!
The big problem is: when you don’t understand your own beliefs and values, someone will decide them for you.
Culturally, there are many skills we fail to teach our youth. Many of these are skills that have to do with emotional intelligence, critical thinking, introspection, and political imagination. As mentioned, this blog’s main goal is to encourage people to develop their credal literacy and credal competence.
Right now, people around the world are suffering from a crisis of faith. Not just religious—political, social, cultural, existential. Know it or not, we are all beginning to feel that intense yearning for an alternative to the current world.
That alternative must necessarily start with new ways of acting, thinking, and before all of that—believing.
———
Recommended reading:
Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs by Ninian Smart
Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World's Beliefs by Ninian Smart
Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective by Peter L. Berger
The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion by Peter L. Berger
The Social Construction of Reality by Peter L. Berger
Alternative Sociologies of Religion: Through Non-Western Eyes by James V. Spickard
Hope without Hope: Rojava and Revolutionary Commitment by Matt Broomfield
