Reddit mentions of The View From Nowhere

OP, nobody should try to change your view because you're right. You're identifying a practice by the media that some media observers/experts have for years been calling "The View from Nowhere" (a story takes no position and provides no context but instead it just says "one the one hand, this person said this, and on the other hand this person said this"). It's basically reporting like a stenographer.

This idea reveals the problem, unrecognized by many people, with our longtime insistence on having "objective" media.

Here's an explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_from_nowhere

Here's the book where the concept originated: https://www.amazon.com/View-Nowhere-Thomas-Nagel/dp/0195056442

There are two ways of answering this question, and most arguments on this issue tend to be arguments between these two responses. The kind of problem that I'm talking about is the subject of Thomas Nagel's book The View From Nowhere, which I highly recommend. I'm going to quote the first paragraph now:

>This book is about a single problem: how to combine the perspective of a particular person inside the world with an objective view of that same world, the person and his viewpoint included. It is a problem that faces every creature with the impulse and the capacity to transcend its particular point of view and to conceive of the world as a whole.

The question of the (un)importance or (in)significance of humans within the universe stems from our feeling of wonder when presented with unfathomably huge things. It frequently invoked when someone wants to convey a message about the fragility or insignificance of humanity or the earth - Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech is a famous example. This feeling is often called the sublime, although that word has a lot of philosophical baggage. The problem emerges when we contrast our felt importance with our (relative) physical minuteness. Truly understanding our physical insignificance on astronomical scales, it is often said, would cause some sort of psychological breakdown or enlightenment experience.

The two ways of responding to this question tend to be associated with the two views that Nagel was talking about. Which one wins out depends on the individual thinker's philosophical style. Proponents of the "perspective of a particular person" tend to say that humans are important because, well, humans are important. (Another way of putting it is "I am important, because I am important") This is a tautology - but this does not mean that it is wrong, as we shall see. Proponents of the "view from nowhere" (the "objective view") tend to come up with arguments similar to the one you mentioned, based on analyses of physical size or other measurable quantities (like gravitational influence).

These two responses stem from the nature of the word "important". When we say that something is important, we mean that it influences some implied phenomenon to a large extent. Such a phenomenon could be the political stability of a country, or the success of a financial venture, or the answer to a question. For instance, the statement "bees are important" is true when talking about food supplies or biodiversity, but false when talking about what makes for an enjoyable film.

The question arises, then, what is the meaning of "important" when used in a general sense? The two responses I spoke of earlier differ in their answer to this question. For proponents of the perspective of the particular person, something is important in general if its existence and/or state has a large role in determining the state of one's life. (A common variant on this view treats the determining factor as perspectives in general, which is taken to mean humanity or "life"). Obviously - tautologically, in fact - humanity is important on these terms. For proponents of the "view from nowhere", however, what makes something important in general is the magnitude of its influence on existence in general - that is, its role in determining the state of the universe. Gravitational relations (for example) are very important here, as are other fundamental forces or phenomena that affect them to a large extent. However, what is not important here is the existence of a few monkeys on an insignificant rock orbiting an unremarkable star in an unremarkable galaxy.

(There is, of course, a third answer - to take the "view from nowhere", but to treat humanity as fundamental in determining the nature of the universe as a whole. This response is common in religious thought, but is also found in some secular formulations of the anthropic principle. Humanity's influence here is teleological - the universe is understood to be as it is in order to make humanity possible. Thus, if humanity did not exist, neither would the universe.)