Subjectivity

11.  A common intentionality makes us comprehensible one to the other, but what does it mean to say "a common intentionality?"  Here one wants to argue for the primacy, and the inscrutability, of the individual being.  To say that "I feel hunger" need not necessarily mean that you feel hunger in exactly the same way or even approximately the same way.   The "feeling," as such, may manifest itself differently for me and for you.  There is no way to wholly resolve this inscrutability because I do not feel your hunger, and you do not feel my hunger, and we are each subject to our own intentionality, subject to the subjectivity that it brings into being, even though, objectively, we each might produce a common description of "hunger," one that could compared for similarity -- even though, objectively, a scientist might map our brain activity and determine that my brain lights up in ways deeply similar to the way your brain lights up under her device.  (At this juncture, one can imagine branching off into a discussion of self-interest and its pursuit -- you acting to free yourself from your subjectivity brought into being by your intentionality, while I likewise act to free myself from my subjectivity brought into being by my intentionality, each inscrutable to the other, each without regard for the other, each in a Hobbesian or Darwinian competition with the other, and all that it implies.)  I would continue to argue for the primacy of the individual, but we are not wholly inscrutable each to the other.  Insofar as our instrumental acts are differentiated between those that do (and all those that do not) work to satisfy a given intentionality, they also serve as signifier to that intentionality.  I do not know what an ameoba or a bat or another like me feels when hungry, but I do recognize each in the act of eating.  I do recognize the signifier to a signified intentionality.   Such, I would argue, is not contingent upon language -- e.g. having a word for "hungry" so that we might say "the bat is hungry."  Conversely, I would argue that language is contingent upon the instrumental differentiations brought into being by intentionality.  My dog recognizes me in the act of eating.  Whether he has sufficient cognitive power to think, "Look! He is hungry!  He is eating!" in whatever inscrutable ways dogs might think, I do not know, but he clearly has sufficient cognitive power to think "Look! He is eating!" and respond by begging, an act instrumental to his own intentionality, his own perpetual hunger.  I do not share his subjectivity, but I fully comprehend his desire to eat.  (At this juncture, one can imagine branching off into a discussion of self-interest and our recognition, our comprehension of a corresponding self-interest in others -- the beggars hand to mouth, a gesture recognizable across the widest cultural divide -- and the degree to which comprehension implies a corresponding apprehension or compassion.)