Emperors And Philosophy

We have discussed Roman Emperors in connection with fiction by Poul Anderson, SM Stirling and others. Julius Caesar had been made a dictator for life and had accepted the titles, "Imperator" and "Father of his Country," and referred to the republic as something that might be restored so why is he not counted as the first Emperor? He is the first of Suetonius' "twelve Caesars." Is it just because his position was not supposed to be hereditary? - which ironically it became precisely because of his assassination.

Fiction dramatizes the philosophical mind-body question although usually we do not notice this because usually we do not philosophize. In Poul Anderson's "The Problem of Pain," the first person narrator informs us that the planet Lucifer has long days - an objective fact - and also that he and his colleague had toiled, sweated, itched, stunk and become grimy and weary through one of those days - a subjective experience.

One objective condition, e.g., the application of heat to a liquid, causes another objective condition, the boiling of the liquid into steam. We observe both conditions. Another objective condition, a neural interaction, causes a subjective event, a sensation. In this case, we can observe the objective condition but not the subjective event. We know of the subjective event because we experience sensations and detect them in others. Someone winces when pricked with a pin. But we do not observe his sensation because that is subjective, not objective. 

Philosophers enquire about the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity, two aspects of reality.