Here’s another quote:Objectivism refuses to take this sort of reflexive step, and thereby consigns itself not merely to ignorance and the unexamined 

life, but to a form of false consciousness. As Merleau-Ponty states in the Preface to his

Phenomenology of Perception: “The whole universe of science is built upon the world as

directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and

arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening

the basic experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression” (1962,

p. viii).  This all sounds kind of reasonable. Yes, the objectivist mechaniscists materialist guys have to explain somehow what rationale they have for being so utterly optimistic about the scientific method and its ‘uncritical’ positing of basic objects (building blocks) that make up ‘reality’. In physics, nobody is certain anymore that these blocks exist (even if they were to be quarks or snares Higgs-ies instead of the familiar very-small-balls-of-stuff we grew up with in highschool). In quantummechanics, things *might* ‘be’ ‘there’ - probably-, but: only for a whee instant (we think). Not the kind of firm ground you whish to stand on. But it is nonsense to state that

The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced 

 

This would give way to much credit to the human scientist himself (the person) in favor of all the structure and organisation he has gathered around him (please read her instead of the hims everywhere). The machine that people have built in order to detect Higgs-particles is not just some linear extension of the human mind. For one thing, the machine is an extension of *many* human minds. So this would already mean that this machine is aggregating over many ‘direct experiences’, probably washing out most of the experiential noise. What is left is, for lack of better terms, perhaps best called “objectivity”. And moreover, even if the whole universe is built upon the world as directly experienced, who ever said that we didn’t come over that exactly by doing Western science? Why do we have to go back? MP says:   

f we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and

arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening

the basic experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression”

 

But that doesn’ mean that in order to understand, say, Vulcano’s, we have to go back to our basic experience of Vulcano’s? And even in order to understand “experience” or “cognition”, we do not have to ‘reawaken the basic experience of the world’? Why would we? As an analogy, consider that, very probably, most of our social and normative behaviors (say: stopping for a red traffic light) is *ultimately* grounded in a biological need of the cave-man, involving heavy amounts of sex, aggression, fear and running around in bush-fashion. Does that mean that in order to negotiate a heavy traffic situation on a Monday morning we have to go back into our deep Neanderthaler-selves and find that inner strength that killed so many Bisons? I would think not. I think that the fact that many people actually DO in some way let the CroMagnon in themselves spring out on Monday mornings is the exact reason that so many people get killed in traffic everyday. We DO NOT WANT to do that. In short: to say that X has roots in Y does not mean that in order for X to work, or even in order to understand X, you need to “go back to Y”. There were reasons why Y is no longer Y, reasons why it evolved into X. There were reasons for the evolution of Western science over direct experience. Now PERHAPS there is reason to go back to direct experience again, but the mere fact that all of science is rooted in it, does not provide any reason whatsoever we should go back into it. Unless we are also willing to accept the logical consequence that all people need to go back into the wombs that produced them - immediately. 

 

 

 

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