XI.21 Elements of a Science of the Life-World

1. XI.21 Elements of a Science of the Life-World Philosophy 157 G. J. Mattey ©2002

2. Investigating the Life-World • The pre-given world is the starting point for all science • To investigate the objectivity of science, we must investigate the life-world • We must also investigate it as the center of our non-scientific lives • But this cannot be done “objectively”

3. Science in General • Science in general includes “objective” science • It investigates the life-world and the way in which “objective” science is built on it • This has never been done before • It is also “objective,” though in a different way from the way of the “objective” sciences

4. Objective Science and the Life-World • Science begins in and operates within the “life-world” common to all • The basic activities of science, observing, measuring, etc. take place in the life-world • The Greeks made the highest end of science the attainment of “objective truth” • Objective science is “the bold guiding idea of the modern period” • How is objective science related to the life-world?

5. Knowledge in the Life-World • We have “occasional” knowledge which is useful for our ordinary practices • This involves “good” verification procedures such as excluding illusion and using induction • These are not to be understood in terms of “objective” psychology • They are not “immediate sense data” • They are subject-relative

6. Scientific Knowledge • How can the subject-relative be used to ground the “objective?” • The theories of science are directed at “truth in itself” • There seems to be an essential conflict between the subject-relative and the truth in itself • Truth in itself is supposed to explain the subjective, but the subjective is supposed to explain it: a paradox

7. Solving the Problem • This cannot be solved through argumentation in the manner of Kant, Hegel, Aristotle, Aquinas • We need to reflect our our practices, without prejudice • This will involve suspending judgment (epoché, ) in the truth or falsity of the “objective sciences”

8. Science as a Vocation • The activities of the scientist are compared with those of the artist or soldier • The present investigation is also a vocation • This is not an intellectual game, as the “modern irrationalistic philosophers” would maintain • It may lead to a momentous intellectual transformation, like a religious conversion

9. The Life-World • There is a “horizon” of possible experience of things: stones, plants, people, products • There is cross-cultural disagreement about much of this • But there are invariants: “spatial shape, motion, sense-quality,” on which “objective” science rests • The life-world has general structure that is not relative

10. The Structure of the Life-World • There is a universal a priori of the life-world which is distinct from that of the “objective” science • Even pure logic depends on the universal, pre-logical a priori • The task here is to find “a pure theory of essence of the life-world”

11. The Most General Structures • There are things distributed in the world-form of space and time • Things are given within a world-horizon • This difference suggests two ways of being conscious of the life-world

12. Two Modes of Consciousness • The first is living toward the objects that are given, and this includes our goals • The second looks toward the manner in which these objects are given • Each lies within the world-horizon • The second is not noticed initially, but it is what makes us conscious of a universal horizon

13. The Task Ahead • The subject manner of givenness brings about coherent consciousness • We investigate how this takes place • We also investigate how it can be the basis of objectivity • It is an historical investigation, but it is not undertaken “objectively”