01-11-2006 - Traces, n.10
Experience

Either the Mechanism
or the Interpretation
The birth of the modern concept of scientific experience from Galileo to Kant to its reduction to pure subjective “proof” without judgment. The contribution of a philosopher struggling against a reduced version of reason

by Costantino Esposito

When Galilei, in a famous letter of 1613 to Benedetto Castelli, identified as essential moments of the scientific method, on the one hand, “perceived experiences” and, on the other, the “necessary demonstrations,” he inaugurated the modern history of the concept of experience. In fact, in the Galilean definition we find first of all the identification of experience with the perception of the senses: on the immediate level we experience the world through our sense organs–we touch it, we see it, we hear it, etc.–of value as the main door through which reality strikes us and enters into our consciousness. But, secondly, this initial approach needs to be integrated and, in the end, reduced to a logical deduction, to a judgment that leaves aside the “qualitative” aspects of the world (that is, those that depend on the subjective conditions of those who perceive with the senses) and formalized according to necessary mathematical relationships, those concerning the purely “quantitative” aspects of reality. Only in this way can the perceived experiences be used in an “experimental” method, like that of Galilei and this method, in contrast to what one would think, is not based on the fact that we have direct and concrete experience of nature but, rather, on the fact that nature is understood as a rigorous and abstract construct of mechanical relationships.

Action/reaction
From this moment on, the destiny of the word “experience” will be definitively marked–in a restrictive way–for all centuries to come: experiencing something will be understood as a mechanism of action/reaction between impulses that come to us from reality and the response of our sense organs, an ultimately subjective relationship, precisely because each person “perceives” the world around him partially, in an individualistic and conditioned way. Instead, in order for experience to become “objective,” it must transform itself into a judgment of measurement that is valid and reproducible for everyone, and this is only assured by its mathematical terms. In short, the subject in flesh and blood, the subject of senses, no longer has “in itself” an “objective” criterion of judgment; the objective judgment of reality no longer requires a subject or an individual “I” in order to function, but only a general (that is, abstract) procedure.

A priori knowledge
With Kant we arrive at the canonical version of this interpretative tendency: in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), the term “experience” comes to mean the same thing as “knowledge,” but–unlike Galilei, for whom mathematics corresponded to the very structure of reality–knowing for Kant no longer means entering into a relationship with “reality” and with the “being” of things (that which always remains an unknown for us), but rather determining the phenomena of nature through the categories of our mind, and therefore “constructing a priori” the objects we know through sensation and intellect. The world of experience is no longer simply based on what is given us, but–exactly the opposite–it is our mind itself that conditions a priori that which one can experience and that which is irremediably closed to experience. But if experience is identified exclusively with scientific knowledge, this means that those things that do not fit into these a priori categories–the meaning of reality, the search for the ultimate truth of things, the striving for the good, or the phenomenon of love–can never be known, that is, encountered and comprehended for what they are, but only “desired” by our subjective sentiment or “commanded” as moral duty by our will.

Only reactivity
Thus, for example, I can have experience (that is, scientific measurement) of the laws of causality but, strictly speaking, I can never have a real and true “experience” of my mother’s love for me, because this second case is not measurable a priori on the basis of my mental schemata; it is only something that belongs to the sphere of affections and sentiments. In the transition from the modern to the post-modern, and with the renewed desire to give space to this subjective sphere, granting it also the dignity of a real and true “experience,” we return once again to defining it as merely “feeling” something, explainable on the basis of biological and emotive reactivity, and even reach the point of explaining the states of consciousness and the acts of will–that is, the interior experience of the “I”–exclusively on the basis of neural connections in our brain, as proposed by neuroscience and contemporary cognitivistic theories.

“Hermeneutic” version
This explanation is accompanied by the other idea (apparently contradictory but, actually, entirely complementary) by which every experience of ours is always a product of the culture, language, and social context in which we live. We could call this the “hermeneutic” version of experience, in which the role of the human subject seems to be exalted, but actually turns out to be, once again, just a mental construct. Either mechanism or interpretation: it seems that the meaning of experience in our era boils down to this alternative, one that creates many more problems than it solves. How can we truly feel something as “our own” (have an experience of it) without comprehending the meaning it has for the “I” and for life? In fact, without judgment, there is no true experience, and the world would simply dissolve into a bundle of our impressions. Here is the fascinating mystery of human experience, that it may become “mine,” that is, the content of my consciousness, something that I can never reduce to myself, because it is given me; it is objective and reaches me, asking for me.