We should then recognize that among these sequences there are no two
altogether alike. But, if the principle of induction, as we have just
stated it, is true, there will be those almost alike and that can be
classed alongside one another. In other words, it is possible to make a
classification of sequences.
It is to the possibility and the legitimacy of such a classification
that determinism, in the end, reduces. This is all that the preceding
analysis leaves of it. Perhaps under this modest form it will seem less
appalling to the moralist.
It will doubtless be said that this is to come back by a detour to M.
LeRoy's conclusion which a moment ago we seemed to reject: we are
determinists voluntarily. And in fact all classification supposes the
active intervention of the classifier. I agree that this may be
maintained, but it seems to me that this detour will not have been
useless and will have contributed to enlighten us a little.
6. _Objectivity of Science_
I arrive at the question set by the title of this article: What is the
objective value of science? And first what should we understand by
objectivity?
What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that
this world is common to us with other thinking beings. Through the
communications that we have with other men, we receive from them
ready-made reasonings; we know that these reasonings do not come from us
and at the same time we recognize in them the work of reasonable beings
like ourselves. And as these reasonings appear to fit the world of our
sensations, we think we may infer that these reasonable beings have seen
the same thing as we; thus it is we know we have not been dreaming.
Such, therefore, is the first condition of objectivity; what is
objective must be common to many minds and consequently transmissible
from one to the other, and as this transmission can only come about by
that 'discourse' which inspires so much distrust in M. LeRoy, we are
even forced to conclude: no discourse, no objectivity.
The sensations of others will be for us a world eternally closed. We
have no means of verifying that the sensation I call red is the same as
that which my neighbor calls red.
Suppose that a cherry and a red poppy produce on me the sensation _A_
and on him the sensation _B_ and that, on the contrary, a leaf produces
on me the sensation _B_ and on him the sensation _A_. It is clear we
shall never know anything about it; since I shall call red the sensation
_A_ and green the sensation _B_, while he will call the first green and
the second red. In compensation, what we shall be able to ascertain is
that, for him as for me, the cherry and the red poppy produce the _same_
sensation, since he gives the same name to the sensations he feels and I
do the same.
Sensations are therefore intransmissible, or rather all that is pure
quality in them is intransmissible and forever impenetrable. But it is
not the same with relations between these sensations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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