Abstract

This extension of the critique is intimately connected with the problems raised by Structure. Toward the end of that book it appeared that, since materialism is false, nature, considered as a system of physical objects connected causally, in some sense, exists only "for us." But it is immediately obvious that we use "for us" in an unfamiliar sense, when we say that. It is not being claimed that nature exists only for us in the sense in which, for instance, philosophers have said that secondary qualities exist only for us. The problem which Structure raised was precisely what new sense we could possibly give to "for us" and its correlative "in itself" so that we could make sense of the result of that earlier argument. Objectivism, as it is being attacked by Merleau-Ponty says that "for us" and "in itself" are only to be used in the familiar senses in which we say that events and objects exist in nature in themselves, independently of any human awareness and are, as such, described by true statements in science. This is an ontological thesis, for something is being asserted about what it means to exist. The objectivist maintains that the only sense in which anything may be said to exist is that of existing whether anyone is aware of that or not. True statements about existence in nature are said, by the objectivist, to be independent of any statements about the mental states of human beings. This dogma is extended to human beings when they are made the object of scientific study. The mental states of human beings, let alone their physical states, are truly described if the statements about them are true independently of statements about any other mental states of the same subject except those which are either causally or logically connected to the mental states under discussion. Similarly, statements about persons are true or false independently of statements about the observer's mental states. Persons and bodies are regarded as impersonal series of events, as "processus en troisième personne".