Deconstructing Human Experiences
In our previous posts, we’ve examined the disparity between scientific understanding and phenomenological experience. We’ve seen how scientific perspectives often categorize core human experiences — such as free will, morality, and meaning — as illusions. This post will delve deeper into this conflict, highlighting the pervasive contradictions between human experience and scientific rationality.
Science often relegates human experiences to the realm of illusions. Concepts like God, objective morality, and free will are viewed as mere constructs rather than realities. The idea that life has inherent meaning is considered absurd. Our conscience, which we trust to guide our moral decisions, is seen as deceptive and unreliable. Human intelligence is perceived as fundamentally flawed and limited, while human dignity is often dismissed as speciesism or a baseless sense of superiority.
The process of deconstruction reveals that many deeply held human experiences are scientifically invalidated, portraying them as convincing but ultimately misleading constructs of human nature. If one intelligent being were to deceive another in this way, we would call it deception or brainwashing. However, within the naturalistic worldview, these are reduced to mere illusions or delusions, a comprehensive and all-encompassing critique of human existence. Evolution, which has created these constructs, can be seen as the ultimate defendant in this scenario.
Absurdity beyond just the meaning of life
Albert Camus highlighted the absurdity of humans desperately seeking meaning in a universe devoid of it. This existential dilemma traps humans in an absurd and unsolvable situation not of their own making. However, this absurdity extends beyond the quest for life’s meaning. It permeates all human experiences and perceptions of reality, such as conscience, free will, human dignity, and values. Despite knowing these constructs might not be true, we cannot escape them.
The growing divide
There is an unresolvable contradiction unfolding between human experience and scientific understanding. Both are compelling truths: one rooted in subjective experience and the other in intellectual and rational reasoning. This duality creates cognitive dissonance, pressuring individuals to reconcile these conflicting realities. However without having a solution to this problem we are forced to temporarily navigate between these parallel interpretations, living our daily lives guided by our internal experiences while intellectually acknowledging the opposing rational arguments.
The gap between everyday human experience and scientific interpretation is becoming increasingly apparent. This growing divide raises critical questions: Why does this discrepancy exist? How did we get here? Where is this leading us? Is our perception of reality a complete self-deception, or does the limitation lie within the scope of scientific reasoning, which fails to explain realities those human experience is able to perceive?