No getting around experience …

… Bringing Mind to Matter — The New Atlantis. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The View from Nowhere argues not only that the subjective view of our perception cannot be reduced to the objective view of the universe, but more importantly that, contrary to what so much modern scientific thought attempts to show, the objective view cannot replace or do away with the subjective view. The fact that there is no “me” or “here” or “now” in the scientific perspective does not show that these things are unreal, but rather that physical science is, and may always remain, incomplete. Likewise, though physics aims to reduce and marginalize so-called “secondary” qualities, like color and brightness, to what it (presumptuously) calls “primary” qualities, like light wavelength and amplitude, this does not prove that colors are less real than electromagnetic waves; it only shows that purely objective science has limitations. Since secondary qualities are the very stuff of consciousness, experience will always remain out of science’s total grasp. Objective science, in short, cannot capture what it is like to be a subject who inescapably experiences the world from a certain viewpoint.