AIME continuing the dialogue between Ricoeur and Changeux

I think that the dialogue between Changeux and Ricoeur

Changeux, J. P., & Ricoeur, P. (2000). What makes us think. Trans. MB DeBevoise. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

is very interesting and illuminating. Changeux was at the time in his 60s and Ricoeur in his eighties and to my understanding they are not just two people that are arguing (politely) on some important issues. It seems to me that they are also arguing on the significance of their lives, on what they have heartily promoted through their lives.

Ricoeur talks in this book about the great difficulty to devise another discourse, one that is neither the discourse of the phenomenology nor the discourse of scientists but that somehow can make clearer the connection between the other two discourses(for example in page 69).
In my opinion one way to see the contribution of AIME and the Modes of Existence Book is as a way to devise such a different kind of discourse.  Even if it turns out that the effort does not deliver it still feels like the right way to go, a way that allows various sciences and experiences in life to communicate, a way that speaks at the same time about a variety of changes that need to be coordinated and that does not leave the scientific observer and her context, the scientific signs, the fragility and bizarness of human communication outside the account of "objective" knowledge.



The book of Ricoeur and Changeux  indicates also the difficulty for this effort to be accepted by scientists. To my understanding Changeux is not searching for any such "new discourse". He constantly returns to an intuition he feels basic: "We finally have this stable point that Archimedes hoped for, and it is science. We are never going to abandon this security". The bifurcational view of reality is THE point on which security rests for him: the beautiful picture of molecules and their structures that science is and is going to be making clearer and clearer.

Why would he want to abandon this "Paradise" and question what he (and perhaps his generation) has fought for (and perhaps reevaluating what he fought against)? Why would he reevaluate the big effort of science, putting it intra pares with so many other modes? To me it is not just an issue of epistemology. It is also an issue of subjectivity, of "in what ways are people trained in the hard sciences willing to accept a criticism of the way they run their selves".

Moreover it seems to me that one should not forget the past of science itself as a maiden of Power.  It is not just economy who is interested with issues of "being quits" as told in the MOE book. Science too is very much concerened with "being quits" but in a different way: "externalities" should be identical with "weakness and ineffectiveness" and "internalities" with "strength and effectiveness". Science is the maiden of Power: because it leaves nothing significant outside and nothing insignificnat inside, Science gives to those who posess it the means to win (by entrance to the unguarded "gates" the others cannot see) and the means to security (because there is no unguarded "gate" for the owners of Science). Can this basic insecurity been overcome? (Especially in a world of increased competitiveness, when there is no Providence but one has only ones own devises?)

The bifurcation view is youthful (eternally young) and strong (unalterable), a truly joyful science!

Finally this dialogue between Ricouer and Changeux brings in my mind the "inner wilderness" of the Modern territory and what seems to me an overhasty integration in MOE: "Let us, all of us calculate."

The Moderns themselves seem split into different traditions (Ricour speaks about the Christian, the Enlightenment and the Romantic ones  and Changeux immediately backlashes to insist on the contrast between the Christian and the Enlightenment traditions). And there is further  the Anglosaxonic pragmatism as a basis in life and different strands of capitalism. And this calculation has also to take place with the "new citizents"/carriers of different traditions (Budhist, Indhuist, Shia and Sunni Muslim). Not to mention Jewish and Orthoodox Christian traditions.

Have the Europeans succeded in EU in bringing forth these calculations that they can now scale them up through the Globe? Why is it so obvious that we should pass directly to a broad collective facing Gaia? 

How is confidence and trust going to be built to the Others, relative to this big calculation exercise (where the participants will be carrying vastly different calculation facilities)?

 Is the way European elites treat various other parts of the populations of their own countries and the EU (the non-enlightened ones, the less "healthy-minded", the "uneducatable") any sign that the discussion with the Others will be one of "mutual acceptance"? 

But I shouldn't talk like this. Because it is ungrateful to this big effort that AIME is.