A reader writes: In your Notes on Descartes, Annalinde Matichei says:

there is no possible step beyond the cogito ergo sum in the absence of the traditional understanding of Pure Intellect. Logically and legitimately, empirical thought stops right there and can go no further.

My question is, is Miss Matichei seriously suggesting that the entire empirical (ie scientific) method should be discarded? is she unaware of the huge scientific discoveries that have transformed the world we live in that are all the results of this method? Annalinde Matichei replies: I was not and am not suggesting that the empirical method should be discarded. I am fully aware that this method has yielded excellent results in the technical sphere. What I was saying was that the attempt to regard empiricism as First Philosophy (which is what Descartes did and the world following him continues to do) is fundamentally dishonest. And it is. To say - there is clearly before us a self-consistent system (the physical world) and by restricting us to the consideration of that system from within, we can build predictive models that allow us to achieve technical results is wholly legitimate and proper. To attempt to extrapolate beyond this and claim some "ontological" value for this predictive/technical model is illegitimate and has been based from the beginning on unclear thinking at best and outright intellectual fraud (very much of the time) at worst. Should you discard the "scientific method"? No. Should you discard the "scientific world-view"? Absolutely. It is the only valid intellectual course to take. That the modern West has too big an emotional investment in the "scientific world-view" to discard it, I fully understand. In that case it is stuck with a flawed and dishonest pseudo-mythic view of the world. And ideas do have consequences. A false and crude "First Philosophy" leads to a false and crude culture. And that is precisely what we see, degenerating by the day.