Against subjectivism

[M Winther]

Science has proved that what we perceive has objective grounds. The
conclusion is that there is no radical alterity of inner and outer
worlds. They are not disparate realities. Cartesius argued that it is
the mind that we know, but not the external world (cogito ergo sum).
This is the Cartesian heritage that has caused the derailment of Western
philosophy into subjectivism.

These old subjectivistic philosophers, Descartes, Hume, and Kant, erred
in postulating that the hidden natures of objects, i.e. their unknown
capacity to produce sensible effect, must be perceptible in themselves.
Since they believed that all knowledge is limited to appearances, they
made the conclusion that the true properties of objects are, per
definition, unknowable. Thus, they concluded that perceived regularities
of nature must have a subjective origin. Kant says:

"Natural science will never reveal to us the internal constitution of
things, which though not appearance, yet can serve as the ultimate
ground of explaining appearance." (Prolegomena, sect.57)

Science has refuted this belief. Through experiment, we may acquire
knowledge that transcends experience. Although we cannot perceive the
molecules or atoms that vibrate in a heated object, we may prove their
existence experimentally and theoretically. Thus, science has
established the causal ground for the perception of heat. Scientific
developments, since Kant, has been overwhelming. Today we have acquired
vast knowledge of matter, which transcends our everyday senses. So we
know today that perceived regularities of nature have an objective
origin, which necessitates some form of realist epistemology.

Mats Winther
http://two-paths.com

Recommended reading:

'The Waning of the Light: The Eclipse of Philosophy'.
Richard H. Schlagel
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20131940?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ne...@netfront.net ---

[M Winther]

(Continued...)

Science is not dependent upon the perceptible. Much of the things
central to science cannot be experienced as such, e.g., quantum
phenomena, superstrings, 4-dimensional space-time, warped space,
molecular motion, etc.

So we know today that Kant was wrong in concluding that science depends
on categories of experience. He believed that science was only about
that which can be experienced. But science has gone way beyond that. The

hidden natures of objects, i.e. their unknown capacity to produce

sensible effect, needn't be perceptible in themselves. Instead, such
factors are understood mathematically. Thus, we may find out the laws of
matter, and we may verify these laws. Today, we know the principles of
the invisible quantum world much better than we understand our everyday
world, and decidedly better than we understand ourselves.

We have certain knowledge about hidden imperceptible nature to the
extent that we can make marvelous and perfect predictions about the
outcome of experiments. Evidently, we have precise knowledge about the
black box. It never occurred to Kant that physical things conform to
laws of their own. The reason is that Kant had postulated that any
knowledge transcending experience was unthinkable. Thus, we cannot know
anything about the black box. Accordingly, he concludes that causal
effect follows not from the inner nature of things but from the nature
of mind. Kant says in the Prolegomena:

"Sect. 29... [If] the sun shines long enough upon a body, it grows warm.
Here there is indeed as yet no necessity of connection, or concept of
cause. But I proceed and say, that if this proposition, which is merely
a subjective connection of perceptions, is to be a judgment of
experience, it must be considered as necessary and universally valid.
Such a proposition would be, II the sun is by its light the cause of
heat." The empirical rule is now considered as a law, and as valid not
merely of appearances but valid of them for the purposes of a possible
experience which requires universal and therefore necessarily valid
rules. I therefore easily comprehend the concept of cause, as a concept
necessarily belonging to the mere form of experience, and its
possibility as a synthetical union of perceptions in consciousness
generally; but I do not at all comprehend the possibility of a thing
generally as a cause, because the concept of cause denotes a condition
not at all belonging to things, but to experience. It is nothing in fact
but an objectively valid cognition of appearances and of their
succession, so far as the antecedent can be conjoined with the
consequent according to the rule of hypothetical judgments.

Sect. 30. Hence if the pure concepts of the understanding do not refer
to objects of experience but to things in themselves (noumena), they
have no signification whatever. They serve, as it were, only to decipher
appearances, that we may be able to read them as experience. The
principles which arise from their reference to the sensible world, only
serve our understanding for empirical use. Beyond this they are
arbitrary combinations, without objective reality, and we can neither
know their possibility a priori, nor verify their reference to objects,
let alone make it intelligible by any example; because examples can only
be borrowed from some possible experience, consequently the objects of
these concepts can be found nowhere but in a possible experience."
(Kant, Prolegomena, sect.29-30)

But today we know that the cause of heat really belongs to the stone,
because electromagnetic radiation gives rise to atomic kinetic motion.
Kant, however, since he thinks it is a black box whose content cannot be
known, calls it the 'noumenon' or 'thing-in-itself'. This has no
signification, he argues, because it cannot be made intelligible.
Instead he concludes that it is all in the mind's eye, in the
experiencing subject. In fact, science has made intelligible the hotness
of the stone. We understand it much better than we understand a little
ant in an anthill.

So Kant's philosophical card house builds on unfounded premises,
postulates which have been refuted. Upon such faulty premises he has
constructed his theory. But if the premises are false, the whole theory
is faulty, and thus it is quite useless. It is time that philosophers
realize this. It is no use beating this dead horse anymore!

Mats Winther
http://two-paths.com

[Marquard Dirk Pienaar]

Didn't Kant mean that we can only perceive the form of things,
as phenomenal, because noumenon is inside forms. Form in
this sense can be understood literally, for example the form
of a table. Without scientifically studying the table, it is
not possible to know what the table was made of etc.

[M Winther]

But science studies nature independently of the phenomenal categories.
They can even predict beforehand, using merely mathematics, what "new"
kind of particles will appear in a particle accelerator.

Mats