Kant's Refutation of Idealism [and Realism?]
Immortalist
a refutation of Bishop George Berkeley’s version of idealism) suggests that,
to “disprove” idealism, all one has to do is kick something (or someone). As
if to say, “oh, so you don’t believe in matter; then this shouldn’t hurt a
bit! But, herein lies the problem. The only evidence sited for matter is
“experience.”
Remember when Hume referred to both "inward and outward sentiment?" He meant
we have the experience of stuff going on inside of us and the experience of
stuff going of outside of us. Both are experiences! Recall Kant's synthetic
a priori knowledge--the 12 categories including space and time, which filter
the Noumena into Phenomena. It is very similar here. In both cases there is
"something" outside that is then put into the minds structure and turned
into an experience. In both cases you can say that "you are not reading this
text" and be perfectly accurate! After Kant wrote his main book explaining
how the mind constructs our experience of the phenomenal realm, philosophers
began wondering what justification is there for the noumena? The Idealists
answer is, there can be no justification from experience.
http://commhum.mccneb.edu/dweber/101%20INTRO/Workbook/Chpt-3/3-2%20Idealism.htm
Refutation of Idealism - Kant argues that temporal judgments about one’s own
states require reference to objects which endure in a way that mental
representations themselves do not, and therefore that consciousness of
oneself also implies consciousness of objects external to oneself [B 275–6]
also [B xxxix–xli].
http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/DB047SECT7
When the Critique of Pure Reason was first published Kant was horrified when
some critics took him to be proposing a form of idealism not unlike, for
example, Berkeley's notorious immaterialism. On the face of it, it wouldn't
be utterly silly, given the arguments of the Aesthetic and Analytic, to
suppose that Kant was claiming that we construct the 'real world' in a way
determined by the nature of our sensory and intellectual apparatus, and that
therefore there was simply no such thing as the 'real world'. However Kant
insists that this is not what he is arguing, and in the second edition he
adds a short section, ‘The Refutation of Idealism’, where he argues against
what he calls material idealism and distinguishes it from transcendental
idealism. We're going to concentrate on how effective this refutation of
material idealism is.
Kant's "Refutation of Empirical Idealism" has an anti-Cartesian conclusion:
"inner experience in general is only possible through outer experience in
general" (B 278). Due to wide-spread preoccupation with Cartesian
skepticism, and to the anti-naturalism of early analytic philosophy
(reflected in its basic division between "conceptual" and "empirical"
issues), most of Kant's recent anglophone commentators have sought a purely
conceptual, "analytic" argument in Kant's Refutation of Idealism--and then
criticized Kant when no such plausible argument can be reconstructed from
his text. They charge that Kant's transcendental arguments must argue by
elimination, though they fail to eliminate the possibility of Descartes'
evil deceiver, or alternative forms of cognition, or the possibility that
the mere (individually subjective) appearances of things would suffice for
the possibility of self-consciousness.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~j018/ktpr-bl.htm
----------------------------
Realism in the Refutation of Idealism
Andrew Brook
Summary
In the Refutation of Idealism and in a long footnote on the same subject
added to the second-edition Preface, Kant seems to say things that point,
prima facie, strongly in the direction of realism. Because any such view
would seem to be completely incompatible with the doctrine of the
unknowability of things as they are and some of his other views, few
commentators have been willing to take them at face value. In this paper, we
examine these indications of realism, and then propose a way to render them
compatible with things in themselves being unknowable. The key move is to
distinguish between being aware of something and having knowledge of it.
Kant made this distinction a centrepiece of his treatment of awareness of
self. Did it also enter his thinking about awareness of objects?
Kant's dominant view of the sensible foundation of knowledge is that we are
immediately aware of nothing but our own representations. However, as Paul
Guyer has so richly documented, a streak of direct realism can also be found
in his work from time to time, a streak that would seem to be in
considerable tension with the official view. In the first Critique, this
streak of realism shows up most clearly in the Refutation of Idealism: he
tells us at one point that we must have "an immediate awareness of the
existence of other things outside me" (B276), of "an external thing distinct
from all my representations" (Bxli), being careful in these statements to
include both the empirical sense of externality, being located in space
(`outside me', `external thing') and the transcendental sense (`other
things', i.e. things other than myself, which are `distinct from all my
representations').
In the first Critique the Refutation of Idealism is given in two parts. In
addition to the section so named, it is taken up in a long footnote appended
to the new Preface. There Kant tells us that he was not happy with some of
the details of the official argument and asks that certain passages in the
footnote be substituted. I will treat the original argument and the long
supplementary footnote together.
The central argument of the Refutation runs as follows.(1)
First, "I am aware of my own existence as determined in time" (B275). What
he means by "determined in time" is unclear in the Refutation, but gets
clarified in the footnote. He means;
the application of the apparatus of location
in time to myself in any way whatsoever:
recognizing earlier and later stages of myself and
combining them, comparing the time of events in
me to the time of other events, locating
myself in time, and so on.
Secondly, I do not determine myself in time on the basis of anything
represented to me about myself. When I am aware of myself as subject of
experience, determinations of time are not represented at all. This form of
self-awareness is
a merely intellectual representation of the spontaneity of the thinking
subject. This `I' has not, therefore the least predicate of intuition, which
as permanent, might serve as correlate for the determination of time in
inner sense -- in the manner in which, for instance, impenetrability serves
in our empirical intuition of matter [B278].
Thus, if I am going to determine my own existence in time, I could only do
it via the contents of inner sense. In any case, my temporal apparatus can
be applied at all only to intuitions, only to something that has a manifold,
a multiplicity of items (Bxl). For me to be able to apply temporal
predicates to myself, therefore, I must do so via applying it to intuitions.
For this, however, not just any old intuitions will do; mere multiplicity is
not enough.
To apply temporal predicates, we must also be able to identify
change. To identify change, however, we must be able to
identify something as persisting through the change --
we must be able to identify something permanent.
For this, awareness of the contents of inner sense
can serve no better than awareness of self as subject.
Moreover, and this is a third and key move, by themselves and cut off from
things other than ourselves (Bxxxix fn.), neither representations nor any
contents of a representation could do any better at representing permanence.
... the representation of [the permanent] may be very transitory and
variable like all our other representations, not excepting those of matter,
it yet refers to something permanent. The latter must therefore be an
external thing distinct from all my representations ... [Bxli; my emphasis].
Our representations are constantly changing; indeed, they cease altogether
for a number of hours each night.
Therefore, the representation of permanence cannot
consist in anything permanent in representations.
Instead, from the contents of various representations
we must somehow extract something that we can
treat as a representation of a persisting object.
If this object were merely a property of myself, however, it would have no
permanence either. Therefore, an object could be represented as permanent
only if it is "an external thing distinct from all my representations"
(Bxli);
I must be aware of at least some thing that
is neither a representation nor myself.
"In other words, the awareness of my existence
is at the same time an immediate awareness of
the existence of other things outside me" (B276).
At least some of the intentional objects of my representations must tell me
of the existence of real, independently-existing objects. QED. Kant is now
advocating some form of direct realism.(2)
http://www.carleton.ca/~abrook/REFUT-ID.htm
---------------------------------------------
Is there anything to the argument of the Refutation? It is hard to tell.
Even if we grant that objects of representations have no permanence, why are
they not able to represent permanence unless they represent something other
in the transcendental sense than oneself? Kant says nothing to help us.
Perhaps he is confusing objects of representation containing no permanence,
in the sense of not being permanent, with them not being able to represent
permanence. Whatever, for the argument of the Refutation, Kant must show
that representations cannot represent permanence by themselves. There are
other controversial premises, too, but here I do not intend to examine
Kant's argument. Instead, I want to focus on the realist conclusion. What
are its implications? Can it be squared with other things in the critical
philosophy, in particular the doctrine of the unknowability of things in
themselves?
For Kant did not give one inch on the unknowability of the noumenal in the
second edition. Nor, for that matter, does he ever say that he is abandoning
the idea that we are aware only of our own representations. So what are we
to make of the new realism? Can having immediate awareness of "an external
thing distinct from all my representations" be squared with the rest of the
critical philosophy?
To begin our search, notice first that the argument of the Refutation is by
no means unanticipated in the first edition, though many seem to believe the
opposite. Only the location, some details of the structure, and of course
the conclusion are new. When Kant turns to the Paralogisms as a whole in the
first edition, immediately after the discussion of the fourth Paralogism, he
says:
... the appearance to outer sense has something fixed or abiding which
supplies a substratum to its transitory determinations ..., whereas time,
which is the sole form of our inner intuition, has nothing abiding and
therefore yields knowledge only of ... change ..., not of any object that
can be thereby determined. For in what we entitle `soul' everything is in
continual flux and there is nothing abiding except ... the `I', which ...
has no content, and therefore no manifold ... [A381].
Kant's argument for the first Analogy, the Principle of Permanence of
Substance, is likewise similar in structure to the argument of the
Refutation. The same is true of the argument-structure of A108. Like the
Refutation, all these passages start from self-awareness, though the
Refutation starts from empirical self-awareness of myself as determined in
time, not transcendental awareness of myself as myself, a point Allison
makes.(3) Likewise, the fundamental idea in all these passages is that I
could appear to myself as I do only if my representations have a certain
character; in the case of the Refutation, "awareness of my existence is
bound up by way of identity (identisch verbunden) with the awareness of ...
something outside me" (Bxl).(4) Of course, the Refutation reaches a stronger
conclusion than the first-edition passages. It argues that representations
must represent objects external in the transcendental sense, i.e., object
genuinely other than myself, whereas the first-edition passages argue only
that objects must be located in space and time and tied together under the
Categories. Nevertheless, at least the argument-structure of the Refutation
is not a radical departure from the first edition.(5)
So what are the implications of the new doctrine? Kant's new doctrine can be
split into two: as well as the new notion that we are aware of objects other
than ourselves, there is a new concept of what a genuinely external object
is like. Unlike the discussion of the fourth Paralogism, Kant is now drawing
a deep distinction between representation of an object and at least some
objects; now at least some objects are quite distinct from our
representations of them. In the first edition, the distinction between `real
objects independent of our representations' and `intentional objects whose
existence depends on our representations' depended merely on our passivity
to the former and denseness of causal integration. Now it takes on some real
strength.
With this change seems to go a change in Kant's conception of matter. In the
first edition, Kant treated matter as a mere feature of appearances -- a
feature that consists of the objects of these appearances having extension,
impenetrability, cohesion, and motion (A358) -- and contrasted it with
things as they actually are (A268=B324).
Matter is with [the transcendental idealist], therefore, only a species of
representations (intuition), which are called external, not as standing in
relation to objects in themselves external, but because they relate
perceptions to the space in which all things are external to one another,
while yet the space itself is in us [A370]
What the `substrate' (A350) of matter might be like, what "inwardly belongs
to it" (A277=B333, a nice Leibnizian term), is hidden from us. All we can be
aware of are its effects on our representations. In the Refutation, this
doctrine of matter undergoes a transformation. Having argued that we must
have immediate awareness of something other than ourselves that is
permanent, Kant says in Note 2. that "... we have nothing permanent ... save
only matter" (B278, his emphasis). He then gives the earth and the sun as
his example -- we can see the sun move by comparing it to the earth's
permanence. To our immense frustration, this elusive hint is all Kant gives
us, but it is enough to indicate that he now seems to believe that matter
exists independently of us.(6)
Must Kant also abandon or modify his doctrine of the ideality of space? This
is the doctrine that space has no extra-mental existence. Though it might
still be us who impose spatial matrices, it would surely be utterly
unmotivated now to continue to insist that things as they are could not have
spatial properties. If so, the treasured distinction of the first edition
between being external to me in space (a state compatible with being a
property of me) and being an object other than me should disappear, too.
Unfortunately, Kant gives us nothing to allow us to pursue these questions
further, not in the first Critique at least.
So let us turn to the final question I will consider: Can the new view be
squared with the doctrine of the unknowability of things as they are? One
way to solve the problem would be to construe the new claims about awareness
of `other things outside me' as falling within transcendental idealism. This
would immediately solve the problem, and is the approach Allison takes: he
construes the new awareness as merely a new application of the general
doctrine of Kant's mentioned earlier, that we are aware of only
representations (hereafter OR, for `only representations').(7) Guyer takes
Kant's realist pronouncements more seriously, quoting his saying that we
have an "intellectual intuition" of "other things outside me" which is "not
a mere representation of them in space" (i.e. not intuitional). Despite
this, Guyer cannot bring himself to suggest that Kant could contradict OR
any more than Allison. In Guyer's view, Kant is merely claiming that we must
presuppose "that there are external objects", not that we must be
immediately aware of them; our representations do not actually present
objects other than oneself, they just presuppose such objects.(8) So let us
ask: Why does even a commentator as sensitive to the realist strain in Kant
as Guyer refuse to accept his realist pronouncements at face value? What
makes him foist such a complicated and implausible account on Kant?
I do not think that it could be merely because the new pronouncements are
inconsistent with OR. OR is not only extraordinarily implausible, it has
caused no end of mischief in the history of philosophy. Any reason to think
that Kant edged away from it at some points in his career would be a reason
to rejoice. Rather, I think the reason has to be that the new doctrine seems
to be so blatantly inconsistent with the doctrine of the unknowability of
the noumenal. Our task is to see if that is so.
Though it has been little remarked upon in the literature, Kant made a
distinction between being aware of something and having knowledge of it that
is vital to the question before us. Most of the time the distinction arose
in connection with awareness of self of a certain kind, so let us first
explore it in that context. In the first edition, he says that we can denote
the self "without noting in it any quality whatsoever" (A355). In the second
edition, he speaks of an "awareness of self" that is "very far from being a
knowledge of the self" (B158), and that we are aware of ourselves "not as we
appear, or as we are, but only that we are" (B157). Kant seems to be
invoking exactly the same non-knowledge but still immediate awareness of the
self in the long footnote: "I am aware of my existence in time ... , and
this is more than to be aware merely of my representations" (Bxl, my
emphasis). Now entertain an interesting if necessarily speculative idea:
suppose Kant applied the same analysis to awareness of things other than the
self? Suppose he distinguished immediate awareness of objects other than
oneself from knowledge of them, too? If so, he could have his new claims
about our immediate awareness of them without violating his old view that we
have no knowledge of them. There is a bit of evidence to support this
speculation, though not much -- Kant makes a few statements that point to
it.
In the long footnote, Kant puts his new idea in a surprisingly large number
of different ways. Sometimes he puts it in exactly the way we have been
examining: "the determination of my existence in time is possible only
through the existence of actual things which I perceive outside me"
(B275-6). Sometimes he puts it in a way that does not actually imply direct
realism at all: we must have "awareness of a relation to something outside
me" (Bxl). But sometimes he puts it this way: we must have merely immediate
awareness of "the existence of other things outside me" (B276, my emphases
in all cases). This claim could easily have behind it the distinction
between being aware of something and knowing anything about it that we have
just explored in connection with awareness of self.
As an exception to any two-world picture of phenomena and noumena, this new
view would be drastic; it would be a death sentence for OR. If we are
immediately aware of the world as it is, the idea that the world as it is
never appears in any way in our representations has to go. Neither
implication seems to me to be fatal for a suggestion that Kant might have
held, or at least have been working his way toward, the new view.
In fact, in one respect, the Refutation may go further with immediate
awareness of things as they are than even the other second edition passages
just cited did. In the Refutation we are not just aware of objects other
than ourselves, we even have one piece of knowledge of them: that they are
permanent, some of them anyway. This would mean that on this one point, our
representations of the world would actually represent the world as it is.
Walker has expressed a fear that allowing immediate awareness of the self
would open a flood-gate to knowledge of the noumenal. So far as awareness of
self is concerned, I think his worry is groundless.(9) With respect to the
statements in the Refutation and the long footnote we have been examining,
however, he may well have a point. Even here, Kant could still cogently
insist, we have no immediate, unconstructed awareness of any other property
of anything, so have no other knowledge of their properties.
Is there any reason to think that Kant might have applied his notion of a
kind of `transcendental' reference to self in which no qualities are noted
to things other than oneself? One reason is that for Kant, awareness of self
and awareness of things other than self are symmetrical. If so, and if there
is a form of reference to self that requires no description or
concept-application, then Kant could well have made use of a notion of a
similar form of reference to objects. On the reading of the Refutation that
I am suggesting, reference to self and reference to objects other than the
self would display just this symmetry. In both cases, we may have no
knowledge of the things to which we refer, knowledge of them as they are,
but in both cases our acts of reference would refer to and thus make us
aware of the objects themselves, not just representations of them. Of
oneself these acts would yield a `bare consciousness' (A346=B404) of the
self that is "very far from being a knowledge of the self" (B158). Of things
other than oneself, they would yield "an immediate awareness of the
existence of other things outside me" (B276) that would be equally far from
being a knowledge of them.
The distinction between being aware of something and knowing anything of it
points to an important theory of reference. On this distinction, reference
could `reach all the way' to its object, yet description could remain an act
of constructive concept-application, even to the point of the constructor
not being able to know whether it is ever accurate -- reference could reach
a real object, free of potentially distorting judgment or description, and
yet all possible room for description to be `theory-laden' and otherwise
influenced by the cognitive apparatus of the mind doing the describing could
be preserved. When Kant called a certain kind of reference transcendental
designation (A355), he may even have had something like this in mind; when
reference `notes no qualities', is non-ascriptive, it would be transcending
the apperceptive, synthesizing activities of the mind. Once such an act of
non-ascriptive reference is made, it would immediately be surrounded by an
`umbra' of cognitive manipulations, of course: the undescribed object to
which reference has been made would be judged, described, propositional
attitudes would be taken up to it, theories could be formed about it, and so
on. It would be at this stage but only at the this stage that we would enter
the realm of knowledge. For one thing, knowledge requires the possibility of
error -- incorrect judgment or description -- and there would be no
possibility of this kind of error in an act of non-ascriptive reference.(10)
It would also be at this stage that we would enter the realm of what cannot
be checked against things as they are, where we could now understand the
latter to be the objects to which we have achieved reference. In fact, the
possibilities for descriptive error within this theory of reference are
vast, so vast that even something as basic as how I carve the world up into
objects could be in error. But what would not be in error when I have
achieved reference is a belief that I am referring to and therefore am aware
of something -- something other than myself. This sort of theory of
reference is quite different from the picture generally accepted in
Anglo-American philosophy since WWII, in which reference is always under a
description. However, it or a view like it does have contemporary
proponents, including Putnam, Kripke, and the later Wittgenstein. It is at
the heart of most paradigm-based semantics theories. If I am right, once
again Kant proves to be more than a cultural artefact, a mere earlier stage
in our intellectual history.
http://www.carleton.ca/~abrook/REFUT-ID.htm
---------------------------------------
KANT AND HIS REFUTATION OF IDEALISM*
36. Kant's refutation of idealism in the second edition of the Critic of the
Pure Reason has been often held to be inconsistent with his main position or
even to be knowingly sophistical. It appears to me to be one of the numerous
passages in that work which betray an elaborated and vigorous analysis,
marred in the exposition by the attempt to state the argument more
abstractly and demonstratively than the thought would warrant.
In "Note 1," Kant says that his argument beats idealism at its own game. How
is that? The idealist says that all that we know immediately, that is,
otherwise than inferentially, is what is present in the mind; and things out
of the mind are not so present. The whole idealist position turns upon this
conception of the present.
37. The idealistic argument turns upon the assumption that certain things
are absolutely "present," namely what we have in mind at the moment, and
that nothing else can be immediately, that is, otherwise than inferentially
known. When this is once granted, the idealist has no difficulty in showing
that that external existence which we cannot know immediately we cannot
know, at all. Some of the arguments used for this purpose are of little
value, because they only go to show that our knowledge of an external world
is fallible; now there is a world of difference between fallible knowledge
and no knowledge.
However, I think it would have to be admitted as a matter of logic that if
we have no immediate perception of a non-ego, we can have no reason to admit
the supposition of an existence so contrary to all experience as that would
in that case be. 38. But what evidence is there that we can immediately know
only what is "present" to the mind? The idealists generally treat this as
self-evident; but, as Clifford jestingly says, " it is evident " is a phrase
which only means " we do not know how to prove."
The proposition that we can immediately perceive only what is present seems
to me parallel to that other vulgar prejudice that "a thing cannot act where
it is not." An opinion which can only defend itself by such a sounding
phrase is pretty sure to be wrong. That a thing cannot act where it is not
is plainly an induction from ordinary experience, which shows no forces
except such as act through the resistance of materials, with the exception
of gravity which, owing to its being the same for all bodies,does not appear
in ordinary experience like a force. But further experience shows that
attractions and repulsions are the universal types of forces. A thing may be
said to be wherever it acts; but the notion that a particle is absolutely
present in one part of space and absolutely absent from all the rest of
space is devoid of all foundation.
In like manner, the idea that we can immediately perceive only what is
present seems to be founded on our ordinary experience |p17 that we cannot
recall and reexamine the events of yesterday nor know otherwise than by
inference what is to happen tomorrow. Obviously, then, the first move toward
beating idealism at its own game is to remark that we apprehend our own
ideas only as flowing in time, and since neither the future nor the past,
however near they may be, is present, there is as much difficulty in
conceiving our perception of what passes within us as in conceiving external
perception. If so, replies the idealist, instead of giving up idealism we
must go still further to nihilism. Kant does not notice this retort; but it
is clear from his footnote that he would have said: Not so; for it is
impossible we should so much as think we think in time unless we do think in
time; or rather, dismissing blind impossibility, the mere imagination of
time is a clear perception of the past.
Hamilton* stupidly objects to Reid's phrase "immediate memory"; but an
immediate, intuitive consciousness of time clearly exists wherever time
exists. But once grant immediate knowledge in time, and what becomes of the
idealist theory that we immediately know only the present? For the present
can contain no time. 39. But Kant does not pursue this line of thought along
the straight road to its natural result; because he is a sort of idealist
himself. Namely, though not idealistic as to the substance of things, he is
partially so in regard to their accidents. Accordingly, he introduces his
distinction of the variable and the persistent (beharrlich), and seeks to
show that the only way we can apprehend our own flow of ideas, binding them
together as a connected flow, is by attaching them to an immediately
perceived persistent externality. He refuses to inquire how that immediate
external consciousness is possible, though such an inquiry might have probed
the foundations of his system.
http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/peirce/exexwo_90.htm
-----------------------------------
§5. The Refutation of Idealism and the Distinction Between Perception and
Imagination
§5.1 Introduction
According to Kant, the argument in the Refutation of Idealism is supposed to
“establish that we have experience and not merely imagination of outer
things”. This focus on the distinction between perception (experience of
outer things) and imagination is easy to overlook because of the apparently
disparate notions upon which the argument draws: consciousness of self, time
determination, and the immediacy of inner and outer sense. Kant claims that
the refutation is directed against the problematic idealism that he
attributes to Descartes, and not against the dogmatic idealism of Berkeley.
Problematic idealism, according to Kant, holds that the existence of things
outside of me is “doubtful and indemonstrable”, whereas dogmatic idealism
holds that the existence of things outside me is impossible.
The two idealisms are surely distinct. Nonetheless, Kant recognized how
easily problematic idealism can lead to dogmatism. Both use cases of
illusion and hallucination to make their arguments. Problematic idealism
uses illusion and hallucination to establish the unreliability of inference
from the subjective qualitative character of mental states to objective
properties of objects. Dogmatic idealism uses illusion and hallucination to
establish that the contents of mental states remain identical regardless of
the existence of external objects. A principled distinction between
perception and imagination undercuts both sorts of idealism. Although Kant
addresses problematic idealism in the refutation, he leaves dogmatic
idealism to a note in the unrevised B edition, where he says that the
question it raises is “whether we have only an inner sense but no outer one,
rather merely outer imagination.” But this is the question that the
refutation is intended to answer against the problematic idealist – of
whether we have experience and not merely imagination of outer things. If
the refutation undercuts both problematic and dogmatic idealism, why does
Kant direct it only against problematic idealism?
For two reasons. First, he thinks that the Transcendental Analytic has
already refuted dogmatic idealism by establishing that space is not a
property of things in themselves. In other words, Kant holds that
transcendental idealism, with its distinction between the empirically real
and the transcendentally ideal undercuts dogmatic idealism by making
spatio-temporal experience a necessary feature of our experience of
empirical objects. Second, the distinction between perception and
imagination that undercuts both idealisms can be made, according to Kant,
only by denying the central theses of problematic idealism: one, that the
immediate object of experience is an object of inner sense; the other that
all perception is mediated by inference from the immediate object of inner
sense to external objects. “The proof that is demanded [for a refutation of
problematic idealism]…cannot be accomplished unless one can prove that even
our inner experience, undoubted by Descartes, is possible only under the
presupposition of outer experience.”
Kant refutes problematic idealism not by establishing the reliability of
inference from the immediate objects of inner sense to external objects, but
by denying that the only immediate objects of experience are objects of
inner sense, and by denying that perception is inferentially mediated by
objects of inner sense. Significantly, Kant does not deny that perception is
mediated. To do so would be inconsistent with the rest of his project:
perception, as empirical representation, is possible only through the
synthesis of the imagination, the unity of apperception and the application
of the categories, which are processes of mediation. When Kant claims that
perception is immediate, he is denying that perception is mediated in the
way that the problematic idealist thinks of mediation, namely by inference
based on the intrinsic properties of the mental state and of the object that
it represents.
In other words, Kant’s empirical realism is a kind of direct realism, as
defined in chapter two. In addition, the direct realism advocated in the
refutation, like Reid’s realism, is bound up with the notion that the
content of perception is externally individuated. Kant denies the central
theses of problematic idealism by showing that perception, or outer sense,
is made possible only by the existence of objects that are distinct from our
perception of them and by showing that imagination is dependent on
perception. Kant shows that perception is a kind of representation that
depends on the existence of the object which it represents – it is a de re,
or demonstrative representation. An imagination, on the other hand, is not
the kind of representation which depends for on the existence of the object
which it represents – there need be no unicorn before me in order for me to
imagine or hallucinate a unicorn.
§5.2 The Refutation of Idealism
The main argument in the Refutation of Idealism can be broken down into the
following premises :
RI1) “I am conscious of my existence as determined in time. ”
RI2) According to the first analogy, all time-determination presupposes the
perception of a persistent thing.
RI3) The persistent thing that I perceive cannot be an intuition in me.
RI4) The perception of the persistent thing depends on the persistent thing
and not on my representing the persisting thing.
RI5) \ My consciousness of my existence as determined in time is possible
only if I perceive something that persists outside of me.
Premise RI1 is shared by Kant and the sort of idealist against whom the
refutation is directed. Kant and the problematic idealist agree that I
experience my own mental states and that I experience them as my own, over
time. The problematic idealist, however, confers epistemological priority on
inner experience, which is certain because it is immediate; it is not the
product of inference. Putative outer experience, however, is possible only
mediately by inference from mental states given immediately in inner
experience. The problematic idealist, then, does not merely agree to the
premise that I am conscious of my existence as determined in time; she also
holds that such consciousness has special epistemological status, which is
used to undermine the epistemological status of perception. The refutation
will show that this position is internally inconsistent because the
problematic idealist cannot hold RI1 while also holding that all our
perceptions may be mere imaginations. As Kant writes, “the game that
idealism plays has with greater justice been turned against it,” and as
Margaret Wilson comments:
"Kant’s conclusion could be rephrased as follows: “I know I exist in time”
entails (in conjunction with other knowable premises) that I have or have
had veridical perceptions of a permanent entity in space. Such a conclusion
could be said to ‘answer’ the Cartesian by establishing that, contrary to
what the arguments from hallucination, etc. seem to suggest, there is
actually an inconsistency in maintaining the Cartesian assumptions about
self-knowledge in conjunction with the view that all one’s ‘outer’
perceptions might be non-veridical "
Premise RI2, that all time determination presupposes a thing persistent in
perception is supposed to have been established by the first analogy, which
I shall not examine in detail. Roughly, the argument is that in order for me
to be conscious of my existence in time, I must be conscious of changes in
my representations because time is not an object of perception and
time-determination is perceived as change. But to perceive change, one must
perceive it relative to something that persists. Thus, this ‘something that
persists’ must also be an object of perception: this is the ‘persistent in
perception’.
Premise RI3, that the persistent thing that I perceive cannot be an
intuition in me, is stated by Kant in the unrevised B edition as “This
persisting thing, however, cannot be something in me, since my own existence
in time can first be determined only through this persistent thing.” In the
revised Preface to this edition, Kant replaces this with the following:
"This persisting thing, however, cannot be an intuition in me. For all
grounds of determination of my existence that can be encountered in me are
representations, and as such require something persistent that is distinct
even from them, in relation to which their change, thus my existence in the
time in which they change, can be determined."
This premise rules out the possibility that the persisting thing that I
perceive is a representation in me – an object of inner sense. The argument
in the first analogy that supports premise RI2 requires that in order for me
to be conscious of my self as determined in time, I must be conscious of a
change in my representations, but I cannot be conscious of this change save
by perceiving a persisting thing against which the change in my
representation can be measured. Perceiving something permanent in
perception, then, is a precondition for consciousness of changing
representations. If the persisting thing were a representation, my
consciousness of it would require the perception of a persisting thing that
is not a representation, and so ad infinitum. Consciousness of the
persisting thing (perception) is prior both to consciousness of
representations and to consciousness of self, which means that consciousness
of the persisting thing cannot be consciousness of a representation.
The substituted remark from the B Preface also makes clear what Kant intends
by the spatial metaphors in me and outside me. The persisting thing that I
perceive is a thing outside me in the sense that it is distinct from my
representing it. The persisting thing that I perceive cannot be an intuition
in me, because the perception – which allows me to become aware of the
succession of representations, and my determination in time – must be a
representation of something distinct from my representation of it. Its esse
cannot be percipi. But no mere representation is distinct from my
representation of it – the esse of representation is percipi – and so the
persisting thing that I perceive cannot be a representation. And, finally,
no representation can itself be the persisting thing because representations
themselves do not persist over time – they are necessarily fleeting.
Premise RI4 states that the perception of the persistent thing depends for
its existence on that thing and not upon my representing it. This premise
requires that the perception of the persisting thing is a de re or
demonstrative form of representation: “Thus the perception of this
persistent thing is possible only through a thing outside me and not through
the mere representation of a thing outside me.” In other words, when I
perceive the persisting thing I represent not ‘that there is a persisting
thing outside me’ but, about that persisting thing outside me, that it is
thus and so. The conclusion of the refutation is that my consciousness of my
existence as determined in time is possible only if I perceive something
that persists outside me. It is important to note that for Kant perception
of something that persists outside me is distinct from perception that
something persists outside me: only the former is sufficient for
consciousness of self in time. In the latter sort of representation, if one
succeeds in picking out an object, one will have done so only by having
given a successful description of the object, and such description can occur
in the absence of any object which corresponds to it. The existence of the
latter sort of representation, however, depends on its picking out an
object, and it picks out its object directly, without the aid of
description.
§5.3 Immediacy
The argument in the refutation demonstrates that “inner experience,
undoubted by Descartes, is possible only under the presupposition of outer
experience” by showing that perception of external objects – outer
experience – is required for consciousness of my self in time – inner
experience. But does it show, as Kant claims, that “outer experience is
really immediate…so that inner experience itself is consequently only
mediate…”? Kant says that inner sense is mediate because it is made possible
only if we have outer sense. This use of ‘mediate’ indicates something like
‘presupposes something else’ while ‘immediate’ suggests ‘is presupposed by
something else’. Kant is merely making reference to the form of the
refutation as a transcendental argument. The problematic idealist doubts
that which makes possible what she regards as most certain. Call this use of
‘mediate’ and ‘immediate’ the ‘presuppositional’ use. Kant’s claim that
inner sense is mediate uses ‘mediate’ presuppositionally; thus, he should
not be read as saying that inner experience is the product of inference from
outer experience.
On the other hand, the immediacy of outer experience is not merely a claim
about the form of the refutation; it is claim about the de re/demonstrative
nature of perception as revealed in premise RI4. Kant is not merely claiming
that outer sense is presupposed by, and thus prior to, inner sense, but also
that outer sense is not mediated in the way that the problematic idealist
insists it must be. In Note 1, Kant provides the argument against which his
refutation is directed.
Idealism assumed that the only immediate experience is inner experience, and
that from that outer things could only be inferred, but, as in any case in
which one infers from given effects to determinate causes, only unreliably,
since the cause of the representations that we perhaps falsely ascribe to
outer things can also lie in us.
The conclusion is left unstated, but the full argument is as follows:
PI1) The only immediate objects of experience are objects of inner sense.
PI2) The existence of objects outside us can be known only mediately, by
inference from the immediate objects of experience.
PI3) Such inferences from the immediate objects of experience to things
known only mediately by them are unreliable.
PI4) Unreliable inferences cannot be the basis of knowledge.
PI5) \ We can have no knowledge of the existence of objects outside us.
According to the idealist, whether something is immediate or mediate depends
on whether it is the product of inference. Call this the ‘inferential’ use.
After Kant presents the problematic idealist’s argument, he makes it clear
that the refutation is intended to undercut premise PI1, that the only
immediate objects of experience are objects of inner sense. “Yet here it is
proved that outer experience is really immediate..” The kind of immediacy
referred to in premise PI1 can’t be undermined by showing that inner
experience is made possible only by outer experience. One could hold premise
PI2, that the existence of objects outside us can be known only mediately,
by inference from the immediate objects of experience, while also holding
the conclusion of the refutation that if we never experienced objects
outside us there would be no immediate objects of experience. One could
hold, for example, that we experience external objects by experiencing their
effects; that these effects are the only immediate object of experience;
that without external objects there would be no immediate object of
experience. Kant must claim that outer experience is immediate in the
non-inferential sense, not just the presuppositional sense, in order to
undermine premise PI1.
Kant rejects premise PI2, that the only way we can know external objects is
by inference from objects of inner sense. But he also rejects an even
stronger thesis, holding that in perception we cannot make inferences to
outer objects from inspecting objects of inner sense. Objects of inner sense
simply lack the intrinsic properties required to form a first-person
inferential basis for judgments about objects of outer sense. Objects of
inner sense lack the properties characteristic of objects of outer sense:
unity, necessary connection with other objects, and so on. The relation
between objects of inner sense and objects of outer sense can never be an
internal relation – a relation based on intrinsic properties of the relata.
Whatever relation objects of inner sense could bear to objects of outer
sense would be determined not by the properties of the relata but by the
forms of intuition and understanding that provide the only rules by which
such connections can be made.
"Combination does not lie in the objects, however, and cannot as it were be
borrowed from them through perception.
Thus we ourselves bring into the appearances that order and regularity in
them that we call nature, and moreover we would not be able to find it there
if we, or the nature of our mind, had not originally put it there. "
In other words, whatever relation objects of inner sense bear to objects of
outer sense, it must be an external relation afforded by cognition itself.
It is precisely because the objects of perception are determined by rules
that we generate – by external relations – that perception is direct rather
than indirect. Perception is a representational relation between items
connected to each other not internally but by a rule that we apply.
Perception represents objects not by inferences made from the intrinsic
character of mental items but by having been connected according to an
external rule.
Kant rejects premise PI1 in the idealist’s argument – that the only
immediate objects of experience are the objects of inner sense – because he
regards the objects of perception as immediate in the sense that we
experience them non-inferentially by a de re/demonstrative representation.
That outer experience is immediate in the non-inferential sense follows from
the kind of representation that perception must be in order for it to enable
consciousness of representations and of self. It is the kind of
representation, as Kant says, that is “possible only through a thing outside
me and not through a mere representation of a thing outside me.” It is also
the kind of representation that takes an object not in virtue of the
intrinsic properties of the representation and the object but in virtue of
their extrinsic properties which are conferred by cognition according to a
rule. This kind of representation – a de re/demonstrative representation –
is not and cannot be a product of inference alone.
§5.4 The Distinction Between Perception and Imagination
Recall that the refutation is intended to “establish that we have experience
and not merely imagination of outer things”. As has been shown, Kant regards
the experience of outer things as immediate. In the notes that follow the
refutation, Kant addresses the question whether the immediate experience of
outer things, i.e. perception, is possible. In a footnote to Note 1, he
identifies two questions: (a) whether immediate perception is possible with
(b) whether our consciousness of outer things counts as experience rather
than mere imagination:
"The immediate consciousness of the existence of outer things is not
presupposed but proved in the preceding theorem [the Refutation of
Idealism], whether we have insight into the possibility of this
consciousness or not. The question about the latter would be whether we have
only an inner sense but no outer one, rather merely outer imagination. But
it is clear that in order for us even to imagine something as external,
i.e., to exhibit it to sense in intuition, we must already have an outer
sense…"
Here, and in Note 3, Kant addresses the problematic idealist’s move from PI3
and PI4 to PI5, from the claim that for any given perception, inference from
immediate sensory experience to the object of the perception is unreliable,
to the claim that we can have no knowledge of objects outside of us, a
distinction exploited by the dogmatic idealist. Kant recognizes that this
move allows that our experience could remain just as it is even if no
objects existed outside of us. He must maintain the position argued in
premise RI4 that perception is a kind of de re/demonstrative representation,
while allowing for the possibility of illusion and hallucination. But it is
this possibility that the problematic idealist exploits.
The problematic idealist asks: if, for any given perceptual experience, our
experience could remain the same, whether or not the object of the
perceptual experience is an object existing outside us, why suppose that
perception is reliable? The dogmatic idealist asks: if, for any given
perceptual experience, our experience could remain the same, whether or not
the object of the perceptual experience is an object existing outside us,
why suppose that any perceptual experiences imply such external objects?
Kant’s answer to these questions is threefold. First, consistent with the
refutation of idealism, he maintains that perception is a kind of de
re/demonstrative representation, the kind that depends upon the existence of
the object it represents. Second, he holds that illusion and hallucination
are not de re/demonstrative representations, and so are not species of
perception. Third, and most important he argues that illusion and
hallucination are dependent on perception. Once again, Kant plays idealism’s
game against itself by showing that illusion and hallucination, which the
idealist uses to undermine the reliability and possibility of perception,
actually presuppose perception.
Hallucinations and illusions, like perceptions, are representations, and
like perceptions they represent their objects as external. Any theory of
perception must address this shared feature of perception, illusion and
hallucination. Kant acknowledges that imagination can represent objects as
external, but he denies that it can represent external objects. This is why
premise RI4 of the refutation is concerned to distinguish de
re/demonstrative representation from descriptive representation. A
representation that there is a persisting thing is not sufficient for time
determination; only a representation of a persisting thing makes possible
the perception of change required for consciousness of self in time. In Note
3 to the refutation, Kant writes,
"From the fact that the existence of outer objects is required for the
possibility of a determinate consciousness of our self it does not follow
that every intuitive representation of outer things includes at the same
time their existence, for that may well be the effect of the imagination (in
dreams as well as in delusions)… "
In other words, some of our intuitive representations of outer things do not
depend upon the existence of the objects that they represent – they are not
de re/demonstrative representations. Imagination represents some of its
objects as external. But these are dreams and delusions, effects of the
imagination, not cases of perception. Imaginations and perceptions are
different sorts of representation: imagination represents objects regardless
of the existence of the objects that it represents; perception, as Kant
writes, is “possible only through the actuality of outer objects.”
Finally, imagination presupposes perception. Kant gives two arguments to
support this claim. The first appears in Note 3: “…but [dreams and
delusions] are possible merely through the reproduction of previous outer
perceptions, which, as has been shown, are possible only through the
actuality of outer objects.” In other words, dreams, illusions and
hallucination are representations assembled from previous outer perceptions
through reproduction and synthesis. Furthermore, the representations that
are reproduced are perceptions – representations of external objects rather
than mere representations as of an external object; thus, there would be no
dreams or delusions without perceptions.
This differs from the familiar empiricist position on imagination in a
striking way: Kant is not claiming that in dreams and delusions we jumble
together previous sensations or objects of inner sense; he is claiming that
we reproduce and synthesize previous perceptions – representations of outer
objects. This is made clear by how Kant regards the objects of inner sense
and sensations, which do not represent objects as external. A sensation of
red differs from a perception of a red thing primarily because the former
represents nothing external. No reproduction and synthesis of sensations or
objects of inner sense could account for the fact that we represent the
objects of dreams and delusions as external. Only a relation to some thing
distinct from representation can afford the kind of consciousness required
to represent something as external; only the externalist character of
perception can account for the phenomenal character of dreams and delusions.
When in dreams and delusions we represent objects as external, we make a
mistake, but this mistake is possible only because we are able to get it
right some of the time. As Carl Posy writes in “Transcendental Idealism and
Causality”, “Kant, of course, clearly holds that sensory information alone
would never suffice to provide the “dignity of relation to an object”
(A197)”
Kant’s second argument for the priority of perception over imagination makes
clear how different his conception is from the empiricist’s. In a footnote
to Note 1, Kant writes:
"But it is clear that in order for us even to imagine something as external,
i.e., to exhibit it to sense in intuition, we must already have an outer
sense, and by this means immediately distinguish the mere receptivity of an
outer intuition from the spontaneity that characterizes every imagination.
For even to merely imagine an outer sense would itself annihilate the
faculty of intuition, which is to be determined through the imagination. "
If imagination were able on its own to represent some of its objects as
external, i.e., without our ever having been effected by an external object,
the faculty of intuition would be otiose. Kant is not claiming that we never
imagine the objects we take to be external, nor that we never hallucinate or
suffer illusions. Rather, he claims that the ability to hallucinate and
suffer illusions depends upon the ability to perceive. As Arthur Collins
writes in Possible Experience: Understanding Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason:
"In cases of seeming perception where there is no apprehension of something
that exists outside the mind, the episode is just an illusion and not an
apprehension of a spatial reality that is somehow also an inner reality. The
aberration consists in the absence (nonexistence) of the outer spatial thing
that seems to be present and not in the presence of an inner spatial thing.
Since there are no inner spatial things, we cannot advert to such things in
order to explain what happens in aberrant perception. It is desirous to keep
in focus Kant’s conception of imagination as “thought of an object that is
not present.”
Since objects are required for the possibility of experience, we can say
that only perceivers hallucinate, only a subject who can really experience
an object can seem to experience one. "
We can perceive because the imagination can apprehend, reproduce and
synthesize, because our self-consciousness allows us to represent objects as
unities and because the categories enable us to make the judgments that make
possible the very distinction between an external and internal object.
Imagination of an object as external requires these same cognitive
conditions. In order to hallucinate an oasis in a desert, I must apprehend,
reproduce and synthesize the impressions that make up the phenomenal content
of the hallucination. In order to move my body towards the hallucination and
drink its hallucinatory water, I must represent not only the oasis but
myself and my relation to it. In order to see the oasis as an oasis, and
regard it (wrongly) as something that may save my life, I must apply the
categories. Although the conditions that make perception possible make
dreams and delusions possible as well, the conditions themselves –
particularly consciousness of myself as determined in time – are possible
only because perception is not the same as imagination. If perception were
imagination, if it merely represented objects as external rather than
representing external objects, neither perception nor imagination would be
possible. Only on the possibility of perceptions, which provide a
demonstrative reference to external objects, can one account for the fact
that illusions, dreams and hallucinations purport to represent external
objects. As William Harper writes,
"The Refutation of Idealism argues that only outer appearances can provide
demonstrative reference to content that can determine a truth of the matter
about what is to count as my subjective empirical self. On this view only
insofar as this self is determined by outer appearances – only insofar as it
is pinned down by the path of my body through a world of outer things – can
it provide a subject to which the appearances of inner sense can be
attributed.
On this view the demon hypothesis in my own case is incoherent because it
assumes away the reference that is required to provide the content that
could make it count as true. "
In §1 of this chapter I argued that for Kant, the problem of perceptual
objectivity is not whether we’re getting it right about the world, but
whether we’re getting at a world about which we can be right (or wrong), at
all. I described Kant’s notion of perceptual objectivity as representational
purport. Kant calls our perceptions objective because they aim at material,
external objects as their target. Perceptions have this target because they
are formed according to rules and norms built into our faculties, norms that
specify the conditions of ‘objecthood’ prior to our forming any particular
perceptions of particular objects. What makes perceptions into
representations of objects for Kant is not any quality that they have, but
our forming them according to norms that specify what it is for us to
represent an object at all. I identified Kant’s central notion of
objectivity with objective validity. Perceptions have objective validity
because they aim at representing objects. A perception has objective reality
only if it is applied to something of which it is true, i.e., only if the
representation purports to be about a specific object or state of affairs
and is in fact about that object or state-of-affairs. The conditions of
objective validity are conditions of the possibility of representing an
object in perception at all; they serve as conditions of objectivity prior
to any actual perceptual interaction with the world. Thus, objective
validity is prior to objective reality.
Kant’s discussion of the priority of perception over imagination in the
refutation makes clear that imaginations of outer objects – dreams and
delusions – have objective validity but not objective reality, as I argued
in § 4. The conditions of the possibility of representing an object in
perceptions are conditions of representational purport. Hallucinations and
illusions also purport to represent the world, and so fall under the same
conditions. Hallucinations and illusions, however, are not applied to any
actual object or state of affairs of which they could be true and so do not
possess objective reality. Hallucination and illusion seem like perceptions,
but they are not perceptions because they do not possess objective reality.
That hallucinations and illusions possess objective validity also explains
why they can’t be made up of mere sensations: sensations do not posses
objective validity and do not purport to be about objects. Kant undermines
idealism by distinguishing between perception and imagination without
sacrificing the phenomenological observation that hallucinations and
illusions, like perception, purport to represent the world.
§5.5 Skepticism
Kant’s remarks about dreams and delusions specify what sorts of skepticism
are ruled out in the refutation. Dogmatic and problematic idealism can lead
to three different types of skepticism. All three trade on the fact that
perceptions, illusions, dreams and hallucinations purport to represent the
world. The first questions whether, for any given perception, we can
distinguish it from a mere imagination. The second questions whether
perceptual experience can be the basis of knowledge given that perception is
the result of inference and that we may infer as easily (though wrongly) to
the existence of external objects from hallucination and illusion as from
perception. This skepticism follows from problematic idealism. The third
sort of skepticism questions whether all perception is mere imagination and
concludes that the existence of an external world is explanatorily
unnecessary. This skepticism follows from dogmatic idealism. The refutation,
according to Kant, rules out the second and third sorts of skepticism, but
not the first:
"Here it had to be proved only that inner experience in general is possible
only through outer experience in general. Whether this or that putative
experience is not mere imagination must be ascertained according to its
particular determinations and through its coherence with the criteria of all
actual experience. "
Like the idealists against whom Kant argues, he accepts that hallucination,
illusion and misperception purport to represent the world. He refutes the
second type of skepticism by denying that perception is mediated by
inference, showing that the immediate experience which the problematic
idealist regards as epistemologically prior to perception actually
presupposes perception. He refutes the third type of skepticism by denying
that imagination is identical with perception, showing that the imagination
of outer objects which the dogmatic idealist claims forms our ‘perceptual’
experience actually presupposes the perception of outer objects.
The first sort of skepticism, which questions, for any given perception,
whether we can distinguish it from a mere imagination, doesn’t seem to
trouble Kant. This, he says “must be ascertained according to its particular
determinations and through its coherence with the criteria of all actual
experience.” In other words, if we can tell that a particular perceptual
experience is actually a perception and not merely an imagination, we will
be able to do so only by comparing it with the objects to which it appears
to be related and by determining whether the experience is coherent with the
rest of our experiences. Kant’s indifference to this skeptical worry is
unsurprising given that the first Critique is less concerned with questions
of the very possibility of experience about which justificatory questions
might then be raised.
http://www.lclark.edu/~rebeccac/kantskep.html
-------------------------------------
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~jlbermud/transcendental%25idealism.pdf
http://www.fordham.edu/philosophy/davenport/texts/refideal.htm
http://philarete.home.mindspring.com/philosophy/kant.html
John Jones
tutors will duly be informed.
Second, wht didn't Berkely, Kant, and Hume, although Hume might have had
more of an inkling on the matter, regard 'experience' as being a full
necessary and sufficient quality of idealism?
jJ
Immortalist <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ap6dnffm6o3...@comcast.com...
275-6]
> also [B xxxix-xli].
> refutation is intended to answer against the problematic idealist - of
> whether we have experience and not merely imagination of outer things. If
> the refutation undercuts both problematic and dogmatic idealism, why does
> Kant direct it only against problematic idealism?
>
> For two reasons. First, he thinks that the Transcendental Analytic has
> already refuted dogmatic idealism by establishing that space is not a
> property of things in themselves. In other words, Kant holds that
> transcendental idealism, with its distinction between the empirically real
> and the transcendentally ideal undercuts dogmatic idealism by making
> spatio-temporal experience a necessary feature of our experience of
> empirical objects. Second, the distinction between perception and
> imagination that undercuts both idealisms can be made, according to Kant,
> only by denying the central theses of problematic idealism: one, that the
> immediate object of experience is an object of inner sense; the other that
> all perception is mediated by inference from the immediate object of inner
> sense to external objects. "The proof that is demanded [for a refutation
of
> problematic idealism].cannot be accomplished unless one can prove that
> depends on the existence of the object which it represents - it is a de
re,
> or demonstrative representation. An imagination, on the other hand, is not
> the kind of representation which depends for on the existence of the
object
> which it represents - there need be no unicorn before me in order for me
> perceive is a representation in me - an object of inner sense. The
argument
> in the first analogy that supports premise RI2 requires that in order for
me
> to be conscious of my self as determined in time, I must be conscious of a
> change in my representations, but I cannot be conscious of this change
save
> by perceiving a persisting thing against which the change in my
> representation can be measured. Perceiving something permanent in
> perception, then, is a precondition for consciousness of changing
> representations. If the persisting thing were a representation, my
> consciousness of it would require the perception of a persisting thing
that
> is not a representation, and so ad infinitum. Consciousness of the
> persisting thing (perception) is prior both to consciousness of
> representations and to consciousness of self, which means that
consciousness
> of the persisting thing cannot be consciousness of a representation.
>
> The substituted remark from the B Preface also makes clear what Kant
intends
> by the spatial metaphors in me and outside me. The persisting thing that I
> perceive is a thing outside me in the sense that it is distinct from my
> representing it. The persisting thing that I perceive cannot be an
intuition
> in me, because the perception - which allows me to become aware of the
> succession of representations, and my determination in time - must be a
> representation of something distinct from my representation of it. Its
esse
> cannot be percipi. But no mere representation is distinct from my
> representation of it - the esse of representation is percipi - and so the
> persisting thing that I perceive cannot be a representation. And, finally,
> no representation can itself be the persisting thing because
representations
> themselves do not persist over time - they are necessarily fleeting.
> experience" by showing that perception of external objects - outer
> experience - is required for consciousness of my self in time - inner
> experience. But does it show, as Kant claims, that "outer experience is
> really immediate.so that inner experience itself is consequently only
> mediate."? Kant says that inner sense is mediate because it is made
> internal relation - a relation based on intrinsic properties of the
relata.
>
> Whatever relation objects of inner sense could bear to objects of outer
> sense would be determined not by the properties of the relata but by the
> forms of intuition and understanding that provide the only rules by which
> such connections can be made.
>
> "Combination does not lie in the objects, however, and cannot as it were
be
> borrowed from them through perception.
> Thus we ourselves bring into the appearances that order and regularity in
> them that we call nature, and moreover we would not be able to find it
there
> if we, or the nature of our mind, had not originally put it there. "
>
> In other words, whatever relation objects of inner sense bear to objects
of
> outer sense, it must be an external relation afforded by cognition itself.
> It is precisely because the objects of perception are determined by rules
> that we generate - by external relations - that perception is direct
rather
> than indirect. Perception is a representational relation between items
> connected to each other not internally but by a rule that we apply.
> Perception represents objects not by inferences made from the intrinsic
> character of mental items but by having been connected according to an
> external rule.
>
> Kant rejects premise PI1 in the idealist's argument - that the only
> immediate objects of experience are the objects of inner sense - because
he
> regards the objects of perception as immediate in the sense that we
> experience them non-inferentially by a de re/demonstrative representation.
> That outer experience is immediate in the non-inferential sense follows
from
> the kind of representation that perception must be in order for it to
enable
> consciousness of representations and of self. It is the kind of
> representation, as Kant says, that is "possible only through a thing
outside
> me and not through a mere representation of a thing outside me." It is
also
> the kind of representation that takes an object not in virtue of the
> intrinsic properties of the representation and the object but in virtue of
> their extrinsic properties which are conferred by cognition according to a
> rule. This kind of representation - a de re/demonstrative representation -
> is not and cannot be a product of inference alone.
>
> §5.4 The Distinction Between Perception and Imagination
>
> Recall that the refutation is intended to "establish that we have
experience
> and not merely imagination of outer things". As has been shown, Kant
regards
> the experience of outer things as immediate. In the notes that follow the
> refutation, Kant addresses the question whether the immediate experience
of
> outer things, i.e. perception, is possible. In a footnote to Note 1, he
> identifies two questions: (a) whether immediate perception is possible
with
> (b) whether our consciousness of outer things counts as experience rather
> than mere imagination:
>
> "The immediate consciousness of the existence of outer things is not
> presupposed but proved in the preceding theorem [the Refutation of
> Idealism], whether we have insight into the possibility of this
> consciousness or not. The question about the latter would be whether we
have
> only an inner sense but no outer one, rather merely outer imagination. But
> it is clear that in order for us even to imagine something as external,
> i.e., to exhibit it to sense in intuition, we must already have an outer
> sense."
> dreams as well as in delusions). "
>
> In other words, some of our intuitive representations of outer things do
not
> depend upon the existence of the objects that they represent - they are
not
> de re/demonstrative representations. Imagination represents some of its
> objects as external. But these are dreams and delusions, effects of the
> imagination, not cases of perception. Imaginations and perceptions are
> different sorts of representation: imagination represents objects
regardless
> of the existence of the objects that it represents; perception, as Kant
> writes, is "possible only through the actuality of outer objects."
>
> Finally, imagination presupposes perception. Kant gives two arguments to
> support this claim. The first appears in Note 3: ".but [dreams and
> delusions] are possible merely through the reproduction of previous outer
> perceptions, which, as has been shown, are possible only through the
> actuality of outer objects." In other words, dreams, illusions and
> hallucination are representations assembled from previous outer
perceptions
> through reproduction and synthesis. Furthermore, the representations that
> are reproduced are perceptions - representations of external objects
rather
> than mere representations as of an external object; thus, there would be
no
> dreams or delusions without perceptions.
>
> This differs from the familiar empiricist position on imagination in a
> striking way: Kant is not claiming that in dreams and delusions we jumble
> together previous sensations or objects of inner sense; he is claiming
that
> we reproduce and synthesize previous perceptions - representations of
> dreams and delusions possible as well, the conditions themselves -
> particularly consciousness of myself as determined in time - are possible
> only because perception is not the same as imagination. If perception were
> imagination, if it merely represented objects as external rather than
> representing external objects, neither perception nor imagination would be
> possible. Only on the possibility of perceptions, which provide a
> demonstrative reference to external objects, can one account for the fact
> that illusions, dreams and hallucinations purport to represent external
> objects. As William Harper writes,
>
> "The Refutation of Idealism argues that only outer appearances can provide
> demonstrative reference to content that can determine a truth of the
matter
> about what is to count as my subjective empirical self. On this view only
> insofar as this self is determined by outer appearances - only insofar as
it
> is pinned down by the path of my body through a world of outer things -
> refutation makes clear that imaginations of outer objects - dreams and
> delusions - have objective validity but not objective reality, as I argued
Jim Pierce
Cartesian view of 'self'.
HPO Jury = America
How did you come to the conclusion that Kant was a Cartesian? Did you
read it somewhere.
--
"Certain questions, which one frequently hears,
are not philosophical queries, but psychological
confessions." Ayn Rand in "Check Your Premises."
HPO Jury = America
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>The traditional “refutation” of idealism, (attributed to a “Dr. Johnson” as
>a refutation of Bishop George Berkeley’s version of idealism) suggests that,
>to “disprove” idealism, all one has to do is kick something (or someone). As
>if to say, “oh, so you don’t believe in matter; then this shouldn’t hurt a
>bit! But, herein lies the problem. The only evidence sited for matter is
>“experience.”
>
>Remember when Hume referred to both "inward and outward sentiment?" He meant
>we have the experience of stuff going on inside of us and the experience of
>stuff going of outside of us. Both are experiences! Recall Kant's synthetic
>a priori knowledge--the 12 categories including space and time, which filter
>the Noumena into Phenomena.
Translated: the categories filter the Moral realm into the Physical
realm. Does it make better sense when properly translated? No. Did the
OP mean it that way? No. Then what did he mean?
>It is very similar here. In both cases there is
>"something" outside that is then put into the minds structure and turned
>into an experience. In both cases you can say that "you are not reading this
>text" and be perfectly accurate! After Kant wrote his main book explaining
>how the mind constructs our experience of the phenomenal realm, philosophers
>began wondering what justification is there for the noumena? The Idealists
>answer is, there can be no justification from experience.
>
>http://commhum.mccneb.edu/dweber/101%20INTRO/Workbook/Chpt-3/3-2%20Idealism.htm
I see. So the OP ascribes Reality to the "noumenal realm," and
Ideality to the "phenomenal realm." But the ideality of phenomena,
which was Berkeley's claim, is the exact opposite of Kant's argument.
If the noumenal realm is real, then why are the Ideas found there?
Aren't the Ideas -- Ideal? Isn't that why Kant called them "Ideas"?
Think now: given what I just wrote, is the Noumenal real, or ideal?
>Refutation of Idealism - Kant argues that temporal judgments about one’s own
>states require reference to objects which endure in a way that mental
>representations themselves do not, and therefore that consciousness of
>oneself also implies consciousness of objects external to oneself [B 275–6]
>also [B xxxix–xli].
>
>http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/DB047SECT7
No, consciousness of the self does not imply consciousness of external
objects. Kant said, "the consciousness of my existence is at the same
time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things
outside me." Do you see the word "imply" there?
(Oddly enough, the OP quoted that in the portion I snipped, but
apparently he didn't lend it much credence. Kant's own words, for some
reason, do not count.)
<snip>
>The first sort of skepticism, which questions, for any given perception,
>whether we can distinguish it from a mere imagination, doesn’t seem to
>trouble Kant. This, he says “must be ascertained according to its particular
>determinations and through its coherence with the criteria of all actual
>experience.” In other words,
Uh oh, interpreting again...
>if we can tell that a particular perceptual
>experience is actually a perception and not merely an imagination, we will
>be able to do so only by comparing it with the objects to which it appears
>to be related and by determining whether the experience is coherent with the
>rest of our experiences. Kant’s indifference to this skeptical worry is
>unsurprising given that the first Critique is less concerned with questions
>of the very possibility of experience about which justificatory questions
>might then be raised.
"To know an object I must be able to prove its possibility, either
from its actuality as attested by experience, or a priori by means of
reason." (CPR)
Jim Pierce
"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:jg4e70hv3ndjpqiou...@4ax.com...
> How did you come to the conclusion that Kant was a Cartesian? Did you
> read it somewhere.
I didn't draw any such conclusion. However, Kant seemingly assumed that what
counted as "self" was not physical. We can all certainly thank Descartes for
popularizing that myth.
The Sophist
I don't know if thanks are in order, but the discussion in "Phaedo"
doesn't strike me as in any way ambiguous. While many religious
traditions which are presently interpreted as believing in souls
probably didn't believe anything of the kind at the time, Plato does
seem to have hit on this one first, so I always wonder why he doesn't
get the credit or blame, as the case may be.
--
Aaron Boyden
"I may have done this and that for sufferers; but always I seemed to
have done better when I learned to feel better joys."
-Thus spoke Zarathustra
Immortalist
"Jim Pierce" <nospamja...@speakeasy.net> wrote in message
news:EeqdnSv8WPX...@speakeasy.net...
Wouldn't he say that the self was a "physical process" much like digestion
or metabolism is? When senseory intuitions are conditioned are they physical
processes of neural tissues?
>
HPO Jury = America
<nospamja...@speakeasy.net> wrote:
>
>"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:jg4e70hv3ndjpqiou...@4ax.com...
>
>> How did you come to the conclusion that Kant was a Cartesian? Did you
>> read it somewhere.
>
>I didn't draw any such conclusion.
Then how do you explain this statement: "Kant could have saved time if
he just would have abandoned the ridicilous Cartesian view of 'self'."
Such a basic view would certainly make Kant into a Cartesian
philosopher.
>However, Kant seemingly assumed that what
>counted as "self" was not physical. We can all certainly thank Descartes for
>popularizing that myth.
I don't know what you mean by "counted as 'self'," but we can thank
Democritus for popularizing the myth that the self is primarily
material.
But you didn't positively say what Kant thought of the "self," only
that it was NOT physical. He definitely battled against materialism.
However, he didn't say the self was spiritual either.
Immortalist
> On Fri, 9 Apr 2004 08:51:38 -0700, "Immortalist"
> <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >The traditional "refutation" of idealism, (attributed to a "Dr. Johnson"
as
> >a refutation of Bishop George Berkeley's version of idealism) suggests
that,
> >to "disprove" idealism, all one has to do is kick something (or someone).
As
> >if to say, "oh, so you don't believe in matter; then this shouldn't hurt
a
> >bit! But, herein lies the problem. The only evidence sited for matter is
> >"experience."
> >
> >Remember when Hume referred to both "inward and outward sentiment?" He
meant
> >we have the experience of stuff going on inside of us and the experience
of
> >stuff going of outside of us. Both are experiences! Recall Kant's
synthetic
> >a priori knowledge--the 12 categories including space and time, which
filter
> >the Noumena into Phenomena.
>
> Translated: the categories filter the Moral realm into the Physical
> realm. Does it make better sense when properly translated? No. Did the
> OP mean it that way? No. Then what did he mean?
>
: > > Recall Kant's synthetic a priori knowledge--
: > > the 12 categories including space and time,
: > > which filter the Noumena into Phenomena.
That statement caught me off guard, can it be said that simply? Wouldn't
"filter" be better called "condition"
But I want to add concepts and "representations of representations"
[interactions of different lobes and areas of the brain] into one tight
sentence. What would be your one sentence that could explain Kant's position
most accurately?
> >It is very similar here. In both cases there is
> >"something" outside that is then put into the minds structure and turned
> >into an experience. In both cases you can say that "you are not reading
this
> >text" and be perfectly accurate! After Kant wrote his main book
explaining
> >how the mind constructs our experience of the phenomenal realm,
philosophers
> >began wondering what justification is there for the noumena? The
Idealists
> >answer is, there can be no justification from experience.
> >
>
>http://commhum.mccneb.edu/dweber/101%20INTRO/Workbook/Chpt-3/3-2%20Idealism
.htm
>
> I see. So the OP ascribes Reality to the "noumenal realm," and
> Ideality to the "phenomenal realm." But the ideality of phenomena,
> which was Berkeley's claim, is the exact opposite of Kant's argument.
>
> If the noumenal realm is real, then why are the Ideas found there?
> Aren't the Ideas -- Ideal? Isn't that why Kant called them "Ideas"?
> Think now: given what I just wrote, is the Noumenal real, or ideal?
>
The Noumenal is "necessary" for the phenomenal? But neural processes are
necessary Noumenal events for the phenomenal processes?
> >Refutation of Idealism - Kant argues that temporal judgments about one's
own
> >states require reference to objects which endure in a way that mental
> >representations themselves do not, and therefore that consciousness of
> >oneself also implies consciousness of objects external to oneself [B
275-6]
> >also [B xxxix-xli].
> >
> >http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/DB047SECT7
>
> No, consciousness of the self does not imply consciousness of external
> objects. Kant said, "the consciousness of my existence is at the same
> time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things
> outside me." Do you see the word "imply" there?
>
> (Oddly enough, the OP quoted that in the portion I snipped, but
> apparently he didn't lend it much credence. Kant's own words, for some
> reason, do not count.)
>
The required proof must, therefore, show that we have experience, and not
merely imagination of outer things; and this, it would seem, cannot be
achieved save by proof that even our inner experience, which for Descartes
is indubitable, is possible only on the assumption of outer experience.
THESIS
The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence
proves the existence of objects in space outside me.
Proof
I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time. All determination
of time presupposes something permanent in perception. This permanent
cannot, however, be something in me, since it is only through this permanent
that my existence in time can itself be determined.
Thus perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing outside
me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me; and
consequently the determination of my existence in time is possible only
through the existence of actual things which I perceive outside me. [B276]
Now consciousness [of my existence] in time is necessarily bound up with
consciousness of the [condition of the] possibility of this
time-determination; and it is therefore necessarily bound up with the
existence of things outside me, as the condition of the time-determination.
In other words, the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an
immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me.
Type in page 244
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
I am quoting [B] and was trying to find your sentence. Are you quoting [A]?
> <snip>
>
> >The first sort of skepticism, which questions, for any given perception,
> >whether we can distinguish it from a mere imagination, doesn't seem to
> >trouble Kant. This, he says "must be ascertained according to its
particular
> >determinations and through its coherence with the criteria of all actual
> >experience." In other words,
>
> Uh oh, interpreting again...
>
Are all actual experiences the activities of nerve cells?
> >if we can tell that a particular perceptual
> >experience is actually a perception and not merely an imagination, we
will
> >be able to do so only by comparing it with the objects to which it
appears
> >to be related and by determining whether the experience is coherent with
the
> >rest of our experiences. Kant's indifference to this skeptical worry is
> >unsurprising given that the first Critique is less concerned with
questions
> >of the very possibility of experience about which justificatory questions
> >might then be raised.
>
> "To know an object I must be able to prove its possibility, either
> from its actuality as attested by experience, or a priori by means of
> reason." (CPR)
>
Therefore he refutes Realism because he has shown we can't go that far, I
mean his claim that we cannot reach "complete_certainty?"
>
> --
>
> "Certain questions, which one frequently hears,
> are not philosophical queries, but psychological
> confessions." Ayn Rand in "Check Your Premises."
I love to read Kant but am confused about Rand's take on it. This neither
makes me oppose nor support her position.
HPO Jury = America
It can't be done from a physicalist standpoint, which I now realize is
your interpretation.
There is only one standpoint at work here: the Kantian. But you could
call it a form of intellectualism, I suppose.
I know it's difficult for people not to interpret Kant in accordance
with their previous experiences, beliefs, and philosophy. However,
what Kant is talking about is not interactions within the brain, but
interactions between intellectual faculties. Its standpoint is the
pure intellect, not even "mind," but intellect. It is as if he was
asking, if the human being were a pure intellect in a physical body,
what would this pure intellect be like? And he's not claiming that the
two are separable, only that one can be taken up into studied,
reflective consideration as if the other, the physical component of
the human being, were completely and totally absent.
I think it was Kant's contention that there is a pure intellect as an
integral element within each of us -- but not a spirit per se, this
isn't spiritism -- that this pure intellect has parts and functions
just like anything real (and he did ascribe reality to this
intellect); and that these parts function by interacting with each
other in a rather "intellectually causal" way, that is, using causal
rules that are not physically causal, but intellectually. Thus, the
rules that govern these intellectual activities are rational, and
determinable by Critical analysis of their various functions. Such
an analysis is not extrospective, and not really introspective; it is
reflective, it reflects on those basic, invisible concepts which
operate "behind the scenes" of each and every thought and
conscious experience.
So obviously, from what I wrote there, it is not about the interacting
of the physical external realm with the senses, and then into the
brain, where somehow or other conscious experience is generated.
It is abouit the basic functioning of the intellect per se, that is,
purely.
This is accomplished through transcendental logic, which is just a
fancy way of saying that Kant has distinguished, in each and every
judgment (not sentence or proposition, but judgment) a form, a
concept, and a material aspect. The formal and conceptual aspects
he considered the intellectual, the a priori; the material he
considered the a posteriori, those representations which possess
the matter of consciousness. Kantian Critique separates out the
intellectual from the material elements of conscious experience, and
considers only the intellectual, the forms, concepts, and ideas, which
provide the basis, the fundamental form and structure, of all rational
thought.
As long as you're studying Kant for comprehension, you must put aside
all modernistic assumptions of physicalism or materialism. If you
don't, you will be forever confused about the subject.
Kant wouldn't call it "assumption."
>THESIS
>
>The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence
>proves the existence of objects in space outside me.
>
>Proof
>
>I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time. All determination
>of time presupposes something permanent in perception. This permanent
>cannot, however, be something in me, since it is only through this permanent
>that my existence in time can itself be determined.
>
>Thus perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing outside
>me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me; and
>consequently the determination of my existence in time is possible only
>through the existence of actual things which I perceive outside me. [B276]
>
>Now consciousness [of my existence] in time is necessarily bound up with
>consciousness of the [condition of the] possibility of this
>time-determination; and it is therefore necessarily bound up with the
>existence of things outside me, as the condition of the time-determination.
>In other words, the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an
>immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me.
>
>Type in page 244
>http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
>
>I am quoting [B] and was trying to find your sentence. Are you quoting [A]?
That "Refutation" is only found in the B edition.
Let's assume, for a moment, that the perception of my own existence is
determined merely through representations of things outside me. What
would that experience be like? The world around me would be as
fleeting as a passing thought. There would be little or no connection
between time A and time B, no thorough-going sense of permanence
to guide and connect my perceptions. The fact that I even have the
capacity to make time-determinations of my inner representations is
that which makes the existence of an external world, not even a bit
doubtful, but absolutely indubitable.
>> <snip>
>>
>> >The first sort of skepticism, which questions, for any given perception,
>> >whether we can distinguish it from a mere imagination, doesn't seem to
>> >trouble Kant. This, he says "must be ascertained according to its
>particular
>> >determinations and through its coherence with the criteria of all actual
>> >experience." In other words,
>>
>> Uh oh, interpreting again...
>>
>
>Are all actual experiences the activities of nerve cells?
The question is irrelevant if we can productively consider the human
being to be an active, pure intellect. Furthermore, if physicalism was
the answer, then it would only be a theoretical, contingent answer, so
we could never be certain if physicalism was the truth or not. That is
why it is necessary to consider man to be a pure intellect, at least
for the questions raised here. That's not to assert that man is a pure
intellect, or to make any faith-based spiritual claims.
>> >if we can tell that a particular perceptual
>> >experience is actually a perception and not merely an imagination, we
>will
>> >be able to do so only by comparing it with the objects to which it
>appears
>> >to be related and by determining whether the experience is coherent with
>the
>> >rest of our experiences. Kant's indifference to this skeptical worry is
>> >unsurprising given that the first Critique is less concerned with
>questions
>> >of the very possibility of experience about which justificatory questions
>> >might then be raised.
>>
>> "To know an object I must be able to prove its possibility, either
>> from its actuality as attested by experience, or a priori by means of
>> reason." (CPR)
>>
>
>Therefore he refutes Realism because he has shown we can't go that far, I
>mean his claim that we cannot reach "complete_certainty?"
Thanks for shortening up your argument, it was too long for usenet,
and we don't all have the time to read everything.
I'm not sure however what you mean by "Realism," whether it's intended
Platonically or in the modern sense (realism vs. nominalism). But a
transcendental idealist is not opposed to empirical realism, these are
just two sides of the same coin.
>> "Certain questions, which one frequently hears,
>> are not philosophical queries, but psychological
>> confessions." Ayn Rand in "Check Your Premises."
>
>I love to read Kant but am confused about Rand's take on it. This neither
>makes me oppose nor support her position.
>
Ayn Rand did not understand Kant. And why should she? She only needed
a 'Satan' to make her religion complete.
HPO Jury = America
<Male...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>That statement caught me off guard, can it be said that simply? Wouldn't
>>"filter" be better called "condition"
>>
>>But I want to add concepts and "representations of representations"
>>[interactions of different lobes and areas of the brain] into one tight
>>sentence. What would be your one sentence that could explain Kant's position
>>most accurately?
>
>It can't be done from a physicalist standpoint, which I now realize is
>your interpretation.
>
>There is only one standpoint at work here: the Kantian. But you could
>call it a form of intellectualism, I suppose.
http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/intellectualism
2. The doctrine that knowledge is derived from pure reason.
That's not the best definition, but it'll do for now.
Tony Thomas
as
> a refutation of Bishop George Berkeley's version of idealism) suggests
that,
> to "disprove" idealism, all one has to do is kick something (or someone).
As
> if to say, "oh, so you don't believe in matter; then this shouldn't hurt a
> bit! But, herein lies the problem. The only evidence sited for matter is
> "experience."
>
> Remember when Hume referred to both "inward and outward sentiment?" He
meant
> we have the experience of stuff going on inside of us and the experience
of
> stuff going of outside of us.
But how are inside and outside to be reliably defined?
I can assign 'inside' to certain experiences and 'outside' to others but
such a classification
does not establish that there 'is' an outside or an inside.
Both are experiences!
And of equal status from a phenomenological point of view. A third category
(consciousness) is present in either case.
> Refutation of Idealism - Kant argues that temporal judgments about one's
own
> states require reference to objects which endure in a way that mental
> representations themselves do not, and therefore that consciousness of
> oneself also implies consciousness of objects external to oneself [B
275-6]
> also [B xxxix-xli].
The inside world persist as well as the outside world. On waking, external
events (including bodily functions) appear to have changed (eg clocks,
growth of beard) but mental processes too change as well (the reclloection
of a dream or other discontinuity). There are no 'objects' which are not
external to the self. In this sense, the sense has no existence at all
beyond being the focus of consciousness.
> When the Critique of Pure Reason was first published Kant was horrified
when
> some critics took him to be proposing a form of idealism not unlike, for
> example, Berkeley's notorious immaterialism. On the face of it, it
wouldn't
> be utterly silly, given the arguments of the Aesthetic and Analytic, to
> suppose that Kant was claiming that we construct the 'real world' in a way
> determined by the nature of our sensory and intellectual apparatus, and
that
> therefore there was simply no such thing as the 'real world'.
The point is that it is constructed on our behalf whether we will it or no.
For example, we learn language as a natural process as opposed to
voluntarily acquiring it.
However Kant
> insists that this is not what he is arguing, and in the second edition he
> adds a short section, 'The Refutation of Idealism', where he argues
against
> what he calls material idealism and distinguishes it from transcendental
> idealism.
He renames it twice. The first term, 'material idealism' is a contradiction
in terms; the second name is an affirmatiuon of idealism, namely the
grounding of the world in the mind rather than in the non-mind. It is
impossible to know anything without mind, so it is impossible to know either
a material world or an illusory one without this (hypothetical) knowing
faculty. If we forbid the concept 'mind', the world appears untainted by
dualism.
Tony Thomas
HPO Jury = America
In other words, the spontaneity of understanding brings unity to our
experiences. But the word "constructed" doesn't bear with it any
involuntary connotations; we construct things, such as systems of
thought, willfully. Experience is not constructed, it is a given,
systematic whole. It requires an effort of intellectual will to
deconstruct and analyze it. This given experience is distilled into
matter and form, then the formal aspect is analyzed further until a
bottom is reached: space, time, and the categories, systematized by
reason.
>
> However Kant
>> insists that this is not what he is arguing, and in the second edition he
>> adds a short section, 'The Refutation of Idealism', where he argues
>against
>> what he calls material idealism and distinguishes it from transcendental
>> idealism.
>
>He renames it twice. The first term, 'material idealism' is a contradiction
>in terms; the second name is an affirmatiuon of idealism, namely the
>grounding of the world in the mind rather than in the non-mind. It is
>impossible to know anything without mind, so it is impossible to know either
>a material world or an illusory one without this (hypothetical) knowing
>faculty. If we forbid the concept 'mind', the world appears untainted by
>dualism.
>
The problem is, the word "mind" has psychologistic connotations.
But there is a certain dualism which runs as a thread throughout
all of Kant's Critical works. This dualism is brought to unity
intellectually through the rational Ideas, and practically, through
the creation of a Kingdom of Ends.
Immortalist
Text in quotes is Kant from CPR:
"By means of outer sense, a property of our mind, we represent to ourselves
objects as outside us, and all without exception in space. In space their
shape, magnitude, and relation to one another are determined or
determinable."
So to claim that this property of the mind in which spacial geography is
(represented), is not so represented in neural activities is preposterous.
Just because our modern science allows us to see this is no good reason to
claim Kant would deny it it if he knew what we do and how right he was about
the psychology of his time.
Actually didn't he create what we know about this by making these necessay
conditions for it to be in the first place? I mean he technically created
the necessary conditions for neuroscience. Not to confuse material nerve
cells with "the activities of nerve cells." The activities of nerve cells
and not the nerve cells themselves, are the corresponding parts of Kant's
philosophy and modern neurophysiology.
"Inner sense, by means of which the mind intuits itself or its inner state,
yields indeed no intuition of the soul itself as an object; but there is
nevertheless a determinate form [namely, time] in A23 which alone the
intuition of inner states is possible, and everything which belongs to inner
determinations is therefore represented in relations of time. Time cannot be
outwardly intuited, any more than space can be intuited as something in us."
So we would agree that a hunk of meatware ticks off no time, but the
activities of this meat may. We must reconcile Kant and other philosophers
to see how close they were to what has turned out to be. So why resist, lets
see just see how close he is and not throw the baby out with the bathwater
right yet.
"1. Space is not an empirical concept which has been derived from outer
experiences. For in order that certain sensations be referred to something
outside me (that is, to something in another region of space from that in
which I find myself), and similarly in order that I may be able to represent
them as outside and alongside one another, and accordingly as not only
different but as in different places, the representation of space must be
presupposed. The representation of space cannot, therefore, be empirically
obtained from the relations of outer appearance. On the contrary, this outer
experience is itself possible at all only through that representation."
Now would this here support the notion that the activities of nerve cells
create a virtual space which is experienced by us as genuine spacial
dimensions in which virtual objects can move around in? You hold back this
possibility by trying to revive and sustain some old psychology bullshit.
"2. Space is a necessary a priori representation, which A24 underlies all
outer intuitions. We can never represent to ourselves the absence of space,
though we can quite well think it as empty of objects. It must therefore be
regarded as the condition B39 of the possibility of appearances, and not as
a determination dependent upon them. It is an a priori representation, which
necessarily underlies outer appearances."
I love this (representation) shit dude. One of my favorite neurophysiology
books frequently used a Kantian version of (re-re-presentation) in relation
to concepts and all. Kant's attention to presentation is awesome but also
Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.
Material in the Quotes above Page 67 (CPR)
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
> There is only one standpoint at work here: the Kantian. But you could
> call it a form of intellectualism, I suppose.
>
Sounds more like some advanced ploy to constrict others and you have found
through trial and error that it stops some materialist assholes or something
and they stop replying?
> I know it's difficult for people not to interpret Kant in accordance
> with their previous experiences, beliefs, and philosophy. However,
> what Kant is talking about is not interactions within the brain, but
> interactions between intellectual faculties. Its standpoint is the
> pure intellect, not even "mind," but intellect. It is as if he was
> asking, if the human being were a pure intellect in a physical body,
> what would this pure intellect be like? And he's not claiming that the
> two are separable, only that one can be taken up into studied,
> reflective consideration as if the other, the physical component of
> the human being, were completely and totally absent.
>
"Sensationalism had declared: All ideas and consequently all truths, to
whatever order they may belong, are derived from the senses (and
reflection); reason does not create them, it receives them."
"Intellectualism, on the other hand, had asserted: All our ideas and
consequently all truths whatsoever are the product of reason."
http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Weber%20-%20History/Kant%20and%20German%20Idealism.htm
Neurophisiology happens to be closer to Intellectualism since most of it's
adherents would claim that Ideas come from interactions and activities of
nerve cells in_the_brain not the activity of the nerve cells in the sensory
apperatus and their connections to the brain. Sense intuitions can influence
the conditioning of ideas by neurological structure equivalent to the
categories.
You are hasty in your judgement and trying to confuse contemporary
neurophysiology with 18th century psychology.
"So-called outer perception is merely an elementary speculation; the
thinking subject is wholly active, and even in cases where it imagines that
it receives, it creates. Criticism agrees with sensationalism in holding
that our ideas, without exception, are given by sensation; but, it adds,
their matter or material alone is given, their form is the product of
reason: in this respect Intellectualism has the right on its side."
"In other words, it distinguishes, in every idea, a material element, which
is furnished a posteriori by the senses, and a formal element, furnished a
priori by thought.
"Every science, therefore, or philosophy, consists of two parts: a pure,
rational, or speculative part, and an empirical part. Hence, criticism
recognizes the partial truth of two systems and two methods; and
consequently repudiates the pretentious claim of either side to possess
absolute truth and to employ the only possible method. It is both idealistic
and realistic, and yet, strictly speaking, neither one nor the other."
Material in the quotes from:
http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Weber%20-%20History/Kant%20and%20German%20Idealism.htm
> I think it was Kant's contention that there is a pure intellect as an
> integral element within each of us -- but not a spirit per se, this
> isn't spiritism -- that this pure intellect has parts and functions
> just like anything real (and he did ascribe reality to this
> intellect); and that these parts function by interacting with each
> other in a rather "intellectually causal" way, that is, using causal
> rules that are not physically causal, but intellectually. Thus, the
> rules that govern these intellectual activities are rational, and
> determinable by Critical analysis of their various functions. Such
> an analysis is not extrospective, and not really introspective; it is
> reflective, it reflects on those basic, invisible concepts which
> operate "behind the scenes" of each and every thought and
> conscious experience.
>
Dude I think you should seriously reconsider your position for you be
holding some people back who listen to you. You may yet convince me of what
you say and I will abandon Kant once and for all, but you are far from that
with this explaination above.
> So obviously, from what I wrote there, it is not about the interacting
> of the physical external realm with the senses, and then into the
> brain, where somehow or other conscious experience is generated.
> It is abouit the basic functioning of the intellect per se, that is,
> purely.
>
Right, you mean the activities of nerve cells in the brain? Do people still
believe the sense data cause all this, man what century you thinkin? Kants
way out ahead of you and those assholes, just open up and consider this.
> This is accomplished through transcendental logic, which is just a
> fancy way of saying that Kant has distinguished, in each and every
> judgment (not sentence or proposition, but judgment) a form, a
> concept, and a material aspect. The formal and conceptual aspects
> he considered the intellectual, the a priori; the material he
> considered the a posteriori, those representations which possess
> the matter of consciousness. Kantian Critique separates out the
> intellectual from the material elements of conscious experience, and
> considers only the intellectual, the forms, concepts, and ideas, which
> provide the basis, the fundamental form and structure, of all rational
> thought.
>
Right, seperates out the physical structure of the nerve cells from the
activities of those neve cells? He is talking about "circuit properties" not
material properties right? Your treading dangerous ground by making it sound
like current research has nothing to offer or ever will, shame on you,
guilty by Jury=.
> As long as you're studying Kant for comprehension, you must put aside
> all modernistic assumptions of physicalism or materialism. If you
> don't, you will be forever confused about the subject.
>
I will put away nothing. Obviously ou know the Critique better than me and
that is commendable. I am studying the Critique as the first succesfull
textbook on neurophysiology. Like a new edition of Locke's very first
textbook on neurphysiology in the history of the human race loc. But I am
open, try and convince me.
But he did because that is the last four or five lines on the bottom of page
244. But I don't play on peoples mistakes and don't care because this ain't
a classroom, but continue to try and convince me that Kant was not talking
about the "activities of the nerve cells" in most of the Critique.
Love that kinda stuff, it just makes Locke look like an old fasioned
psychologist! I was talking with a buddy JJ about the necessary
non-awareness of moments. Some text in first paragraph from some page;
[Kant argues that moments of time are not possible objects
of perception and thus temporal judgments must be grounded
in some feature of our representations and if it is possible
to base a temporal judgement on some feature of our
representations, then certain synthetic apriori principles
must be true.]
(is this like single frames in a movie strip are not perceptable but motion
between and amoungst_frames_passing is? [in quotes below from CPR])
"...Experience is an empirical knowledge, that is, a knowledge which
determines an object through perceptions. It is a synthesis of perceptions,
not contained in perception but itself containing in one consciousness the
synthetic unity of the manifold of perceptions."
"This synthetic unity constitutes the essential in any knowledge of objects
of the senses, that is, in experience as distinguished from mere intuition
or sensation B219 of the senses. In experience, however, perceptions come
together only in accidental order, so that no necessity determining their
connection is or can be revealed in the perceptions themselves.
For apprehension is only a placing together of the manifold of empirical
intuition; and we can find in it no representation of any necessity which
determines the appearances thus combined to have connected existence in
space and time."
"But since experience is a knowledge of objects through perceptions, the
relation [involved] in the existence of the manifold has to be represented
in experience, not as it comes to be constructed in time but as it exists
objectively in time."
"Since time, however, cannot itself be perceived, the determination of the
existence of objects in time can take place only through their relation in
time in general, and therefore only through concepts that connect them a
priori."
"Since these always carry necessity with them, it follows that experience is
only possible through a representation of necessary connection of
perceptions."
"The three modes of time are duration, succession, and coexistence. There
will, therefore, be three rules of all relations of appearances in time, and
these rules will be prior to all experience, and indeed make it possible."
"By means of these rules the existence of every appearance can be determined
in respect of the unity of all time."
Punch in page 208 in the Kant computer:
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
But I admit I am making these interpretations up, help me out.
> >> <snip>
> >>
> >> >The first sort of skepticism, which questions, for any given
perception,
> >> >whether we can distinguish it from a mere imagination, doesn't seem to
> >> >trouble Kant. This, he says "must be ascertained according to its
> >particular
> >> >determinations and through its coherence with the criteria of all
actual
> >> >experience." In other words,
> >>
> >> Uh oh, interpreting again...
> >>
> >
> >Are all actual experiences the activities of nerve cells?
>
> The question is irrelevant if we can productively consider the human
> being to be an active, pure intellect. Furthermore, if physicalism was
> the answer, then it would only be a theoretical, contingent answer, so
> we could never be certain if physicalism was the truth or not. That is
> why it is necessary to consider man to be a pure intellect, at least
> for the questions raised here. That's not to assert that man is a pure
> intellect, or to make any faith-based spiritual claims.
>
(Once again) "Sensationalism had declared: All ideas and consequently all
truths, to whatever order they may belong, are derived from the senses (and
reflection); reason does not create them, it receives them."
"Intellectualism, on the other hand, had asserted: All our ideas and
consequently all truths whatsoever are the product of reason."
http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Weber%20-%20History/Kant%20and%20German%20Idealism.htm
Neurophisiology happens to be closer to Intellectualism since most of it's
adherents would claim that Ideas come from interactions and activities of
nerve cells in_the_brain not the activity of the nerve cells in the sensory
apperatus and their connections to the brain. Sense intuitions can influence
the conditioning of ideas by neurological structure equivalent to the
categories.
"Thus all controversy in regard to the nature of the thinking being and its
connection with the corporeal world is merely a result of filling the gap
where knowledge is wholly lacking to us with paralogisms of reason, treating
our thoughts as things and hypostatising them."
"Hence originates an imaginary science, imaginary both in the case of him
who affirms and of him who denies, since all parties either suppose some
knowledge of objects of which no human being has any concept, or treat their
own representations as objects, and so revolve in a perpetual circle of
ambiguities and contradictions."
"Nothing but the sobriety of a critique, at once strict and just, can free
us from this dogmatic delusion, which through the lure of an imagined
felicity keeps so many in bondage to theories and systems."
"Such a critique confines all our speculative claims rigidly to the field of
possible experience; and it does this not by shallow scoffing at
ever-repeated failures or pious sighs over the limits of our reason, but by
an effective determining of these limits in accordance with established
principles, inscribing its nihil ulterius on those Pillars of Hercules which
nature herself has erected in order that the voyage of our reason may be
extended no further than the continuous coastline of experience A396 itself
reaches -- a coast we cannot leave without venturing upon a shoreless ocean
which, after alluring us with ever- deceptive prospects, compels us in the
end to abandon as hopeless all this vexatious and tedious endeavour."
Page 361 (CPR)
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
Let us say gain complete certainty about either idealism or realism would be
to venture out beyond the horizon on the high seas without going there.
Gotta love Kant's middle grounds cutting off the extremes almost like
Aristotle.
> >> "Certain questions, which one frequently hears,
> >> are not philosophical queries, but psychological
> >> confessions." Ayn Rand in "Check Your Premises."
> >
> >I love to read Kant but am confused about Rand's take on it. This neither
> >makes me oppose nor support her position.
> >
>
> Ayn Rand did not understand Kant. And why should she? She only needed
> a 'Satan' to make her religion complete.
> --
What did she think of neurophysiology?
HPO Jury = America
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
You seem upset. However, I'm only saying that Kant was not a
physicalist, nor a psychologist, but an intellectualist. But thanks
for calling it "advanced" anyway.
What neuro-physiologists want to make out of it is their own concern.
But look at it this way: You are trying to constrict my view to the
neuro-physiological. Nothing in your Kant quotes indicates that Kant
was arguing from that, or even for that.
If you want to argue from physiology, then you are left with the usual
empirical reduction leading to infinity, with no firm foundation.
Because even if physiology has something to do with Kantian Critique,
then the next question is: why is our physiology giving us these
spatial constructs? Evolution? How did evolution come into play here,
and why? Where does evolution begin and end? Pretty soon, you'll be
back to playing philosopher instead of scientist in order to find a
final stopping-point for all your questions.
But Kant has already provided that stopping-point in his
intellectualist theory of the a priori.
>> I know it's difficult for people not to interpret Kant in accordance
>> with their previous experiences, beliefs, and philosophy. However,
>> what Kant is talking about is not interactions within the brain, but
>> interactions between intellectual faculties. Its standpoint is the
>> pure intellect, not even "mind," but intellect. It is as if he was
>> asking, if the human being were a pure intellect in a physical body,
>> what would this pure intellect be like? And he's not claiming that the
>> two are separable, only that one can be taken up into studied,
>> reflective consideration as if the other, the physical component of
>> the human being, were completely and totally absent.
>>
>
>"Sensationalism had declared: All ideas and consequently all truths, to
>whatever order they may belong, are derived from the senses (and
>reflection); reason does not create them, it receives them."
>
>"Intellectualism, on the other hand, had asserted: All our ideas and
>consequently all truths whatsoever are the product of reason."
>
>http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Weber%20-%20History/Kant%20and%20German%20Idealism.htm
>
>Neurophisiology happens to be closer to Intellectualism since most of it's
>adherents would claim that Ideas come from interactions and activities of
>nerve cells in_the_brain not the activity of the nerve cells in the sensory
>apperatus and their connections to the brain. Sense intuitions can influence
>the conditioning of ideas by neurological structure equivalent to the
>categories.
You are trying to constrict me into your physicalist categories.
Nobody is trying to step on your toes here. Kant is providing an a
priori intellectual foundation for all knowledge, including of course
the scientific. He is making no scientific claims per se, or basing
his arguments in any sciences, because the foundation cannot be
based on the structure it supports.
Axx: " What reason produces entirely out of itself cannot be
concealed, but is brought to light by reason itself immediately the
common principle has been discovered. The complete unity of this
kind of knowledge, and the fact that it is derived solely from pure
concepts, ENTIRELY UNINFLUENCED BY ANY EXPERIENCE or by
special intuition, such as might lead to any determinate experience
that would enlarge and increase it, make this unconditioned
completeness not only practicable but also necessary."
From now on, when you see the term "a priori," think "intellectual
foundation," or "foundational."
>> So obviously, from what I wrote there, it is not about the interacting
>> of the physical external realm with the senses, and then into the
>> brain, where somehow or other conscious experience is generated.
>> It is abouit the basic functioning of the intellect per se, that is,
>> purely.
>>
>
>Right, you mean the activities of nerve cells in the brain? Do people still
>believe the sense data cause all this, man what century you thinkin? Kants
>way out ahead of you and those assholes, just open up and consider this.
>
>> This is accomplished through transcendental logic, which is just a
>> fancy way of saying that Kant has distinguished, in each and every
>> judgment (not sentence or proposition, but judgment) a form, a
>> concept, and a material aspect. The formal and conceptual aspects
>> he considered the intellectual, the a priori; the material he
>> considered the a posteriori, those representations which possess
>> the matter of consciousness. Kantian Critique separates out the
>> intellectual from the material elements of conscious experience, and
>> considers only the intellectual, the forms, concepts, and ideas, which
>> provide the basis, the fundamental form and structure, of all rational
>> thought.
>>
>
>Right, seperates out the physical structure of the nerve cells from the
>activities of those neve cells?
No.
>He is talking about "circuit properties" not
>material properties right?
No.
>Your treading dangerous ground by making it sound
>like current research has nothing to offer or ever will, shame on you,
>guilty by Jury=.
No, the research has falsifiable truths to offer. But even these
truths must be based in an a priori foundation in order to be
considered truths even contingently.
>> >
>> >The required proof must, therefore, show that we have experience, and not
>> >merely imagination of outer things; and this, it would seem, cannot be
>> >achieved save by proof that even our inner experience, which for
>Descartes
>> >is indubitable, is possible only on the assumption of outer experience.
>>
>> Kant wouldn't call it "assumption."
>>
>
>But he did because that is the last four or five lines on the bottom of page
>244. But I don't play on peoples mistakes and don't care because this ain't
>a classroom, but continue to try and convince me that Kant was not talking
>about the "activities of the nerve cells" in most of the Critique.
Stop trying to constrict me, asshole.
>Type in page 244
>http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
>
>> That "Refutation" is only found in the B edition.
>>
>> Let's assume, for a moment, that the perception of my own existence is
>> determined merely through representations of things outside me. What
>> would that experience be like? The world around me would be as
>> fleeting as a passing thought. There would be little or no connection
>> between time A and time B, no thorough-going sense of permanence
>> to guide and connect my perceptions. The fact that I even have the
>> capacity to make time-determinations of my inner representations is
>> that which makes the existence of an external world, not even a bit
>> doubtful, but absolutely indubitable.
>>
>
>Love that kinda stuff, it just makes Locke look like an old fasioned
>psychologist! I was talking with a buddy JJ about the necessary
>non-awareness of moments. Some text in first paragraph from some page;
>
>[Kant argues that moments of time are not possible objects
>of perception and thus temporal judgments must be grounded
>in some feature of our representations and if it is possible
>to base a temporal judgement on some feature of our
>representations, then certain synthetic apriori principles
>must be true.]
>
>(is this like single frames in a movie strip are not perceptable but motion
>between and amoungst_frames_passing is? [in quotes below from CPR])
I see at best a very rough analogy there.
Ok. If you believe the neuro-physiologist's standpoint, then you have
sacrificed all a priori necessity ["Since these (concepts) always
carry necessity with them..."] in favor of the concepts of falsifiable
science.
>> The question is irrelevant if we can productively consider the human
>> being to be an active, pure intellect. Furthermore, if physicalism was
>> the answer, then it would only be a theoretical, contingent answer, so
>> we could never be certain if physicalism was the truth or not. That is
>> why it is necessary to consider man to be a pure intellect, at least
>> for the questions raised here. That's not to assert that man is a pure
>> intellect, or to make any faith-based spiritual claims.
>>
>
>(Once again) "Sensationalism had declared: All ideas and consequently all
>truths, to whatever order they may belong, are derived from the senses (and
>reflection); reason does not create them, it receives them."
>
>"Intellectualism, on the other hand, had asserted: All our ideas and
>consequently all truths whatsoever are the product of reason."
>
>http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Weber%20-%20History/Kant%20and%20German%20Idealism.htm
>
>Neurophisiology happens to be closer to Intellectualism since most of it's
>adherents would claim that Ideas come from interactions and activities of
>nerve cells in_the_brain not the activity of the nerve cells in the sensory
>apperatus and their connections to the brain. Sense intuitions can influence
>the conditioning of ideas by neurological structure equivalent to the
>categories.
>
You are only trying to draw me into a conversation about your own
theories. But being "closer to" Intellectualism (even if true) is not
the same as Intellectualism, which is what Kant was doing. If you want
to learn something about Kant, then listen to me. Formalism has
nothing to do with your Physicalism. If Kant had argued from the
latter perspective, he would be quickly reduced to the absurdities of
Humean skepticism in which nothing empirical, including firing
neurons, can prove necessity or provide a firm foundation for your
sciences.
>> >Therefore he refutes Realism because he has shown we can't go that far, I
>> >mean his claim that we cannot reach "complete_certainty?"
>>
>> Thanks for shortening up your argument, it was too long for usenet,
>> and we don't all have the time to read everything.
>>
>> I'm not sure however what you mean by "Realism," whether it's intended
>> Platonically or in the modern sense (realism vs. nominalism). But a
>> transcendental idealist is not opposed to empirical realism, these are
>> just two sides of the same coin.
>>
>
>"Thus all controversy in regard to the nature of the thinking being and its
>connection with the corporeal world is merely a result of filling the gap
>where knowledge is wholly lacking to us with paralogisms of reason, treating
>our thoughts as things and hypostatising them."
Yes, treating our thoughts as firing neurons, for instance.
>"Hence originates an imaginary science, imaginary both in the case of him
>who affirms and of him who denies, since all parties either suppose some
>knowledge of objects of which no human being has any concept, or treat their
>own representations as objects, and so revolve in a perpetual circle of
>ambiguities and contradictions."
>
>"Nothing but the sobriety of a critique, at once strict and just, can free
>us from this dogmatic delusion, which through the lure of an imagined
>felicity keeps so many in bondage to theories and systems."
>
>"Such a critique confines all our speculative claims rigidly to the field of
>possible experience; and it does this not by shallow scoffing at
>ever-repeated failures or pious sighs over the limits of our reason, but by
>an effective determining of these limits in accordance with established
>principles, inscribing its nihil ulterius on those Pillars of Hercules which
>nature herself has erected in order that the voyage of our reason may be
>extended no further than the continuous coastline of experience A396 itself
>reaches -- a coast we cannot leave without venturing upon a shoreless ocean
>which, after alluring us with ever- deceptive prospects, compels us in the
>end to abandon as hopeless all this vexatious and tedious endeavour."
>
>Page 361 (CPR)
>http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
>
>Let us say gain complete certainty about either idealism or realism would be
>to venture out beyond the horizon on the high seas without going there.
>Gotta love Kant's middle grounds cutting off the extremes almost like
>Aristotle.
>
The above quote says that speculative metaphysics is a bogus
enterprise.
>> >> "Certain questions, which one frequently hears,
>> >> are not philosophical queries, but psychological
>> >> confessions." Ayn Rand in "Check Your Premises."
>> >
>> >I love to read Kant but am confused about Rand's take on it. This neither
>> >makes me oppose nor support her position.
>> >
>>
>> Ayn Rand did not understand Kant. And why should she? She only needed
>> a 'Satan' to make her religion complete.
>> --
>
>What did she think of neurophysiology?
Her aesthetics of music had no firm grounds, she claimed, thus only
musical opinions were possible without the assistance of a
psychologist, a neurologist, and a philosopher all studying how the
brain works and produces the experience of music. She was a base
materialist at heart.
--
Immortalist
Not upset but I noticed some cracks in your knowledge of Kant and you push
them through to defeat your oppnent thus sacrificing Kant for some ego
arousal of yours I guess and you might be doing this knowingly. Thats just
how it appeared to me but I wasn't upset about it, and I might be wrong.
3.1 Pietism
The development of early and even mid-enlightenment thought in 18th century
Germany proceeded hand in hand with the then relatively new (protestant)
religious trend: pietism. Like the discontent that the representatives of
the early enlightenment had with authority and, at least in the early years,
intellectual life, those of pietism took issue with the (religious)
orthodoxy and its intellectualism. Furthermore, rather than endorse
obedience and conformity to the establishment, the pietist movement
emphasized the subjective aspect of faith: a person's experience, feeling,
and, above all, personal participation in religious matters and
performances. The emphasis on the subjective and personal, and on people's
actual participation in religion made pietism an ideal companion for early
enlightenment thought. At issue here was not academic competence, not the
cognitive aspect of religion, but its affective aspect with emphasis on
devotion and practical service, just as what was at issue in the early
enlightenment was not the intellectual aspect of reason, but its practical
performance and service. And both movements were characterized by a
commitment to egalitarianism.
[Are trying to make physicalism out to be peitism?]
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/18thGerman-preKant/
Pietism tried to purify Lutheranism, stripping it of dogma and detail. The
Protestant Church avoided a schism in Prussia, but at the price of friction
between the Lutheran mainstream and the Pietist firebrands. Pietism stressed
literal exegesis, quiet humility, and charitable deeds. It allowed believers
to practice a spirituality of mystical intensity - but as the purge of Halle
University (1723) illustrates, it had a totalitarian streak.
[Is there some confusion of Pietism with physicalism? Isn't
intelectuallism_vs_sensationalism the recognized dynamic?]
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-development/
Peistism:Stress on the emotional and personal aspects of religion.
Affected or exaggerated piety.
Pietism A reform movement in the German Lutheran Church during the 17th and
18th centuries, which strove to renew the devotional ideal in the Protestant
religion.
physicalism
n : the doctrine that matter is the only reality [syn: materialism]
http://dictionary.reference.com/
intellectualism
\In`tel*lec"tu*al*ism\, n. 1. Intellectual power; intellectuality.
2. The doctrine that knowledge is derived from pure reason.
Sensationalism: Philosophy. The theory that sensation is the only source of
knowledge.
Reason: Logic. A premise, usually the minor premise, of an argument.
reason·er n.
Synonyms: reason, intuition, understanding, judgment
These nouns refer to the intellectual faculty by which humans seek or attain
knowledge or truth. Reason is the power to think rationally and logically
and to draw inferences: "Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its
[the Christian religion's] veracity" (David Hume). Intuition is perception
or comprehension, as of truths or facts, without the use of the rational
process: I trust my intuitions when it comes to assessing someone's
character. Understanding is the faculty by which one understands, often
together with the resulting comprehension: "The greatest dangers to liberty
lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without
understanding" (Louis D. Brandeis). Judgment is the ability to assess
situations or circumstances and draw sound conclusions: "At twenty years of
age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment"
(Benjamin Franklin). See also synonyms at cause See also synonyms at mind
See also synonyms at think
Think:
To have or formulate in the mind.
To reason about or reflect on; ponder: Think how complex language is. Think
the matter through.
To decide by reasoning, reflection, or pondering: thinking what to do.
To judge or regard; look upon: I think it only fair.
To believe; suppose: always thought he was right.
To expect; hope: They thought she'd arrive early.
To intend: They thought they'd take their time.
To call to mind; remember: I can't think what her name was.
To visualize; imagine: Think what a scene it will be at the reunion.
To devise or evolve; invent: thought up a plan to get rich quick.
To bring into a given condition by mental preoccupation: He thought himself
into a panic over the impending examination.
To concentrate one's thoughts on: "Think languor" (Diana Vreeland).
To exercise the power of reason, as by conceiving ideas, drawing inferences,
and using judgment.
To weigh or consider an idea: They are thinking about moving.
To bring a thought to mind by imagination or invention: No one before had
thought of bifocal glasses.
To recall a thought or an image to mind: She thought of her childhood when
she saw the movie.
To believe; suppose: He thinks of himself as a wit. It's later than you
think.
To have care or consideration: Think first of the ones you love.
To dispose the mind in a given way: Do you think so?
Synonyms: think, cerebrate, cogitate, reason, reflect, speculate
These verbs mean to use the powers of the mind, as in conceiving ideas or
drawing inferences: thought before answering; sat in front of the fire
cerebrating; cogitates about business problems; reasons clearly; took time
to reflect before deciding; speculates on what will happen.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=think
cerebrate
v : use or exercise the mind or one's power of reason in order to make
inferences, decisions, or arrive at a solution or judgments; "I've been
thinking all day and getting nowhere" [syn: think, cogitate]
......................
cogitate
v 1: consider carefully and deeply; reflect upon; turn over in one's mind
[syn: deliberate] 2: use or exercise the mind or one's power of reason in
order to make inferences, decisions, or arrive at a solution or judgments;
"I've been thinking all day and getting nowhere" [syn: think, cerebrate]
> What neuro-physiologists want to make out of it is their own concern.
> But look at it this way: You are trying to constrict my view to the
> neuro-physiological. Nothing in your Kant quotes indicates that Kant
> was arguing from that, or even for that.
>
If nothing in my quotes indicates that Kant was arguing from that or even
for that how am I constricting you by using the quote? All I'm sayng
actually is that some neurophysiologists are interested in finding the
neural activities that produce these representations.
But LOL:
"This is a major reinterpretation of Kant's work and its continued relevance
to cognitive science as revealed through nineteenth-century attempts to
pursue implications suggested by Kant's writings, culminating in the work of
perhaps the most important cognitive scientist of the time, Hermann
Helmholtz. In a brilliant reinterpretation of Kant's work certain to provoke
lively discussion among Kant specialists, Hatfield shows that Kant embraced
both the naturalistic and the normative positions in a manner consistent
with his philosophical enterprise."
-- Timothy Lenoir, Stanford University
Gary Hatfield examines theories of spatial perception from the seventeenth
to the nineteenth century and provides a detailed analysis of the works of
Kant and Helmholtz, who adopted opposing stances on whether central
questions about spatial perception were amenable to natural-scientific
treatment. At stake were the proper understanding of the relationships among
sensation, perception, and experience, and the proper methodological
framework for investigating the mental activities of judgment,
understanding, and reason issues which remain at the core of philosophical
psychology and cognitive science.
Hatfield presents these important issues as living philosophies of science
that shape and are shaped by actual research programs, creating a complex
and fascinating picture of the entire nineteenth-century battle between
nativism and empiricism. His examination of Helmholtz's work in
physiological optics and epistemology is a tour de force.
Gary Hatfield is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Pennsylvania.
Table of Contents
Preface
1 Introduction
2 Mind, Perception, and Psychology from Descartes to Hume
3 Mind, Space, and Geometry in Kant: Transcendental and Naturalistic
Conceptions of Thought and the Mental
4 Spatial Realism and Idealism: Kant Read, Revised, and Rebuffed
5 Helmholtz: The Epistemology and Psychology of Spatial Perception
6 Summary
7 Conclusions
Appendix A Nativism-Empirism and Rationalism-Empiricism
Appendix B Sensation and Perception: Epistemological and Psychological
Notes
References
Index
http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/view?isbn=0262080869
Looks like my man here might put a little crimp in yo prefered style holmes.
Especially if he produces some neural evidences for what Kant proposes.
The Home Page of
Gary Hatfield
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~hatfield/
> If you want to argue from physiology, then you are left with the usual
> empirical reduction leading to infinity, with no firm foundation.
> Because even if physiology has something to do with Kantian Critique,
> then the next question is: why is our physiology giving us these
> spatial constructs? Evolution? How did evolution come into play here,
> and why? Where does evolution begin and end? Pretty soon, you'll be
> back to playing philosopher instead of scientist in order to find a
> final stopping-point for all your questions.
>
Neurophysiologists aren't concerned with origional causes but how and why
things in the brain function like they do.
Back when during Kant's time there were various arguments about the embryo
and the inner working of organs of the body, but now it is most assured that
the embryo starts as a single cell and divides into 70 trilion in a full
human body and that organs like the liver and the pancreas perform certain
stabalizing functions.
Therefore the usual empirical reduction changes and Kant openly admitted
that he was seeking out the Analytical and he didn't criticise going beyond
that except as concerns the most basic foundations we can know, like space
and time.
You try and have it both ways like you can use your current contemporary
knowledge when it suits you and then revert to being constrained in the
Kantian world of science knowledge when it suits your purpose. Very
misleading and hurtful if the method is used regularly so if anyone trusts
this guys opinions about Kant beware he at least sometimes appears to care
more about how right or wrong he sounds instead of defending Kant's
position.
> But Kant has already provided that stopping-point in his
> intellectualist theory of the a priori.
>
The stopping point as concerns analytic justification which was his goal. So
what if a neuroscientist wants to find the activities of nerve cells which
produce such representations? You think Kant would complain about the
evidenciary supports that might come as we learn more about the brain. Would
Kant complain if we found neural support for his categories?
Now your slipping into your contemporary mode, notice, how my appeal to the
traditional distinction between sensationalism vs intellectualism is
distorted to physicalism, when really I am arguing for finding the nerve
cells that produce intellectualistic activities in the brain. And yes that
is going beyond Kant to support Kant.
But most scientists would agree with Kant about intellectual foundations in
logic or how could they assert anything to begin with. Are you saying
everyone but Kant is an absolute skeptic?
> Axx: " What reason produces entirely out of itself cannot be
> concealed, but is brought to light by reason itself immediately the
> common principle has been discovered. The complete unity of this
> kind of knowledge, and the fact that it is derived solely from pure
> concepts, ENTIRELY UNINFLUENCED BY ANY EXPERIENCE or by
> special intuition, such as might lead to any determinate experience
> that would enlarge and increase it, make this unconditioned
> completeness not only practicable but also necessary."
>
Yes, we want to find the nerve cells doing that. Of course reason is a
subject to itself.
> From now on, when you see the term "a priori," think "intellectual
> foundation," or "foundational."
>
I like the intellectual foundaion part but foundational seems to easily
confused with the refuted contemporary foundationalism.
But this "before sense intuition" is a very interesting subject
neuroscientists are trying to map out. Would Kant complain that they are
trying to find what he believes is necessary?
>
> >> So obviously, from what I wrote there, it is not about the interacting
> >> of the physical external realm with the senses, and then into the
> >> brain, where somehow or other conscious experience is generated.
> >> It is abouit the basic functioning of the intellect per se, that is,
> >> purely.
> >>
> >
> >Right, you mean the activities of nerve cells in the brain? Do people
still
> >believe the sense data cause all this, man what century you thinkin?
Kants
> >way out ahead of you and those assholes, just open up and consider this.
> >
> >> This is accomplished through transcendental logic, which is just a
> >> fancy way of saying that Kant has distinguished, in each and every
> >> judgment (not sentence or proposition, but judgment) a form, a
> >> concept, and a material aspect. The formal and conceptual aspects
> >> he considered the intellectual, the a priori; the material he
> >> considered the a posteriori, those representations which possess
> >> the matter of consciousness. Kantian Critique separates out the
> >> intellectual from the material elements of conscious experience, and
> >> considers only the intellectual, the forms, concepts, and ideas, which
> >> provide the basis, the fundamental form and structure, of all rational
> >> thought.
> >>
> >
> >Right, seperates out the physical structure of the nerve cells from the
> >activities of those neve cells?
>
> No.
>
Ok, how about seperates out physical things from activities? PC enough for
you?
> >He is talking about "circuit properties" not
> >material properties right?
>
> No.
>
Then he is talking about the interactions of representations and not
physical properties?
> >Your treading dangerous ground by making it sound
> >like current research has nothing to offer or ever will, shame on you,
> >guilty by Jury=.
>
> No, the research has falsifiable truths to offer. But even these
> truths must be based in an a priori foundation in order to be
> considered truths even contingently.
>
About anyone would admit that to even assert anything one must believe
someting true. Like asking the absolute skeptic how he can assert anything
at all. [do you see a necessary absolute skeptic when you percieve that you
are being confined or whatever?]
> >> >
> >> >The required proof must, therefore, show that we have experience, and
not
> >> >merely imagination of outer things; and this, it would seem, cannot be
> >> >achieved save by proof that even our inner experience, which for
> >Descartes
> >> >is indubitable, is possible only on the assumption of outer
experience.
> >>
> >> Kant wouldn't call it "assumption."
> >>
> >
> >But he did because that is the last four or five lines on the bottom of
page
> >244. But I don't play on peoples mistakes and don't care because this
ain't
> >a classroom, but continue to try and convince me that Kant was not
talking
> >about the "activities of the nerve cells" in most of the Critique.
>
> Stop trying to constrict me, asshole.
>
Notice, he doesn't admit it when he makes mistakes. By their fruits yea
shall know them loc. And how can we trust you on Kant when you decieve like
this, the text is on page 244. When you say asshole does that mean you are
becoming aroused and suffering from frustrated expectations loworing
testosterone levels?
Very good, the neurophysiologist at best, which is pretty dam good, sees a
rough analogy between Kant's intellectual foundations and the activities
from live brain scan movies when people activate such foundations. Try and
convince me Kant would disaprove.
Then you are claiming that ALL neurophysiologists claim that it is not the
case that these (concepts) always carry necessity with them
Many neurophysiologists claim that ideas necessarily originate from within
the brain and not with the sensory apperatus and their impulses. Are you
confusing sensationalism with peitism again. I am proposing neither but
trying to find support from science for what Kant proposes.
> >> >Therefore he refutes Realism because he has shown we can't go that
far, I
> >> >mean his claim that we cannot reach "complete_certainty?"
> >>
> >> Thanks for shortening up your argument, it was too long for usenet,
> >> and we don't all have the time to read everything.
> >>
> >> I'm not sure however what you mean by "Realism," whether it's intended
> >> Platonically or in the modern sense (realism vs. nominalism). But a
> >> transcendental idealist is not opposed to empirical realism, these are
> >> just two sides of the same coin.
> >>
> >
> >"Thus all controversy in regard to the nature of the thinking being and
its
> >connection with the corporeal world is merely a result of filling the gap
> >where knowledge is wholly lacking to us with paralogisms of reason,
treating
> >our thoughts as things and hypostatising them."
>
> Yes, treating our thoughts as firing neurons, for instance.
>
Or perhaps going out on a limb and claiming that thought are not identical
to the activities of nerve cells like you are?
Only if it ventures out beyond the horizon and claims to be analyical.
Neurophysiologists do not claim their research results are analytical so
what are you saying?
> >> >> "Certain questions, which one frequently hears,
> >> >> are not philosophical queries, but psychological
> >> >> confessions." Ayn Rand in "Check Your Premises."
> >> >
> >> >I love to read Kant but am confused about Rand's take on it. This
neither
> >> >makes me oppose nor support her position.
> >> >
> >>
> >> Ayn Rand did not understand Kant. And why should she? She only needed
> >> a 'Satan' to make her religion complete.
> >> --
> >
> >What did she think of neurophysiology?
>
> Her aesthetics of music had no firm grounds, she claimed, thus only
> musical opinions were possible without the assistance of a
> psychologist, a neurologist, and a philosopher all studying how the
> brain works and produces the experience of music. She was a base
> materialist at heart.
>
But what if Kant had one of those hearing problems where little noises
screwed with him and this left a wide hole in his philosophy as concerns
hearing, sound, meter, and music? Wasn't Hegal the first one to exploit this
weakness? Green probably joked about it when he dictated to Kant every line
of the second edition, you know the merchent from England with news about
untranslated into German British philosophies?
Kant: A Biography
by Manfred Kuehn
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521524067/
> --
>
> "Certain questions, which one frequently hears,
> are not philosophical queries, but psychological
> confessions." Ayn Rand in "Check Your Premises."
But let us finish Mr. Kant project and find the neural activities behind it
to boot. Why are you against this?
"To note, and, where possible, to give a complete inventory of these
concepts, would be a useful and not unpleasant task, but it is a task from
which we can here be absolved."
"In this treatise, I purposely omit the definitions of the categories,
although I may be in possession of them. I shall A83 proceed to analyse
these concepts only so far as is necessary in connection with the doctrine
of method which I am propounding. B109"
"In a system of pure reason, definitions of the categories would rightly be
demanded, but in this treatise they would merely divert attention from the
main object of the enquiry, arousing doubts and objections which, without
detriment to what is essential to our purposes, can very well be reserved
for another occasion."
So it is a preliminary avoidence of the very kinds of objections and doubts
"aroused" in the likes of your punk ass, individuals who would not be able
to get beyond them to proceed clearly and acurately.
"Meanwhile, from the little that I have said, it will be obvious that a
complete glossary, with all the requisite explanations, is not only a
possible, but an easy task."
"The divisions are provided; all that is required is to fill them; and a
systematic 'topic', such as that here given, affords sufficient guidance as
to the proper location of each concept, while at the same time indicating
which divisions are still empty."
Page 115 (CPR)
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
(b) Time is nothing but the form of inner sense, that is, of
the intuition of ourselves and of our inner state. It cannot be a
determination of outer appearances; it has to do neither with
shape nor position, but with the relation of representations in B50
our inner state. And just because this inner intuition yields no
shape, we endeavour to make up for this want by analogies.
We represent the time-sequence by a line progressing to infinity,
in which the manifold constitutes a series of one dimension
only; and we reason from the properties of this line to all
the properties of time, with this one exception, that while the
parts of the line are simultaneous the parts of time are always
successive. From this fact also, that all the relations of time
allow of being expressed in an outer intuition, it is evident that
the representation is itself an intuition.
Page 77 (CPR)
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
<quote>
German Philosophy 1760-1860
The Legacy of Idealism
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521663814/
The very possibility of making true judgments in mathematics and geometry,
Kant asserted, would prove to be dependent not on the structure of any
objects in the universe that we could be said to encounter in ordinary
experience, but rather on the necessary general structure of the mind. To
show that, Kant argued that we must acknowledge a radical distinction
between two very different faculties in our own minds. Our experience is a
combination, he argued, of two different types of "ideas" or
"representations" in our experience -concepts and intuitions - and the way
in which we combine them makes up the structure of our experience.* Neither
concepts nor intuitions are ultimately reducible to the other; each is an
independent type of representation. Reflection on that structure, Kant
rather surprisingly proposed, should tell us everything we can know about
metaphysics.
* The term for "representation" is Vorstellung, and the term for intuition
is Anschauung. Famously, these terms have been disputed as the best way of
rendering Kant's own distinctions. I happen to think that they are about as
good as one gets. Vorstellung, obviously, has closer affinities with the
English term, "idea," than it does with "representation," which, although an
ordinary word, tends to be used in its Kantian sense in English more often
for more-or-less technical discussions in philosophy. Anschauung, while
meaning "intuition" in English, carries a more common usage of "viewing" in
German. In any event, "representation" and "intuition" have become the
standard way of translating Kant's terms, so I shall stick with that here.
In encountering something as humdrum as a stone, Kant pointed out, we are
conscious of it in two ways: as an individual thing and as possessing
certain general properties. The stone is this stone, but we can also note
that it shares, for example, a color with another stone. We are intuitively,
sensuously aware of the individual stone, and we make conceptual judgments
about it when we characterize it in terms of its general features. In fact,
this might suggest that we are directly aware of the individual thing and
only indirectly (conceptually) aware of the general properties it has. After
all, intuitions, as Kant himself put it, put us in an "immediate relation"
to an object, whereas concepts only put us in a mediated relation to them;
indeed Kant even says that a judgment is a "representation of a
representation" of an object - that is, a combination of an intuitive
representation of an object and conceptual representation of that intuitive
representation, or what Kant (following the logical vocabulary of his time)
calls a synthesis of representations. [A19/B33] [A68/B93] Our experience,
therefore, seems to consist of two types of "ideas" or "representations":
There are the intuitive representations of things as individuals and the
conceptual representations of them in terms of their general features.
Nothing about that view seems, of course, very farfetched; but Kant was to
draw some startling and profound conclusions from it.
In light of these distinctions, Kant asked his readers to consider the
judgments about infinities found in geometry and mathematics. No purely
sensory intuition could supply a representation of such an infinity, since
sensory intuition is always of individual things. Neither could we construct
a purely conceptual understanding of those infinities, since it was
impossible in the formal logic of Kant's time to represent such infinities.
Therefore, if the synthetic a priori judgments found in mathematics and
geometry are to be possible, it must be because we are both intuitively
aware of such infinities and are capable of constructing the objects of both
disciplines by basing our constructions on that intuitive awareness. Since
we require a representation of space to construct the objects of pure
geometry, and space, being infinite, cannot be an object of pure logic
(concepts) or sensory intuition, we must therefore have a pure intuition of
space, a kind of intuitive awareness of the infinite "whole" of space for us
to be able to make those geometrical judgments and constructions. We know,
for example, that between any two points on a line, we can always construct
a point in between them; that, however, requires us to be able to represent
space as having an infinite number of such parts. (We just have to be able
to "see" that for any line segment, no matter how small, we can always make
another cut in it.) A similar argument can be made about the allegedly pure
intuition of time: for us to be able to reiterate the operations of
arithmetic (so that we can add 5 to 7 and then 4 to that, and so on, to
infinity), we must have a "pure intuition" of temporality, a representation
of what it would mean to carry on such an iterative procedure to infinity -
which is again something we must be able to "see" (that is, intuit) if we
are to be able to perform the operation.
Time and space, Kant therefore concluded, were "ideal" since they could not
be objects of direct sensory experience and therefore had to be available to
us only in our "pure" representations of them. Stones and branches were
"real" and available to us in ordinary experience; but space and time as
treated in the sciences of geometry and arithmetic were only available in
our "ideal" representations of them. From that, Kant concluded, we could not
say that space and time were "objects" out there in the world. Or, to put it
another way, we could not say, apart from the conditions under which objects
are experienceable by us, whether those objects are spatial or temporal.
All this was immensely puzzling to Kant's readers, as if Kant were
outrageously asserting that space and time were only subjective human
"ideas" and not real features of the universe. Kant then astounded them even
more by asking: could we therefore know anything about the objects of
experience simply by having direct intuitive encounters with them,
unmediated and uncolored by conceptual activity, even with pure intuition?
The answer to that proved to be the core of Kant's philosophy and even more
far reaching.
CONCEPTS AND INTUITIONS: THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION
Kant drew some rather startling conclusions that at first seemed to go
against what he had argued about the nature of geometry and mathematics.
There could be no direct intuitive knowledge of anything, even in
mathematics and geometry; all knowledge required the mediation and use of
concepts deployed in judgments. In fact, our most elementary acts of
consciousness of the world involved a combination of both intuitions and
concepts (each making their own, separate contribution to the whole), and,
prior to that combination, there is no consciousness at all. From what had
looked like a fairly arcane discussion of the structure of judgments and
geometry, Kant had quickly moved Into speculation about the very nature of
consciousness and mentality in general.
In some ways, the overall picture that Kant ended up with looks deceptively
simple. Our consciousness of the world is the result of the combination of
two very different types of "representation," Vorstellung: There are the
passively received representations of objects in space and time given by
sensible intuitions; and there are the discursive representations (concepts)
that we combine with the intuitive representations to produce judgments.
Concepts, in turn, should be thought of as rules for the combination of
representations, as when we "combine" a representation such as "that thing
over there" with another representation, "green," into the simple judgment:
that thing over there is green. In all of this, we are aware of ourselves as
having a viewpoint on the world and making judgments about it that may be
true or false.
</quote>
REPRESENTATION [A320/B376] "There is no lack of terms suitable for each
kind of representation...Their serial arrangement is as follows. The genus
is representation in general (repreaesentatio). Subordinate to it stands
representation with consciousness (perceptio}. A perception which relates
solely to the subject as the modification of its state is sensation
(sensatio), an objective perception is knowledge (cognitio). This is either
intuition or concept (intuitus vel conceptus)". In addition to concepts,
intuitions, sensations, and perceptions, Kant holds that appearances are
representations. He maintains all judgments, and thus all acts of knowledge,
involve the representations of representations. [Bxl] However, Kant also
suggests that we are not only conscious of different types of
representations; the Preface to B he asserts that "I am conscious of my
existence in time...and this is more than to be conscious merely of my
representation".
It is admitted that to find the nerve cells whose activities produce these
representations does go beyond Kant. But could this be part of the filling
in that is so easy?
Immortalist
"Tony Thomas" <etho...@bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:r1Kdc.2649$ED....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
In a word Faculties?
Faculty:
1. An inherent power or ability. Any of the powers or capacities possessed
by the human mind. See Synonyms at ability. The ability to perform or act.
Faculties:
1. Ability to act or perform, whether inborn or cultivated; capacity for any
natural function; especially, an original mental power or capacity for any
of the well-known classes of mental activity; psychical or soul capacity;
capacity for any of the leading kinds of soul activity, as knowledge,
feeling, volition; intellectual endowment or gift; power; as, faculties of
the mind or the soul.
2. Special mental endowment; characteristic knack.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=faculties
--------------------------------
Definition: ability
Synonyms: adroitness, aptitude, aptness, bent, capability, capacity,
cleverness, dexterity, facility, flair, forte, genius, gift, instinct,
intelligence, knack, leaning, nose, peculiarity, penchant, pistol, power,
predilection, proclivity, propensity, property, quality, readiness, reason,
right stuff, sense, skill, strength, talent, turn, wits
Antonyms: inability, incapacity, incompetence, ineptness
http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=faculty
--------------------------------------
Here we observe Mr. Locke using the term Faculty and or Faculties back in
the 17th century.
[THE NATURE OF SIMPLE IDEAS - LOCKE - FROM AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN
UNDERSTANDING]
The two great and principal actions of the mind which are most frequently
considered, and which are so frequent that everyone that pleases may take
notice of them in himself, are these two: perception or thinking, and
volition or will. The power of thinking is called the understanding, and the
power of volition is called the will. And these two powers or abilities in
the mind are denominated faculties. Modes of these simple ideas of
reflection are remembrance, discerning, reasoning, judging, knowledge,
faith.
It has, further, pleased our wise Creator to annex to several objects and to
the ideas which we receive from them, as also to several of our thoughts, a
concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects to several degrees, that
those faculties which He has endowed us with might not remain wholly
unemployed by us. Pain has the same efficacy and use to set us on work that
pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our faculties to avoid that as to
pursue this.
http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/Outline_of_Great_Books_Volume_I/informatio_bgg.html
...But though our thought seems to possess this unbounded liberty, we shall
find, upon a nearer examination, that it is really confined within very
narrow limits, and that all this creative power of the mind amounts to no
more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or
diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience. When we
think of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold, and
mountain, with which we were formerly acquainted. A virtuous horse we can
conceive; because, from our own feeling, we can conceive virtue; and this we
may unite to the figure and shape of a horse, which is an animal familiar to
us. In short, all the materials of thinking are derived either from our
outward or inward sentiment: the mixture and composition of these belongs
alone to the mind and will. Or, to express myself in philosophical language,
all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or
more lively ones.
14. To prove this, the two following arguments will, I hope, be sufficient.
First, when we analyze our thoughts or ideas, however compounded or sublime,
we always find that they resolve themselves into such simple ideas as were
copied from a precedent feeling or sentiment. Even those ideas, which, at
first view, seem the most wide of this origin, are found, upon a nearer
scrutiny, to be derived from it. The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely
intelligent, wise, and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations
of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness
and wisdom. We may prosecute this enquiry to what length we please; where we
shall always find, that every idea which we examine is copied from a similar
impression. Those who would assert that this position is not universally
true nor without exception, have only one, and that an easy method of
refuting it; by producing that idea, which, in their opinion, is not derived
from this source. It will then be incumbent on us, if we would maintain our
doctrine, to produce the impression, or lively perception, which corresponds
to it.
15. Secondly. If it happen, from a defect of the organ, that a man is not
susceptible of any species of sensation, we always find that he is as little
susceptible of the correspondent ideas. A blind man can form no notion of
colours; a deaf man of sounds. Restore either of them that sense in which he
is deficient; by opening this new inlet for his sensations, you also open an
inlet for the ideas; and he finds no difficulty in conceiving these objects.
The case is the same, if the object, proper for exciting any sensation, has
never been applied to the organ. A Laplander or Negro has no notion of the
relish of wine. And though there are few or no instances of a like
deficiency in the mind, where a person has never felt or is wholly incapable
of a sentiment or passion that belongs to his species; yet we find the same
observation to take place in a less degree. A man of mild manners can form
no idea of inveterate revenge or cruelty; nor can a selfish heart easily
conceive the heights of friendship and generosity. It is readily allowed,
that other beings may possess many senses of which we can have no
conception; because the ideas of them have never been introduced to us in
the only manner by which an idea can have access to the mind, to wit, by the
actual feeling and sensation.
16. There is, however, one contradictory phenomenon, which may prove that it
is not absolutely impossible for ideas to arise, independent of their
correspondent impressions. I believe it will readily be allowed, that the
several distinct ideas of colour, which enter by the eye, or those of sound,
which are conveyed by the ear, are really different from each other; though,
at the same time, resembling. Now if this be true of different colours, it
must be no less so of the different shades of the same colour; and each
shade produces a distinct idea, independent of the rest. For if this should
be denied, it is possible, by the continual gradation of shades, to run a
colour insensibly into what is most remote from it; and if you will not
allow any of the means to be different, you cannot, without absurdity, deny
the extremes to be the same. Suppose, therefore, a person to have enjoyed
his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly acquainted with col
ours of all kinds except one particular shade of blue, for instance, which
it never has been his fortune to meet with. Let all the different shades of
that colour, except that single one, be placed before him, descending
gradually from the deepest to the lightest; it is plain that he will
perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, and will be sensible that
there is a greater distance in that place between the contiguous colours
than in any other. Now I ask, whether it be possible for him, from his own
imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of
that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his
senses? I believe there are few but will be of opinion that he can: and this
may serve as a proof that the simple ideas are not always, in every
instance, derived from the correspondent impressions; though this instance
is so singular, that it is scarcely worth our observing, and does not merit
that for it alone we should alter our general maxim.
17. Here, therefore, is a proposition, which not only seems, in itself,
simple and intelligible; but, if a proper use were made of it, might render
every dispute equally intelligible, and banish all that jargon, which has so
long taken possession of metaphysical reasonings, and drawn disgrace upon
them. All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure:
the mind has but a slender hold of them: they are apt to be confounded with
other resembling ideas; and when we have often employed any term, though
without a distinct meaning, we are apt to imagine it has a determinate idea
annexed to it. On the contrary, all impressions, that is, all sensations,
either outward or inward, are strong and vivid: the limits between them are
more exactly determined: nor is it easy to fall into any error or mistake
with regard to them. When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a
philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is but too
frequent), we need but enquire, from what impression is that supposed idea
derived? And if it be impossible to assign any, this will serve to confirm
our suspicion. By bringing ideas into so clear a light we may reasonably
hope to remove all dispute, which may arise, concerning their nature and
reality.*
* It is probable that no more was meant by those, who denied innate ideas,
than that all ideas were copies of our impressions; though it must be
confessed, that the terms, which they employed, were not chosen with such
caution, nor so exactly defined, as to prevent all mistakes about their
doctrine. For what is meant by innate? If innate be equivalent to natural,
then all the perceptions and ideas of the mind must be allowed to be innate
or natural, in whatever sense we take the latter word, whether in opposition
to what is uncommon, artificial, or miraculous. If by innate be meant,
contemporary to our birth, the dispute seems to be frivolous; nor is it
worth while to enquire at what time thinking begins, whether before, at, or
after our birth. Again, the word idea, seems to be commonly taken in a very
loose sense, by Locke and others; as standing for any of our perceptions,
our sensations and passions, as well as thoughts. Now in this sense, I
should desire to know, what can be meant by asserting, that self-love, or
resentment of injuries, or the passion between the sexes is not innate?
-----------------
50. To be fully acquainted, therefore, with the idea of power or necessary
connexion, let us examine its impression; and in order to find the
impression with greater certainty, let us search for it in all the sources,
from which it may possibly be derived.
When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the operation
of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or
necessary connexion; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause, and
renders the one an infallible consequence of the other. We only find, that
the one does actually, in fact, follow the other. The impulse of one
billiard-ball is attended with motion in the second. This is the whole that
appears to the outward senses. The mind feels no sentiment or inward
impression from this succession of objects: Consequently, there is not, in
any single, particular instance of cause and effect, anything which can
suggest the idea of power or necessary connexion.
>From the first appearance of an object, we never can conjecture what effect
will result from it. But were the power or energy of any cause discoverable
by the mind, we could foresee the effect, even without experience; and
might, at first, pronounce with certainty concerning it, by mere dint of
thought and reasoning.
@ Hume - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/david_hume/human_understanding.html
>
> > Refutation of Idealism - Kant argues that temporal judgments about one's
> own
> > states require reference to objects which endure in a way that mental
> > representations themselves do not, and therefore that consciousness of
> > oneself also implies consciousness of objects external to oneself [B
> 275-6]
> > also [B xxxix-xli].
>
> The inside world persist as well as the outside world. On waking, external
> events (including bodily functions) appear to have changed (eg clocks,
> growth of beard) but mental processes too change as well (the reclloection
> of a dream or other discontinuity). There are no 'objects' which are not
> external to the self. In this sense, the sense has no existence at all
> beyond being the focus of consciousness.
>
FROM KANT GLOSSARIES
INNER SENSE [A33/B49] Inner sense is the faculty through which we intuit
ourselves and our own inner states. "It cannot be a determination of outer
appearances; it has to do neither with shape nor position, but with the
relation of representations in our inner state". Namely, it has to do with
the temporal relations of our representations; for "time is nothing but the
form of inner space". As such, time "is the formal a priori condition of all
appearances whatsoever" (whereas space in an a priori condition only of
outer appearances).
OUTER SENSE [B291] Outer sense is the faculty through which we intuit outer
appearances (that is, as in space). In the Analogies Kant argues that to
employ the understanding "in conformity with the categories"--which is to
say to synthesize intuitions according to concepts in an act of judgment,
to come to have experience--"we need, not merely intuitions, but intuitions
that are in all cases outer intuitions". As well as being in time, Kant
argues that the objective validity of the categories requires that all
appearances be appearances of (empirical) objects in space; in particular,
determinations of inner sense require that we represent our (empirical)
selves as existing in space and undergoing "successive existence...in
different states". [B293] "Similarly, it can easily be shown that the
possibility of things as quantities, and therefore the objective reality of
[the categories of] quantity, can be exhibited only in outer intuition, and
that only through the mediation of outer intuition can it be applied also to
inner sense". Helpfully, Kant "leaves to the reader to supply his own
examples of this", promising that "these remarks are of great importance,
not only in confirmation of our previous refutation of idealism, but even
more, when we come to treat of self-knowledge".
[These two are from online Kant glossaries]:
faculty: a fundamental power of human subjects to do something or perform
some rational function.
faculty: [Vermögen, Facultät, sometimes Kraft; also translated ‘power’] An
ability of the mind to produce some presentation or to act in a certain way.
E.g., the ability to form concepts, to apply them in judgements, to receive
sensible intuitions, or to reason about concepts and propositions. Kant is
interested in showing that there must be such faculties universally, and the
principles and consequences of their actions. He is not interested in
speculating on the material conditions of them (e.g. the brain). See also,
especially, 'principle'.
principle: [Prinzipien, Grundsätze] Broadly, any fundamental law. More
specifically, a proposition stating the fundamental legislative or
regulative contribution of a faculty. Thus, the basic principle of
sensibility is that all appearances must be subject to the form of space or
time (Kant also speaks of space and time as themselves principles of
sensibility). And the ‘Analytic of Principles’ (A130=B169ff) is a treatment
of the various principles of our faculty of the judgement of appearances in
accordance with the categories; the principle that governs all the others in
this treatment is the ‘highest principle of all synthetic judgements’
(A154=B193).
========================================
So my question is; if Kant is talking about faculties or mental capacities
but is not interested in the material conditions of them, where would he
claim these falculties were, inside our head or floating around in space?
BRAIN-duh-as-it-appear-beyond-out-of-our-horizon-?
HPO Jury = America
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
You're trying to mind-read.
>Thats just
>how it appeared to me but I wasn't upset about it, and I might be wrong.
Probably.
>3.1 Pietism
>
>The development of early and even mid-enlightenment thought in 18th century
>Germany proceeded hand in hand with the then relatively new (protestant)
>religious trend: pietism. Like the discontent that the representatives of
>the early enlightenment had with authority and, at least in the early years,
>intellectual life, those of pietism took issue with the (religious)
>orthodoxy and its intellectualism. Furthermore, rather than endorse
>obedience and conformity to the establishment, the pietist movement
>emphasized the subjective aspect of faith: a person's experience, feeling,
>and, above all, personal participation in religious matters and
>performances. The emphasis on the subjective and personal, and on people's
>actual participation in religion made pietism an ideal companion for early
>enlightenment thought. At issue here was not academic competence, not the
>cognitive aspect of religion, but its affective aspect with emphasis on
>devotion and practical service, just as what was at issue in the early
>enlightenment was not the intellectual aspect of reason, but its practical
>performance and service. And both movements were characterized by a
>commitment to egalitarianism.
>
>[Are trying to make physicalism out to be peitism?]
>http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/18thGerman-preKant/
Me? No, physicalism is the theory that science can be reduced to
physical events or properties. You are reducing Kant's Aesthetic to
firing neurons and such. Therefore: Physicalism.
>
>Pietism tried to purify Lutheranism, stripping it of dogma and detail. The
>Protestant Church avoided a schism in Prussia, but at the price of friction
>between the Lutheran mainstream and the Pietist firebrands. Pietism stressed
>literal exegesis, quiet humility, and charitable deeds. It allowed believers
>to practice a spirituality of mystical intensity - but as the purge of Halle
>University (1723) illustrates, it had a totalitarian streak.
>
>[Is there some confusion of Pietism with physicalism? Isn't
>intelectuallism_vs_sensationalism the recognized dynamic?]
>http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-development/
You can always pit whatever theory like Physicalism against
Intellectualism and call it your own recognized dynamic.
>Peistism:Stress on the emotional and personal aspects of religion.
>Affected or exaggerated piety.
>
>Pietism A reform movement in the German Lutheran Church during the 17th and
>18th centuries, which strove to renew the devotional ideal in the Protestant
>religion.
>
>physicalism
>n : the doctrine that matter is the only reality [syn: materialism]
>
>http://dictionary.reference.com/
>
>intellectualism
>
>\In`tel*lec"tu*al*ism\, n. 1. Intellectual power; intellectuality.
>
>2. The doctrine that knowledge is derived from pure reason.
>
>Sensationalism: Philosophy. The theory that sensation is the only source of
>knowledge.
They may be diametrically opposed, but then so are materialism and
spiritism. A materialist, or physicalist, typically downgrades Kant as
a spiritist in opposition to materialism, or in your case,
re-interprets him in terms more comfortable to you personally because
it works well with your previous biases or some such motive.
Fine, let them try. I just don't see how that would resolve the issues
Kant was dealing with.
>But LOL:
>
>"This is a major reinterpretation of Kant's work and its continued relevance
>to cognitive science as revealed through nineteenth-century attempts to
>pursue implications suggested by Kant's writings, culminating in the work of
>perhaps the most important cognitive scientist of the time, Hermann
>Helmholtz. In a brilliant reinterpretation of Kant's work certain to provoke
>lively discussion among Kant specialists, Hatfield shows that Kant embraced
>both the naturalistic and the normative positions in a manner consistent
>with his philosophical enterprise."
>-- Timothy Lenoir, Stanford University
>
>Gary Hatfield examines theories of spatial perception from the seventeenth
>to the nineteenth century and provides a detailed analysis of the works of
>Kant and Helmholtz, who adopted opposing stances on whether central
>questions about spatial perception were amenable to natural-scientific
>treatment. At stake were the proper understanding of the relationships among
>sensation, perception, and experience, and the proper methodological
>framework for investigating the mental activities of judgment,
>understanding, and reason issues which remain at the core of philosophical
>psychology and cognitive science.
>
>Hatfield presents these important issues as living philosophies of science
>that shape and are shaped by actual research programs, creating a complex
>and fascinating picture of the entire nineteenth-century battle between
>nativism and empiricism. His examination of Helmholtz's work in
>physiological optics and epistemology is a tour de force.
?Nativism?
>Gary Hatfield is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
>Pennsylvania.
>
>Table of Contents
> Preface
>1 Introduction
>
>2 Mind, Perception, and Psychology from Descartes to Hume
>
>3 Mind, Space, and Geometry in Kant: Transcendental and Naturalistic
>Conceptions of Thought and the Mental
>
>4 Spatial Realism and Idealism: Kant Read, Revised, and Rebuffed
>
>5 Helmholtz: The Epistemology and Psychology of Spatial Perception
>
>6 Summary
>
>7 Conclusions
>
> Appendix A Nativism-Empirism and Rationalism-Empiricism
>
> Appendix B Sensation and Perception: Epistemological and Psychological
>
> Notes
> References
> Index
>
>http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/view?isbn=0262080869
>
>Looks like my man here might put a little crimp in yo prefered style holmes.
>Especially if he produces some neural evidences for what Kant proposes.
Evidence is good when it goes to further Kant's cause. All I'm saying
is that it doesn't prove necessity, anymore than measuring the speed
of light against variously accelerating reference frames necessarily
proves that Einstein was right. The proof is in the formulas, the
ideas themselves. Thus, Intellectualism.
All I know is that materialists of various flavors always think that
Kant is stepping on their little toesies, when he isn't.
>> But Kant has already provided that stopping-point in his
>> intellectualist theory of the a priori.
>>
>
>The stopping point as concerns analytic justification which was his goal. So
>what if a neuroscientist wants to find the activities of nerve cells which
>produce such representations? You think Kant would complain about the
>evidenciary supports that might come as we learn more about the brain. Would
>Kant complain if we found neural support for his categories?
No, he would say something along the lines of what I said above.
Evidence is good -- it's good as far as it takes you: contingent,
falsifiable truths. It's not good enough for philosophy.
The alternative is to take the position that science gives philosophy
its necessary truths. But that would lead to Objectivism.
You never previously made the distinction, you only just brought it
up. Therefore my re-posted comment above couldn't be directed toward
it.
I'm saying that neurophysiology cannot possibly form an a priori
foundation for anything. But the evidentiary nature of that field is
good, as far as it goes.
>> Axx: " What reason produces entirely out of itself cannot be
>> concealed, but is brought to light by reason itself immediately the
>> common principle has been discovered. The complete unity of this
>> kind of knowledge, and the fact that it is derived solely from pure
>> concepts, ENTIRELY UNINFLUENCED BY ANY EXPERIENCE or by
>> special intuition, such as might lead to any determinate experience
>> that would enlarge and increase it, make this unconditioned
>> completeness not only practicable but also necessary."
>>
>
>Yes, we want to find the nerve cells doing that. Of course reason is a
>subject to itself.
>
>> From now on, when you see the term "a priori," think "intellectual
>> foundation," or "foundational."
>>
>
>I like the intellectual foundaion part but foundational seems to easily
>confused with the refuted contemporary foundationalism.
>
>But this "before sense intuition" is a very interesting subject
>neuroscientists are trying to map out. Would Kant complain that they are
>trying to find what he believes is necessary?
>
He MIGHT think they are looking for the ghost in the machine, and will
thus never find it.
Yes, representations of a being represented as a pure intellect.
>> >Your treading dangerous ground by making it sound
>> >like current research has nothing to offer or ever will, shame on you,
>> >guilty by Jury=.
>>
>> No, the research has falsifiable truths to offer. But even these
>> truths must be based in an a priori foundation in order to be
>> considered truths even contingently.
>>
>
>About anyone would admit that to even assert anything one must believe
>someting true. Like asking the absolute skeptic how he can assert anything
>at all. [do you see a necessary absolute skeptic when you percieve that you
>are being confined or whatever?]
>
Even Bob Kolker knows there must be a necessary foundation for his
truths, a foundation not proved from science per se, and his
anti-philosophy stance is self-defeating.
Only if the neurophysiologists are trying to find the a priori, and
not just evidence of it.
There aren't any concepts in the brain. And if there were, they
wouldn't carry necessity with them.
I'm not the one who's confused, but as time goes by your point of view
becomes less obscure.
>> >> >Therefore he refutes Realism because he has shown we can't go that
>far, I
>> >> >mean his claim that we cannot reach "complete_certainty?"
>> >>
>> >> Thanks for shortening up your argument, it was too long for usenet,
>> >> and we don't all have the time to read everything.
>> >>
>> >> I'm not sure however what you mean by "Realism," whether it's intended
>> >> Platonically or in the modern sense (realism vs. nominalism). But a
>> >> transcendental idealist is not opposed to empirical realism, these are
>> >> just two sides of the same coin.
>> >>
>> >
>> >"Thus all controversy in regard to the nature of the thinking being and
>its
>> >connection with the corporeal world is merely a result of filling the gap
>> >where knowledge is wholly lacking to us with paralogisms of reason,
>treating
>> >our thoughts as things and hypostatising them."
>>
>> Yes, treating our thoughts as firing neurons, for instance.
>>
>
>Or perhaps going out on a limb and claiming that thought are not identical
>to the activities of nerve cells like you are?
It's not going out on a limb to assert against something that hasn't
been proven.
I'm saying that the above quote says that speculative metaphysics is a
bogus enterprise. Are neurophysiologists doing speculative
metaphysics? No.
>> >> >> "Certain questions, which one frequently hears,
>> >> >> are not philosophical queries, but psychological
>> >> >> confessions." Ayn Rand in "Check Your Premises."
>> >> >
>> >> >I love to read Kant but am confused about Rand's take on it. This
>neither
>> >> >makes me oppose nor support her position.
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> Ayn Rand did not understand Kant. And why should she? She only needed
>> >> a 'Satan' to make her religion complete.
>> >> --
>> >
>> >What did she think of neurophysiology?
>>
>> Her aesthetics of music had no firm grounds, she claimed, thus only
>> musical opinions were possible without the assistance of a
>> psychologist, a neurologist, and a philosopher all studying how the
>> brain works and produces the experience of music. She was a base
>> materialist at heart.
>>
>
>But what if Kant had one of those hearing problems where little noises
>screwed with him and this left a wide hole in his philosophy as concerns
>hearing, sound, meter, and music? Wasn't Hegal the first one to exploit this
>weakness? Green probably joked about it when he dictated to Kant every line
>of the second edition, you know the merchent from England with news about
>untranslated into German British philosophies?
I was talking about Rand. Or are you switching the topic to the
Critique of Judgment now?
>Kant: A Biography
>by Manfred Kuehn
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521524067/
>
>> --
>>
>> "Certain questions, which one frequently hears,
>> are not philosophical queries, but psychological
>> confessions." Ayn Rand in "Check Your Premises."
>
>But let us finish Mr. Kant project and find the neural activities behind it
>to boot. Why are you against this?
>
>"To note, and, where possible, to give a complete inventory of these
>concepts, would be a useful and not unpleasant task, but it is a task from
>which we can here be absolved."
>
>"In this treatise, I purposely omit the definitions of the categories,
>although I may be in possession of them. I shall A83 proceed to analyse
>these concepts only so far as is necessary in connection with the doctrine
>of method which I am propounding. B109"
>
>"In a system of pure reason, definitions of the categories would rightly be
>demanded, but in this treatise they would merely divert attention from the
>main object of the enquiry, arousing doubts and objections which, without
>detriment to what is essential to our purposes, can very well be reserved
>for another occasion."
>
>So it is a preliminary avoidence of the very kinds of objections and doubts
>"aroused" in the likes of your punk ass, individuals who would not be able
>to get beyond them to proceed clearly and acurately.
Are you sure you're feeling ok?
Nothing needs to be filled in.
Immortalist
Alright I give.
I am an idealist that toys with physicalist notions?
See this thingy went off line and the place that had the back up and the
cached page was eliminated from google and I had to scan from a print. I was
curious about the 10 propositions:
-----
6. THE REFUTATION OF IDEALISM
In the Refutation of Idealism Kant attempts to prove that "we have
experience, and not merely imagination of outer things" (B275). He claims
that his argument shows "that even our inner experience, which for Descartes
is indubitable, is possible only on the assumption of outer experience"
(Ibid). Note that this claim is ambiguous because "outer experience" can
mean being conscious of a representation of a certain state of affairs or
event (epistemologically objective experience) or can mean experience of the
object of such a representation, namely experience of states of affairs or
events (ontologically objective experience). Thus, Kant's summary of the
conclusion of his argument could mean merely that this argument establishes
that all experience must be epistemologically objective. However, Kant
attempted to prove this thesis in the Transcendental Deduction and
elaborated his view in the Analogies. Clearly, if he is to refute
problematic idealism, Kant must show that having ontologically objective
outer experience is a necessary condition of having inner experience.
In my interpretation, the general form of Kant's argument in the Refutation
is:
l. The ability to make any temporal judgement presupposes the perception of
something permanent [from First Analogy]; and
2. Nothing permanent is intuitable in the empirical self [presented as an
application of the First Analogy], so that
3. A perception of this permanent presupposes an intuitable object in space
and not merely the representation of an object in space.
This argument is invalid because the third step does not follow from the
first two; according to the argument of the First Analogy, a representation
of an object in space does ground the ability to make temporal judgements.
Thus, the argument does not shed light on the question it supposedly
answers, namely whether or not the permanent has ontological objectivity in
addition to epistemological objectivity. This argument is also unsound
because Kant's argument for the second premise is invalid in largely the
same way.
In the Preface to B, Kant tries to rebut this charge. With his comments
there in mind, this is my summary of Kant's argument in the Refutation:
1.Each of us is conscious of our own existence as determined in time; in
particular, we have inner experience in which we are conscious of having a
succession of representations.
2.The First Analogy shows that all temporal judgements (that is,
determinations in time) presuppose something permanent in perception.
3.According to the theory of judgement, all judgement-and thus all
judgements of time determination-incorporate an intuition and a concept.
4.The Deduction shows that the I of apperception is permanent; it is a
thought "in us" of something permanent.
5.However, the I of apperception is wholly indeterminate and is not an
intuition; as indeterminate, we can base no judgements on our consciousness
of the I of apperception.
6.Thus, we can base no temporal judgement on the I of apperception; the I of
apperception cannot be permanent by relation to which our empirical
self-consciousness is temporally determined.
7.Therefore, some other permanent must ground our empirical
self-consciousness.
8.This permanent must not be "in me"; as the First Analogy shows, the
permanent must be outside me in the sense that it must involve the
perception of an object or objects in space.
9.Because it cannot be "in me", "perception of this permanent is possible
only through a thing outside me and not through the mere representation of a
thing outside me; and consequently the determination of my existence in time
is possible only through the existence of actual things which I perceive
outside me" (B275).
lO.This is to say that "the consciousness of my existence is at the same
time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me"
(B276).
Steps one through five are fairly straightforward Kantian claims. The way
that Kant presents the I of apperception as "bare" or "formal" precludes it
from grounding a temporal judgement; for Kant, we have seen, judgements
require two types of full-bodied representations, intuitions and concepts.
Thus, steps six and seven follow; given Kant's accounts of apperception and
judgement and his argument in the First Analogy, it follows that our
empirical self-consciousness must be founded on some permanent other than
the bare I of apperception. It is not so easy to understand why steps eight
and nine follow-and these, clearly, are the crucial steps of the argument.
http://www.antioch-college.edu/~andrewc/home/kant/kant_glossary.html
http://www.texttribe.com/text/kany_glossary.htm
78. IDEA [L:97] In the Logic, defined as "a concept of reason, whose object
can be met with nowhere in experience", and thus cannot be known by us; Kant
suggests, however, that such ideas "serve to guide the understanding through
reason in respect of experience" by "using to their greatest perfection" the
rules of reason. He associates such ideas with regulative principles, and
gives as an example the idea of the universe, which is necessary "only as a
regulative principle for the sake of the all-pervasive coherence of the
empirical use of our understanding". [A320/B376] Similarly, in the Critique
Kant speaks of the ideas of reason, which he also calls transcendental
ideas, and he justifies abandoning (as hopelessly confused) the traditional
meaning of the term. He writes, "a concept formed from notions [the source
of pure concepts] and transcending the possibility of experience is an
idea".
79. IDEALISM [Bxxxv] Although Kant is himself a transcendental idealist
(and empirical realist), one of his main concern is to destroy
idealism--namely, dogmatic and problematic idealism, both of which rest on
(in Kant's view) bogus notion of transcendental realism--by means of the
critique of reason. Thus in the Preface to B he writes "criticism alone can
sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism,
and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism
and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the schools" (in fact, he
argues that the very same transcendental illusions which help motivate
idealism also motivate materialism, fatalism, atheism, and moral
free-thinking). [A377] "The dogmatic idealist would be one who denies the
existence of matter, the skeptical idealist one who doubts its existence,
because thinking it to be incapable of proof", while the transcendental
idealist adopts empirical realism and judges appearances as empirically real
objects according to the criteria "whatever is connected with a perception
according to empirical laws, is actual".
170. TRANSCENDENTAL [A12/B25] Used by Kant in many senses: to refer to a
type of philosophy, to a type of deduction, to a type of exposition, to
types of idealism and realism, to "content", to a way of employing the
faculties of the mind, to the unity of apperception, to different types of
proofs, to a type of reflection, to a special unknown "transcendental object
= x", to a type of truth, to a type of knowledge, to a type of reflection,
to a type of illusion, to subjects (selves), to certain ideas, to a sort of
negation, to principles, to a kind of theology, to a type of hypothesis-not
to mention the term's use in contrast to empirical, transcendent, etc.
Nevertheless, Kant did hazard some general comments about the meaning of the
term. In the Introduction, he writes "I entitle transcendental all knowledge
which is occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge
of objects in so far as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori".
[A295/B352] In the Dialectic he defines a different usage: "we shall entitle
the principles whose application is confined entirely within the limits of
possible experience, immanent; and those, on the other hand, which profess
to pass beyond these limits, transcendent. In the case of these latter, I am
not referring to the transcendental employment of misemployment of the
categories, which is merely an error of the faculty of judgment when it is
not duly curbed by criticism". Kant offers innumerable other such
definitions in the Critique, e.g. (at A720/B748), "synthetic propositions in
regard to things in general, the intuition of which does not admit to being
given a priori, are transcendental. Transcendental propositions can never be
given through construction of concepts, but only in accordance with concepts
that are a priori".
171. TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC [A21/B35] "The science of all principles of a
priori sensibility I call transcendental aesthetic. There must be such a
science, forming the first part of the transcendental doctrine of elements,
in distinction from that part which deals with the principles of pure
thought, and which is called transcendental logic. In the transcendental
Aesthetic we shall...first isolate sensibility, by taking away from it
everything which the understanding thinks through in its
concepts....Secondly, we shall also separate off from it everything which
belongs to sensation, so that nothing may remain save the pure intuition and
the mere form of appearances, which is all that sensibility can supply a
priori".
transcendent: the realm of thought which lies beyond the boundary of
possible knowledge, because it consists of objects which cannot be presented
to us in intuition-i.e., objects which we can never experience with our
senses (sometimes called noumena). The closest we can get to gaining
knowledge of the transcendent realm is to think about it by means of ideas.
(The opposite of 'transcendent' is 'immanent'.)
transcendental: one of Kant's four main perspectives, aiming to establish a
kind of knowledge which is both synthetic and a priori. It is a special type
of philosophical knowledge, concerned with the necessary conditions for the
possibility of experience. However, Kant believes all knowing subjects
assume certain transcendental truths, whether or not they are aware of it.
Transcendental knowledge defines the boundary between empirical knowledge
and speculation about the transcendent realm. 'Every event has a cause' is a
typical transcendental statement. (Cf. empirical.)
transcendental object: an object considered transcendentally insofar as it
has been presented to a subject, but is not yet represented in any
determined way-i.e., not yet influenced by space and time or by the
categories. Also called an 'object in general'.
Transcendent: Distinct from 'transcendental'. Of a principle that demands
application beyond the limits of experience. Opposite: immanent.
transcendental: Concerning that which forms the a priori conditions of the
possibility of something (in particular, of either knowledge or experience).
Transcendental knowledge, then, is knowledge of such conditions and how
those conditions function. Transcendental knowledge is therefore different
both from ordinary knowledge about things, and even from metaphysical
knowledge.
=================================
It is thought by some that Kant's idealism makes the physical world a mental
phenomenon. However, Kant's system was not fundamentally mentalist. True, he
thought that physical objects as physical objects were mental in character,
but this does not mean they are merely in our heads, nor that they have no
objective existence in a reality outside of us. This is because their
ultimate reality can be logico-mathematical in nature and completely
nonmental, while their physical objecthood remains a matter of mind. I will
explain how this is so by reconstructing Kant's transcendental deduction of
the categories, from the Critique of Pure Reason (B edition). Although not
the force that it once was, I believe that some kind of transcendental
idealism is the only way of thinking that makes sense in this age of quantum
theory. I will develop the deduction in a somewhat more modern context than
that of Kant, bringing in modern ideas in logic, mathematics and physics.
Thus, I do not consider the particular set of categories that Kant chooses
to be fundamental, preferring to ground things in a more modern notion of
the foundations of logic, such as that found in recursion theory (Kant's
particular categories may or may not then flow out of this more modern
foundation). I will therefore tend to prefer Kant's lesser-used term
"logical functions" over his more frequently used Aristotelian term
"categories" (Kant himself uses the terms interchangeably). I close by
suggesting that Kant's grounding of physical law in the synthetic unity of
consciousness (apperception) can perhaps be viewed as an early version of
the modern cosmological anthropic principle.
http://home.ican.net/~arandall/Kant/Idealism/
=====================================
After Hume weren't we all idealists?
This intellectualism was a good ploy, and I was reading, "is often confused
with materialism on the grounds that physical equals material,"
then this guy and his ecuse for circuit properties;
We may be using different definitions of "material." I meant, there
are things in nature that are not made of matter/energy. Mathematical
equations do not have a chemical formula. The design of my car does
not have a specific gravity (now, John himself might object that these
things exist only insofar as they are expressed in some physical
matrix that has these properties; I'm willing to indulge in a sort of
matter/pattern neo-dualism). When I say the formal cause is
nonmaterial, I mean only that it is a pattern, not a chunk of matter
itself. I say nothing about nonmaterial origins for that pattern.
then yada yada pooplalapaloosa;
I agree here. It is important to point out that these things give rise to
a different sense of dualism (really, pluralism) than consciousness does.
The non-physicalness of these entities (functioning and behavior)
issues from their failure to "reduce" to the physical in the
classic positivist/empiricist sense: there is no *mutual* entailment
between the concepts of physical theory, and the concepts which
characterize what it is to be these kinds of entities.
and ole mitch math psycho;
From: Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind - physicalism
"The positivists defined the physical as that
which can be described in the concepts of a
language with an intersubjective observation
basis. This could be called unity of science
physicalism. It is the primary meaning of
physicalism in the philosophy of science. Another
type of physicalism might be called causal
physicalism, the view that all causes are physical
causes.
"There is a lot of confusion in the philosophy of
mind literature stemming from a tendency to take
physicalism and materialism to be interchangeable."
I think that my use of the term synthetic derives from Kant. To the extent
that judgements
of perception (relevant to the description of natural philosophy as a
science) are
empirical, they are designated as synthetic a posteriori judgements.
Since I consider Kant's characterization of causality reasonable, I have no
problem with the description of causal physicalism if the physicalism is
nonmaterial--that is, I know how I am actually resolving the definition.
the predicate physical is being defined on topological
containment in the physical universe, which is tacitly defined on
and descriptively contained in the predicate physical, so that the
self-definition of "physical" is a two-step operation involving both
topological and descriptive containment. While this principle, which
we might regard as a statement of "physicalism", is often confused
with materialism on the grounds that "physical" equals "material",
the material may in fact be only a part of what makes up the
physical. Similarly, the physical may only be a part of what makes
up the real. Because the content of reality is a matter of science
as opposed to mere semantics, this issue can be resolved only by
rational or empirical evidence, not by assumption alone.
-------------------------------
By the way, you are both correct and incorrect about my materialism. For me
there is uncertainty. Knowing that physicalism has both material and
nonmaterial interpretations seems consistent with my experience. I cannot
make an ontological commitment either way. But, at least I understand how
this circumstance is consistent with my being.
-----------------------------
> >Dualism is an *enlargement* of the world, not the end of it. As such,
> >it opens up a new scientific frontier, it doesn't destroy science. Sit
> >back. Relax. Enjoy the ride -- it should be one terrific show.
>
> I think that there is a sense in which functionalism and behaviorism
> are themselves dualistic theories, because they introduce nonmaterial
> entities "function" and "behavior".
I agree here. It is important to point out that these things give rise to
a different sense of dualism (really, pluralism) than consciousness does.
The non-physicalness of these entities (functioning and behavior)
issues from their failure to "reduce" to the physical in the
classic positivist/empiricist sense: there is no *mutual* entailment
between the concepts of physical theory, and the concepts which
characterize what it is to be these kinds of entities.
This means that, in a broad sense, "what it is to be" these things cannot
be accounted for in physical terms. The Being of a thing concerns the
conditions of its category, and functioning/behavior represent failures of
Being to reduce to the physical. Many, many things fail in this way.
Think, for example, of what it is to be a friend. It is extremely unlikely
that the definition of friendship (however loosely it must be defined) can
ultimately be given in physical terms.
Nevertheless, there is a perfectly good sense in which these things
are physical: the *existence* (not the Being) of these
things, and the facts about them, is implied by the existence of the
physical facts. This is the only sense a committed physicalist needs
to worry about.
Putting the philosophical pretension aside, the point comes to this:
the existing physical facts strictly imply all the facts about the
existence of these other kinds of beings. This is because the physical
story literally contains the story about these other beings, only
implicitly. The "implicitness" of the story grounds the implication.
It is a kind of containment relation, so nothing new, apart from the
physical facts, is involved in these other kinds of facts.
On the other hand, the failure of Being to be grounded in the physical
comes to just this: the story about the existence of the high-level
entities does not strictly entail the existence of the physical facts. If
it did, we wouldn't have the problem of justifying inference to the best
explanation. The reason the story about the existence of these other
things fails to contain, even implicitly, the story about the existence
of the physical is that the categories of the high-level story,
almost to a one, admit of multiple realizations.
Therefore, while the ground of Being of things like functions are
non-physical, the ground of their existence is clearly physical.
Physicalist-minded people can take note of this, argue that ontology is
concerned with what exists, and wave away the non-physical ground of
these things Being. The may claim Being is "merely" conceptual. The
concepts allow for pictures of ways things might have been, but aren't. It
is not surprising that these categories allow for alternative realizations
that are not the way things are. They were formed to deal with the world
at the level we live in it, and long before we had an inkling of the correct
physics.
In contrast, the failure of consciousness to be implied by the physical is
of another order of magnitude entirely. It is not simply a failure of the
Being of consciousness to be grounded in physical concepts. The failure
includes even the one-way implication from the existing physical facts to
the
existing phenomenal facts. (the facts about function and behavior do not
fail in this way).
From this, it follows that the physical facts cannot be the sole
ground for the existence of consciousness (much less of its Being). The
notion of natural law used by dualism is simply a device by which the
existence of consciousness gets grounded: If X kind of physical situation
exists, then Y kind of consciousness exists.
So, in short, a reasonable argument exists that the pluralism of Being
Daryl points out does not undermine physicalism, since the ontological
importance of Being can be waved away by the committed physicalist. In its
stead, we may favor existence as what is relevant to ontology. Indeed, if
it were not for the failure of the physical to account for consciousness,
I would be very attracted to this tack myself.
> These entities are patterns found
> in the material world, but are not themselves material, just as
> instances of the number 2 can be found in the material world (two
> apples for instance) while the number 2 itself is nonmaterial. I think
> that the enlargement of the world by considering abstract entities is
> very fruitful. While properties of abstractions cannot be studied
> empirically, they *can* be studied rigorously using the tools of
> mathematics.
I think what Daryl says here is very true. What a committed physicalist
*should* disagree with above is the idea of the abstract entities
"themselves." When we consider these things "themselves" the physicalist
needs to say we are thinking in fictional ways; we are thinking about ways
things *might* have been, or things that *might* have existed, or about
abstract objects which, in some sense, *could* be.
The physicalist should be quick to point out that the only things which DO
exist are (1) the physical, and (2) whatever is logically implied by the
existence of the physical (such as *instances* of the number 2, but not
the number 2 "itself"). Fictional ways of thinking don't present us with
ontological concerns.
> However, the kind of dualism that Gregg Rosenberg and Selmer
> Bringsjord propose doesn't seem amenable to study using *any* rigorous
> methods whatsoever. So I disagree with Gregg that it opens up a new
> scientific frontier---it can't be scientific if there is no way to
> study it.
---------------------------------------
> I thought PHYSICALISM was rooted in PHYSICS which is EXTREMELY
> MATERIAL, NON SYNTHETIC branch of SCIENCE. Where do your words come
> from?
>
For some reason, I seemed to think the quote used the term "synthetic" when,
in fact, it
did not.
From: Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind - physicalism
"The positivists defined the physical as that
which can be described in the concepts of a
language with an intersubjective observation
basis. This could be called unity of science
physicalism. It is the primary meaning of
physicalism in the philosophy of science. Another
type of physicalism might be called causal
physicalism, the view that all causes are physical
causes.
"There is a lot of confusion in the philosophy of
mind literature stemming from a tendency to take
physicalism and materialism to be interchangeable."
I think that my use of the term synthetic derives from Kant. To the extent
that judgements
of perception (relevant to the description of natural philosophy as a
science) are
empirical, they are designated as synthetic a posteriori judgements.
-------------
Since I consider Kant's characterization of causality reasonable, I have no
problem with the description of causal physicalism if the physicalism is
nonmaterial--that is, I know how I am actually resolving the definition.
---------------
> You are not mistaken and your're making good points. However, most
> philosophers of mathemeatics made that distinction clear in advance
> and never mixed the subjects. Nothing should prevent a man for being
> both a mathematician and a metaphysician. Mixing the two is
> unacceptable in science. In this respect, any reference to
> consiousness is related to existence, therefore a subject of
> metaphysics.
>
But Kant's analysis of necessity bound the questions discussed here to
epistemology as a
prerequisite to metaphysics. There is no question that a theory of
epistemic limitation constitutes
an ontological commitment. However, the metaphysical implications are
derivative rather than
assertorical.
One must justify the positions of those who would claim that the Kantian
analysis of causal relation
is not correct--that is, those who demand that science and metaphysics be
separated in the sense I
infer from your remarks. The fact is that the very efficacy of technology
allowed alternate
perspectives to continue spouting metaphysical explanations without due
regard for a theory that
explained the legitimacy of natural philosophy with equal vigor. The
dichotomy you are asking me to
respect is a definist fallacy.
As far as philosophy of science is concerned, it is my understanding that
modern perspectives
understand the unity of science in terms of a nonmaterial physicalism that
is consistent with
Kantian philosophy. In my humble opinion, it is the material physicalism of
theological origin
which leads so many people posting on the internet to ask "Is
physics/general relativity/quantum
mechanics a religion?"
I once concluded a post to alt.philosophy with the following remark,
"Under no imaginable circumstances could I
conceive of a universe devoid of consciousness
because I have no sensible intuition of a
universe in which I do not exist. I can, however,
imagine a lifeless universe because a label
is just a language token."
It is not that I do not understand the issues of the dichotomy you have
brought to bear. But, in my
universe we are individuals with individual experiences that influence our
paradigmatic choices.
All of the mathematical formalism in the world does nothing to make a least
common denominator
anything but equivalent to a rerun of "Three's Company."
Having clarified my *personal* opinion of scientific dogma, I am curious why
you believe that
intensional logics are necessarily analytic. If I have not offended you,
please enlighten me. I
respect material physicalism as a dual paradigm and would consider it
unfortunate if this thread
devolved into an argument about science.
:-)
mitch
-----------------------------------
Besides, all that stuff about clarity is irrelevant, relative, and
merely circumstantial. If you had been raised in a more intellectually
fruitful environment, you would find Kantianism to be actually quite
palatable, and verboseness would seem pleasant to you rather than
painful or excessive.
Your opinion relates more to your own undeveloped sense of taste in
intellectualism, in that it is truly more on a par with that of the
great unwashed you mentioned. But then, that would only make you a
typical American. Fortunately, I am not typical.
As it goes, your aesthetic summation of Kant's writing carries along
with it the absoluteness of objective judgment, implying that Kant was
right in that
we do represent our aesthetic experiences as universal, and anybody
who fails to match up to our judgment to be, at the very least,
disagreeable. So it would never occur to you to see yourself as
anti-intellectual in your ad hoc appeal to the great unwashed; rather,
your judgment, which you see as objective and fair, would seem very
intellectual to you. But that is only because you take your mere
representations of aesthetic judgment as reality, or, let us say, as
certain, obvious, and logically eternal as one of Rand's axioms.
-----------------------------------------
And, this from Will Durant in _The Story of Philosophy_:
After all, Schopenhauer opened the eyes of psychologists
to the subtle depth and omnipresent force of instinct.
Intellectualism - the conception of man as above all a
thinking animal, consciously adapting means to rationally
chosen ends - fell sick with Rousseau, took to its bed
with Kant, and died with Schopenhauer.
IIRC, Schopenhauer believed that our rational thoughts were really only
rationalizations of our instincts - our Wills? I thought the Nazis
exalted instinct & blind action over mere "cunning", as they called
rational thought & invention.
How COULD someone use Schopenhauer as an intellectual defense against
Nazism?
Likewise with Nietzche: He took Schopenhauer's notion of the Will, &
decided to celebrate the Will to Power instead of fearing the Will. And
while he hated anti-semitism, there's also this little idea that
morality is whatever the Ubermensch requires - and self-sacrifice is
something that the weak must endure for the strong, etc.
(In many ways the relation of Bergson to the age of Darwin is a replica of
Kant's relation to Voltaire. Kant strove to repulse that great wave of
secular, and partly atheistic, intellectualism which had begun with Bacon
and Descartes, and had ended in the scepticism of Diderot and Hume; and his
effort took the line of denying the finality of intellect in the field of
transcendental problems. But Darwin unconsciously, and Spencer consciously,
renewed the assaults which Voltaire, and his more-than-Voltairean followers,
had leveled at the ancient faith; and mechanist materialism, which had given
ground before Kant and Schopenhauer, had won all of its old power at the
beginning of our century. Bergson attacked it, not with a Kantian critique
of knowledge, nor with the idealist contention that matter is known only
through mind; but by following the lead of Schopenhauer, and seeking, in the
objective as well as in the subjective world, an energizing principle, an
active entelechy, which might make more intelligible the miracles and
subtleties of life. Never was vitalism so forcefully argued, or so
attractively dressed.)
Obviously, there are at least two types of intellectualism: one, an ideology
free-basing on 'pure reason'; the other grounding its reason in experience.
-------------------------------------------
Frederick C. Crews suggested that Paris intellectuals such as Jacques
Derrida "are treasured, I suspect, less for their specific creeds than
for the invigorating Nietzschean scorn they direct at intellectual
prudence. The rise of 'theory' has resulted in an irrationalist
climate in the strictest sense..." He warned readers of _Commentary_
that "Indeterminism as a movement bears implications that are both
irrationalist and undemocratic."
In _New French Thought_ Mark Lilla argues that in the early postwar
period "French intellectuals were almost unanimous in their a priori
rejection of liberal society and their adherence to some form of
Marxism.' (p. 10) The structuralist movements which followed
(including deconstruction and postmodernism) represented a new, no
longer Marxist, form of antiliberal intellectualism:
the structuralist movements, which on the surface did not appear
tied to any particular political doctrine, contributed to the
long stream of French antiliberalism in the sixties and seventies.
[...] if autonomous individuals as conceived by the Enlightenment
and the liberal tradition do not exist independently, if it is
structures that produce them--whether those structures are
linguistic, symbolic, cultural, psychological, ideological,
"logocentric," or simply those of "power"--then potentially
every human experience can be interpreted politically through a
political analysis of those structures. (p. 13)
Richard Wolin, in _The Terms of Cultural Criticism_, observes:
the postructuralist critique of reason (e.g., Derrida's
critique of "logocentrism") was inspired primarily by
German philosophical sources (Nietzsche and Heidegger).
[...] In the eyes of Germany's oxymoronic "conservative
revolutionaries," the "intellect" or "reason" was viewed
as the "antagonist" of the "soul" or "life." (p. xv)
In Volume II of _The Open Society and Its Enemies_ Popper suggests the
origin of the romantic, illiberal strain of modern intellectualism:
It was Kant's criticism of all attempts to prove the existence
of God which led to the romantic reaction of Fichte, Schelling,
and Hegel. The new tendency is to descard proofs, and with
them, any kind of rational argument. With the romantics, a new
kind of dogmatism becomes fashionable [...] It confronts us
with its dictum. And we can _take it or leave it_. This
romantic period of an oracular philosophy, called by
Schopenhauer the 'age of dishonesty', is described by him as
follows: 'The character of honesty, that spirit of undertaking
an inquiry together with the reader, which permeates the works
of all previous philosophers, disappears here completely.
Every page witnesses that these so-called philosophers do not
attempt to teach, but to bewitch the reader. (p. 21)
A certain kind of intellectual appears, a romantic intellectual; and
as asserted in Part 2, these intellectuals' methods were not
intellectual and neither was their thought.
For an example of a false intellectual, in _Unauthorized Freud_ Crews
argues that psychoanalysis, and Freud's opus in general, does not meet
"the requirements of a well-conceived, logically coherent, empirically
responsible theory." (p. 75)
In the same work John Farrell writes, "It is the prevalence of this
intellectual dynamic [antirational, antiempirical and--Farrell
argues--paranoid] that causes modern people to see themselves so
movingly reflected in personalities like those of Rousseau, Nietzsche,
and Freud, allowing these agitated and frequently deluded
intellectuals to assume a prominent place in history without
embarrassment." (p. 245)
For an example of a deluded romantic intellectual, here's Nietzsche,
long before the advent of the Third Reich, deploying its language:
the pre-Aryan dweller of the Italian soil which
distinguished [himself] most clearly through his color from
blonds who became their masters, namely the Aryan conquering
race. [...] Who can say whether modern democracy, [...]
does not signify in the main a tremendous _counterattack_--
and that the conqueror and _master race_, the Aryan, is not
succumbing physiologically, too?
- (quoted in Ferry and Renaut's _Why We Are Not Nietzscheans_)
And here is Nietzsche--he who inspired Heidegger and Derrida--not
content with rhapsodizing over the Aryan master race, praising
slavery:
The essential characteristic of a good and healthy aristocracy
. . . is that it . . . accepts with a good conscience the
sacrifice of untold human beings who, _for its sake_, must be
reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to
instruments.
Their methods were not intellectual and neither was their thought.
Richard Wolin, in _The Terms of Cultural Criticism_, observes:
the postructuralist critique of reason (e.g., Derrida's
critique of "logocentrism") was inspired primarily by
German philosophical sources (Nietzsche and Heidegger).
They were, however, illiberal and reactionary. Richard Wolin reminded
us above of the connection between current left intellectual fashions
whose main figure is Derrida and the German "conservative
revolutionaries."
Fritz Stern, in _The Politics of Cultural Despair_, notes that this
particular left intellectual orientation is basically illiberal:
The chief target of the conservative revolutionaries, however,
was liberalism. All the vast and undesirable changes in the
lives and feelings of Western man they blamed on liberalism.
They sensed that liberalism was the spiritual and political
basis of modernity and they sought to equate liberalism [...]
with the disregard of man's spiritual aspirations, with the
acceptance of economic selfishness and exploitation, with
the embourgeoisement of life and morals. They ignored--or
maligned--the ideal aspirations of liberalism, its dedication
to freedom, the hospitality to science, the rational, humane,
tolerant view of man. For what they loosely called liberalism
constituted little less than the culmination of the secular,
moral tradition of the West. (p. 10)
There are, of course, intellectuals who do not betray the intellectual
discipline; I've quoted a few: Lilla, Crews, Wolin, Stern, Ferry and
Renaut. There is the Randall Kennedy of "My Race Problem -- And Ours,"
Noretta Koertge of _House Built on Sand_, the Stephen Holmes of _The
Anatomy of Antiliberalism_ (which has drawn some really hostile
responses), Richard Bernstein (_Dictatorship of Virtue_), Pauline
Maier (_American Scripture_), Nat Hentoff (_Free Speech for Me--But
Not for Thee_).
There are slightly more conservative intellectuals who offer
substantial insights into liberalism: John M. Ellis (he deconstructs
Grimms fairy tales--and deconstruction), Paul Hollander, Mary
Lefkowitz ("The problem with saying that Aristotle stole his
philosophy from Egypt is not that modern Greeks and classicists will
be offended; what's wrong with the statement is that it is untrue.").
Some scientists are allies. Allan Sokal (_Fashionable Nonsense_, and I
think he wrote a satire of "science studies" in 1996), his co-author
Jean Bricmont, Lee Smolin of _The Life of the Cosmos_ and _Three Roads
to Quantum Gravity_ (as claimed in Part 2, the knowledge professions
converge).
I'll close with a Whitman quote from Smolin's _The Life of the Cosmos_
(if you don't know why the quote reflects a liberal sensibility--you
should):
Whatever may have been the case in years gone by, the true use
for the imaginative faculty of modern times is to give ultimate
vivification to facts, to science and common lives, endowing them
with the glows and glories and final illustriousness to which belong
every real thing, and to real things only. - Walt Whitman [p. 47]
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
anyway that was cool, peace.
HPO Jury = America
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:a1og70tfoptft8s8o...@4ax.com...
>> On Sat, 10 Apr 2004 10:35:29 -0700, "Immortalist"
>> <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>Alright I give.
>
>I am an idealist that toys with physicalist notions?
As you wish.
>See this thingy went off line and the place that had the back up and the
>cached page was eliminated from google and I had to scan from a print. I was
>curious about the 10 propositions:
>
>-----
>
>6. THE REFUTATION OF IDEALISM
>
>In the Refutation of Idealism Kant attempts to prove that "we have
>experience, and not merely imagination of outer things" (B275). He claims
>that his argument shows "that even our inner experience, which for Descartes
>is indubitable, is possible only on the assumption of outer experience"
>(Ibid). Note that this claim is ambiguous because "outer experience" can
>mean being conscious of a representation of a certain state of affairs or
>event (epistemologically objective experience) or can mean experience of the
>object of such a representation, namely experience of states of affairs or
>events (ontologically objective experience). Thus, Kant's summary of the
>conclusion of his argument could mean merely that this argument establishes
>that all experience must be epistemologically objective. However, Kant
>attempted to prove this thesis in the Transcendental Deduction and
>elaborated his view in the Analogies. Clearly, if he is to refute
>problematic idealism, Kant must show that having ontologically objective
>outer experience is a necessary condition of having inner experience.
I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time.
All determination of time presupposes something permanent in
perception.
This permanent cannot, however, be something in me, since it is
only through this permanent that my existence in time can itself be
determined.
Thus perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing
outside me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside
me; and consequently the determination of my existence in time is
possible only through the existence of actual things which I perceive
outside me.
Now consciousness [of my existence] in time is necessarily bound up
with consciousness of the [condition of the] possibility of this
time-determination; and it is therefore necessarily bound up with the
existence of things outside me, as the condition of the time-
determination.
In other words, the consciousness of my existence is at the same time
an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside
me.
>In my interpretation, the general form of Kant's argument in the Refutation
>is:
>
>l. The ability to make any temporal judgement presupposes the perception of
>something permanent [from First Analogy]; and
>
>2. Nothing permanent is intuitable in the empirical self [presented as an
>application of the First Analogy], so that
>
>3. A perception of this permanent presupposes an intuitable object in space
>and not merely the representation of an object in space.
>
>This argument is invalid because the third step does not follow from the
>first two; according to the argument of the First Analogy, a representation
>of an object in space does ground the ability to make temporal judgements.
>Thus, the argument does not shed light on the question it supposedly
>answers, namely whether or not the permanent has ontological objectivity in
>addition to epistemological objectivity. This argument is also unsound
>because Kant's argument for the second premise is invalid in largely the
>same way.
I don't see Kant's simple argument as following in the manner you
describe. It merely implies that there are just two possible locations
for this permanent which makes the time-determination of self
possible: within us, or outside us. The permanent cannot be within us,
therefore, it must be outside us.
You are correct that the First Analogy plays a key role in this
argument. It argues for the necessity of a permanent substratum, while
the Refutation argues for the location of this permanent as outside
us, making possible our inner experience of a constantly changing
succession of representations. "Thus perception of this permanent is
possible only through a thing outside me and not through the mere
representation of a thing outside me," for otherwise we would have no
location for the permanent in the succession of temporal events, only
in that which is constantly changing, entailing a contradiction.
I don't see them as crucial to the argument, but explanatory points
which build on the preceding argument.
<snip>
>anyway that was cool, peace.
>
Aren't mental gymnastics fun though?
Immortalist
But how is it to be observed that in the foregoing proof the game played by
idealism has been turned against itself, and with greater justice even if
idealism assumed that the only immediate experience is inner experience, and
that from it we can only infer outer things, and this, moreover, only in an
untrustworthy manner, as in all cases where we are inferring from given
effects to determinate causes?
Is it because, despite this particular case and the cause of the
representations, which we ascribe, perhaps falsely, to outer things, may lie
in ourselves, that it has been shown that outer experience is really
immediate, and that only by means of it is inner experience -- not indeed
the consciousness of my own existence, but the determination of it in
time -- possible?
Could you describe this permanent again? And what relation doeth it have to
the "necessary X?"
Do they build to the point of allowing possible differing opinions and if so
this makes them non-analytical?
> <snip>
>
> >anyway that was cool, peace.
> >
>
> Aren't mental gymnastics fun though?
> --
>
Ya, but when the number of back and forth gets to long it aint worth
spending all that time on when there are other cool things to talk in
variety.
As concerns the "all that is required is to fill them in," the categories
that is, you claimed there was no need to. You differ with Kant here?
Page 115 (CPR)
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
In this treatise, I purposely omit the definitions of the categories,
although I may be in possession of them. I shall A83 proceed to analyse
these concepts only so far as is necessary in connection with the doctrine
of method which I am propounding. B109
In a system of pure reason, definitions of the categories would rightly be
demanded, but in this treatise they would merely divert attention from the
main object of the enquiry, arousing doubts and objections which, without
detriment to what is essential to our purposes, can very well be reserved
for another occasion.
Meanwhile, from the little that I have said, it will be obvious that a
complete glossary, with all the requisite explanations, is not only a
possible, but an easy task. The divisions are provided; all that is required
is (to_fill_them); and a systematic 'topic', such as that here given,
affords sufficient guidance as to the proper location of each concept, while
at the same time indicating which divisions are still empty.
</endquote>
What does he mean by "indicating which divisions are still empty?"
You also said concepts are not in the brain or a result of the activities
within the brain, or something like that. Are you talking about Kants
definition of concepts or the contemporary definition of concepts?
HPO Jury = America
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Because Kant starts with the immediacy of inner perception, as do the
Cartesians, but comes to the opposite conclusion.
>Is it because, despite this particular case and the cause of the
>representations, which we ascribe, perhaps falsely, to outer things, may lie
>in ourselves, that it has been shown that outer experience is really
>immediate, and that only by means of it is inner experience -- not indeed
>the consciousness of my own existence, but the determination of it in
>time -- possible?
Yes, determination in time is the key factor which the Cartesians
neglected. Without it, the Cartesians come to transcendent
conclusions. If time is not a priori, then the timeless "I" becomes an
object of rational examination. "I think therefore I am." The "I am"
is not any unity of apperception for them, not a merely logical form,
but a timeless, ontological being. The problem is that in order to
derive "I am" from "I think," it is necessary to determine the former
in accordance with the same rule of time-determination as with the
latter.
The permanent is the unchanging, intellectual fundament within which
all time-determinations whatsoever are made.
>And what relation doeth it have to the "necessary X?"
The transcendental object = x? The undetermined object of experience,
"the unity of the manifold in sensible intuition." Things in general
before they become determinate objects for us, represented as the
unified correlate of the unity of apperception.
Perhaps it would best be described as the a priori idea that things
exist in a systematic, orderly matrix of time and space. The
relationship of this with the permanent is found in the principle that
"Experience [in general] is possible only through the representation
of a necessary connection of perceptions." (B218) This representation
is found in the transcendental imagination, and is entitled the
transcendental schema of imagination. That title is not a quote, by
the way, but: "the schema is in itself always a product of
imagination." (A140/B179) And it is not empirical imagination because
it does not concern images of things, like Kant's example of the
schema of a dog (what I would call the universal "dogness" of the
concept "dog"), but laws of nature. As transcendental, the schema
require an intellectual foundation of permanence in which to make the
time-determinations both possible and necessary.
>>
>> I don't see them as crucial to the argument, but explanatory points
>> which build on the preceding argument.
>>
>
>Do they build to the point of allowing possible differing opinions and if so
>this makes them non-analytical?
But what exactly are we talking about here? This conclusion: "In other
words, the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an
immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me."
In other words (again), to put it in the negative, there are no
mediating representations through which we comprehend the external
world.
This is merely a consequence of the preceding argument: "This
permanent cannot, however, be something in me, since it is only
through this permanent that my existence in time can itself be
determined. Thus perception of this permanent is possible only through
a thing outside me and not through the mere representation of a thing
outside me; and consequently the determination of my existence in time
is possible only through the existence of actual things which I
perceive outside me."
>> <snip>
>>
>> >anyway that was cool, peace.
>> >
>>
>> Aren't mental gymnastics fun though?
>> --
>>
>
>Ya, but when the number of back and forth gets to long it aint worth
>spending all that time on when there are other cool things to talk in
>variety.
>
>
>As concerns the "all that is required is to fill them in," the categories
>that is, you claimed there was no need to. You differ with Kant here?
I did a Google groups and CPR search on that quote and couldn't find
the reference.
>Page 115 (CPR)
>http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
>
>In this treatise, I purposely omit the definitions of the categories,
>although I may be in possession of them. I shall A83 proceed to analyse
>these concepts only so far as is necessary in connection with the doctrine
>of method which I am propounding. B109
>
>In a system of pure reason, definitions of the categories would rightly be
>demanded, but in this treatise they would merely divert attention from the
>main object of the enquiry, arousing doubts and objections which, without
>detriment to what is essential to our purposes, can very well be reserved
>for another occasion.
>
>Meanwhile, from the little that I have said, it will be obvious that a
>complete glossary, with all the requisite explanations, is not only a
>possible, but an easy task. The divisions are provided; all that is required
>is (to_fill_them); and a systematic 'topic', such as that here given,
>affords sufficient guidance as to the proper location of each concept, while
>at the same time indicating which divisions are still empty.
></endquote>
>
>What does he mean by "indicating which divisions are still empty?"
Kant is talking about the method he used to fill in the divisions in
the table of categories. It seems to have been something like working
a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces that were put in place indicated and gave
clues to the ones yet missing. But now they are in place, and the
table of categories is complete.
>You also said concepts are not in the brain or a result of the activities
>within the brain, or something like that. Are you talking about Kants
>definition of concepts or the contemporary definition of concepts?
>
I said that you won't find the concepts in the brain, not that they
aren't there. I have no opinion as to the latter.
--
HPO Jury = America
<Male...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>But how is it to be observed that in the foregoing proof the game played by
>>idealism has been turned against itself, and with greater justice even if
>>idealism assumed that the only immediate experience is inner experience, and
>>that from it we can only infer outer things, and this, moreover, only in an
>>untrustworthy manner, as in all cases where we are inferring from given
>>effects to determinate causes?
>
>Because Kant starts with the immediacy of inner perception, as do the
>Cartesians, but comes to the opposite conclusion.
I'm not quite happy with that statement, particularly the word
"immediacy." Better to say, "Kant starts with the fact of inner
perception," in order to avoid confusing it with the immediacy of
external experience.
Immortalist
My mistake.
"all that is required is to fill them"
But if they are all in place in the table on the preceding page why would he
say;
[B108] Since at present we are concerned not with the
completeness of the system, but only with the principles to be
followed in its construction, I reserve this supplementary work
P 115 for another occasion.
It can easily be carried out, with the
aid of the ontological manuals -- for instance, by placing under
the category of causality the predicables of force, action,
passion; under the category of community the predicables
of presence, resistance; under the predicaments of modality
the predicables of coming to be, ceasing to be, change, etc.
The categories, when combined with the modes of pure sensibility,
or with one another, yield a large number of derivative
a priori concepts. To note, and, where possible, to give a
complete inventory of these concepts, would be a useful and not
unpleasant task, but it is a task from which we can here be
absolved.
> >You also said concepts are not in the brain or a result of the activities
> >within the brain, or something like that. Are you talking about Kants
> >definition of concepts or the contemporary definition of concepts?
> >
>
> I said that you won't find the concepts in the brain, not that they
> aren't there. I have no opinion as to the latter.
> --
I like this view, that science is not metaphysics.
But I am curious as to clear up any confusion that Kant is not talking of
physical body parts or activities but only necessary activities whatever
their constitution, the words confuse me;
http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/indx/toc.html
The first number is "times this word occurs" the the page number and the
line the word is on that page.
ORGAN 3 033 12, 033 34, 379 28
http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/indx/O.html
FACULTIES 21 012 8, 017 27, 127 25, 127 32, 146 27, 176 5, 276 15,
277 13, 373 8, 373 18, 374 18, 381 17, 428 16, 472 18, 472 26, 472 29,
479 6, 593 2, 610 3, 614 15, 630 2
FACULTY 164 009 14, 011 36, 012 13, 022 27, 036 25, 041 5, 042 3,
042 4, 044 13, 045 8, 045 25, 057 4, 058 19, 060 5, 065 20, 077 33,
083 37, 088 17, 090 18, 093 8, 103 8, 103 12, 104 5, 104 7, 105 6,
105 8, 106 7, 106 8, 110 38, 114 5, 114 6, 121 29, 121 37, 127 28,
128 12, 130 23, 130 24, 130 24, 132 23, 133 32, 133 32, 140 22,
142 39, 143 23, 144 9, 144 10, 144 21, 144 35, 145 38, 147 28, 147 30,
148 19, 151 10, 151 16, 151 16, 152 9, 154 19, 154 39, 161 24, 164 21,
165 9, 165 18, 166 8, 166 15, 166 27, 172 29, 173 5, 174 22, 177 18,
177 19, 183 11, 194 35, 195 24, 198 38, 218 26, 239 15, 246 16,
246 39, 246 40, 252 6, 252 15, 252 26, 266 7, 270 4, 270 8, 276 27,
277 01, 277 11, 277 26, 277 37, 278 2, 278 10, 281 19, 282 5, 282 10,
283 12, 283 14, 287 7, 298 22, 298 27, 299 5, 299 32, 300 29, 300 32,
301 2, 301 3, 301 5, 301 8, 301 16, 301 17, 303 3, 303 5, 303 12,
305 6, 305 7, 310 34, 320 26, 320 27, 321 25, 322 33, 325 35, 329 16,
366 29, 373 17, 375 29, 378 42, 379 23, 379 28, 383 5, 383 7, 414 11,
441 21, 467 21, 467 29, 467 31, 471 8, 471 23, 472 20, 474 01, 475 17,
475 25, 476 34, 489 10, 489 11, 534 37, 540 9, 540 11, 542 8, 569 28,
576 33, 603 9, 610 10, 611 01, 618 33, 618 36, 630 9, 633 27, 633 34,
633 35, 655 27, 655 29, 656 11, 659 10, 661 32
http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/indx/F.html
POWER 76 005 10, 010 34, 023 23, 047 7, 057 26, 086 16, 092 11,
093 01, 093 3, 112 4, 134 26, 145 6, 147 27, 148 7, 161 21, 166 12,
169 17, 178 2, 178 10, 241 25, 241 26, 262 12, 280 25, 285 10, 312 37,
348 31, 409 29, 412 27, 412 30, 413 19, 413 30, 413 26, 413 29,
413 39, 425 31, 426 32, 431 21, 433 35, 451 40, 464 25, 465 15,
476 36, 478 16, 486 13, 486 13, 500 11, 519 18, 523 5, 523 31, 527 01,
536 19, 536 24, 536 30, 536 32, 536 33, 536 37, 536 39, 537 2, 537 7,
537 8, 537 16, 537 40, 557 14, 557 34, 599 2, 604 15, 611 23, 622 22,
622 27, 622 29, 623 18, 623 37, 625 34, 633 26, 660 22, 666 22
POWERS 47 005 33, 025 19, 032 29, 047 18, 093 10, 093 17, 113 10,
132 21, 147 21, 176 8, 279 32, 280 2, 353 31, 373 13, 374 17, 374 18,
381 16, 472 18, 472 31, 472 38, 478 30, 532 18, 532 22, 536 22,
536 35, 537 01, 537 3, 537 4, 537 18, 537 21, 537 25, 537 28, 537 38,
538 01, 545 5, 557 33, 563 30, 597 27, 607 21, 608 15, 611 20, 612 2,
612 12, 613 24, 618 28, 626 11, 649 23
http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/indx/P.html
power: See 'faculty'.
faculty: [Vermögen, Facultät, sometimes Kraft; also translated 'power'] An
ability of the mind to produce some presentation or to act in a certain way.
E.g., the ability to form concepts, to apply them in judgements, to receive
sensible intuitions, or to reason about concepts and propositions. Kant is
interested in showing that there must be such faculties universally, and the
principles and consequences of their actions. He is not interested in
speculating on the material conditions of them (e.g. the brain). See also,
especially, 'principle'.
Now Locke would claim its neural tissue activities, Kant just doesn't say
but uses Locke's jargon as spread through British Empiricism?
You are helping me greatly so far.
Immortalist
>
> "HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:udlm70tomt9unfsro...@4ax.com...
>
Dogmatism is thus the dogmatic procedure of pure reason, without previous
criticism of its own powers.
[Wolff] He was thus peculiarly well fitted to raise metaphysics to the
dignity of a science, if only it had occurred to him to prepare the ground
beforehand by a critique of the organ, that is, of pure reason itself.
[Bxxxvii]
For pure speculative reason has a structure wherein everything is an organ,
the whole being for the sake of every part, and every part for the sake of
all the others, so that even the Bxxxviii smallest imperfection, be it a
fault (error) or a deficiency, must inevitably betray itself in use.
I am only curious as to what this "organ" is, is it a Lockian Faculty and
therefore the brain tissue activities or is Kant using it as necessary
faculties for theses "powers" whatever they be?
If Mitch were still around I would ask him but he disappeared.
page 32 and 33 (CPR) kemp
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
HPO Jury = America
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:udlm70tomt9unfsro...@4ax.com...
>> I did a Google groups and CPR search on that quote and couldn't find
>> the reference.
>>
>
>My mistake.
>
>"all that is required is to fill them"
>
>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22all+that+is+required+is+to+fill+them%22
>
>> >What does he mean by "indicating which divisions are still empty?"
>>
>> Kant is talking about the method he used to fill in the divisions in
>> the table of categories. It seems to have been something like working
>> a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces that were put in place indicated and gave
>> clues to the ones yet missing. But now they are in place, and the
>> table of categories is complete.
>>
>
>But if they are all in place in the table on the preceding page why would he
>say;
>
>[B108] Since at present we are concerned not with the
>completeness of the system, but only with the principles to be
>followed in its construction, I reserve this supplementary work
>P 115 for another occasion.
That is not a reference to the table itself, but to the derivative
concepts he called "predicables."
>It can easily be carried out, with the
>aid of the ontological manuals -- for instance, by placing under
>the category of causality the predicables of force, action,
>passion; under the category of community the predicables
>of presence, resistance; under the predicaments of modality
>the predicables of coming to be, ceasing to be, change, etc.
>The categories, when combined with the modes of pure sensibility,
>or with one another, yield a large number of derivative
>a priori concepts. To note, and, where possible, to give a
>complete inventory of these concepts, would be a useful and not
>unpleasant task, but it is a task from which we can here be
>absolved.
The CPR was controversial enough without adding more fuel to the fire.
>
>> >You also said concepts are not in the brain or a result of the activities
>> >within the brain, or something like that. Are you talking about Kants
>> >definition of concepts or the contemporary definition of concepts?
>> >
>>
>> I said that you won't find the concepts in the brain, not that they
>> aren't there. I have no opinion as to the latter.
>> --
>
>I like this view, that science is not metaphysics.
>
>But I am curious as to clear up any confusion that Kant is not talking of
>physical body parts or activities but only necessary activities whatever
>their constitution, the words confuse me;
I suppose you can just call them "activities" without implying any
physical activity. They are purely intellectual activities. Not
intellectual as in deep thinking, but simply as opposed to the
physical. A more primitive stage of thought would consider it
"spiritual." But that assumes the existence of a spiritual being that
isn't part of Kant's theory. So the activity is freed, for purposes of
argument, of any real or allegedly real context.
Then, as your thread topic suggests, isn't this an implicit attack on
realism? Yes, in a sense; it is an attack on Platonic Realism, the
notion that forms and essences are real existents. But Kantianism
supports the empirical, existential reality of phenomena against
Plato.
In Kant's view, it has to be one or the other. If one side is
considered real, the other side is considered relatively unreal,
problematically or absolutely.
John Locke? Did he even think that way? A British Empiricist who
believed in tabula rasa should at least study the brain first to see
if there really is any hard-wired knowledge. But empiricism by its
nature doesn't start with any such presuppositions.
>You are helping me greatly so far.
That's good.
--
HPO Jury = America
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Dogmatism is thus the dogmatic procedure of pure reason, without previous
>criticism of its own powers.
>
>[Wolff] He was thus peculiarly well fitted to raise metaphysics to the
>dignity of a science, if only it had occurred to him to prepare the ground
>beforehand by a critique of the organ, that is, of pure reason itself.
>[Bxxxvii]
>
>For pure speculative reason has a structure wherein everything is an organ,
>the whole being for the sake of every part, and every part for the sake of
>all the others, so that even the Bxxxviii smallest imperfection, be it a
>fault (error) or a deficiency, must inevitably betray itself in use.
>
>I am only curious as to what this "organ" is, is it a Lockian Faculty and
>therefore the brain tissue activities or is Kant using it as necessary
>faculties for theses "powers" whatever they be?
Hopefully I answered this question in the post I just sent.
>If Mitch were still around I would ask him but he disappeared.
>
>page 32 and 33 (CPR) kemp
>http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
He probably went back for more therapy. That's not a crack at Mitch,
but he has a severe case of a mental something or other which has
converted him into a polymath in a bricklayer's body. That's not
exactly normal.
--
Richard F Hall
>rational, or speculative part, and an empirical part. Hence, criticism
>recognizes the partial truth of two systems and two methods; and
>consequently repudiates the pretentious claim of either side to possess
>absolute truth and to employ the only possible method. It is both idealistic
>and realistic, and yet, strictly speaking, neither one nor the other."
>
about Realistic Idealism. Then I realized that this quote is from Alfred
Weber's _History of Philosophy_. Shucks! Alfred hasn't heard of
Realistic Idealism, probably.
It seems evident to me that everything humanity has touched on, from
mythology to philosophy, has in some way drawn upon someone's
observation of reality. Kant's observations are really no different.
The comparisons between Kant and neuro-physiology would most likely
yield some new knowledge.
There must be some neuro-physiological apparatus of perception which
tends to develop now and then, or how would the knowledge, inspiration,
and imagination of humanity expand and continue to develop.
Many of the questions that Kant concerned himself with involved the
questions of cerebral vs. sensory functions (are we perceiving or is
it all in our mind). In his day, Kant had no idea there were such things
as "cells". They were still debating the existence of reality and themselves.
By the way, "idealism" sure sounds like solipsism to me? Is there a
difference?
Science has shown us that blood rushes to specific areas of the brain in
all of us when we think of certain things. This suggests that these areas
are the places in the brain where this thinking is taking place. There are other
indications that there are specific areas of the brain that function for specific
activities. At one time, psychologists could administer a battery of tests to
determine an individual’s capabilities in a variety of areas. Low test scores
in specific functions would pin-point coinciding areas of the brain where
damage has taken place. When specific areas are damaged, such as
with stroke victims, we know that other areas of the brain will attempt to
take over, but the result is never as good as the original. So, the pursuit of
Kant's observations by someone who knows neuro-physiology is admirable.
Thanks to the Immortalist
Richard F Hall
Realistic Idealism
Immortalist
That paragraph is unedited Kemp (B108).
> >
> >> >You also said concepts are not in the brain or a result of the
activities
> >> >within the brain, or something like that. Are you talking about Kants
> >> >definition of concepts or the contemporary definition of concepts?
> >> >
> >>
> >> I said that you won't find the concepts in the brain, not that they
> >> aren't there. I have no opinion as to the latter.
> >> --
> >
> >I like this view, that science is not metaphysics.
> >
> >But I am curious as to clear up any confusion that Kant is not talking of
> >physical body parts or activities but only necessary activities whatever
> >their constitution, the words confuse me;
>
> I suppose you can just call them "activities" without implying any
> physical activity.
But to continue in the cautious mode wouldn't Kant say more like "implying
neither physical nor non-physical activities, just necessary activities?"
> They are purely intellectual activities. Not
> intellectual as in deep thinking, but simply as opposed to the
> physical. A more primitive stage of thought would consider it
> "spiritual." But that assumes the existence of a spiritual being that
> isn't part of Kant's theory. So the activity is freed, for purposes of
> argument, of any real or allegedly real context.
>
Ya, freed from any assertion one way or the other beyond the needs of "pure
reason" right?
> Then, as your thread topic suggests, isn't this an implicit attack on
> realism? Yes, in a sense; it is an attack on Platonic Realism, the
> notion that forms and essences are real existents. But Kantianism
> supports the empirical, existential reality of phenomena against
> Plato.
>
This is why many supposedly errored authors on Kant claim that Kant tried to
unite or merge Empiricism and Rationalism. But that doesn't concern me, he
carried the tourch after British philosophy and kicked some arses along the
way.
> In Kant's view, it has to be one or the other. If one side is
> considered real, the other side is considered relatively unreal,
> problematically or absolutely.
>
Can you show some of Kants words to support that?
Here is some pasted junk about the history of the location of the soul
starting with Descartes. I have searched for uses of the word brain in
Locke's essay and put the first so many examples;
As well, Descartes suggested the precise location of the soul's interaction
with the body: the pineal gland (readings: p. 211). He suggests (not here)
that there are movements of the pineal gland that affect the animal spirits
(which travel in the nerves), resulting in movements. Perception is the
reverse process. Of course, the problem is that how the soul effects (and is
affected by) those movements still isn't explained. Elizabeth's reply to
these kinds of responses is that which many latter day philosophers give: "I
must admit that it would be easier for me to attribute matter and extension
to the soul, than to attribute to an immaterial being the capacity to move
and be moved by a body".
A second, less spectacular, theoretical problem with Cartesian dualism is
the assumption that all mental life is conscious mental life. Freud and
other psychoanalysts of the 19th century were able to provide good
demonstrations of the existence of subconscious. As well, they could predict
behavior and even help people by considering subconscious causes of
behavior. Lyons gives some examples: hypnotism perhaps being the most
striking. Contemporary psychology is full of examples of subconscious
effects (e.g. 'priming', 'masking', 'implicit learning'; e.g. HM).
............
After many centuries of repression, the philosophies inspired by the body
were revived by Locke (1632-1704) and Hume (1711-1776) in England, as well
as by Diderot (1713-1784) in France. These three men are the major
representatives of what has been called sensualist ethics. Combining
hedonism, materialism, and empiricism, sensualist morality, which appeared
in the 17th and 18th centuries, was immediately criticized by idealist and
religious philosophers.
http://www.thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_03/i_03_s/i_03_s_que/i_03_s_que.html
The controversy about how the brain or the mind represents abstract ideas
such as the general concept of a color or a circle, square, or triangle is
older than psychology as an independent scientific discipline. Early in the
18th century, Bishop Berkeley (1710) famously criticized John Locke's theory
of abstract ideas (1690). David Hume (1739, 17) later summarized succinctly
Berkeley's argument. "A great philosopher [Berkeley] has disputed the
receiv'd opinion in this particular, and has asserted, that all general
ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which
gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall upon
occasion other individuals, which are similar to them." Berkeley's views are
well supported by our results. After visual display of a patch of red or of
a circle, the image is represented in the cortex by the brain wave of the
word red or circle within a few hundred ms of the display and somewhat
quicker than is the representation in the cortex of the spoken word red or
circle. To the skeptical response that we do not really know it is the word
red or circle that is being represented in the cortex, as opposed to the
particular visual image, we respond that everything we have learned thus far
about the one-dimensional temporal representation of words, presented either
auditorily or visually, supports our inference, the spatial
unidimensionality of the temporal representation used for recognition, above
all. Perhaps just as important, the filtered brain waves representing the
spoken color or shape words conform closely to the brain waves of the many
other words whose brain waves we have identified in our earlier work.
There is much evidence that the memory of purely visual images decays
quickly, almost always less than 200 ms ... [S]hort-term auditory memory
lasts 2-5 sec ..., so it is most efficient to represent simple visual images
in memory by the auditory representation of their names or simple
descriptions. The brain-wave experiments reported here support in an
unusually direct way that this is indeed what [happens, as] Berkeley and
Hume conjectured long ago, but for different reasons than the brevity of
visual memory.
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/EarlyModern/AbstractIdeas.html
..............................
Examples of brain in Locke
...and by long poring on the same objects, so dim his sight as to take
monsters lodged in his own brain for the images of the Deity, and the
workmanship of his hands...
The floating of other men's opinions in our brains, makes us not one jot the
more knowing, though they happen to be true. What in them was science, is in
us but opiniatrety; To think often, and never to retain it so much as one
moment, is a very useless sort of thinking;
Perhaps it will be said, that in a waking man the materials of the body are
employed, and made use of, in thinking; and that the memory of thoughts is
retained by the impressions that are made on the brain, and the traces there
left after such thinking; but that in the thinking of the soul, which is not
perceived in a sleeping man,
If then external objects be not united to our minds when they produce ideas
therein; and yet we perceive these original qualities in such of them as
singly fall under our senses, it is evident that some motion must be thence
continued by our nerves, or animal spirits, by some parts of our bodies, to
the brains or the seat of sensation, there to produce in our minds the
particular ideas we have of them.
by some parts of our bodies, to the brains or the seat of sensation, there
to produce in our minds the particular ideas we have of them. And since the
extension, figure, number, and motion of bodies of an observable bigness,
may be perceived at a distance by the sight, it is evident some singly
imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes, and thereby convey to
the brain some motion; which produces these ideas which we have of them in
us.
whatever impressions are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken
notice of within, there is no perception. Fire may burn our bodies with no
other effect than it does a billet, unless the motion be continued to the
brain, and there the sense of heat, or idea of pain, be produced in the
mind; wherein consists actual perception.
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/locke/Essay.htm
http://northonline.sccd.ctc.edu/phi298/lectures/epistemology_lectures/locke.htm
http://www.xenodochy.org/article/locke.html
> >You are helping me greatly so far.
>
> That's good.
>
Well you have made it much more clearer how well Kant covered his own ass
and into the future. But his goal was simply pure reason. And the Brain
sciences had been going for more than a hundred years before Kant wrote the
critique.
Immortalist
"Richard F Hall" <real...@seanet.com> wrote in message
news:0i1p70pk9fk3cs85f...@4ax.com...
posed the now celebrated question: "Suppose a man born blind, and now adult,
and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the
same metal. Suppose then the cube and sphere were placed on a table, and the
blind man made to see: query, whether by his sight, before he touched them,
could he distinguish and tell which was the globe and which the cube? . . .
. The acute and judicious proposer answers: not. For though he has obtained
the experience of how the globe, how the cube, affects his touch, yet he has
not yet attained the experience that what affects his touch so or so, must
affect his sight, so or so. . . ." In the Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, 1690, (Book 11, Chapt. 9, Sect. 8) Locke comments as
follows: - " I agree with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to call
my friend, in his answer to this his problem; and am of the opinion that the
blind man, at first, would not be able with certainty to say which was the
globe, which the cube. . . ."
Bishop George Berkeley, (1685 - 1753) in his A New Theory of Vision (1709)
distinguished carefully between sight and touch as ways of perceiving and
knowing, and took the hypothetical case of recovery from blindness in the
following way: - "In order to disentangle our minds from whatever prejudices
we may entertain with the relation to the subject in hand nothing is more
apposite than the taking into our thoughts the case of one born blind, and
afterwards, when grown up, made to see. And though perhaps it may not be an
easy task to divest ourselves entirely of the experience received from sight
so as to be able to put our thoughts exactly in the posture as such a one's:
we must nevertheless, as far as possible, endeavour to frame true
conceptions of what might reasonably be supposed to pass in his mind" (op.
cit. Sect. XCII). Berkeley goes on to say that we should expect such a man
not to know whether anything was "high or low, erect or inverted . . . for
the objects to which he had hitherto used to apply the terms up and down,
high and low, were such only as affected or were some way perceived by his
touch; but the proper objects of vision make a new set of ideas, perfectly
distinct and different from the former, and which can in no sort make
themselves perceived by touch" (op. cit. XCV). He goes on to say that it
would take some time to learn to associate the two.
In 1728 Cheselden presented the celebrated case of a boy of thirteen who
gained his sight after removal of the lenses rendered opaque by cataract
from birth, but this was not by any means the first successful operation of
its kind: the earliest reported dates from A.D. 1020, of a man of thirty
operated upon in Arabia. Other cases were reported in: 1668, 1695, 1704 and
1709. [ Footnote 1 ] After the Cheselden case of 1728, we find some fifty
cases up to the present day, one of the most recent being that of Latta,
1904. [ Footnote 2 ]
http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/recovery_blind/1-introduction.htm
By Kant's time stuff like this was common foder. I think while reading this
new biography of Kant there was note in his teaching days that they debated
about this blind regaining sight much. Gotta read it again.
"To which purpose I shall here insert a problem of that very ingenious and
studious promoter of real knowledge, the learned and worthy Mr. Molyneux,
which he was pleased to send me in a letter some months since; and it is
this:- "Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to
distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the
same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the
cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table,
and the blind man be made to see: quaere, whether by his sight, before he
touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which
the cube?" To which the acute and judicious proposer answers, "Not. For,
though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his
touch, yet he has not yet obtained the experience, that what affects his
touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so; or that a protuberant angle
in the cube, that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it
does in the cube."- I agree with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to
call my friend, in his answer to this problem; and am of opinion that the
blind man, at first sight, would not be able with certainty to say which was
the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw them; though he could
unerringly name them by his touch, and certainly distinguish them by the
difference of their figures felt. This I have set down, and leave with my
reader, as an occasion for him to consider how much he may be beholden to
experience, improvement, and acquired notions, where he thinks he had not
the least use of, or help from them. And the rather, because this observing
gentleman further adds, that "having, upon the occasion of my book, proposed
this to divers very ingenious men, he hardly ever met with one that at first
gave the answer to it which he thinks true, till by hearing his reasons they
were convinced."
settin right there in "the Essay" John Locke
http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/classics/locke/ctb2c09.htm
what is strange is that they debated this in Germany as rumor and hearesy
because there were no German translations of these by then old books by
Locke. Man this biography of Kant was so bad ass I am gonna check it out
again to find out more about the mysterious Brit "Mr. Green" who explained
every single line the second edition and Kant wrote it.
HPO Jury = America
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:el3p705aps796l49r...@4ax.com...
>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:44:45 -0700, "Immortalist"
>> <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>> >It can easily be carried out, with the
>> >aid of the ontological manuals -- for instance, by placing under
>> >the category of causality the predicables of force, action,
>> >passion; under the category of community the predicables
>> >of presence, resistance; under the predicaments of modality
>> >the predicables of coming to be, ceasing to be, change, etc.
>> >The categories, when combined with the modes of pure sensibility,
>> >or with one another, yield a large number of derivative
>> >a priori concepts. To note, and, where possible, to give a
>> >complete inventory of these concepts, would be a useful and not
>> >unpleasant task, but it is a task from which we can here be
>> >absolved.
>>
>> The CPR was controversial enough without adding more fuel to the fire.
>>
>
>That paragraph is unedited Kemp (B108).
I know. That's what I'm saying. I'm familiar with the paragraph, and
it was Kant's way of not adding more fuel to the fire (despite the
pleasure it would have brought him, he said, to engage himself in the
task).
>
>> >
>> >> >You also said concepts are not in the brain or a result of the
>activities
>> >> >within the brain, or something like that. Are you talking about Kants
>> >> >definition of concepts or the contemporary definition of concepts?
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> I said that you won't find the concepts in the brain, not that they
>> >> aren't there. I have no opinion as to the latter.
>> >> --
>> >
>> >I like this view, that science is not metaphysics.
>> >
>> >But I am curious as to clear up any confusion that Kant is not talking of
>> >physical body parts or activities but only necessary activities whatever
>> >their constitution, the words confuse me;
>>
>> I suppose you can just call them "activities" without implying any
>> physical activity.
>
>But to continue in the cautious mode wouldn't Kant say more like "implying
>neither physical nor non-physical activities, just necessary activities?"
That is an ambiguous statement which can be read either of two ways:
either the activity is neither physical nor non-physical (but
definitely necessary), or it is claiming agnosticism on the subject.
But I know you intended the latter meaning.
>> They are purely intellectual activities. Not
>> intellectual as in deep thinking, but simply as opposed to the
>> physical. A more primitive stage of thought would consider it
>> "spiritual." But that assumes the existence of a spiritual being that
>> isn't part of Kant's theory. So the activity is freed, for purposes of
>> argument, of any real or allegedly real context.
>>
>
>Ya, freed from any assertion one way or the other beyond the needs of "pure
>reason" right?
Reason "needs" unity, and any assertion which aids in attaining that
goal. Provable assertions are best.
>> Then, as your thread topic suggests, isn't this an implicit attack on
>> realism? Yes, in a sense; it is an attack on Platonic Realism, the
>> notion that forms and essences are real existents. But Kantianism
>> supports the empirical, existential reality of phenomena against
>> Plato.
>>
>
>This is why many supposedly errored authors on Kant claim that Kant tried to
>unite or merge Empiricism and Rationalism. But that doesn't concern me, he
>carried the tourch after British philosophy and kicked some arses along the
>way.
It is beyond empiricism and rationalism, in the sense that neither of
those schools chose the alternative of Critique. To merge those two
schools one would simply be left with the same old schools of thought
contradictorily asserted. To rise above them required a paradigm shift
in philosophical thinking. That paradigm shift involved the creation
of a new idea of Reason, not as a faculty constitutive of knowledge,
but as regulative toward it; in other words, not as giving us any
certain knowledge, but leading the way toward it, acting as a guide
for the Understanding in the empirical advance.
The section of the Transcendental Doctrine of Method which Kant
devoted to analyzing Hume's thesis is most revealing in this. For he
writes: "Further, he [Hume] draws no distinction between the well-
grounded claims of the understanding and the dialectical
pretensions of reason, though it is indeed chiefly against
the latter that his attacks are directed."
In other words, Hume drew no boundary line between reason and
understanding; he conflated them into one giant mystical pursuit, with
faith in miracles considered intellectually on a par with causality.
It is understandable, from this point of view, that if this "reason"
is a faculty of speculative pursuits covered over with a veneer of
empirical sensibleness, then it is merely a faculty of belief, and
everything we believe in must eventually fail, including our own
unproven belief in the lawfulness of causality which must be
continuously supported through its phenomena a posteriori,
contingently.
However, as you know, for Kant causality does not belong to the realm
of speculative reason, but to the spontaneity of understanding. Reason
has its seat in the will, but we do not have to will the experience of
a causal relationship, nor is it any subconsciously projected belief
that makes the laws of nature seem necessary and objective. If we did
not experience them as concrete laws of nature, we would not
experience their phenomena at all. Thus the subject is intricately
bound up with his experience, but not in the way Hume believed; not
psychologically, but a priori to any empirical concerns.
>> In Kant's view, it has to be one or the other. If one side is
>> considered real, the other side is considered relatively unreal,
>> problematically or absolutely.
>>
>
>Can you show some of Kants words to support that?
"But the reason why this objection is so unanimously urged, P 080
and that too by those who have nothing very convincing to say B55
against the doctrine of the ideality of space, is this. They have no
expectation of being able to prove apodeictically the absolute reality
of space; for they are confronted by idealism, which teaches that the
reality of outer objects does not allow of strict proof. On the other
hand, the reality of the object of our inner sense (the reality of
myself and my state) is, [they argue,] immediately evident through
consciousness. The former may be merely an illusion; the latter is, on
their view, undeniably something real."
>> >Now Locke would claim its neural tissue activities, Kant just doesn't say
>> >but uses Locke's jargon as spread through British Empiricism?
>>
>> John Locke? Did he even think that way? A British Empiricist who
>> believed in tabula rasa should at least study the brain first to see
>> if there really is any hard-wired knowledge. But empiricism by its
>> nature doesn't start with any such presuppositions.
>>
>
>Here is some pasted junk about the history of the location of the soul
>starting with Descartes. I have searched for uses of the word brain in
>Locke's essay and put the first so many examples;
Yes, they took the notion of a 'soul' as materially constitutive, as
affecting something, as stimulus and response, and desired to locate
it somewhere in the body. Although it may indeed lie in the pineal
gland, or in my pinkie toe, they will never find it. That quest was
irrelevant anyway.
Notice there that Locke has not even learned to appreciate the
distinction between sensation and perception.
>http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/locke/Essay.htm
>
>http://northonline.sccd.ctc.edu/phi298/lectures/epistemology_lectures/locke.htm
>http://www.xenodochy.org/article/locke.html
>
>> >You are helping me greatly so far.
>>
>> That's good.
>>
>
>Well you have made it much more clearer how well Kant covered his own ass
>and into the future. But his goal was simply pure reason. And the Brain
>sciences had been going for more than a hundred years before Kant wrote the
>critique.
Kant's goal was to examine the intellect, as it were, purely; the
target, in the long run and according to the book's title, was pure
reason, the faculty which lends us the problematic idea that man
can have certain knowledge of things beyond the senses (the
noumenal), and furthermore, that the ONLY certain knowledge lies
beyond any possible reach of the senses. It is reportedly certain,
necessary knowledge, but not necessarily connected to any reality
around us. In order to be certain knowledge, it must therefore be
pure of any taint of the empirical, according to the pre-Kantians;
knowledge constituting a whole-in-itself which can only be estimated
problematically through experience and assimilated piecemeal
therefrom. Science, according to these thinkers (such as David Hume),
would be reduced to a mere random groping about for knowledge,
although they may not have fully recognized the intellectually severe
consequences of their skepticism.
Kant retained the notion of pure knowledge being certain. However, he
abandoned the idea that such knowledge is constitutive, reducing it to
a merely regulative function; that is, the pure, formal level of
thought exists only to serve our understanding in the pursuit of
empirical knowledge, what Kant called the "empirical advance." This
advance constitutes a progression toward something merely rational:
the ultimate unity of all the sciences, a complete and perfect system
of knowledge.
Immortalist
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 20:34:15 -0700, "Immortalist"
> <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:el3p705aps796l49r...@4ax.com...
> >> On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:44:45 -0700, "Immortalist"
> >> <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> >> >It can easily be carried out, with the
> >> >aid of the ontological manuals -- for instance, by placing under
> >> >the category of causality the predicables of force, action,
> >> >passion; under the category of community the predicables
> >> >of presence, resistance; under the predicaments of modality
> >> >the predicables of coming to be, ceasing to be, change, etc.
> >> >The categories, when combined with the modes of pure sensibility,
> >> >or with one another, yield a large number of derivative
> >> >a priori concepts. To note, and, where possible, to give a
> >> >complete inventory of these concepts, would be a useful and not
> >> >unpleasant task, but it is a task from which we can here be
> >> >absolved.
> >>
> >> The CPR was controversial enough without adding more fuel to the fire.
> >>
> >
> >That paragraph is unedited Kemp (B108).
>
> I know. That's what I'm saying. I'm familiar with the paragraph, and
> it was Kant's way of not adding more fuel to the fire (despite the
> pleasure it would have brought him, he said, to engage himself in the
> task).
>
[23] On the table of the categories many neat observations may be made, for
instance (1) that the third arises from the first and the second joined in
one concept (2) that in those of Quantity and of Quality there is merely a
progress from unity to totality or from something to nothing (for this
purpose the categories of Quality must stand thus: reality, limitation,
total negation), without correlata or opposita, whereas those of Relation
and of Modality have them; (3) that, as in Logic categorical judgments are
the basis of all others, so the category of Substance is the basis of all
concepts of actual things; (4) that as Modality in the judgment is not a
particular predicate, so by the modal concepts a determination is not
superadded to things, etc., etc. Such observations are of great use. If we
besides enumerate all the predicables, which we can find pretty completely
in any good ontology (for example, Baumgarten's), and arrange them in
classes under the categories, in which operation we must not neglect to add
as complete a dissection of all these concepts as possible, there will then
arise a merely analytical part of metaphysics, which does not contain a
single synthetical proposition. which might precede the second (the
synthetical), and would by its precision and completeness be not only
useful, but, in virtue of its system, be even to some extent elegant.
[24] See Critique of Pure Reason, Von der Amphibolie der Reflexbergriffe.
Prolegomena Preamble
http://www.msu.org/e&r/content_e&r/texts/kant/prolegomena_preamble.html
So he didn't want to "fill in" a glossary of the "predicables" is what your
saying merely to avoid controversy and remain analytical?
> >
> >> >
> >> >> >You also said concepts are not in the brain or a result of the
> >activities
> >> >> >within the brain, or something like that. Are you talking about
Kants
> >> >> >definition of concepts or the contemporary definition of concepts?
> >> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >> I said that you won't find the concepts in the brain, not that they
> >> >> aren't there. I have no opinion as to the latter.
> >> >> --
> >> >
> >> >I like this view, that science is not metaphysics.
> >> >
> >> >But I am curious as to clear up any confusion that Kant is not talking
of
> >> >physical body parts or activities but only necessary activities
whatever
> >> >their constitution, the words confuse me;
> >>
> >> I suppose you can just call them "activities" without implying any
> >> physical activity.
> >
> >But to continue in the cautious mode wouldn't Kant say more like
"implying
> >neither physical nor non-physical activities, just necessary activities?"
>
> That is an ambiguous statement which can be read either of two ways:
> either the activity is neither physical nor non-physical (but
> definitely necessary), or it is claiming agnosticism on the subject.
> But I know you intended the latter meaning.
>
But if as you said we suppose we can just call them "activities" without
implying any physical activity this would leave room for further scientific
investigation without conflicting with pure reason?
> >> They are purely intellectual activities. Not
> >> intellectual as in deep thinking, but simply as opposed to the
> >> physical. A more primitive stage of thought would consider it
> >> "spiritual." But that assumes the existence of a spiritual being that
> >> isn't part of Kant's theory. So the activity is freed, for purposes of
> >> argument, of any real or allegedly real context.
> >>
> >
> >Ya, freed from any assertion one way or the other beyond the needs of
"pure
> >reason" right?
>
> Reason "needs" unity, and any assertion which aids in attaining that
> goal. Provable assertions are best.
>
But what if unity is beyond the horizon of pure reason in this case, what
then?
I can't disagree with that but it sure is a good thing Kant had Hume's
errors to work with.
> >> In Kant's view, it has to be one or the other. If one side is
> >> considered real, the other side is considered relatively unreal,
> >> problematically or absolutely.
> >>
> >
> >Can you show some of Kants words to support that?
>
> "But the reason why this objection is so unanimously urged, P 080
> and that too by those who have nothing very convincing to say B55
> against the doctrine of the ideality of space, is this. They have no
> expectation of being able to prove apodeictically the absolute reality
> of space; for they are confronted by idealism, which teaches that the
> reality of outer objects does not allow of strict proof. On the other
> hand, the reality of the object of our inner sense (the reality of
> myself and my state) is, [they argue,] immediately evident through
> consciousness. The former may be merely an illusion; the latter is, on
> their view, undeniably something real."
>
Well I was referring to the "Kantian Sythesis" in its various and probably
errored form dispersed around the internet like below. But that point about
idealism and time is well taken also.
Kant's merger of Platonism with skepticism allows him to defend the waning
Christian morality of self-denial from the increasingly egoistic,
pro-reason, implicitly Aristotelian philosophy of the Enlightenment.
Enlightenment philosophy had no conclusive answer to skepticism. Although it
embraced the egoistic pursuit of personal happiness as moral, it had no
defense against the claim that true moral understanding was beyond the
compass of ordinary empirical reasoning.
http://www.aynrand.org/ssg/philosophy.html
Kant's synthesis of Rationalism and Empiricism: "Concepts without percepts
are empty; percepts without concepts are blind."
http://www.wfu.edu/~hhardgra/kantmet.html
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant combined the empiricist principle that
all knowledge has its source in experience with the rationalist belief in
knowledge obtained by deduction. According to Kant, the underlying nature of
reality cannot be known -- only the appearances of everything (which he
called phenomena) can be perceived. People, however, impose a form of
reality on the world by the way they organize their thoughts about it. They
thus impose an order on their world through categories created by the mind.
Although the content of experience must be discovered through experience
itself, the mind imposes form and order on all its experiences, and this
form and order can be discovered a priori, that is, by reflection alone.
Philosophers in the tradition of Kant have argued that it is impossible to
make observations that are free of all preconceptions, because all
observational reports go beyond what has actually been perceived -- in
modern terms, all observations are "theory-laden."
http://kosmoi.com/Science/Philosophy/
"inferences (Hume's celebrated Problem of Induction) requires an
explanation....It is the search for this explanation that leads Kant to a
formulation of transcendental categories, which represents a partial
resolution to the rationalist/empiricist dichotomy."
Empiricism vs. Rationalism
The Debate Continues
(Revised December 22, 1996)
here is that article
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Introduction
The First Cognitive Revolution, developing as an aspect of the broader
Scientific Revolution, stretches roughly from Galileo to Kant. In the eyes
of many of its participants, the pivotal issue was whether or not all
knowledge is acquired from the senses--empiricism pitted against
rationalism. Since the current tendency in cultural studies is resolutely
empiricist by this admittedly restrictive definition, and critical practice
characterized by the continued tracing of human capacities and qualities to
cultural causes, the early British Empiricists provide a particularly
appropriate starting point for situating Cognitive Culture Theory, with its
rationalist claims about the relevance of human universals in the
understanding of cultural forms.
Innate ideas
Early on in the first cognitive revolution, the debate between rationalists
and empiricists was phrased simply in terms of whether or not knowledge was
acquired from the senses. On the rationalist side, lord Herbert argued in De
Veritate (1645) that certain moral propositions are innate; on the
empiricist side, Locke maintained the mind is a blank slate at birth (see
Locke's arguments against innate ideas). Locke's position that the
understanding is a set of propositions present to consciousness, however,
misses the central point: what is innate is faculties, not conscious
propositional knowledge.
Innate faculties
The commonsense assumption of cognitive transparancy is not challenged until
Hume, whose introspective experiments led him to posit cognitive faculties
with characteristics that cannot be traced back to experience. This
undermined the notion that the understanding is a product, consisting in
propositions; rather, it is a process, where the power of making inferences
(Hume's celebrated Problem of Induction) requires an explanation.
It is the search for this explanation that leads Kant to a formulation of
transcendental categories, which represents a partial resolution to the
rationalist/empiricist dichotomy. According to Kant, empiricism is enabled
by faculties that cannot themselves be derived from experience.
Not until genetic theory is well established is Kant's solution seen to be
compatible with Darwin's theory of evolution, that triumph of practical
empiricism. Lorenz (1977) points out that what Kant could only place in a
transcendental realm, in the tradition of rationalism, can now be placed in
natural history. Pace Lorenz, however, genes do not directly control
behavior; for a discussion of this early misunderstanding, see The
Sociobiological Fallacy. The relation between innate structures and the
environment remains a highly complex issue that show no signs of going away.
Erasing the boundaries
To pose the empiricist question again, we might put it this way: What is the
evidence that cognitive processing is not wholly dependent on information
acquired from the senses? If it is not from the senses, where is it from?
The proposal of evolutionary psychology is that no sharp line can be drawn
between information that originates in the environment--including that
acquired from the senses--and information that is conveyed through the
genes. This gives us a very different overall picture of cognitive
development.
In the genetic model, the environment is paradoxically all-important. The
information in the genes cannot express itself in bodily structures unless
they are in a complexly specified suitable environment--so much so that 99%
of the information for building an organism may be thought of as located in
the environment and only 1% in the genes themselves (the proportion is not
strictly quantifiable). The environment acts as a trigger for selective gene
transcription, which in turn has an effect upon the immediate environment.
As the information in the gene expresses itself in response to the structure
of the environment, and the environment in turn responds to the action of
the genes, the organism slowly begins to materialize. It is as if matter
itself contains most of the information for life; it just needs a little
extra hint.
In terms of cognitive development, this means that genetic and environmental
information act concurrently to construct cognitive structures. Some of the
environmental information that activates certain genes may come through the
senses; for instance, cats are unable to perceive vertical lines if they are
not exposed to them before a certain age, and children who have not heard a
language before the age of ten will no longer retain the capacity to acquire
one. More complex scenarios with intermediate control structures are also
possible, as an alternative to a continued role for the genes.
While the rationalist argument agrees with the genetic model in that both
affirm that cognition is dependent on structures that do not derive from
experience, the genetic model has historicized rationalism, playing the part
of empiricism in undermining its claims to transcendental universals. Thus,
the distinction between empiricism and rationalism has become largely
meaningless, like two aspects of the same coin that have fused into a
sphere.
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/Empiricism.html
> >> >Now Locke would claim its neural tissue activities, Kant just doesn't
say
> >> >but uses Locke's jargon as spread through British Empiricism?
> >>
> >> John Locke? Did he even think that way? A British Empiricist who
> >> believed in tabula rasa should at least study the brain first to see
> >> if there really is any hard-wired knowledge. But empiricism by its
> >> nature doesn't start with any such presuppositions.
> >>
> >
> >Here is some pasted junk about the history of the location of the soul
> >starting with Descartes. I have searched for uses of the word brain in
> >Locke's essay and put the first so many examples;
>
> Yes, they took the notion of a 'soul' as materially constitutive, as
> affecting something, as stimulus and response, and desired to locate
> it somewhere in the body. Although it may indeed lie in the pineal
> gland, or in my pinkie toe, they will never find it. That quest was
> irrelevant anyway.
>
I merely mention their failed attempt to point out that during Kant's time
there really wasn't room for a claim of naivity as concerns meatware and
neural activities. But the quest for pure reason may require one to be quite
about grey matter. But these older philosophers could care as they created
the flawed but actual psychology.
Of course did you know that he was a "sensationalist" and they thought the
sense apperatus fired up the brain with data and the brain closes down when
the senses do? But think of it, these guys were talking about
neurophysiology. I know it pales in comparison with the needs of pure
reason, but as history showed, Kant couldn't stop the development of
psychology.
> >http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/locke/Essay.htm
> >
>
>http://northonline.sccd.ctc.edu/phi298/lectures/epistemology_lectures/locke
Yada yada yada, I hear ya again. Very good statement actually the way you
say it. Seems that this perfect system is currently emerging from
multi-disciplinary approaches which require each discipline to tone down
their rhetoric a bit to fit in. In this way maybe we are heading towards a
more pure reason as we discover the neural activities that produce it.
Immortalist
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 20:34:15 -0700, "Immortalist"
> <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:el3p705aps796l49r...@4ax.com...
> >> On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:44:45 -0700, "Immortalist"
> >> <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> >> >It can easily be carried out, with the
> >> >aid of the ontological manuals -- for instance, by placing under
> >> >the category of causality the predicables of force, action,
> >> >passion; under the category of community the predicables
> >> >of presence, resistance; under the predicaments of modality
> >> >the predicables of coming to be, ceasing to be, change, etc.
> >> >The categories, when combined with the modes of pure sensibility,
> >> >or with one another, yield a large number of derivative
> >> >a priori concepts. To note, and, where possible, to give a
> >> >complete inventory of these concepts, would be a useful and not
> >> >unpleasant task, but it is a task from which we can here be
> >> >absolved.
> >>
> >> The CPR was controversial enough without adding more fuel to the fire.
> >>
> >
> >That paragraph is unedited Kemp (B108).
>
> I know. That's what I'm saying. I'm familiar with the paragraph, and
> it was Kant's way of not adding more fuel to the fire (despite the
> pleasure it would have brought him, he said, to engage himself in the
> task).
>
[23] On the table of the categories many neat observations may be made, for
instance (1) that the third arises from the first and the second joined in
one concept (2) that in those of Quantity and of Quality there is merely a
progress from unity to totality or from something to nothing (for this
purpose the categories of Quality must stand thus: reality, limitation,
total negation), without correlata or opposita, whereas those of Relation
and of Modality have them; (3) that, as in Logic categorical judgments are
the basis of all others, so the category of Substance is the basis of all
concepts of actual things; (4) that as Modality in the judgment is not a
particular predicate, so by the modal concepts a determination is not
superadded to things, etc., etc. Such observations are of great use. If we
besides enumerate all the predicables, which we can find pretty completely
in any good ontology (for example, Baumgarten's), and arrange them in
classes under the categories, in which operation we must not neglect to add
as complete a dissection of all these concepts as possible, there will then
arise a merely analytical part of metaphysics, which does not contain a
single synthetical proposition. which might precede the second (the
synthetical), and would by its precision and completeness be not only
useful, but, in virtue of its system, be even to some extent elegant.
[24] See Critique of Pure Reason, Von der Amphibolie der Reflexbergriffe.
Prolegomena Preamble
http://www.msu.org/e&r/content_e&r/texts/kant/prolegomena_preamble.html
So he didn't want to "fill in" a glossary of the "predicables" is what your
saying merely to avoid controversy and remain analytical?
> >
> >> >
> >> >> >You also said concepts are not in the brain or a result of the
> >activities
> >> >> >within the brain, or something like that. Are you talking about
Kants
> >> >> >definition of concepts or the contemporary definition of concepts?
> >> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >> I said that you won't find the concepts in the brain, not that they
> >> >> aren't there. I have no opinion as to the latter.
> >> >> --
> >> >
> >> >I like this view, that science is not metaphysics.
> >> >
> >> >But I am curious as to clear up any confusion that Kant is not talking
of
> >> >physical body parts or activities but only necessary activities
whatever
> >> >their constitution, the words confuse me;
> >>
> >> I suppose you can just call them "activities" without implying any
> >> physical activity.
> >
> >But to continue in the cautious mode wouldn't Kant say more like
"implying
> >neither physical nor non-physical activities, just necessary activities?"
>
> That is an ambiguous statement which can be read either of two ways:
> either the activity is neither physical nor non-physical (but
> definitely necessary), or it is claiming agnosticism on the subject.
> But I know you intended the latter meaning.
>
But if as you said we suppose we can just call them "activities" without
implying any physical activity this would leave room for further scientific
investigation without conflicting with pure reason?
> >> They are purely intellectual activities. Not
> >> intellectual as in deep thinking, but simply as opposed to the
> >> physical. A more primitive stage of thought would consider it
> >> "spiritual." But that assumes the existence of a spiritual being that
> >> isn't part of Kant's theory. So the activity is freed, for purposes of
> >> argument, of any real or allegedly real context.
> >>
> >
> >Ya, freed from any assertion one way or the other beyond the needs of
"pure
> >reason" right?
>
> Reason "needs" unity, and any assertion which aids in attaining that
> goal. Provable assertions are best.
>
But what if unity is beyond the horizon of pure reason in this case, what
then?
> >> Then, as your thread topic suggests, isn't this an implicit attack on
I can't disagree with that but it sure is a good thing Kant had Hume's
errors to work with.
> >> In Kant's view, it has to be one or the other. If one side is
> >> considered real, the other side is considered relatively unreal,
> >> problematically or absolutely.
> >>
> >
> >Can you show some of Kants words to support that?
>
> "But the reason why this objection is so unanimously urged, P 080
> and that too by those who have nothing very convincing to say B55
> against the doctrine of the ideality of space, is this. They have no
> expectation of being able to prove apodeictically the absolute reality
> of space; for they are confronted by idealism, which teaches that the
> reality of outer objects does not allow of strict proof. On the other
> hand, the reality of the object of our inner sense (the reality of
> myself and my state) is, [they argue,] immediately evident through
> consciousness. The former may be merely an illusion; the latter is, on
> their view, undeniably something real."
>
Well I was referring to the "Kantian Sythesis" in its various and probably
http://www.aynrand.org/ssg/philosophy.html
http://www.wfu.edu/~hhardgra/kantmet.html
http://kosmoi.com/Science/Philosophy/
Introduction
Innate ideas
Innate faculties
Erasing the boundaries
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/Empiricism.html
> >> >Now Locke would claim its neural tissue activities, Kant just doesn't
say
> >> >but uses Locke's jargon as spread through British Empiricism?
> >>
> >> John Locke? Did he even think that way? A British Empiricist who
> >> believed in tabula rasa should at least study the brain first to see
> >> if there really is any hard-wired knowledge. But empiricism by its
> >> nature doesn't start with any such presuppositions.
> >>
> >
> >Here is some pasted junk about the history of the location of the soul
> >starting with Descartes. I have searched for uses of the word brain in
> >Locke's essay and put the first so many examples;
>
> Yes, they took the notion of a 'soul' as materially constitutive, as
> affecting something, as stimulus and response, and desired to locate
> it somewhere in the body. Although it may indeed lie in the pineal
> gland, or in my pinkie toe, they will never find it. That quest was
> irrelevant anyway.
>
I merely mention their failed attempt to point out that during Kant's time
there really wasn't room for a claim of naivity as concerns meatware and
neural activities. But the quest for pure reason may require one to be quite
about grey matter. But these older philosophers could care as they created
the flawed but actual psychology.
> >As well, Descartes suggested the precise location of the soul's
Of course did you know that he was a "sensationalist" and they thought the
sense apperatus fired up the brain with data and the brain closes down when
the senses do? But think of it, these guys were talking about
neurophysiology. I know it pales in comparison with the needs of pure
reason, but as history showed, Kant couldn't stop the development of
psychology.
> >http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/locke/Essay.htm
> >
>
>http://northonline.sccd.ctc.edu/phi298/lectures/epistemology_lectures/locke
.htm
Yada yada yada, I hear ya again. Very good statement actually the way you
say it. Seems that this perfect system is currently emerging from
multi-disciplinary approaches which require each discipline to tone down
their rhetoric a bit to fit in. In this way maybe we are heading towards a
more pure reason as we discover the neural activities that produce it.
HPO Jury = America
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
The 'filling in' and the 'predicables' were separate issues entirely.
"Pure reason" is a misnomer. But your question seems to be, would
studying neural activity conflict with Kant's findings? No, I see only
support in that direction.
>
>> >> They are purely intellectual activities. Not
>> >> intellectual as in deep thinking, but simply as opposed to the
>> >> physical. A more primitive stage of thought would consider it
>> >> "spiritual." But that assumes the existence of a spiritual being that
>> >> isn't part of Kant's theory. So the activity is freed, for purposes of
>> >> argument, of any real or allegedly real context.
>> >>
>> >
>> >Ya, freed from any assertion one way or the other beyond the needs of
>"pure
>> >reason" right?
>>
>> Reason "needs" unity, and any assertion which aids in attaining that
>> goal. Provable assertions are best.
>>
>
>But what if unity is beyond the horizon of pure reason in this case, what
>then?
>
Yes, it's beyond the horizon, but not beyond hope.
Skeptics serve their purposes. They shake us out of our dogmatic
complacency. So it's not so much that Hume made errors -- he simply
didn't have the intellectual wherewithal to think up a critique of
pure reason. But it was Hume who pointed out the gaps in our
philosophical knowledge, who showed that the laws of nature cannot
merely be asserted like a Christian who asserts the existence of God
without proof.
>> >> In Kant's view, it has to be one or the other. If one side is
>> >> considered real, the other side is considered relatively unreal,
>> >> problematically or absolutely.
>> >>
>> >
>> >Can you show some of Kants words to support that?
>>
>> "But the reason why this objection is so unanimously urged, P 080
>> and that too by those who have nothing very convincing to say B55
>> against the doctrine of the ideality of space, is this. They have no
>> expectation of being able to prove apodeictically the absolute reality
>> of space; for they are confronted by idealism, which teaches that the
>> reality of outer objects does not allow of strict proof. On the other
>> hand, the reality of the object of our inner sense (the reality of
>> myself and my state) is, [they argue,] immediately evident through
>> consciousness. The former may be merely an illusion; the latter is, on
>> their view, undeniably something real."
>>
>
>Well I was referring to the "Kantian Sythesis" in its various and probably
>errored form dispersed around the internet like below. But that point about
>idealism and time is well taken also.
There were probably better quotes out there, but it takes a long time
to hunt some of them down. So I decided that the above quote expressed
at least the roots of the sentiment I was trying to convey.
>Kant's merger of Platonism with skepticism allows him to defend the waning
>Christian morality of self-denial from the increasingly egoistic,
>pro-reason, implicitly Aristotelian philosophy of the Enlightenment.
>Enlightenment philosophy had no conclusive answer to skepticism. Although it
>embraced the egoistic pursuit of personal happiness as moral, it had no
>defense against the claim that true moral understanding was beyond the
>compass of ordinary empirical reasoning.
>
>http://www.aynrand.org/ssg/philosophy.html
>
>Kant's synthesis of Rationalism and Empiricism: "Concepts without percepts
>are empty; percepts without concepts are blind."
Or: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts
are blind."
>http://www.wfu.edu/~hhardgra/kantmet.html
>
>The German philosopher Immanuel Kant combined the empiricist principle that
>all knowledge has its source in experience with the rationalist belief in
>knowledge obtained by deduction. According to Kant, the underlying nature of
>reality cannot be known -- only the appearances of everything (which he
>called phenomena) can be perceived. People, however, impose a form of
>reality on the world by the way they organize their thoughts about it. They
>thus impose an order on their world through categories created by the mind.
>Although the content of experience must be discovered through experience
>itself, the mind imposes form and order on all its experiences, and this
>form and order can be discovered a priori, that is, by reflection alone.
>Philosophers in the tradition of Kant have argued that it is impossible to
>make observations that are free of all preconceptions, because all
>observational reports go beyond what has actually been perceived -- in
>modern terms, all observations are "theory-laden."
In order to combine anything, there must be a combining principle
involved. That article doesn't happen to state what that principle
consists in, thus missing the Kantian mark.
This indicates that Hume was not interested in knocking down science,
but only in posing certain questions the answers to which must be
answered in order to maintain science as a system of knowledge.
>It is the search for this explanation that leads Kant to a formulation of
>transcendental categories, which represents a partial resolution to the
>rationalist/empiricist dichotomy. According to Kant, empiricism is enabled
>by faculties that cannot themselves be derived from experience.
>
>Not until genetic theory is well established is Kant's solution seen to be
>compatible with Darwin's theory of evolution, that triumph of practical
>empiricism.
Darwin was certainly empirical, yet notice that his writing is rife
with references to things not empirical. There was an underlying
philosophy guiding his thinking process.
>Lorenz (1977) points out that what Kant could only place in a
>transcendental realm, in the tradition of rationalism, can now be placed in
>natural history. Pace Lorenz, however, genes do not directly control
>behavior; for a discussion of this early misunderstanding, see The
>Sociobiological Fallacy. The relation between innate structures and the
>environment remains a highly complex issue that show no signs of going away.
>
>Erasing the boundaries
>
>To pose the empiricist question again, we might put it this way: What is the
>evidence that cognitive processing is not wholly dependent on information
>acquired from the senses? If it is not from the senses, where is it from?
That's not to ask if there is innate knowledge; but how is the process
of acquiring knowledge bootstrapped?
Pure reason is a native flaw in our architectonic of intellect. It
leads us to consider as knowledge that which is merely speculative.
The idea that this is basically a genetic flaw is part of the same
erroneousness of pure reason. To propose that all is matter, for
instance, is to make a noumenal assertion about the "all" that is
indeed rationalistic, but not Kantian as the author of the previous
article suggested. The a priori is not a realm upon which we construct
our sciences. It is merely that empty realm of forms and ideas given
their substance through experience.
>> >whatever impressions are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken
>> >notice of within, there is no perception. Fire may burn our bodies with
>no
>> >other effect than it does a billet, unless the motion be continued to the
>> >brain, and there the sense of heat, or idea of pain, be produced in the
>> >mind; wherein consists actual perception.
>>
>> Notice there that Locke has not even learned to appreciate the
>> distinction between sensation and perception.
>>
>
>Of course did you know that he was a "sensationalist" and they thought the
>sense apperatus fired up the brain with data and the brain closes down when
>the senses do? But think of it, these guys were talking about
>neurophysiology. I know it pales in comparison with the needs of pure
>reason, but as history showed, Kant couldn't stop the development of
>psychology.
>
Yet there is also a distinction between psychology and psychologism. I
don't suppose Kant knew enough about the former to be concerned
with it, and if he did, I don't think it would have concerned him. The
empirical study of human behavior would be just another science to
him, and one that of course is in need of guidance and
systematization. Psychologism, on the other hand, is a substitute for
philosophy, a belief that human existence and history is guided or
even controlled by something like subconscious psychological
motivations.
The contradiction in this has always been this notion that somehow
those who believe the theory are not themselves being controlled by
it: error of self-reference; and that therefore their theory may be in
error, as it is now a contingent issue.
It's hard to see that process as actually coming to fruition when
keeping the focus only on usenet posts.
--
Immortalist
> >So he didn't want to "fill in" a glossary of the "predicables" is what
your
> >saying merely to avoid controversy and remain analytical?
>
> The 'filling in' and the 'predicables' were separate issues entirely.
>
But you said this a couple posts ago;
Me-
> >[B108] Since at present we are concerned not with the
> >completeness of the system, but only with the principles to be
> >followed in its construction, I reserve this supplementary work
> >P 115 for another occasion.
>
You-
> That is not a reference to the table itself, but to the derivative
> concepts he called "predicables."
>
So I ask again, as concerns the "all that is required is to fill them" the
categories that is, you claimed there was no need to. You differ with Kant
here?
the text again, I am curious about this actually, its not a lamer ploy;
>Page 115 (CPR)
>http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
>
>In this treatise, I purposely omit the definitions of the categories,
>although I may be in possession of them. I shall A83 proceed to analyse
>these concepts only so far as is necessary in connection with the doctrine
>of method which I am propounding. B109
>
>In a system of pure reason, definitions of the categories would rightly be
>demanded, but in this treatise they would merely divert attention from the
>main object of the enquiry, arousing doubts and objections which, without
>detriment to what is essential to our purposes, can very well be reserved
>for another occasion.
>
>Meanwhile, from the little that I have said, it will be obvious that a
>complete glossary, with all the requisite explanations, is not only a
>possible, but an easy task. The divisions are provided; all that is
required
>is (to_fill_them); and a systematic 'topic', such as that here given,
>affords sufficient guidance as to the proper location of each concept,
while
>at the same time indicating which divisions are still empty.
></endquote>
> >> That is an ambiguous statement which can be read either of two ways:
> >> either the activity is neither physical nor non-physical (but
> >> definitely necessary), or it is claiming agnosticism on the subject.
> >> But I know you intended the latter meaning.
> >>
> >
> >But if as you said we suppose we can just call them "activities" without
> >implying any physical activity this would leave room for further
scientific
> >investigation without conflicting with pure reason?
> >
>
> "Pure reason" is a misnomer. But your question seems to be, would
> studying neural activity conflict with Kant's findings? No, I see only
> support in that direction.
>
Interesting, and what I thought initially but I got the wrong impression I
guess.
> >> Reason "needs" unity, and any assertion which aids in attaining that
> >> goal. Provable assertions are best.
> >>
> >
> >But what if unity is beyond the horizon of pure reason in this case, what
> >then?
> >
>
> Yes, it's beyond the horizon, but not beyond hope.
>
Very good.
> >> However, as you know, for Kant causality does not belong to the realm
> >> of speculative reason, but to the spontaneity of understanding. Reason
> >> has its seat in the will, but we do not have to will the experience of
> >> a causal relationship, nor is it any subconsciously projected belief
> >> that makes the laws of nature seem necessary and objective. If we did
> >> not experience them as concrete laws of nature, we would not
> >> experience their phenomena at all. Thus the subject is intricately
> >> bound up with his experience, but not in the way Hume believed; not
> >> psychologically, but a priori to any empirical concerns.
> >>
> >
> >I can't disagree with that but it sure is a good thing Kant had Hume's
> >errors to work with.
> >
>
> Skeptics serve their purposes. They shake us out of our dogmatic
> complacency. So it's not so much that Hume made errors -- he simply
> didn't have the intellectual wherewithal to think up a critique of
> pure reason. But it was Hume who pointed out the gaps in our
> philosophical knowledge, who showed that the laws of nature cannot
> merely be asserted like a Christian who asserts the existence of God
> without proof.
>
But Locke was a Sociologist and Psychologist, well before there were names
for such creatures. Berkeley? a lens grinder and logic grinder?
But Hume was a logician like Kant. If you look more closely at Humes logic
he may seem to say more than Kant's reference to him in the critique.
> >
> >I merely mention their failed attempt to point out that during Kant's
time
> >there really wasn't room for a claim of naivity as concerns meatware and
> >neural activities. But the quest for pure reason may require one to be
quite
> >about grey matter. But these older philosophers could care as they
created
> >the flawed but actual psychology.
> >
>
> Pure reason is a native flaw in our architectonic of intellect. It
> leads us to consider as knowledge that which is merely speculative.
> The idea that this is basically a genetic flaw is part of the same
> erroneousness of pure reason. To propose that all is matter, for
> instance, is to make a noumenal assertion about the "all" that is
> indeed rationalistic, but not Kantian as the author of the previous
> article suggested. The a priori is not a realm upon which we construct
> our sciences. It is merely that empty realm of forms and ideas given
> their substance through experience.
>
>
Sounds very good, even though, I still read a few lines from the critique
every morning and suppose I will do so until I die. But some morning its
only five minutes and others an hour or two.
> >> Notice there that Locke has not even learned to appreciate the
> >> distinction between sensation and perception.
> >>
> >
> >Of course did you know that he was a "sensationalist" and they thought
the
> >sense apperatus fired up the brain with data and the brain closes down
when
> >the senses do? But think of it, these guys were talking about
> >neurophysiology. I know it pales in comparison with the needs of pure
> >reason, but as history showed, Kant couldn't stop the development of
> >psychology.
> >
>
> Yet there is also a distinction between psychology and psychologism. I
> don't suppose Kant knew enough about the former to be concerned
> with it, and if he did, I don't think it would have concerned him. The
> empirical study of human behavior would be just another science to
> him, and one that of course is in need of guidance and
> systematization. Psychologism, on the other hand, is a substitute for
> philosophy, a belief that human existence and history is guided or
> even controlled by something like subconscious psychological
> motivations.
>
Very good, now I want to figure the difference between psychology and
psychologism, very good you have cleared up a number of things for me. And
this systematation, I ran across that a few mornings ago again, want to
check that out, it is the key to proper science.
> The contradiction in this has always been this notion that somehow
> those who believe the theory are not themselves being controlled by
> it: error of self-reference; and that therefore their theory may be in
> error, as it is now a contingent issue.
>
Actually I would like to go back into cloaked mode again and just appear to
be doing epistemology with bad spelling. Man nice talkin with you, you are
cool. But to some people this Kant business is "serious life long business"
please be clear. You have been clear though.
>
HPO Jury = America
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:4ror70p5pem7rrhqa...@4ax.com...
>> On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 14:03:40 -0700, "Immortalist"
>> <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> >So he didn't want to "fill in" a glossary of the "predicables" is what
>your
>> >saying merely to avoid controversy and remain analytical?
>>
>> The 'filling in' and the 'predicables' were separate issues entirely.
>>
>
>But you said this a couple posts ago;
>
>Me-
>> >[B108] Since at present we are concerned not with the
>> >completeness of the system, but only with the principles to be
>> >followed in its construction, I reserve this supplementary work
>> >P 115 for another occasion.
>>
>
>You-
>> That is not a reference to the table itself, but to the derivative
>> concepts he called "predicables."
>>
>
>So I ask again, as concerns the "all that is required is to fill them" the
>categories that is, you claimed there was no need to. You differ with Kant
>here?
I read it as saying the categories were filled in, and that the
predicables were omitted. Perhaps I'm mistaken. We'll see...
>the text again, I am curious about this actually, its not a lamer ploy;
>
>>Page 115 (CPR)
>>http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
>>
>>In this treatise, I purposely omit the definitions of the categories,
>>although I may be in possession of them. I shall A83 proceed to analyse
>>these concepts only so far as is necessary in connection with the doctrine
>>of method which I am propounding. B109
>>
>>In a system of pure reason, definitions of the categories would rightly be
>>demanded, but in this treatise they would merely divert attention from the
>>main object of the enquiry, arousing doubts and objections which, without
>>detriment to what is essential to our purposes, can very well be reserved
>>for another occasion.
>>
>>Meanwhile, from the little that I have said, it will be obvious that a
>>complete glossary, with all the requisite explanations, is not only a
>>possible, but an easy task. The divisions are provided; all that is
>required
>>is (to_fill_them); and a systematic 'topic', such as that here given,
>>affords sufficient guidance as to the proper location of each concept,
>while
>>at the same time indicating which divisions are still empty.
I don't see any reason to change my interpretation from that, unless
you point to something I might have missed.
>
>></endquote>
>
>> >> That is an ambiguous statement which can be read either of two ways:
>> >> either the activity is neither physical nor non-physical (but
>> >> definitely necessary), or it is claiming agnosticism on the subject.
>> >> But I know you intended the latter meaning.
>> >>
>> >
>> >But if as you said we suppose we can just call them "activities" without
>> >implying any physical activity this would leave room for further
>scientific
>> >investigation without conflicting with pure reason?
>> >
>>
>> "Pure reason" is a misnomer. But your question seems to be, would
>> studying neural activity conflict with Kant's findings? No, I see only
>> support in that direction.
>>
>
>Interesting, and what I thought initially but I got the wrong impression I
>guess.
From what I've read in the past such studies tend to support Kant's
conclusions. And the entire pursuit tends to take Kant as a
starting-point. Kantianism is very supportive of many modern
scientific endeavors.
>> >> Reason "needs" unity, and any assertion which aids in attaining that
>> >> goal. Provable assertions are best.
>> >>
>> >
>> >But what if unity is beyond the horizon of pure reason in this case, what
>> >then?
>> >
>>
>> Yes, it's beyond the horizon, but not beyond hope.
>>
>
>Very good.
>
Well, "hope" is after all a common Kantian theme, even in the Critique
of Pure Reason.
"All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical,
combine in the three following questions:
1. What can I know?
2. What ought I to do?
3. What may I hope?"
A805\B833
>> >> However, as you know, for Kant causality does not belong to the realm
>> >> of speculative reason, but to the spontaneity of understanding. Reason
>> >> has its seat in the will, but we do not have to will the experience of
>> >> a causal relationship, nor is it any subconsciously projected belief
>> >> that makes the laws of nature seem necessary and objective. If we did
>> >> not experience them as concrete laws of nature, we would not
>> >> experience their phenomena at all. Thus the subject is intricately
>> >> bound up with his experience, but not in the way Hume believed; not
>> >> psychologically, but a priori to any empirical concerns.
>> >>
>> >
>> >I can't disagree with that but it sure is a good thing Kant had Hume's
>> >errors to work with.
>> >
>>
>> Skeptics serve their purposes. They shake us out of our dogmatic
>> complacency. So it's not so much that Hume made errors -- he simply
>> didn't have the intellectual wherewithal to think up a critique of
>> pure reason. But it was Hume who pointed out the gaps in our
>> philosophical knowledge, who showed that the laws of nature cannot
>> merely be asserted like a Christian who asserts the existence of God
>> without proof.
>>
>
>But Locke was a Sociologist and Psychologist, well before there were names
>for such creatures. Berkeley? a lens grinder and logic grinder?
>
>But Hume was a logician like Kant. If you look more closely at Humes logic
>he may seem to say more than Kant's reference to him in the critique.
>
Hume predates Kant in terms of the idea of an a priori level of
thought, and faculties of knowledge. From the Enquiry:
"If we would satisfy ourselves, therefore, concerning the nature of
that evidence, which assures us of matters of fact, we must enquire
how we arrive at the knowledge of cause and effect. I shall venture to
affirm, as a general proposition, which admits of no exception, that
the knowledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by
reasonings a priori; but arises entirely from experience..."
"Nothing is more useful than for writers, even, on moral, political,
or physical subjects, to distinguish between reason and experience,
and to suppose, that these species of argumentation are entirely
different from each other. The former are taken for the mere result of
our intellectual faculties, which, by considering a priori the nature
of things, and examining the effects, that must follow from their
operation, establish particular principles of science and philosophy."
"But though our thought seems to possess this unbounded liberty, we
shall find, upon a nearer examination, that it is really confined
within very narrow limits, and that all this creative power of the
mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing,
augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and
experience."
"But as it is impossible that this faculty of imagination can ever, of
itself, reach belief, it is evident that belief consists not in the
peculiar nature or order of ideas, but in the manner of their
conception, and in their feeling to the mind. I confess, that it is
impossible perfectly to explain this feeling or manner of conception."
I'm very certain that Kant was completely aware of such passages, and
drew on them for some kind of support, even if only negatively.
>> >
>> >I merely mention their failed attempt to point out that during Kant's
>time
>> >there really wasn't room for a claim of naivity as concerns meatware and
>> >neural activities. But the quest for pure reason may require one to be
>quite
>> >about grey matter. But these older philosophers could care as they
>created
>> >the flawed but actual psychology.
>> >
>>
>> Pure reason is a native flaw in our architectonic of intellect. It
>> leads us to consider as knowledge that which is merely speculative.
>> The idea that this is basically a genetic flaw is part of the same
>> erroneousness of pure reason. To propose that all is matter, for
>> instance, is to make a noumenal assertion about the "all" that is
>> indeed rationalistic, but not Kantian as the author of the previous
>> article suggested. The a priori is not a realm upon which we construct
>> our sciences. It is merely that empty realm of forms and ideas given
>> their substance through experience.
>>
>>
>
>Sounds very good, even though, I still read a few lines from the critique
>every morning and suppose I will do so until I die. But some morning its
>only five minutes and others an hour or two.
>
But would you nevertheless speculate further, in that this flaw in our
human reasoning may be intentional, that it was placed there by
design? And that this purpose has its intent in drawing us into even
higher states of self-awareness, reflection, and philosophy? If you
agree with that even somewhat, can't you see the present concern with
psychology as a dead-end side road taking us away from the issues
which truly confront us as human? Because these issues are not
primarily psychological, but philosophical.
Science, left to its own devices, leads us only to an intellectual
cul-de-sac. We may find many interesting things there, but they allow
no further progress. The most we could hope for is to travel back down
the path and rediscover old ideas.
I speculate that civilization is undergoing this process right now.
After traveling so far, all we have found is emptiness. Not that
there's only emptiness, but science has abandoned philosophy, leaving
itself alone and friendless. Science eventually won't so much
self-destruct as it will abandon its principles, having already
abandoned hope, that is, the whatever-it-may-be lying beyond the
unattainable horizons, the fundamental "lure" that draws all
scientists onward.
>> Yet there is also a distinction between psychology and psychologism. I
>> don't suppose Kant knew enough about the former to be concerned
>> with it, and if he did, I don't think it would have concerned him. The
>> empirical study of human behavior would be just another science to
>> him, and one that of course is in need of guidance and
>> systematization. Psychologism, on the other hand, is a substitute for
>> philosophy, a belief that human existence and history is guided or
>> even controlled by something like subconscious psychological
>> motivations.
>>
>
>Very good, now I want to figure the difference between psychology and
>psychologism, very good you have cleared up a number of things for me. And
>this systematation, I ran across that a few mornings ago again, want to
>check that out, it is the key to proper science.
>
The difference is that if psychologism is true (which would be
impossible to prove anyway, but not impossible to believe by erroneous
pure reason), then man is a metaphysically determined creature. His
only hope of escape from this pre-determination is then only through a
helpless, a-moral cynicism.
>> The contradiction in this has always been this notion that somehow
>> those who believe the theory are not themselves being controlled by
>> it: error of self-reference; and that therefore their theory may be in
>> error, as it is now a contingent issue.
>>
>
>Actually I would like to go back into cloaked mode again and just appear to
>be doing epistemology with bad spelling. Man nice talkin with you, you are
>cool. But to some people this Kant business is "serious life long business"
>please be clear. You have been clear though.
That's good, because some of my enemies will swear to you that I am
clear as mud.
John Jones
JJ
Immortalist <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:SeWdnfEOGYb...@comcast.com...
>
> "Jim Pierce" <nospamja...@speakeasy.net> wrote in message
> news:EeqdnSv8WPX...@speakeasy.net...
> >
> > "HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:jg4e70hv3ndjpqiou...@4ax.com...
> >
> > > How did you come to the conclusion that Kant was a Cartesian? Did you
> > > read it somewhere.
> >
> > I didn't draw any such conclusion. However, Kant seemingly assumed that
> what
> > counted as "self" was not physical. We can all certainly thank Descartes
> for
> > popularizing that myth.
> >
>
> Wouldn't he say that the self was a "physical process" much like digestion
> or metabolism is? When senseory intuitions are conditioned are they
physical
> processes of neural tissues?
>
> >
>
>
HPO Jury = America
<nospamja...@speakeasy.net> wrote:
>
>"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:jg4e70hv3ndjpqiou...@4ax.com...
>
>> How did you come to the conclusion that Kant was a Cartesian? Did you
>> read it somewhere.
>
>I didn't draw any such conclusion. However, Kant seemingly assumed that what
>counted as "self" was not physical. We can all certainly thank Descartes for
>popularizing that myth.
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Try again, this time, without the spin doctoring.
Immortalist
"John Jones" <jivers...@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
news:c5q3q9$pti$1...@hercules.btinternet.com...
> you are qouting that the thing in itself is the object of science.
> JJ
>
Could you explain how I am doing that?
ZZBunker
> On Fri, 9 Apr 2004 14:28:12 -0700, "Jim Pierce"
> <nospamja...@speakeasy.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:jg4e70hv3ndjpqiou...@4ax.com...
> >
> >> How did you come to the conclusion that Kant was a Cartesian? Did you
> >> read it somewhere.
> >
> >I didn't draw any such conclusion. However, Kant seemingly assumed that what
> >counted as "self" was not physical. We can all certainly thank Descartes for
> >popularizing that myth.
It is impossible for Kant to thought that.
Descartes was a mathematician. Kant was
the original musician philosopher:
mean, sub-abusive, not only jobless,
as a artist philosopher would be,
but also homeless.
> ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
>
> Try again, this time, without the spin doctoring.
It is impossible to spin doctor Kant, since
he like Einstein, being a quasi-chemist,
didn't believe in spin.
Immortalist
"ZZBunker" <zzbu...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:e4a0829b.04041...@posting.google.com...
> HPO Jury = America <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:<ik6180t2v8g4mrmo8...@4ax.com>...
> > On Fri, 9 Apr 2004 14:28:12 -0700, "Jim Pierce"
> > <nospamja...@speakeasy.net> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > >news:jg4e70hv3ndjpqiou...@4ax.com...
> > >
> > >> How did you come to the conclusion that Kant was a Cartesian? Did you
> > >> read it somewhere.
> > >
> > >I didn't draw any such conclusion. However, Kant seemingly assumed that
what
> > >counted as "self" was not physical. We can all certainly thank
Descartes for
> > >popularizing that myth.
>
> It is impossible for Kant to thought that.
> Descartes was a mathematician. Kant was
> the original musician philosopher:
> mean, sub-abusive, not only jobless,
> as a artist philosopher would be,
> but also homeless.
>
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=hogan%27s+heroes&spell=1
Robert J. Kolker
ZZBunker wrote:
> It is impossible for Kant to thought that.
> Descartes was a mathematician. Kant was
> the original musician philosopher:
> mean, sub-abusive, not only jobless,
> as a artist philosopher would be,
> but also homeless.
Utter and complete balderdash. Kant was employed and he had a house and
a man-servant to go with it (good old steady Lampe). Kant's lifestyle
was modest for the standards of the time, but far from impoverished.
Anything he did not get in salary he made up by card playing.
Bob Kolker
HPO Jury = America
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>"ZZBunker" <zzbu...@netscape.net> wrote in message
>news:e4a0829b.04041...@posting.google.com...
>> HPO Jury = America <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:<ik6180t2v8g4mrmo8...@4ax.com>...
>> > On Fri, 9 Apr 2004 14:28:12 -0700, "Jim Pierce"
>> > <nospamja...@speakeasy.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > >
>> > >"HPO Jury = America" <Male...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> > >news:jg4e70hv3ndjpqiou...@4ax.com...
>> > >
>> > >> How did you come to the conclusion that Kant was a Cartesian? Did you
>> > >> read it somewhere.
>> > >
>> > >I didn't draw any such conclusion. However, Kant seemingly assumed that
>what
>> > >counted as "self" was not physical. We can all certainly thank
>Descartes for
>> > >popularizing that myth.
>>
>> It is impossible for Kant to thought that.
>> Descartes was a mathematician. Kant was
>> the original musician philosopher:
>> mean, sub-abusive, not only jobless,
>> as a artist philosopher would be,
>> but also homeless.
>>
>
>http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=hogan%27s+heroes&spell=1
That was funny.
ZZBunker
But that was when he wrote Prolegemma.
By the he wrote the Critique, he was not
only homeless he was completely insane.
So if would not a difference to him
one or the other if he one, two,
three, four, or infinity servants,
Science MORONS.
>
> Bob Kolker
Immortalist
> > http://images.google.com/images?q=hogan%27s+heroes&spell=1
>
> That was funny.
>
Instructions: Make a sentence containing each of the given words or
names. (10 Marks)
1. Locke
2. Marx
3. Kant
4. Metaphysics
5. Mill
6. Hobbes
7. Plato
8. Buber
9. Heidegger
10. Descartes
11. Make a sentence with three of the above words or names. (Bonus Mark)
Answers
1. I hope they Locke him in jail and throw away the key.
2. I hope I get good Marx in this course.
3. I Kant understand why we still learn about dead philosophers.
4. I Metaphysics professor today. (Thanks Sherianne! :))
5. To make flour out of wheat you take it to the Mill.
6. When that guy with the sprained ankle goes without crutches, he Hobbes
around, trying not to put weight on the injured leg.
7. Some children play with plastocine when they are young but I played
with Plato.
8. Does the person who gets the lowest mark on this test win the Buber
prize?
9. Is it fair to call someone who is drilling for oil on top of a
mountain a Heidegger?
10. Don't put Descartes before de horse!
And finally the answer to the bonus question...
11. I just Kant put the Locke on getting good Marx
-------------------------------------
Causes of Death for Some of the Great Philosophers
By Stiv Fleishman
Thales: Drowning
Parmenides: It wasn't anything at all
Ockham: Cut while shaving
Russell: Cut while being shaved by one who did not shave himself
Descartes: Stopped thinking
Spinoza: Substance abuse
Leibniz: Monadnucleosis
Darwin: Natural causes
Hume: Unnatural causes
Kant: Transcendental causes (although it was his own idea)
Paley: By design
Heidegger: By Dasein
Meinong: Climbing accident
Neurath: Boating accident
G.E. Moore: By his own hand, obviously
Sheffer: Stroke
Sartre: Nausea
Pascal: Became despondent after losing a wager
Wittgenstein: Tried to see if death was an experience one lived through.
(Alternate: fell off a ladder)
Hegel: Collision with owl at dusk
-----------------------------------------
The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:
> Oh mighty oracle, who CAN eat just one potato chip, please tell me
> this:
>
> We've got a betting pool going on with regards to famous matchups in
> history. Who would have won these?
>
> Bach vs. Beethoven
> Rembrandt vs. Van Gogh
> Aristotle vs. Kant
> Da Vinci vs. Kepler
>
> (just so you know, my money's on Bach.)
And in response, thus spake the Oracle:
} The Oracle resurrects Aristotle and Kant, and places a open bag of
} Ruffles before each.
}
} Orrie: "Now, who can eat just one?"
} Aristotle: "Why would anyone not want to eat just one? One is the
} measure of all things, from which all else is built. One is
} unity, and symbolizes purity. Therefore clearly I could eat
} just one."
} Orrie: "Yes, well you still haven't tried them."
} Aristotle eats a chip, and another, and another. "Mmmm. Very good."
} Orrie: "Hah! So you can't eat just one."
} Aristotle points to the bag of chips. "This? This doesn't matter.
} What matters is thought, and a have logically shown that I can
} eat just one." [munch]
} Orrie: [turns to Kant] "How about you?"
} Kant: "Clearly we can't discover anything by just thinking about it.
} We must perform an empirical experiment." [Eats a chip.]
} "Yes, I this is evidence that I can eat just one. However a
} single experiment conveys little information. We must verify the
} results." [Eats another chip.] "Yes, this corroborates the first
} experiment. Still, more evidence would be helpful." [Eats more
} chips.]
} Orrie: "It appears neither of you can eat just one."
} Aristotle: "What! I have logically proven that I can eat only one."
} [munch] Kant: "And I have-" [munch] "-performed many experiments
} showing that I can eat just one."
} Orrie: "Thank you gentlemen." *POOF*
}
} Oracle writes down on clipboard "Aristotle v. Kant --- both lose."
}
} Orrie: "Hmmm. They ate all my Ruffles. Now I'll have to perform
} some different tests."
} An art dealer suddenly appears. "Zat am I doink here? And zo are you?"
} Orrie: "I need you to appraise these."
} Dealer: "Zwa? Es dis an original Rembrant? And dis a Van Gogh? Vere
} did you get dese?!"
} Orrie: "The curator of the Hermitage had a question... But that's
} another story. Which is worth more?"
} Dealer: "Dese are both priceless! Rembrant and Van Gogh zere both
} brillant painters!"
} Orrie: "Yes, but who's the _winner_?"
} Dealer: "Vell, de Van Gogh ist probably vurth more, because Van Gogh
} painted less. Ee ad a miserable life, you know."
} Orrie: "And Rembrant didn't?"
} Dealer: "Yes, dat's right."
} Orrie: "So Rembrant was the winner, but if you want to be a winner
} you'll own the Van Gogh rather than the Rembrant?"
} Dealer: "I suppose...."
} Orrie: "Thank you." *POOF*
}
} Oracle writes down on clipboard "Rembrant v. Van Gogh --- Van Gogh died
} penniless and insane. Rembrant wins."
}
} A musician suddenly appears. "Hey!"
} Orrie: "You're a classical musician, aren't you?"
} Musician: "Yeah. Who are you?"
} Orrie: "I'm the Usenet Oracle. You owe the Oracle a autographed
} original of one of Mozart's compositions. And try to grovel when
} you ask a question."
} Musician: "What's going on here?!"
} Orrie: *Zot* "Remember what I said about grovelling?"
} Musician: "OWWWW! Ouch, oww."
} Orrie: "Who's more popular, Beethoven or Bach?"
} Musician: "Geee, I don't know."
} Orrie: "Who's more widely known then?"
} Musician: "More widely known? What do you mean?"
} Orrie: "Who's work reaches the farthest?"
} Musician: "Well, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is on those records that
} NASA puts on those space probes."
} Orrie: "And Bach's work is not?"
} Musician: "Not that I know of. But they also have 'Johnny B. Goode'."
} Orrie: "Thank you." *POOF*
}
} Oracle write down on clipboard "Bach v. Beethoven --- Bach loses to
} Johnny B. Goode. Beethoven wins."
}
} Orrie: "This is too much work."
} Oracle writes down on clipboard "Da Vinci v. Kepler --- Da Vinci is two
} words and seven letters. Kepler is only one word and six
} letters. Da Vinci wins."
}
} Supplicant, here are the results you wished for:
} Bach vs. Beethoven: Beethoven wins
} Rembrandt vs. Van Gogh: Rembrandt wins
} Da Vinci vs. Kepler: Da Vinci wins
} And in philosophy no one wins. Remeber that philosophy majors
} when you get out into the real world.
}
} You owe the Oracle some bags of Ruffles potato chips to replace those
} eaten by Kant and Aristotle.