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| | Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure ReasonPage 4 of 3 (1, 2, 3) | | Thanks for clarifying that - it certainly explains why the Leibnizian influences in Kant are so strong, as it makes sense that it would I think be easier to temper that with an empirical flavour than it would be to modify an empirical outlook with... hmmm... a more Baroque approach... | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/1/2009 3:51:53 PM | RE Msg: 48 by desertrhino:
Just saying, is all. The pissing match over who has read, hasn't read, understands, and doesn't understand Kant is, at best, unbelievably dull. Totally agree.
RE Msg: 47 by TaiChiJohn: I wrote a very long post in response to you. Then I read desertrhino's post. Says it all.
I never said I was definite about my views on Kant. I merely said that they were a possibility.
FYI, I wrote that I had every intention of reading Kant's work, having read what was written here. However, you are really making me question if that is worth doing, if this is the result, ridiculous arguments about trivial points.
However, I would agree that there appears to be a conflict between Kant claiming to support insight and reason, and stating that mathemtical truths are "a priori", and yet, on the other hand, being an empiricist. But criticising pure reason would have the same effect, as one cannot criticise pure reason and state that it is something one can agree with. Ah - now we are getting to the philosophic heart of the matter. Whatever compelled Kant to think these concepts as he did, the contingency of the situation caused him to bring insight, reason, and empirical experience together. Why he did this, and how he did this, is the essence of Immanuel Kant's philosophy... and it is something best discovered by reading what he wrote.
I'm going to read Kant anyway. But if anyone has a good primer on his biography, and on continental rationalism, and on the main works of Locke and Hume, I'd appreciate a short-list. I have only so much time to read. | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/1/2009 4:01:12 PM | Re: message 52;
I'm going to read Kant anyway. But if anyone has a good primer on his biography, and on continental rationalism, and on the main works of Locke and Hume, I'd appreciate a short-list. I have only so much time to read.
I would like to see that too. I am interested in Kant's relation to Leibniz; and this thread has brought my attention to bear upon Kant after many years have passed since my last having read his works.
I really like philosophy - I am a philosophy geek and I will openly admit that.
I really like Leibniz right now, because I like the way that he developed the concept of the infinitesimal differential (as associated with calculus), the singular (as associated with minute perceptions) and the singular (as associated with virtual points/spaces).
So, I will be re-working my way through Kant to see he might have picked up of these (and associated) concepts. | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/1/2009 4:34:44 PM | @ TaiChiJohn
I like the way that he developed the concept of the infinitesimal
Just a digression for bit of trivia that might interest you (if you didn't already know it):
Mathematicians were never comfortable with the concept of the infinitesimal. Even though they "worked", many didn't like using them because there was no formal description for the concept (One guy called them "the ghosts of departed quantities"). The epsilon/delta method of successively smaller finite intervals was thought to have finally purged those intuitive "renegade" infinitesimals from calculus, but they eventually turned up again in about 1960, when they were put on "solid ground" by Abe Robinson. | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/1/2009 4:56:52 PM | @ JustDucky
Mathematicians were never comfortable with the concept of the infinitesimal.
Leibniz considered 'what precipitates a perception's formation in consciousness' and came up with the concept of the 'minute perception' - the smallest possible differential which enters perception, and, around which a conscious perception forms.
A common example used to illustrate this was that of the first drop of water in a wave collapsing on shore, which precipitates the conscious perception that is the sound of the wave crashing.
It wasn't until a few years ago that scientific inquiry discovered this sound is actually caused by the cumulative 'popping' of bubbles formed as the foam of a collapsing wave. | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/1/2009 7:44:17 PM | RE Msg: 54 by JustDukky:
Mathematicians were never comfortable with the concept of the infinitesimal. Even though they "worked", many didn't like using them because there was no formal description for the concept (One guy called them "the ghosts of departed quantities"). The epsilon/delta method of successively smaller finite intervals was thought to have finally purged those intuitive "renegade" infinitesimals from calculus, but they eventually turned up again in about 1960, when they were put on "solid ground" by Abe Robinson. Funny, that. This thread made me think about Abe today. His book on non-standard analysis is one of the few expensive maths books I chose to spend my money on and read, after I'd left uni, just for self-interest.
Incidentally, I had a look up on Wikipedia about Robinson, just to remind myself. Guess who is attributed to have started the ball rolling in infinitesimals? Leibniz. Ironic, huh? | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/2/2009 10:28:17 AM | | Manfred Kuehn's intellectual biography is a good place to start. He's a fine scholar (and a lovely chap I might add too, very affable indeed) and his biogrpahy is very highly regarded and thorough. He knows his stuff. Some of the most important secondary literature on Kant is by Henry Allison. Professor Allison didn't like me very much, but I learned an awful lot for the guy. So if you want to see a spirited defence of Kant's critical philosophy in motion, as it were, I'd have a look at his book on Transcendental Idealism. It's a tightly argued, well reasoned piece, but you will have to be really up to your neck in the first Critique to get anything from it. However, for people looking to get their feet wet, I often recommend the Routledge series on major philosophers and their most important work. They have done a decent job with a number of complicated thinkers and they don't usually approve of shortcuts. I would imagine that their book on Kant in that series would be a very good place to start and would offer some solid theoretical grounding in perhaps more digestible form. As for reading the first Critique itself, Norman Kemp Smith's masterful translation now plays second fiddle to Guyer and Wood's translation which is more literal and faithful to the German, but is more difficult to read as a result. So, for scholarly purposes, I would recommend Guyer and Wood, but Kemp-Smith's is a fine translation as well and one doesn't lose too much...hope that helps! | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/2/2009 5:11:37 PM | RE Msg: 58 by JustDukky:
Not really; that's why I mentioned Robinson in the first place. Sorry, I completely misunderstood.
I thought that when we were talking about infinitesimals, we were talking about something other than δx, because I always understood that δx is a variable, and not a constant.
Maybe I'm just not smart like you. | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/2/2009 7:05:47 PM | "A professional objector would say to Leibniz: you announce to us, you talk to us of the irreducibility of truths of existence, and you can define this irreducibility concretely only by using purely mathematical notions. What would Leibniz answer? In all sorts of texts, people have always had me say that differential calculus designated a reality. I never said that, Leibniz answers, differential calculus is a well-founded convention. Leibniz relies enormously on differential calculus being only a symbolic system, and not sketching out a reality, but designating a way of treating reality. What is this well-founded convention? It's not in relation to reality that it's a convention, but in relation to mathematics. That's the misinterpretation not to make. Differential calculus is symbolism, but in relation to mathematical reality, not at all in relation to real reality. It's in relation to mathematical reality that the system of differential calculus is a fiction. He also used the expression "well founded fiction." It’s a well-founded fiction in relation to the mathematical reality. In other words, differential calculus mobilizes concepts that cannot be justified from the point of view of classical algebra, or from the point of view of arithmetic. It's obvious. Quantities that are not nothing and that equal zero, it's arithmetical nonsense, it has neither arithmetic reality, nor algebraic reality. It's a fiction. So, in my opinion, it does not mean at all that differential calculus does not designate anything real, it means that differential calculus is irreducible to mathematical reality. It's therefore a fiction in this sense, but precisely in so far as it's a fiction, it can cause us to think of existence.
In other words, differential calculus is a kind of union of mathematics and the existent, specifically it's the symbolic of the existent.
It's because it's a well-founded fiction in relation to mathematical truth that it is henceforth a basic and real means of exploration of the reality of existence.
You see therefore what the words "evanescent" and "evanescent difference" mean. It's when the relation continues when the terms of the relation have disappeared. The relation c/e when C and E have disappeared, that is, coincide with A. You have therefore constructed a continuity through differential calculus. "
Gilles Deleuze
http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/texte.php?cle=53&groupe=Leibniz&langue=2 | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/2/2009 8:34:33 PM | Kant was a Transcendental Idealist; meaning that we have the faculties in place to understand things necessarily, but we need to have sense experience in order for those faculties to function. It is very much in line with Aristotle's notion of potential and actual. The key difference in reading Kant and to Transcendental Idealism is that we necessarily conceptualize within the confines of the categories of the understanding but we can never have epistemological access to how the world actually is. Because we necessarily conceptualize in such a way, we can posit the notion of a supreme being for practical uses but once again we can have no empirical evidence for a God. He notes that reason will never be able to achieve the answers to reasons' own questions. He was not creating a perfect system of cognition and understanding. He was explaining what faculties must be in place in order for concepts and understanding to arise.
The categorical imperative is a bi-product of the categories of the understanding; however, I don't believe the system is set out in the Critique. Schematically it functions the same way as the categories, hence categorical imperative. | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/3/2009 1:26:21 AM | Quite right! The categorical imperative belongs to the discussion of practical reason. He does set out his argument for the necessary existence of a categorical imperative in much the same way. And understanding something of the flavour of Kant's critical philosophy certainly gets one up and running with "Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals" or indeed "The Metaphysics of Morals" itself.
Not sure why you made the following comment:
He was not creating a perfect system of cognition and understanding.
Of course he wasn't creating it, he was "describing one". And he did think it was necessary! The antimonies and paralogisms belong to the critique of pure reason/rationalism. But Kant believed that his 'system' of transcendental idealism issued in results every bit as necessary as the categorical imperative! Epistemology was to be given a footing (through the 'Copernican' discovery of sythetically a priori operations, transcendental unity of apperception, the categories, the schematism and so on...) every bit as solid as that provided in the 'exact' sciences. He is taking up Aristotle's delimiting of things whereby one should not expect from the subject more precision than can be admitted, but Kant felt that the shortcomings of pure rationalism or empiricism were no impediment to the necessity of the system of knowledge/epistemology he looked to inaugurate! | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/3/2009 10:16:34 AM | I had noted that he was not creating a system in response to a thread above. I think there is quite a bit of mis-information, or perhaps mis-interpretation of Kant's goal in the thread. I was hoping to clear the air. It is an intense and difficult piece of phiosophy and a paragraph does not quite capture it in its entirety.
Of course he thought his description was necessary. He was not only attempting to safe-guard scientific endeavor from Humean skepticism, he was also attempting to revise centuries of rationalist dogmatism. | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/3/2009 10:34:48 AM | So, we're agreed then, that given that we cannot 'process' the manifold of experience in any other way but as Kant believes he has identified...it's fair to say, that that represents his 'Kantian system'...and it is a necessary one!!??
So for instance, as part of his vision, he will say that on the basis of his 'system' (I'm thinking here of the first two Analogies of Experience) on the basis of the unchanging quantum of substance and the necessity of what Allison calls 'event awareness'...we cannot experience the manifold in any other way but causally! Right? That's Kantian idealism a la his system and it is necessarily the case for Kant. | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/3/2009 3:18:44 PM | I just found your wording first time a little misleading on the lack of 'system'. That's all! No big deal. After that...only wanted to make sure I understood what you were suggesting. I'm not a Kantian really...but I do think he is one of the big guns. Can't really get anywhere without coming to grips with him at some point. Paid my dues for a couple of years some time back...
BTW what do you mean by "via the unification of the manifolds"? Are you talking unity as in the transcendental unity of apperception? | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/4/2009 1:10:55 AM | Yeah. We synthesize things in ncessary ways. Otherwise our experience would be of flux as opposed to the manifold of experience which we experience structurally! Wasn't sure what you meant by unity of the manifold"s" at first! Figured it was probably just a typo.
What do you make of the analogies? Allison ended up despising a colleague of mine and myself from our time as graduate students. We argued that the first analogy fails on Kant's own terms and as a result the second analogy (and thus the refutation of Hume's problem of induction) fails...but he could never seem to offer a response...beyond losing his temper | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/4/2009 12:01:19 PM | He calls that "synthetic" a priori knowledge. That was the key to his breakthrough, i.e., that there were a priori truths that were not analytic (as Hume had insisted), but rather, synthetic and dependent on operations (though necessary ) of the understanding...and he then began to look on our experience of the world in this way.
But no, I was talking about the first two of the three "Analogies of Experience"...later in the book... | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/11/2009 9:29:22 PM | The Passion Of Wanting To Know
In the land of giants
One will erect a post
And put a sign on top.
Other giants will
Agree with what the sign says
Or else push the post over.
The sign’s supporters push
Against those who push against it.
They battle it out
Sometimes with reason,
Sometimes with force.
When it’s over, almost immediately,
Analysis of the battle follows.
The post could be a football game
Or a soccer match
Or a statement that the Earth is round
Or that we descended from monkeys.
Though the game is over,
It’s never over
Because the giants' minds,
However analytical,
Can only infer what reality is –
Yet reality they crave to know.
2007 May 24
Here's to you, MelissaMay, purely for being a rational voice in a world of critics; the voice of reason.
------
(in my own humble opinion, the poem is s_, so is the thought in it, but the two together somehow support each other and help to stand up from the gutter, these two old smelly drunkards, after a Friday night's drinking at the bar, and having fallen during their wobbling, teetering walk home late in the night.) | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/12/2009 12:34:35 AM | I read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason a while ago, but I don't remember all the gory details, just the generalities and the spots where I disagreed with him. Here are a few quick comments on the work:
1. I find his distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal world to be totally arbitrary and unnecessary. He doesn't really put forth much of an argument for the noumenal realm and hence I don't find that aspect of his philosophy particularly convincing. It is a classic example of a nonfalsifiable hypothesis to put forward some "unknowable" realm, and the fact that it is not subject to criticism or proof in its favor is reason enough to abandon such an idea.
2. The Critique of Pure Reason is quite famous in the philosophy of religion for advancing many arguments against the three supposed "logical proofs" of God's existence. Kant's critique of the ontological argument is particularly well-known, as his criticism is that the argument treats existence as a predicate when existence should not be treated in such a manner.
3. Some aspects of Kant's philosophy are interesting and seem to hint at later developments. In a general sense, his idea that the human mind and its "categories" shape experience was spot on and quite in line with modern cognitive science, although he was certainly not using any sort of empirical research to arrive at these conclusions. Ultimately, though, I don't think Kant really answered Hume's skepticism with his philosophy, as was his intent. Something along the lines of Pearce's pragmatism is a better epistemological system for addressing such problems, I think.
4. As many others have said, this book is incredibly dry. Not only that, but Kant is famous for being a horrendous writer. I've never read the original German, of course, but based on the translations I've read, that hypothesis appears to be correct! | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/12/2009 3:17:28 AM |
I find his distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal world to be totally arbitrary and unnecessary. He doesn't really put forth much of an argument for the noumenal realm and hence I don't find that aspect of his philosophy particularly convincing. It is a classic example of a nonfalsifiable hypothesis to put forward some "unknowable" realm, and the fact that it is not subject to criticism or proof in its favor is reason enough to abandon such an idea.
Actually, when you think about it, this is a skeptical concession by Kant...all of our descriptions of appearance (phenomena) are descriptions of the way we process what we experience, they are not necessarily descriptions of things in themselves. Even if we are accurate or close to accurate in the way our mind necessarily orders reality in order for it to make sense to us, that is not to say that necessarily things are like that or that the dynamics of the universe are necessarily like that. We cannot claim to know the thing-in-itself and so on...so...I don't know that it's entirely arbitrary...and as such, the idea that there is no argument for it doesn't really stand up either...even the Proegomenon would seem to unsettle that claim!
I don't know that Kant is a 'horrendous writer'...it's not meant to be entertaining, it's a technical treatise. A scientific or mathematical treatise is often going to be 'dry' in this sense as well, that's no shortcoming of the writer. If you take a more populist piece like the Groundwork for example, that is rather elegant, even the appendix on lying for example! As for the translations of the first Critique, Norman Kemp-Smith's is a little easier to read, but the more recent Guyer-Wood translation is considered more literal and thus more faithful, however, that translation is NOT an easy read. A lot of German philosophy, particular technical work can sound rather awkward translated into English. That's no fault of either language really. | |
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| Ruling Out The Higher Power: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Posted: 6/12/2009 7:20:15 AM | "A lot of German philosophy, particular technical work can sound rather awkward translated into English. That's no fault of either language really."
Sometimes, oftentimes, it's the fault of the translator who cannot decide between sticking to readability or sticking to a literal translation.
I read, pardon me, I started to read one translation of the "Kritik der reinen Vernunft" and I could not get past the introduction, which read (not verbatim) somewhat like "and therefore her causing the effect of his stance would become not normally her responsibility, but his." What the hell? In the environment it made no sense, until I realized that the idiot whom they hired to translate the book took the definite articles that are used in German as pronouns, and translated them along with their gender. To make it clearer: idea in German is die Idee, and thought is der Gedank. So when the author spoke later in the text about idea and thought, he simply referred to them as sie and er, the pronouns, or as die and der, the definite articles. That is common practice in German, nobody gets hung up on that. It's handy, it's very useful, and completely understandable. It even makes the text clear, and easier to comprehend. I have no words to describe the translator's stupidity who put this into English, straight in the surrounding text as she and he. This made the text entirely incomprehensible to the English reader. Not to mention the Swahili and Albanian (!) readers, who speak neither English nor German.
Then I decided to read my favourite guy, Hume. He is even less comprehensible, though his mother tongue is English (or Pict, I don't know). The guy is brilliant, he has insight that is way ahead of its time, he is full of what I consider positive human qualities, he is wise, he's non-judgmental, he's loving, he's smart -- yet he cannot write worth hot damn s_.
The third one I took on was the Republic by Plato -- now, here's a book which is entertaining, readable, carries the reader on an enjoyable ride, AND translates well. Still, any scholar will find ten translational mistakes and errors on any page of an English edition of it. I don't care -- the book stands up as a good read.
In my old age and financial freedom I am taking courses at the local university in philosophy. The teachers (profs they are called around here) love me and hate me. I love and hate them. Some are really, but really good entertainers and orators; some are stuck-up snobbish boors. I love the whole thing. I remember the first class in the second course I took, I arrived forty-five minutes early, sat in the pews and I got buzzed on the sheer prospect of attending a philosophy lecture. I was imbibing my most potent mind-altering substance, coffee from StarBucks, and listened to my iPod, and I moved myself to tears. It was one them really good highs.
That prof did not let me down, he was a cool dude.
Some of the lectures I sign up for I cannot listen to, because the chairs are so incredibly uncomfortable in the classrooms. They are torture devices, more like. I don't know what's becoming of me, but I find it more and more difficult to sit. Standing is terror, walking is painful, bicycling is ok, and sitting is uncomfortable. Lying on my stomach makes me suffocate, lying on my back makes my lower back hurt. Lying on my side makes my shoulders ache. Doctor, what is it? My dear fellow, please learn, that you are dainty and fragile, despite your robust 210 lbs in a 5'4" frame. | |
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