Just because reality is not immediately and non-inferrentially given doesn't mean we don't know what it is. The Myth of the Given isn't necessarily resolved by postulating an inaccessible noumenon as Kant did. There are even materialists who reject the Myth of the Given and use this as a way to justify that Sellars' Manifest Image (phenomenon) presupposes and is influenced by a Scientific Image (noumenon) to which we have access to.At various points in your preceding posts, you refer to 'reality as it is', 'independently of models'. But, that presumes you can know 'reality as it is', when that is precisely what is at issue. — Wayfarer
Just because reality is not immediately and non-inferrentially given doesn't mean we don't know what it is. — Agustino
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern. — William Blake
I think this is the basically the same as aesthetic knowledge in the narrower sense, when we know beauty or harmony, for example, or in the moral sense, when we know goodness, or in the religious sense when we know God, or in the 'Zen' sense of 'being enlightened'. This knowing of the 'familiarity' kind cannot be, to the great frustration of many philosophers, inter-subjectively corroborated, but it is not through any lack of trying; in fact philosophers are often very stubborn, and so I doubt they will ever give up the attempt. For me, metaphysics is firmly in this latter character of knowing. An inter-subjectively corroborate-able (horrible word but I could not think of any other) metaphysics is simply impossible to achieve — John
Pierre mentioned that the concept of enduring substance doesn't enter the purview of the laws of physics. — Metaphysician Undercover
You and Kant, but Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Spinoza before, all rebelled against this separation of noumenon from phenomenon, and granting access only to the one and not to the other. I don't see how Kant's distinction is valid if we don't have access to the noumenon. If we actually don't, then the Kantian distinction is merely a logical formalism, and nothing else.Ah, but do we? I am inclined to accept the view that nobody knows what anything really is. — Wayfarer
The use of the term 'metaphysics' ought to respect the Aristotelean derivation, otherwise it becomes a catch-word for all kinds of woo. That, I think, is why scholastic metaphysics tends to appear cumbersome - its formality ensures every key term is defined very precisely, specifically to avoid debate sliding off into vagueness. — Wayfarer
I said that, also, the reason being that Galilean and Newtonian physics rejected Aristotelean physics, it didn't need the scholastic concept of 'substance' in order to do its work (and besides wanted to break from the 'dead hand of scholasticism'). — Wayfarer
I don't see how Kant's distinction is valid if we don't have access to the noumenon. If we actually don't, then the Kantian distinction is merely a logical formalism, and nothing else. — Agustino
Both Hegel and Schlieirmacher thought that Kant [in naming the ding an sich] had missed something important—namely, that the self which experiences the world is also a part of the world it is experiencing. Rather than there being this sharp divide between the experiencing subject and things-in-themselves, with phenomena emerging at the point of interface, the experiencing subject is a thing-in-itself. It is one of the noumena—or, put another way, the self that experiences the world is part of the ultimate reality that lies behind experience.
So: the self that has experiences is a noumenal reality. Both Schleiermacher and Hegel believed that this fact could be made use of, so that somehow the self could serve as a wedge to pry open a doorway through the wall of mystery, into an understanding of reality as it is in itself.
But this understanding couldn’t be achieved by simply turning our attention on ourselves. As soon as we do that we’ve made ourselves into an object of experience, and this object is just as likely to be the product of our own cognitive reconstructions as any other object. In other words, what we are presented with when we investigate ourselves introspectively is the phenomenal self, not the noumenal self. The self as it appears to itself may be radically unlike the self as it is in itself. ....
...Schleiermacher dealt with this conundrum by privileging a distinct mode of self-consciousness, one in which all attempts to make the self into an object of consciousness—that is, all attempts to come to know the self—are set aside. When the self is made an object of study it becomes a phenomenon, and as such is divorced from the noumenal self. But it is possible to simply be—to become quiescent, if you will, and simply be what one is rather than attempt to know what one is.
And in this place of cognitive stillness, one discovers in a direct experiential way an ultimate reality that cannot be conceptualized or made into an object of study.
The concept of enduring substance is inherent within Newtonian physics, as the given. It is taken for granted by Newton's first law. — Metaphysician Undercover
The problem is that there cannot be any precise formulations of metaphysical categories and definitions of metaphysical terms that everyone will agree upon. — John
I don't know about that. Scholastic metaphysics is very rigorous. You and I and most people here don't play in that space. I think you say that the distinctions, etc, are 'ineluctably ambivalent' because you're not actually speaking from within that domain. But many metaphysical arguments (for example, the cosmological or ontological arguments) are indeed logically provable, but they're not empirically verifiable; given certain axioms, then their conclusions certainly follow, but the axioms cannot themselves be proven. — Wayfarer
No inconsistency in the arguments of either protagonist need to be at work, and yet they will forever disagree. — John
People follow their metaphysical intuitions or else some authority (which really amounts to other's intuitions as canonized); there is no possibility of evidence or logical proof when it comes to metaphysics. — John
Arguments can be shown to be consistent and valid or not, that is all logic can achieve — John
Philosophy is actually very messy and imprecise, and ineluctably so, I would say. — John
People follow their metaphysical intuitions or else some authority (which really amounts to other's intuitions as canonized); there is no possibility of evidence or logical proof when it comes to metaphysics. — John
I still don't think that's correct. I had intended a couple of times to enroll in an excellent-looking external course offered by Oxford (this one and may try again for April). But they do discuss a curriculum in such courses - it isn't just 'what anybody thinks'. — Wayfarer
:s I agree with Hegel's conception of how we access the noumenon, not with some of his other positions. This is in fact no different than the Spinozist conception, but since Spinoza (the improved Hegel :P ) isn't in this discussion, I'm using Hegel as an alternative.You agree with Hegel now, against Schopenhauer? Actually Hegel's philosophy was arguably very influenced by the mystical tradition, so it is by no means as cut and dried as you are painting it. For an interesting discussion see: — John
Yes, but it is a different style of presentation that is at stake. Spinoza gives a completed system, Hegel gives a Phenomenology - the process of completion of the system. Spinoza is more difficult to learn and understand though, since he doesn't show how his system is completed in the first place. Understanding some Hegel (or Schopenhauer), does help in understanding Spinoza though.Hegel's concerns at least (I don't know much about Schelling) were far more comprehensive than Spinoza's as Hegel was attending to the whole dialectical development of speculative reason, and understanding each phase as a piece in the whole puzzle. — John
YesSchopenhauer actually criticizes Schelling and Hegel for doing precisely for following Spinoza in his On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason — John
Yes I think so, but he also, at least early Schopenhauer, anthropomorphises the thing-in-itself by identifying it completely as the Will. Both Schopenhauer and Hegel are Spinozists though, effectively performing a re-reading of Kant through the lens of Spinoza.I have long thought that Schopenhauer himself appropriates Spinoza's notion of conatus and redresses it as Will, but I can't remember encountering any acknowledgment of this from Schopenhauer. — John
>:O >:O >:O Personally I love his insults, but then, like him, I'd also say I have a big ego :P - which explains why I admire people like Schopenhauer.Some of his bitter diatribes against Hegel are quite amusing, and they, along with his repeated references to his "prize-winning essay" and the immense importance of his own work clearly show his monumental ego. — John
"This is an excellent book. It performs a significant service by its uninhibited exposure of Hegel's dark side."―Michael Inwood, Trinity College, Oxford, International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 3, September 2002 — Review of the book you recommended
If you are going to quote, then the name is "Consistent Histories" or "Decoherent Histories". — tom
Newton's laws concern mass, not substance, in the Aristotelean sense. Crucial distinction. — Wayfarer
Mass was said to be a fundamental property of matter, weight or some such thing, which is quantifiable. — Metaphysician Undercover
Since representation is real, then this process which alone makes it possible must also be real. So this process then is the noumenon - the unexperienced cause of all experience - this is basically what Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schleiermacher, etc. identified as the noumenon. This process constitutes both the self and the world of representation, and we do know it. — Agustino
Many rigorous metaphysical systems can be constructed on different premises, and metaphysics as the study of what we are able to imagine as possible premises and what consistent arguments we can construct based on the elaborations of those premises is a fascinating, rewarding and creative discipline — John
The fact is though that no metaphysical system can ever be demonstrated to be the one true system or even the most true one; different views will always be in play even at the highest levels of sophistication; and I can't see how it does not, in the final analysis, come down to individual intuition, taste, faith or merely opinion as to what an individual believes is true (if she believes anything is true) when it comes to metaphysics. — John
Mass is assumed to be the most fundamental form of matter. Therefore to discuss the mass of a body is to discuss substance in the Aristotelian sense, matter with form (mass). — Metaphysician Undercover
It's not only what you know through. It's that through which the whole empirical world is constituted (not only your self - in fact your self and the world presuppose one another - that which constitutes them both is the noumenon - the real). Hegel was fundamentally right in identifying the limits of the subject to also be the limits of the world - hence ultimately bringing down the distinction between noumenon and phenomenon, in the sense of rendering us access to both.It's more accurately what we know through — Wayfarer
Well, that's true, but it's also a reflection of a world where every school of thought and tradition vie in the marketplace of ideas. — Wayfarer
I don't think it actually does, as you know. So there is even disagreement about this, because there are others like me as well.How would we recognize it, if rigorous reason can lead to multitudes of metaphysical views, each based on different starting assumptions? — John
:s You mean naval gazing Sir?Would not recognition of a "higher philosophy" be itself a 'higher' recognition and thus necessarily be a supra-rational process? Wouldn't it be something like the gnosis of the mystics, or the abhijñā of Buddhism? If such a process is possible and if it yields genuine insight into the nature of reality, then surely it must a 'higher' intuition, perhaps we could say an intellectual intuition, that transcends logic and defies rational explanation. — John
To be honest, I wouldn't actually care much, so long as there was no state police involved, or abuse in the workforce by the bosses towards the workers.Would you rather live in a world like that, or a world in which a politically enforced predominant view is mandated, and competing views are at the very least frowned upon, and at the extreme enforced? — John
To be honest, I wouldn't actually care much, so long as there was no state police involved, or abuse in the workforce by the bosses towards the workers. — Agustino
What I mean by brings down the distinction is this... In my reading:I don't think it's right to say that Hegel "brings down" the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon if by that you mean abolishes it. I think it is right if by "bring down' you mean 'immanentizes'. He wants to show that the in itself is not in itself for itself, but only in itself for us. — John
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