I am more of the idea that we do not find the 'out there', we create it, and that when we create it it becomes real, to us. — leo
That if we insist in believing that scientific laws are the truth, are objective, are eternal, and we silence those who disagree, and we dismiss any experience that doesn't follow these laws as hallucination, or delusion, or imagination, then we will create such a world where nothing can transcend these laws, because in a profound sense we will stop experiencing anything that transcends these laws. — leo
For whatever it is worth, I find all except the first (“only one winner”) interesting and worth exploring... — 0 thru 9
There were quite a few German scientists of that period who opposed atomism on philosophical grounds. I seem to remember this attitude was one of the things that drove Ludwig Boltzmann to suicide. — Wayfarer
But then again they had in common that they did philosophy and not just physics. When you do physics only, you are stuck thinking within the mainstream theories of the era, seeing the assumptions at the root of the theories as truth rather than as assumptions. — leo
I started the sentence with "If", "If there are only minds", "If there are only minds, then there is no mind-independent 'here' or 'world' that our minds are in". If you disagree with that sentence, I would be interested to hear what makes you disagree, because in my reality I don't see how it could be wrong. — leo
Now if there is repeated consistency and agreements between how we name our experiences, then we can say there is a common ground between our realities. Does it imply there is one single reality? Are we going to agree on everything? What of people who don't see that tree? Is there something wrong with them, are they delusional because they don't see the single reality that you assumed exists? — leo
And I talk of "we" because we have a common ground, our realities partially intersect. — leo
If there is a single reality, then in principle they could find an explanation, such as your brain being different in some way to theirs. — leo
Today many people agree on the idea of a single physical reality, but they can't explain how is it that they can experience anything at all in such a reality. At that point there is only faith holding that single reality together. Minds believing in it. — leo
question the legitimacy of extending it to include the origin of science, or of the intellect, or of rationality as a faculty or capacity, because it implicitly or even explicitly reduces these capacities to those which can directly be understood for the advantage for reproduction that they obviously might provide. — Wayfarer
Dennett does not believe in reason. He will be outraged to hear this, since he regards himself as a giant of rationalism. But the reason he imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.
This actually is a really deep conundrum in modern philosophy, we can't just brush it off. — Wayfarer
Science, or at least its general methodology is definitely the best known tool by which we, as a whole, can obtain a high degree of objective knowledge. But this in no way suggests that objective knowledge is superior to non-objective knowledge, and by that measure, neither can science be declared as the superior method for obtaining knowledge. Knowledge of my self, my life, who I am and where I stand is something that science cannot touch, at least not at the purest levels of subjectivity, and something that I would suspect has been on every true philosopher's mind at one time or another. For me, such subjective knowledge is infinitely important. Nevertheless, science shows excellent results. — Merkwurdichliebe
I also refer back to this post and the traditional virtues of sagacity and detachment whereby the sage 'sees things as they truly are'. That is what science aspires to do, it is the very impulse that science arose from. — Wayfarer
But whilst he might be opposed to materialism, like all positivists he is completely opposed to the idea of there being a metaphysics. — Wayfarer
So Mach was opposed to materialism, not from the same perspective as idealist philosophers, but because if only sensation is real then the positing of real external existents is unwarranted. — Wayfarer
https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/consciousness.htm'Thoughts' and 'things' are names for two sorts of object, which common sense will always find contrasted and will always practically oppose to each other. Philosophy, reflecting on the contrast, has varied in the past in her explanations of it, and may be expected to vary in the future.
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To deny plumply that 'consciousness' exists seems so absurd on the face of it -- for undeniably 'thoughts' do exist -- that I fear some readers will follow me no farther. Let me then immediately explain that I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function. There is, I mean, no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted with that of which material objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are made; but there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for the performance of which this quality of being is invoked. That function is knowing. 'Consciousness' is supposed necessary to explain the fact that things not only are, but get reported, are known. Whoever blots out the notion of consciousness from his list of first principles must still provide in some way for that function's being carried on.
My thesis is that if we start with the supposition that there is only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed, and if we call that stuff 'pure experience,' the knowing can easily be explained as a particular sort of relation towards one another into which portions of pure experience may enter. The relation itself is a part of pure experience; one if its 'terms' becomes the subject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower,[2] the other becomes the object known. — James
Atoms are a useful way of looking at things. My mother isn't 'really' atoms. — g0d
I'm not saying that I reject the theory of evolution — g0d
'Thoughts' and 'things' are names for two sorts of object, — James
there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for the performance of which this quality of being is invoked. That function is knowing. — James
This goes back to Hegel & Fichte. We get a system of intelligible unities, since the meaning of 'cat' is entangled with the meaning of 'mouse,' and ego is entangled with world, etc. In practical life, some of these distinctions are vividly lived. We are sure that we have isolated selves (ghosts in skulls) without much thinking about it. — g0d
if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.
The stroke of genius of atomism was that 'the changeless' could be understood as the fundamental element of everything; that whilst the atom remained indivisible and eternal in itself and so, like the One, it could at the same time combine in countless ways to produce the 'ten thousand things', so resolving the paradox. — Wayfarer
I think that intuition remains behind atomism but the original philosophical inspiration long forgotten, as it still preserved the division between 'the uncreated' (unconditioned, unmade, unfabricated) and 'the manifest realm'. So now the original appeal of atomism has been forgotten, but it wanted to discern the bedrock, the basis, the fundamental ground from which everything appears. — Wayfarer
Then I noticed how much evolutionary paradigms had seeped into all kinds of philosophical problems - that everything could be understood through the lense of evolutionary biology - including Mach, by the way. — Wayfarer
Relying on a complex etymology, Vico argues in the Scienza Nuova that civilization develops in a recurring cycle (ricorso) of three ages: the divine, the heroic, and the human. Each age exhibits distinct political and social features and can be characterized by master tropes or figures of language. The giganti of the divine age rely on metaphor to compare, and thus comprehend, human and natural phenomena. In the heroic age, metonymy and synecdoche support the development of feudal or monarchic institutions embodied by idealized figures. The final age is characterized by popular democracy and reflection via irony; in this epoch, the rise of rationality leads to barbarie della reflessione or barbarism of reflection, and civilization descends once more into the poetic era. Taken together, the recurring cycle of three ages – common to every nation – constitutes for Vico a storia ideale eterna or ideal eternal history. — Wiki
That is why the predominant materialism of secular culture is based in neo-Darwinism; it's kind of a 'reverse fundamentalism', as it believes that evolutionary theory debunks the religious account of creation. But it only does that if you first believed that the religious account was literally true; if you've never thought it was literally true (as I did not) then the fact that it's *not* literally true has no significance. — Wayfarer
if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized.
I just find this completely persuasive. — Wayfarer
So, intelligibility arises from the ability of intellect (nous) to discern the forms of things, to understand them as being part of an intelligible order - and emphatically not merely as a 'kind of sensation'. — Wayfarer
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/What we ‘first’ hear is never noises or complexes of sounds, but the creaking waggon, the motor-cycle. We hear the column on the march, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling… It requires a very artificial and complicated frame of mind to ‘hear’ a ‘pure noise’. The fact that motor-cycles and waggons are what we proximally hear is the phenomenal evidence that in every case Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, already dwells alongside what is ready-to-hand within-the-world; it certainly does not dwell proximally alongside ‘sensations’; nor would it first have to give shape to the swirl of sensations to provide a springboard from which the subject leaps off and finally arrives at a ‘world’. — SEP
But I don't think that reason, as such, is explained naturalistically, as it is not 'evident to sensation', right? — Wayfarer
https://blogofthecosmos.com/2016/03/01/the-numerical-abilities-of-non-human-animals/A landowner had been quite bothered by the crow since it had chosen to nest in his watch-house. He had planned to shoot it. The bird would fly away and wait until the landowner had left to return to its nest inside the watch-house, given that no-one would be inside to shoot it. In order to deceive it, the landowner had two people enter the watch-house and one leave. The crow was not deceived by this malicious plan, even when three men entered and two left. It wasn’t until five men had entered the tower and four had left that the bird did eventually fly back inside the watch-house. The crow thus shows a certain numerical ability to count up until four but not five. — link
And while the faculty of reason is certainly something that evolved, what is discerned by reason didn't evolve; I mean, the 'law of the excluded middle' didn't come into being when we evolved to perceived it; what evolved was our capacity to perceive it. And this is something I don't believe the empiricist philosophers would agree with. — Wayfarer
Actually in pretty close agreement with James, but would parse it differently.
'Thoughts' are not objects as such; objects exist in thought, or rather, in mind, but you can't be discursively aware of that, because you can't step outside mind or treat mind as an object, as it never is an object. — Wayfarer
I think is a strong case for a form of dualism. — Wayfarer
“Abstraction, which is the proper task of active intellect, is essentially a liberating function in which the essence of the sensible object, potentially understandable as it lies beneath its accidents, is liberated from the elements that individualize it and is thus made actually understandable. The product of abstraction is a species of an intelligible order. Now possible intellect is supplied with an adequate stimulus to which it responds by producing a concept.” — link
So this is hylomorphic dualism, matter-form dualism, and I have to confess, it makes sense to me. — Wayfarer
For me the gap is between religion that experiences God as an invisible person who sees inside one's heart and does miracles and other more abstract versions of God. More abstract versions of God aren't controversial, as far as I can see, but somewhere between myth and metaphysics. I call myself an atheist because it's the least confusing word I could choose, but I think the myths are profoundly true in ways I would not defend with arguments. — g0d
[According to Afrikan Spir] God is not the creator deity of the universe and mankind, but man's true nature and the norm of all things, in general. The moral and religious conscience live in the consciousness of the contrast between this norm (Realität) and empirical reality (Wirklichkeit). "There is a radical dualism between the empirical nature of man and his moral nature" and the awareness of this dualism is the sole true foundation of moral judgment.
The religious perceive our present life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory; he feels it to be, not a mere condition, but a predicament; it strikes him as vain or empty if taken as an end in itself; he sees himself as homo viator, as a wayfarer (!) or pilgrim treading a via dolorosa through a vale that cannot possibly be a final and fitting resting place; he senses or glimpses from time to time the possibility of a Higher Life; he feels himself in danger of missing out on this Higher Life of true happiness. — Bill Vallicella, quoting Josiah Royce
But I must say that I don't think the empiricists ever believed that we experienced a mess of sensations. I think they were just proto-Kantians. Look at the titles of their works. — g0d
I find dualism to be roughly true. — g0d
ot 'a mess of sensations' but the 'tabula rasa' principle of Locke was and is a firm dogma of empiricism. — Wayfarer
Since it is the understanding, that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion, which he has over them; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into. The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object.
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If, by this enquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the powers thereof; how far they reach; to what things they are in any degree proportionate; and where they fail us: I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man, to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things, which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. We should not then perhaps be so forward, out of an affectation of an universal knowledge, to raise questions, and perplex ourselves and others with disputes about things, to which our understandings are not suited; and of which we cannot frame in our minds any clear or distinct perceptions, or whereof (as it has perhaps too often happened) we have not any notions at all. — Locke
Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.
It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. — Kant
For, first, it is evident, that all children and idiots have not the least apprehension or thought of them; and the want of that is enough to destroy that universal assent, which must needs be the necessary concomitant of all innate truths: it seeming to me near a contradiction, to say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or understands not; imprinting, if it signify any thing, being nothing else, but the making certain truths to be perceived. [15] For to imprint any thing on the mind, without the mind’s perceiving it, seems to me hardly intelligible. If therefore children and idiots have souls, have minds, with those impressions upon them, they must unavoidably perceive them, and necessarily know and assent to these truths: which since they do not, it is evident that there are no such impressions. For if they are not notions naturally imprinted, how can they be innate? and if they are notions imprinted, how can they be unknown?
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To avoid this, it is usually answered, That all men know and assent to them, when they come to the use of reason, and this is enough to prove them innate. I answer,
Doubtful expressions that have scarce any signification, go for clear reasons, to those, who being prepossessed, take not the pains to examine, even what they themselves say. For to apply this answer with any tolerable sense to our present purpose, it must signify one of these two things; either, that, as soon as men come to the use of reason, these supposed native inscriptions come to be known, and observed by them: or else, that the use and exercise of men’s reason assists them in the discovery of these principles, and certainly makes them known to them.
If they mean, that by the use of reason men may discover these principles; and that this is sufficient to prove them innate: their way of arguing will stand thus, (viz.) that, whatever truths reason can certainly discover to us, and make us firmly assent to, those are all naturally imprinted on the mind; since that universal assent, which is made the mark of them, amounts to no more but this; that by the use of reason, we are capable to come to a certain knowledge [17] of, and assent to them; and, by this means, there will be no difference between the maxims of the mathematicians, and theorems they deduce from them; all must be equally allowed innate; they being all discoveries made by the use of reason, and truths that a rational creature may certainly come to know, if he apply his thoughts rightly that way.
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That certainly can never be thought innate, which we have need of reason to discover; unless, as I have said, we will have all the certain truths, that reason ever teaches us, to be innate.
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So that to make reason discover those truths, thus imprinted, is to say, that the use of reason discovers to a man what he knew before: and if men have those innate impressed truths originally, and before the use of reason, and yet are always ignorant of them, till they come to the use of reason, it is in effect to say, that men know, and know them not, at the same time.
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The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet; and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards the mind, proceeding farther, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the [21] materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty: and the use of reason becomes daily more visible, as these materials, that give it employment, increase. But though the having of general ideas, and the use of general words and reason, usually grow together; yet, I see not, how this any way proves them innate. The knowledge of some truths, I confess, is very early in the mind; but in a way that shows them not to be innate. — Locke
Note the difference between hylomorphic and Cartesian dualism. The former never conceived of 'the soul' as a substance, or something that exists over and above the body. In a sense, Aristotle's intuition is that the soul is the unity of the body. — Wayfarer
God is not the creator deity of the universe and mankind, but man's true nature and the norm of all things, in general. The moral and religious conscience live in the consciousness of the contrast between this norm (Realität) and empirical reality (Wirklichkeit)
The religious perceive our present life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory; he feels it to be, not a mere condition, but a predicament; it strikes him as vain or empty if taken as an end in itself; he sees himself as homo viator, as a wayfarer (!) or pilgrim treading a via dolorosa through a vale that cannot possibly be a final and fitting resting place; he senses or glimpses from time to time the possibility of a Higher Life; he feels himself in danger of missing out on this Higher Life of true happiness. — Bill Vallicella
It is said that 'science relies on reason' but really it relies even more on what is tangible or instrumentally-detectable; it is nothing like rationalism in the sense that a Leibniz or rationalist philosophy understands, which sought to intuit an order wholly transcending the order of the sense; something which is practically unintelligible to a modern. — Wayfarer
But look at the role of observability in empirical science - the yardstick of what is real, is what can be ascertained by sensory experience, amplified by instruments, and mathematical abstraction thereof. — Wayfarer
Again, thanks for the post — Cris
I had the impression that you liked both forms of dualism. — g0d
[The mind] thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. — Kant
The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet; and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards the mind, proceeding farther, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the [21] materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty: and the use of reason becomes daily more visible, as these materials, that give it employment, increase. But though the having of general ideas, and the use of general words and reason, usually grow together; yet, I see not, how this any way proves them innate. — John Locke
Empiricists, such as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, argued that human knowledge originates in our sensations. Locke, for instance, was a representative realist about the external world and placed great confidence in the ability of the senses to inform us of the properties that empirical objects really have in themselves. Locke had also argued that the mind is a blank slate, or a tabula rasa, that becomes populated with ideas by its interactions with the world. Experience teaches us everything, including concepts of relationship, identity, causation, and so on. Kant argues that the blank slate model of the mind is insufficient to explain the beliefs about objects that we have; some components of our beliefs must be brought by the mind to experience.
...Kant gives a number of arguments to show that Locke's, Berkeley's, and Hume's empiricist positions are untenable because they necessarily presuppose the very claims they set out to disprove.
It is said that 'science relies on reason' but really it relies even more on what is tangible or instrumentally-detectable; it is nothing like rationalism in the sense that a Leibniz or rationalist philosophy understands, which sought to intuit an order wholly transcending the order of the sense; something which is practically unintelligible to a modern.
— Wayfarer
Isn't it more complicated than that? — g0d
This is a fascinating quote, but note that it frames the religious person in terms of longing, sorrow, and fear who merely glimpses something Higher now and then. What is not mentioned is a general sense of well-being. To be sure there is plenty of vanity in the world, but we can choose our spouses, friends, books, etc. Can we not get better at life as we get better at riding a bike? — g0d
The problem with Cartesian dualism is the very idea of there being a 'thinking substance'. It is an impossible abstraction, and has lead to enormous confusion. Husserl has a great criticism of that in Crisis of European Sciences. — Wayfarer
This is from 'the antinomies of reason'. It is about the fact that there are questions traditionally regarded as metaphysical, which can never be resolved, like whether the world has a beginning or whether there is a first cause. — Wayfarer
Right - there's a succinct statement of the 'blank slate'. — Wayfarer
t is extremely complicated, but the fact remains that 'empiricism' means 'demonstrable in objective experience', right? — Wayfarer
It can be distinguished from philosophical reasoning that is aimed at effecting a transformation of insight, as was traditional philosophy; science is results-oriented and instrumental in nature. Not wrong on that account, but also not necessarily efficacious in any sense other than those. — Wayfarer
I don't think it's all or nothing. One can 'live in the world' as many a good Christian, Buddhist or Hindu might do, but still feel that sense of the radical insufficiency of natural life. — Wayfarer
Some say the universe is made of atoms, but I say it is made of stories. — Cris
I have never seen an atom. I simply believe the story I was told. This is the case for all I know. No on has ever seen the continents drift from a single land mass to where we ae now. People found a bunch of bones and stones and pieced togehter a story. No one has ever seen the big bang. They observed things and did some math and then told the story that they believe and now so do I. — Cris
We compile the stories and form our worldview. If the stories are harmonious then they are more believable and we enter them in as knowledge. If they are not compatible then one must go and we will look for anoter to fill its place. That seems to be the scientific method. — Cris
The observable process which Schiller and Dewey particularly singled out for generalisation is the familiar one by which any individual settles into new opinions. The process here is always the same. The individual has a stock of old opinions already, but he meets a new experience that puts them to a strain. Somebody contradicts them; or in a reflective moment he discovers that they contradict each other; or he hears of facts with which they are incompatible; or desires arise in him which they cease to satisfy. The result is an inward trouble to which his mind till then had been a stranger, and from which he seeks to escape by modifying his previous mass of opinions. He saves as much of it as he can, for in this matter of belief we are all extreme conservatives. So he tries to change first this opinion, and then that (for they resist change very variously), until at last some new idea comes up which he can graft upon the ancient stock with a minimum of disturbance of the latter, some idea that mediates between the stock and the new experience and runs them into one another most felicitously and expediently.
This new idea is then adopted as the true one. It preserves the older stock of truths with a minimum of modification, stretching them just enough to make them admit the novelty, but conceiving that in ways as familiar as the case leaves possible. An outrée [outrageous] explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something less eccentric. The most violent revolutions in an individual’s beliefs leave most of his old order standing. — James
As far as that which is common to us all that would constitute knowledge that is not learned, but innate; our dissatisfaction with the world as it is, seems to be a norm that binds us all together. Why is it that we all find the state of the world to be disgusting? Wouldn't that point to an innate knowledge? — Cris
This is the sense in which Kant criticizes the empiricists. The gist of it is, to even make the arguments that they make, the empiricists are already assuming the very faculties which they believe they can account for in terms of experience. — Wayfarer
It is plainly not the effect of the levity, but of the matured judgement* of the age, which refuses to be any longer entertained with illusory knowledge, It is, in fact, a call to reason, again to undertake the most laborious of all tasks—that of self-examination, and to establish a tribunal, which may secure it in its well-grounded claims, while it pronounces against all baseless assumptions and pretensions, not in an arbitrary manner, but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws. This tribunal is nothing less than the critical investigation of pure reason.
I do not mean by this a criticism of books and systems, but a critical inquiry into the faculty of reason, with reference to the cognitions to which it strives to attain without the aid of experience; in other words, the solution of the question regarding the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics, and the determination of the origin, as well as of the extent and limits of this science. All this must be done on the basis of principles.
This path—the only one now remaining—has been entered upon by me; and I flatter myself that I have, in this way, discovered the cause of—and consequently the mode of removing—all the errors which have hitherto set reason at variance with itself, in the sphere of non-empirical thought... It is true, these questions have not been solved as dogmatism, in its vain fancies and desires, had expected; for it can only be satisfied by the exercise of magical arts, and of these I have no knowledge. But neither do these come within the compass of our mental powers; and it was the duty of philosophy to destroy the illusions which had their origin in misconceptions, whatever darling hopes and valued expectations may be ruined by its explanations. — Kant
Kant points out that moving from what I'd call naive realism requires 'long practice' and skill. That the empiricists should have accidentally left some of the work of their own minds 'projected' is no surprise. And those who came after Kant criticized him. What we have is an evolving theory of the 'lens' and how it structures the given into experience. Kant aimed at one fixed lens. Others later held to the lens metaphor but insisted that the lens changed with time. Heidegger and Wittgenstein presented something like a soft and evolving lens that we could never quite grasp explicitly and/or comprehensively.That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but begins with it.
But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion), an addition which we cannot distinguish from the original element given by sense, till long practice has made us attentive to, and skillful in separating it. — Kant
Kant is great, and he added to the empiricists — g0d
though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience — Kant
Which is precisely what the empiricists claim. They’re not equivocal about it. — Wayfarer
And of course:For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion), an addition which we cannot distinguish from the original element given by sense, till long practice has made us attentive to, and skillful in separating it. — Kant
How are these conceptually structured intuitions so different from Hume's impressions?Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. It is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible, that is, to add the object to them in intuition, as to make our intuitions intelligible, that is, to bring them under concepts. — Kant
The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet; and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards the mind, proceeding farther, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the [21] materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty: and the use of reason becomes daily more visible, as these materials, that give it employment, increase.
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The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object. — John Locke
Hume doesn't go into much detail, but that last sentence is hard to ignore.All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic; and in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides, is a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That three times five is equal to the half of thirty, expresses a relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever retain their certainty and evidence.
— Hume
By this it appears that Reason is not as Sense, and Memory, borne with us; nor gotten by Experience onely; as Prudence is; but attayned by Industry; first in apt imposing of Names; and secondly by getting a good and orderly Method in proceeding from the Elements, which are Names, to Assertions made by Connexion of one of them to another; and so to syllogismes, which are the Connexions of one Assertion to another, till we come to a knowledge of all the Consequences of names appertaining to the subject in hand; and that is it, men call SCIENCE. And whereas Sense and Memory are but knowledge of Fact, which is a thing past, and irrevocable; Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependance of one fact upon another: by which, out of that we can presently do, we know how to do something els when we will, or the like, another time; Because when we see how any thing comes about, upon what causes, and by what manner; when the like causes come into our power, wee see how to make it produce the like effects.
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No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute knowledge of Fact, past, or to come. For, as for the knowledge of Fact, it is originally, Sense; and ever after, Memory. And for the knowledge of consequence, which I have said before is called Science, it is not Absolute, but Conditionall. No man can know by Discourse, that this, or that, is, has been, or will be; which is to know absolutely: but onely, that if This be, That is; if This has been, That has been; if This shall be, That shall be: which is to know conditionally; and that not the consequence of one thing to another; but of one name of a thing, to another name of the same thing. — Hobbes
I must, therefore, abolish knowledge, to make room for belief. — Kant
What was it that Hume wrote, that Kant said ‘awakened him from his dogmatic slumber’? — Wayfarer
Whereas the concept of causality is, for Kant, clearly a priori, he does not think that particular causal laws relating specific causes with specific effects are all synthetic a priori—and, if they are not a priori, how can they be necessary? Indeed, Kant illustrates this difficulty, in a footnote to § 22, with his own example of the sun warming a stone (4, 305; 58):
But how does this proposition, that judgments of experience are supposed to contain necessity in the synthesis of perceptions, agree with my proposition, urged many times above, that experience, as a posteriori cognition, can yield only contingent judgments? If I say that experience teaches me something, I always mean only the perception that lies within in it, e.g., that heat always follows the illumination of the stone by the sun. That this heating results necessarily from the illumination by the sun is in fact contained in the judgment of experience (in virtue of the concept of cause); but I do not learn this from experience, rather, conversely, experience is first generated through this addition of the concept of the understanding (of cause) to the perception.
In other words, experience in the Humean sense teaches me that heat always (i.e., constantly) follows the illumination of the stone by the sun; experience in the Kantian sense then adds that:
the succession is necessary; … the effect does not merely follow upon the cause but is posited through it and follows from it. (A91/B124)
But what exactly does this mean? — link
How are these conceptually structured intuitions so different from Hume's impressions? — g0d
rescues the a priori origin of the pure concepts of the understanding and the validity of the general laws of nature as laws of the understanding, in such a way that their use is limited only to experience, because their possibility has its ground merely in the relation of the understanding to experience, however, not in such a way that they are derived from experience, but that experience is derived from them, a completely reversed kind of connection which never occurred to Hume.
There are some subject areas, or ideas, which are not amenable to the kind of analysis that will yield the kind of empirical evidence that is considered scientific, so questions about those kinds of topics aren't considered legitimate at all by scientific standards. — Wayfarer
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