Science is a good thing — Banno
Not at all! You have forgotten all about religion and the arts, not to mention science; many of the greatest works of the human imagination would not have existed without the notion of the noumenon, and the attempt to imagine the unimaginable.It's only consequence is the production of philosophy papers and poor forum threads. — Banno
You have forgotten all about religion and the arts; — Janus
Take care, because I am saying you are right. — Banno
According to Kant, the very nature of science means that it is limited to certain kinds of understanding and explanation, and these will never satisfy us completely. For as he says in the first sentence of the Critique, human reason has this peculiarity: it is driven by its very nature to pose questions that it is incapable of answering. Now hardheaded types may dismiss out of hand as not worth asking any questions that don't admit of scientific answers. This, one imagines, is Mr. Spock's position, and possibly such an attitude will one day take over completely. But I suspect Kant is right on this matter for two reasons.
One reason is that in our search for explanations we find it hard to be content with brute contingency. If we ask, “Why did this happen?” we will not be satisfied with the answer, “It just did.” If we ask, “Why are things this way?” we expect more than, “That's just the way things are.” Yet however deep science penetrates into the origin of things or the nature of things, it never seems to eliminate that element of contingency, and it is hard to see how it ever can. Leibniz's question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” will always be waiting.
A second reason, which I suspect is related to the first, is that some questions we pose probably can't be answered, yet we ask them anyway because they express an abiding sense of wonder, mystery, concern, gratitude or despair over the conditions of our existence. Why am I this particular subject of experience? Why am I alive now and not at some other time? What should I do with my life? Why do I love this person, and why is our love so important? Such thoughts may take the form of questions, but they are really expressions of amazement and perplexity. The feelings expressed fuel religion, poetry, music, and the other arts. They also often accompany experiences we think of as especially valuable or profound: for instance, being present at a birth or a death, feeling great love, witnessing heroism, or encountering overwhelming natural beauty. — Emrys Westacott, The Continuing Relevance of Immaneul Kant
I would say that what has happened is the problem has been dissipated, but that you mistook the solution for another rendering.I will always stand by Kant's differentiation of phenomena and noumena, because it is the central problem of philosophy, which only ever considers new ways to re-frame it. — Wayfarer
indeed to deny it is to loose all sight of the boundary between science and philosophy proper. — Wayfarer
And yet philosophers keep trying, when the only appropriate response is silence.some questions we pose probably can't be answered... — Emrys Westacott, The Continuing Relevance of Kant
And yet philosophers keep trying, when the only appropriate response is silence.
Or music. — Banno
I will always stand by Kant's differentiation of phenomena and noumena, because it is the central problem of philosophy, that being 'appearance and reality', and philosophy only ever consists of seeking new ways to re-frame it. — Wayfarer
philosophy as an exercise of the imagination, or even sometimes as a stimulus to scientific investigation, as Popper, distancing himself from the Positivists of the Vienna School, acknowledged. — Janus
That's the result when you teach only criticism. Before criticism, you have to learn what the actual idea is and how it explains issues. By only teaching criticism you make people negative and hopeless.Their diet has been one critical of the scientific view, the emphasis on negative consequences of scientific work. It was interesting to see their faces change as they realised there was some hope. — Banno
Science is just a tool.
— frank — counterpunch
No. It's not. And that's why Popper is wrong. — counterpunch
You mean a gradient of more or less 'in itself' and/ or 'for us'? How would we tell though, when all the telling is "for us"? — Janus
Personally, I reject the idea that there is any "in itself" that could not, at least in principle, become a 'for us'. We can easily imagine that there is an ineffable, — Janus
I will be winning when this thread continues without my intervention. That's when I will know the point has been well-made and is bothersome. — Banno
I have absolutely no bad feelings towards Banno
— Jack Cummins
I can fix that... — Banno
The in-itself is not about ineffability. It's that we don't apparently learn that, for instance, physical objects have spacial and temporal extension. — frank
So the idea is that we're sort of projecting an environment for the things we encounter. — frank
This is an interesting related idea, though: IIT theory of consciousness. — frank
I will always stand by Kant's differentiation of phenomena and noumena, because it is the central problem of philosophy, that being 'appearance and reality', and philosophy only ever consists of seeking new ways to re-frame it. — Wayfarer
We can easily imagine that there is an ineffable, but what could it mean for us in rationally discursive terms, when to mean something in those terms would entail rendering the ineffable effable, and thus dissolving the distinction? — Janus
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