All I am asking of you is to read what people have actually written before you go off. I'm fine if you disagree with me, or even think I'm an idiot. What I cannot stand is the accusation that I have simply said things without providing reasons when that is what this whole thread has been about. If you care enough to respond to someone, care enough to read what they actually say.

Not the idea of causality per se, but the definition of our world. Kant treats the necessity of our world as if it were finite, as if its states depend on causality pre-dating them.

Rather than recognising our necessity, that we and they world are intelligible, Kant assumes we are not. For us to possibility exist, we (supposedly) need aprioi causality to pre-date us. He denies the world is necessary. When faced with it, Kant claims it makes no sense, that we are impossible unless aprioi causality predates us. Kant is trying to save the relevance of the infinite to defining the world.

Hume showed that the necessity of causality played no role in defining which states are caused (i.e. anything might happen at anytime). Causility, as envisioned by the Rationalists, is different to the emprical states which appear. The intelligiblity of any individual state is NOT dependent on the infinite of causality.

Kant is trying to rescue the link between infinite causality and intelligibility of individual states. He does so by denying any empirical state is possible without being specifed by the infinite of causality.

Previously, the Rationalist link between the infinite and empirical was logical. It was just thought an individual emprical state didn't makes sense without definition from infinite causality. Hume destroys this idea by pointing out each empirical state is its own logical entity.

Kant responds to this by ransoming the emprical world. He says we simply must have an infinite of causality which defines indivdual states, else those states simply couldn't be. Since the world, with all its individual states, is clearly here, the infinite of causality simply must be doing its work. It's the "the world would be impossible without God" circular argument.

All I am asking of you is to read what people have actually written before you go off. I'm fine if you disagree with me, or even think I'm an idiot. — The Great Whatever

I did read it, and I don't think you're an idiot. But my view is that, if anything, Kant is underrated.

Willow, answer honestly now; have you actually studied Kant's works or even secondary texts dealing with them?

Yes. It was some time ago though.

But I'm contextualising Kant with respect to others and wider metaphysical issues here, not arguing as Kant does. This is partly what I meant about your lack of imagination in our discussion the other week. When people take issue with something Kant says, for example, you act like they aren't even positing a different idea, position or significance.

It's like one has to argue as Kant does or else one isn't even making a relevant philosophical point. You act like Kant's metaphysics are the ground which required to make metaphysical comment possible (which I suppose is fitting).

I have no idea what you are talking about here, Willow. If you want to discuss the pros and cons of Kant's philosophy then you have to stay true to criticizing what he actually professed.I don't know what you mean by saying that when others "take issue with something Kant says" I " act like they aren't even positing a different idea, position or significance".

Firstly, they should be taking issue with something he actually said, and then they have to be really taking issue with it; which means laying out precisely why they disagree with it. If you can show an example of where you did that and received the response you claim that I (always, mostly, often?) manifest, then I'll be happy to consider it.

I am convinced that Kant was pretty much right about what we can claim to know about metaphysics. I don't believe Kant has a metaphysics in any traditional sense. I think in a way the clue to understanding Kant's implicit attitude to metaphysics may be seen in the way Heidegger adapted Kant, such that he pretty much rejected metaphysics, and subsumed ontology to phenomenology.

I agree. It's altogether too fashionable these days to indulge in Descartes-bashing. At least TGW, even though I think he is totally misguided in equating Kant's contribution with Berkeley's, is certainly not being fashionable with his particular brand of Kant-bashing.

I think your memory is pretty good. That sounds like something I would have said. Perhaps the end of history can be equated with the completion of the dialectic. Steiner claims that this is the completion of rationality, but not of what he calls "extra-mental" understanding; in fact it sets the stage for the latter. Of course, Hegel, would not have agreed with this, since he thought the "Rational is the Real". — John

Yeah I don't agree with the "extra-mental" part, which is extra-rational, simply because it doesn't make much sense to me what that would be or could be. So that's why I would agree with Hegel that everything that is Real must be Rational.

It's altogether too fashionable these days to indulge in Descartes-bashing — John

>:O
I personally don't see much in terms of valuable ideas in Descartes at all, and it has little to do with Descartes bashing. Maybe I just haven't read his Meditations carefully, who knows.

Never understood the hype surrounding Bertrand Russell.

I think Descartes focused philosophical consideration of the mind/matter, subject/object (and by implication the rationalism/empiricism) dichotomies and 'supercharged' the question of priority, by being spectacularly wrong about it with his substance dualism which highlighted the 'interaction problem'; thus paving the way for Spinoza and Leibniz, and also for the British Empiricists, and ultimately the great revolutionary solution offered by Kant (which sees neither mind nor matter as prior, but something (discursively at least) unknowable which manifests as a world consisting of bodies and minds).

Although it could be said that Spinoza's system is a neutral monism that achieves the same outcome, his imputation of absolute necessity to deus sive natura, tends to objectify it and give priority to material existence; with mind understood as a secondary function, or even, really, as a phenomenal parallelism. It also involves an ultimate denial of the possibility of genuine freedom. This is inevitable because of Spinoza's denial of person-hood (which is so essential to a proper understanding of mind) to God, and by implication to nature, including the human; leading to seeing it (person-hood) as a kind of illusion.

I think Steiner's notion of the "extramental" is on the right track, but overblown, since he believed that mystical understanding could somehow be objectified as a science (this is the essence of his conception of 'anthropo-sophy'). But the 'wisdom of the human' can never become a science; it must rather become, as Berdyaev contends, a fully developed art. The reason it can never become a science is that the 'knowledge' obtained mystically can never be subject to intersubjective strategies of corroboration; verification and falsification.

by being spectacularly wrong about it with his substance dualism which highlighted the 'interaction problem' — John

So for being an idiot, he gets called a genius? :P

the great revolutionary solution offered by Kant (which sees neither mind nor matter as prior, but something (discursively at least) unknowable which manifests as a world consisting of bodies and minds). — John

Kant wasn't as revolutionary as you and Wayfarer make him sound like, I lean towards TGW here. Of course I don't agree with TGW, because I think Kant was actually a genius, but certainly not as great as you guys make him out to be. As TGW said, a lot of Kant is prefigured in earlier thinkers. However, I do admire Kant and I've taken a few insights from him - the Kingdom of ends, treating others as ends in themselves (persons) instead of means to ends (objects), the a priority of space/time/causality, the co-dependence of subject and object.

Although it could be said that Spinoza's system is a neutral monism that achieves the same outcome — John

Not only it could be said, this is actually the case.

absolute necessity to deus sive natura, tends to objectify it and give priority to material existence — John

No, priority isn't given to extension... I don't understand where you're taking this from. Also you misunderstand what Spinoza means by absolute necessity... Certainly he doesn't mean absolute necessity as it would be empirically understood.

In fact, Spinoza being an acosmist does quite the opposite - he gives priority to God, not to the empirical manifestations of the world. Priority is given to the unmanifest source of the manifest.

mind understood as a secondary function, or even, really, as a phenomenal parallelism — John

No, Spinoza doesn't understand mind as epiphenomenal if that's what you mean to say.

It also involves an ultimate denial of the possibility of genuine freedom — John

No, this doesn't follow. Absolute necessity is not incompatible with freedom. Absolute necessity is a metaphysical postulate of one reality - because it is one reality, it is absolutely necessary. Freedom exists because one has the power to cause other things, being an element within the causal chain, with its own powers. Determinism doesn't mean that there is no freedom - determinism isn't fatalism. Determinism simply means that the causal agent is embedded within the causal chain - within the same reality and hence not transcendent - this is the absolute necessity. But because the causal agent has powers which determine other things, he plays a role, and to the extent that he plays a role in determining what happens, he is free.

Spinoza's denial of person-hood (which is so essential to a proper understanding of mind) to God — John

How can God be a person? How can the ground of person-hood be itself a person, except perhaps analogically in order to say that personhood merely emerges from it? Can the eye see itself? Can the conditions which make any experience possible be found within experience or must they be a priori? Can that which makes personhood possible be a person, or must it be prior to personality?

leading to seeing it (person-hood) as a kind of illusion. — John

This doesn't follow, as I showed above.

But the 'wisdom of the human' can never become a science; it must rather become, as Berdyaev contends, a fully developed art. The reason it can never become a science is that the 'knowledge' obtained mystically can never be subject to intersubjective strategies of corroboration; verification and falsification. — John

But this isn't knowledge at all - merely finding a way for one to live in the world. Finding what to do with one's time until that time is up and death comes knocking on the door. That's a personal choice - something that is inherently subjective indeed. There's nothing objectively that has to be done. But since one has this time anyway, and suicide is pointless precisely because death is inevitable, what is one to do with their time, and how are they to choose this? That's the "art" that you speak of. But that's not theoretical knowledge, but practical application.

So for being an idiot, he gets called a genius? — Agustino

Only true geniuses can get things spectacularly wrong in ways that really matter. In any case, looked at dialectically he was not so much wrong, as the first to realize and actualize a particular phase of dialectical possibility. For that he should be despised and belittled? :-} To see him as "wrong" is simply another of the many conceits of modernism.

a lot of Kant is prefigured in earlier thinkers. — Agustino

A lot of any great and revolutionary thinker is prefigured in earlier thinkers.

That's the "art" that you speak of. But that's not theoretical knowledge, but practical application. — Agustino

I agree it is not "theoretical knowledge"; theoretical knowledge is really possible only in relation to logical and empirical matters, and that is precisely what I have been saying. Call it "phronesis" if you like. I disagree though, that what is done makes no real difference to the spirit; what is done is 'objectively' right or wrong, 'objectively' conducive to spiritual development or not, just as great works are 'objectively' more or less great, only in this sense. I must say you seem to be slipping back into a kind of nihilistic slumber with this talk of killing time until you die.

But because the causal agent has powers which determine other things, he plays a role, and to the extent that he plays a role in determining what happens, he is free. — Agustino

The powers of the "causal agent" are determined by other powers that are not under his or her control, according to Spinoza. That's why he makes the analogy with the stone rolling down the hill that would, if it was sentient, feel itself to be free, Spinoza believed that freedom is an illusion due to our inability to be aware of all the forces acting upon us to determine our every action, just as the stone feels itself to be the free source of its own movement. To be consistent Spinoza must believe that every single action is an absolutely necessary and actually predetermined manifestation of the absolute necessity of God's nature. Spinoza specifically says somewhere, if I remember aright, that God does not have free will. I understand that for Spinoza a kind of freedom consists in absolute acceptance of one's nature, but this is not the Christian understanding of freedom, the kind of freedom that can coherently ground the idea of true moral responsibility. That freedom is irreducible, though; a discursive account of it cannot be given, because such an account would necessarily be in causal terms as all our accounts are, and that would deny the very freedom it is giving an account of. The greatness of Kant is that he was the very first to recognize this.

How can God be a person? How can the ground of person-hood be itself a person, except perhaps analogically in order to say that personhood merely emerges from it? — Agustino

Where does personhood really exist except as a characteristic of persons? Sure you can say there may be a part of God that is absolutely unknowable, like the Kabbalistic notion of the 'ein sof', but how can the world of persons have their existence in God in His image, if God is not also a person. How is the personal relationship with Christ-as-God, as conceived in Christianity, possible, if Christ is not a person?

In any case, looked at dialectically he was not so much wrong, as the first to realize and actualize a particular phase of dialectical possibility. For that he should be despised and belittled? :-} To see him as "wrong" is simply another of the many conceits of modernism. — John

Well see, this is what I don't like about Hegel personally. I don't view history as having a direction - as being a dialectic headed somewhere. It's not headed anywhere - we and the rest of the world are going absolutely nowhere. I mean there's so many strange things that occur in history - so many unexpected twists and turns. It's always easy to read some story into the past if we don't look in detail... if we look just in big brushes... but then we eliminate the sea of differences and twists and turns which don't actually fit our story - we reject them, as anomalous points, and thus we truncate reality.

I disagree though, that what is done makes no real difference to the spirit; what is done is 'objectively' right or wrong, 'objectively' conducive to spiritual development or not, just as great works are 'objectively' more or less great, only in this sense. I must say you seem to be slipping back into a kind of nihilistic slumber with this talk of killing time until you die. — John

I see you're spying on what I'm saying in other threads :P

Nihilism in this sense is pure freedom. We can only be free if we're not compelled to do any particular thing - if all we're doing is killing time. If there's actually some goal - we can never be free, for we are always servants to that goal. And I'm talking empirically now. As I said morality still stands - but morality is self-chosen. We choose to be moral.

The powers of the "causal agent" are determined by other powers that are not under his or her control, according to Spinoza — John

Yes, just like my birth is determined by things that aren't in my control. So? "My control" enters into the world through those things which give birth and power to it. I am given power from the outside. I don't give power to myself - I don't pull myself out of the water by my own boot straps - but that doesn't mean that once given power, I do not have that power, and I do not use that power to cause things around me. So yes, my powers aren't ultimately determined by me. But that doesn't make me a slave to those causes - for once I have the power, I can use it to cause other things, in accordance to my own nature (and hence my own freedom). There is only determinism, not pre-determinism.

That's why he makes the analogy with the stone rolling down the hill that would, if it was sentient, feel itself to be free, Spinoza believed that freedom is an illusion due to our inability to be aware of all the forces acting upon us to determine our every action, just as the stone feels itself to be the free source of its own movement. — John

No he didn't believe freedom to be an illusion. He attacked the traditional metaphysical idea of freedom and replaced it with another. Our freedom is limited - it's limited by the powers we have acquired and been bestowed with. But we do have freedom in-so-far as we have power. The rock also has freedom, but a lot less freedom than we do. Sure it is true that that power is ultimately not ours, and will in the end be taken away. But this isn't to say we don't currently have it.

To be consistent Spinoza must believe that every single action is an absolutely necessary and actually predetermined manifestation of the absolute necessity of God's nature — John

Absolutely no - Spinoza is against predeterminism. Predeterminism means that we are puppets - we have no power at all, we're not causal agents at all. Things are settled regardless of what we do. This means that all we can do is watch what happens, but not influence it - we're not even causal agents within the chain, we're just observers. This was anathema to Spinoza - this is the homonuculus in the brain - Spinoza would be horrified by this (mis)interpretation.

Spinoza specifically says somewhere, if I remember aright, that God does not have free will — John

Yes - God cannot create arbitrarily - by free will - he necessarily creates as a result of his infinite and overflowing nature. Contingency (creation) necessarily exists in other words. The only necessity is the necessity of contingency. That's what you're missing when you accuse Spinoza of absolute necessity - yes, it is a metaphysical and logical absolute necessity, which grounds the empirically real contingency. You treat his metaphysical and logical absolute necessity to be equivalent to empirical absolute necessity.

I understand that for Spinoza a kind of freedom consists in absolute acceptance of one's nature — John

No, for Spinoza freedom consists in being true to one's self - being determined by one's own powers, instead of by powers external to oneself. If I wear a red hat because others wear a red hat, I'm not free, because my actions are determined by causes outside of myself. If I wear a red hat because I want to wear a red hat, and doing so is me being true to myself, then I am free - I am determined to act so by my own nature and powers.

but this is not the Christian understanding of freedom, the kind of freedom that can coherently ground the idea of true moral responsibility. That freedom is irreducible, though; a discursive account of it cannot be given, because such an account would necessarily be in causal terms as all our accounts are, and that would deny the very freedom it is giving an account of. The greatness of Kant is that he was the very first to recognize this. — John

Why do you think this freedom is irreducible? And why do you think moral responsibility must be grounded in such a freedom as this?

Where does personhood really exist except as a characteristic of persons? Sure you can say there may be a part of God that is absolutely unknowable, like the Kabbalistic notion of the 'ein sof', but how can the world of persons have their existence in God in His image, if God is not also a person. — John

We are in "His image" because he is the source of our personhood.

How is the personal relationship with Christ-as-God, as conceived in Christianity, possible, if Christ is not a person? — John

I honestly don't know to tell you the truth :-O That's a theological, not a philosophical question. As I said before, I'm not very big on those things. I never think about them. The way you phrase these issues sounds very Barfield/Hegel like. I don't like it much lol O:) :P

I see you're spying on what I'm saying in other threads :P — Agustino

Actually, I was just referring to this:

Finding what to do with one's time until that time is up and death comes knocking on the door. That's a personal choice - something that is inherently subjective indeed. There's nothing objectively that has to be done. But since one has this time anyway, and suicide is pointless precisely because death is inevitable, what is one to do with their time, and how are they to choose this? — Agustino

Sounds to me that you are saying it doesn't matter what we do, and therefore we are just killing time until we die. Perhaps I misinterpreted your meaning?

I have to go to work, so the rest will have to wait.
:)

Actually, I was just referring to this — John

Ah I see, okay

Sounds to me that you are saying it doesn't matter what we do, and therefore we are just killing time until we die. Perhaps I misinterpreted your meaning? — John

Well yes, objectively it doesn't matter. Imagine for a moment you are Bill Gates, you are so rich, you don't need to work for another day in your life, and there's nothing that you have to do. What would you then do? Would you sit around doing nothing, just staring blankly at what is in front of you? Why wouldn't you? Likewise you probably wouldn't sit on the couch watching TV all day long day after day. Why not? Because you found something better to fill your time with. So we all have some limited time until we die that we fill in with whatever we deem and judge to be worth filling it with. Objectively, it doesn't matter. It only matters to us. Objectively, we're all just wasting time.

Why do I, or you, do the work we're currently doing? To survive. Why do we want to survive? Because again, we have nothing better to do. Why do we enjoy studying, learning, gaining knowledge? Because there's nothing better that we can do with our time. All of us are just filling time, waiting to die. As Democritus says in my profile - you came, you saw, you went away ...

looked at dialectically — John

To add a bit more about this - I think some thinkers were fundamentally right - maybe not right in the details, but fundamentally right, regardless of the time when they wrote. I think for example that Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer (to name just a few that come immediately to mind), were fundamentally right. So I disagree with Hegel - there is no world-historical dialectic going on. Plato/Aristotle are fundamentally right, and Descartes is fundamentally wrong, regardless of the fact that he came long after them.

Socrates might have talked about universals, but it was Kant that truly made us universal thinkers. He inferred that the milky way is our galaxy sideways on, and that there are other such clusters in the sky which are not stars, but distant galaxies.

Well see, this is what I don't like about Hegel personally. I don't view history as having a direction - as being a dialectic headed somewhere. — Agustino

I don't either, and I'm not convinced Hegel does. It doesn't have a determined direction, it unfolds creatively...or uncreatively. When it comes to ideas, though, do you not think there is a (more or less inexorable) logic inherent in the ways in which they develop historically? I mean, we are speaking about the history of ideas here, as it has been canonized, we are not concerning ourselves with the immense complexity of actual historical contingencies. We are always dealing with the "broad brush" in either case, because the arbitrary details are so many and and so irrelevant to the whole, and hence uninteresting.

Think about designing and building a garden. There is an overall plan, and the way in which the garden is constructed will probably never I insofar as it is a complex garden) turn out exactly to plan. The Spinozistic conception of God is that there is no overall plan. The Christian conception of God is very definitely that there is an overall plan; so the two are incompatible; they contradict one another. Now I am not a believing Christian, I have only been labouring this point because you have identified yourself as such, and yet claim to hold to a Spinozistic conception of God, and I am trying to understand how you resolve the contradiction.

There is only determinism, not pre-determinism. — Agustino

Determinism, in the sense of Laplace's Demon, I believe is the way that Spinoza conceived of it. Descartes also conceived of nature this way, and Spinoza was very much influenced by Descartes. He studied him very closely and departed form his philosophy, for sure, but I cannot see how his departure has any bearing on the question of determinism. IN fact it was the way that Descartes conceived res cogitans, as being different from, and not dependent upon, and even prior to, res extensa, that allowed for genuine freedom. Spinoza say every being and event, every detail of everything that happens is an absolutely necessary unfolding of Deus sive natura.

Think of Laplace's Demon; according to Laplace the demon, by knowing the position, momentum and direction of every particle could calculate precisely all future events. Now in this thought experiment all future events are precisely and rigidly determined by present conditions (there is thus not necessarily any God in this picture, but there is a Nature; which amounts to the same thing). How is this different than saying that future events are always predetermined by present conditions. What is the difference that makes a difference between this understanding of determinism and pre-determinism; and what is the difference between this and Spinoza? I can't see it, and you haven't explained it to me yet. The only difference I can see is the epistemic difference. We feel free because we don't know what all the forces are determining our actions. For us our actions are thus not rigidly determined; not pre-determined; but this is so only on account of our ignorance. If we knew everything we would see that our freedom is an illusion. I want to know what you think the ontological difference could be.

I am determined to act so by my own nature and powers. — Agustino

Yes, just as the lightning is. And yet we do not hold the lightning morally responsible if it kills someone. Nor do we hold a snake or a tiger morally responsible. If persons can only act according to their natures in the same way that spiders, snakes, tigers and lightning do, then we can be no more justified in holding a person morally responsible for his or her actions than we can hold a spider, snake, tiger or lightning morally responsible. It's all very well to say 'Oh, but humans are capable of moral action, and animals are not". Yes, you or I might be capable of acting morally, but the murderer or rapist might not, and that is again determined by conditions beyond the control of any individual if Spinoza's kind of determinism is ontologically, as opposed to merely epistemologically, the case.

it unfolds creatively — John

I agree to this.

or uncreatively — John

I don't agree to this, and I think this is Spinoza's point with regards to absolute necessity - existence necessarily is creative.

When it comes to ideas, though, do you not think there is a (more or less inexorable) logic inherent in the ways in which they develop historically? — John

I think every age re-appropriates the truth for itself, and hence re-appropriates it under terms that are usually somewhat different than the terms used by the previous age - the symbolisms change. But it is one and the same truth - we aren't more developed today (not speaking of technologically now, but in terms of philosophical knowledge), than we were 2000 years ago. Our knowledge can always be complete. Indeed, Spinoza makes this point in one of his letters, can't remember which, in which he says that there could be another philosophy different from his and yet saying the same thing. Concepts and symbols change, but what those concepts and symbols point to remains the same. What they point to is generally muddled up in every age - for example in our age reductive materialism is a giant confusion, just as dualism was a giant confusion in the time of Descartes.

Think about learning something. When you learn something - say the Theorem of Pythagoras - it is not sufficient to recite what it is to have learned it. Neither is it sufficient to apply it to particular cases to have learnt it. What you have to do is that you have to give an account for it - that account is your own - it's your own appropriation of the truth, that's where your creativity comes in. You may give a different account of it, and explain it differently than I do - because you have appropriated it differently. Teaching it to others - that's usually what shows that you have learned it yourself.

I mean, we are speaking about the history of ideas here, as it has been canonized, we are not concerning ourselves with the immense complexity of actual historical contingencies. — John

A large share of canonized history has to do with what works happened to survive, and with what works happened to be emphasised or available for political and social reasons at different times.

We are always dealing with the "broad brush" in either case, because the arbitrary details are so many and and so irrelevant to the whole, and hence uninteresting. — John

I don't think history can form a whole - history is always perennially incomplete, simply because it always repeats itself, but fails to close itself - nothing is stable and everything is contingent, and hence truth cannot reign supreme through time, and it must be obscured at points, and then show itself once again, and so forth. All we're doing is rediscovering the same old truth anew - we cannot discover anything new - but we must certainly rediscover it anew, because it is only by rediscovering anew - by appropriating - that we can learn.

There is an overall plan, and the way in which the garden is constructed will probably never I insofar as it is a complex garden) turn out exactly to plan. — John

A plan is a model of the garden, so yes, the real garden is always different than the model - the model never approximates it perfectly. The model is useful at achieving certain particular things at the neglect of others (these are the things that people happen to be interested in because of whatever purposes they have) - for example the model allows one to predict how much earth has to be removed, how much fill needs to be placed and where, what trees/flowers/arrangements are to be placed, where they will be placed, in what quantities, what irrigation/watering system if any the garden will use, etc. . But it obscures a lot of other things which are part of reality - how big will this individual tree exactly be? How many leaves will it have? (etc. - these questions are not addressed by the model - indeed they cannot be addressed - because they are not of interest).

The Spinozistic conception of God is that there is no overall plan. — John

With regards to history yes - if there was some plan, then where would be the place for creativity? Creativity is precisely that which goes unplanned. There's other things which also play a role - such that the truth is one, and always available at each point in time. So there cannot be a plan, because where would it be going? History by being history (and thus in-time) is bound to go up and down, sometime closer to that truth (which is always available) and sometimes further away.

The Christian conception of God is very definitely that there is an overall plan; so the two are incompatible; they contradict one another. Now I am not a believing Christian, I have only been labouring this point because you have identified yourself as such, and yet claim to hold to a Spinozistic conception of God, and I am trying to understand how you resolve the contradiction. — John

Then I will clearly not interpret the Revelation and the Christian story as a story occuring in history - it is a spiritual truth, which is always and at all ages accessible. We're not empirically headed towards the Kingdom of God on Earth - that I disagree with. Like Voegelin, I think that's just immanentizing the eschaton.

Determinism, in the sense of Laplace's Demon — John

But that isn't just determinism, that is already pre-determinism and fatalism.

I believe is the way that Spinoza conceived of it. Descartes also conceived of nature this way, and Spinoza was very much influenced by Descartes. He studied him very closely and departed form his philosophy, for sure, but I cannot see how his departure has any bearing on the question of determinism. — John

Spinoza is a Cartesian <=> a wolf in the sheep's clothes. Spinoza, due to Descartes tremendous success, took over his terminology just like one would take the wine bottles of a popular brand, and then placed his own wine inside. He de-constructed Cartesianism from the inside, and returned to the old Scholasticism of old - of people like Avicenna and Averroës.

IN fact it was the way that Descartes conceived res cogitans, as being different from, and not dependent upon, and even prior to, res extensa, that allowed for genuine freedom. — John

But according to Spinoza res extensa and res cogitans aren't dependent on one another either - that's what them being parallel entails. There is no causality between each other.

Spinoza say every being and event, every detail of everything that happens is an absolutely necessary unfolding of Deus sive natura. — John

Yes - everything necessarily happens, but this particular thing doesn't necessarily happen. The former is a statement of metaphysics and logic, the latter a statement of what is actually the case in the world.

Think of Laplace's Demon; according to Laplace the demon, by knowing the position, momentum and direction of every particle could calculate precisely all future events. Now in this thought experiment all future events are precisely and rigidly determined by present conditions (there is thus not necessarily any God in this picture, but there is a Nature; which amounts to the same thing). How is this different than saying that future events are always predetermined by present conditions. — John

Right, it's not. That's why Laplace was really advocating pre-determinism.

What is the difference that makes a difference between this understanding of determinism and pre-determinism; and what is the difference between this and Spinoza? — John

The difference is that in pre-determinism knowing the conditions at time X is sufficient to predict the conditions at time Y while in determinism the conditions at time Y are an effect of the conditions at time X (which is their cause), but they cannot be predicted or known - they are necessarily contingent. Epicurus has this idea through the swerve of the atom - the atom swerves - indeed it NECESSARILY swerves. God cannot but create this contingent (and hence creative) empirical reality - reality cannot be uncreative. It is determined that the atom swerves, and the swerve itself is, empirically, contingent.

We feel free because we don't know what all the forces are determining our actions. For us our actions are thus not rigidly determined; not pre-determined; but this is so only on account of our ignorance. — John

The knowledge you refer to doesn't exist though. Reality is necessarily creative. Spinoza doesn't deny contingency, he places it in its right place - below necessity. Contingency is logically and metaphysically grounded in the necessity of God. Indeed Spinoza would have quite a false philosophy - as would everyone else - if they deny aspects of reality, such as either necessity or contingency.

And yet we do not hold the lightning morally responsible if it kills someone. — John

Lightning gets all of its powers from a source external to it, and the powers confer it no capacity of self-determination. Humans - by virtue of the rational part of the mind - are able to restrain their passions - humans are self-reflective, their powers reflect back on themselves and can alter themselves. Imagine this by analogy to the body. If the heart does something its not supposed to - such as go into atrial fibrillation - the brain initiates certain processes which generally cause the process to become self-limiting. Who determined you to stop yourself from so and so? You have - through a different part of yourself. But all of that is nevertheless determined.

So humans are morally responsible simply because humans have the capacity or power of self-determination by this reflexivity that I have described. There is no reflexivity in the lightning strike.

If persons can only act according to their natures in the same way that spiders, snakes, tigers and lightning do, then we can be no more justified in holding a person morally responsible for his or her actions than we can hold a spider, snake, tiger or lightning morally responsible. — John

The nature of persons is self-reflective - the natures of spiders isn't (largely speaking - also there's no point of judging spiders. When we hold people morally responsible, it's always with the intent of judging them). There are cases when outside forces destroy or severely limit this capacity for reflexivity though - in such cases people are no longer held to be morally responsible, or at least they are held to be less morally responsible. For example, in many countries it is illegal to shoot an intruder in your house with a gun and kill him, if he attacks you with a knife (say). And yet someone could end up shooting them accidentally in the head (instead of in the foot) out of being overwhelmed by fear - their action will still remain immoral and they will still be judged, but a lesser sentence will be given than to the man who intentionally shot in the head the intruder in his home even though the intruder made no sign or intention of wanting to hurt them.

I think you are equivocating on the terms 'necessary' and 'contingent'. As far as I remember Spinoza says tha God is a necessary being in both the sense that He could not be otherwise than he is, and in the sense that his essence is to exist (which means his existence does not depend on anything outside himself).

Humans and in fact all other beings. As well as events, relations, quantities and qualities, are like God in being necessary in the first sense, but unlike god in being contingent in the second sense.

There is no difference between those forms of necessity. Independennce of everything places something outside existing states.

God cannot be "personal" for this reason. If God were a distinct state of the world, God would depend on others, would have things which are not God build God's world.

The second sense which you are using "necessary" here, as a reflection of the necessary presence of the distinct state of God (whether in our world or a different realm), is incohrent. Spinoza removes the whole question of God as a distinct state, recognising it as a logic error-- taking with it speculation and doubt within metaphysics.

In this respect, Spinoza TAKES OUT the equivocation of the necessary (God, infinite) with the contingent (distinct state which may or may not be), which has charactertised most metaphysics. Since God is necessary, God is beyond doubt. The move which treats God as a presence that may or may not be (i.e. contingent) is shown to be partaking in the impossible.

I don't personally understand the distinction you're specifying or why I am equivocating - I agree with Willow's response by and large.

Late to chime in, but with respect to Kant, his most significant contribution, it seems to me, is the doctrine of the transcendental illusions: those illusions internally engendered by the operation of thought itself. Whereas previously, error was taken according to a model of the failure of thought, in Kant, error becomes internal to thought as such, such that one can speak of the 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' employment of Reason. Kant institutes a kind of transcendental topology of cognition that complicates any simple partition between that which is and is not proper to thought. It seems to me that this is the specific twist to his transcendentalism, which properly marks it's originality, and without which none of his other considerations can be properly assessed.

Zizek remarks on the break here that takes place with respect to the metaphors employed when thinking of reason: "This is what changes with the Kantian revolution: in the pre-Kantian universe, humans were simply humans, beings of reason, fighting the excesses of animal lusts and divine madness, while only with Kant and German Idealism, the excess to be fought is absolutely immanent, the very core of subjectivity itself (which is why, with German Idealism, the metaphor for the core of subjectivity is Night, "Night of the World," in contrast to the Enlightenment notion of the Light of Reason fighting the darkness around). So when, in the pre-Kantian universe, a hero goes mad, it means he is deprived of his humanity, i.e., the animal passions or divine madness took over, while with Kant, madness signals the unconstrained explosion of the very core of a human being." (Zizek, The Ticklish Subject)

Deleuze too makes a similar assessment: "There is an even greater change when Kant shows that thought is threatened less by error than by inevitable illusions that come from within reason, as if from an internal arctic zone where the needle of every compass goes mad. A reorientation of the whole of thought becomes necessary at the same time as it is in principle penetrated by a certain delirium. .. In the classical image, error does not express what is by right the worst that can happen to thought, without thought being presented as "willing" truth, as orientated toward truth, as turned toward truth. It is this confidence ... which animates the classical image ... In contrast, in the eighteenth century, what manifests the mutation of light from "natural light" to the "Enlightened" is the substitution of belief for knowledge - that is, a new infinite movement implying another image of thought: it is no longer a matter of turning toward but rather one of following tracks, of inferring rather than grasping or being grasped. Under what conditions is inference legitimate? Under what conditions can belief be legitimate when it has become secular?" (Deleuze, What Is Philosophy)

That particular Kantian lesson, to this day I think, hasn't been fully absorbed yet.

Late to chime in, but with respect to Kant, his most significant contribution, it seems to me, is the doctrine of the transcendental illusions: those illusions internally engendered by the operation of thought itself. Whereas previously, error was taken according to a model of the failure of thought, in Kant, error becomes internal to thought as such, such that one can speak of the 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' employment of Reason. — StreetlightX

I fail to see how this is anything more than a distinction without a difference. Whether something is an error because of a transcendental illusion, or something is an error because of the failure of thought, that seems merely two different ways of conceptualising the same underlying reality...

It's a question of the nature of that which is 'doing the conceptualizing'; it's the reflexive impetus of the critical philosophy. No one can claim to understand Kant until they recognize it's significance.

It's a question of the nature of that which is 'doing the conceptualizing'; it's the reflexive impetus of the critical philosophy. — StreetlightX

Don't we also conceptualise the nature of that which is doing the conceptualising? :s That which conceptualises also conceptualises its own nature. I don't see anything revolutionary here... That we look at errors as being internally engendered by the operation of thought itself, or we look at them as being the failure of thought - that really is the same thing to me, I can see no difference there. Perhaps I just don't understand what you mean, but that's how I see it anyway...

Whereas previously, error was taken according to a model of the failure of thought, in Kant, error becomes internal to thought as such — StreetlightX

But wasn't the model of the failure of thought produced by thought itself, and hence error was still internal to thought? :s This is absolutely puzzling and incoherent, precisely because there is no difference between the two.

That which conceptualises also conceptualises its own nature. I don't see anything revolutionary here... — Agustino

Conceptualizes it's own nature how? Pre-Kant, the general tendency to posit an immediate link between the thinker and the thought (Descartes is paradigmatic here: I think therefore I am; yet one can also mention Hume's pre-established harmony between nature and thought, or even Socrates, for whom error is a case of mis-recognition, and evil a case of ignorance: in every case what maligns thought is external to it). Post-Kant, the thought and the thinker herself are split down the middle, without even immediate access to her own thoughts: the rigour of Kant's idealism means that not even the subject that thinks is excluded from the form of representation; the thinker is only ever a "I or He or It (the thing) which thinks" which only knows it's own thoughts through it's own representations of them.

Markus Gabriel puts it like this: "The constituting activity of experience is as a result put out of reach. We have no grasp of that which constitutes our world even though it is we who perform said constitution. The uncanny stranger begins to pervade the sphere of the subject, threatening its identity from within. Kant is thus one of the first to become aware of the intimidating possibility of total semantic schizophrenia inherent in the anonymous transcendental subjectivity as such." (Gabriel, The Mythological Being of Reflection.

Deleuze, attending to the manner in which temporarily is introduced into thought by Kant (against Descartes) puts like this: "The entire Kantian critique amounts to objecting against Descartes that it is impossible for determination to bear directly upon the undetermined. The determination ('I think') obviously implies something undetermined ('I am'), but nothing so far tells us how it is that this undetermined is determinable by the 'I think' ... Kant's answer is well known: the form under which undetermined existence is determinable by the 'I think' is that of time ... The consequences of this are extreme: my undetermined existence can be determined only within time as the existence of a phenomenon, of a passive, receptive phenomenal subject appearing within time. As a result, the spontaneity of which I am conscious in the 'I think' cannot be understood as the attribute of a substantial and spontaneous being, but only as the affection of a passive self which experiences its own thought its own intelligence, that by virtue of which it can say I - being exercised in it and upon it but not by it." (Difference and Repetition)

Zizek, also attentive to the passivity of the thinker inherent to Kant's conceptualization, frames it thusly: "if one reads Kant's reference to Copernicus closely, one cannot fail to notice how Kant's emphasis is not on the shift of the substantial fixed Center [i.e. from object to subject -SX], but on something quite different — on the status of the subject itself ... The precise German terms ("die Zuschauer sich drehen" —not so much "turn around another center" as "turn/rotate around themselves") make it clear what interests Kant: the subject loses its substantial stability/identity and is reduced to the pure substanceless void of the self-rotating abyssal vortex called "transcendental apperception." (Zizek, An Answer To Two Questions).

I cite this literature - and there's a lot more - to show that there is a rich and complex engagement with this question, and much of what is written traces out the not inconsiderable consequences that follow from such a conception of the subject. There's probably a bit too much to go into here, but the point is that your inability to see the difference is an issue that's largely, well, yours.

Okay, what I gather from this is that according to you, Deleuze, Zizek, etc. prior to Kant "error" entered from the outside, while after Kant, error is seen as internal to thought itself. There is the self as I experience it as representation, and there is the transcendental self, which I don't experience, but which makes the representational self possible. Therefore there are thoughts that affect me and influence me that I don't experience - only part of that bubbles to the surface, which I experience, some of which are actually illusions.

But again, how does this change anything? Before error entered from the outside, from something that wasn't me, that I wasn't conscious of. Now error enters supposedly from the inside, from my transcendental subjectivity - of which again I'm not conscious of. To what extent is this transcendental subjectivity anymore "inside" than the error that entered from the outside was? That's why I said that to me this seems merely as another way to conceive of the same thing that was previously conceived, and I don't see why it would be "better" to conceive of it this way (neither do I see why it would be better to conceive of it in the opposite way though... to me they are equivalent as they're saying the same thing in two different ways).

But again, how does this change anything? — Agustino

Simply put, if the error is external, then the mind simply has to make a better effort at knowing the world truly. But if instead the error is internal - the mind has to create the structure of its perceptions - then more effort may only put the mind at an even further distance from the thing-in-itself.

And this in fact fits with psychological science. It also ceases to be a problem once you give up rationalist dreams of perfect knowledge and accept the pragmatism of a Peircean modelling relation with the world.

So a striking fact of cognitive architecture is that consciousness is in fact "anti-representational". The brain would rather live with its best guess about the actual state of the world. It would like to predict away all experience if it could - as that way it can start to notice the small things that might matter most to it.

This would be Kantianism in spades. It is not just a generic structure of space and time, or causality, that we project on to existence. Ahead of every moment we are predicting every material event as much as possible, so we can quickly file it under "ignore" when it actually happens.

In this sense, we externalise error. Through forward modelling or anticipatory processing, we form strong expectancies about how the world "ought to be". And then the world goes and does something "wrong", something surprising or unexpected. The damn thing-in-itself misbehaves, leaving us having to impose some revised set of expectations that then becomes our new consciousness of its state of being.

(And until we have generated some new state of prediction, we are not conscious of anything for the half second to second it can take to sort out a state of sudden confusion - or in extreme situations, like a car crash, our memory will be of time slowed or even frozen with a hallucinatory, conceptually undigested, vividness. It is another psychological observation that childhood experience and dreams have this extra vividness because there is not then such a weight of adult conceptual habit predicting all the perception away and rendering it much more mundane.)

Anyway, as I was saying, Kant was right in understanding that the brain has to come at the world equipped with conceptual habits of structuration if it is to understand anything - in terms of its own pragmatic interests.

But Kant was still caught up in the rationalist dream of perfect knowledge. And so the gap between mind and world was seen as some kind of drama or failure. We have the right to know the world as it is - and yet we absolutely can't.

Peirce fixed this by naturalising teleology. Knowledge exists to serve purposes. And so what was a rationalist bug becomes a pragmatistic feature.

Oh goody! We don't have to actually know the world truly at all if the real epistemic aim is to be able to imagine it in terms that give us the most personal freedom to act. The more we can routinely ignore, the more we can then insert our own preferences into the world as we experience it. Consciousness becomes not a story of the thing-in-itself but about ourselves whizzing along on a wave of satisfied self-interest.

So Kant turned things around to get the cognitive architecture right. But because he still aspired to rationalist perfection, he wanted to boil down the mind's necessary habits to some bare minimum - ontic structure like space, time and causality.

This simply isn't bold enough. Brains evolved for entirely self-interested reasons. Which is why an epistemology of pragmatism - consciousness as a reality-predicting modelling relation - was needed to fully cash out the "Kantian revolution". The thing-in-itself is of interest only to the degree that it can be rendered impotent to the mind. The goal is to transcend its material constraints so as to live in the splendid freedom of a self-made world of semiotic sign.

(Of course, living beings can't actually ignore the world. They must live in it. But the point here is the direction of the desires. Rationalism got the natural direction wrong - leading to rationalist frustration and all its problems concerning knowledge. Pragmatism instead gets the direction right and thus explains the way we actually are. There is a good reason why humans want to escape into a realm of "fiction" - and I'm including science and technology here, of course. As to the extent we can do that, we become then true "selves", the locus of a radical freedom or autonomy to make the world whatever the hell we want it to be.)

There is no difference between those forms of necessity. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I can see a clear distinction between the two ideas of necessity and the two ideas of contingency as Spinoza formulates them. You deny this distinction, you want to dissolve it, and yet you have given no rationale for your denial. If you lay your reasons for denial out clearly I will pay attention. What I have set out is straight from Spinoza. Are you denying Spinoza thought of it this way; if so provide textual evidence.

It's a long time since I studied the Ethics, so I thought I better go back to the text
Consider the following passages, quoted from the Ethics:

4. The cause for the existence of a thing must either be contained in the very
nature and definition of the existent thing (in effect, existence belongs to its nature) or must have its being independently of the thing itself.

PROPOSITION 24
The essence of things produced by God does not involve existence.
Proof: This is evident from Def. I . For only that whose nature (considered in itself)involves existence is self-caused and exists solely from the necessity of its own nature.
Corollary: Hence it follows that God is the cause not only of the coming into existence of things but also of their continuing in existence, or, to use a scholastic term, God is the cause of the being of things [essendi rerum]. For whether things exist or do not exist, in reflecting on their essence we realize that this essence involves neither existence nor duration. So it is not their essence which can be the cause of either their existence or their duration, but only God, to whose nature alone existence pertains (Cor. I Pr. 14).

God is the only necessary being in the sense that only God's existence is essentially necessary; the existence of all other other beings depends on conditions outside themselves, and, ultimately, on God. In that sense, because their essence does not involve existence, and because they are dependent on others, they are contingent beings.


PROPOSITION 29
Nothing in nature is contingent, but all things are from the necessity of the divine nature determined to exist and to act in a definite way.
Proof: Whatever is, is in God (Pr. 1 5) . But God cannot be termed a contingent
thing, for (Pr. I I ) he exists necessarily, not contingently. Again, the modes of
the divine nature have also followed from it necessarily, not contingently (Pr.
1 6) , and that, too, whether insofar as the divine nature is considered absolutely (Pr. 2 1 ) or insofar as it is considered as determined to act in a definite way (Pr. 27). Furthermore, God is the cause of these modes not only insofar as they simply exist (Cor. Pro 26), but also insofar as they are considered as determined to a particular action (Pr. 26). Now if they are not determined by God (Pr. 26), it is an impossibility, not a contingency, that they should determine themselves. On the other hand (Pr. 27), if they are determined by God, it is an impossibility, not a contingency, that they should render themselves undetermined.
Therefore, all things are determined from the necessity of the divine nature
not only to exist but also to exist and to act in a definite way. Thus, there is no
contingency.
Scholium: Before I go any further, I wish to explain at this point what we must
understand by "Natura naturans" and "Natura naturata." I should perhaps say
not "explain; but "remind the reader," for I consider that it is already clear from what has gone before that by "Natura naturans" we must understand that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; that is, the attributes of substance that express eternal and infinite essence; or (Cor. I Pr. 14 and Cor. 2 Pr. 1 7) , God insofar as he is considered a free cause. By "Natura naturata" I understand all that follows from the necessity of God's nature, that is, from the necessity of each one of God's attributes; or all the modes of God's attributes insofar as they are considered as things which are in God and can neither be nor be conceived without God.

In another sense nothing is contingent because as a mode of the infinite attributes of God everything is necessarily just exactly as it is. It follows that everything is utterly determined by God, according to Spinoza, and that there hence cannot be any freedom of the genuine kind that would support the Christian conception of moral responsibility. This is because we could never have done otherwise than we have done under Spinoza's conception of reality. Any genuine ontological distinction between the actions of natural phenomena and human actions is thus dissolved.

Corollary 2: It follows, secondly, that God alone is a free cause. For God alone
exists solely from the necessity of his own nature (Pr. 1 1 and Cor. 1 Pr. 1 4) and acts solely from the necessity of his own nature (Pr. 1 7). So he alone is a free cause
(Def. 7).