Comments

  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    For Aristotle, "Physics" is an investigation about "Phusis" or Nature.

    How ever it came to be called "Metaphysics", that book is concerned with "being as being" and whether there could be such an investigation.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪Mww

    I agree that Kant's argument does not directly approach the thesis of solipsism. Kant introduced the goal of his Refutation as:

    The only thing I can really call a supplement, and that only in the way of proof, is what I have said at B 273 in the form of a new refutation of psychological idealism, and a strict proof (the only possible one, I believe) of the objective reality of outer intuition. No matter how innocent idealism may be held to be as regards the essential ends of metaphysics (though in fact it is not so innocent), it always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us (from which we after all get the whole matter for our cognitions, even for our inner sense) should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof. — C Pure R, Preface B XXXIX

    It is toward this end Kant figures he has overturned Berkeley and Descartes with one theorem even though they say completely different things:

    The proof that is demanded must therefore establish that we have experience and not merely imagination of outer things, which cannot be accomplished unless one can prove that even our inner experience, undoubted by Descartes, is possible only under the presupposition of outer experience. — ibid. B275

    Descartes solved his solipsism problem through a means that Kant rejects. Both Berkeley and Descartes are taking for granted a view of the self that Kant does not.

    Now Kant does say a lot of things about the "self" that involves faith. The Critique of Judgement tries to make sense of that.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪frank

    For Kant, in his time, the statement that awareness of self required the existence of "exterior" things was his argument against solipsism.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪frank

    I can deal with that challenge tomorrow. I will quote from the text I have been referring to and link it to other sections of the other Critiques.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪frank

    Then what will be the difference between our points of view?

    Will you no longer challenge what I have said in the past as you just did?

    I would rather work with that gap than agree to disagree. It is more interesting.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪frank

    I am not going to say more until we deal with your charges about my agenda.
  • Disproving solipsism
    You, on the other hand, take a bit of text and use it as the basis for what ends up being self reflection. You want every philosopher to be something like a materialist, and you take one word and draw out a materialist outlook. — frank

    That is not the case. I have argued extensively against Gerson's interpretation of materialism as a general idea in Plato and subsequent literature. Are you remembering my objections to Cornford's view of the forms as an argument for materialism? Nothing could be further from the case. I see that I have only been a cypher in your mind.

    I don't want Kant to say this or that. Or if I do, it needs to be a way to read what was written. I don't see the world the way he does in many ways. But he deserves to be fairly represented.
  • Disproving solipsism
    I have a much broader outlook. — frank
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪frank

    Pretty contemptuous last word.

    I will leave you with it.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪frank

    I am trying to avoid being cryptic by referencing specific portions of the actual text. I was sincere in my general thumbnail that you asked for. But that generality is cryptic as all general descriptions tend to be. That is why I was so reluctant to offer it.

    I am doing the best that I can as I understand effort.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪frank

    The quote you provided from SEP comes from a particular contrast between Kant and Hume. The argument about what the "I" is in the context of representations is an important issue throughout the book.

    The matter of intuition goes to a more "existential" cause of the difference of self and object when Kant says:

    The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own
    existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me.     — Critique of Pure Reason, B275
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪frank

    Since the intuitions are separated from the processes of reason a priori, differences of experience are neither what Descartes nor Berkeley described, as outlined in Kant's Refutation of Idealism.

    That approach is different from observing there are "differences" of experience that provide a context for a subject as presented in Descartes and Berkeley. It is on the same grounds that Kant resisted Hume describing causality as only a story that is told.
  • Disproving solipsism
    He's just saying that consciousness of my own existence requires something to compare and contrast with me. The use of dialectics runs through the CPR. This is a case of that. — frank
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    Even if I had a very intimate discussions on many topics or shared some daily life experience with someone, I would not claim I know their deep true inside feelings, thoughts and wills. — Corvus

    It sounds like what you are calling "solipsism" is what other people refer to as single individuals.
  • Disproving solipsism
    Per Kant, we don't learn about space and time a posteriori. — frank

    That is more of an argument toward accepting an "ontological" limit than saying:

    He's just saying that consciousness of my own existence requires something to compare and contrast with me. The use of dialectics runs through the CPR. This is a case of that. — frank

    The Refutation of Idealism section previously linked to argues against the "any difference will do" idea.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪frank

    This is why I resisted giving a summary.

    Perhaps you could provide references that support your interpretation. On the surface, your description does not account for the emphasis upon the intuitions of space and time.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪frank

    We do not have access to an "I" as a given before our experience in the world. So, when we approach the matter as if that is not a critical feature of experience, we take on airs and imagine proximity to the divine.

    But that is not all that Kant was trying to say. My summary may be correct and not very useful heard in isolation. Or it could be incorrect which also would require more work reading the text.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪ProtagoranSocratist

    I was having fun, too. Maybe it was too culturally limited to my ruralism.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪frank

    The Introduction written by Guyer and Wood in the linked edition is the clearest summary (and limits to summary) that I have found. Kant developed his view over many years.

    For this discussion of solipsism, I suggest reading the Refutation of Idealism from B275 to B288 in the linked text. It reflects much of the previous part of the book while also trying to sharpen his use of terms.

    I will do my best to answer any questions from that common ground.
  • Disproving solipsism
    ↪ProtagoranSocratist

    Well, Kant put the "not knowing" the other way around. Here is the Theorem from the Refutation of Idealism:

    The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own
    existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me.     — Critique of Pure Reason, B275

    Same ignorance, different day.
  • A new home for TPF
    ↪Jamal
    ↪Jamal

    I am glad that the current pagination will be turned into a single document for the archives. The "Find in page" browser function will make searches one-stop shopping.

    I fixed my email so it is current and then noticed that I had turned off notifications sometime in the past. Just mentioning in case others find themselves out of the loop before the transition.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    ↪AmadeusD

    Fair enough, I should have minded my own business.

    Now this is not a solipsism like some have been misled on the point. — Corvus

    There are different varieties of solipsism? How can they be compared to each other? That would seem to cancel the isolation you are reporting.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    From what I've seen the main argument in the last two pages has been that Banno thinks if there are things we don't currently know, then Antirealism can't hold. — AmadeusD

    It is difficult to follow your argument since you base it upon an interpretation of what an interlocuter has said rather than engage in the debate proffered.
  • A new home for TPF
    I'm not all that concerned about it, I guess, otherwise I would have been doing that all along. — Janus

    I have used some stuff elsewhere but mostly considered writing here as a one-shot deal. Remembering the past for me has been about recalling discussions in OPs. Anything i said was in the context of other statements. There is a Groundhog Day movie quality to much of that.

    ↪Leontiskos


    Interesting points on how to search the site. Since the old site will be preserved, I wonder if the "advanced search" functions that work now will work there. There are words that get to the beginning of the site, long before I showed up.
  • A new home for TPF
    ↪Janus

    Without having the site do that, it is easily done by copy/pasting from the comment collection under one's name.

    I did a little of that but not into the thousands.

    It would be cool if we could transfer all that as a single file. I get the impression that those writers who are most concerned about that sort of thing are posting here from copies of their own files.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    Kant wrote his massive tome to show this is wrong.
    — Jamal

    Yes, I agree.     — Corvus

    It is confusing to have you acknowledge that Kant argued against your argument immediately after you claim that he supported it.
  • A new home for TPF
    Thank you, Jamal and team, for keeping the place alive. I particularly appreciate the preservation of the archives because there is so much good stuff there.

    During the transition, is keeping the email info current critical to rolling over to a new account? I have just have been relying on messages once signed in to communicate.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    The expression "how do we know" is peculiar in this context. It usually appears as a counter to a statement of fact made by a person.

    "How do we know that Frodo was on the balcony with a torch as described by Cicero in his testimony?"

    The request to confirm what cannot be reported upon is a diving board extended over an empty pool.
  • Reading group of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    ↪Antony Nickles

    I have learned many things new to me in your thread. I need to think and read about it more before trying to answer your points of argument.

    Till then.
  • Greek Hedonists, Pleasure and Plato. What are the bad pleasures?
    I figure that what the dialogue Phaedrus was concerned with was how love for other people turns into wanting things for them. Once you start doing that, it may run contrary to other desires but can no longer be just about what you want.

    It seems a simple enough observation to me. I watch dogs and leaves falling from the trees.
  • Reading group of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    But I’m interested to hear what you take thinking to consist of, and why psychology would be a part of it (or thought to be), one that needed to be separated, and for what reason. — Antony Nickles

    I spoke of 'thinking' more generally than W would probably warrant. However, from the Tractatus to the PI, the distinction between science and whatever he is doing keeps being reestablished. That difference is often depicted as a limit to what can be explained but he seems hell bent to put it in other ways.

    So, we have discussed previously where W looked at how the desire to be mysterious is recognized as a motive. But there is nothing like a move to make that an explanation for why it always happens. The latter would be an example of a reduction through psychology.
  • Reading group of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    One starting place is to ask why W wants to separate psychology from thinking. The separation is a stumbling block to explanation.

    I take your point that we often impose one set of meanings to replace others. That does not explain why W does not reduce one set of signs into another.
  • Reading group of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    The motivation for an “answer” is a desire for “reliability, and solidity”. To picture “what I mean” (p.65) as “information” is to need it to be in the framework only of knowledge. Our personal experience is pictured as an internal object to be “the very basis of all that we say with any sense about [being a human]” (p. 48). He also says we are “tempted to say that these personal experiences are the material of which reality consists.” (p. 45) The skeptic really wants to be “inhabited” by the exceptional, in a way that “others can’t see”. Thus the creation of the object, that is a 'mind' or 'subject', is to make me inherently important and unique; as if within me would be “that which really lives”. — Antony Nickles

    Looking through what your thread has focused upon, and what we have discussed as differences of method by different thinkers, I resist the idea that thoughts about "the object" come down merely to a psychological motivation.
  • The Aestheticization of Evil
    The tragedy, self-destruction of the antihero, perhaps with the realization of their mistake if they go do it all over is what makes the progression of such stories morally satisfying. To see them live happily ever after is what would make it more repugnant to our moral sensitivities. — Nils Loc

    That prompted me to think of Scarface. Tony has a code which has him look like a victim of his conscience in one place but the agent of his demise when betraying innocence in other places. It is like the magical protection Macbeth believes in.

    W White is more like a Faust who becomes more aware of the exchange he has made as time goes by and is without illusion at the end.

    But as you say, a morality play.
  • Currently Reading
    ↪T Clark

    There have been many times when I wondered if I was the only one who retained any kind of institutional memory here.
  • Currently Reading
    ↪T Clark

    Yes, James is on your wavelength, judging from your previous posts.
  • The Preacher's Paradox
    ↪Leontiskos

    I am glad we have found some common ground.

    I will need to mull the teacher/midwife distinction because it cuts across many different points of view I have not tried to assemble before in one place. I will put out a few thoughts without suggesting they form anything like a thesis.

    There is the bias I must confess to regarding the reading of ancient texts. The proposal that the new has not superseded the old is always worth considering.

    One controversy that has played out for years on this site is how to understand the midwifery in Theaetetus against the accounts of recollection in other dialogues. Kierkegaard clearly refers to the latter in the Fragments as a fundamental condition. Does Penner deal with that difference in any way? I will poke around and see if Kierkegaard discussed that issue in particular.

    As a matter of theology in the Protestant tradition, the role of who will be a teacher is an explosion of thoughts after questioning the apostolic continuity of the Catholic dogma. I figure that all the "disciple at the second hand" discussion in the Fragments can be ruled out as a secular conversation. It certainly is a stumbling block for those who want to separate that thought from the theological.

    Incidentally, do you see the individualism such as is found in the West as uniquely Christian, such that it would not come from other cultures? I've seen some folk claiming such a thing recently. — Leontiskos

    Well, Hegel said as much. It is important to remember Kierkegaard is repeating that view through his view of paganism. I do not agree with them. Maybe I can say why sometime.
  • The Preacher's Paradox
    Okay. My sense is that Penner thinks Kierkegaard was correct as seeing them as within the Christian community, and therefore he does not see Kierkegaard as being "fooled." — Leontiskos

    It is Penner who calls the "moderns" "pseudo-Christians." I take your point that my characterization of Penner's argument does not zero in on the difference between his view and Kierkegaard. So, I will try to speak strictly about that difference without impugning Penner's rhetoric.

    When Kierkegaard speaks of 'Christendom', he refers to his congregation where they confess a faith that requires a life lived differently than the "worldliness" that most are comfortable with. Calling them "pseudo-Christians" would not capture how this dilemma is as old as Christianity itself. Francis of Assisi spoke in the same language. The City of God and the City of Men will always be different territories.

    Christendom also cannot be dismissed as simply "fake" because it is through its survival that the conditions of 'worldliness' have changed. That is what I meant to emphasize in the passage from Works of Love, beginning with:

    Even the one who is not ordinarily inclined to praise God and Christianity, nevertheless does so when he shudderingly contemplates the terrifying facts of how in paganism the discriminations of the earthly life, or how the caste system, inhumanly separate man from man; how this ungodly wickedness inhumanly teaches one man to disavow kinship with another; teaches him presumptuously and madly to say about another man that he does not exist, that he is "not born." Then even that man praises Christianity which has saved men from this evil by deeply and forever unforgettably emphasizing the kinship between man and man, because the kinship is assured by every individual's equal kinship with and his relation to God in Christ... — Works of Love, page 57

    Life in Christendom is not complete but is an agent of change in the world. In this sense it is the source of the equality of individuals expressed through many works of the Enlightenment. They have value but are insufficient for the engagement Kierkegaard is calling for. The highest wisdom one can look for without that engagement is that of Socrates, whether one lives in Copenhagen or Athens. That is the crisis missing from Penner's depiction of the secular.
  • Bannings
    ↪DingoJones

    Yes. You don't have to be signed in to see it.
  • Idealism Simplified
    ↪Mww

    Sometimes it comes down to taste and aesthetics. I tried reading Derrida a couple of times and kept lapsing into a coma. I have no idea if I disagree with him or not.
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