This section focuses on the five areas mentioned in the title: language (words), semantics (meaning), ideas, reality, and epistemology (knowledge) -- and how they all link 'dialectically' and 'wholistically' together.
First up is a short discussion on language. Then we will move quickly into a discussion of semantics -- the relationship of language (or more specifically words) to meaning. From a more complicated brief discussion of meaning, we will then move into a discussion of 'epistemology' -- the study of knowledge. Let's start with the philosophy of language. That is bascially the agenda or menu for this floor of Hegel's Hotel.
First up -- a very brief discussion of language. How many different types of words are there in the English language? Nouns. Verbs. Adjectives. Adverbs. Pronouns. Conjunctions. Prepositions. Introjections. Eight different types of words. Unless I've forgotten one, that is about it.
What are there functions? Nouns. Nouns describe 'structure' in the world -- things that have substance and body, take up space, and don't move very fast -- althouth speed is relative and even things that have 'structure' in the world still move at a /slow, or even a fast pace. A 'cheetah' is the fastest mammal on earth but 'cheetah' is still a noun because a cheetah is considered to have 'structure' and 'substance'. Even 'river' is a noun because it too is considered to have 'structure' and 'substance'. When we start to talk more specifically about 'running' and 'moving' and 'flowing', then we have moved out of the world of 'structure' and now we are talking about the world of 'process' -- verbs describe 'processes' (motion and movement).
Adjectives describe nouns (beautiful girl). Pronouns take the place of nouns (him, her, he, she, it...). Adverbs describe verbs (pretty fast). Conjunctions join nouns or verbs or adjectives or adverbs or clauses together in a sentence (Paul and Sally, fast and slow, faster and faster, He went home and then he went to his bedroom...) You have to excuse me here if I am missing anything. I am going back to my Grade 6 grammar classes and I haven't pulled out a grammar book yet to see if I am missing anything which I'm sure I am because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of exceptions in the English language. So -- I am speaking in generalities here, and I am trying to move fairly quickly here without getting bogged down in exceptions.
Prepositions describe 'relationships' (in, out, of, above, under...). Introjections describe emotions, sounds... (Heh!!, 'Whoosh!!).
So there you have it. That is the English language -- grammatically -- in two or three paragraphs.
Now we come to the subject of 'semantics' or 'meaning'. This gets much, much trickier.
People who believe in the 'one word, one meaning fallacy' are going to get blown away and left behind by the English language. It doesn't matter how many dictionaries you read -- from front to back cover -- you will never completely learn or comprehend the full nature, the intricisies, and the dynamics of the English language if you try to learn the English language from a dictionary. Indeed, this goes for every language -- if you want to learn Parisian French, you have to go to Paris, if you want to learn Quebecois French, you have to go to Quebec. If you want to learn English English, you have to go to England. If you want to learn Canadian English, you have to go to Canada. If you want to learn American English, you have to go to America.
So this brings into focuse the ideas of 'dialect', 'context', and 'function'. Languages for the most part are learned in homes, and on the street, in front of tvs, and in schools, and in places of business. I never learned French properly -- or even adequately -- from a 'French to English translation dictionary'. It just doesn't cut it when someone starts speaking French at you -- and expects you to answer them, no different than trying to learn how to drive a car would work from studying a book and without stepping into a car. You may be able to partly learn a language from studying a dictionary, more so by actually trying to read a book (and maybe flipping back and forth between the book and the dictionary.) But more so, if you want to learn a language, you need to actually 'drop yourself' in the centre of the country or the region where you want to learn the language. And start to pick it up just like any 2 year old kid would (although he or she would have a significant advantage over you in the infinite learning flexibility that kids have at that time of their lives which you or I no longer have. Plus the two year old would not have to 'unlearn' some of the different things that you and I would probably have to 'unlearn' in order to 'learn' a different language).
Sunday, October 08, 2006
15.4. What is An Idea?
An idea is a representation -- a 'map' of a 'territory'. (See Alfred Korzybski, 1933, Science and Sanity, or S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, 1941.) Now this territory could/can be real or it could/can be false. We can differentiate between ideas that are supposed to represent real territories or 'existential phenomena' vs. ideas that are meant to be 'fanciful' for any of a variety of reasons, some more honorable than others. There is a significant difference between fanciful literary entertainment and manipulative, narcissistic deceit. Also, ideas may represent real or false processes, real or false relationships between things, real or false descriptions of things. The issue of 'truth' or 'realness' becomes important only when we wish to 'plan an epistemological trip using good knowledge' and therefore need a map that is a 'good representation of the territory it is supposed to existentially represent. (See Korzybski and/or Hayakawaka again.)
Thus, words are short forms for ideas or concepts which in turn are representations of 'pieces of real existential territory' -- assuming the idea is supposed to be 'real' or 'right' or 'truthful' or 'congruent' or 'structurally similar' with the actual existential territory it is supposed to represent'. Otherwise, the map is a bad idea or a fanciful idea or a manipulative, deceitful idea, or something that has no 'truth bearing with existential reality as it really is'.
Our ideas are maps of things or processes that either exist in the real world or do not exist, or bits of both, or may potentially exist in the future if we make them happen by building actual physical replicas of the type of architecture that we have already built in our minds...These types of ideas are called 'plans'.
Kant (Critique of Pure Reason) said that we cannot 'know' our objective world but he was only partly right. What he should have said is that we can nevrr know our 'objective world' perfectly. however, we can know it with different amounts of truth value and/or distortion depedning on how 'good' or 'bad' our 'cogitive or conceptual maps' are and these maps will always be at least somewhat biaseed in favor of our personal interests, wishes, and/or fears, or worded otherwise, our IPPs (individual philosophies and psychologies). That is why science and our legal court systems and news reporters are always looking for 'second, third, and sometimes more sources of independent empirical verification'. The more independent verifications we get of something being true, the more we are likely to give the assertions behind these verifications 'truth value' and/or 'truth credibiltiy'.
Kant, in saying what he did about our not being able to know our objective world -- not being able to know the 'real' world beyond our senses -- set epistemology on its ear, and epistemology has not quite fully recovered yet. The Knatian 'Copernican' revolution in epistemology was partly good for epistemology in that it made people pay more attention to their individual and cultural biases -- and while Kant went through epistemology like a fairly strong wind storm, Nietzshe later took over for where Kant left off, and went back through epistemology like a level 5 hurricane, demolishing everything in his path. Nietzsche was undoubtedly the finest deconstructionist in the history of Western philosophy -- and much of his deconstructionism was epistemologically important as he 'tore down false idols'. But still, epistemology was a wreck by the time he was through. Between Kant and Nietzsche, together they opened the door back up for 'ethical relativists, 'non-ethical narcissists' and/or modern day Sophists' (conceptual mercenaries who will tell you anything you want to hear and make it sound good and credible even if it is not true -- like our modern day lawyers -- for a fee.)
Epistemology needs to be re-established on a solid foundation again, even if it does need to be much more wary of 'sensory error, inferential error, and narcissistic bias' than it was before Kant and Nietzshe. Partly Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein I believed tried to do this...but then along comes Derrida and more deconstructionism...tied in hand in hand with Foucault and his study of the narcissisitc relationship between 'knowledge and power'. Again epistemology takes a nose dive. Since Descartes and Kant turned the study of epistemology inwards, epistemology has had a rather rough ride through much of the 19th, all of the 20th, and now the 21st century. Are we left with anything other than 'epistemological nihilism'?
Personally, I say that we need to learn the lessons of Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Derrida, and Foucault but put back into perspective and the perspective I tend to emphasize is the one built by Alfred Korzybski and his followers -- General Semantics -- with perhaps some modifications -- for example, 'dialectical modifications' -- that I may make along the way. This is what I will call 'DGB Epistemology' -- which has connections to every other section that I write about in DGB Philosophy -- Psychology, Business and Economics, History, Law, Ethics, Politics, Religion, and so on. Let us call this our starting point then, both for DGB Philosophy and, in particular, for DGB Epistemology.
dgb, September 25th, 2006
Thus, words are short forms for ideas or concepts which in turn are representations of 'pieces of real existential territory' -- assuming the idea is supposed to be 'real' or 'right' or 'truthful' or 'congruent' or 'structurally similar' with the actual existential territory it is supposed to represent'. Otherwise, the map is a bad idea or a fanciful idea or a manipulative, deceitful idea, or something that has no 'truth bearing with existential reality as it really is'.
Our ideas are maps of things or processes that either exist in the real world or do not exist, or bits of both, or may potentially exist in the future if we make them happen by building actual physical replicas of the type of architecture that we have already built in our minds...These types of ideas are called 'plans'.
Kant (Critique of Pure Reason) said that we cannot 'know' our objective world but he was only partly right. What he should have said is that we can nevrr know our 'objective world' perfectly. however, we can know it with different amounts of truth value and/or distortion depedning on how 'good' or 'bad' our 'cogitive or conceptual maps' are and these maps will always be at least somewhat biaseed in favor of our personal interests, wishes, and/or fears, or worded otherwise, our IPPs (individual philosophies and psychologies). That is why science and our legal court systems and news reporters are always looking for 'second, third, and sometimes more sources of independent empirical verification'. The more independent verifications we get of something being true, the more we are likely to give the assertions behind these verifications 'truth value' and/or 'truth credibiltiy'.
Kant, in saying what he did about our not being able to know our objective world -- not being able to know the 'real' world beyond our senses -- set epistemology on its ear, and epistemology has not quite fully recovered yet. The Knatian 'Copernican' revolution in epistemology was partly good for epistemology in that it made people pay more attention to their individual and cultural biases -- and while Kant went through epistemology like a fairly strong wind storm, Nietzshe later took over for where Kant left off, and went back through epistemology like a level 5 hurricane, demolishing everything in his path. Nietzsche was undoubtedly the finest deconstructionist in the history of Western philosophy -- and much of his deconstructionism was epistemologically important as he 'tore down false idols'. But still, epistemology was a wreck by the time he was through. Between Kant and Nietzsche, together they opened the door back up for 'ethical relativists, 'non-ethical narcissists' and/or modern day Sophists' (conceptual mercenaries who will tell you anything you want to hear and make it sound good and credible even if it is not true -- like our modern day lawyers -- for a fee.)
Epistemology needs to be re-established on a solid foundation again, even if it does need to be much more wary of 'sensory error, inferential error, and narcissistic bias' than it was before Kant and Nietzshe. Partly Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein I believed tried to do this...but then along comes Derrida and more deconstructionism...tied in hand in hand with Foucault and his study of the narcissisitc relationship between 'knowledge and power'. Again epistemology takes a nose dive. Since Descartes and Kant turned the study of epistemology inwards, epistemology has had a rather rough ride through much of the 19th, all of the 20th, and now the 21st century. Are we left with anything other than 'epistemological nihilism'?
Personally, I say that we need to learn the lessons of Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Derrida, and Foucault but put back into perspective and the perspective I tend to emphasize is the one built by Alfred Korzybski and his followers -- General Semantics -- with perhaps some modifications -- for example, 'dialectical modifications' -- that I may make along the way. This is what I will call 'DGB Epistemology' -- which has connections to every other section that I write about in DGB Philosophy -- Psychology, Business and Economics, History, Law, Ethics, Politics, Religion, and so on. Let us call this our starting point then, both for DGB Philosophy and, in particular, for DGB Epistemology.
dgb, September 25th, 2006
15.3. How Do We Determine A 'Good' Idea?
Here's how DGB Philosophy defines a good idea -- borrowing the ideas of 'clear' and 'distinct' from Descartes :
1. It needs to be 'associatively' clear. (the 'associative clarity' criterion. How is hte idea similar and/or related to other ideas?).
2. It needs to be 'distinctively' clear. (the 'distinctive clarity' criterion. How is the idea distinctively clear or clearly different than other ideas?).
3. It needs to be 'empirically' or 'experientially' grounded. (The 'empirical- experiential' and 'ontological' criterion. Does the idea represent a 'phenomenon' -- a person, thing, process, and/or event...that actually exists?)
4. It needs to be 'narcissistically useful'. (The 'narcissistic' criterion -- 'Does the idea help to make my life better).
5. It should be 'altruistically useful'. (The 'altruistic' criterion. Does the idea help to make the world a better place to live in?)
1. It needs to be 'associatively' clear. (the 'associative clarity' criterion. How is hte idea similar and/or related to other ideas?).
2. It needs to be 'distinctively' clear. (the 'distinctive clarity' criterion. How is the idea distinctively clear or clearly different than other ideas?).
3. It needs to be 'empirically' or 'experientially' grounded. (The 'empirical- experiential' and 'ontological' criterion. Does the idea represent a 'phenomenon' -- a person, thing, process, and/or event...that actually exists?)
4. It needs to be 'narcissistically useful'. (The 'narcissistic' criterion -- 'Does the idea help to make my life better).
5. It should be 'altruistically useful'. (The 'altruistic' criterion. Does the idea help to make the world a better place to live in?)
Friday, September 15, 2006
15.2. Critiquing Kant: What Did He Mean By 'Knowing'? What Do We Mean By 'Knowing'?
Philosophy does not, and should not, have to be about rocket science -- about mystifying and bedazzling and manipulating people with ideas that are above and beyond the grasp of normal comprehension. And when philosophy starts to go this way -- to alienate itself from the common people, in ways that are similar and different to the way that politics can and does alienate itself from the common people, then it becomes the job of certain people -- I will list William James as an example -- to bring philosophy back to earth again, and within reach of the common man (and woman -- lest I be accused of being sexist here).
Kant's classic philosophical treatise -- The Critique of Pure Reason -- did create a 'Copernican revolution' in Western philosophy in that it subjectified rather objectified philosophy. Rather than being solely concerned with searching for 'epistemological truth', philosophers now had to concern themselves with the fallibility of the instrument philosphers were using in their search for 'objective truth'. This instrument was man's 'mind' and as soon as philosophers started to take a serious look at the weakenesses, limitations, fallibilities, and vulnerablilites of man's mind, philosophers had to take a huge, skeptical step backwards and realize that there would be no arrival date any time soon -- if ever -- at any type of 'epistemological knowledge' that anyone could call 'objective truth'. And if anyone had any kind of serious doubts about the validity of what Kant was saying, Nietzsche took Kant to the extreme and logically annhilated practically every form of human knowledge (except his own of course). In this respect, we could say that Kant opened the modern day door for the both philosophy of the 'dialectic' and the philosophy of 'deconstruction' which Hegel ran with (claiming rightly or wrongly that the dialectic could overcome man's Kantian epistemological weaknesses and limitations -- and thus, still get us to 'Absolute Knowledge and Truth' -- whereas, Nietzsche basically returned to Kantian 101 Epistemology and wrote: 'There is no such thing as fact (or truth), only interpretation'.
Part of 'deconstructing' someone or some idea (in layman's terms 'deconstruction' is more or less tantamount to 'diaagreeing' with and 'criticizing' someone or some idea) requires a 'proper interpretation' of that which one is setting about to 'deconstruct'. Based on what I have read this morning off the internet (Wikipedia -- The Free Encyclopedia) -- and this came as news to me, there is a disagreement among Kantian scholars revolving around two conflicting statements that Kant made. Firstly, there is the 'two world interpretation' which until today was the only Kantian interpretation that I knew about. This suggests that we live in two different worlds -- a 'noumenal' world which is the 'world of objects' that exist beyond the limitations and capabilities of our senses. Then there is the second world that we are much more familiar with -- our 'phenomenal' world -- which is the world as we understand it through our sensual-perceptive interpretations, our acts of logic (and illogic), distinction, associations, causality, time and space, coceptual formulations and generalizations, and other classification categories. This is the world according to the 'sensory-perceptual-interpretive-evaluative glasses' that we wear each day to meet the world -- and the other world, the noumenal 'objective' world apart from, and beyond, our senses is a world that we will basically nver be able to 'know'. (So much for the pursit of 'truth' and 'objective knowledge'.)
The second interpretation of Kant is one that I have a hard time believing and taking seriously because it flat out contradicts the first interpretation and I can't believe that Kant would have contradicted himself in this fashion. This interpretation is based on the fact that...'Kant however also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this thought, interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alone.' I flat out dismiss this interpretation because here he would be completely reversing and confusing the respective meanings of the distinctive categories 'noumenal' and 'phenomenal' that made hime famous. There is no 'Copernican revolution' in this interpreation, and indeed, it sounds like a second rendition of Plato's theory of 'The Forms' which is not what I believe Kant had in mind by his concept of 'noumenal (thing-in-itself or objective) world'. If Kant was going to argue that the noumenal world existed beyond the capability and limitation of man's senses and conceptualization process, how could he have the nerve or stupidity to turn around and say something like 'the noumenal world represents a world that exists at a level (or attempted level) of human understanding at its pinnicle, abstractive height.' This makes no sense to me -- and again, sounds more like Plato than Kant. Again, this proposition -- or its interpretation -- is no Copernican revolution but rather represents a confusion in my mind of the distinction that Kant was trying to make.
So let's go back to Interpetation 1. Much of the controversy and potential unclarity of this proposition hinges around a semantic interpretation of the word 'know'. What does it mean to 'know' someone or something? I think that what Kant should have said is that we cannot 'perfectly know' our noumenal world -- but we can know it 'imperfectly'. This modified epistemological statement would have cost much less grief in the philosophical world and would have prevented many philosophers, scientists, Enlightenment idealists, and lay persons alike from wanting to jump off the tallest buildings they had back then (or to pull all their investments out of the stock market and their savings out of the bank -- neither of which they likely had back then. Did they have banks in the 1700s?)
This newly modified and reconstructed Kantian interpretation that I am launching here looks at the senses as being basically like 'bridges' or 'portholes' between the outside world and us. There is a 'contact bounaary' between the outside world and ourselves with our senses playing an essential life-preserving and life-enhancing role at the point of contact. My finger touches the keyboard I am typing on, and at this point of contact there is both a bridge and a boundary between the outside world and myself, my body. If I touch the desk with my finger and I touch it hard, the friction, pressure, and resistance at the point of contact become more intense signalling stronger messages back to my brain based on the level and type of contact between the desk and me.
Do I, or can I, 'know' the desk? Certainly -- I do, and I can -- imperfectly, relative to the limitation of my senses, particularly my eyes (which are becoming worse and worse sensory instruments as I age) as far as the 'look' of the desk is concerned. As far as the 'structure' and the 'underlying dybamic process' of the desk, this information is even harder to get at, harder to learn, requiring greater and greater knowledge of 'physics' and 'energy concepts' (depending on just how 'perfectionstic' we want to get in our 'knowledge' of the deak), and this knowledge in itself -- available to us through centuries of epistemological evolution in this area -- is itself imperfective relative to the limitations of how far epistemological evolution has gotten, and how far, it still has to go in this areas of human epistemological evoltion. Who can tell in this regard to what extent our knowledge will ever be 'complete' or 'incomplete', 'perfect' or 'imperfect'. There will likely always be room in human evolution for more and better epistemological knowlege. We can always view the subject of human epistemology as being either 'half full' or 'half empty' -- or anywhere else along the continuum between empty and full. Who will every know when our 'epistemological glass' is full? God? What is He or She or It going to do -- tell us to stop searching for Truth and Perfection because we have already gotten there? I would imagine that anyone reading this essay will not be around to witness that moment -- indeed, I doubt that moment will ever come. Perhaps it is man's curse that he will always be imperfect -- while still striving for perfection. Why else would I spend more than half of my life time trying to build this philosophical monstrosity? A will to create? Probably. A will to be more 'epistemologically and philosophically perfect tomorrow than I am today? Probably. A 'Will to Power' as Nietzsche would say, or asm my email friend Paul would say, a will to see my individual philosphy become recognized and esteemed social philosophy? In this regard, are my goals narcissistic and egotistical? Definitely, at least in part.
Let us come to a final conclusion about the pursuit of knowledge -- specifically, it is not a useless pursuit, indeed, it is essential to our continued and enhanced existence, even if we never do achieve 'perfection', which we probably never will (and as I said, who would even know when we got there?) But still, this demands the belief that our 'enhanced phenomenal knowledge' is getting us closer to a better understanding of our 'noumenal, thing-in-itself-objective' world. If someone wanted to write a biography of me, they could start by asking my girlfriend or my parents or my brother and sister, or my friends, or my work colleagues -- what I am like. But the best biography would probably be written by some writer who asked all of those people what I was like, and then maybe interviewed me too (not that I would necessarily tell the writer the truth).
My point here, is that epistemologically -- and politically -- we lost something when we lost the spirit and the ideals of the Enlightenment. I am not saying that other philosophical evolutionary developments after the Enlightenment were not important because they were, and indeed we will discuss many of these evolutionary developments. But what I am saying, is that we both won and lost something in the Kantian Copernican epistemological revolution. And more than anything, what we lost was mainly the high-spirited epistemological, scientific, ethical, and political idealism of the time. After Kant, we became an epistemologically and an ethically jaded Western world. Like a betrayed lover who has lost his or her naive, innocent belief in love, we as a Western World lost our naive, innocent belief in Objective Truth. And that, my friends, was -- and is -- at least partly a Greek or Nietzschean tragedy.
*DGBN, Sept. 15th, 2006.
David Gordon Bain,
Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
Dialectical-Gap-Bridging-Negotiations
Kant's classic philosophical treatise -- The Critique of Pure Reason -- did create a 'Copernican revolution' in Western philosophy in that it subjectified rather objectified philosophy. Rather than being solely concerned with searching for 'epistemological truth', philosophers now had to concern themselves with the fallibility of the instrument philosphers were using in their search for 'objective truth'. This instrument was man's 'mind' and as soon as philosophers started to take a serious look at the weakenesses, limitations, fallibilities, and vulnerablilites of man's mind, philosophers had to take a huge, skeptical step backwards and realize that there would be no arrival date any time soon -- if ever -- at any type of 'epistemological knowledge' that anyone could call 'objective truth'. And if anyone had any kind of serious doubts about the validity of what Kant was saying, Nietzsche took Kant to the extreme and logically annhilated practically every form of human knowledge (except his own of course). In this respect, we could say that Kant opened the modern day door for the both philosophy of the 'dialectic' and the philosophy of 'deconstruction' which Hegel ran with (claiming rightly or wrongly that the dialectic could overcome man's Kantian epistemological weaknesses and limitations -- and thus, still get us to 'Absolute Knowledge and Truth' -- whereas, Nietzsche basically returned to Kantian 101 Epistemology and wrote: 'There is no such thing as fact (or truth), only interpretation'.
Part of 'deconstructing' someone or some idea (in layman's terms 'deconstruction' is more or less tantamount to 'diaagreeing' with and 'criticizing' someone or some idea) requires a 'proper interpretation' of that which one is setting about to 'deconstruct'. Based on what I have read this morning off the internet (Wikipedia -- The Free Encyclopedia) -- and this came as news to me, there is a disagreement among Kantian scholars revolving around two conflicting statements that Kant made. Firstly, there is the 'two world interpretation' which until today was the only Kantian interpretation that I knew about. This suggests that we live in two different worlds -- a 'noumenal' world which is the 'world of objects' that exist beyond the limitations and capabilities of our senses. Then there is the second world that we are much more familiar with -- our 'phenomenal' world -- which is the world as we understand it through our sensual-perceptive interpretations, our acts of logic (and illogic), distinction, associations, causality, time and space, coceptual formulations and generalizations, and other classification categories. This is the world according to the 'sensory-perceptual-interpretive-evaluative glasses' that we wear each day to meet the world -- and the other world, the noumenal 'objective' world apart from, and beyond, our senses is a world that we will basically nver be able to 'know'. (So much for the pursit of 'truth' and 'objective knowledge'.)
The second interpretation of Kant is one that I have a hard time believing and taking seriously because it flat out contradicts the first interpretation and I can't believe that Kant would have contradicted himself in this fashion. This interpretation is based on the fact that...'Kant however also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this thought, interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alone.' I flat out dismiss this interpretation because here he would be completely reversing and confusing the respective meanings of the distinctive categories 'noumenal' and 'phenomenal' that made hime famous. There is no 'Copernican revolution' in this interpreation, and indeed, it sounds like a second rendition of Plato's theory of 'The Forms' which is not what I believe Kant had in mind by his concept of 'noumenal (thing-in-itself or objective) world'. If Kant was going to argue that the noumenal world existed beyond the capability and limitation of man's senses and conceptualization process, how could he have the nerve or stupidity to turn around and say something like 'the noumenal world represents a world that exists at a level (or attempted level) of human understanding at its pinnicle, abstractive height.' This makes no sense to me -- and again, sounds more like Plato than Kant. Again, this proposition -- or its interpretation -- is no Copernican revolution but rather represents a confusion in my mind of the distinction that Kant was trying to make.
So let's go back to Interpetation 1. Much of the controversy and potential unclarity of this proposition hinges around a semantic interpretation of the word 'know'. What does it mean to 'know' someone or something? I think that what Kant should have said is that we cannot 'perfectly know' our noumenal world -- but we can know it 'imperfectly'. This modified epistemological statement would have cost much less grief in the philosophical world and would have prevented many philosophers, scientists, Enlightenment idealists, and lay persons alike from wanting to jump off the tallest buildings they had back then (or to pull all their investments out of the stock market and their savings out of the bank -- neither of which they likely had back then. Did they have banks in the 1700s?)
This newly modified and reconstructed Kantian interpretation that I am launching here looks at the senses as being basically like 'bridges' or 'portholes' between the outside world and us. There is a 'contact bounaary' between the outside world and ourselves with our senses playing an essential life-preserving and life-enhancing role at the point of contact. My finger touches the keyboard I am typing on, and at this point of contact there is both a bridge and a boundary between the outside world and myself, my body. If I touch the desk with my finger and I touch it hard, the friction, pressure, and resistance at the point of contact become more intense signalling stronger messages back to my brain based on the level and type of contact between the desk and me.
Do I, or can I, 'know' the desk? Certainly -- I do, and I can -- imperfectly, relative to the limitation of my senses, particularly my eyes (which are becoming worse and worse sensory instruments as I age) as far as the 'look' of the desk is concerned. As far as the 'structure' and the 'underlying dybamic process' of the desk, this information is even harder to get at, harder to learn, requiring greater and greater knowledge of 'physics' and 'energy concepts' (depending on just how 'perfectionstic' we want to get in our 'knowledge' of the deak), and this knowledge in itself -- available to us through centuries of epistemological evolution in this area -- is itself imperfective relative to the limitations of how far epistemological evolution has gotten, and how far, it still has to go in this areas of human epistemological evoltion. Who can tell in this regard to what extent our knowledge will ever be 'complete' or 'incomplete', 'perfect' or 'imperfect'. There will likely always be room in human evolution for more and better epistemological knowlege. We can always view the subject of human epistemology as being either 'half full' or 'half empty' -- or anywhere else along the continuum between empty and full. Who will every know when our 'epistemological glass' is full? God? What is He or She or It going to do -- tell us to stop searching for Truth and Perfection because we have already gotten there? I would imagine that anyone reading this essay will not be around to witness that moment -- indeed, I doubt that moment will ever come. Perhaps it is man's curse that he will always be imperfect -- while still striving for perfection. Why else would I spend more than half of my life time trying to build this philosophical monstrosity? A will to create? Probably. A will to be more 'epistemologically and philosophically perfect tomorrow than I am today? Probably. A 'Will to Power' as Nietzsche would say, or asm my email friend Paul would say, a will to see my individual philosphy become recognized and esteemed social philosophy? In this regard, are my goals narcissistic and egotistical? Definitely, at least in part.
Let us come to a final conclusion about the pursuit of knowledge -- specifically, it is not a useless pursuit, indeed, it is essential to our continued and enhanced existence, even if we never do achieve 'perfection', which we probably never will (and as I said, who would even know when we got there?) But still, this demands the belief that our 'enhanced phenomenal knowledge' is getting us closer to a better understanding of our 'noumenal, thing-in-itself-objective' world. If someone wanted to write a biography of me, they could start by asking my girlfriend or my parents or my brother and sister, or my friends, or my work colleagues -- what I am like. But the best biography would probably be written by some writer who asked all of those people what I was like, and then maybe interviewed me too (not that I would necessarily tell the writer the truth).
My point here, is that epistemologically -- and politically -- we lost something when we lost the spirit and the ideals of the Enlightenment. I am not saying that other philosophical evolutionary developments after the Enlightenment were not important because they were, and indeed we will discuss many of these evolutionary developments. But what I am saying, is that we both won and lost something in the Kantian Copernican epistemological revolution. And more than anything, what we lost was mainly the high-spirited epistemological, scientific, ethical, and political idealism of the time. After Kant, we became an epistemologically and an ethically jaded Western world. Like a betrayed lover who has lost his or her naive, innocent belief in love, we as a Western World lost our naive, innocent belief in Objective Truth. And that, my friends, was -- and is -- at least partly a Greek or Nietzschean tragedy.
*DGBN, Sept. 15th, 2006.
David Gordon Bain,
Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
Dialectical-Gap-Bridging-Negotiations
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
15.1. From Kant to Subjectivism to Subjective Relativism to Subjective-Objectivism...
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
"Kant's most original contribution to philosophy is his "Copernican Revolution," that, as he puts it, it is the representation that makes the object possible rather than the object that makes the representation possible. This introduced the human mind as an active originator of experience rather than just a passive recipient of perception. Something like this now seems obvious: the mind could be a tabula rasa, a "blank tablet," no more than a bathtub full of silicon chips could be a digital computer. Perceptual input must be processed, i.e. recognized, or it would just be noise -- "less even than a dream" or "nothing to us," as Kant alternatively puts it.
But if the mind actively generates perception, this raises the question whether the result has anything to do with the world, or if so, how much. The answer to the question, unusual, ambiguous, or confusing as it would be, made for endless trouble both in Kant's thought and for a posterity trying to figure him out. To the extent that knowledge depends on the structure of the mind and not on the world, knowledge would have no connection to the world and is not even true representation, just a solipsistic or intersubjective fantasy. Kantianism seems threatened with "psychologism," the doctrine that what we know is our own psychology, not external things. Kant did say, consistent with psychologism, that basically we don't know about "things-in-themselves," objects as they exist apart from perception. But at the same time Kant thought he was vindicating both a scientific realism, where science really knows the world, and a moral realism, where there is objective moral obligation, for both of which a connection to external or objective existence is essential." (From the internet...Introduction to his philosophy. From The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series.)
).......................................................................
Now I do not profess to be an expert on Kant -- indeed, I believe that his name is very appropriate because about 90 percent of the 5 percent of people who actually try to read his work, kant understand him. Or maybe I am being presumptious here based on my own very limited reading experiences with Kant. I suspect however, that many who have tried to understand Kant and failed, but still felt compelled to try to understand him -- introductory philosophy students mainly who are trying to pass philosophy -- have gone on to Option 2, like I have: specifically, try to understand Kant through an interpreter who aims to try to simplify both his words and his ideas. One such interpreter can be found in the passage I quoted above from the internet. But even this leaves me scratching my head....
Specifically, how can Kant on the one hand say that we cannot possibly 'know' our 'objective' (or in his language 'noumenal') world, and then in the next breath come back and say that 'science can know this world'... I refer you back to this part of the passage above...albeit remembering that it is not Kant himself speaking but a Kantian interpreter...
"Kantianism seems threatened with "psychologism," the doctrine that what we know is our own psychology, not external things. Kant did say, consistent with psychologism, that basically we don't know about "things-in-themselves," objects as they exist apart from perception. But at the same time Kant thought he was vindicating both a scientific realism, where science really knows the world..."
Isn't this Kant trying to talk through both sides of his mouth at the same time. 'You can but you can't know.' What does this mean?
Well, I will tell you what I think it means -- even though I don't think what I am sharing here is what Kant had in mind when he 'allegedly' or 'apparently' said what he said...you see even here the 'uncertainties of historical epistemology'. It would seem here that we need to find a direct quote from Kant saying that 'scientific knowledge was/is legitmate 'real' knowledge of the 'real, objective (noumenal)' world. Either that and/or he has to say that scientific knowledge is 'phenomenal' (appearance or apparent) knowledge that we 'assume' to bear a strong, structural resemblance to the 'real, actual (noumenal) world -- unless and/or until it is 'proven' or 'suspected' differently through further scientific (and/or common sense) investigation that leads us up or down a different epistemoligical path. I like this latter theory better.
So let us start with this assumption. Epistemological Assumption 1: All knowledge is apparent knowledge. 'Objective reality' -- if we can call it that -- becomes 'subjectified' the moment it enters an individual's very subjective 'Sensory-Perceptual-Epistemological-Evaluation-Directive to action' ('SPEED') system. However, having said this, there are certain types of knowledge that carry with them a high degree of 'probability' or 'reliability' or 'social agreement' (allowing for the fact that sometimes 'social agreement' can be a very dangerous component and feature of 'assumed knowledge').
This brings us to Epistemological Assumption 2: Specifically, 'What' knowledge' tends in general to be much more reliable, predictable, and/or socially agreed upon than 'why' knowledge. A crane that was helping to build a baseball stadium (Miller Stadium in Milwaukee) collapsed and everyone agreed that the crane indeed collapsed -- killing three workers in the process. There is no epistemological disagreement here. But it took 2 years to determine 'why' the crane collapsed -- using the best 'forensic engineers and engineering tests available at the time -- and even after an 'epistemological decision' was made by a judge in a court of law based on forensic engineering conclusions, one can still question the 'epistemoligical relevance, appropriateness, and/or wholistic fullness' of the forensic engineers and/or the court decision that was rendered. Same with the assassination of JFK. Or the 'whys' surrounding 9/11. Everybody agrees that these events happened. But the 'whys' surrounding these events most definitely will be debated for years yet still to come. Epistemologically, 'whats' are generally much easier to determine, to socially agree upon, and to deal with, than 'whys' are -- the latter of which require a whole host of 'reductionistic' and 'wholistic' epistemological understandings often which are invisible and/or lie beneath the surface of the 'witnessing' naked eye.
This brings us to Epistemological Assumption 3: In general, 'sensory-perceptual' knowledge can be equated with 'what' knowledge and is therefore generally superior and more reliable than 'inferential' knowledge that requires a 'logical, forensic investigation' into what is going on 'beneath the surface of what we are seeing and/or hearing, with an assumption also that 'seeing knowledge' is generally more reliable and therefore superior to 'hearing knowledge').
Now where does this leave us relative to Kant. In somewhat 'epistemologically uncertain' territory because there are epistemological issues relative to Kant that are still not crystal clear. It seems -- at least to me -- that Kant was trying to 'bridge the gap' (which I try to do a lot of -- consequently the name I use, 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging' (DGB) Philosophy) but we are talking about Kant here -- between 'rationalism' and 'empiricism', between Plato and Aristotle, between Descartes and Hume, perhaps even between science and religion. But did Kant really solve the epistemoligcal battle between 'subjectivism' and 'objectivism' (he seemed to be straddling both), or did he just add more epistemological fuel to the fire?
Certainly, different forms of 'subjective relativism' (most notably Nietzsche) took off after Kant. More generally, I think it is safe to say that philosophy turned much more 'subjective' after Kant as different philosophers looked at all types of different ways of incorporating the 'workings of the common and individual human mind' into the ongoing evolution of epistemology and every other branch of philosophy. This culminated in the evolution of the study of a particular part of philosophy into the study of 'psychology' for example as the respective philosophies of Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche all converged into Freud and Psychoanalysis.
For our epistemological purposes here, what was important about Kant that culminated in Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and others was a strong recognition of 'individual', 'social', 'eoonomic', 'power', 'egotistical', 'narcissistic', 'hedonistic', 'sexual', 'greed', 'property', 'capitalist', 'socialist', 'conservative', 'romantic', 'liberal', 'religious', 'political', 'scientific' and all other varieties of individual and cultural factors -- with 'biases' being an alternatively appropriate word to 'factors' -- influencing what before Kant was much more likely to be called 'objective epistemology, science, and/or knowledge'.
In this regard, DGB Epistemology and Philosophy completely recognizes and accepts the importance of 'subjective individual and social biases' infliencing and/or blatantly interfering with any attempt at achieving any type of 'completely objective epistemology'. However, what judges and courts of law do on a day to day basis is what each and every one of us needs to do in a variety of less formal settings -- whether it is settling a dispute between two co-workers or two of your kids -- and that is weed through the individual narcissistic bias to try to get to some semblence of the 'subjective-objective epistemological truth'.
And that is what DGB Epistemology is going to try to do here -- specifically weed through the endless forms of human narcissism, distortion, whitewashes, abstractions, avoidances, and outright fabrications to get to some semblence of what might be called 'subjective-objective epistemological truth'.
In DGB Epistemology then, we do not fall victim to the epistemological and/or ethical avoidances of subjective relativism saying that 'no one person is more or less right or wrong, good or bad, than the next person. Right and wrong, good and bad, are categories that retain epistemological and ethical significance. Statements still have 'truth value' albeit there is still a strong recognition that all 'alleged truth statements' can later be shown to be false. 'Truth' remains an endless epistemological business albeit with a complete recognition of the seemingly endless parade of narcissistic human factors that can interfere with any so called 'objective search for truth'.
Indeed, DGB Philosophy -- as my personal philosophical projection -- is crying for a return to an integration of Enlightenment, Romantic, Spiritual, Scientific, and other types of compassion and integrity-based Humanistic-Existential values even as you and I can both look around everywhere -- West, East, Middle East, North, and South -- and see cultures and societies that seem to be drowning in a sea of human individual, organizational, corporate, political, legal, national, international, power, and economic narcissism.
When is this progression -- or rather regression -- going to make us all sick enough to our stomachs to want to probe back into the archives of Western, Eastern, and Middle Eastern Idealistic Philosophy to find an 'epistemology' that involves a 'search for truth that involves some Enlightenment Integrity' and a search for a good individual, social, national, and international code of humaanistic-existential ethics that is not going to be obliterated by this sea of individual, political, corporate, legal, religious, national, or international narcissism that I am talking about.
Democracy Must Go Beyond Human Narcissism -- Or Human Narcissism Will Destroy Human Democracy (or any proper semblence of it).
DGBN, Sept. 13th, 2006.
"Kant's most original contribution to philosophy is his "Copernican Revolution," that, as he puts it, it is the representation that makes the object possible rather than the object that makes the representation possible. This introduced the human mind as an active originator of experience rather than just a passive recipient of perception. Something like this now seems obvious: the mind could be a tabula rasa, a "blank tablet," no more than a bathtub full of silicon chips could be a digital computer. Perceptual input must be processed, i.e. recognized, or it would just be noise -- "less even than a dream" or "nothing to us," as Kant alternatively puts it.
But if the mind actively generates perception, this raises the question whether the result has anything to do with the world, or if so, how much. The answer to the question, unusual, ambiguous, or confusing as it would be, made for endless trouble both in Kant's thought and for a posterity trying to figure him out. To the extent that knowledge depends on the structure of the mind and not on the world, knowledge would have no connection to the world and is not even true representation, just a solipsistic or intersubjective fantasy. Kantianism seems threatened with "psychologism," the doctrine that what we know is our own psychology, not external things. Kant did say, consistent with psychologism, that basically we don't know about "things-in-themselves," objects as they exist apart from perception. But at the same time Kant thought he was vindicating both a scientific realism, where science really knows the world, and a moral realism, where there is objective moral obligation, for both of which a connection to external or objective existence is essential." (From the internet...Introduction to his philosophy. From The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series.)
).......................................................................
Now I do not profess to be an expert on Kant -- indeed, I believe that his name is very appropriate because about 90 percent of the 5 percent of people who actually try to read his work, kant understand him. Or maybe I am being presumptious here based on my own very limited reading experiences with Kant. I suspect however, that many who have tried to understand Kant and failed, but still felt compelled to try to understand him -- introductory philosophy students mainly who are trying to pass philosophy -- have gone on to Option 2, like I have: specifically, try to understand Kant through an interpreter who aims to try to simplify both his words and his ideas. One such interpreter can be found in the passage I quoted above from the internet. But even this leaves me scratching my head....
Specifically, how can Kant on the one hand say that we cannot possibly 'know' our 'objective' (or in his language 'noumenal') world, and then in the next breath come back and say that 'science can know this world'... I refer you back to this part of the passage above...albeit remembering that it is not Kant himself speaking but a Kantian interpreter...
"Kantianism seems threatened with "psychologism," the doctrine that what we know is our own psychology, not external things. Kant did say, consistent with psychologism, that basically we don't know about "things-in-themselves," objects as they exist apart from perception. But at the same time Kant thought he was vindicating both a scientific realism, where science really knows the world..."
Isn't this Kant trying to talk through both sides of his mouth at the same time. 'You can but you can't know.' What does this mean?
Well, I will tell you what I think it means -- even though I don't think what I am sharing here is what Kant had in mind when he 'allegedly' or 'apparently' said what he said...you see even here the 'uncertainties of historical epistemology'. It would seem here that we need to find a direct quote from Kant saying that 'scientific knowledge was/is legitmate 'real' knowledge of the 'real, objective (noumenal)' world. Either that and/or he has to say that scientific knowledge is 'phenomenal' (appearance or apparent) knowledge that we 'assume' to bear a strong, structural resemblance to the 'real, actual (noumenal) world -- unless and/or until it is 'proven' or 'suspected' differently through further scientific (and/or common sense) investigation that leads us up or down a different epistemoligical path. I like this latter theory better.
So let us start with this assumption. Epistemological Assumption 1: All knowledge is apparent knowledge. 'Objective reality' -- if we can call it that -- becomes 'subjectified' the moment it enters an individual's very subjective 'Sensory-Perceptual-Epistemological-Evaluation-Directive to action' ('SPEED') system. However, having said this, there are certain types of knowledge that carry with them a high degree of 'probability' or 'reliability' or 'social agreement' (allowing for the fact that sometimes 'social agreement' can be a very dangerous component and feature of 'assumed knowledge').
This brings us to Epistemological Assumption 2: Specifically, 'What' knowledge' tends in general to be much more reliable, predictable, and/or socially agreed upon than 'why' knowledge. A crane that was helping to build a baseball stadium (Miller Stadium in Milwaukee) collapsed and everyone agreed that the crane indeed collapsed -- killing three workers in the process. There is no epistemological disagreement here. But it took 2 years to determine 'why' the crane collapsed -- using the best 'forensic engineers and engineering tests available at the time -- and even after an 'epistemological decision' was made by a judge in a court of law based on forensic engineering conclusions, one can still question the 'epistemoligical relevance, appropriateness, and/or wholistic fullness' of the forensic engineers and/or the court decision that was rendered. Same with the assassination of JFK. Or the 'whys' surrounding 9/11. Everybody agrees that these events happened. But the 'whys' surrounding these events most definitely will be debated for years yet still to come. Epistemologically, 'whats' are generally much easier to determine, to socially agree upon, and to deal with, than 'whys' are -- the latter of which require a whole host of 'reductionistic' and 'wholistic' epistemological understandings often which are invisible and/or lie beneath the surface of the 'witnessing' naked eye.
This brings us to Epistemological Assumption 3: In general, 'sensory-perceptual' knowledge can be equated with 'what' knowledge and is therefore generally superior and more reliable than 'inferential' knowledge that requires a 'logical, forensic investigation' into what is going on 'beneath the surface of what we are seeing and/or hearing, with an assumption also that 'seeing knowledge' is generally more reliable and therefore superior to 'hearing knowledge').
Now where does this leave us relative to Kant. In somewhat 'epistemologically uncertain' territory because there are epistemological issues relative to Kant that are still not crystal clear. It seems -- at least to me -- that Kant was trying to 'bridge the gap' (which I try to do a lot of -- consequently the name I use, 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging' (DGB) Philosophy) but we are talking about Kant here -- between 'rationalism' and 'empiricism', between Plato and Aristotle, between Descartes and Hume, perhaps even between science and religion. But did Kant really solve the epistemoligcal battle between 'subjectivism' and 'objectivism' (he seemed to be straddling both), or did he just add more epistemological fuel to the fire?
Certainly, different forms of 'subjective relativism' (most notably Nietzsche) took off after Kant. More generally, I think it is safe to say that philosophy turned much more 'subjective' after Kant as different philosophers looked at all types of different ways of incorporating the 'workings of the common and individual human mind' into the ongoing evolution of epistemology and every other branch of philosophy. This culminated in the evolution of the study of a particular part of philosophy into the study of 'psychology' for example as the respective philosophies of Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche all converged into Freud and Psychoanalysis.
For our epistemological purposes here, what was important about Kant that culminated in Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and others was a strong recognition of 'individual', 'social', 'eoonomic', 'power', 'egotistical', 'narcissistic', 'hedonistic', 'sexual', 'greed', 'property', 'capitalist', 'socialist', 'conservative', 'romantic', 'liberal', 'religious', 'political', 'scientific' and all other varieties of individual and cultural factors -- with 'biases' being an alternatively appropriate word to 'factors' -- influencing what before Kant was much more likely to be called 'objective epistemology, science, and/or knowledge'.
In this regard, DGB Epistemology and Philosophy completely recognizes and accepts the importance of 'subjective individual and social biases' infliencing and/or blatantly interfering with any attempt at achieving any type of 'completely objective epistemology'. However, what judges and courts of law do on a day to day basis is what each and every one of us needs to do in a variety of less formal settings -- whether it is settling a dispute between two co-workers or two of your kids -- and that is weed through the individual narcissistic bias to try to get to some semblence of the 'subjective-objective epistemological truth'.
And that is what DGB Epistemology is going to try to do here -- specifically weed through the endless forms of human narcissism, distortion, whitewashes, abstractions, avoidances, and outright fabrications to get to some semblence of what might be called 'subjective-objective epistemological truth'.
In DGB Epistemology then, we do not fall victim to the epistemological and/or ethical avoidances of subjective relativism saying that 'no one person is more or less right or wrong, good or bad, than the next person. Right and wrong, good and bad, are categories that retain epistemological and ethical significance. Statements still have 'truth value' albeit there is still a strong recognition that all 'alleged truth statements' can later be shown to be false. 'Truth' remains an endless epistemological business albeit with a complete recognition of the seemingly endless parade of narcissistic human factors that can interfere with any so called 'objective search for truth'.
Indeed, DGB Philosophy -- as my personal philosophical projection -- is crying for a return to an integration of Enlightenment, Romantic, Spiritual, Scientific, and other types of compassion and integrity-based Humanistic-Existential values even as you and I can both look around everywhere -- West, East, Middle East, North, and South -- and see cultures and societies that seem to be drowning in a sea of human individual, organizational, corporate, political, legal, national, international, power, and economic narcissism.
When is this progression -- or rather regression -- going to make us all sick enough to our stomachs to want to probe back into the archives of Western, Eastern, and Middle Eastern Idealistic Philosophy to find an 'epistemology' that involves a 'search for truth that involves some Enlightenment Integrity' and a search for a good individual, social, national, and international code of humaanistic-existential ethics that is not going to be obliterated by this sea of individual, political, corporate, legal, religious, national, or international narcissism that I am talking about.
Democracy Must Go Beyond Human Narcissism -- Or Human Narcissism Will Destroy Human Democracy (or any proper semblence of it).
DGBN, Sept. 13th, 2006.
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