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.)
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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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