On Aug 15, 5:30 am, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Aug 14, 12:14 pm, yandahir bazoot <justinles...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > On Aug 14, 4:16 am, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > > On Aug 13, 5:37 am, Michael Gordge <mikegor...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > Dear Immortalist
> > I thought yours is a good post that seemed reasonably clear. I shall
> > have a think about it at my leisure, because I'm very lazy and also
> > tend to get confused. But it has always seemed to me that Kant misses
> > something about normal, na=EFve, empirical realism, and that from this
> > normal point of view although his system is very intellectual, and
> > subtle it runs the danger of being a ridiculous sort of over subtlety
> > that is unbelievable.
> > You say that we couldn't know things in themselves without being able
> > to stand outside our modes of perception and reasoning faculty. It
> > depends on what you mean by 'know'. If you mean 'have a justified
> > certainty and guarantee that we have grasped them correctly as they
> > are in themselves' then I can see how it could seem that such a
> > guaranteed degree of certainty, at least, must depend on our own grasp
> > of the situation. We could not be certain about something that could,
> > as it were, float away from our own grasp and do what it liked-I don't
> > think there is any such certainty, including, I'm inclined to say, in
> > logical deduction. In another sense of 'know' i.e. could we have
> > accurately grasped the thing in itself as it is in itself, it seems to
> > me there is a possible criteria by which we could make a judgement
> > about realising how the independent object could itself be.
>
> I think Kant meant the former sense of logical deduction. We have
> beliefs, customs and agreements as to what logic, certainty,
> proposition, conclusion, etc... is to be. And by these nearly
> universal agreements, our beliefs about sense data could be mistaken,
> and hence not deductive but are empirical.
>
> No one knows: perceptual beliefs are true/false?
>
> ...suppose that two people are looking through different windows. The
> first person re****ts that there is a sphere on a table outside her
> window; she sees the sphere to be green. She sees this no matter from
> what vantage point she views things. Suppose further that the second
> person, looking through her own window, sees and re****ts the very same
> thing. Each person has exactly the same justification for claiming to
> know that there is a green sphere outside his window. Each is in just
> as good a position to know this as the other. Surely, the only correct
> conclusion to reach is that either each person knows there is a green
> sphere outside her window or that neither of them knows this. It would
> be entirely arbitrary, and hence unreasonable, to say that one person
> knows this and the other does not.
>
> However, it is perfectly possible that one of these people is mistaken
> and the other is not. Suppose the first person sees what she does
> because there is a green sphere outside her window. On the other hand,
> suppose the second sees what she does because she is being tricked
> with mirrors and drawings-there is no green sphere outside her window
> at all. Moreover, the deception is so excellent that from behind the
> windows no one could detect any difference in what is seen through
> each. This shows that the first person, who is in fact not mistaken,
> could have been mistaken. The second person was mistaken, and the
> first person had no better evidence for what she believed than the
> second person did. Since having this evidence did not keep the second
> person from being mistaken, the first person, too, could have been
> mistaken. What was so in the one case could have been so in the other.
> The only reasonable conclusion is that neither person has knowledge.
>
> What we have just imagined has perfectly general implications. The
> experiences a person has, when he or she sees something that really
> exists, can always be duplicated by the experiences of another person
> who is being deceived. Because the experiences in question provide the
> only evidence a person has for believing what she does, if one person
> fails to know what she believes, so must the other. If one is mistaken
> in believing something, then another person who has a similar belief
> based on similar experiences surely could have been mistaken-even if
> in fact she is not. Since this duplication of experiences is always
> possible, it is always possible that a perceptual belief based on
> sensory experience is mistaken. The argument for skepticism requires
> no other assumption.
>
> 2) The Modified Skeptical Argument
>
> We may conclude, then, with a slightly modified formulation of the
> argument for skepticism. The first two premises of the argument, which
> differ from the initial premises of the preceding skeptical argument,
> are as follows:
>
> 1. The experiences of a person who has a true perceptual belief may be
> exactly duplicated by the experiences of a person whose perceptual
> belief is exactly similar but false.
>
> 2. If the experiences of a person who has a true perceptual belief may
> be exactly duplicated by the experiences of a person whose perceptual
> belief is exactly similar but false, then it is always logically
> possible that our perceptual beliefs are false.
>
> The next premise is the same as in the earlier argument:
>
> 3. If it is always logically possible that our perceptual beliefs are
> false, then no one ever knows that any of our perceptual beliefs are
> true.
>
> >From these three premises we can deduce the skeptical conclusion.
>
> 4. No one ever knows that any of our perceptual beliefs are true.
>
> Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
> by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros
Pappashttp://www.amazon=
..com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/
>
> http://www-philosophy.ucdavis.edu/phi102/tk.htm
>
> > ...It seems
> > to me that we could try to see how what we are aware of through
> > experience could form an independently self sufficient system.
> > If, for instance, we saw how it appeared self sufficient then in
> > seeing this we would be seeing how it itself explained itself. As an
> > example of this take Darwin's theory of evolution through natural
> > selection. It is supposed by this theory that the world, space, matter
> > and its properties carry on independently and that life forms are
> > brought into being and evolve and develop naturally, i.e. the
> > continuation of space, matter and its properties are themselves
> > sufficient to produce the appearance of life forms and their gradual
> > and continuing development up to and beyond the presently observable
> > state of things. But this seems an essentially different sort of a
> > claim from, for instance, trying to claim that these things can appear
> > self sufficient due to our reasoning faculty. This seems because 1) no
> > mention is made of our reasoning faculty in discussions about how the
> > continuation of these things could be sufficient to produce the
> > current state of life forms, and 2) if our reasoning faculty were
> > supposed necessary to make it appear these things could be self
> > sufficient to produce the current state of life forms this would be
> > claiming that the continuation of these things could not themselves be
> > sufficient to produce the current state of life forms. But this is
> > what the theory is claiming. Thus Kantians are in danger of miss
> > understanding the nature of what is being claimed in such cases, and
> > of producing a superfluous level of explanation. If something is self
> > sufficient it can't need another layer of explanation. If it needs
> > another layer of explanation, then in that respect it can't be self
> > sufficient.
> > As another attempt to bring out this essential difference between the
> > two approaches, and what is being claimed by each. According to
> > evolution through natural selection, evolution through natural
> > selection can't depend on anything human, or conscious, because for
> > most of the time it was operating there were no humans or
> > consciousness. Similarly anything e.g. space and time, that may seem
> > universal and invariable in human experience can't depend on humans
> > because humans vary and there is no essential nature to any species.
> > There are only wider or closer groupings of variations. The reason why
> > some aspects of experience may be invariable is because it is claimed
> > these are part of the structure of existence and so life forms (and
> > their variations) that are subsequent to and produced from these more
> > fundamental forms can't alter them; although they certainly can vary
> > in their perception of them in various ways. On the other hand
> > Kantians, it seems, must claim that there is an essential nature to
> > humans (at least), and so, consequently in some respects humans must
> > be invariable. But this does not seem very plausible when we consider
> > some of the gross deformities (i.e. very unusual, or socially
> > unacceptable, variations) that can result from human unions; E.g.
> > babies born without a head. Or are we to only count as humans, for
> > instance, people who experience space as Euclidean? (Such a claim
> > would seem-to me-to have the added complication that since space is
> > experienced in combination with the laws of perspective, which are
> > additional to the properly 'Euclidean' properties, the normal
> > experience of spatial relations can't be strictly Euclidean).
>
> > The big difference between the two approaches, it seems to me, is that
> > the naive realist, and often science, tend to concentrate on how the
> > world does it. 'How' both in the descriptive sense, but also, often,
> > in the explanatory sense of attempting to see how these 'objects' in
> > the world can form a self sufficient system producing what we
> > experience to occur of them, depending on our position in this system.
> > But often, or mostly, Philosophy tends to concentrate on how the mind
> > could handle its data and produce its ideas and understanding of the
> > world. Philosophy tends to think that its type of question undercuts,
> > and is more fundamental than the na=EFve or scientific approach, but I
> > think that the na=EFve approach does not require answering those
> > philosophical questions, carries its own possible justification within
> > it, and is more directly engaged with experiencable reality.
>
> >http://members.lycos.co.uk/causalrealism/
>
> That was a good post.
Dear Immortalist
You say
"I think Kant meant the former sense of logical deduction." Can you
seperately state the two senses of logical deduction you are reffering
to, please? Because I don't know what you mean.
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