THESIS XII
A Philosophical Review
Volume 24 • Number 1
Ó February, 2018
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Falyn
Elhard
A Promising Argument
Allison Gregory
Sex as Social Construct
Nicole K. Braden-Johnson
Live or Let Die
A Response to Jeff McMahan’s
“Eating Animals the Nice Way”
Keaton Shoults
The Value of Multiculturalism
August Stowers
The Origin of Moral Truth
Michael McAndrew
Closing the Gap Between
Deontological and
Teleological Theories of Ethics
David K. Braden-Johnson
Eleven Theses on Realism
Paul Nnodim
Kant's Transcendental Idealism and the Crisis of Metaphysics
Paul Nnodim
Kant's Transcendental Idealism and the Crisis of Metaphysics
_____________________________
A Promising
Argument
Falyn Elhard
I do not
believe that it is possible to derive a substantive and normative conclusion
from non-substantive and non-normative premises; in other words, I do not
believe that the is/ought gap is bridgeable. Science, or empirical data, is
grounded in observation of how the world is.
Ethics, or morality, is grounded in intuition about how the world ought to be. A conclusion about how the
world is does not, and cannot follow, from a statement about how the world
ought to be. Anyone who attempts to bridge the is/ought gap fails to see the
role that their own subjectivity is playing within their argument, and thus is
failing to remain an objective and critical thinker. Some argue that debating
the semantics of the is/ought dilemma detracts from being able to address
certain moral issues, but I do not think that this is necessarily so. If the
gap between morality and fact is closed, and we allow people to posit their
subjective worldviews as the way in which the world should and does function
for everyone else, then that opens the door for bias and bigotry to take root.
Opinion should not be stated as fact.
Whenever
one attempts to bridge the is/ought gap, they are making an implicit assumption
that they hold a worldview that is shared and validated by others outside of
themselves, and then proceeding from there to make a conclusion based on that
assumption. If normativity is assumed in the premises, and valid arguments must
have a conclusion that follow their premises, then any ‘valid’ argument
attempting to bridge the is/ought gap will have a normative conclusion
following from normative premises. Thus, the gap is not bridged, because there
is no non-normative content in the conclusion to bridge the inherent
normativity of the premises to; all of the content is normative.
The
majority of the arguments that I have seen which attempt to bridge the is/ought
gap seek to do so through proving that is
can be derived from ought. However,
some argue that it is ought that can
be derived from is. For example, in
his publication How to Derive “Ought”
From “Is”, John R. Searle posits that, through the nature of promising, it
is possible to originate categorical ‘ought’ conclusions that follow from ‘is’
premises. This conclusion is arrived at by citing empirically validated quotes
in the third person, such as “Person A
said, ‘I promise to do X as is within my means for Person B.’ ”
This
argument refutes nothing that I have stated previously. In this case, Searle is
making a normative assumption about the nature of promising, such as that when
one says that they will do something,
one ought to do that thing. This is
predicated upon the morally based understanding of truth and honesty. It is not
a proven empirical fact that we should be truthful in what we say to others and
how we interact with them, but rather a subjective moral assessment. As such,
the premises of his argument contain implicit normativity, and fails to bridge
the is/ought gap.
All of
this is not to say that there can be no valid arguments from morality, or that
we cannot hold any valid moral worldviews. Empirical data can inform and help
to validate ethics, and vice versa;
but it is just not possible to go directly from empirical fact to moral truth
without some sort of substantive and/or normative inference being made.
References
Braden-Johnson,
D. K. (2016, May). The Problem with the Is-Ought Non-Problem. Thesis XII,
22(1).
Miller,
H. B. (n.d.). Science, Ethics, and Moral Status. Retrieved from Paris Mountain:
http://parismount.blogspot.com/2012/03/copyright-1988-harlan-b.htm.
Searle,
J. R. (1964, January). How to Derive "Ought" From "Is". The
Philosophical Review, 73(1).
Silliman,
M. (2016, May). The Is-Ought Non-Problem. Thesis XII, 22(1).
.
Falyn Elhard is a student at MCLA
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Sex as Social
Construct
Allison Gregory
When
discussing expectations in society, each society seems to have different
expectations regarding appearance, gender expression, and how men and women are
treated. It is easy to tease apart how these aspects of life are socially
constructed by the popular viewpoint that has dominated throughout enough of
history to be determined the norm. Gender expression has to do with the
outwardly appearance of a person that aligns with how they identify. This does
not seem hard to recognize as a social construct. On the other hand, sex is
harder to consider a social construct. Although it is impossible to socially
construct the biological aspects of sex (e.g. chromosomes and genes), it may be
possible to construct the idea of a sex binary based on outward appearance and
the term ‘sex’ in general regarding nature.
When
suggesting the concept of sex to be a social construction, people will
immediately argue that one cannot socially construct chromosomes. This is
entirely true; chromosomes have been proven, by science, to be in our genetics
and can help determine the types of hormones the body produces and how the
outward body may look. What is meant by the statement ‘the concept of sex is a
social construction’ deals more with the binary society has accepted. Society
accepts, generally, two sexes: male and female. As Sara C. writes, “even though
most people never get their chromosomes tested, we […] assume this sex
assignment to mean that people with penises always have XY chromosomes and
people with vulvas always have XX chromosomes” (1). The author points out the
problem with this social construction which seems to counter the assertion of
those who do not believe sex to be a social construct because chromosomes
cannot be a social construction. The problem with a sex binary is it leaves out
those who are intersex; those who can have various combinations of sex
chromosomes such as XXY, outward appearing women with XY chromosomes, outward
appearing men with XX chromosomes, etc. This leads to the problem of intersex
people not falling within the binary and, therefore, are ignored by society due
to the construct.
With a
socially constructed sex binary, this allows for the perpetuation of a gender
binary as well. The concept of a gender binary would not be strong if society
did not suggest there are “‘sexes’ with a ‘natural’ or ‘biological’ or
‘hormonal’ or ‘genetic’ difference that has sociological consequences” (2).
This leads to the social conception that sex is a part of nature. In certain
respects, nature can be changed. Due to scientific advancements, what “nature”
created in the womb can be changed through gene therapy, hormone replacement
therapy, gender-affirming surgery, etc. As Alcoff writes, “what we set aside as 'nature' is in dialectical relation with 'culture' in so far as it is altered
by human practice and what we know about it is constantly altered as practices
evolve, or devolve” (3). We can see sex/gender in direct relation with
nature/culture since sex is often viewed as determined by nature at conception,
due to chromosomes and genes remaining constant even if the outward body
changes. Gender, on the other hand, is viewed as a part of culture since
different cultures view gender and gender roles differently than others. For
example, in some indigenous cultures, the men of a tribe will take over womanly
duties and become women if there are few women in the tribe. Of course, this
idea is very different from how many Western cultures perceive gender. This
furthers the idea that both sex and gender are equally socially constructed.
The idea
of sex as a binary based on the link between chromosomes and outward appearance
and sex regarding nature seem to denote sex as a social construct. Sex is
harder to pin down as a social construct than gender due to the constant
rebuttal of how one cannot change chromosomes. Once a person begins to move
away from concrete biology dealing with genetics and towards how sex is
discussed and manipulated in society, one moves towards a better understanding
of the social construction of sex. By recognizing the variation found in sex
identity, it seems to consistently go against the societal construct of only
two sexes existing.
Notes
(1)
C, Sara. “The XX and XY Lie: Our Social Construction of a Sex and Gender
Binary.” Medium, Medium, 21 Oct. 2017,
medium.com/@QSE/the-xx-xy-lie-our-social-construction-of-a-sex-and-gender-binary-4eed1e60e615.
p. 12.
(2)
Alcoff, Linda. “The Metaphysics of Gender and Sexual Difference.” The
Metaphysics of Gender and Sexual Difference | Alcoff.com,
www.alcoff.com/content/chap6metags.html. p. 15.
(3) Ibid,
p. 80.
Allison Gregory
is a student at MCLA
_____________________________
_____________________________
Live or Let Die
A Response to Jeff McMahan’s
“Eating Animals the Nice Way”
Nicole K.
Braden-Johnson
In “Eating Animals the Nice Way,”
Jeff McMahan argues clearly and rightly against the notion that meat consumption
would be morally justified by treating animals well up until the moment of
their death. To summarize his main argument: to cause the premature death of a
being capable of feeling pleasure is to deprive that being of future pleasures
he or she would have otherwise experienced; and depriving any being of such
pleasures is wrong. Therefore, even the most sudden and painless killing of an
unwilling participant is wrong.
In the final pages of the article,
McMahan posits a hypothetical scenario in which it may be morally permissible
to raise and then eat non-human animals. He suggests that if we could
genetically modify pigs, for instance, to have a relatively short life-span
(two or three years), then it would be permissible to raise them and harvest
their bodies once they die. Thus, we would not be (directly) killing them and
we would not be depriving them of future pleasures, since they would not have
the capacity to live long enough to experience those pleasures. McMahan seems
to realize that there is something wrong with treating humans in a similar
fashion (perhaps, he suggests, because it causes social inequality), but cannot
see his way clear to extending the same consideration to other animals (McMahan
9-10).
After giving this scenario some consideration,
I contacted McMahan and suggested that his hypothetical example relied too
heavily on the temporal distance between an act and its consequences. I argued
that, for instance, intentionally administering a slow-acting poison that takes
twenty or more years to kill its victim is no more justified than directly and
immediately killing an innocent person. Since McMahan also suggests that one
cannot infringe upon the rights of a person who does not yet exist, I gave the
counterexample of planting time-activated bombs beneath pigpens before the pigs
in question were born. Provided we had set the bombs up in such a fashion as to
make interference impossible, it seemed no different to me than genetically
altering the lifespan of the pig.
McMahan responded that, in the case
of a genetically modified pig, the resulting pig would be a different animal
than the pig that results had we not intervened. The modified pig would have a
shorter lifespan, and so would never be in a position to forfeit future pleasures
it would not have in the first place. McMahan’s position flows from the
so-called “non-identity problem”: while causing a person to exist, albeit with
a limited lifespan, would not be better than never existing, it wouldn’t be
worse either, provided that his or her life was worth living. This is because
never existing is a morally neutral state; that is to say, it is neither good
nor bad. Therefore, it is also neither worse nor better to be brought into
existence — even if that existence is in itself good or bad.
The moral neutrality of
non-existence can be difficult initially to understand or accept (which seems
to be a main source of tension in debates regarding abortion as well). We are
so accustomed to thinking from the viewpoint of an already existing entity,
that it seems obvious that some of a good thing is better than none
of it. For example, having some apples (or favorite fruit of your choice) is
better than having no apples — at least from the perspective of an individual
who cares. A non-existent entity does not or cannot care;
indeed, it is strictly incoherent to engage in any talk of a nonexistent being
caring.
It seems to me that McMahan’s
argument still neglects two important aspects of moral decision-making: our
ability to foresee the consequences of our actions and the active role genetic
manipulation plays in cutting short a life. My counterexample of what might
actually constitute moral meat-eating (though only in theory, and only under
certain very strict conditions (1)) would be to raise animals who naturally
live to be only two or three years old, say mice, and then eat their bodies
after they have lived out their natural lives. I can see no moral reason to
oppose this practice (though a few aesthetic and practical ones come to mind).
In contrast, consider McMahan’s
example in which we genetically manipulate humans in order to harvest their
organs. The idea of creating people who die relatively young (so that their
organs are in optimal condition for transplantation), seems intuitively wrong.
In fact, we commonly accept the moral obligation to attempt to reverse or
mitigate the effects of these genetic differences. We do not, for example, ignore
or deny out obligations to assist or seek a cure a child with cystic fibrosis.
In fact, we invest considerable resources in preventing these disorders from
occurring to future people.
We know that an inborn trait is not
a sufficient basis on which to decide how long a person deserves to live, since
we have an understanding of what a fulfilling life typically
entails. Our average natural lifespan determines how fast we procreate, how
quickly we mature into adulthood, and even how we perceive time (to name a few
things). A mouse, who lives for about three years, has an entirely different relationship
to any of these biological or cognition milestones. They mature much more
quickly, procreate many more times, and perceive time differently. Pigs, who
can live about 10-15 years, have corresponding biological make-ups and perceptions
of the world. Thus, to cause a pig or human to die at an earlier age than their
evolutionary biology dictates is to cause them harm.
The genetic manipulation of any
being to shorten his or her lifespan is to cause a genetic disorder. It does not
change the humanity of a person to have cystic fibrosis any more than to have
any other type of genetic time-bomb. Our moral responsibility is clearly to
change or mitigate the undesirable outcomes for such individuals, and never
(deliberately) to cause them to exist. Similarly, you cannot erase the pig-ness
of a pig simply by giving it a genetic disorder.
It is important to note that the
non-identity problem rests on the assumption that a person’s existence is unavoidably
flawed (see M.A. Roberts’ interpretation in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy of, among others’, Derek
Parfit’s work on this subject). Clearly, choosing to modify a pig’s DNA does
not constitute an unavoidable flaw; on the contrary, this is a flaw we
have created for our own purposes and desires. In a sense, any talk about the
comparative existence or non-existence of other beings is a red herring in
cases where we choose to be the creators of the harm done to future persons.
The question is not whether a limited existence is better or worse than
non-existence. The issue is solely the act of committing avoidable harm to
another being, which is clearly wrong. Artificially shortening a life is not in
that being’s best interest unless existing with that flaw is unavoidable (2).
Notes
(1) I generally agree with Gary Francione’s
sentiments regarding the abolition of the social and legal status of animals as
property (see Francione’s “Reflections on Animals, Property, and the Law,
and Rain Without Thunder”). I don’t think we can be trusted with caring
for large numbers of animals, especially in the context of selfish, consumerist
desires rather than in an honest attempt to sustain the kind of reciprocal
relationships we associate with companion animals (and even there, our relations to nonhumans are often abusive).
(2) McMahan had also posited the scenario of a
sick person near death who could only be saved by a drug that would later kill
her. This scenario is entirely different, as this person would already be in
possession of an existence that matters to her, and so measures that prolong
her life (provided that life is worth living) are obviously morally good. In
the case of genetically modifying pigs, we are comparing non-existence to beings
brought into existence, which means the pigs are not yet in possession of a
life which matters to them.
References
Francione, Gary. “Reflections
on Animals, Property, and the Law and Rain Without Thunder.” Law and
Contemporary Problems, vol. 70, no. 1, Dec. 2007, pp. 9–58.,
scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol70/iss1/2/.
Gardner, Molly. “A
Harm-Based Solution to the Non-Identity Problem.” Ergo - An Open Access
Journal of Philosophy, vol. 2, no. 17, 2015, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0002.017.
McMahan, Jeffrey.
“Eating Animals The Nice Way.” Deadalus, vol. 137, no. 1, Dec. 2008, pp.
66–76., doi:https://doi.org/10.1162/daed.2008.137.1.66 .
Roberts, M. A.
“The Nonidentity Problem.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 21 July
2009, plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonidentity-problem/#ActWroVirAgeReaAttInt.
Nicole K. Braden-Johnson is an alumna of MCLA and
works for the Amherst Regional School System
_____________________________
The Value of
Multiculturalism
Keaton Shoults
In
the realm of contemporary moral issues, there is prominent
debate about how cultures should structure
themselves in light of concerns involving immigration policies, economic
operations, and cultural integrity. As with any worthy debate, there are people
who feel strongly on either side of the multiculturalism discussion. While some
advocate for the preservation of traditional cultures, citing economic and
cultural worries, many others embrace the idea of multiculturalism, believing
it has both economic and cultural benefits to offer. Furthermore, others feel
passionate about multiculturalism simply because it relates to matters of
freedom: freedom of movement, freedom of peoples to associate with each other,
and so on. Needless to say, the multiculturalism debate is complex. Nevertheless, multicultural societies are
inevitable in a globalizing world. What then, is the value of multiculturalism?
In short, the primary value of multiculturalism is that it tends to produce
more well-rounded societies.
Note to Readers
Thesis XII: A
Philosophical Review is
published biannually as an open forum promoting respectful philosophical
exchanges among students, faculty, alumni, and the public. Submissions reflect a diversity of
disciplinary perspectives, philosophical approaches, and topics. Those new to the discipline are especially
encouraged to participate.
Address all
correspondence to:
Dr. David K.
Braden-Johnson, Editor
Thesis XII: A
Philosophical Review
Department of
Philosophy, IDS, and Modern Languages
Massachusetts
College of Liberal Arts
North Adams,
Massachusetts 01247
Associate Editor:
Dr. Matthew R. Silliman
There are
several reasons why multiculturalism tends to produce more well-rounded
societies. To begin, a society with mixed cultures promotes intercultural
understanding, which in turn helps close the “us-them” gap that divides
cultures. This is critical in a world where cultural
misunderstanding and ignorance often contributes to widespread fear, hatred,
and animosity. Beyond this, multiculturalism has the effect of aggregating the
cultural capital of many cultures, resulting in a more diverse and
resource-rich society. No one can deny the importance of a population with
diverse experiences and skills in developing and maintaining a thriving
society. Lastly, since multicultural societies are inevitable in the globalized
world at present, one may argue that there is intrinsic value in embracing such
societies. Together, these points demonstrate how multiculturalism can produce
more well-rounded societies.
Despite
the promising aspects of multiculturalism, there are many who express reservations. For starters, a
common concern about multiculturalism is that it degrades the integrity of the
host culture. In other words, many people worry that the influx of different
cultures threatens to alter or destroy the traditions of the host culture. Others argue that multiculturalism will lead to
intercultural conflicts. From this view, these conflicts are an inevitable
product of mixing cultures, and thus cultural mixing should be avoided. Lastly,
others will likely point to economic concerns, arguing that the introduction of
a different culture of immigrants will threaten the health of the domestic
economy. Undoubtedly, such economic concerns weigh heavily on policies
affecting multiculturalism.
In response to the claim that
multiculturalism degrades the integrity of the host culture, we need to consider how it is actually a detriment for a society to
resist cultural melding in a globalized world. It is futile to fight the
globalized reality of our world. As far as intercultural conflicts go, it
is important to note how in the long run these conflicts would be better
resolved through cultural contact than through cultural isolation. Lastly, in
addressing the economic concerns raised by some opponents to multiculturalism,
it can be argued that an economy is actually better off with a more diverse
range of human capital and skills. Ultimately, it stands to reason that
multiculturalism is valuable for how it tends to produce more well-rounded societies.
References
Scheffler,
Samuel. “Immigration and the Significance of Culture.” Wiley, pp.
93–125. JSTOR [JSTOR], libproxy.mcla.edu:2095/stable/pdf/4623784.pdf.
Keaton Shoults is a student at MCLA
_____________________________
The Origin of
Moral Truth
August Stowers
The
existence of moral truth is equiprimordial with the human condition. Normative
statements will remain intelligible for as long as human beings possess the
capacity to be harmed or benefited by the actions of their peers. The origin of
harm and benefit is not intrinsic to the universe, but it is intrinsic to
humanity. I will define harm and benefit as results that are, respectively,
conducive and not conducive to a person’s good. As T. M. Benditt points out,
“not everything that is properly called a benefit promotes one's good;
similarly, not everything that is properly called harm adversely affects one's
good” (Benditt 120). Now, a person’s good is not intrinsic to the universe but
arises when a being can conceive of its own good. I use the word “conceive” for
lack of a better term because this capacity is pre-mental, emotional, or
instinctual, and is a consequence of sentience. This means that many non-human
animals have some moral existence as well. What would perish with humankind is
access to moral truth, not moral truth itself.
I will not
argue that the universe does not have an intrinsic moral reality since it has
no bearing on my conclusion. Moral truth exists at least as a
consequence of sentience and the human condition.
Of the
several breeds of moral anti-realism that I will consider as counter-arguments,
the first is emotivism, the idea that morally charged statements serve only to
express emotions. Even though moral judgements are simply expressions of
emotion, emotion is a valid way of knowing when it comes to morality. My
definition of personal good revolves around a subjective and emotional instinct
or intuition on the part of the subject. Expressing a feeling that something is
wrong or right has worth as an argument. Even if emotivism is valid and correct
it may miss the point.
This
leaves the semantic component of emotivism, which is shared by many moral
anti-realist positions, ”the claim that moral sentences lack truth conditions”
(Stoljar 81). This claim is highly counterintuitive since moral statements seem
to possess truth conditions. Daniel Stoljar concludes that the problem of moral
statements having the appearance of truth value is easily solved by distinguishing
between a deflationary and inflationary theory of truth. Under emotivism moral
statements have deflationary truth value, but not inflationary truth value. In
other words, it rests its case on the non-existence of something to which moral
statements might correspond. But this is something that I have provided with my
explanation of moral truth’s origin. Moral statements correspond to the
instinctual existence of personal good.
Prescriptivism
is not totally incompatible with my position since it is the position that
moral statements should be taken as imperatives for people in similar
circumstances. If it were to be reconciled with my position, prescriptivism’s
imperatives would have greater weight because they would actually apply to
their subjects. That still leaves the prescriptivist position that moral
statements have no truth value, which I addressed earlier.
Moral
fictionalism views moral statements as fictions that are useful or even
necessary for everyday life. This is where I need to bring in outside
assumptions. Fiction exists in a literal sense, but not in the same place as
physically existent objects. Literally true and fictionally true are not
mutually exclusive categories, and moral truths fit into both. This mode of
truth is also different enough from the truth of the non-fictional world to
keep my position from offending a moral quasi-realist, who would posit that
truth value can be attributed to moral statements even though they do not
actually correspond to ethical facts.
The last
moral anti-realist position I will tackle is projectivism. The idea that we
project qualities onto objects of our perception. I will add to it the caveat
that projected qualities exist fictionally and apply literally to the objects
that we attach them to. I refer back to my treatment with moral fictionalism.
As for
moral relativism, it could be reconciled with my position as long as it is not
coupled with moral anti-realism. Moral truth could exist even if it changes by
place or time. And like relativism, my position avoids the problem of
disregarding cultural differences.
Some forms
of moral relativism view the logic of moral statements as circular, which is a
problem for me. Of course, moral statements rely on specific moral
systems for their truth or falsity, but, as Torbjörn Tänsjö points out, “The
claim as such makes no reference to the existence of these principles” (131).
The only part of a moral system that an individual moral claim absolutely must
echo is the one that establishes the truth value of moral claims.
References
Benditt, T. M.
“Benefit and Harm.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 37, no. 1,
1976, pp. 116–120. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2106377.
Winch, Peter. “Can
a Good Man Be Harmed?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 66, 1965,
pp. 55–70. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4544722.
Stoljar, Daniel.
“Emotivism and Truth Conditions.” Philosophical Studies: An International
Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, vol. 70, no. 1, 1993, pp.
81–101. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4320397.
Tännsjö, Torbjörn.
“Moral Relativism.” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for
Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, vol. 135, no. 2, 2007, pp. 123–143.
JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40208744.
Moore, Michael S.
“Moral Reality Revisited.” Michigan Law Review, vol. 90, no. 8, 1992, pp.
2424–2533. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1289577.
August Stowers is a student at MCLA
_____________________________
_____________________________
Closing the Gap
Between Deontological and Teleological Theories of Ethics
Michael McAndrew
The
distinction between teleological and deontological theories of ethics is
unnecessary and can get in the way of sound ethical decision making because it
needlessly separates two very important facets of human existence: the contents
of the world and the contents of our mind. Both things need to play an
important role in the decisions that we make. These two categories, as they are
commonly described have more in common with one another then proponents of
these two branches of thought would like to admit. Deontological arguments are
based off human reason and fulfilling duties that through reason can become
apparent. In trying to fulfill these duties, sometimes one will have to make
difficult choices that make it appears as if those who support deontological
theories are disregarding the consequences of their actions. This could not be
further from the truth of the matter. While there are some obvious negative
consequences that can arise from people following their duty, there is still
one good that does arise out of this, namely the satisfaction of doing one’s
duty.
When
thinking about teleological theories, a similar problem emerges: How is it
possible to maximize the good without a preconceived notion of what the good
is? The concept of the good that you are trying to maximize cannot arise from
experience because there is a variety of states of being that could
be considered good. A teleological theory would become completely incoherent if
all goods were trying to be maximized at once because these goods often conflict
with one another. Without some type of consensus on what the good that one is
trying to maximize is, these theories would fall into relativism as everyone
would try to maximize what they thought was good.
Governments
based off of constitutional law are very similar to deontological ethical
theories. In a constitutional government, a set of basic principles (the
constitution) are listed out as the basis for all other laws that are passed
within the country. Countries with constitutional courts, like the United
States Supreme Court, use these courts to decide whether laws passed by
legislature follow these basic principles. Often, these courts will try to make
their decision in an abstract manner based off the original principles set down
in the constitution. While this frequently works, there have been times when
consequences of these judgments are considered and the more abstract,
deontological based judgements are found to have unexpected consequences that
can be damaging. One example of this is the busing of inner city students to
other school districts in the name of equality following the U.S. civil rights
movement. While it was originally thought that this would be a positive thing
to do because it would increase equality, people found that the busing led to
unforeseen problems that negated its positive effects, like academic standards
continuing to fall at schools students were bused from (1). While they do
provide a solid starting point for ethical judgments, they cannot be the only
thing we appeal to as human experience is far too complex and variable to be
able to make accurate and acceptable judgments solely from pre-established
principles. While humans are good abstract thinkers, this ability decreases
with the complexity of the problem (2). Since ethical issues are often some of
the most difficult problems humans must solve, it follows that it would be
difficult for humans to solve these problems without concrete experiential data
to help them along in their decision.
One may
argue that mixing deontological and teleological theories could lead to the
needs of the individual being disregarded as the consequences of the action
over a wide segment of society must be considered, which may make the impact on
the individual seem negligible. This does not need to be true, as is shown by
John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice. In
this book, Rawls lays out a contractualist view of how society should be
organized. He does this by creating two principles that need to be followed: individual freedom and economic equality. Rawls admits that these two things
cannot happen at the same time and that individual freedoms need to be
established before having economic equality is truly possible (3). This
ordering of rules that must be followed makes it so that society is not
improved at the expense of the individual. The only way for economic equality
to be reached is by first looking at the consequences of individual freedom
then tailoring the rules to ensure that both freedom and equality are both met.
These rules cannot be decided upon outside experience of how this freedom will
affect social and economic conditions.
References
(1)
The Learning Network, “April 20, 1971: Supreme Court Rules That Busing Can Be
Used To Integrate Schools, accessed 9/15/17, https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com /2012/04/20/april-20-1971-supreme-court-rules-that-busing-can-be-used-to-integrate-schools/.
(2)
Carsten Murawski and Peter Bossaerts, “How Humans Solve Complex Problems: the
Case of the Knapsack Problem”, Scientific
Reports (2016), accessed 9/15/17,
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep34851.
(3)
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard
University Press (1971), 214-220.
Michael McAndrew
is a student at MCLA
_____________________________
_____________________________
Eleven Theses on
Realism
David K.
Braden-Johnson
Metaphysical realism (MR), in concert with
common sense, amounts to the claim that the world exists and has a nature that
is entirely independent of our thoughts, words, and perceptions. However, talk
of the world’s independence — a world, in Kantian nomenclature, that exists
“in-and-for itself” — raises the specter of radical, epistemically debilitating
skepticism: does MR posit a world we cannot possibly know or even sensibly
refer to in thought or language? As Marx’s long-time friend and collaborator,
Friedrich Engels, asks:
In what
relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world
itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able
in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of
reality? Thus the question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation
of the spirit to nature [is] the paramount question of the whole of philosophy
(Engels, F., Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German
Philosophy).
In the
following eleven theses I attempt to shed some light on these questions.
1.
Skepticism can inform, but never derail, MR. In my view, skepticism, like the
quest for certain knowledge (see #2 below), looms all too large in
epistemology. Skeptical doubts can serve as a check on our most cherished
beliefs (not always fun but constructive); at the extreme, however, they amount
to little more than a game (fun but not very constructive). But there are
limits. Traditional skepticism, like any number of fantastic hypotheses, can
easily undermine most of our claims to know the world, but not the claim that
the world exists and has a determinate nature, since the latter claim is
presupposed by the skeptical thesis itself (see #6 below).
2. MR is
not absolutist, impossibly transcendent, or mystical. Metaphysical claims are,
or ought to be, speculative and testable in terms of the observable differences
that would result if they were true. But notice: Very few things outside of
logic and other formal systems can be known absolutely or with certainty,
including many, if not all, of our internal states. So, if certainty were the
standard of all legitimate knowledge, realism and its anti-realist competitors
— in fact, all epistemological views, including Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenalist
reduction of material objects to qualifications of possible or actual
experience — would suffer alike. Often glossing this latter point, the tendency
in anti-realist circles is selectively to condemn realism for a constitutive
limitation of all empirical inquiry.
3. MR, as
I understand and apply it, is just that: a metaphysical rather than epistemic
notion about what there is. It amounts to the rather pedestrian-sounding claim
that the nonhuman world (alternatively: the external world, nature, reality,
the universe) exists and has a nature independently of what we think, say, or
do. It is not reducible to or dependent on any epistemic or semantic thesis. In
particular, beyond the bare assertion of its independence from our conceptions,
it does not say anything at all about whether and to what degree we can know
this world or how that knowledge might come about. Of course, various epistemic
theses seem to provide better or worse explanations of our common experience of
the world; but none, including correspondence truth, is entailed by realism.
4. The
natural world is manifestly impervious to and predates our existence; it
certainly takes no interest (pardon the anthropomorphic flourish) in our
efforts to conceptualize or structure it. In an exact reversal of the emphases
and methods of contemporary linguistic philosophy — which would have us derive
anti-realist conclusions from some theory of meaning or language — we ought to
locate or “naturalize” epistemology within an overarching theory of the world,
just as humans, qua terrestrial mammals, are located within nature as one of
its creatures. That is, metaphysical speculation, as a collection of abductive
inferences, qualifies and extends our understanding of a world that we have
always known, at least in general outline. (For an extended defense of this and
the previous paragraph, see Devitt; see also Weissman. 1989.)
5. There
can be no “God’s eye,” neutral, transcendent, or otherwise non-sensed view of
the world, contra Putnam’s and Rorty’s well-known critiques of
realism. To perceive the world is always to employ the perceptual resources of
some perceiver or other occupying a determinate spatio-temporal location. That
is, the nonhuman world can only be known, if it can be known at all, in terms
first I, employing the chaotic and relatively autonomous cognitive skills of an
infant, and then we, as language and sociality enter the scene more completely,
supply in our conceptualizations of experience. Furthermore, our choice of
conceptual scheme is mostly arbitrary. I resist saying it is entirely arbitrary
given the plausibility of certain nativist, evolutionary, or naturalized
accounts of our thinking. Of course, not all conceptual schemes will make
sense, comport with basic logic or rationality, or prove at all useful. These
words explain my “trivial constructivist” (see von Glasersfeld) sympathies and
natural preference for certain pedagogical methods: Epistemically speaking, the
world never, or very rarely, imposes itself on us (some exceptions can be found
in the dictates of elementary logic where, for example, the principle of
noncontradiction has a naturally existing counterpart in the refusal of
instantiated particulars to possess contradictory properties); rather, we
decide what to look for in the world and how to conceptualize it. Given these
qualifications, I can unambiguously, if rather trivially, assert that all
knowledge is a construction of the knower.
6. It is
a truism that every view of the world is a view of someone and from somewhere
(#5 above). Nevertheless, from that fact alone nothing of (especially
anti-realist) interest logically follows about what can or cannot be known. In
particular, it does not follow that we cannot know the world as it is
independent of our experience. What does follow is the related, second-order
and skeptical worry that we might not know in any particular case if we fail or
succeed to know the world as it is independent of our experience (see #1
above). But this limited skepticism is no threat to realism, for two reasons.
First, MR supplies the very condition of intelligibility for all varieties of
skepticism — if there were no world, there would be nothing to be skeptical
about. And second, many of our speculative, referential claims about the world
receive experiential confirmation as we infer abductively from successful or
unsuccessful action to the external conditions for the truth of these
representations. At any rate, these are epistemic worries unrelated to the basic
assumption of MR (see #3 above), that the world exists and has a nature
independent of all that we think, say, or do.
7.
Anti-realism (alternatively: radical phenomenalism, relativistic
neo-Kantianism, postmodern idealism, irrealism, radical constructivism/empiricism,
etc.) supposes that knowledge must consist of the interanimation of these two
things: The indubitable contents of immediate experience and the rules of
deductive inference. These restrictions on knowledge guarantee that the world
remains unknowable or unthinkable, since none of its features would be directly
inspectable in this way. Further, it restricts anti-realists to the flat,
descriptive plane of sensory data — the so-called “experiential worlds” of
radical constructivism — disallowing reference either to extra-mental causes of
the differentiations and orders present to experience or to the uninspectable
properties of knowers capable of organizing and conceptualizing the data
received. Despite the well advertised utility of their view (see Rorty and
Putnam), anti-realist pragmatists or constructivists of a radical stripe have
embraced what amounts to, when compared to MR, an explanatorily useless
doctrine. Relaxing the logical empiricist demand for verification, realism
proposes this alternative, hypothetical method: we infer abductively from the
inspectable differences and samenesses to their extra-linguistic,
extra-conceptual conditions and causes. The existence and nature of the
external world then serves as the conclusion of a rather global and often
unconscious inference to the best explanation of successful practice. Contrary
to radical empiricist scruples, experience is not the object of knowledge, but
that activity by which we come to know the world (see Devitt).
8.
Analysis suggests that coherence truth collapses in every case to
correspondence truth, which is apparently ingredient in the very notion of
truth. Combining our best theory of truth with realism we say, in a
neo-Aristotelian spirit, that our thoughts are true when and if they correspond
to the way things are (see Weissman, 1993).
9. Given
the arbitrariness and diversity of our conceptualizations, correspondence is
rarely picture-like or isomorphic. Rather, our thoughts and sentences signify
possible configurations of properties and relations obtaining in the world.
When the possibilities signified are actual, the sentences are true. Though
correspondence is the apparent meaning of truth, what it means in any
particular instance for some element of a conceptual scheme to correspond to
the world is determined internally to that conceptual scheme. For example,
however I might choose to conceptualize some entity X, it is the world, not my
scheme, that determines the truthfulness of claims such as “the world contains more
than one X or “X is larger than the average porcupine.” That is, from my
naturalistic perspective, truth is radically non-epistemic.
10.
Furthermore, given the arbitrariness and diversity of our conceptualizations,
the world determines but never guarantees our access to truth. We may rarely,
if ever, be right about the world; but even when, as traditional skepticism
would have it, we are entirely or mostly wrong, we are wrong about the way the
world really is. That is, contemporary realism combined with correspondence
truth is always fallibilistic and never “naïve.”
11. Since
I deny the sense of deriving MR from the immediate contents of experience, my
view, contra critics like Rorty, does not attempt to do what
is clearly impossible: To know the world extra-conceptually or without the
assistance of any concepts or input from experience. Rather, I claim only to
infer abductively from the noticeable effects to its conditions within a
particular conceptual scheme to the extra-conceptual and determinate nature of
the world, just as a mapmaker makes a map of the world that contains his or her
own position. While to know the world without employing thoughts is quite
nonsensical, to know the world as it is without thoughts is commonplace.
Appeals to science and common sense, rather than signaling a naïve faith in the
world as guarantor of truth, are used fallibilistically and hypothetically to
provide billions of daily bits of evidence in favor of a more robust realism
that posits the mind-independent existence and nature of the many objects and
relations of everyday experience, like trees, cats, rocks, and other people,
etc. The abductively confirmed hypothesis of the existence of the objects and
relations of this extra-conceptual world, its successful application to
science, practice, and everyday life, its sheer popularity and persistence, all
conspire to make this the default position against which alternatives inherit
the burden of proof. There is, I suppose, no non-question begging, deductive
proof of realism or immediate grasping of reality (but see Stove for a
compelling defense of the view that metaphysical realism is a necessary truth,
and Pols for a defense of the idea that we directly apprehend much of the
world).
References
Devitt, Michael.
1991. Realism and Truth. Basil Blackwell.
Pols, Edward. 1992. Radical
Realism. Cornell University Press.
Putnam, Hilary. 1987. The
Many Faces of Realism. Open Court Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton University Press.
Stove, David. 1991. The
Plato Cult. Basil Blackwell.
Von Glasersfeld, Ernst.
1995. Radical Constructivism. Falmer Press.
Weissman, David J. 1989. Hypothesis
and the Spiral of Reflection. SUNY Press;
Weissman, David J. 1993. Truth’s
Debt to Value. Yale University Press.
David
K Braden-Johnson teaches Philosophy at MCLA
_____________________________
Kant's Transcendental Idealism and the Crisis of Metaphysics
Paul Nnodim
“To
avoid all misapprehension, it is necessary to explain, as clearly as possible,
what our view is regarding the fundamental constitution of sensible knowledge
in general. What we have meant to say is that all our intuition is nothing but
the representation of appearance; that the things which we intuit are not in
themselves what we intuit them as being, nor their relations so constituted in
themselves as they appear to us, and that if the subject, or even only the
subjective constitution of the senses in general, be removed, the whole
constitution and all the relations of objects in space and time, nay space and
time themselves, would vanish. As appearances, they cannot exist in themselves,
but only in us. What objects may be in themselves, and apart from all this
receptivity of our sensibility, remains completely unknown to us. We know
nothing but our mode of perceiving them…. Even if we could bring our intuition to the highest degree of clearness,
we should not thereby come any nearer to the constitution of objects in
themselves. We should still know only our mode of intuition, that is, our
sensibility. … What the objects may be in themselves would never become known
to us even through the most enlightened knowledge of that which is alone given
us, namely, their appearance….”
(Immanuel
Kant – Critique of Pure Reason translated
by Norman Kemp Smith, 2007, 81: General Remarks on Transcendental Aesthetic.)
Introduction
As the excerpt indicates, the focus of this paper
is Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) distinction between appearance (phenomenon)
and the thing-in-itself (das Ding an sich or noumenon) in the Critique
of Pure Reason (1781) – hereafter Critique.
For some of Kant’s critics (including some German idealists, such as
Fichte and Hegel), the hermeneutical debacle that accompanies this juxtaposition
marks the crisis of metaphysics. If the scope of metaphysical inquiry encompasses
the potential unraveling of ultimate reality, they argue, then a plausible corollary of Kant’s unknowable noumenon is the futility
of the metaphysical enterprise. In
distinguishing appearance from the thing-in-itself, does Kant suggest the
existence of two ontological worlds, one phenomenal and the other noumenal?Or are the phenomenon and the noumenon two aspects of the same thing? Does his
critical philosophy make ontological claims or merely espouse epistemic
propositions? And what does metaphysics mean for Kant? I will be defending what I see as Kant’s epistemological and
methodological refutation of the metaphysical dogmatism of both his
predecessors and contemporaries. My claim is that the Kantian Copernican Revolution
was a relatively unproblematic thesis, but one injudiciously mired in the
circuitousness and irresolution of its author. Kant’s doctrinal
inconsistencies, even in the revised, second edition of the Critique (1787) encourage his detractors
to galvanize the “two-worlds” and the “two-aspects” debate. (1) Nonetheless, in the letters he wrote to some of his
associates, Kant appeared to lend more support to the “two-aspects” interpretation.
By considering his transcendental idealism
as merely a reflection upon the synthetic a priori conditions of human cognition
and the fallibilism of experiential
knowledge, I hope to have defended Kant’s critical philosophy from possible
charges of empirical idealism. Thus, instead of pronouncing an “eschatological” judgment upon metaphysics,
as some of Kant’s critics allege, the Critique serves
a propaedeutic function to the discourse.
What is Metaphysics for Kant?
In the history of Western
philosophy, the term metaphysics is but an accidental construct. Tὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ
βιβλία, or “the books that follow the
books on physics” was the phrase adopted
by Andronicus of Rhodes (ca. 70 B.C.), the editor of Aristotle’s works, to catalog πρώτη φιλοσοφία or First Philosophy. Since then, this
collection of Aristotle’s treatises on όν η όν or knowledge of beings qua beings goes by
the name Metaphysics, (2) while what Aristotle precisely meant by όν η όν remains a conundrum.
In the search for incontrovertible reasons for the appropriateness of the word
metaphysics, medieval scholars misconstrued the original meaning of the term. Thomas
Aquinas (1225-1274), for example, understood metaphysics to mean the science of
the supersensible world (meta-physica
– beyond or after physical nature): “metaphysical sciences would mean, those
which we study after having mastered the sciences which deal with the physical
world.” (Cath. Encyl. 226) In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1997),
Heidegger recommends that we first question
whether what is brought together in the Aristotelian Metaphysics is “metaphysics” in the first place before defining the
subject matter of First Philosophy (Heidegger 4) Evidently, the post-Aristotelian development of
metaphysics as a field of philosophical inquiry is
not predicated on the template of an existing Aristotelian system, “but
rather to a lack of understanding concerning the questionable and open nature
of the central problems left by Plato and Aristotle” (Heidegger 5).
In the Critique,
Kant begins his inquiry into the nature of metaphysics with “architectonic
circumscription and delineation” (Heidegger 2). Metaphysics requires a ground-laying or ground works, the laying of a
foundation through which its essence can be
understood. How “laying the ground” became the Critique of Pure Reason indicates that, perhaps, Kant’s idea of
metaphysics differs from the present-day meaning of the term. As Heidegger further notes: “The horizon from within
which Kant saw metaphysics and in terms of which his ground-laying must be
fixed may be characterized roughly by means of Baumgarten’s definition: “Metaphysica est Scientia prima cognitionis
humanae principia continens” (Baumgarten 1) (3) or “Metaphysics is the
science that contains the first principles of human knowledge” (Heidegger
3). For Kant, the sphere of metaphysical inquiry transcends the empirical
analysis of both human experience and nature. It
is literally, to say the least, the science which follows after and goes beyond
physics (nature): “…now φύσις is called
Nature, but we can arrive at the concept of Nature in no other way than through
experience, so that the science which follows from it is called Metaphysics
(from μετά, trans, and physica). It is a science that is, so to speak, outside of the field of
physics, which lies on the other side of it” (Heidegger 4). (4)
Contemporary critics of Kant’s transcendental idealism are
either unmindful of his idea of metaphysics or tend to define metaphysics
differently, while retroactively demanding that Kant agree with their views.
They define metaphysics as the study of whatever is or ontology, and everything that
exists is its subject matter. For
Kant, however, metaphysical questions are about the operation of thoughts
called judgments. In the Critique, he presents two of these judgments: analytic and synthetic. All analytic judgments are a priori. They are informed by necessity
and universality and do not depend on our
experience of particular cases to be valid. For example, all triangles have
three angles. The predicate (angles) is
implicit in the subject. Such a predicate
does not give us any new information about the subject.
Most synthetic judgments are a
posteriori. For example, the statement “all girls at Mt. Greylock Regional
High School play lacrosse” is a synthetic a
posteriori judgment. The proposition may be contingently true, but not necessarily true. The validity of
this statement is dependent upon sense experience (see Stumpf and Fieser 276).
But can there be a third judgment that is both a priori (universal and necessary) but
also arising from experience (synthetic)?
If so, how are a priori synthetic
judgments possible? Despite the daunting nature of the question, Kant believes
that we already make such judgments in
the sciences, such as in mathematics and physics.
Thus, to pose a similar question
in metaphysics is not preposterous
because metaphysics relies on a judgment
that is akin to what obtains in the sciences. Nevertheless, such an inquiry would cause some tremor
at the foundations of the dogmatic metaphysics
of continental rationalism and British empiricism. This explains why Kant’s figurative laying of the ground for the
foundations of metaphysics must be carried
out as a critique of pure reason.
The Copernican
Revolution
The
discoveries in the sciences in 18th century Europe impressed Kant.
However, he was quite disillusioned with the dogmatic rationalism represented primarily by Leibniz and skeptical
empiricism, especially that of Hume. That said, science also had its problems
as it raised the bar for philosophical inquiry. The mechanistic and
reductionist methodologies of the sciences posed serious problems for the
philosopher, who stood helpless as the mechanical worldview gobbled up the ideas
of God, freedom, and moral values. For the Rationalists, human reason was the
only source of reliable knowledge. The empiricists insisted on the superiority
of sense experience. Hume’s empirical criterion of meaning led to his outright
denial of God, self, and causality. In fact, George Berkeley (1685-1753) went a
little further to claim that all we could perceive were our own ideas and to be is to be perceived (esse
est percipi).
Kant’s
novel proposition about the acquisition
of knowledge, in the Critique, is
that objects conform to the operation of the mind and not the other way round. He would
arrive at this supposition by following the footsteps of Copernicus, who
“failing of satisfactory progress in explaining the movements of the heavenly
bodies on the supposition that they all revolved round the spectator, he tried
whether he might not have better success if he made the spectator to revolve
and the stars to remain at rest” (Stumpf & Fieser 278). Kant does
not claim that the human mind fashions objects or like Descartes, that humans possess innate ideas. His so-called Copernican
revolution simply means that the human mind is not a passive recipient of sense
data, but engages actively in the epistemological process. In other words,
human ways of knowing go beyond the passive reception of sense impressions to make judgments about experience itself.
The mind imposes what Kant calls the categories of thought on the object of
sensation. These categories are like the lenses through which humans perceive
reality: “[j]ust as a person who wears colored glasses sees everything in that
color, so every human being, having the faculty of thought, inevitably thinks
about things in accordance with the
natural structure of the mind” (278). Thus, neither intellect nor sensibility
alone can produce knowledge, but both must complement each other in the knowing
process. Hence, Kant thinks that he has successfully reconciled rationalism
with empiricism.
Kant’s Transcendental Idealism
Kant’s transcendental
idealism posits that objects in space and time are not absolute, but relative
to the necessary conditions of experience. By implication, this claim suggests the idea of a reality beyond those conditions
and limitations (phenomenon) - the world as it is in itself (noumenon). The
mind as a direct contributor of knowledge exerts some influence or authority
upon the nature of reality. We may call this constructivist realism. Thus, phenomenal reality is the world or things as we
experience them in space and time (forms of intuition) through the categories
of thought. The categories of thought, twelve in
number, are listed under four concepts: quality (one or many), quantity
(positive or negative), relation (cause and effect), and modality (possible or
impossible) (Kant 57). Unlike the empiricists, Kant does not view concepts as
faint copies of sensory images, but as rules for making judgments. Concepts are not to be reified or regarded as
things in the mind. They only have meaning
in relation to the function they have in judgment. We judge the variety of our
experiences or the “manifold of experience” as Kant calls it, through certain fixed forms or concepts (Stumpf
& Fieser 279).
Noumenal
reality or the thing-in-itself (Ding an sich) is the world as it is independent
of our experience of it. But can the noumenon be reified? Does it point to a
thing as such? Philosophers after
Kant have been guilty of pardonable amphiboly because of his ambivalent
presentation of both the transcendental idealism and the transcendental
aesthetic. Moses Mendelsohn (1729-1786) thought of the thing-it-self “as a
distinct entity, so that an appearance is one thing, the thing-in-itself
another” (Scruton 55). Kant’s student J.S. Beck “took the phrase
‘thing-in-itself’ to refer to a way of describing the very same object that we
also know as an appearance” (55). It is
plausible to follow Beck’s interpretation, since Kant himself supports this
version of the idea of the noumenon more than the two-worlds aspect in his
correspondence with Beck and several passages of the follow-up book - Critique
of Practical Reason, and in other letters (55). He writes: “All objects
that can be given to us can be conceptualized in two ways; on the one hand, as
appearances; on the other, as things in themselves” (55).
Conclusion
I
will conclude by saying that Kant’s critical philosophy is not the end of
metaphysics but a preparation for it. His
transcendental idealism states that the
claims we make about empirical
knowledge are real, even though we cannot prove them with absolute certainty.
There may be another dimension to being,
which is not only unknown to the human mind
but will never be given to human
knowledge, no matter how hard we try. The noumenon, in my understanding, plays
no positive role in theoretical knowledge.
It has empty extensional meaning, which
reminds us of the limitations of knowledge and sensation – namely the
parameters established by the conditions of experience (see also Scruton 56). It would amount to a category mistake to think
otherwise. Kant’s transcendental idealism is also clearly distinguishable from
any form of Berkeley’s empirical idealism or in its contemporary form – radical constructivism. Kant does not
say that we know only the contents of our minds or ideas, or as Strawson claims
that “…reality is supersensible and
that we can have no knowledge of it” (Allison 5). What we know or can know
through the senses and the imposition of the categories of thought is reality
and is objective. However, phenomenal knowledge is not absolutely objective. As fallibilism demands, we can accept propositions about empirical knowledge even though we cannot demonstrate their validity with absolute
certainty. Like
the refraction of the rainbow on a pond of water through which Goethe's Faust perceives
the beauty of the sun and declares: “Am
farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben” (Geothe 8) (5), the phenomena provide us with objective knowledge that we may nevertheless call a refraction. Rather than signaling the crisis of
metaphysics, the Critique is a preparation for metaphysics or as the title
of Kant’s follow-up book suggests – A Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.
*I would like to thank my good friend, Professor Uchenna Okeja of Rhodes University, South Africa, for his invaluable suggestions.
*I would like to thank my good friend, Professor Uchenna Okeja of Rhodes University, South Africa, for his invaluable suggestions.
Bibliography
Allison,
H.E. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism.
Yale University Press, 2004.
Goethe,
Wolfgang von. Goethe's Werke.
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Buc hhandlung, 1832.
Heidegger,
Martin. Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics. Indiana University Press, 1997.
Heinze, M. Vorlesungen Kants ueber Metaphysik asu drei
Semestern. Abhdlg. Der K. Saechsich. Ges. Der Wissenschaften. Volume XIV,
phil.-hist. KL. 1894.
Herbermann, C.G., et al. (eds).
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Kant,
Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007.
Scruton,
Roger. Kant: A Very Short Introduction.
Oxford University Press, 2001.
Seung, T.K.
Kant: A Guide For the Perplexed.
Continuum, 2007.
Simmonds, G.P. “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: A
Hopeless Case?” (http://www.academia.edu/13693414/Kants_Transcendental_Idealism_A_Hopeless_Case)
Stumpf,
Samuel Enoch & Fieser, James. Philosophy:
History and Readings. McGraw-Hill, 2008.
Wood, Allen
(ed.). Basic Writings of Kant. Modern
Library, 2001.
Notes
(1) See Simmonds 2015.
(2)
The Cath. Encyc. P. 226.
(3)
A.G. Baumgarten,
Metaphysica, 2d. ed (1743 ss1), cited in Heidegger 1997, 3.
(4)
M. Heinze, Vorlesungen Kants ueber Metaphysik asu drei
Semestern. Abhdlg. Der K. Saechsich. Ges. Der Wissenschaften. Volume XIV,
phil.-hist. KL. 1894, p.666 (S. 186) – see also Heidegger 4.
(5)Life
is ours by a colorful refraction.
Paul Nnodim teaches Philosophy at MCLA
_____________________________
