/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17475049]

Are there any philosophers that defend Hume from Kant's criticism and draw more from him than Kant?

[Anonymous No.17475065]

>>17475049
Hume defends himself from Kant preemptively and without even anticipating him, merely by being completely right about everything, any honest man who reads Kant sees the Scottish Blob's face swimming mellowly before his eyes as if to ask 'isn't he a silly fellow this stunted kraut'

[Anonymous No.17475069]

>>17475049
>draw more from him than Kant?
every single english language one

[Anonymous No.17475075]

>>17475069
Elaborate, it's not like that much is lost in translation.

[Anonymous No.17475091]

>>17475049
Fuck is he wearing on his head

[Anonymous No.17475302]

>>17475075
Anglo philosophers have followed Elizabeth Anscombe in her paper Modern Moral Philosophy on returning to Hume

https://www.pitt.edu/~mthompso/readings/mmp.pdf

[Anonymous No.17475313]

>>17475049
Hume.

[Anonymous No.17475323]

>>17475049
>Kant's criticism
There's no criticism. Kant just tries to take Hume's skepticism further to some sort of resolution.

[Anonymous No.17475396]

>>17475049
Hume and Kant aren't different much

[Anonymous No.17475398]

>>17475075
the entire anglo-american philosophical tradition is more influenced by hume than kant. kant is mainly influential amongst continentals and pseuds.

[Anonymous No.17475415]

>>17475049
Any of the Neo-Humean skeptics who attacked Kant in the 1780s/90s (Maimon, Schulze etc...). Other than that I'm sure there are a lot of Anglo philosophers who are anti-Kantian.

[Anonymous No.17475424]

>>17475049
Deleuze. The first thing he ever wrote was a book in praise of Hume. Although later on in his own peculiar way he fuses him with Kant to birth the monster-child called Transcendental Empiricism.

[Anonymous No.17475462]

>>17475424
>birth the monster-child called Transcendental Empiricism
Please elaborate

[Anonymous No.17475468]

>>17475065
I keked although you are wrong

[Anonymous No.17475581]

>>17475049
Hume was far more Kantian than Kant himself realized, and CERTAINLY more than /lit/ realizes. His brand of skepticism is deeply misunderstood by idiots who don't read the Enquiry closely and never even read the Treatise.
>>17475069
>>17475398
This is false. Even logical positivism, stereotyped as Humean, was actually extremely Kantian in its Carnapian form. People like Strawson and Putnam and Sellars are explicitly more Kantian than Humean. Others like Quine, Davidson, and Rorty are the same. And then the metaphysical realists who follow (people like Kripke and Lewis and so forth) are certainly not either Humean OR Kantian, but a return to a sort of realism which is both anti-phenomenalist AND anti-transcendental idealist. So no, analytics are not very Humean at all, this is just another example of /lit/ idiots not reading the people they talk about (in this case, analytic philosophy).
>>17475424
Deleuze doesn't really read Hume correctly at all, but one thing Deleuze is right to do is to implicitly recognize Hume as a continental forefather. Hume was the first critical philosopher, not Kant. That's because he was seeking after the conditions for the possibility of certain beliefs we hold, such as our belief in external objects, in mental subjects, and so forth. He was employing transcendental reasoning and giving critiques of more uncritical and dogmatic forms of thinking.

[Anonymous No.17475611]

>>17475462
We have ways of categorizing experience(Kant's project: looking for the transcendental conditions that structure our experience)
But experience presents radical novelty(difference) that does not fit with those categories, this violent abomination forces us into thinking, and it is what allows/compels us to creatively construct categories by which to understand this event of radical novelty(empiricism). We create concepts to slice up the world, then the world reacts and grows more complex, we change our concepts and then deal with the problem, new problem arises, repeat add infinitum: this is transcendental empiricism; the eternal game of chaos vs order.

[Anonymous No.17475698]

>>17475611
I don't see the difference to Transcendental Idealism

[Anonymous No.17475714]

humians
>bro how can we be sure the sun will rise tomorrow


ya no need to defend him

[Anonymous No.17475762]

>>17475065
>the Scottish Blob's
Hume wasn't Scottish.

[Anonymous No.17475791]

>>17475762
>David Hume (/hjuːm/; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776)[10] was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher,

[Anonymous No.17475800]

>>17475611
>But experience presents radical novelty(difference) that does not fit with those categories, this violent abomination forces us into thinking, and it is what allows/compels us to creatively construct categories by which to understand this event of radical novelty(empiricism). We create concepts to slice up the world, then the world reacts and grows more complex, we change our concepts and then deal with the problem, new problem arises, repeat add infinitum: this is transcendental empiricism; the eternal game of chaos vs order.
Wow so Deleuze recreated Carnap by reading Hume creatively? Not the first time continentals recreate Carnap and then still think the worst of him without having read him. Because this is literally what Carnap's conception of constructed categories is. And that is almost literally his term by the way, see Aufbau section 101 where he calls them constructional forms of synthesis, and section 83 where he talks about seeing the forms of synthesis as categories. But Carnap conceives these as conventionalist rather than transcendental: we pick them according to our practical purposes (i.e. Deleuze's problem solving needs). This is why continentals should actually read Carnap as counter-intuitive as that sounds.

[Anonymous No.17475805]

>>17475791
*Also he actually spent tens of thousands (in modern money) to get an English accent, identified as English and published books encouraging Scots to become Englishmen.

[Anonymous No.17475812]

>>17475805
So he was a Scot that wished he was English, still a Scot

[Anonymous No.17475817]

>>17475805
>>17475812
You fuckers arguing about Hume's race instead of Hume's philosophy is why /lit/ sucks.

[Anonymous No.17475827]

>>17475812
>a man who had nothing scottish about him is scottish
No.
>>17475817
>race
No one mentioned race.

[Anonymous No.17475856]

>>17475800
Not the guy you're replying to but do you think we can escape the analytical-continental dichotomy with bits and pieces from each school? Neither rejecting nor adhering to one, but transcending the issue altogether?

[Anonymous No.17475867]

>>17475856
Yes. I will do my part to try and read both sides completely because they've both got valuable insights. Kant bridged the empiricist-rational divide and we can do the same today with the analytic-continental divide, the problem is too many people don't want to even try, they're too partisan.

[Anonymous No.17475906]

>>17475581
Lewis who? David?

[Anonymous No.17475977]

>>17475827
>>a man who had nothing scottish about him is scottish
He was born in Scotland to Scottish parents

[Anonymous No.17475987]

>>17475867
That's what I plan to do as well, though I'll admit I'm not too found of logical positivism so I'll probably start out with the analytic philosophers that reject it like Quine and I think Kuhn though I may be misremembering.

[Anonymous No.17475995]

>>17475817
This is why american IPs should be permabanned

[Anonymous No.17476014]

>>17475977
You can change ethnicity.
He was the most anti-scottishman alive then.
get over it.

[Anonymous No.17476023]

>>17476014
>You can change ethnicity.
You literally cannot, I can steal your hair and dna test it and mock you with the results

[Anonymous No.17476054]

>>17476023
>ethnicity is genetic
Okay then hume is English .

[Anonymous No.17476076]

>>17476054
No he was Scottish, his grandfather was a Scottish judge

[Anonymous No.17476087]

>>17476076
Hume origins from England making him an English immigrant and so around 40% of Scotland is not Scottish at all according to you.

[Anonymous No.17476092]

>>17476087
>Hume origins from England
prove it fag

[Anonymous No.17476121]

>>17476092
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Hume_Family_History#Origins_of_the_Surname_Hume

[Anonymous No.17476140]

>>17476121
>It is an English and Scottish surname. It refers to meadow lands near or surrounded by water, grassy plains; sometimes an island.
>and Scottish

[Anonymous No.17476170]

>>17475906
Yeah, David Lewis.
>>17475987
Godspeed anon. Quine and Kuhn and others are definitely important and worth reading. The important thing you need to know about logical positivism is that it's been deeply misrepresented by people who opposed it. The Vienna Circle had two wings. The right-positivists (including Schlick, the founder of the Vienna Circle) were straightforward naive phenomenalists and verificationists. But the left-positivists (Carnap and Neurath being chief figures) eventually abandoned verification in favor of confirmation and recognized that observation is always theory-laden. Carnap's form of conventionalism, as I referred to in >>17475800 is actually pretty Kantian-esque. Neurath I know less, but I know he was a coherentist, and in this way he was actually a very important influence for Quine. These left-positivists have closer continuity to Quine and Kuhn than people realize. I think they're valuable, and even if they made error (who in the history of philosophy hasn't) they also had insights. Post-positivists get a lot of credit for the idea that observation is theory-laden for example, but Carnap understood that very well already, and his brand of conventionalism has a lot in common with people like Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, etc. He was also influenced by Dilthey, just like Heidegger was, so they're in a way not that different after all, just working from Dilthey in different ways.

[Anonymous No.17476172]

>>17476140
"In 1200 England, the surname "de Hulm" was used in Lancashire." learn to read yank

[Anonymous No.17476243]

Yes, Schulze in the Aenesidemus review remained a neo-Humean. Hamann's metacritical philosophy was substantially neo-Humean and he was friends with Kant personally.

They are arguing on different levels anyway. Hume only remains destructive for a Locke or J.S. Mill style radical empiricism. Kant is a phenomenologist, immanently describing the structural regularities in consciousness. A Humean critic can easily ask Kant how he can have certain knowledge of those structures merely through observation and description of their abstract forms. That would still be observation, thus the paradox of induction would still occur. Kant can still reply to Hume that the very fact that we ARE drawing and making abstractly valid judgments from observations DESPITE the paradox of injunction is what he is interested in examining as a kind of "brute fact" or "always already" of consciousness, and that this is transcendental analysis. Hume is right to an extent but so is Kant. Both would have to agree on a fundamental position of scepticism.

Even more sophisticated quasi-Humean critiques could bring in the fact that we never witness the abstract, "contentless forms" of judgments in abstraction, only in practice. One way to say this is that Kant is wrong in in first deducing the categories and ideas, as if they are static abstract identities awaiting "instantiation" in particular instances, and THEN to talk about how the categories and even ideas are involved in transcendental schematisms of the imagination. Instead, Kant should start with the schematism, i.e. with true phenomenological invesigation of contents of consciousness AS they really appear for us, which is as a flow of instants and not as discrete contents. (Bergson's duree and James' radical empiricism could be helpful here.)

From that perspective, Hume's inductive paradox really comes out, since we can hardly "observe" how a flux or manifold of particulars is differentiated into discrete objects of intuition and brought under concepts of the understanding, without some a priori theory of differentiation, which could only be derived from the observation. But again so Kant's transcendental position comes out too: "and yet it happens."

[Anonymous No.17476268]

>>17476172
So what his family was in scotland for generations, the name Hume is considered of Scottish origins as well

[Anonymous No.17476521]

>>17475581
Quine's stuff is Hume taken to its logical extreme

[Anonymous No.17476550]

>>17476170
>Godspeed anon. Quine and Kuhn and others are definitely important and worth reading. The important thing you need to know about logical positivism is that it's been deeply misrepresented by people who opposed it. The Vienna Circle had two wings. The right-positivists (including Schlick, the founder of the Vienna Circle) were straightforward naive phenomenalists and verificationists. But the left-positivists (Carnap and Neurath being chief figures) eventually abandoned verification in favor of confirmation and recognized that observation is always theory-laden. Carnap's form of conventionalism, as I referred to in >>17475800 is actually pretty Kantian-esque. Neurath I know less, but I know he was a coherentist, and in this way he was actually a very important influence for Quine. These left-positivists have closer continuity to Quine and Kuhn than people realize. I think they're valuable, and even if they made error (who in the history of philosophy hasn't) they also had insights. Post-positivists get a lot of credit for the idea that observation is theory-laden for example, but Carnap understood that very well already, and his brand of conventionalism has a lot in common with people like Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, etc. He was also influenced by Dilthey, just like Heidegger was, so they're in a way not that different after all, just working from Dilthey in different ways.
Ah thanks for the info, I would have made inaccurate assumptions otherwise. I still plan to read the logical positivists regardless. I've never quite understand coherentism, could you give a run-down on it by chance?

[Anonymous No.17476562]

>>17475398
>hey kid you want some experience
Anglo philosophy is nothing more than a joke

[Anonymous No.17476651]

>>17476562
can tell youre a 5iq faggot already

[Anonymous No.17477877]

>>17475581
>And then the metaphysical realists who follow (people like Kripke and Lewis and so forth) are certainly not either Humean OR Kantian, but a return to a sort of realism which is both anti-phenomenalist AND anti-transcendental idealist. So no, analytics are not very Humean at all, this is just another example of /lit/ idiots not reading the people they talk about (in this case, analytic philosophy).
Some analytics are definitely Humean in spirit, Lewis' modal reductionism is humean in origin, hence the name of "humean supervenience". I would say anyone who combines nominalism + modal reductionism + external realism + moral antirealism very much has a humean metaphysical picture. So by this definition David Lewis and J L Mackie would be humean analytic philosophers (although Mackie would be the more hardcore humean).
>Deleuze doesn't really read Hume correctly at all, but one thing Deleuze is right to do is to implicitly recognize Hume as a continental forefather. Hume was the first critical philosopher, not Kant. That's because he was seeking after the conditions for the possibility of certain beliefs we hold, such as our belief in external objects, in mental subjects, and so forth. He was employing transcendental reasoning and giving critiques of more uncritical and dogmatic forms of thinking.
That's an interesting point but in the end I don't think it holds up. It is true that Hume started from his concept empiricism and did metapysics from there, rejecting entities whose ideas didn't have their source either in sensation or introspection (aside from logic and mathematics, which he viewed as a priori in an important sense). But Descartes also started from exploring the conditions of possibility for knowledge before delving into metaphysics. Does that make him a Kantian? Surely not. The distinctness of Kantianism is not primarily that he replaces metaphysics with epistemology for first philosophy (a theme that is as common in early modern philosophy as it is pernicious). The point where Kant split paths with almost all previous western philosophers (save for Berkley) was in his doctrine that reality *as we experience it* is constituted wholly by the subject. It is this monstrous subjectivism that was the invention of Kant, an intuition that came to dominate all subsequent Continental philosophy.

[Anonymous No.17478136]

>>17477877
>Some analytics are definitely Humean in spirit, Lewis' modal reductionism is humean in origin, hence the name of "humean supervenience".
Here's the thing though, people got and still get Hume totally wrong about causation. He was a phenomenalist and ultimately concluded that we do have an idea of causation (it arises under conditions of habit and constant conjunction, but it's very much there) which on his model means it corresponds to an initial impression, which he considers to ultimately be an impression of reflection. The sense in which Lewisian Humean supervenience is 'Humean' is a matter of inspiration rather than actual proper Humeanism. The inspiration's definitely there but I wouldn't call it very humean anymore.
>I would say anyone who combines nominalism + modal reductionism + external realism + moral antirealism very much has a humean metaphysical picture. So by this definition David Lewis and J L Mackie would be humean analytic philosophers (although Mackie would be the more hardcore humean).
I agree about someone like Mackie, and it's worth mentioning explicitly Humean or neo-Humean analytic philosophers doing work in ethics, such as Philippa Foot. But there's neo-Kantians as well. I don't mean to suggest analytic philosophy doesn't have its Humean influences. But I strongly contest the idea that analytic philosophy is more influenced by Hume than Kant. That's a long-standing belief that I don't think is particularly correct.
>That's an interesting point but in the end I don't think it holds up. It is true that Hume started from his concept empiricism and did metapysics from there, rejecting entities whose ideas didn't have their source either in sensation or introspection (aside from logic and mathematics, which he viewed as a priori in an important sense). But Descartes also started from exploring the conditions of possibility for knowledge before delving into metaphysics. Does that make him a Kantian? Surely not.
Descartes doesn't really give critical accounts like Hume and Kant do though. If you've read the Treatise, Hume gives a genetic account of how we come to believe in external objects, he talks about the move from a belief in continued existence, and afterward double existence, in the progression from our sensation towards out belief in external objects. He likewise focuses on giving a genetic account of how we come to have causal beliefs. These are basically error theories: he's questioning the justification of our beliefs (in external objects, in causation) or at least casting into doubt that they are either given in intuition or provable via demonstration, and then saying "Here's how these beliefs are possible." This is exactly what Kant does. Kant isn't giving error theories per se, the opposite actually, but he IS interested in providing conditions for how we come to have, for example, synthetic a priori judgments. (1/2)

[Anonymous No.17478182]

>>17477877
(2/2) Since Kant, continental philosophy has been 'critical' in the sense that it questions that our beliefs are arrived at innocently from intuition or just from demonstration alone. So they give these sometimes less-than-flattering explanations for what causes us to reach those views. For example, Marx talks about material conditions, Freud about the subconscious, Nietzsche gives a genealogy of morals, and Foucault focuses on power dynamics. Hume was basically doing that, for the first time in early modern history. I wouldn't say Descartes did the same, his method was pre-critical rationalism (prove the existence of God a priori for example).
>The distinctness of Kantianism is not primarily that he replaces metaphysics with epistemology for first philosophy (a theme that is as common in early modern philosophy as it is pernicious). The point where Kant split paths with almost all previous western philosophers (save for Berkley) was in his doctrine that reality *as we experience it* is constituted wholly by the subject. It is this monstrous subjectivism that was the invention of Kant, an intuition that came to dominate all subsequent Continental philosophy.
I'm not sure Berkeley really goes as far as Kant there, but you are right that Kant is making a break with earlier philosophy. Even then, Hume is a lot more Kantian than people realize. Many Hume-and-Kant scholars realize it though because it's true. Kant of course has spontaneity and transcendental apperception at the source of the synthesis of the manifold, the application of the forms of intuition and the categories, etc. In that sense reality for Kant is constituted wholly by the subject in a way Hume can't do, since the subject for Hume is instead constituted out of impressions and ideas (his bundle theory of the mental subject). But other than this detail, they both agree that a lot of things we think are just 'pictures' of the structure of some world outside us, are actually instead little necessary rules that are psychologically based. Hume is psychologizing causation (NOT eliminating it like people wrongly suppose) for example, something that anticipates Kant making causation a synthetic a priori category.
>>17476550
>I've never quite understand coherentism, could you give a run-down on it by chance?
The basic jist of it is that coherentists don't believe in an external reality that consists in mind-independent entities and structure, so they reject the correspondence theory of truth. Instead they think that truth is a feature of internal coherence or consistency in a complete set of beliefs or propositions or what have you.

[Anonymous No.17478422]

>>17478136
>The sense in which Lewisian Humean supervenience is 'Humean' is a matter of inspiration rather than actual proper Humeanism. The inspiration's definitely there but I wouldn't call it very humean anymore.
I would say that everyone who reduces modal to non modal facts is very much motivated by Humean intuitions. I use "Humeanism" in a similar way to "Platonism", as a broader umbrella term for a family resemblance of similar philosophical views.
>I don't mean to suggest analytic philosophy doesn't have its Humean influences. But I strongly contest the idea that analytic philosophy is more influenced by Hume than Kant. That's a long-standing belief that I don't think is particularly correct.
Contemporary analytic philosophy is very diverse, and it encompasses many different philosophical perspectives. But I think the current consensus is generally towards realism about the physical world and very pro-metaphysics (both themes are fiercely anti-Kantian in spirit). As you mentioned some older analytics like Sellars and Strawson are more Kantian, but even they differ from Kant in being realists rather than the idiosyncratic realist/phenomenalist hybrid Kant favored.
>If you've read the Treatise, Hume gives a genetic account of how we come to believe in external objects, he talks about the move from a belief in continued existence, and afterward double existence, in the progression from our sensation towards out belief in external objects. He likewise focuses on giving a genetic account of how we come to have causal beliefs. These are basically error theories: he's questioning the justification of our beliefs (in external objects, in causation) or at least casting into doubt that they are either given in intuition or provable via demonstration, and then saying "Here's how these beliefs are possible."
That's fair enough but for me Kantianism is stronger than that, the central insight being that the observable world is in some important sense a mental construct. Hence I want to deny that Hume is really close to "Critical Philosophy", even though some parallels are there.
>Even then, Hume is a lot more Kantian than people realize. Many Hume-and-Kant scholars realize it though because it's true. (...) they both agree that a lot of things we think are just 'pictures' of the structure of some world outside us, are actually instead little necessary rules that are psychologically based. Hume is psychologizing causation.
I guess it may be a matter of emphasis. For me the parts of Hume where he is closest to Kant is the "bad" Hume (a tendency to reduce epistemology to psychology), with the "good" Hume being metaphysical views like modal reductionism, nominalism, moral antirealism, scepticism about the supernatural etc. This is partly due to my own philosophical commitments being a compromise between robust analytic metaphysics ala Armstrong and the careful Empiricism of Hume.

[Anonymous No.17478562]

>>17478422
I'll say I actually do have epistemological sympathies with Hume's empiricist project. It's actually partly due to that, that modern analytic metaphysicians by and large do not strike me as Humean. They are usually quite-Moorean common sense realists, and very often aren't super down with sense data. Those are two ways in which Hume and I are unlike them. The difference between Hume and myself is that I am not a phenomenalist who constructs everything out of sense data, I do believe in the traditional external world, so I caucus with the analytic metaphysicians so to speak, rather than the old logical positivists or the neo-pragmatists like Quine (or the Kantians, or the continentals). Still, I find it particularly, let's say, parochial, that these same people who often think of my views negatively (saying "That's crazy!" and what not), then want to say they're Humeans. I'm more Humean than they are, and they're clearly opposed to my views on these things, so I just naturally tend to think of them as less-Humean than they want to claim credit for. In my view their common sense realism is if anything more influenced by Thomas Reid, Hume's Scottish opponent. But I guess specific analytics like Lewis aren't as common sense realist so much as they are physicalists, mereological universalists, and so forth. Some of those things you see as good-Hume I actually see as bad-Hume (the modal reductionism, the moral anti-realism, the Humean supervenience account of causation/laws, the nominalism), so maybe that explains our difference. All in all though, I do see the sense in which Hume inspired people like Lewis for sure. But whereas you give a good reason to see analytic philosophers today as Humean, even if I contest it, I highly doubt the earlier anon meant anything so thought out when he says analytics are Humeans. On /lit/ people just assume Humean empiricism is all there is to analytic philosophy. I resist that because Humean empiricism, being sense data empiricism and external world skeptical, is super different from contemporary analytic common sense realism and sense data skepticism. Those are almost inversions. I mentioned the neo-Pragmatists and positivists being more Kantian than people realize, I do still stick by that. Outside of analytic metaphysics though analytic philosophers are honestly still pretty Kantian sometimes, even today. Sometimes I feel fellow analytic metaphysicians haven't experienced how pragmatistic many non-metaphysician analytics even today are, they're really annoying to deal with actually if you're pro-metaphysics. Just my experience though.

[Anonymous No.17478578]

>>17475065
based and true

[Anonymous No.17478600]

>>17478422
>Armstrong
By the way I just want to add, Armstrong is pretty based. Wouldn't say he's a nominalist though, aren't Armstrongian universals repeatable? He's different from D. C. Williams and his trope theory.

[Anonymous No.17478618]

>>17475049

[Anonymous No.17479025]

>>17478562
It's not completely clear to me what do you mean by common sense realism. If it means something like relying a lot on common sense intuitions as good evidence for metaphysical truths (I have two hands! --> Hence, the external world is real) I wouldn't subscribe to that either. But there is another way to speak of intuitions that I am very much on board with, namely the use of "rational intuition" in metaphysics to eg. argue against Meinongianism on the grounds that "it makes no sense" to posit non existent objects. And I explain this rational intuition simply as the rejection of unintelligent notions, so in a sense I keep up with the Humean tradition in rejecting that the acquisition of metaphysical knowledge is anything mysterious like a direct apprehension of a distant realm of metaphysicl truthmakers On the other hand I wouldn't accept his strict Concept Empiricism, so in this sense I depart from Hume's views.
I am also somewhat puzzled by you being (as I understand it) both favorable to the Hume-Kant psychologizing of epistemology and to robust metaphysics. Extreme Empiricism tends to lead to a very thin metaphysical picture akin to that of Kant or the Phenomenalists.
>Those are almost inversions. I mentioned the neo-Pragmatists and positivists being more Kantian than people realize, I do still stick by that.
I agree about the neopragmatists having a strong Kantian influence but for me positivists like A J Ayer seem closer to Hume than Kant.
>By the way I just want to add, Armstrong is pretty based. Wouldn't say he's a nominalist though, aren't Armstrongian universals repeatable? He's different from D. C. Williams and his trope theory.
He is a Neo-Aristotelian in certain respects. He accepts moderate realism about Universals and Aristotle's substance-attribute model (although he rejects hylomorphic dualism, power ontology, and teleology).
What I like from Armstrong is the focus on metaphysics as first philosophy, I don't necessarily agree with his particular brand of metaphysics. I share with Hume a scepticism of what I take to be "occult" entities (counterfactuals, universals, objective moral facts etc.). But unlike Hume, I don't think thee views can be simply refuted by adopting a restrictive epistemology. Rather, the theoretical virtues of opposing metaphysical views have to be compared one by one. A general "argument from queerness" just isn't enough to settle the issues.

[Anonymous No.17479086]

>>17479025
>I am also somewhat puzzled by you being (as I understand it) both favorable to the Hume-Kant psychologizing of epistemology and to robust metaphysics. Extreme Empiricism tends to lead to a very thin metaphysical picture akin to that of Kant or the Phenomenalists.
I don't psychologize (if by that you mean, psychologism?), I just agree with Hume that what we know first directly are sense data, and that we don't have higher Moorean certainty that the external world exists than said sense data. But this position has become increasingly unpopular today. I'm not an extreme empiricist in the sense that I would let myself become skeptical of things I can't be certain exist, I am not that way. Much as I accept inductive inference being rationally justified, I think we can be justified believing in all sorts of things we can't be certain exist, and if there's appropriate conditions being met we could even say we have (fallibilist) knowledge.
>for me positivists like A J Ayer seem closer to Hume than Kant.
I think Carnap would be the ideal example of being surprisingly more Kantian than people would think, but Ayer himself is a little more Kantian than people think. At the minimum, I think Ayer (like Carnap) has been badly misunderstood. For example he accepts 'weak verification' (aka confirmation) and he seems to accept theory-loaded observation much like Carnap. Even the way he understands the analytic/a priori is wrongly misrepresented today as subjectively-available conceptual analysis or as synonymy, when he literally says that's not what he's doing.
> Rather, the theoretical virtues of opposing metaphysical views have to be compared one by one.
Quinean! You have good company, I know today's metaphysicians tend to be Quinean. I guess I sometimes do dissent from the Quinean style though, and just prefer saying, "Look I literally grasp the structure of reality sometimes, and it doesn't look like this alternative view that has theoretic virtues, it looks different, harder." My views on modality and tense and other such things take their shape because of that.

[Anonymous No.17479198]

>>17479086
>I just agree with Hume that what we know first directly are sense data, and that we don't have higher Moorean certainty that the external world exists than said sense data. But this position has become increasingly unpopular today.
So, indirect realism? That would be my view as well.
>I guess I sometimes do dissent from the Quinean style though, and just prefer saying, "Look I literally grasp the structure of reality sometimes, and it doesn't look like this alternative view that has theoretic virtues, it looks different, harder." My views on modality and tense and other such things take their shape because of that.
Isn't that Armstrong's view rather than Quine's though? As I understand it Quine rejected some traditional metaphysical questions like the problem of universals on the grounds of being a pseudo-problem, which prompted Armstrong to dub his position "Ostrich Nominalism". I am definitely with Armstrong in the rejection of any NeoWittgensteinean reduction of metaphysics to semantics.
By theoretical virtues I mean considerations like simplicity and (especially) explanatory power. For example, it seems to me that the core argument in favor of realism about universals is that it claims to explain how non-identical things can be identical in certain respects. I can't think of any other way of doing metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.17479229]

>>17479198
>Isn't that Armstrong's view rather than Quine's though?
A lot of metaphysicians call it Quinean methodology. Example: Schaffer in "On What Grounds What." It's not just him. Lewis was his student after all, and I've seen all sorts of people I've read, articles summarizing metaphysics, and my own professors call it Quinean. And it stems from Quine's paper "On What There Is."
>As I understand it Quine rejected some traditional metaphysical questions
Yeah you're absolutely right about this. It's ironically like Lewis calling something Humean when Hume himself might have differed. In this case, Quinean metaphysics would probably be at odds with Quine's philosophy in some respects. What makes it 'Quinean' though is this idea of weighing theories based on their theoretical virtues, then committing to the best one and then committing to the existence of the values of the bound variables.

[Anonymous No.17479319]

>>17479229
I am actually not sure if I described my preferred methodology correctly as "comparing theoretical virtues", since in practice I mostly defend my core metaphysical commitments in the form of reductio arguments against opposing views. For example if Aristotelian universals were real, it would follow that there are things that can be fully present in spatially distinct concrete objects, and as such they would have to be both singular and plural. If modality was ontologically primitive, that would could commit us to purely counterfactual states of affairs, and hence Meinongian non-existing facts. This is roughly how I go about building a metaphysical picture.

[Anonymous No.17479481]

>>17475091
A hat

[Anonymous No.17480190]

why bother arguing about hume and philosophical antiquity? why bother with these silly outdated philosophies and metaphysics at all. philosophy in this guise ends with late wittgenstein and that is that. the rest is mostly nonsense.

[Anonymous No.17481068]

>>17480190
Grice and Kripke proved the late Wittgenstein wrong.
>>17479319
>For example if Aristotelian universals were real, it would follow that there are things that can be fully present in spatially distinct concrete objects, and as such they would have to be both singular and plural.
Not sure that's the case. Multilocation doesn't seem to me to be a logical contradiction.
>If modality was ontologically primitive, that would could commit us to purely counterfactual states of affairs, and hence Meinongian non-existing facts.
I know most modal primitivists are modal ersatzists, so they probably give the truth conditions for non-actual possible truths in terms of ersatz possible worlds, which aren't Meinongian. I do agree there's still some trouble on the horizon, since ersatzism still requires commitment to primitive intensional entities, but on the other hand we probably should accept those anyway for other reasons, some might argue.
>I am actually not sure if I described my preferred methodology correctly as "comparing theoretical virtues", since in practice I mostly defend my core metaphysical commitments in the form of reductio arguments against opposing views.
Fair enough.

[Anonymous No.17481434]

>>17475049
Why is he wearing bacon on his head?

[Anonymous No.17481565]

Kant credits Hume in his first Critique for waking him up from his "dogmatic slumber."
I'm honestly not sure what Hume would've contested in the first Critique. He would've enjoyed the antinomies, and placing something like causality as a synthetic a priori category isn't exactly contra Hume. It doesn't really matter whether you base the conception of causality on a subjective habit or a subjective faculty -- it's saying the same thing. And everything Kant wrote about noumena basically just affirms Hume's philosophical skepticism.
Plus, Hume wrote to be easily understood, whereas Kant, though ultimately understandable, wrote to self-aggrandize.

[Anonymous No.17481622]

>>17475049
what was kant's critique of hume?

[Anonymous No.17481668]

>>17475049
Most Analytical philosophers but
Also Deleuze in Difference and repetition. He calls himself a transcendental empiricist

[Anonymous No.17482287]

>>17475049
How could you defend Hume? Kant 360noscoped him when he built his trascendental deduction on the only fact about subjectivity that Hume conceced. Either you say that Hume did not concede that fact either (namely that we are bundle of perceptions, or in Kantian terms, that the I think accompanies all my representations), turning him de facto in a full-blown skeptic, or you concede that Hume was wrong in stopping his analysis there. And once the trascendental deduction is established, all the problems about causality, substantiality, etc., are solved

[Anonymous No.17482477]

>>17482287
>Either you say that Hume did not concede that fact either
He had second thoughts about it, as he writes in the Appendix to the Treatise. But even without a subject, Hume was still establishing causality, substance, and brought about through necessary and universal operations within our mind, and not things out in the noumenal reality. How's that any different from Kant?

[Anonymous No.17482675]

>>17475049
Whitehead gave a better critique of Hume. Whitehead notes, for instance, that Hume’s own presuppositions contradict his assertion that causal efficacy cannot be directly perceived: "Hume with the clarity of genius states the fundamental point, that sense-data functioning in an act of experience demonstrate that they are given by the causal efficacy of actual bodily organs. He refers to this causal efficacy as a component in direct perception." That is to say, by Hume’s own prior admission we get direct acquaintance with the world through the actions of the body. "In asserting the lack of perception of causality, [Hume] implicitly presupposes it.. His argument presupposes that sense-data, functioning in presentational immediacy, are ‘given’ by reason of ‘eyes,’ ‘ears,’ ‘palates’ functioning in causal efficacy." More generally, Whitehead says: "We see the picture, and we see it with our eyes; we touch the wood, and we touch it with our hands; we smell the rose, and we smell it with our nose; we hear the bell, and we hear it with our ears; we taste the sugar, and we taste it with our palate." The functioning here of experience in the mode of causal efficacy is antecedent to, and necessary for, the very experience in the mode of presentational immediacy within which, Hume says, no causation can be discerned. Whitehead recapitulates and expands this critique of Hume in Process and Reality. Hume argues that our expectation that a certain effect will follow a cause is merely a product of habit. But Whitehead notes that "it is difficult to understand why Hume exempts ‘habit’ from the same criticism as that applied to the notion of ’cause.’ We have no ‘impression’ of ‘habit,’ just as we have no ‘impression’ of ’cause.’ Cause, repetition, habit are all in the same boat." Once again, Hume presupposes the power of causal efficacy in his very attempt to explain it away. I am tempted to describe Whitehead’s mode of argument here as a precise inversion of Kant’s. Kant opposes Hume by insisting that we cannot, in principle, escape causality, because it must be imposed transcendentally from above. Whitehead instead opposes Hume by observing that, in point of fact, we do not escape causality because it is always already at work empirically, from below. Whitehead turns Kant around and puts him on his feet, in the same way that Marx put Hegel on his feet. Whitehead shows that causal efficacy is always already at work in our perception, as a physical functioning of the bodily organs. This would remain the case even if we were brains in vats, getting delusive sense impressions by means of direct stimulation of the neurons. The actual physical functioning of causal efficacy must still be presupposed, even if the picture presented through presentational immediacy does not correspond to an actual state of affairs in the world.

1/4

[Anonymous No.17482684]

>>17482675
This is why Whitehead says that "direct experience" in itself "is infallible." This assertion is in fact a tautology: "what you have experienced, you have experienced". The delusion of a brain in vats, like the delusion exhibited in "Aesop’s fable of the dog who dropped a piece of meat to grasp at its reflection in the water", is a failure of symbolic reference, rather than of direct experience in itself. It results, not from any defect of perception per se, but from the way in which "the various actualities disclosed respectively by the two modes are either identified, or are at least correlated together as interrelated elements in our environment". In other words, the dog’s error is a mistake of interpretation, or a failure to respect the limits of abstraction. Whitehead tells us that we cannot live without making abstractions, even though we go wrong when we take our abstractions too seriously, or push them beyond the limits within which they are useful. This is what Whitehead famously calls "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness"; we find it at work not just in a dog’s misjudgement, but also in the most refined examples of philosophical reasoning. It is not the perception of meat in the water that is at fault, but rather the dog’s failure to understand that this meat – which he truly perceived – is a reflection rather than an edible substance. This is why Whitehead remains so relaxed in his treatment of error: "Aesop’s dog lost his meat, but he gained a step on the road towards a free imagination. We experience causal efficacy not only because we are bodies, but also because we feel, and subsist within, the passage of time. Whitehead argues that Hume’s skeptical conclusions "rest upon an extraordinary naive assumption of time as pure succession". This notion of "pure succession," or time as an empty form, "is an abstraction from the irreversible relationship of settled past to derivative present". In actual concrete experience, we feel time as "the derivation of state from state, with the later state exhibiting conformity to the antecedent… The past consists of the community of settled acts which, through their objectifications in the present act, establish the conditions to which that act must conform." In other words, experience does not only happen in the present moment, in the Now. It also comprehends the past, and projects toward the future. Even the most "primitive living organisms… have a sense for the fate from which they have emerged, and for the fate towards which they go". Time is not so much the measure of change, as it is the force of "conformation"; and it is only against the background of this force of conformation that change is even possible: "The present fact is luminously the outcome from its predecessors, one quarter of a second ago.

2/4

[Anonymous No.17482692]

>>17482684
Unsuspected factors may have intervened; dynamite may have exploded. But, however that may be, the present event issues subject to the limitations laid upon it by the actual nature of the immediate past. If dynamite explodes, then present fact is that issue from the past which is consistent with dynamite exploding." In this way, perception and judgment are themselves temporal instances. They are nested within the broad span of "conformation" or causal influence. To perceive something is to be affected or influenced by that something. And willed action – or more generally, what Whitehead in Process and Reality calls decision – can itself only take place within a given framework of causal efficacy. This is the source of Whitehead’s distinction, in Symbolism, between "pure potentiality" and "natural potentiality" – which is recast in Process and Reality as a distinction between "general potentiality" and "real potentiality". Pure or general potentiality is mere logical possibility; while natural or real potentiality takes account of "stubborn fact," or of the actual "components which are given for experience" For the mainstream of modern Western philosophy, causality is an example of a relation that must be put into doubt, because it is supposedly not given in perception. Whitehead counters this, by showing that causality is not just an abstract condition for perceptive experience (which Kant had argued already), but also an actually given component of experience. Causal efficacy is in fact directly experienced. But beyond this, experience of any sort materially depends upon the functioning of causal efficacy. In this way causality is more than just an example of something whose status in perception we may argue about. In fact it is central to the whole theory of perception. Perception is itself a sort of causal relation – rather than causal relations being instances that we may perceive or not. In this way, Whitehead’s account of causal efficacy provides a bridge from epistemology to ontology, or to what Whitehead calls cosmology. For Hume, Kant, and their modern successors, we cannot talk about causality without first accounting for how we know that causal relations between ostensibly independent entities can exist. But Whitehead argues that even to raise the question of how we know is already to have accepted the operation of causal efficacy, in the form of the conformation of present fact to immediate past. Whitehead thus cuts the Gordian know of Kantian critique; he frees speculation from the grim Kantian alternative of either being subjected to critique, which is to say to prior epistemological legitimation, or being rejected as simply "dogmatic."

3/4

[Anonymous No.17482701]

>>17482692
Whitehead describes his own speculative philosophy as "a recurrence to that phase of philosophic thought which began with Descartes and ended with Hume". Nonetheless, I do not think that Whitehead’s constructivist proposal for solving the riddles of perception and causality can be categorized as "dogmatic" in the pejorative Kantian sense. Rather, Whitehead’s speculative "flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization," together with his subsequent return to the ground "for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation", allows him to perform what he describes, in another act of setting Kant on his feet, as "the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity". Whitehead argues both that causal efficacy is directly perceived, and that the causal conformation of the present to the immediate past is a general process, of which direct perception in either mode is just an example. There is therefore a curious chiasmus between perception and causality, which intersect in something like a feedback loop. This also implies, among other things, that there is no clear dividing line between perception proper, and causal influence more generally. I "perceive" something whenever I am affected by that something – even in cases where this does not happen consciously. For instance, Whitehead notes that "the human body is causally affected by the ultra-violet rays of the solar spectrum in ways which do not issue in any sensation of colour. Nevertheless such rays produce a decided emotional effect" This "emotional effect" may well be a modulation of my mood: I always feel better when I am outdoors on a sunny day. But it may also consist in my getting sun tanned, or sunburnt, or even developing skin cancer. Any physical response of this sort is in some sense an "emotional" response as well. Even below the threshold of consciousness, a physical change is also a change of some sort in affective tone. This is not only the case for human experience, but also for organisms that Whitehead calls "low grade": as when "a flower turns to the light," or even when "a stone conforms to the conditions set by its external environment".

4/4

[Anonymous No.17482890]

>>17482477
I didn't know that, I only read his two Inquiries.
>But even without a subject, Hume was still establishing causality, substance, and brought about through necessary and universal operations within our mind, and not things out in the noumenal reality. How's that any different from Kant?
Causality and substance are only established pragmatically, insofar as they help up navigate the world. Their truth is instead negated: we are wrong when we think these concepts actually refer to something (even the phenomena we experience), regardless of how useful it is for us to do so.
Kant is instead interested in affirming exactly this truth (as in, that we are epistemically justified to apply this concepts to objects). His response is problematic for the Humean because Kant grounds his system on premises that Hume would have accepted. So, to mention it again, to establish his trascendental deduction (which ends up proving that we are correct when we, for example, attribute causality to phenomena we observe) needs only two premises: that the I think must accompany all our representations, and that we do not have an intellectual intuition of the I think. Both premises follow directly from (respectively) Hume's bundle theory and his critique of personal identity. Kant's 360noscope move is to point out that these theories already entail a series of presuppositions which necessarily lead to the trascendental deduction (and the rest of his system with it).

I wonder how Kant would have responded to contemporary analytic skeptics. Like, could have Kant 360noscoped Dennett, and start his trascendental philosophy from a standpoint which rejects that we have representations at all, and that we are in fact not conscious? In comparison, Hume's position is almost metaphysical.

[Anonymous No.17482992]

>>17481068
>Grice and Kripke
No they didn't - how did they?

[Anonymous No.17483042]

>>17482992
Grice btfo the use theory garbage Wittgenstein and his ordinary language philosophy buddies relied on by showing that we need to account for pragmatics in addition to semantics. Kripke's possible world semantics undermines one of Wittgenstein's arguments against private language, namely, when Wittgenstein claims that it is nonsense to say some things cannot be doubted. Wittgenstein claims that if something can't be doubted it also can't be known. It's a very bad line of thought based on mistaken metalinguistic ideas influenced by Russell's type theory, and reminds one of Ryle as well. But Kripke's possible world semantics makes it easy to show that it's perfectly normal to say that some things are necessarily ~P.

[Anonymous No.17483124]

>>17483042
>by showing that we need to account for pragmatics in addition to semantics.

What do you mean?

>Kripke's possible world semantics undermines one of Wittgenstein's arguments against private language, namely, when Wittgenstein claims that it is nonsense to say some things cannot be doubted. Wittgenstein claims that if something can't be doubted it also can't be known.

This is something very minor about Wittgenstein's thought imo and I don't think that disagreeing with him on that undermines his thoughts about private language.

[Anonymous No.17483194]

>>17483124
>
This is something very minor about Wittgenstein's thought imo and I don't think that disagreeing with him on that undermines his thoughts about private language.
I think it's fatal, because it means that it's perfectly legitimate to say "I have indubitable knowledge of my personal sensations" which he disagrees about.

[Anonymous No.17483629]

bump

[Anonymous No.17483829]

>>17483194
no, wittgenstein basically says the opposite of this and then says it cannot be seen as knowing something because it's immediacy makes "knowing" redundant.

[Anonymous No.17484142]

>>17475049
Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.17484250]

>>17475581
>Deleuze doesn't really read Hume correctly at all
Lol you didn’t read Deleuze correctly at all, his whole point in doing monographs on historical figures is to blend them with his own philosophy to produce a new thing entirely

[Anonymous No.17484722]

>>17475049
yes, unfortunately, too many disgusting, inbred, anglo retards were capable enough to follow their fat idiot leader and do just as he did, by being so dumb and pathetic to not even be able to enter Kant's cathedral without falling face-flat on the first step of the entrance, and then proceeding to describe the floor they see as some divine knowledge and revelation

also, you should be shot and hanged

[Anonymous No.17484957]

>>17475065
i kekked because youre right

[Anonymous No.17484982]

hume was right. reason alone doesnt get you anywhere except skepticism. ultimately, any conclusive judgement is based on at least some amount of intuition. no transcendental argument achieves conclusive truth. not kant's, not descart's. "self evidence" is just waving away all the ways you could be wrong.

[Anonymous No.17484992]

why did he dress like a fag

[Anonymous No.17485054]

>>17484982
How would you describe Kant's failure to achieve conclusive truth? Take the trascendental deduction, for example: how does it fail?

[Anonymous No.17485320]

>>17485054
as long as you can ask, "how are you sure?", (and you can always ask it) you havent reached a fully sound conclusion in the context of applying pure reason to conclusions about reality, wether phenomenal or noumenal. even if you did (which i believe havent even been done), reason doesnt neccesitate that reality (phenomena or noumena) be reasonable. we can never know their true relationship, and so we can never know if reason is the right tool.

[Anonymous No.17485672]

>>17485320
Okay, but this is all very vague. What I'm asking is specifically: what part of the argument contained in the trascendental deduction fails in this way? He thought that his deduction managed to do exactly what you mentioned in your post. That's the whole point of the deduction: to prove that the categories of the intellect, and with it the whole system of reason, can be used to correctly represent reality (as in, we can have true knowledge of it, and our conceptual schemes are well equipped to represent this knowledge), and that we can be apodictically sure in knowing that we are not wrong in using these concepts (i.e. the concept of causality, or of existence).
Now, since this is his goal, and since he thinks he achieved this goal, my question to you is: how did he fail? At what point did his argument stop working?

[Anonymous No.17485674]

>>17475065
Massive cringe

[Anonymous No.17485768]

>>17485672
his argument was doomed from the get go as his goal is simply not possible. you can still ask "how are you sure" to the conclusion he comes to

one specific instance of this uncertainty is highlighted in this word youve used:
>apodictically
something being logicly true doesnt mean that it is a fact. logic/reason doesnt neccesitate that logic/reason be real or that reality must abide by logic. therefore apodictical conclusions about reality arent possible.

[Anonymous No.17485783]

>>17477877
I agree on this one.

>>17478182
>Since Kant, continental philosophy has been 'critical' in the sense that it questions that our beliefs are arrived at innocently from intuition or just from demonstration alone.
>I wouldn't say Descartes did the same, his method was pre-critical rationalism
Can you elaborate more on it?

[Anonymous No.17485831]

>>17475581
How do you think about Mach and the relation of logical positivist? Maybe Carnap would be mor Kantian than I expected. But I am not sure about this all is just stereotype.
One more question. Why do you pick Quine and Davidson as Kantian?

[Anonymous No.17485915]

>>17485768
>his argument was doomed from the get go as his goal is simply not possible. you can still ask "how are you sure" to the conclusion he comes to
I don't want to be polemic, but you're repeating yourself. I understand that you think so. Kant didn't, and thought that his argument sctually works. I'm just asking to tell me specifically why he is wrong, by telling me specifically how the trascendental deduction fails.
>something being logicly true doesnt mean that it is a fact. logic/reason doesnt neccesitate that logic/reason be real or that reality must abide by logic. therefore apodictical conclusions about reality arent possible.
That's not the meaning of apodictic I meant. I was referring to absolute certainity concerning an item of true knowledge. Kant doesn't think that logical coherence is enough, in fact that's the whole premise of the trascendental deduction (if he assumed that naive use of concept is justified as long as logical coherence is mantained, then why did he feel the need to write a whole deduction to justify that use?)

[Anonymous No.17486033]

>>17485915
not only is logical coherence untrustworthy, logical neccesity is also, for the same reasons ive mentioned. logical neccesity is the essential tool to his and others' transcendental deductions, or any deductions.

[Anonymous No.17486066]

>>17486033
Okay, but Kant's argument is not based on that. He agrees with you on this point.

... have you actually read the first critique?

[Anonymous No.17486074]

>>17484722
What a gay post.

[Anonymous No.17486123]

>>17486066
his argument points out the logically neccesary qualities of phenomena for the possibility of experience no?

[Anonymous No.17486236]

>>17485783
Pre-critical rationalism "proves" the existence of entire entities entirely a priori, from premises which don't even contain those entities conceptually within them or otherwise (any claims to the contrary notwithstanding). They're not performing analysis, they're performing dialectic: proceeding from premises to conclusions beyond what those premises' meaningful content permits them to do. Demonstration alone wouldn't let them do that. Descartes' proof of God is an example, much as Anselm's proof of God is.
>>17485831
Because Quine and Davidson don't believe our conceptual schemes are 'pictures' of the structure of some out-there metaphysical reality. They differ from Kant in that they think the true theory of the world is partly based in pragmatic virtues and partly in observation (so they accept something like a synthetic ground, analogous to noumena, but they reject structure is to be found in it and pictured by our theories).

[Anonymous No.17486271]

>>17485831
As for Mach, I am not as familiar with his beliefs. From what I've read, which is very little, he seems to be a straightforward phenomenalist like Hume, Mill, or Schlick. Carnap was not like that, he had more in common with Quine and Davidson, the main difference is that he allows for subjective conventionalism whereas they go for objective pragmatism when they're asking questions about truth. Quine and Davidson would appeal to some theory that materializes at the idealized end of history and say that's the only true theory, but Carnap allows for many different theories to be true in a sense. But he otherwise accepts the same noumenal-like synthetic ground while rejecting a metaphysical reality with structure that our theories have to picture to be true. Very Kantian, all these people, in that sense.

[Anonymous No.17486353]

>>17486123
Not really, that's a consequence of the argument that is developed in a later section (the one on schematism)

[Anonymous No.17486370]

>>17486353
>consequence
like a... logical consequence? ;)

ok but seriously how can you even make any conclusive claims whatsoever if logic is out the window? you have to use intuition, and with intuition comes uncertainty

[Anonymous No.17486484]

>>17486370
Dude read the trascendental deduction, it's like 20 pages long

[Anonymous No.17486976]

>>17486484
it still seems to me that his whole point relies on logical neccesity

[Anonymous No.17487365]

>>17486976
I'm telling you it doesn't. You should rrally try reading that part. Maybe read the part about logic that comes before it, so that you can see that Kant does not think that his trascendental philosophy can be built on mere logical coherence. He associates the term "dogmatism" to this moves, and it finds its origins in Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy, and he's trying to make a break with it.

[Anonymous No.17487526]

>>17487365
i know he thinks he has done away with it but he argues no differently. after his base arguments it actually reads more like very wierd cognitive science rather than epistemology and maybe its more valuable that way.

he derives the categories from thoughts about the world, and he even calls them logical forms of judgement. not only does this derivation use logic, but what he is deriving from is in part, logical thought.

he still uses self evidencey of consciousness as a starting off point wich you cant. there is nothing epistemologically certain about consciousness (or anything). you can still ask "how are you sure" to it. even if you could, the logical neccesities that followed would still be just that, logical neccesities, wich we have agreed are untrustworthy.

he mentions intuition as a methodology hes ok with, which may be what seperates him from the that "dogmatism". if intuition is okay, than his system is completely dismissable, since through intuition, we can arrive at conclusions about noumena. but intuition always means uncertainty

[Anonymous No.17487624]

>>17487365
his arguments proceed at every level with logical deduction and neccesity. the founding premise that he builds the whole thing is the self evidency of consciousness, which he arrives at intuitively. his methodology involves logic and intuition, both of wich are fallable and untrustworthy.

[Anonymous No.17487645]

>>17487526
>i know he thinks he has done away with it but he argues no differently. after his base arguments it actually reads more like very wierd cognitive science rather than epistemology and maybe its more valuable that way
How could you know if you haven't even read his argument? I hope you can see that this is a completely incoherent attitude.
>he derives the categories from thoughts about the world, and he even calls them logical forms of judgement. not only does this derivation use logic, but what he is deriving from is in part, logical thought.
Even if this critique were to be valid (it simply isn't, psychologistic theories of logic are simply not tenable, insofar as they are completely insufficient in explaining the necessity of logical laws - in other terms, logical laws are not and cannot be derived empirically), this is still not an integral part of the trascendental deduction (categories become relevant only in the sequent section; before the trascendental deduction Kant thinks that we have no reason to assume that there is any epistemically justified use for these concepts). At this point I'm not even defending his argument, I'm just straight up telling you that you're strawmanning his actual position (I'm not assuming that you're in bad faith).
>he still uses self evidencey of consciousness as a starting off point wich you cant. there is nothing epistemologically certain about consciousness (or anything). you can still ask "how are you sure" to it. even if you could, the logical neccesities that followed would still be just that, logical neccesities, wich we have agreed are untrustworthy
Kant's starting point in the trascendental deduction is literally Hume's bundle theory, which is a view skeptical of all the things you probably have in mind. Kant assumes nothing more about our consciousness, other than the fact that it is a bundle of perceptions (or in his terms, that it is accompanied by many representations). As far as I know not even eliminativists like Dennett would not concede such a premise. In fact I know of no form of skepticism that posed any doubt on these facts (if you know any, please tell me, I'd be very interested to read it).
>he mentions intuition as a methodology hes ok with, which may be what seperates him from the that "dogmatism". if intuition is okay, than his system is completely dismissable, since through intuition, we can arrive at conclusions about noumena. but intuition always means uncertainty
Kant explicitly rejects intellectuals intuitions. His argument is not based on any intuition of the self, for he accepts as a starting point Hume's critique of personal identity (from which it follows that there is no intuition of the res cogitans).

[Anonymous No.17487779]

>>17481068
>Not sure that's the case. Multilocation doesn't seem to me to be a logical contradiction.
Prima facie, not necessarily. But if we say that the greeness of the grass is identical (strictly identical; it is the exact same entity) with the greeness of the apple, we can ask the question whether "greeness" is fully present in the grass, or only partly. Surely the answer is that it is fully present - if only a part of greeness was present in the grass, the grass would fail to instantiate greeness. Yet if greeness is fully present in the grass, there is no part of its being left to be present on the apple.
Therefore, it seems that we have to say that greeness is and is not fully present in the grass.
>I know most modal primitivists are modal ersatzists, so they probably give the truth conditions for non-actual possible truths in terms of ersatz possible worlds, which aren't Meinongian. I do agree there's still some trouble on the horizon, since ersatzism still requires commitment to primitive intensional entities, but on the other hand we probably should accept those anyway for other reasons, some might argue.
Well, if modality is primitive, wouldn't that also make counterfactuals primitive? But all situations described by counterfactuals have failed to exist. Hence the notion of a counterfactual includes an implicit reference to non-existent situations. That leaves us with primitive Meinongian entities in our ontology.

[Anonymous No.17487784]

>>17487645
okay thanks for being patient with me even tho i havent read the texts thoroughly, im not in bad faith lol. but we have touched upon a few fundemental disagreements here.
>Kant assumes nothing more about our consciousness, other than the fact that it is a bundle of perceptions (or in his terms, that it is accompanied by many representations).
even assuming its existence, let alone its nature, is a big assumptions that most radical skeptics would disagree with. this is the self evidence-y i was talking about. though i believe consciousness IS, it isnt an epistemological certainty and its ultimately founded on intuition. radical skeptics dont have much literature as far as i know cuz their beliefs dont go very far, since they only accept absolute certainty. but lesser versions can be seen in plato, hume and the like. ppl like dennet are working on a much higher ontological level built upon many uncertain premises.

he then builds upon this base of consciousness using logical neccesity
>Kant explicitly rejects intellectuals intuitions. His argument is not based on any intuition of the self, for he accepts as a starting point Hume's critique of personal identity (from which it follows that there is no intuition of the res cogitans).
positing any self at all requires intuition. the self isnt a neccesity according to radical skepticism, which too is ultimately a belief, but one that doesnt pretend to have absolute certainty

[Anonymous No.17488981]

bump

[Anonymous No.17489472]

>>17487779
>Prima facie, not necessarily. But if we say that the greeness of the grass is identical (strictly identical; it is the exact same entity) with the greeness of the apple, we can ask the question whether "greeness" is fully present in the grass, or only partly. Surely the answer is that it is fully present - if only a part of greeness was present in the grass, the grass would fail to instantiate greeness. Yet if greeness is fully present in the grass, there is no part of its being left to be present on the apple.
I still don't see the problem. I think there's an intuitive difficulty, akin to saying something can be green and blue all over, but not an obvious logical contradiction. You can conceive of a given thing as being located at place 1 and located at place 2. That's no different than saying a given thing falls under property 1 and property 2. The latter isn't a contradiction, logically speaking, unless 1 and 2 are mutually exclusive by way of definition (like three-sided and four-sided). So there's no obvious logical contradiction with multi-location. Something can be fully in two places at once, as far as the logic allows anyway. Is it metaphysically impossible regardless? Maybe, that's up for debate.
>Well, if modality is primitive, wouldn't that also make counterfactuals primitive?
Not sure about that. Say I'm an ersatzist and I accept a Lewis-inspired idea of counterfactuals where they involve sufficiently-"close" possible worlds. How we determine the close worlds is its own topic. Point is some ersatz worlds count as close enough for the counterfactual analysis. Then you design each world as entire temporally-complete units, and "Were A to happen, B would have happened" can be analyzed in terms of A happening at these close worlds and B happening in turn. The Meinongian worry I have is that it's lurking with the intensional entities, since intentional inexistence feels necessary to get alien properties and individuals in ersatz worlds. Lewis' criticism of ersatzism is based on how they can't refer to these alien properties and individuals properly. They would need intensional entities that refer to total non-existents to overcome that, and analyzing that seems to commit one to Meinongianism. The ersatzists I've talked to think we should just not worry about those alien properties/individuals. That's not very satisfying to everyone.

[Anonymous No.17490421]

>>17487784
>even assuming its existence, let alone its nature, is a big assumptions that most radical skeptics would disagree with. this is the self evidence-y i was talking about. though i believe consciousness IS, it isnt an epistemological certainty and its ultimately founded on intuition. radical skeptics dont have much literature as far as i know cuz their beliefs dont go very far, since they only accept absolute certainty. but lesser versions can be seen in plato, hume and the like. ppl like dennet are working on a much higher ontological level built upon many uncertain premises.
It depends on what you mean by "exists". If you're scared Kant is trying to presuppose the existence of a res cogitans, or a soul, or even just a conscious body, then don't worry. Not only he doesn't presuppose any of these things, he'll even say that these things cannot ever be known.
The only thing he presupposes is that there are multiple representations: on thr subject of such representations nothing is said, because nothing csn be known. Notice also thst it is not presupposed that these representations refer to anything at all, or that we have the conceptual tools to talk about them.
Now, I seriously don't know any skeptic eho would deny this point. I know Eliminativists would accept it, I know Buddhists would accept it, I know Phyrronian skeptics would accept it, I know Nietscheans and Stirnerians would wccept it, and so on. If someone would reject it, as I told you, I would absolutely interested to read him, since I genuinely can't imagine who would deny that we have had at least 2 representations.
>positing any self at all requires intuition.
Not an intuition of the self, certainly! In fsct, Kant is quite anal about it, and in multiple sections he will repeat the same argument (which is lifted from Hume) for which it is said thst in our experience no intuition of the self can ever be found (and that this notion, in fact, makes no sense)

[Anonymous No.17490953]

>>17490421
okay now the problem receeds from a self experiencing consciousness to "multiple representations". i get that kant presupposed very little but to claim absolute epistomological certainty, a little is a lot. and that seemingly little actually implies a lot too. just supposing the "existance of multiple representations" or any similar statement supposes the accuracy of all of those words and the one to one correspondence of them with "ultimate reality" (if there is such a thing), which requires a firm belief on language that many mystical traditions and even wittgenstein would reject. the same goes for any consecutive concepts deduced from it and the logic (or any tool) used in that deduction.

does kant pass gorgias' skeptic nihilism challange of proving anything beyond:
>Nothing exists;
>Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and
>Even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others.
>Even if it can be communicated, it cannot be understood.
how does he prove it? does he also prove his methodology? which method does he even use to prove his methodology with? and so on...

gorgias actually started from a similar place with the noumena phenomena divide but he ended up reaching a more sound conclusion imo that nothing is for certain. even if he himself didnt believe that, that nothing is for certain epistemologically is actually a quite popular belief, and it is what makes kant controversial

[Anonymous No.17490966]

>>17485674