Hawking - philosophy is dead

[thalarch]

I will just say

But first, it's "time" to render this sub-topic moot by my not straying into or further accomodating its error. In Kant's critical philosophy, science studies and researches the phenomenal world, not the noumenal world that speculative and dogmatic metaphysics projected doctrines upon (which is the one Kant leaves a blank, neutral placeholder deprived of the Aristotlean categories, time and space, etc.). Alfred Nordmann of the
Darmstadt Technical University expresses this neatly:

"If you want to know what noumena or things-in-themselves are, consider things like atoms or molecules. After all, we cannot directly experience them and yet our phenomenal world of experience is composed of them. This interpretation is obviously incorrect because we formulate and test scientific theories about atoms and molecules.

No this is exactly correct and very perceptive. Kant would have approved. Whatever way you look at it, atoms and sub atomic particles are just models, and all models are subject to change as we are continually seeing in atomic physics.
Such things are beyond our phenomenal understanding and are imperceptible; against common sense. We can never conceive of a atom which is supposedly empty space with virtually invisible particles. Kant meant exactly this.



These are therefore objects of knowledge and it was precisely for all objects of knowledge that Kant showed how we constitute them as phenomena in time and space, as subject to causality, etc. As far as science is concerned, atoms and molecules are definitely no things-in-themselves that are unstructured by our minds. As objects of knowledge they come with, they are part and parcel of our theoretical representations."

Atoms are exactly things in our minds. This does not mean that they are not part of the external real world, but it does mean that they are conceptualised reality; models by which our understanding of the world is enhanced.

Micro-entities were metaphysical speculations in Kant's era --a history also key to why Mach still abhorred granting realism status to later atomistic theories, preferring his "phenomenalism". What Nordmann refers to is science today, and thus part of the study of the phenomenal world. Kantians, however, can still contend that our detections and technical descriptions of atoms / particles in experience are not what they are as things-in-themselves (their "external" existence as not processed into knowledge / experience / comprehension).

"Thus the order and regularity in the appearances, which we entitle nature, we ourselves introduce." http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/ancon.html

[chaz wyman]

Micro-entities were metaphysical speculations in Kant's era --a history also key to why Mach still abhorred granting realism status to later atomistic theories, preferring his "phenomenalism". What Nordmann refers to is science today, and thus part of the study of the phenomenal world. Kantians, however, can still contend that our detections and technical descriptions of atoms / particles in experience are not what they are as things-in-themselves (their "external" existence as not processed into knowledge / experience / comprehension).

Then Kantians are correct. When you think of an atom you think of a mini solar system were the orbits are shells. Atoms cannot look that way. No light wave, upon which our eyes depend can reflect these objects and as we only see by reflection, atoms are effectively invisible and will always retain a noumenal enigma.
Kant never said that the external world did not exist, he did say that we can only understand what we may perceive and reason of it.


"Thus the order and regularity in the appearances, which we entitle nature, we ourselves introduce." http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/ancon.html

[thalarch]

Micro-entities were metaphysical speculations in Kant's era --a history also key to why Mach still abhorred granting realism status to later atomistic theories, preferring his "phenomenalism". What Nordmann refers to is science today, and thus part of the study of the phenomenal world. Kantians, however, can still contend that our detections and technical descriptions of atoms / particles in experience are not what they are as things-in-themselves (their "external" existence as not processed into knowledge / experience / comprehension).

Then Kantians are correct. When you think of an atom you think of a mini solar system were the orbits are shells. Atoms cannot look that way. No light wave, upon which our eyes depend can reflect these objects and as we only see by reflection, atoms are effectively invisible and will always retain a noumenal enigma.
Kant never said that the external world did not exist, he did say that we can only understand what we may perceive and reason of it.


"Thus the order and regularity in the appearances, which we entitle nature, we ourselves introduce." http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/ancon.html

Noumena are supposedly part of a different nomological order than phenomena, even though in Kant's scheme the definition of the latter and practical reasoning demands that such appearances still correspond to or represent things-in-themselves within the mind's organizing system:

Kant: Things in themselves would necessarily, apart from any understanding that knows them, conform to laws of their own. But appearances are only representations of things which are unknown as regards what they may be in themselves. As mere representations, they are subject to no law of connection save that which the connecting faculty prescribes. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subje ... n/ch02.htm

But there's yet another "objective" world --the one that both commonsense and physical science researches-- which is the behavior and circumstances of phenomena in external experience. This actvity is at least mind-independent of a particular individual's will, if not so from the a priori "operating system" that's apparently duplicated in each human mind. One might even speculate that this is what Ernst Mach used for an "external world", after he and a variety of post-Kantians and neo-Kantians over the next 150 years discarded the noumenal world as being "superfluous". A place where Kant acknowledges experience being dichotomized into internal (private) and external (public) is here:

Kant: It [metaphysical cognition] must not be physical but metaphysical knowledge, viz., knowledge lying beyond experience. It can therefore have for its basis neither external experience, which is the source of physics proper, nor internal, which is the basis of empirical psychology. It is therefore a priori knowledge, coming from pure Understanding and pure reason. --from Preamble of "Prolegomena TAFM"

Nevertheless, the question sometimes arises in direction to these dead guys like Mach who dropped things-in-themselves: "What the hell were you thinking?! Weren't you flirting with solipsism?"

[Cerveny]

If something is dead it is just Theory of relativity. For eighty years it is leading to nowhere but to silly singularities :( No time exists after the point “now”, yet if we want consider the “time” at all, it has only a local character, local relevance. As for STR, it is clear the incoming body acts to subject for a shorter time (it is coming in with the same velocity as its force, in limit case) then outgoing body acts. Such difference is a source of tangential force to a Mercury‘s trace… As for famous mc^2 we can imagine it is a kinetic energy of some universal movement “toward the future”…

[Daniel1974]

This place is just totally retarded! Have a good one everyone!~ I'm not making any further contributions. Have fun talking about "the think in itself" and the "phenomenalism"!

[chaz wyman]

This place is just totally retarded! Have a good one everyone!~ I'm not making any further contributions. Have fun talking about "the think in itself" and the "phenomenalism"!

DUHHHH.

THere is no "think in itself", you mean "thing in itself"
AND "phenomenalism" requires no article.

Interesting that a person who accuses this place of being retarded manages to make two mistakes in such a short post!
Good bye - I think we might be better off without you.

[lancek4]

It seems the frustration here involves "phenomena" and its supposed opposite "numen" (sp?) It is interesting that the idea behind a phenomenon is that it occurs or exists but we cannot know exactly why. Kant takes phenomenon and 'grants' it a substantial quality, thereby ignoring the unknown part of the meaning, or rather substaiating (meaning 'make known') it by creating another term 'numen'. It is puely discursive acrobatics.

[thalarch]

It seems the frustration here involves "phenomena" and its supposed opposite "numen" (sp?) It is interesting that the idea behind a phenomenon is that it occurs or exists but we cannot know exactly why. Kant takes phenomenon and 'grants' it a substantial quality, thereby ignoring the unknown part of the meaning, or rather substaiating (meaning 'make known') it by creating another term 'numen'. It is puely discursive acrobatics.

He invented neither term. Plato spoke of both the "visible realm" (phenomena) and the "knowable/intellectual realm" (noumena). In his own writings, Schopenhauer did chastise Kant for supposedly tweaking the original meanings, but revision of concepts is hardly a novelty in philosophy. Materialism has been adjusted for centuries as physics advanced, to keep the word alive.

[chaz wyman]

It seems the frustration here involves "phenomena" and its supposed opposite "numen" (sp?) It is interesting that the idea behind a phenomenon is that it occurs or exists but we cannot know exactly why. Kant takes phenomenon and 'grants' it a substantial quality, thereby ignoring the unknown part of the meaning, or rather substaiating (meaning 'make known') it by creating another term 'numen'. It is puely discursive acrobatics.

He invented neither term. Plato spoke of both the "visible realm" (phenomena) and the "knowable/intellectual realm" (noumena). In his own writings, Schopenhauer did chastise Kant for supposedly tweaking the original meanings, but revision of concepts is hardly a novelty in philosophy. Materialism has been adjusted for centuries as physics advanced, to keep the word alive.

Kant and Plato are completely different in this respect. The simple reason for this is that Plato was completely wrong. There is and can be no realm of the "Theory of Forms", unless you accept that they exist in the mind of God. Whilst it is possible to rescue Plato's Forms by bringing them back into a Materialist position, Kant was defining the Noumena by rejecting Plato - Plato was not articulating any materialist position as you seem to imply. Schop can chastise all he likes, Kant offers a theory which is more likely to represent that which is the case, whilst Plato offers an esoteric and unverifiable metaphysical position.

[thalarch]

It seems the frustration here involves "phenomena" and its supposed opposite "numen" (sp?) It is interesting that the idea behind a phenomenon is that it occurs or exists but we cannot know exactly why. Kant takes phenomenon and 'grants' it a substantial quality, thereby ignoring the unknown part of the meaning, or rather substaiating (meaning 'make known') it by creating another term 'numen'. It is puely discursive acrobatics.

He invented neither term. Plato spoke of both the "visible realm" (phenomena) and the "knowable/intellectual realm" (noumena). In his own writings, Schopenhauer did chastise Kant for supposedly tweaking the original meanings, but revision of concepts is hardly a novelty in philosophy. Materialism has been adjusted for centuries as physics advanced, to keep the word alive.

Kant and Plato are completely different in this respect. The simple reason for this is that Plato was completely wrong. There is and can be no realm of the "Theory of Forms", unless you accept that they exist in the mind of God. Whilst it is possible to rescue Plato's Forms by bringing them back into a Materialist position, Kant was defining the Noumena by rejecting Plato - Plato was not articulating any materialist position as you seem to imply. Schop can chastise all he likes, Kant offers a theory which is more likely to represent that which is the case, whilst Plato offers an esoteric and unverifiable metaphysical position.

What I wrote was what I wrote: That Kant didn't arbitrarily conjure the terms, they date back to classical times. This didn't include mention of any nonsense about Plato being a materialist. Obviously there are differences in how Kant used them, otherwise why did I defend the changes by saying that it's hardly novel for individual thinkers to revise common (or uncommon) philosophical staple for their own purposes. Yet there are still some similarities, like Plato's abstract realm being aspatial and atemporal. The post-Kantians rejected Kant's things-in-themselves because Kant made them fully unknowable or uncertain, even intellectually. Apparently missing part of the point of the antinomies, that reason can generate many theoretical conclusions from starting assumptions, rather than A conclusion. Which the post-Kantians themselves later demonstrated with their own varied panpsychist and objective idealist schemes.

Prof. Lewis W. Beck: These terms mean literally ‘things that appear’ and ‘things that are thought’. Platonic Ideas and Forms are noumena, and phenomena are things displaying themselves to the senses. In Plato's metaphor of the divided line (Republic, bk. 6), whatever lies above the dividing-line is noumenal, that which is below it is phenomenal. In Republic 517b the distinction is between that which is revealed to sight and that which is intelligible; at 524c the contrast is between terms cognate with noumena and phenomena. This dichotomy is the most characteristic feature of Plato's dualism; that noumena and the noumenal world are objects of the highest knowledge, truths, and values is Plato's principal legacy to philosophy. --Republic, On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World

[But] it would be a mistake to take Plato's imagery as positing the intelligible world as a literally separate realm. Plato emphasizes that the Forms are not beings which are extended in space (or time), but rather subsist in a more abstract way. Such we read in the Symposium of the Form of Beauty: "It is not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself with itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms

[chaz wyman]

He invented neither term. Plato spoke of both the "visible realm" (phenomena) and the "knowable/intellectual realm" (noumena). In his own writings, Schopenhauer did chastise Kant for supposedly tweaking the original meanings, but revision of concepts is hardly a novelty in philosophy. Materialism has been adjusted for centuries as physics advanced, to keep the word alive.

Kant and Plato are completely different in this respect. The simple reason for this is that Plato was completely wrong. There is and can be no realm of the "Theory of Forms", unless you accept that they exist in the mind of God. Whilst it is possible to rescue Plato's Forms by bringing them back into a Materialist position, Kant was defining the Noumena by rejecting Plato - Plato was not articulating any materialist position as you seem to imply. Schop can chastise all he likes, Kant offers a theory which is more likely to represent that which is the case, whilst Plato offers an esoteric and unverifiable metaphysical position.

What I wrote was what I wrote: That Kant didn't arbitrarily conjure the terms, they date back to classical times. This didn't include mention of any nonsense about Plato being a materialist.

Your words:

Materialism has been adjusted for centuries as physics advanced, to keep the word alive.

Why mention it if you did not want it part of the discussion?


Obviously there are differences in how Kant used them, otherwise why did I defend the changes by saying that it's hardly novel for individual thinkers to revise common (or uncommon) philosophical staple for their own purposes. Yet there are still some similarities, like Plato's abstract realm being aspatial and atemporal. The post-Kantians rejected Kant's things-in-themselves because Kant made them fully unknowable or uncertain, even intellectually. Apparently missing part of the point of the antinomies, that reason can generate many theoretical conclusions from starting assumptions, rather than A conclusion. Which the post-Kantians themselves later demonstrated with their own varied panpsychist and objective idealist schemes.

You seem to be conflating the Noumena with the Antinomies.

I love to meet some of your so-called post-Kantian panpsychist and objective idealists.



Prof. Lewis W. Beck: These terms mean literally ‘things that appear’ and ‘things that are thought’. Platonic Ideas and Forms are noumena, and phenomena are things displaying themselves to the senses.

Well he is wrong. Wrong to impose a incoherent literalism on these words. Noumena did not even mean that for Plato. I think we can agree on Phenomena in the most banal way, though.


In Plato's metaphor of the divided line (Republic, bk. 6), whatever lies above the dividing-line is noumenal, that which is below it is phenomenal. In Republic 517b the distinction is between that which is revealed to sight and that which is intelligible; at 524c the contrast is between terms cognate with noumena and phenomena. This dichotomy is the most characteristic feature of Plato's dualism; that noumena and the noumenal world are objects of the highest knowledge, truths, and values is Plato's principal legacy to philosophy. --Republic, On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World


What is good for Plato doesn't work for Kant. Words change their meaning. At the heart of our understanding of Kant's philosophy is the very change in meaning to which you refer.


[But] it would be a mistake to take Plato's imagery as positing the intelligible world as a literally separate realm. Plato emphasizes that the Forms are not beings which are extended in space (or time), but rather subsist in a more abstract way. Such we read in the Symposium of the Form of Beauty: "It is not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself with itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms

This makes sense in a subjective way, but I think Plato was not aware of the importance of a subjective/objective distinction

[lancek4]

An excellent flaunting of acedemic prowess. I'm impressed. But if we are considering ideas of now. I think a better is Witts formulation in tractatus. I would like anyone to explain to us how to discern between "that of the senses" (or however you put platos category and/ or kant's) and "that of knowledge". Likewise, inform me how I may discern between a noumen and a phenomenon in actual reality. Do I know it or just sense it? How do I know a "sense"? Or do I just know it? Can I sense something without knowing it?

[chaz wyman]

An excellent flaunting of acedemic prowess. I'm impressed. But if we are considering ideas of now. I think a better is Witts formulation in tractatus. I would like anyone to explain to us how to discern between "that of the senses" (or however you put platos category and/ or kant's) and "that of knowledge". Likewise, inform me how I may discern between a noumen and a phenomenon in actual reality. Do I know it or just sense it? How do I know a "sense"? Or do I just know it? Can I sense something without knowing it?

A idiotic story floated about on the philosophy blogs a while ago suggesting that the first American India to sense a Galleon, sensed nothing because he has no reference for a large ship with sails. This is clearly bollocks. The Indian would have sensed a thing he had not previously identified. He might have guessed it was a type of boat had he had knowledge of such a thing, but he would have sensed the material of which the Galleon was comprised, even if he had no knowledge of ships there would have been something there.
Heiddgger had a good handle on this problem by defining things that were "ready to hand" and 'present at hand'. ALthough he did not articulate these concepts for the topic we are talking about, they are no less useful. For the Indian seeing the thing for the first time will be present-at-hand, not part of his immediate knowledge, whereas a object such as his bow and arrows will be ready at hand, part of his knowledge. Present at hand leads to ready to hand when the utility and function of the object becomes part of the furniture of his life, and will become integrated into his life-world. This will necessarily mean that he will not conceive of the object in exactly the same way as one of the sailors on the ship.
It can be argued that the conception of all objects have to be unique to each subject.
In the most basic sense a thing of the senses is easily distinguished from that of knowledge, by closing your eyes to see if the object persists, if it does it is part of knowledge.
Can you sense without knowledge- yes- in a present-at-hand way.

[thalarch]

Your words:

Materialism has been adjusted for centuries as physics advanced, to keep the word alive.

Why mention it if you did not want it part of the discussion?

The issue you submitted in your own words which was dismissed by me was: "Plato was not articulating any materialist position as you seem to imply?", not this spin of discussing materialism in general. Your sudden shift here is like "Let's discuss the beating of wives across the world as a topic" after making the suggestion "So you beat your wife last night?".

You seem to be conflating the Noumena with the Antinomies.

These elements and explorations are tied-together and mutually support each other in Kant's system. Noumenon is referred to at least twice in the section about antinomies, along with various associative returns to appearances, phenomena, etc.: http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/antin.html

The first antinomy consists of opposing space and time assumptions: [This] antinomy arises, Kant argued, based upon two illegitimate presuppositions: first, that space and time are forms of existence; second, that we do not make a distinction between Phenomena and Noumena. For Kant, space and time are not forms of existence but subjective forms of the mind. When a man has certain experiences, he or she unconsciously applies these forms of the mind in order to organize the experiences. Furthermore, human cognition is limited to the sphere of phenomena which has a certain sensible content. But, things considered in themselves ("noumena" or "things in themselves") without the consideration of the human cognitive apparatus are, in principle, unknowable. An antinomy arises when we take space and time as forms of existing objects that are conceived as forms of "things in themselves" or "noumena." http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Antinomy

The second antinomy deals with the thesis of indivisible componets contrasted with the antithesis of no divisible components (what a conflict over a pre-kantian version of things-in-themselves as the items in older atomistic metaphysics could be subsumed under).

I love to meet some of your so-called post-Kantian panpsychist and objective idealists.'

"Johann Fichte opposed Kant’s notion of "thing-in-itself" beyond Reason..." http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/f/i.htm

"Hegel rejects things-in-themselves." http://www.friesian.com/hegel.htm

"Schelling claimed that the ideas or mental images in the mind are identical to the extended objects which are external to the mind. Schelling's 'absolute identity' or 'indifferentism' asserted that there is no difference between the subjective and the objective, that is, the ideal and the real." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_idealism

Hugh Chisholm: "...led to the wider view by Schelling and Hegel that the world is an absolute thought of an infinite mind" --from the "The Encyclopædia Britannica", 1911

"Gottlob Ernst Schulze wrote, anonymously, that the law of cause and effect only applies to the phenomena within the mind, not between those phenomena and any things-in-themselves outside of the mind. That is, a thing-in-itself cannot be the cause of an idea or image of a thing in the mind. In this way, he discredited Kant's philosophy by using Kant's own reasoning to disprove the existence of a thing-in-itself." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_idealism

One should note with Schulze that it apparently flew over his head that the category of causation was grounded in the space and time simulating forms in Kant's version of mind, which were absent in the noumenal world. Thus, the "influences" or correlations of noumena upon/with phenomena was not a causal connection, or an inconsistency of Kant via the category of "causation" being returned to its former or traditional externalized status.

[chaz wyman]

Your words:

Materialism has been adjusted for centuries as physics advanced, to keep the word alive.

Why mention it if you did not want it part of the discussion?

The issue you submitted in your own words which was dismissed by me was: "Plato was not articulating any materialist position as you seem to imply?", not this spin of discussing materialism in general. Your sudden shift here is like "Let's discuss the beating of wives across the world as a topic" after making the suggestion "So you beat your wife last night?".


'uckin hell. As you concluded your statement with the sentence I pointed out you can hardly berate my for thinking you were introducing the subject of materialism into the discussion.
Perhaps in future you could keep things relevant.

You seem to be conflating the Noumena with the Antinomies.

These elements and explorations are tied-together and mutually support each other in Kant's system. Noumenon is referred to at least twice in the section about antinomies, along with various associative returns to appearances, phenomena, etc.: http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/antin.html


The first antinomy consists of opposing space and time assumptions: [This] antinomy arises, Kant argued, based upon two illegitimate presuppositions: first, that space and time are forms of existence; second, that we do not make a distinction between Phenomena and Noumena. For Kant, space and time are not forms of existence but subjective forms of the mind. When a man has certain experiences, he or she unconsciously applies these forms of the mind in order to organize the experiences. Furthermore, human cognition is limited to the sphere of phenomena which has a certain sensible content. But, things considered in themselves ("noumena" or "things in themselves") without the consideration of the human cognitive apparatus are, in principle, unknowable. An antinomy arises when we take space and time as forms of existing objects that are conceived as forms of "things in themselves" or "noumena."

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Antinomy

It's one thing to copy and paste, another to understand.



The second antinomy deals with the thesis of indivisible componets contrasted with the antithesis of no divisible components (what a conflict over a pre-kantian version of things-in-themselves as the items in older atomistic metaphysics could be subsumed under).

I love to meet some of your so-called post-Kantian panpsychist and objective idealists.'

"Johann Fichte opposed Kant’s notion of "thing-in-itself" beyond Reason..." http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/f/i.htm

"Hegel rejects things-in-themselves." http://www.friesian.com/hegel.htm

Predated the coining of the term, as does Plato though?
I'm not sure it is a viable term for Plato.


"Schelling claimed that the ideas or mental images in the mind are identical to the extended objects which are external to the mind. Schelling's 'absolute identity' or 'indifferentism' asserted that there is no difference between the subjective and the objective, that is, the ideal and the real." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_idealism

Not really the same as objective idealism is it?

Hugh Chisholm: "...led to the wider view by Schelling and Hegel that the world is an absolute thought of an infinite mind" --from the "The Encyclopædia Britannica", 1911

"Gottlob Ernst Schulze wrote, anonymously, that the law of cause and effect only applies to the phenomena within the mind, not between those phenomena and any things-in-themselves outside of the mind. That is, a thing-in-itself cannot be the cause of an idea or image of a thing in the mind. In this way, he discredited Kant's philosophy by using Kant's own reasoning to disprove the existence of a thing-in-itself." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_idealism

One should note with Schulze that it apparently flew over his head that the category of causation was grounded in the space and time simulating forms in Kant's version of mind, which were absent in the noumenal world. Thus, the "influences" or correlations of noumena upon/with phenomena was not a causal connection, or an inconsistency of Kant via the category of "causation" being returned to its former or traditional externalized status.

So you've done your homework.

What is panpsychist?