[lit-ideas] Re: Transcendental and otherwise
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 12:38:32 +0900
Once again, I extend my appreciation to Eric Dean for carrying our
discussion forward, in directions with which I can largely agree. A
few questions remain.
On Jan 9, 2008 7:39 AM, Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I think it can be productive to try to assert the (substantial) conditions
> of possibility for moral judgment, but not because anyone's going to resolve
> the question of whether the asserted list contains all and only the
> conditions of possibility, but because doing so may help illuminate some
> corner of the human condition in a way otherwise not readily available.
To me one of the most memorable assertions I have read on lit-ideas
was John Wager's proposition that moral judgment presupposes
ambiguity. If a situation is clear cut, there is no moral judgment to
be made. Would, then, ambiguity count as a condition of possibility?
>
> Asking apposite, incisive questions seems to me a skill worth cultivating.
> Transcendental analyses can provide very useful tools for the questioner, so
> I wouldn't jettison them. But the idea that they constitute the whole or
> even the soul of philosophy seems misguided to me.
I agree. To adapt a remark that Bourdieu made about science, the fact
that we now know it to be the product of particular parts of the world
at particular moments in history does not make it less worthy of
study. Or, as Edward Said once noted, the recurrence of perennial
issues is a sign of vitality in a discipline. When all matters seem
settled, the discipline is dead.
Returning, however, from morals to epistemology: A few days back I
mentioned a website (http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/kantmeta.htm#H2) that
provides a synopsis of Kant's metaphysics and asked if any of our
experts would comment upon the account that it offers. Since no one
has risen to that bait, let me sharpen the challenge a bit. The
explanation of the synthetic a priori reads as follows,
"Synthetic a priori claims, Kant argues, demand an entirely different
kind of proof than those required for analytic, a priori claims or
synthetic, a posteriori claims. Indications for how to proceed, Kant
says, can be found in the examples of synthetic a priori claims in
natural science and mathematics, specifically geometry. Claims like
Newton's, "the quantity of matter is always preserved," and the
geometer's claim, "the angles of a triangle always add up to 180
degrees" are known a priori, but they cannot be known merely from an
analysis of the concepts of matter or triangle. We must "go outside
and beyond the concept. . . joining to it a priori in thought
something which I have not thought in it." (B 18)"
In retrospect, Kant's f examples seem suspect. Nowadays, both these
claims would be qualified. Of the first we would say, **In classical
mechanics** the quantity of matter is always preserved. Since Einstein
and the atomic bomb, we know that conversion of matter into energy can
leave less matter at the end than at the beginning of a physical
process. Of the second we would say **In Euclidean geometry** the
angles of a triangle always add up to 180 degrees. Now, thanks to
Bernard Riemann, we know that Euclidean geometry is only a special, if
familiar, case. Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemannian_geometry) says,
"Riemannian geometry was first put forward in generality by Bernhard
Riemann in the nineteenth century. It deals with a broad range of
geometries whose metric properties vary from point to point, as well
as two standard types of Non-Euclidean geometry, spherical geometry
and hyperbolic geometry, as well as Euclidean geometry itself."
In contrast to Kant's day, when Newtonian (now classical) mechanics
and Euclidean geometry were believed to constitute the very fabric of
the universe, we now view both as examples of systems that logically
derive consequences that, while they remain useful to those of us in
the middle of the cosmos-to-quantum scale, have been shown to be only
subsets of larger systems--with different assumptions and
implications.
If, however, we put aside these relatively substantive but
demonstrably erroneous examples of synthetic a priori propositions,
what are we left with? Some plausible-sounding examples can be found
at http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5f.htm
"As we saw last time, applying the concepts of space and time as forms
of sensible intuition is necessary condition for any perception. But
the possibility of scientific knowledge requires that our experience
of the world be not only perceivable but thinkable as well, and Kant
held that the general intelligibility of experience entails the
satisfaction of two further conditions:
First, it must be possible in principle to arrange and organize the
chaos of our many individual sensory images by tracing the connections
that hold among them. This Kant called the synthetic unity of the
sensory manifold.
Second, it must be possible in principle for a single subject to
perform this organization by discovering the connections among
perceived images. This is satisfied by what Kant called the
transcendental unity of apperception."
On the one hand, the proposition that knowledge requires the
organization of sensory images by finding connections among them comes
as no surprise. But the interesting work on precisely how the relevant
processes work is being done in fields outside philosophy, in
neurophysiology, for example. Such phrases as "the synthetic unity of
the sensory manifold" or "the transcendental unity of apperception"
appear no more meaningful than "phlogiston."
Or am I missing something here?
John
>
>
> Regards to one and all.
> Eric Dean
> Washington DC
>
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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