[lit-ideas] Re: Philosophy: A Very LONG Introduction
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2013 22:07:04 +0000 (GMT)
>Methinks Neil over-generalizes. From the perspectives of Kant's "public reason"
and Habermas's Discourse Theory of Morality, that part of the universe existing
(ek-sisting) in the human mode of being is indeed under such an obligation
(both moral and epistemic) when deliberating and judging in the public sphere.>
The obligation here sounds like an ought. The fundamental point is that even if
we have a (partially) knowable universe, a universe of which we have some
knowledge, it is neither a logical or physical necessity that (out of all the
possible universes) the actual universe should be a knowable one: it is a
contingent fact. In this sense, the universe is not 'obliged' to be knowable by
any kind of necessity.
>Oh alright, let's also include them trees that are capable of propositional
knowledge>
Who suggested trees are capable of "propositional knowledge"? Popper's
suggestion is that trees and animals have knowledge, not that trees have
propositional knowledge. A tree's knowledge is, in Popper's account, a World 1
kind of dispositional knowledge, as it lacks any World 2. Some animals may have
World 2 mental states, unconscious and conscious, and knowledge bound up with
such World 2 states - a World 2 kind of knowledge. In Popper's account only
human's have World 3 knowledge. And only World 3 knowledge probably counts as
what Walter terms "propositional knowledge", though World 3 knowledge is wider
than "propositional knowledge". Trees have no access to World 3, nor do
animals. But while they may lack that kind of distinctively human knowledge
bound up with World 3 that does mean they lack any knowledge whatsoever.
To rebut this by stipulation as what 'knowledge' means is facile and beside the
point: and will amount, perhaps unwittingly, to substituting a verbal problem
for a substantive one.
Donal
London
On Tuesday, 17 December 2013, 20:19, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
wrote:
Quoting Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Couldn't resist this one, even though I have no idea who the author of the
> quote is, and I am not going to Google him at this late hour...
>
> "The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you"
>
> Neil deGrasse Tyson
Methinks Neil over-generalizes. From the perspectives of Kant's "public reason"
and Habermas's Discourse Theory of Morality, that part of the universe existing
(ek-sisting) in the human mode of being is indeed under such an obligation
(both moral and epistemic) when deliberating and judging in the public sphere.
Oh alright, let's also include them trees that are capable of propositional
knowledge, since it's such a festive time of the year. But not priests at their
pulpits, and definitely no members of the Parti Quebecois.
Walter O (who for the longest time while an undergraduate thought he had coined
the phrase "The universe just naturally grows knowers of itself." Alas, a grad
course on Hegel with Prof Harris at York U dashed my 24 yr old ego into
smithereens (sp?) I don't know why I keep studying philosophy; I just keep
encountering my own thoughts repeated over and over ...)
Research Chair of Anachronistic Historiography
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, December 16, 2013 8:05 PM, Donal McEvoy
> <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> >Those who cannot remember past philosophical arguments and debates are
> doomed to repeat them.>
>
> Those who cannot repeat past philosophical arguments and debates are doomed
> not to remember them.
>
> Dnl
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, 16 December 2013, 18:00, "cblists@xxxxxxxx" <cblists@xxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>
> Those who cannot remember past philosophical arguments and debates are doomed
> to repeat them.
>
> Chris Bruce,
> celebrating his (not my) 150th
> birthday with a corollary, in
> Kiel, Germany
>
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