As far as Kant goes: if you strip away all the religiosity his basic insight is pretty sound. That is, there’s too much information in the universe, so man has to “chunk” it down to use it—that’s basically what the “categories” are.

This “insight” is actually Kant’s most serious error. Daniel’s references to biology in relation to the theory remind me of some lines from my verse performance “Errors of Modern Science,” published here a few days ago, concerning philosophical questions:

Who will decide? What awesome kind of sleuth?

Not scientists. No data they’re obtaining

Can ever bear on questions such as these. …

It’s for philosophy that I’m campaigning—

There only can the root facts be defended;

I am also reminded of Ayn Rand’s statement, “Philosophy is primarily epistemology.”

The Kantian notion of “seeing things in themselves” is a mystical construct, not a valid concept formed by valid means. The senses being man’s only contact with reality, all concepts must ultimately be based on the information provided by their operation. This includes concepts of consciousness. Although consciousness cannot be experienced by the senses in the usual way, persons do have experience of it in the course of using all their other senses; thus the whole realm of sentience is also opened to human thought. When you add in external observations of other people and of animals, and contrasting observations of plants and inanimate objects, there turns out to be plenty of material for forming concepts of consciousness of all kinds: logic, reason, memory, thought, emotion, etc.

When we proceed in this proper way, there’s no point at which we can form a concept of awareness that does not involve some means of awareness. All the instances of awareness from which we formed our concept of it involve some form of contact with the world, some operations performed that result in a certain mental state. Thus, that is what is meant by consciousness—any other idea has no foundation, is arbitrary. To criticize the accuracy of a form of consciousness on the basis that it involves “processing” is to use a standard of judgment based upon a fantasy. “Consciousness is the faculty of awareness—the faculty of perceiving that which exists. … Awareness is not a passive state, but an active process. … On the higher, conceptual level, the process is psychological, conscious and volitional. In either case, awareness is achieved and maintained by continuous action” (Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology).

“That which exists,” of course, is the only reasonable interpretation of the phrase “the thing in itself”—and what exists is what we perceive. I think that many who are taken in by Kant’s theory have actually failed to distinguish between the two axiomatic concepts of existence and consciousness, and the fact that neither can be reduced to terms of the other.

Daniel has some premises about the idea of certainty that I will answer this way. On December 11, 2003, a participant in a discussion at SOLO wrote:

I can tell you, Rand was wrong. There ain’t no such thing as certainty, contextual or otherwise. Do I claim to be certain about this? No! … Do I claim to be around 98% sure? Yes.

There is little one can say to this sort of confusion except: “No, you don’t. Of that I am certain.”

My advice to you is not to use the word “ain’t” in intellectual discussions and to cut down on the name-calling. Readers will respect you more. I don’t get a good image of you from these practices.

The Bayes equation sounds quite valid. But if you describe a mathematical statement of the probability connection between two related phenomena in terms of other probability connections in the other direction as the “proper basis for reasoning,” and sum it up as “mind on one side and reality on the other,” you are begging the question: Does man perceive reality exclusively in terms of probabilities?

Probability is a mathematical method for dealing with situations in which one’s knowledge is insufficient, enabling one to act with the best result. So, naturally, one would expect a probability to change, to “slide,” with the amount of relevant information one has. There’s nothing philosophically significant in this.

If one accepts the theorem as the basis of all reasoning, and uses it to deny the possibility of certainty, one is confused. If you are not certain of the Bayes theorem, how can you use it to categorically deny the possibility of certainty? It is all very well to say, “I am only 98 percent sure that there is no certainty,” but the reason you’re saying that is because you believe in the Bayes theorem so completely! Besides, you are not 98 percent sure—you are adamant about it. I think that if one talks in such riddles and contradictions, one is confused. Can you decide whether I should have used the word “Besides” in this paragraph? I can’t—and I am not confused about anything. The problem is the incoherence of your position.

The contradiction extends to your discussion of accuracy versus certainty. You are hobbled by the idea that everything is analyzable in terms of the theory of probability, and that awareness is the building of tentative models. You’re saying that man can be right about reality, but cannot know that he is right. And yet you say you believe that man can grasp—that he can be aware of—objective reality. Let me explain why I believe this to be a contradiction by quoting myself in response to another person:

For Ayn Rand the issue of certainty is not exactly one of probability, with 100 percent equaling absolutism, but of awareness. Somewhere she counters those who claim universal uncertainty—that is, those whose uncertainty extends to even their theory of certainty and to the theory of probability on which they base it—by saying that to maintain this position is really to say that man is not conscious. Is man aware of reality or not? If one grants that he is, one must accept certainty as possible to man. …

The basic view taken by Rand is that man is aware, not just suspicious, of facts and of reality. This awareness constitutes a basic core of certainty, to which all other facts and all other beliefs are related. Some of them are related so intimately, and in so many ways, that they are in fact considered part of the awareness core itself, and are [also] referred to as “knowledge.” One may not be able to explicitly identify all the connections and all the logic behind one’s belief in such facts, but one knows that it is impossible to be in error about them. (Or if it is, the doubter has to provide reasons [and connect them to your core of certainty].)

(I should have added that in providing reasons for doubt, the doubter must implicitly buy into certainty.) I don’t know whether Ayn Rand would agree with the above, but that is how I interpret her position.

A word of advice from me: when dealing with philosophical/epistemological issues, stop talking about “models.” Building models and seeing how they work has some applications in science and technology, but continued talk about models and probability linkages in connection with scientific problems is just one more sign of the disintegration of science in our time. The business of science is to be aware of reality, of facts, and to end up knowing those facts. The vocabulary of significant correlations and model-building, I suspect, is often used as a kind of self-protection to head off the accusation that one claims to know anything. What is the source of the fear? Modern philosophy and its attack on certainty.

(Edited by Rodney Rawlings on 4/01, 10:51am)