RoR: Forum

Robert,

Ayer's variation on the analytic-synthetic theme is logical positivist, and that is the one Peikoff took issue with in his essay on the "dichotomy," not Kant's. Kant was not a logical positivist, nor could he be since logical positivism had rejected the theory of the synthetic a priori at the logical basis of Kant's architectonic.

But Kant needn't be a card-carrying logical positivist in order to be in error regarding the relation of the following 3 things: the a priori, the synthetic, and the analytic. All he would need to do is to accept it -- to accept a dichotomy (rather than reject it, as Objectivists do). If Kant were to initially accept such a dichotomy, then he would have to put some work in in order to try to transcend it. He would have to come up with the "synthetic a priori" as a solution to the "problem."

If, on the other hand, there isn't a problem -- then the concept of the "synthetic a priori" is not needed as a solution. This is the thinking error with which Kant has been charged, not for creating the synthetic a priori, but for perceiving a need for it (to explain things). If Kant had rejected the analytic-synthetic dichotomy in the first place, then Rand and Peikoff would not have included him in a scornful discussion about it.

So I don't buy Peikoff's claim that the "moderns" played with Kant's "marked cards" only they played it "deuces wild." Philosophers are quite capable of marking their own cards, they don't need Kant's help.

Okay, but Kant, in offering a solution to a non-existent problem, didn't help philosophy make the progress it has made. Instead, leaning on a false solution (like leaning on "fool's gold" for your fortune) ended up setting philosophical progress back a few notches. Notice how you do not even have to discuss the details or even the merits of Kant's solution -- like you do not need to know the weight of the fool's gold that you have (because it's all a sham, anyways) -- in order to criticize Kant's thinking.

You consider my idea of the a priori to be static. I think Kant's point about the mind is that the rules it operates by are static - do you believe the laws of nature are changing or unchanging?

Well, as I showed above, this (examining the "synthetic a priori" for its merits, etc) is already water under the bridge. I will answer anyway, to be as clear as I can. The rules that the mind operates by are static, I agree. But that doesn't mean that we need to know anything about reality before (or independently of) experiencing it. It's a non sequitur. To think that we need experience-free knowledge about reality in order to know reality is a bold-faced acceptance of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy (as I showed above).

Kant considered the expressions "laws of nature" and "laws of experience" to be identical. And they are static, unchanging, immutable, necessary. Those ideas go to the very heart of what it means to be a priori, along with "independently of experience," where appearance only brings with it constant change.

I disagree. I don't believe in innate ideas (knowledge, independent of experience). Furthermore, I do not see the epistemological need to postulate such a thing. It seems to me to be a rejection of the method humans use to know reality.

Hume mistook the forms of understanding for forms of sensibility. Leibniz mistook the forms of sensibility for forms of understanding. Kantian Critique brought both kinds of form to their respective proper transcendental topics.

Good observation, though Kant was still wrong -- in the same way that "fixing" any non-existent problem is wrong. At best, you waste resources; at worst, you legitimize a falsehood (rather than outright rejecting it).

Rand and Peikoff know nothing of this.

I beg to differ (but do so without the appropriate counter-evidence).

... by definition the a priori is that which is known independently of any and all experience.

I reject this as an anti-concept. This sense of the a priori is not needed.

Your argument concludes that there needs to be something more than just the static notion of an a priori judgment, but Kant has already provided that answer for you: the synthetic a priori judgment.

That's an epistemological "bait-n-switch" if I've ever seen one. An analogy would be a defense contractor mentioning a need for a missle defense system, and then offering the government a crate of toy slingshots at the price of a billion dollars. Just because there's a need for something, doesn't mean that "any" imagined solution will do (or is, therefore, a "good" solution).

The better solution, rather than postulating that we have to know some things about the world before ever experiencing it, would be to say that we learn things about the world via a combination of logic and experience. This solution would work, unless you initially accept the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, that is.

Ed

Post 41

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - 8:31pm

Kant was responding to numerous philosophers. The Aesthetic of the CPR takes on Newton and Leibniz. The Transcendental Analytic takes on Hume. The Transcendental Dialectic takes on Plato and perhaps Swedenborg's mysticism.

Kant states that he borrowed those infamous concepts of the understanding from Aristotle. So I always find it a mute testimony to Rand's failure to actually read Kant that she calls Kant's (thus Aristotle's) categories a "preposterous invention."

Post 42

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - 5:48am

Robert Keele, welcome to RoR.

It is inaccurate to say “Kant states that he borrowed those infamous concepts of the understanding from Aristotle.”

Kant sets out his table of judgments in A70 B95. This table is a representation of the various forms of judgments covered by logic texts of his time, as used in the logic courses he taught, and with his own modifications, which he explains in the text immediately following that table. Taking this table as a lead, he proceeds to “deduce” his table of the categories of the understanding. The entries in the former table are merely logical, the entries in the latter are transcendental.

Aristotle’s categories are ontological, Kant’s are forms of cognition. The latter is intended to stand in place of the former; but treating the latter as forms of being, as it is apart from human consciousness, is against the rules of Kant. Kant is rocking the audience to sleep when he writes: “There arise as many pure concepts of understanding applying a priori to objects of intuition as such, as in the preceding table there were logical functions involved in all possible judgments. For these functions of the understanding are completely exhaustive and survey its power entirely. Following Aristotle, we shall call these functions categories. For our aim is fundamentally [uranfänglich] the same as his, even though it greatly deviates from his in its execution”(A79 B105). (Translation of Werner Pluhar 1996).

Kant then displays his table of categories and lays out his criticisms of Aristotle’s attempt at identifying most basic categories (KrV A80–83 B106–9).

Post 43

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - 4:50am

Ed,

British empiricists such as Ayers typically trace their philosophical lineage back to Hume, not Kant. It is with Hume that the present dichotomy rose to prominence, although Hume did not give it a name. Logical positivists took the names from Kant (who put the issue into conceptual form), thus Kant rather than Hume gets the blame (whereas logical positivists would give the credit to Hume).

It was Hume's error for failing to clarify his own concepts, thus waiting for Kant to clarify them for him. Because if Hume had done so he would have seen that his conclusions not only do away with causality as a concept, but also mathematics and geometry.

It was Kant's stated intention to save these from Hume's destructive critique. So you may blame Kant for trying, and even if he made a mistake somewhere, his intentions were good, not evil.

Post 44

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - 10:46am

Thanks Stephen,

I'd considered joining for a long time and then finally got up the nerve.

I was referring to Kant's statement at A80: "These concepts we shall, with Aristotle, call categories, for our
primary purpose is the same as his, although widely diverging
from it in manner of execution."

"Manner of execution" I take to mean the systematization and deduction of these concepts according to a rule or principle rather than gathering them rhapsodically: "It was an enterprise worthy of an acute thinker like Aristotle to make search for these fundamental concepts. But as he did so on no principle, he merely picked them up as they came his way..." (A81)

As for the categories being ontological for Aristotle, you must be thinking of his theory of essences, or "what it is for a thing to be." That certainly says to me that Aristotle was referring to being and not concept in relation to essence, whereas a category is not being, categories belong to the topic of logic although of course they are then related to being by the thinking mind.

What Kant has done is take a logic table, as you mentioned, translating it from that topic to another, a transcendental topic. That is the step Aristotle obviously did not take.
But it was only in the form of a transcendental topic that, as you also mentioned, Kant could then deduce them.

Post 45

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - 1:29pm

I don't know if my post is still awaiting moderation after so many hours have gone by. Or if someone decided that Boydstun should have the last word. I just don't see how Aristotle's categories could have been ontological when they are logical, although relating to being. Essences ("what it is to be") are ontological for Aristotle, not categories.

Post 46

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - 1:50pm

There, now you don't need to wait.

Post 47

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - 3:13pm

Boydstun wrote:

Kant sets out his table of judgments in A70 B95. This table is a representation of the various forms of judgments covered by logic texts of his time, as used in the logic courses he taught, and with his own modifications, which he explains in the text immediately following that table.

I'm not sure if you're saying for certain that Kant actually had a table of logic already prepared for him. But Kant makes it appear in his analysis as if he borrowed his categories from Aristotle. I'm trying to remember if Kant prepared one especially for the CPR or if he borrowed it from another book, or if he had it from one of his own lectures.

However, I do know this much: Kant's table of logical functions is flawed, and so I would not take it too seriously. Fortunately, the deduction of categories is not dependent upon the table of logic except in a general sense, and that's how I take it. But the particular details of the table itself are not up to scholastic standards.

Post 48

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - 4:30pm

Yeah, some of us non-Kantians work for a living. ;) Thanks, Ted.

Post 49

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - 5:22pm

Robert,

It was Kant's stated intention to save these from Hume's destructive critique. So you may blame Kant for trying, and even if he made a mistake somewhere, his intentions were good, not evil.

As I said above, it doesn't really matter whether Kant's intention was good -- e.g., it doesn't matter whether there is some merit to be found in the "synthetic a priori" as a tool to transcend the analytic-synthetic dichotomy of Hume -- it matters whether Kant was wrong or not. Let me share a current example ...

Listening to recordings of town halls on talk radio, I have become aware that B.H. Obama said that republicans have made an economic mess and that he is trying to clean it up with a mop, so to speak. Then he says that the republicans won't shut up and get out of the way so that he can clean up the mess. He made fun of the republicans complaining that he's not holding the mop the right way (when he is charged with the task of fixing things, while they get to sit idle on the sidelines). He mocked them and said: "But that's a socialist mop. We don't want that." [paraphrased]

He's painting the republicans as a bunch of rabble-rousers who want to cause trouble even for people who are trying to save them from themselves. But, if you will pardon the pun, here is the rub:

Socialism (Fannie, Freddie, CRA, etc) is what made the mess.

Now, not wanting to understand the real problem, more socialism is offered as a solution for the mess (2nd and 3rd bailouts for Fannie, Freddie, GMAC, new public liability for union pensions, etc, ad nauseum). Instead of understanding the problem in its true form of market mechanics such as logical risk-assessments, return-on-investments, savings, capital, etc.; we are offered a surrogate solution which accepts the old canard that there has been too much freedom (even though freedom has been lessening for decades).

Kant is like Obama. He offered a so-called solution to a "problem" without understanding what the real nature of the problem was. By trying to fix something in the wrong way, he added to the mess. Picture taking a mop and merely spreading spaghetti sauce around on the floor (rather than mopping it up). This is what Kant did to philosophy. Kant is guilty of relying on the quick-fix, the easy-solution, or the pet-theory as an answer -- and his pet-theory had disastrous consequences. He accepted the old explanation for the philosophical mess and, therefore, legitimized it. This set philosophy back a few hundred (if not a few thousand) years.

Now you can say that Kant meant well, but I honestly do not know how you could know this. As an aside, do you think Obama means well? Do you think that Obama will set America back to a 30% reduction in our standard of living?

You do not have to answer that, but the question is illustrative of what Rand called the Primacy of Consciousness -- wherein we ascribe or project things instead of dealing with logic and experience like Aristotle and Rand said we should be doing. The key question is this:

If so much wrong comes from their actions (which can be predicted by folks like me), does it matter whether they meant well? Isn't there a point where we say that they should know better, and that they are culpable? How much destructive and idiotic error should go unchallenged? This is what I meant above when I said:

This is the thinking error with which Kant has been charged, not for creating the synthetic a priori, but for perceiving a need for it (to explain things). ...

... Notice how you do not even have to discuss the details or even the merits of Kant's solution -- ... -- in order to criticize Kant's thinking.

What do you have to say about that?

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/07, 4:05am)

Post 50

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 7:00am

Yeah, some of us non-Kantians work for a living. ;) Thanks, Ted.

I was not sitting here on my thumbs waiting for the moderation to approve my post. After working 5 hours without a break I came back to my computer and noticed it was not approved yet.

Post 51

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 7:14am

I was not sitting here on my thumbs waiting for the moderation to approve my post. After working 5 hours without a break I came back to my computer and noticed it was not approved yet.

You no longer need to wait for moderator approval per here:
http://rebirthofreason.com/About/AtlasFAQ.shtml

Post 52

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 7:29am

Ed,

I don't know why every philosophical discussion has to devolve like this. The CPR is not a political tract. I don't think Obama's intentions involve anything beyond his own power-mongering ways.

Kant understood the problem Hume set forth and then set down his solution. If he 'failed' it was only in the sense that Hume asked for a simple answer. But simple answers are not always possible, sometimes "the solution is too big to fit into this margin."

After years of studying Kant and Objectivism I concluded that Objectivism's criticism of Kant is best leveled at Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and that it appears they have Kant and Fichte confused. Fichte was truly a human monster. There is a difference between obscure writing and Obscurantism. Fichte's Obscurantism was the hallmark of his writing. But that isn't the monstrous part. Fichte was an explicit nationalist-racist, a proto-Aryan whose intentions could only be called evil. By rejecting, not accepting or believing in, the Kantian noumenon and the theory of transcendental imagination, Fichte is the philosopher who truly marked the cards and created a new way for subjectivism, idealism, and mysticism - ideas that make evil possible - to gain a fresh toehold on the philosophical front. For Fichte rather, "the phenomenal world as such, arises from self-consciousness; the activity of the ego; and moral awareness." (Wikipedia article on Fichte)

Fichte

called Jews a "state within a state" that could "undermine" the German nation (GA I/1: pp. 292–293). In regard to Jews getting "civil rights," he wrote that this would only be possible if one managed "to cut off all their heads in one night, and to set new ones on their shoulders, which should contain not a single Jewish idea." (ibid)

This is the exact opposite of Kantianism.

Post 53

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 9:41am

Wikipedia

In mimicking Kant's difficult style, Fichte produced works that were barely intelligible. "He made no hesitation in pluming himself on his great skill in the shadowy and obscure, by often remarking to his pupils, that 'there was only one man in the world who could fully understand his writings; and even he was often at a loss to seize upon his real meaning.' "[4] This remark was often mistakenly attributed to Hegel.

Fichte did not endorse Kant's argument for the existence of noumena, of "things in themselves", the supra-sensible reality beyond the categories of human reason. Fichte saw the rigorous and systematic separation of "things in themselves" (noumena) and things "as they appear to us" (phenomena) as an invitation to skepticism. Rather than invite such skepticism, Fichte made the radical suggestion that we should throw out the notion of a noumenal world and instead accept the fact that consciousness does not have a grounding in a so-called "real world". In fact, Fichte achieved fame for originating the argument that consciousness is not grounded in anything outside of itself. The phenomenal world as such, arises from self-consciousness; the activity of the ego; and moral awareness.

Post 54

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 9:49am

Much of this goes over my head, but I can't help remembering a footnote in a discussion of this very topic (Aristotelan vs. Kantian categories [though it has a much wider applicability]) by Julius Moravscik, famous Aristotle scholar: "I do not understand this tendency of philosophers to assume that the great men of the past were doing exactly what they were doing, only they did not do it as well."

Post 55

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 10:47am

You know, when you read Darwin or Newton you don't have to interpret and read between the lines, and wonder what it is they meant to say, and guess at their motives. Yeah, if you want to try to read Hume and Kant as if they were honestly trying to solve problems, you can twist yourself into knots trying to do their work for them.

But if you want to know what was really going on, and you have a lot of time and money to waste, and a high tolerance for pain and the smell of horse shit, then take a class in these philosophers at a university. You will hear the students and teachers interpreting their nonsense in just the same way as Rand, except that where Rand understands the arbitrary and reason destroying nature of such things as Hume's denial of the objectivity of causality, the university students will think its both "true" and cool to imagine that what is a loaf of bread one moment can become cold green red hot lava the next. No, Hume himself wasn't actually a concentration camp guard torturing his victims with arbitrary commands, telling his victims to chose which child would die to save the other, and then killing both.

Rand says Kant is purposefully unintelligible and his notion of thing in itself leads to the denial of objective reality. Wikipedia says Fichte's incomprehensible style mimics Kants and that the whereas Kant posited the Ding-an-Sich Fichte did away with it and posited intersubjectivity, that we are all figments of each other's imagination. Rand doesn't say that Kant was evil in the sense that he tortured kittens. She says he's evil because of what is implicit in his ideas. Kant's very own students who are recognized as his best interpreters, like the statist Fichte who says you'd have to cut the heads off Jews to make them Germans, prove her point.

If philosophy is just a hobby or an academic game, or a literary exercise, then why do the supporters of Kant, et al., who say his theories themselves could never lead to violence and unreason in the real world, call Rand, who never advocated or perpetrated violence against a single individual, a monster and a fascist and say that on every page of her books one can hear "to the gas chambers go"?

Post 56

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 4:06pm

I was not sitting here on my thumbs waiting for the moderation to approve my post. After working 5 hours without a break I came back to my computer and noticed it was not approved yet.

How wonderfully capitalist it is that you have Internet access where you work. I, unfortunately, do not.

Post 57

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 5:38pm

Hoping my response goes through this time:

Ted,

I for one don't say any such thing about Rand. I don't say it about Kant either. I do say it about Fichte. I have read a few tidbits about Fichte suggesting that he envied Kant's fame and sought to elevate himself by parasitizing Kant's system of thought.

You also imply that "Kant led to Fichte." But "leading to" is not necessarily a bad thing - Nietzsche led to Rand, that's a good thing, correct? And Rand led to libertarianism, the latter which many Objectivists (including Rand) consider to be a bad thing.

So the way I've learned to see it is that Rand took from Nietzsche what was useful to her (a heroic view of man), and left the rest (his subjectivism). The libertarians took from Rand their politics and left behind her moral theory. Fichte, as a matter of historical fact, took from Kant just the opposite of what Kant left us, and kept the obscure style of a bad writer while elevating it to the level of a purposeful Obscurantism. Fichte also, by the way, took Kant's politics of cosmopolitanism and reoriented it toward just the opposite perspective - German nationalism.

Teresa,

I just saw your post. Interesting that you take this opportunity to stump for capitalism. But as far as capitalism goes, I am not sufficiently misanthropic to hate it. And I don't believe there is such a thing as a perfect economic-political system, whether or not it is a moral one. Everything man-made has its good points and its drawbacks, including capitalism. What you won't hear, however, are even the slightest negative reviews of capitalism from Objectivists.

Post 58

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 6:07pm

Indeed, Robert -

To borrow a phrase, I'll never miss an opportunity to promote Capitalism.

However, to issue some proof of it's superiority, and validity, let me unpack this:

I just saw your post. Interesting that you take this opportunity to stump for capitalism.

Good ideas should be promoted. That's that.

But as far as capitalism goes, I am not sufficiently misanthropic to hate it.

lol. That's good.

And I don't believe there is such a thing as a perfect economic-political system, whether or not it is a moral one.

Because people are imperfect, and imperfect-able. Perhaps they're evil! Right? Objectivists disagree. Incredible as it sounds, we all require the same things to survive. All of us. Because some are better at acquiring those things makes them more valuable, not less valuable. Collectivists will immediately introduce something like theft into the equation. But theft isn't Capitalism. Neither is fraud. The Trader Principle is Capitalism.

Everything man-made has its good points and its drawbacks, including capitalism.

But, what made men? Men made men. Men=good. Unless, of course, you think human beings are inherently, intrinsically, fundamentally "wrong" somehow.

What you won't hear, however, are even the slightest negative reviews of capitalism from Objectivists.

Nope. And we can refute every single objection, too. Its so awesome. Test it, go ahead.

I'm glad you joined us, Robert. There are some amazing people here. Take advantage.

Post 59

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 6:09pm