Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Wed, 18 Feb 1998 05:50:12 +0100
On a personal valuation, I think that philosophy between Aristotle
and Kant is just this sort of troth which is why I don't really dwell on
Decartes or Lock or Hume. This is where the fun starts (or restarts).
On a more objective level: It's been said that all philosophy
since 1780 can be maped onto Kant somewhere depending on what's emphacized
and what's down-played, so don't underestimate his influence.
Kant's chief work is THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON (CoPR). He spent
He spent 10 years working it out and published in 1780. The general
question of the CoPR is: What makes synthetic-a priori knowledge possible?
A "proposition" is the meaning of a declairative sentance. Of
propositions we can say that there are two reasons why they are true or
false (T or F), and two ways we know they are T or F.
The Why:
ANALYTIC propositions are T (or F) mearly because of the words.
Calvin Coolage once said: "When a great many people are out of work
unemployment results."
SYNTHETIC propositions are T because of the way the world is:
"The male cardinal has red plumage."
How do we know?
EMPERICAL means you use your senses, often some inductive method.
A PRIORI is "other" -- no observation needed.
* An eperical-anlytic statment is an oxymoron; there's no such
thing. (All you need to know to know the truth of an analytic prop is what
the words mean, but you don't need to obseve anything.)
* An a priori-analytic statment is a logical truth.
* An emperical-synthetic statment are the rutine truths of science
and common sense. (A personal aside: The implication is that what the man on
the street is doing is like what the scientist does in the lab only the
scientist does it better -- I hope that when that move is pointed out we
can see it's nonsense.)
* Before Kant no one believed in the synthetic-a priori. But Kant
says that mathematics is based on this kind of truth. Previously it was
argued that 9=3x3 was analytic, a statment of identity (Like "Mark Twain
is Samual Clements"). Kant's not convinced.
Okay, the year is 1581 and young Galilao is in church. Above him
are these big chandeliers. Now, they light these things by hooking them
and drawing them over to the balcony, lighting them and letting them
loose to swing back and forth. Now, Galilao, being a pious lad, is looking
up toward heven -- the cealing -- when he notices that the duration of the
swing of the chandelier stays the same even as the length of the swing
decreeses (it slows down in proportion). --This really is a true story.--
So being a mathematical genious he comes up w/ the law of simple harmonic
motion right there on the spot -- that the time of the swing is equil to
the square root of the length divided by the gravatational constant --
right in his head. So he thinks, "I'd better test this. I'd time them w/ a
stopwatch but the stopwatch hasn't been invented yet. I know! I'll use the
rhythm of my pulse."
Now back off; forget everything you know and ask yourself, "What
did he miss?"
He made the ASUMPTION that time is mathimatically intelligable,
that the flow, or rhythm, or beet of time is mathematically consistant --
like a point moving along a line at a constant speed. This ISN'T natural
to human beings! It's not built into our biology. You can't do it until
you have the math. The cave man couldn't think this way. And, in fact, an
account of history shows that people havn't always thought like this. For
the Greeks there were one set of rules of "physics" below the orbit of the
moon and another above it. And in Christian theology there's one type of
world before the Fall, another after, and a third type will come after
the Judgment. Science presuposes the continuity of space and (especialy
time). This advent of a new concept of time makes the modern age.
("Concept" of time? If you mistake a badger for a skunk then I
would say, "You've got the wrong concept of a badger." In what way can you
get the wrong concept of time?)
I've aparently side-tracked onto this w/ good reason: Time is the
key to metaphysics! Empirical science proceds this way:
Event A happens at Time A' in place A".
Event B happens at Time B' in place B".
Event C ...
In other words, in science you obseve in space-time, but you can't look at
space-time (Kant will say why). A "What is X" question askes "How do you
pick it out?" Given a ground, can you identify the figure. So the one
thing X can't be is the ground itself. (Where does that leave
metaphysics?)
O-kay that's enough of that for one dose, and really what I've
done is try to set up the problem of the CoPR. We'll get into Kant's
responce in Breakneck Kant Part 2. Now, I warned you that I'm not a Kant
scholor. Mostly I know him by way of Hegel, so take this for what it is.
TTFN (Ta-ta For Now)
Donny
-- post message - mailto:lilasqd@hkg.com unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:42:47 CEST