LS Breakneck Kant 2


Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:04:30 +0100


        Hello,
        Okay, in "Kant 1" I set up the problem which the CoPR addresses.
Kant's responce to it is a dizzyingly complex machine full of pullys and
pistons and fly-wheels. So what I intened to do is just gloss it (if you
want to see all his arguments they're in the CoPR; I won't boar everyone
to tears w/ them) in hopes of showing how Kant and German Idealism fit
in the MoQ (or perhaps I could say, where the MoQ maps onto it -- a
cronological distinction).

        Kant thought that the aplicability of math to experience poses a
problem and therefor was a senthetic disciplin. Hume (a British sckeptic)
had said that the scientific method was an a prior-synthetic disciplin and
since such a thing was imposible, science yields no truth. In plainer
words: Can you have knowledge of (the world of) experience prior to
experience? Hume says no - Kant says yes - Hegel gives a strenuous no -
Pirsig says yes.
        What makes synth-a priori propositions possible?
Kant transforms that into 4 questions:
        1) What makes pure mathematics possible?
        2) What makes pure natural science possible?
        3) What makes metaphysics in general possible?
        4) What makes metaphysics as a Science possible? (or, "IS
           metaphysics possible?")
#1 is addressed in the "transendental aesthetic" (or "trancendental
feeling")
#2 is addressed in the "trancendental analytic" and
The last two are in the "trancendental dialectic" (This is just some
Kantian jargan -- these are just how he subchapters the CoPR.)

#1 The Trancendental Aesthetic
        Human knowledge has a content (our experience derived from the 5
senses) and a form (spacio-temporality). We know in advance that
experience will be in space-time, and that it will be the s-t of
mathematical physics. S-t are a priori. He calls them "Anschauung" --
often translated as "intuition" but it really means "view." We look at the
world w/ or through the view of s-t, while the world itself has no s-t.

        So Kant makes pure math possible, but at a price -- We know things
for us, but not things in themselves.
        He goes through 4 formulations of this thing in itself.
1) The thing in itself (sometimes the "nomena" as opposed to "phenomina"
-- thing for us) is the unknown cause of all our perceptions / our
experience. What causes me to experience X? I can't know because it's
filtered through s-t. (Kant misses that this machine, the mind, is
creating time over time, or creating time from time to time, you see?)

        Pretend I hold up a quarter in front of you and ask, "What do you
see?" -"A quarter"- "But what to you SEE?" -"Oh! A silver disk."- Now I
turn the quarter perpandiculer to you, and say "Now what do you see?" -"A
silver line."- "Well," I say "What you saw changed but it's the same
quarter so what you say couldn't have been the quarter." (P does his own
version in ZMM ch 11, I think, w/ the "a priori motercycle.")
        The point is that an object is an explanation. That's it's
function. If I peel off the foil wraper and pop the chocolet "coin" in my
mouth, you'd say, "Gee, it wasn't a quarter at all; it was a candy." Or if
said "ALLAH BE PRAISED!" and throw the quorter down and it explodes in a
burst of hellfire and brimstone you'd say, "Why that was no quarter; that
was a Muslum damnation device!" ;-)
        An object is an explanation. It explains the continuity of s-t.
Kant's word is "synthasis" -- it conects our perceptions to one-another.
Before Kant everyone was asking, "Do objects exists?" Kant turned the
question on it's head and asked, "What is the function of an object?" VERY
original move here.

        Hugo (being a Bohr fan) and anyone who's checked out the Pirsig
artical about Bohr on the Web sight, will be seeing some familer turf
here. (Check it out.)
        Well, dwell on that, comment, enjoy, and next we'll move onto Kant
3 and the Transendental Analytic and Nomina - verion 2.

                                TTFN (ta-ta for now)
                                Donny

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