Finished...May 14th, 2012...
Tonight, I am going to start to play rhetorical, philosophical ping pong with 'the bigwigs' -- 'the heavyweight philosophers' -- or at least some of them centered around the period of 'German Idealism' (late 1700s to early 1800s).
Let's start with Kant. Kant's famous distinction was between our 'phenomenal (subjective) world' and our 'noumenal (objective) world'. Within our phenomenal world are 'phenomena' which are designed to 'appear' as 'representations' of 'the things-in-themselves' that exist in our nomenal (objective) world.
Kant's famous epistemological dictum was that 'We can't (kant) know what exists in our noumenal (objective) world -- we can't know the things-in-themselves that exist in this world -- because it lies beyond the border of our senses -- it lies in, or exists in, a 'metaphysical world' that is beyond the capability of our senses to capture this (noumenal/objectiv) world -- and everything in it -- at least in a 'completely perfect' idealistic, epistemological sense.
Which brings us to the weakness in Kant's philosophy. Who says that we have to capture everything that exists, or captures our attention to, in our noumenal/objective world -- perfectly. Obviously, that will never happen which brings us to the point that there will always be a 'gap' between the sensory and/or conceptual constructions of our internal-subjective-phenomenal world and the noumenal/objective world that our phenomenal world is supposed to represent.
The question then becomes -- from a practical, functional, epistemological point of view -- how significant is the gap between our phenomenal representations and our objective-noumenal world? If we see a car coming, and we jump out of the way of it, out of harm's way, then our senses have done their 'functional, evolutionary job' -- i.e., in this case, kept us alive.
If our senses, had missed the 'existence' of the fast oncoming car -- the noumenal-objective car as well as its internal sensory representation, and we had been hit by the car, then our senses didn't do their evolutionary job, or our attention was occupied elsewhere and we weren't watching the road, and the potential danger on the road.
Thus, from a practical, functional point of view, we can distinguish between 'good enough structural-dynamic representation' or 'good enough epistemology' and 'not good enough epistemology' -- depending on the significance in the gap (error in structural-dynamic representation') between our subjective-phenomenal world and our objective-noumenal world. Functionality and survival have the last say in this matter.
Once the car smashes into our 'self-body', it becomes 'safe to assume' that our 'objective-noumenal world' and 'our subjective-phenomenal world' have collided in a way that is capable of putting us either into the hospital or the morgue.
We will backtrack in chronological history to Hume in a moment, but first let me make a 'trialectic distinction' as opposed to Kant's 'dialectic distinction of '(subjective) phenomenal' vs. '(objective) noumenal' world.
The trialectic or 'triangular' distinction that I wish to make here is between 1. our 'objective-noumenal-world; 2. our subjective-objective-sensory-empirical world; and 3. our 'subjective-generalized-abstractive-conceptual world'.
Now, almost all of the animal kingdom has superior senses to man in at least one dimension or another. Our senses are not the usual reason why man is usually 'on top of the food chain hierarchy' unless man uses some type of instrument like a 'telescope' or 'binoculars' to heighten his 'sensory capabilities and functions'.
Here are some of the main reasons why man is usually at the top of the animal hierarchy in terms of his/her evolutionary capabilities.
1. Man is a superior thinker to all other animals in the animal kingdom in such areas as: distinction/differentation, association, generalization, conceputal abstraction, theorizing, map-making, paradigm-making, symbolizing, language making and communicating, logic, cause and effect, creative imagination, synthesis...
2. Man is a tool and weapon-maker;
3. Man -- using a combinaton of written language and 'lessons learned from both the recent and the distant past' -- is a 'time-binder' over history;
4. Man usually uses a combination of his entangled 'competitive spirit' and his 'co-operative spirit' to his evolutionary advantage;
5. Man can be both a 'pack predator' and a 'pack protector' in whatever numbers are necessary.
Now, let's turn back the pages of history to David Hume.
Hume claimed that 'man had no self' -- a rather radical proclamation to say the least.
But you have to know what 'perspective' or 'paradigm' Hume was coming from...
Hume was an 'empiricist' -- usually a philosopher, psychologist, and/or scientist who believes essentially that the only 'knowledge' that is 'trustable' is the knowledge that comes in through our senses, and nothing more.
In this regard, Hume was probably the most radical, extreme empiricist in the history of western philosophy. Hume kept the 'paradigm' of empiricism within its strictest possible limits, and in doing so, he probably undermined what he was attempting to do in eliminating all sources and extensions of 'rationalism', 'abstractionism', 'generalization-making', and 'concept-making'. By the time Hume got finished with 'man', there was 'no man left' -- at least no 'abstracting, generalizing man' -- just a 'sensory watchdog' who had no business jumping to any type of interpretive conclusions whatsoever. By the time Hume finished with man, man was essentially 'mindless' because anything coming out of man's mind that was not 'sensory information' -- was essentially 'useless' or 'discarded' information.
So for Hume there was no 'God' which is fine -- there are many intelligent people, in the world, both past and present who are, or have been, 'atheists' or 'agnostics'. The logic being either: 1. atheism: 'I can't see God; therefore God does not exist.'; and 2. agnosticism: 'I can't see God; therefore I don't know if God exists or not.'
However, then Hume 'attacked' the concept of 'Self' or 'self' and concluded that 'man has no self' because 'the self' cannot be 'empirically seen' (except in its bodily form) -- beyond this, 'the self' is an essentially useless, abstractive, mythological concept or generalization -- just like 'God' is. Or so, that was Mr. Hume's line of reasoning. But as you can see, Mr. Hume was still 'reasoning' to support his own line of 'empirically airtight, rigid, abstraction, generalization, and concept-free, thinking'. But it's a 'generalization' even to say that 'man has no self'.
Man, according to Mr. Hume, is to be 'trained as a watchdog' -- and as soon as man attempts to be 'rational' or 'abstractive' or to 'turn an observation into a generalization or a concept' -- 'wack, across the hand with a ruler'. ('negative reinforcement' to support 'sensory awareness' with no 'justifiable abstractive conclusions' to follow behind any of our observations, or to follow 'any set of observations' that may point us to any kind of reasonable or unreasonable, 'generalizable consclusion'). Mr. Hume, according to his own line or paradigm of 'logical reasoning', had the only key left to 'logical reasoning' -- and that was 'never to attempt any type of logical reason' (except his 'own brand of sterile, suffocating, empiricism').....which 'left man with eyes as big as saucers -- and no 'mind-brain' behind these eye saucers'). Such was the 'lifeless, empirically airtight world' of David Hume. Smart guy. But took 'empiricism' just a little too far -- as Hegel would say -- 'to the point of its own self-destruction'. 'Empiricism' -- just like any and every other concept that man can think of -- has both a 'life instinct or force' and a 'death instinct or force' -- and David Hume took empiricism to the point where its 'death instinct' killed empiricism.
That was good because it was just another demonstration how 'dialectic, bipolar concepts' are usually 'functionally superior' to 'one-sided, unilateral theories and paradigms.
Thus, 'empiricism' eventually gave way to its much stronger, evolutionary 'offspring' -- the dialectic, bipolar concept of 'rational-empiricism' which took the strengths of 'empiricism' and balanced its 'weaknesses' with 'rationalism'. And at the same time, the new dialectic concept took the strengths of 'rationalism' and balanced the latter concept's weaknesses' with 'empiricism'. Voila! Dialectic conceptuology and paradigm-making once again 'wins out' over its 'one-sided' competition! The Enlightenment became stronger with the birth of rational-empiricism...and slowly, a general but distinct awareness of the logic behind 'dialectic reasoning' was starting to percolate and overflow -- in Idealistic Germany.
Which is what took us from Hume to Kant.
Now Kant 'kant' be generalized and idealized as the first 'dialectic thinker' although he started the ball rolling in this direction in 'Enlightenment influenced, Romanticism influenced, Idealistic late 18th century and early 19th century Germany'.
To be sure, we have had 'dialectic thinkers' in philosophy since the beginning of recorded philosophy -- Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse ('yin' vs. 'yang' and the need for 'dialectic balance between yin and yang')...
However, in Idealistic Germany, a greater conscious awareness of the benefits of 'dialectic thinking' was starting to surface. And this dialectic awareness started with Kant -- probably even the Romanticists before him who were trying to integrate man's 'rationalism' with his 'romanticism' -- an integrative process that Spinoza started almost a hundred and fifty years before the German Romanticists.
Now, two things need to be stated here. Firstly, Kant was not entirely free of 'Aristolean, Either/Or' thinking. Nor should any of us be. Because at times, we all need to make 'either/or choices'.
Aristotle's brand of 'either/or thinking' involved an either/or choice between 'supposedly black or white -- no gray -- classification categories'.
In contrast, Kierkegaard's brand of 'either/or thinking' was a 'choice between existential choices'....
There -- you see how it's done -- I just created a new 'either/or classification category' between 'Aristotlean either/or categorical thinking' and 'Kierkgaardian either/or existential thinking'. And a new 'either/or' classification category is created....
So along comes Kant -- having freshly read the provocative Mr. David Hume -- upon which Kant's classic philosophical treatise -- 'Critique of Pure Reason' (I think it should have been called 'Critique of Pure Empiricism') was based as a 'counter-thesis' or alternatively, a 'synthesis' between rationalism and empiricism....
And Professor Kant sets up this Aristolean, dualistic set of 'classification categories' between 'the world that appears to us' (our 'subjective-phenomenal world') and the world of 'things-in-themselves' (our 'noumenal world' or what today we would probably call our 'objective world' which lies 'outside' of our senses).
Now, in walks Professor Bain (that's me...just joking about the 'Professor' part but according to Freud every joke is a subliminary message from the 'phantasy world' of our unconscious id...)
And 'imaginary' Professor Bain proceeds to add two more 'categorical imperatives' to go with Kant's categorical dualism: 1. our objective (noumenal) world that lies beyond the realm of our senses; 2. our subjective-phenomenal-sensory-empirical world' that aims as best it can to 'capture' our objective-noumenal world; 3. our subjective-abstractive-conceptual world that aims to give more interpretive meaning to whatever came in through our empirical senses; and 4. our subjective-evaluative-judging-world of incoming stimulus from our objective-noumenal world-and/or-transference-cognitive-emotional-existential-behavioral choices'... (Breathe..)
Call this a part of our 'multi-dialectic plethora of worlds and paradigms' that we need to somehow functionally integrate or synthesize together in order that we can live in 'one wholistic, subjective-objective, humanistic-existential world that makes coherent, meaningful sense to us' -- or not.
-- dgb, May 11th-14th, 2012
-- David Gordon Bain
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