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Okay, this follows on from my "Self Education" Thread ( http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=136680 ).
I will summarize yesterday's lecture... hopefully getting a discussion going, and a few difficult questions that might help me improve my understanding of the material.
The lecturer then introduced us to the concept of Metaphysics ("what appears is not the real, the real is what gives rise to what appears"), and Plato's theory of universal forms
Universal / Particular
Real / Apparent
Eternal / Temporal
Truth / Opinion
Plato's philosophy is (partly) based upon the Greek idealists Pythagoras and Parmenides. Pythagoras argued that mathematics is universal and eternal, and that numbers are ideal forms that have a reality of their own.
Parmenides argued that the apparent world could not be real as it grows, decays and dissolves (whereas Heraclitus (?) argued that these properties constitute reality). Parmenides argued that there must be an eternal and immutable reality independent on the ever changing apparent world, which is an illusion. Plato's philosophy follows on from this argument.
The lecturer then gave us some examples of ideal forms. The term chair can refer to a number of particular (different) objects, but the essential qualities of chair are universal. (I don't think I explained that very well).
The lecturer then discussed Medieval philosophy and the opposition of the nominalists and the realists. The Nominalists argued that Universals are concepts of the mind, whereas the realists argued that Universals were real.
Hume was a nominalist who argued that the self was a fiction, simply a bundle of sensations. "Hume's fork" separates the objects of human reason: relations of ideas (reason) and matters of fact (empiricism).
Basically, Kant was replying to both Christian Woolf (who "systematized" Leibniz), and David Hume. The lecturer didn't go into Woolf and Leibniz's theories in great detail, but he did say that Leibniz had a theory that people were "monads"; self enclosed, "windowless" things. Hume was a sceptic, he challenged the idea that humans could come by knowledge of reality through reason, argued against the reality of causality, and proposed that morality was determined by sentiments, not reason.
Kant agreed with Hume that humans could not know the world as it exists "in itself", but rebelled against the implications of Hume's sceptical philosophy, which he saw as undermining the moral foundations of life. Kant was also an admirer of Newton's physics, but argued that they should not apply to human activity and consciousness, as this would permit a determinism that would undermine morality. Thus Kant was presented with a seemingly paradoxical demand: to refute Hume's scepticism in favour of the causal laws of science, and to limit the pretensions of science to make room for faith and morality.
Kant rejected the separation inherent in Hume's fork; reason and empiricism could not be kept separate.
Reason / Empiricism
A priori / A posteriori
Definitive / (?)
Deductive / Inductive
(?) / Synthetic
Syllogisms / (?)
Kant asked: how can there be "a priori synthetic judgements" (i.e. hybrid propositions that are both necessary (?) and non-trivial (?).. meaning, a unity of reason (a priori) and experience (synthetic).
This led to his "Copernican revolution".
Prior to Kant people believed that thought simply reflected a world independent of us. However, Kant proposed that there are certain (a priori) categories of thought that structure our experience of the world, that structure the way we see and think about the world. They are our "cognitive architecture", the pre-conditions of all experience, that are transcendental (because they are universal).
Kant proposed that the world we see is the "phenomenal" world, a world governed by categories that put into the world with our thought...
However, to avoid the problems he saw inherent in both Humean scepticism and Newtonian causality, he proposed the existence of the "noumenal world", the realm of the thing in-itself, from where concepts that do not conform to the mechanistic laws of Newtonian Science can reside, free of their amoral implications.
From there, the lecturer explained the following split between continental and analytical philosophy.
I have summarised this lecture somewhat, so key information may have been omitted, but hopefully I can reveal how much I understand in reply to the probing questions and challenges I expect from you
I will summarize yesterday's lecture... hopefully getting a discussion going, and a few difficult questions that might help me improve my understanding of the material.
The lecturer then introduced us to the concept of Metaphysics ("what appears is not the real, the real is what gives rise to what appears"), and Plato's theory of universal forms
Universal / Particular
Real / Apparent
Eternal / Temporal
Truth / Opinion
Plato's philosophy is (partly) based upon the Greek idealists Pythagoras and Parmenides. Pythagoras argued that mathematics is universal and eternal, and that numbers are ideal forms that have a reality of their own.
Parmenides argued that the apparent world could not be real as it grows, decays and dissolves (whereas Heraclitus (?) argued that these properties constitute reality). Parmenides argued that there must be an eternal and immutable reality independent on the ever changing apparent world, which is an illusion. Plato's philosophy follows on from this argument.
The lecturer then gave us some examples of ideal forms. The term chair can refer to a number of particular (different) objects, but the essential qualities of chair are universal. (I don't think I explained that very well).
The lecturer then discussed Medieval philosophy and the opposition of the nominalists and the realists. The Nominalists argued that Universals are concepts of the mind, whereas the realists argued that Universals were real.
Hume was a nominalist who argued that the self was a fiction, simply a bundle of sensations. "Hume's fork" separates the objects of human reason: relations of ideas (reason) and matters of fact (empiricism).
Basically, Kant was replying to both Christian Woolf (who "systematized" Leibniz), and David Hume. The lecturer didn't go into Woolf and Leibniz's theories in great detail, but he did say that Leibniz had a theory that people were "monads"; self enclosed, "windowless" things. Hume was a sceptic, he challenged the idea that humans could come by knowledge of reality through reason, argued against the reality of causality, and proposed that morality was determined by sentiments, not reason.
Kant agreed with Hume that humans could not know the world as it exists "in itself", but rebelled against the implications of Hume's sceptical philosophy, which he saw as undermining the moral foundations of life. Kant was also an admirer of Newton's physics, but argued that they should not apply to human activity and consciousness, as this would permit a determinism that would undermine morality. Thus Kant was presented with a seemingly paradoxical demand: to refute Hume's scepticism in favour of the causal laws of science, and to limit the pretensions of science to make room for faith and morality.
Kant rejected the separation inherent in Hume's fork; reason and empiricism could not be kept separate.
Reason / Empiricism
A priori / A posteriori
Definitive / (?)
Deductive / Inductive
(?) / Synthetic
Syllogisms / (?)
Kant asked: how can there be "a priori synthetic judgements" (i.e. hybrid propositions that are both necessary (?) and non-trivial (?).. meaning, a unity of reason (a priori) and experience (synthetic).
This led to his "Copernican revolution".
Prior to Kant people believed that thought simply reflected a world independent of us. However, Kant proposed that there are certain (a priori) categories of thought that structure our experience of the world, that structure the way we see and think about the world. They are our "cognitive architecture", the pre-conditions of all experience, that are transcendental (because they are universal).
Kant proposed that the world we see is the "phenomenal" world, a world governed by categories that put into the world with our thought...
However, to avoid the problems he saw inherent in both Humean scepticism and Newtonian causality, he proposed the existence of the "noumenal world", the realm of the thing in-itself, from where concepts that do not conform to the mechanistic laws of Newtonian Science can reside, free of their amoral implications.
From there, the lecturer explained the following split between continental and analytical philosophy.
I have summarised this lecture somewhat, so key information may have been omitted, but hopefully I can reveal how much I understand in reply to the probing questions and challenges I expect from you
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