Author: Bill Vallicella

Hume and Kant on Sense Perception

Another round with Ed Buckner who writes,

Meanwhile I continue to struggle through Kant, and I point out what seems to be a fundamental and insuperable difficulty below. (I may be wrong).

Start with Hume, and with what he means by ‘impressions’. As I write, I am looking at what I take to be the black surface of my desk. Note “what I take to be”. Assume that what I take to be the surface is the surface. But what then does Hume mean by an ‘impression’? He says “Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions; and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul”. Ideas are ‘the faint images’ of the impressions in thinking and reasoning.

This is not clear at all. By ‘impression’ Hume means either that which I (perhaps wrongly) take to be the surface of the desk, or something else. Suppose the former. Hume makes it clear that the impression makes its appearance in the soul, and it is clear from everything he says later that an impression is a mental item. But the desk is not a mental item, hence the surface of the desk is not a mental item. Which is absurd.

Or he means the latter. Then the ‘impression’ must be something other than what I take to be the surface of the desk. But I am aware of no such thing. In looking at the desk I am aware of nothing corresponding to a perception which enters “with force and violence”. Nor, when I shut my eyes and think of the surface of the desk, am I aware of anything but a faint memory of seeing the surface itself, rather than the faint image of any ‘impression’.

So both interpretations are problematic. Either my desk and its surface are mental items, which is absurd. Or it is impossible to say what Hume means by ‘impression’. So Hume’s position makes no sense.

I agree with the above analysis. It is clear and convincing. We can also display the problem in my preferred way as an aporetic polyad, in this case a tetrad:

1) Impressions are mental items.

2) The surfaces of physical things are not mental items.

3) What we know when we have sensory knowledge are impressions.

4) We have sensory knowledge of the surfaces of physical things.

These propositions are collectively inconsistent.  So at least one of them must be rejected. As I read Hume, he is committed to (1), (3), and (4), and so he must reject  (2). But this leads to a subjective idealism that both Ed and I find intolerable.  No physical thing such as Ed's desk is a bundle of sense impressions.  Sense impressions are 'in the mind' and no desk or part thereof is in anyone's mind.

The Humean solution is worse than the problem.  Another solution is to reject (3). One might hold a representational theory of mind according to which what we know via the outer senses are, in the typical non-illusory cases,  mind-independent things and some of their parts, but we know them via mental representations.  Enter the epistemic intermediary: contents in the mind mediate between mind and external thing.  

There are other putative solutions such as Husserl's and Butchvarov's. They too have their difficulties. I won't go into them because Ed hasn't read these philosophers.

The next question is whether Kant’s position makes any sense, given that his position here seems closely connected with that of Hume. He speaks of ‘sensible sensations’, ‘the world of the senses’, ‘the field of appearances’ etc etc. What does he mean by these terms? Does he mean the sorts of things that e.g. I take to be parts of material objects? But then it seems to follow from everything else he says that either material objects are mental items, or that I am wrong in thinking that what I take to be part of a material object, is in fact such. Both positions are absurd.

Have I misunderstood Kant? 

To assimilate Kant to Hume is a mistake. There are many crucial differences between the two. For one thing, Kant is not a subjective idealist. He does not hold that physical things are bundles of impressions.  He would reject (3) in the tetrad above.  To explain this is impossible in a few sentences.  I refer Ed to Kant's Letter to Marcus Herz, 21 February 1772 which may help. 

There is also the following excerpt from a different entry:

Kant
 
I think Ed is wrong above about Kant.  For Kant, the pure is the opposite of the empirical. Every concept is either pure or empirical and no concept is both. A pure concept is one that is not drawn from experience, ein solcher der nicht von der Erfahrung abgezogen ist, but originates from the understanding in respect of both form and content, sondern auch dem Inhalte nach aus dem Verstande entspringt. The form of all concepts, including pure concepts, arises from reflexion Reflexion, and thus from the understanding. Empirical concepts arise from the senses, entspringen aus den Sinnen,  by comparison of the objects of experience. Their content comes from the senses, and their form of universality, Form der Allgemeinheit, alone from the understanding.
 
If Buckner is telling us that Kant's pure-empirical distinction runs parallel to Zabarella's first intention-second intention distinction, then that can't be right. For Zabarella's animal and human being, which are first intentions for him, count as empirical concepts for Kant. 
 
Any comparison of Zabarella (1533-1589) the Aristotelian and Kant is bound to be fraught with difficulty because of the transcendental-subjective turn of modern philosophy commencing with Descartes (1596-1650).  For Aristotle, the categories are categories of a real world independent of  our understanding; for Kant, the categories are precisely categories of the understanding (Verstandeskategorien) grounded in the understanding both in their form and in their content.  The categories of Aristotle are thus objective, categories belonging to a world to be understood, and not subjective, categories whereby a mind understands the world.
 
Pure Concepts of Reason as Limit Concepts
 
Kant also speaks in his Logic and elsewhere of Ideas which are pure concepts of reason, Vernunft, and not of understanding, Verstand. Die Idee ist ein Vernunftbegriff deren Gegenstand gar nicht in der Erfahrug kann angetroffen werden. (Logik, sec. 3)  The objects of these pure concepts of reason cannot be known by us because our form of intuition, Anschauung, is sensible, not intellectual. We can know only phenomena, not noumena. Among these Ideas, which are plainly limit concepts, are God, the soul, the world-whole, and freedom. And they are not merely negative limit concepts. Free will, for example, is objectively real despite its not being obejctively knowable. But more on this later.

Globalist Greenies Go after Cryptomining in New York State

Story here. To understand the issue,  bear in mind that bitcoins are not literally mined, they are 'mined' using supercomputers  which consume a lot of electricity.

Anthony Flood sent me the hyperlink. He comments:

Bitcoin threatens globalist/statist "green" agenda . . . and everything else on their to-do list. No monopoly on money via fiat central banking? Then no "democratic" imposition of lower living standards. With respect to achieving global decentralization, the spontaneous, market-based decentralization of money "moves the needle." It's happening slowly, almost imperceptibly so, but it's in a race with globalist countermoves.

Marx and Work

Physical work is good for the soul if you are working for yourself and have time for other things. So I have long felt a certain sympathy for a famous passage from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (ed. C. J. Arthur, New York: International Publishers, 1970, p. 53):
 
. . . as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic. 
 
With all due respect to talk show host Dennis Prager, Marx did not envisage a society in which people do no work, but one in which their work was non-alienating and fulfilling. If you have ever worked a factory job where you are required to perform a mindless repetitive task for low wages for eight or more hours per day, then you should be able to sympathize somewhat with Marx. But the sympathy is not likely to survive a clear recognition of the absurdity of what Marx is proposing above.
 
First of all, it is silly to say that "each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes." Could Saul Kripke have become a diplomat or a chauffeur or an auto mechanic if he wished? PeeWee Herman a furniture mover or Pope? Einstein a general? Patton a physicist? Woody Allen a bronco-buster? Evel Knievel a neurosurgeon?
 
And if Marx had actually done any 'cattle rearing,' he would have soon discovered that he couldn't be successful at it if he did it only once in a while when he wasn't in the mood for hunting, fishing, or writing Das Kapital.
 
So despite my sympathy, I judge that what we have above is utopian, reality-denying nonsense. Dangerous, murderous, leftist nonsense. Incoherence: dictatorship of the proletariat, classless society, worker's paradise. Cuba? North Korea? Communist China? Dictatorship of the dictator (Stalin, Mao, Fidel . . .). Classlessness by reduction of the people to one class, that of the impoverished and oppressed, lorded over by apparatchiks vastly UNEQUAL in power, perquisites, and pelf to those they lord over. So in the end two classes: oppressed and oppressors.
 
The incoherence of socialism in a nutshell: The achievement of the desired-for equality requires the suppression of dissidents and the inequality of the revolutionary vanguard who, once enjoying a taste of their unequal power, will never give it up, until the whole house of cards collapses as did the USSR.
 
But this leaves us with the problem of the millions of Americans who work repetitive, boring jobs for lousy pay. One thing that could be done that would drive up the pay scale is something that RINOs and 'liberals' refuse to do, namely, stop the influx of illegal aliens. RINOs want cheap labor while the 'liberals' want to alter the demographics of the nation so as to assure the permanent ascendancy of the Left. These two unsavory groups are in tacit cahoots.
 
To hell with them both. Not that they are equally bad. It is hard to beat the scumbaggery of a 'liberal' or leftist who delights in smearing his political opponents with such epithets as 'xenophobe' and 'racist.'  The typical RINO is either a useful idiot or someone who lacks the civil courage to stand up for what he knows is right. But at least he falls short of an all-out assault on the English language.

Memorial Day?

What's to celebrate in a nation so decadent that it cannot preserve its monuments and memorials from leftist thugs and their globalist enablers, a nation so decadent that its 'leaders,' complicit in the erasure of history and the erosion of standards, have no plans to restore what has been destroyed?

Politicians who won't take action are not worthy to honor those who died in action.

Rand and Peikoff on God and Existence

Substack latest.

Wherein I analyze the Objectivist battle cry, "Existence exists!"

Ayn Rand is worth reading, mainly on political and economic topics: she is a corrective to the destructive lunacy of the collectivists. I am not suggesting that she is wholly correct, but that she is useful as a corrective, especially now, to the extremism of the clowns in control of the pathocratic Biden (mal)administration.

Denial of God, Denial of Nature

These are opposite poles of the world of woke-leftist lunacy. 

The metaphysical naturalist denies God and elevates nature, and in some cases make an idol of nature. The theist, while not denying nature, subordinates it to God. He may succumb to idolatry too if his concept of God is unworthy. 

Both naturalist and theist are in contact with reality.  They share the common ground of nature and can agree on much. They can and will agree, for example, that biological males should not be permitted to compete against biological females in female athletic events, and this for the simple reason that the biological stratum of nature is real, and thus in no way constructed by humans, and that therefore the biological differences of males and females are also real, which fact makes it unfair for biological males to compete against biological females.

The naturalist and the theist, then, are in contact with reality. They share a commitment to the reality of the natural world. My point remains unaffected by the fact that the theist, but not the naturalist, understands nature to be a divine creation.  And  it doesn't matter that there there is much more to reality for the theist than what the naturalist envisages.  Naturalist and theist agree that nature exists and that it is not a social construct.

The woke leftist, however, has lost contact with reality: everything becomes a social construct.  This is an absurd form of idealism. Ask yourself: are the social constructors themselves social constructs? I'll leave it to you to think it through. Why should I have to do all the work?

Is Classical Theism a Type of Idealism?

I return an affirmative answer.
 
If God creates ex nihilo, and everything concrete other than God is created by God, and God is a pure spirit, then one type of metaphysical realism can be excluded at the outset. This  realism asserts that there are radically transcendent uncreated concrete things other than God.  'Radically transcendent' means 'transcendent of any mind, finite or infinite.' On this view, radically transcendent items exist and have most of their properties independently of any mind, including the divine mind.  Call this realism-1. We could also call it extreme metaphysical realism.  
 
No classical theist could be a realist-1. For on classical theism, everything other than God is created by God, created out of nothing, mind you, and not out of Avicennian mere possibles or any cognate sort of item. God creates out of nothing, not out of possibilities. ('Out of nothing' is  a privative expression that means 'not out of something.') We also note that on classical theism, God is not merely an originating cause of things other than himself, but a continuing cause that keeps these things in existence moment-by-moment. He is not a mere cosmic starter-upper. That would be deism, not classical theism. Whom do I have in mind? Thomas Aquinas for one. But I am not interested in playing the exegete with respect to his texts. I am thinking things through for myself. 
 
Corresponding to realism-1, as its opposite, is idealism-1.  This is the view that everything other than God is created ex nihilo by God, who is a pure spirit, and who therefore creates in a purely spiritual way.  (To simplify the discussion, let us leave to one side the problem of so-called 'abstract objects.')  It seems to me, therefore, that there is a very clear sense in which classical theism is a type of idealism.   For on classical theism God brings into existence and keeps in existence every concretum other than himself and he does so by his  purely mental/spiritual activity.  We could call this type of idealism onto-theological absolute idealism. It is the position that my A Paradigm Theory of Existence (Kluwer 2002) defends. The book bears the embarrassingly 'high horse' subtitle: Onto-Theology Vindicated, which was intended as a swipe against Heidegger. But I digress.
 
I am not saying that the entire physical cosmos is a content of the divine mind; it is rather an accusative or intentional object of the divine mind.  Though not radically transcendent, the cosmos is a transcendence-in-immanence, to borrow some Husserlian phraseology. 
 
So if the universe is expanding, that is not to say that the divine mind or any part thereof is expanding.  If an intentional object has a property P it does not follow that a mind trained upon this object, or an act of this mind or a content in this mind has P.  Perceiving a blue coffee cup, I have as intentional object something blue; but my mind is not blue, nor is the perceiving blue, nor any mental content that mediates the perceiving.  If I perceive or imagine or recall or in any way think of an extended sticky surface, neither my mind nor any part of it becomes extended or sticky.  Same with God.  He retains his difference from the physical cosmos even while said cosmos is nothing more than his merely intentional object incapable of existing on its own.
 
Actually, what I just wrote is only an approximation to what I really want to say.  For just as God is sui generis, the relation between God and the world is also sui generis, and as such not an instance of the intentional relation with which we are familiar in our own mental lives.  The former is only analogous to the latter.  If one takes the divine transcendence seriously, as classical theism does, then God cannot be a being among beings; equally, God's relation to the world cannot be a relation among relations.  If we achieve any understanding in these lofty precincts, it is not the sort of understanding one achieves by subsuming a new case under an old pattern; God does not fit any pre-existing pattern, nor does his 'relation' to the world fit any pre-existing pattern.  God is the Absolute and the Absolute cannot be a token of a type. If we achieve any understanding here it will be via various groping analogies.  These analogies can only take us so far.  In the end we must confess the infirmity of finite reason in respect of the Absolute that is the ontologically simple Paradigm Existent.
 
God's relation to the world (the realm of creatures), then, cannot be just another relation.  There is also the well-known problem that the intentional 'relation' is not, strictly speaking, a relation.  It is at best analogous to a relation.  So it looks as if we have a double analogy going here.  The God-world 'relation' is analogous to something analogous to a relation in the strict sense.  Let me explain.  
 
Necessarily, if x stands in relation R to y, then both x, y exist.  But x can stand in the intentional 'relation' to y even if y does not exist in reality.  'Exist in reality' is harmless pleonasm; it underscores the fact that, strictly speaking, to exist is to exist in reality. It is a plain fact that we sometimes have very definite thoughts about objects that do not exist, the planet Vulcan, for example.  What about the creating/sustaining 'relation'? The holding of this 'relation' as between God and Socrates cannot presuppose the existence in reality of both relata.  It presupposes the existence of God no doubt, but if it presupposed the existence of Socrates then there would be no need for the creating/sustaining ex nihilo of Socrates. Creating is a producing, a causing to exist, and indeed moment by moment.
 
For this reason, creation/sustaining cannot be a relation, strictly speaking.  It follows that the createdness of a creature cannot be a relational property, strictly speaking. (Mundane example: if a cat licks my arm, then my arm has the relational property of being licked by a cat.)  Now the createdness of a creature is its existence or Being.  So the existence of a creature cannot be a relational property thereof; it is at most  like a relational property thereof.
 
What I have done so far is argue that classical theism is a form of idealism, a form of idealism that is the opposite of an extreme from of metaphysical realism, the form I referred to as 'realism-1.'  If you say that no one has ever held such a form of realism, I will point to Ayn Rand. (See Rand and Peikoff on God and Existence.)
 
Moderate  Realism (Realism-2)
 
Realism holds with respect to some of the objects of finite minds.  Not for merely intentional objects, of course, but for things like trees and mountains and cats and chairs and their parts.  They exist and have most of their properties independently of the mental activity of finite minds such as ours. We can call this realism-2.
 
Kant held that empirical realism and transcendental idealism are logically compatible and he subscribed to both.  Now the idealism I urge is not a mere transcendental idealism, but a full-throated onto-theological absolute idealism; but it too is compatible, as far as I can see, with the empirical reality of most of the objects of ectypal intellects such as ours.  (God's intellect is archetypal; mine is ectypal.) The divine spontaneity makes the objects of ectypal intellects  exist thereby rendering them  them available to the receptivity of such intellects.  Realism-2 is consistent with idealism-1. 
 
My thesis, then, is that classical theism is a type of idealism; it is onto-theological absolute idealism.  If everything concrete is created originally and sustained ongoingly ex nihilo by a purely spiritual being, an Absolute Mind, and by purely spiritual activity, then this is better denominated 'idealism' than 'realism.'  Is that not obvious?
 
But trouble looms as I will argue in the next entry in this series.  And so we will have to consider whether the sui generis, absolutely unique status of God and his relation to the world is good reason to withhold both appellations, 'realism' and 'idealism.'

An INDIVIDUAL Right to Keep and Bear Arms

>>In District of Columbia v. Heller the Supreme Court held in 2008 that the District’s handgun ban violated the individual right to keep and bear arms. The opinion clarified that to “bear arms” means to “carry arms” and has no exclusive militia context. And it rejected the view that the right could be dismissed or diminished by judge-made interest-balancing tests.<<
 
Of course it is an individual right: my right to life is my individual, not collective, right to life and said right entails my individual right to defend my individual life. And of course if I have the right to bear arms, then I have the right to be armed outside my domicile. Obviously, I have a greater need for self-defense outside my domicile than within it.
 
Will leftists say that this is now 'settled law'? Or will they say that the 2008 ruling can be overturned?  If they say the latter, will they also say that Roe v. Wade can be overturned?

2A and the Origin of Rights

Your right to defend your life with appropriate means is not conferred by the State and would not be affected by repeal of 2A. That right is no more conferred by the State than the right to life from which the right to self-defense follows.

The same holds for all of the rights specified in the Bill of Rights.

Many conservatives say that our rights "come from God." I don't deny it. But in terms of political  tactics, it is probably a mistake to affirm it. It is enough to say that our rights do not come from the State. For if you bring God into the discussion, you risk alienating those atheists who are otherwise open to persuasion. 

If I want to persuade you of something, I will get nowhere if I employ premises that you do not accept. So if my otherwise open-minded interlocutor gets the impression that the affirmation of natural rights will commit him to the existence of God, if he gets the impression that if  rights do not come from the State, then they must come from God, then we risk losing an ally in the fight against our political enemies.

We need all the allies we can get. The Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable must be broad and big-tented  to defeat the forces of nihilism.  

Tactically, it suffices to say that our rights are rooted in rerum natura, in the nature of things, and leave it to the philosophers to wrestle with the question as to what exactly this means and whether there can be natural rights without divine support.

Are Philosophical Problems Soluble?

Edward Buckner writes, 

In my PhD thesis I argued that philosophical problems cannot be resolved. I think you still take the same view. My thinking today is that while the problems exist in some sense, they cannot be coherently stated in logical form. I.e. “The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.”

I do indeed consider the central problems of philosophy to be insoluble. But I don't agree that the problems cannot be coherently stated in logical form. And I don't agree that a problem to be genuine must be soluble.  Consider the following antilogism:

1. All genuine problems are soluble.

2. No problem of philosophy is soluble.

3. Some problems of philosophy are genuine.

The above inconsistent triad is a clear and coherent presentation in logical form of a philosophical problem, namely, the meta-problem of whether only soluble problems are genuine.  The problem is obviously genuine (as opposed to pseudo), but not obviously soluble.  Hence it is reasonably held to be insoluble. 

If you disagree, tell me which of the three propositions you will reject, and why it must be rejected. For example, you might tell me that (3) is to be rejected and its negation accepted. The negation of (3) is:

    ~3. No problems of philosophy are genuine.

Now prove (~3).  You won't be able to do it.