Let's review how Descartes shaped our collective inheritance, the rose colored glasses that are western cultures mythos and logos.
Since Descartes failed to realize that he was shaped by the ideas that became his rose colored glasses, his map given to him by his enculturation into the society into which he was born and raised, he cannot compensate for that bias. He created a divide that did not necessarily need to be and he passed on his map to others. They who came after him also failing to understand the process of being shaped by ideas and that those shaping ideas affect how they subsequently shape for themselves new ideas, they accepted Descartes map.
They take his map and make it a part of their rose colored glasses. And we have inherited Descartes map. The split between Mind and Body/ Mind and Matter/ Inner reality and External reality, is the reinforced by Descartes.
To get ahead of our story, Kant projected this split outward and inward and said that this divide is the nature of our ability to understand everything. We are stuck Kant said on this divide between the external world, the thing-in-itself he called the Noumenon and all that we can know of the world, our mind's internal map, which is our experience of this noumenon, the thing that is known, the Phenomenon.
But all of these maps are human creations and inventions therefore they are probably not completely accurate. We can and must question the maps we inherit. We can do so only when we realize the process of how we are shaped by ideas.
Let us explore the maps of Immanuel Kant by very briefly outlining his contribution to our present day A-logic map of the Kosmos.
'According to Kant, the reading of [David] Hume's work had awakened him from his "dogmatic slumber".' This being the case before we get to Kant's map let us examine David Hume's map .
'To begin his analysis, Hume made distinction between sensory impressions and ideas: Sensory impressions are the basis of any knowledge…. Ideas are faint copies of those impressions. One can experience through the sense an impression of the color blue, and on the basis of this impression one can have an idea of that color whereby the latter can be recalled.' [From Richard Tarnas: The Passion of the Western Mind, p.337]
'If the mind analyzes its experience without preconception, it must recognize that in fact all its supposed knowledge is based on a continuous chaotic volley of discrete sensations, and that on these sensations the mind imposes an order of its own. The mind draws from its experience an explanation that in fact derives from the mind itself, not from the experience. The mind cannot really know what causes the sensations, for it never experiences "cause" as a sensation.' [Tarnas, p. 337]
Hume was presenting a map that outlined how we create cause out of an association of x impression repeatedly being following by y impression. Hume believes that it is this association, the close proximity of x and y and the assumed relationship based on the proximity, is the sole basis of the idea of cause. Hume does not believe that cause and effect can are ever proven or experienced. Hume believed that knowledge could only be based on facts, the stuff of sensory impressions. But if causation is not something we ever see but it is an assumption, an idea that we make up out of proximity in time of sensory events, than all human knowledge is only a human's opinion of what s/he thinks is going on.
'One can perceive the regularity of events, but not their necessity. The latter is no more than a subjective feeling induced by the experience of apparent regularity. In such a context, science is possible, but it is a science of the phenomenal only, of appearances registered in the mind, and its certainty is a subjective one, determined not by nature but by human psychology.' [Tarnas, p. 339]
'But for Hume, not only was the human mind less than perfect, it could never claim access to the world's order, which could not be said to exist apart from the mind. That order was not inherent in nature, but was the result of the mind's own associating tendencies.' [Tarnas, 340]
This was the map Kant was trying to compare to the territory. Kant begins his monumental work The Critique of Pure Reason stating:
'That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. …But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For…it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself…' [Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pg. 1 of the introduction, 1781, translated by J. M. D. Meiklejohn]
Kant wanted to believe in the idea that humans could know the world, and this knowing was summarized in science, but he recognized from Hume that experience, the only true source of knowledge never presents us with cause and effect the foundation upon which science is based. Kant resolved this contradiction in the dense prose of his Critique of Pure Reason.
In the Critique of Pure Reason 'Kant expresses deep dissatisfaction with the idealistic and seemingly skeptical results of the empirical lines of inquiry. In each case, Kant gives a number of arguments to show that Locke's, Berkeley's, and Hume's empiricist positions are untenable because they necessarily presupposes the very claims they set out to disprove. In fact, any coherent account of how we perform even the most rudimentary mental acts of self-awareness and making judgments about objects must presuppose these claims, Kant argues.' [Matt McCormick, pg 3 of 19, Immanuel Kant Metaphysics, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/kantmeta.htm]
For Hume the fact that ideas like cause and effect is an idea of the disembodied mind, a mind separated from the body by the constructs of Descartes, is a terrible thing that undercuts our faith in human's ability to understand the world. But Kant ultimately turns this negative into a positive; Kant agrees that some ideas, like cause and effect, are not found in nature but are instead are products of the disembodied mind. They are foundational ideas of the disembodied mind – A Priori ideas.
'For in Kant's view, the nature of the human mind is such that it does not passively receive sense data. Rather, it actively digests and structures them, and man therefore knows objective reality precisely to the extent that the reality conforms to the fundamental structures of the mind.' [Tarnas, p. 343]
Kant established that it was only through the A-Priori ideas of 'Space', 'Time', 'Cause and Effect', 'Substance', 'Quantity' and 'Relation', etc., that the human mind was capable of discerning the external world through the sense. That Science worked because of the A-Priori constructs inherent in the human mind. Kant thus presumed and concluded that humans 'could know things only as they appeared to him, and not as they were in themselves.' Kant concluded that we saw and knew only the phenomenon and not the noumenon.
Noumenon and phenomenon was an A-logic opposition similar to Descartes mind – body opposition. We need to go beyond this A-logic map; we need a Null-A logic map.
To get to that map, recall that Kant stated that these A-Priori ideas were a part of the mind, but for Kant that mind has no reference in or foundation in a body – his it is a disembodied mind. He knew they must exist and they were the only basis for human's ability to comprehend and perceive the external world. But if these A-Priori ideas do exist they must exist somewhere other than some fantasy world of platonic ideals, and we should require something other than a nebulous statement that they exists in the disembodied mind. We must describe the how and the why of their existence in the mind.
I believe that these A-Priori ideas are inherent in the very fabric and structure of the human body, our 'computer system'. You had presumably no trouble with the data on the computer having order inherent in it and you had no trouble accepting the fact that the computer works because inherent in it is a physical order in all that stuff inside the computer box, its speakers, its monitors and so on. Thus why should it be hard to accept that order is directly built into the biological sensory apparatus in conjunction with the biology of the nervous system that culminates in the brain's neural network? This biology of the body ultimately gives rise to the workings of the mind. It is the body's order and inherent structure that is the origin of and the place where the A-Priori ideas stem from. The mind directly knows these A-Priori ideas because it is the way the biology of the senses and the nervous system work.
The body has this structure because it, the body, is a natural part of the physical universe. The physical universe has an inherent structure that imposes that structure on the body. Thus the body is orderly because the universe itself is orderly.
The universe exists not in chaos but in an orderly manner because at its core the universe is built upon order.
The universe has beating within its core order and structure. This order and structure is known by many names, one of which is the name given to it by Lao Tzu: The Tao. Another of name has been give to it by Robert Pirsig: Quality. The Vedic sacred scriptures name it: Brahman. The Jewish Kabbalists name it: Ayn Sof.
Therefore Kant is in error when he states that we cannot see the actual universe we can only see the model of the universe created out of the interaction of the mind with the world, created by sense data filtered through the A-Priori ideas. In actuality we can directly perceive the order of the universe.
We can directly perceive the universe because we are a part of the universe that is built upon the order and structure known as Tao/Quality. Tao/Quality is the source. Tao/Quality is order and structure. Tao/Quality is the ultimate A-Priori inherent not only in our mind/body but in all stuff out of which everything is.
Kant created a riddle by leaving the location of A-Priori ideas in the disembodied conception of the mind. Kant could state that we cannot directly perceive the universe because he knew we could perceive and comprehend what we perceived only on the basis of disembodied A-Priori ideas.
But now we know that the source of the A-Priori ideas is embodied in the Tao/Quality order inherent in the physical nature of all things. Perception and comprehension is a small part of the Tao/Quality looking out at the rest of the large Tao/Quality. We are the subject and the object. We are Tao/Quality/Brahman/Ayn Sof perceiving ourselves.
Ironically we seem to have returned to Bishop Berkeley's map that the world is an orderly place because it is sustained and created in the mind of God. This religious Idealist solution Hume rejected and it was this rejection was the impetus to Hume's analysis and map making.
But we have not returned to Berkeley's map. Berkeley placed order as an idea that exists in the mind of God. I have placed order in the structure of the body of God. That 'body of God' is also known as the bounded infinite Universe. The bounded infinite universe is the territory we are always trying to map.
Order is not merely in our maps; it is not something we made up. We experience order directly because we are a part of the territory. Order is inherent in the territory.
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Comments: 7
Time and space he argued are not inherent qualities of the physical world;
they are a reflection of the way the mind operates. They are part of the perceptual framework within which our experience of the world is constructed.
Einstein challenged the assumption that space- time are absolutes. He agreed with Kant; all we ever know of the underlying reality are the ways
in which it appears as the two very different qualities of space and time.
They say that a good theory has predictive value. Does your idea or theory make predictions that Kant would not make ?
When I first began reading this, I recognised my own philosophy in Kant where he said that we are right in between the objective and subjective (my words) and our job is to meld the two as a balance for our meaning (my take).
But as I read on it seems that you diverged from Kant some, I will have to go back later and reread that.
As for the computer analogy, I believe our body is the hardware and the software is in in our genetic code. But we were not 'constructed' as individual computers (the ego view), but we are part of a vast universal 'network'. As such, we are each and all interconnected 'transceivers' ( transmitter/receivers). what I call spirit is the energy that interconnects, and the totality of it all is a unity that would be described as God in effect (for lack of room and time to elaborate further here).
I will continue to read and learn of all our interrelationships as lee seems to be doing.
Thanks for all, Peace, j.
I posit that we experience the noumenon through the 'tinted glasses' of our beliefs.
But because I believe that order and structure is inherent in the workings of the noumenon I posit that Kant's listed categories of 'a priori' concepts such as 'cause and effect' 'space' 'time', and the others are all inherent properties of the workings of the biology of the body particularly and most relevant is the workings of the neural network. To use a computer metaphor – Kant's a priori's are hard wired into our brain.
As for predictions that Kant did not make…I am not sure.
Perhaps I am offering a different place to search for answers. Rather than wrestle with these questions only in the realm of the mind rather search for answers in the working of the body along the lines of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's book: Philosophy in the flesh: The Embodied Mind and its challenge to Western Thought.
you wrote: As for the computer analogy, I believe our body is the hardware and the software is in in our genetic code. But we were not 'constructed' as individual computers (the ego view), but we are part of a vast universal 'network'. As such, we are each and all interconnected 'transceivers' ( transmitter/receivers). what I call spirit is the energy that interconnects, and the totality of it all is a unity that would be described as God in effect (for lack of room and time to elaborate further here).
The idea reminds me of Emerson's essay "The Overmind".
I beleive it is not a matter of either/or. We are not just seperate entities and we are not just connected entities. We are both - simultaneously. A answer one would expect from a Taoist.
We are constructed as individual units and as parts of a greater whole. Arthur Koestler called this realization the Holon. See his work "The Ghost in the Machine". For his outline of the concept of the Holon. Ken Wilber has taken up the idea and almost acts as if he owns it. But Koestler defined it first and better.
We are not parts alone or wholes alone but are both. The yin and the yang is co-existant modalities.
I have studied KW, and believe that his theory of everything is more complex than it need to be, I much prefer my own.