Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:22 am
Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:01 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:26 am
Nope I had never argued for solipsism which is a incoherent theory.
Your phenomenalism is one that inevitably leads to solipsism, even if you are not aware of it. I just explained to you why, you can deal with the arguments if you want to, but plainly denying your solipsism will not do.
You mentioned solipsism here,
viewtopic.php?p=506843#p506843
that was a strawman.
I responded none of your points [1 & 2] are applicable to mine.
No, actually you didn't answer, you avoided a direct response to my argument. You claimed humans do exist and I explained that this have consequences that lead directly either to acknowledging the existence of a universe without humans or to solipsism.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:26 am
Note Bertrand Russell, a strong indirect realist conceded to the following;
- "Of course it is not by argument that we originally come by our belief in an independent external world.. "
Problem of Philosophy Chapter II
The key word here is "originally". At the level of cognition and common sense, we could not expect anything else. It is only at higher levels of systematization of knowledge in philosophy and science that what appears as an independent external world is confirmed as real.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:26 am
What I embraced is based on justified empirical evidence the external world is real, re empirical realism.
So, the answer to the point in contention: '
does the universe exists if there are no humans' is a categorical YES.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:22 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:26 am
There are few passages in the Critique that led many people to believe Kant was agnostic with things-in-themselves.
But in the whole context of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant is very firm things-in-themselves are illusory when reified as real.
Conde Lucanor wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:01 pmI'm afraid that's not the case and it was exactly the opposite.
The first interpretation of his work that came out put him among the deniers of the thing in itself, and then he came back with an appendix to the Prolegomena to correct them (he also accused Berkeley of being one of the deniers), so that it was made clear that he only presented as illusory the forms of the thing in itself, but not the matter of the thing in itself, in other words, that we know there are things in themselves, but we know nothing about how they actually are, just how they appear to us, and they must appear to us as they do because of what they actually are, combined with our
a priori concepts.
Nope you got it wrong. It is was not an appendix the Prolegomena, but it was in the Preface of the 2nd edition of the CPR that he added '
The refutation of idealism'.
This refutation replaced his original discussion of problematic idealism which was misinterpreted by many as if Kant agreed with Berkeley.
So Kant differentiated his sort of transcendental idealism from Berkeley's Subjective aka Problematic idealism.
Regardless of Berkeley's idealism as problematic, nevertheless Kant expressed that idealism in general is not harmless in comparison to philosophical realism;
Here is Kant in the Prolegomena in response to his critics (my comments added in
blue):
The dictum of all genuine idealists from the Eleatic school to Bishop Berkeley, is contained in this formula: "All cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion, and only, in the ideas of the pure understanding and reason there is truth." This is the equivalent of saying: "there is NOT a real physical object that is transmitting the waves that generate the sense-data in the brain. This thing-in-itself is NOT real and is NOT independent of the human conditions, or human mind." And Kant says he does not endorse this.
The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth."
But this is directly contrary to idealism proper. How came I then to use this expression for quite an opposite purpose, and how came my reviewer to see it everywhere?
The solution of this difficulty rests on something that could have been very easily understood from the general bearing of the work, if the reader had only desired to do so. Space and time, together with all that they contain, are not things nor qualities in themselves, but belong merely to the appearances of the latter: up to this point I am one in confession with the above idealists. But these, and amongst them more particularly Berkeley, regarded space as a mere empirical presentation that, like the phenomenon it contains, is only known to us by means of experience or perception, together with its determinations. I, on the contrary, prove in the first place, that space (and also time, which Berkeley did not consider) and all its determinations a priori, can be known by us, because, no less than time, it inheres in our sensibility as a pure form before all perception or experience and makes all intuition of the same, and therefore all its phenomena, possible. It follows from this, that as truth rests on universal and necessary laws as its criteria, experience, according to Berkeley, can have no criteria of truth, because its phenomena (according to him) have nothing a priori at their foundation; whence it follows, that they are nothing but sheer illusion; whereas with us, space and time (in conjunction with the pure conceptions of the understanding) prescribe their law to all possible experience a priori, and at the same time afford the certain criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion therein. My so-called (properly critical) Idealism is of quite a special character, in that it subverts the ordinary idealism, and that through it all cognition a priori, even that of geometry, first receives objective reality... Here Kant endorses the view that "there is a real objective reality that is transmitting the waves that generate the sense-data that is received as cognition by the brain. This thing-in-itself is real and is independent of the human conditions, or human mind."
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:22 am
Kant in CPR wrote:However harmless Idealism may be considered in respect of the essential aims of Metaphysics (though, in fact, it is not, thus harmless),
it still remains a scandal to Philosophy and to Human Reason-in-General that the Existence of Things outside us (from which we derive the whole material of Knowledge, even for our Inner Sense) must be accepted merely on Faith,
and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their Existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.
B55
In the above Kant challenged realist to provide proof, the external independent world exists,
Which of course was the first most obvious interpretation of Kant, but to which Kant responded denying it. Actually, what Kant meant is that the thing in itself had to exist in order for the phenomena to be perceived, in other words, that the phenomena have something
a priori at their foundation, they cannot be pure illusion.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:22 am
You can take up Kant's challenge and prove the independent external world exists and is really real in the ultimate sense.
Actually, the point was to prove whether it existed as it appeared to our senses or in other form, which Kant said was impossible to know, adding that space and time were merely
a priori contributions of our minds.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:22 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:26 am
Unfortunately, something that we find consistently in Kant is his inconsistency. You can quote him saying something and then something else that seems to convey exactly the opposite. That's one reason of the multiple interpretations out of the mess that the Critique is, and one way to conciliate this is the view that he was simply agnostic about the thing in itself.
Show me the evidence in the context of the whole of Kant's CPR that Kant was certainly inconsistent.
Those who claimed 'inconsistency' is because they did not understand the CPR thoroughly re the various perspectives of reality that Kant was engaging in.
That Kant's work is obscure and open to several interpretations from competent scholars is not something controversial. It does not diminish his greatness. Denying it amounts to approaching philosophy with the fan club mentality.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:22 am
Note I'd spent [sometime ago] 3 years full time [up to 8 hours a day] intensively researching Kant, so I am very familiar with Kant's philosophy. You?
I would advice anyone in these forums not to claim expertise in any given subject, it might be counterproductive to their whole debate strategy, as it is the case now. It looks like you will need some more years of research. I don't claim myself to be an expert on Kant, but I have debated a good enough amount of idealists throughout the years as to know where they are standing.