Angela asked:

What is the meaning of Kant’s famous words, ‘Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without conceptions blind’?

Answer by Martin Jenkins

Those words of Kant epitomise his philosophy of Critical Idealism espoused in the Critique of Pure Reason. How do we know what we know? Kant sought to answer this perennial question. If I can firstly use an analogy. Think of the sealing wax and signet ring. The mind is like a signet ring because it will impose Form upon the wax – the Forms are like Conceptions or Categories. The signet ring is applied to the hot sealing wax to give it Form and the wax gives content to it. Without the shaping of the ring/Mind, there can be no content or intuitions. Without the content [or intuitions] of the wax, the Form or Categories remain empty. Both are needed in the act of synthesis.

In the Critique, Kant argues that despite many attempts, Metaphysics had failed to prove anything substantial apart from logic and tautologies. Empiricism was subject to all kinds of shortcomings as identified by the philosopher David Hume. If all knowledge was acquired by means of experience then it could never reach the status of being indubitable, of possessing certainty, of displaying necessary connections such as cause and effect. It would remain forever contingent because known only through experience and, experience could change at any time and judgements made about it would only ever be retrospective. Whilst metaphysics displayed logical certainty, it’s content was empty; whilst empiricism had content, no logical certainty meant it was contingent.

Neither Metaphysics or Empiricism on their own were suitable vehicles to acquire knowledge and to justify the claim of knowing anything. However, Kant maintained that both were involved in understanding and these elements should be combined in Synthetic a-priori judgements. That is, the necessary, a priori elements of metaphysics be combined with the a-posteriori element of empiricism.

The necessary a-priori elements Kant terms the Categories. These are the conditions which make knowing or understanding possible. The empirical aspect appears in intuitions. In the original synthetic unity of apperception, the collection of intuitions or manifolds are simultaneously combined with the Categories to appear before consciousness. This is a Synthetic a priori judgement. Categories are termed Transcendental in that although they shape and, are the very conditions of the intuitions, they are not experientially derived from them: they are the conditions which make it possible I.e. Transcending experience. If you like, the Categories are the Form and the intuition the Content of Judgements.

For example, I see a table before me. It is made possible by the Categories of Quantity [it is one object], Quality [it possesses reality in its intensity, it is not anything else and it is limited in space and time], Relation [as it partakes of substance in which it will change over time], Modality [as it necessarily exists although it is also subject to the possibility of non-existence]. The colour, texture, weight o the table are derived from intuitions within the schema of the Categories.

So when Kant writes Categories without intuitions are empty just as intuitions without Categories are blind; he means that categories are empty without the necessary content of intuitions, and intuitions without the necessary conditioning of the Categories would not be cognisable, they would be blind as we could understand them.

Martin Jenkins received the ISFP Fellowship for his dissertation ‘Aristocratic Radicalism or Anarchy? An Examination of Nietzsche’s Doctrine of Will to Power’. He is a Pathways Mentor.

 

Rose asked:

Compare and contrast the moral philosophy of Aristotle and Kant?

Answer by Tony Fahey

Aristotle

It is in his Nicomachean Ethics that Aristotle sets out his ethical theory: his concept of what it is, for human beings, to live well. For Aristotle, the end or final cause of human existence is eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is most commonly translated as ‘happiness’, but a more accurate translation is ‘flourishing’. Aristotle believed that the desire to live a fulfilled life is part of what it is to be human. A eudaimon life is a life that is successful. It is important to relies that what Aristotle means by happiness/ flourishing has nothing to do with physical pleasure, but is an activity of the mind/ soul in accordance with virtue. (NB for the ancient Greeks, soul was a synonym of mind.)

For Aristotle there are two parts to the mind/ soul: the intellectual and the emotional. Correspondingly, there are two types of virtue: intellectual and moral. Moreover, virtue, whether intellectual or moral, is a disposition (a natural inclination) of the mind/ soul, which finds its expression in voluntary action – that is, it is consciously chosen.

Moral virtue is expressed in the choice of pursuit of a middle course between excessive and deficient emotion, and exaggerated or inadequate action: this is the famous doctrine of the Golden Mean, which holds that each virtue stands somewhere between two opposing vices. Thus, courage or fortitude is a mean between cowardice and rashness; and temperance is the mean between licentiousness or profligacy and insensibility. Justice, or ‘fairness’, the most important virtue of the moral virtues, is also concerned with a mean in the sense that it aims at each person getting neither more nor less than his or her due. However, it is not like other virtues, flanked by opposing vices since any departure from the just mean, on either side, involves simply injustice. Moral virtue prevents disordered emotion from leading to inappropriate action. What decides, in any situation, what is appropriate action and the correct amount of feeling, is the intellectual virtue of prudence or practical wisdom (phronesis): this is the virtue of that part of reason that is concerned with action.

The virtue of the speculative part of the reaction is learning, or philosophic wisdom (Sophia): this virtue finds its most sublime manifestations in more or less solitary contemplation (theoria). Supreme happiness, according to Aristotle, would consist in a life of philosophical contemplation. However, whilst this would be the ultimate in human fulfilment, it is also a life that is beyond the realization of mere mortals. The best we can aspire to is the kind of happiness that can be found in a life of political activity and public magnificence in accordance with moral values.

Kant

Central to Kant’s moral philosophy is the view that right actions are those actions that are not instigated by impulses or desires, but by practical reason. Right action is right only if it is undertaken for the sake of fulfilling one’s duty, and fulfilling one’s duty means acting in accordance with certain moral laws or ‘imperatives’. To help us identify those laws which are morally binding Kant has provided us with the ultimate calculus: the ‘categorical imperative’ which states ‘Act only in accordance with the maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law’. To the categorical imperative, Kant offers a codicil which relates specifically to human will; ‘so act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means’.

Whilst Kant’s moral philosophy can be said to hold considerable merit, in that it advocates that human beings should be treated as ends in themselves rather than means to ends, I would argue that, as an ethical theory, it fails in that it looks on people, not as sentient beings, but as duty automatons. Thus, it seems to me, of the two theories, by virtue of its rejection of closure in relation to what it is that determines right action, and its view that it is one’s natural disposition to seek to lead a life of excellence, Aristotle’s ethical theory is the closest we have come to identifying an ethical theory that requires the least alteration to allow us to lead an ethical life.

http://www.tonyfahey.com

 

Iris asked:

Use the allegory of the cave to illustrate Plates political views. In doing so, you should b) explain how the theory of forms supports Plato’s favoured form of Aristocracy (to begin with, recall the relation between individual men and the Form of man) and c) explain how the theory of Forms grounds his criticism and rejection of democracy (where in the cave are the Athenian democrats? where are they on the divided line?).

Answer by Martin Jenkins

The Cave

People in the cave are secured so they cannot move their heads. This ensures they continuously look at the cave wall upon which, shadows move and pass. Shadows are cast from actual statuettes carried by other persons as they walk in front of a fire. If one of the shackled cave occupants were set free, s/he would be able to observe the whole spectacle of the fire, the statuettes and the shadows upon the cave wall. Looking into the fire itself would very well, daze his eyes-their being accustomed to the gloom of the cave. Essentially, he would be bewildered, confused and want to return to the shadows on the cave wall for securely knowing anything as s/he has done habitually.

As such, s/he would have to be ‘forcibly dragged’ out of the cave. Out of the security of the cave and its gloom, s/he would suffer pain and distress and temporarily be blinded by the Sunlight outside. Eventually, s/he would begin to regain the power of sight. Initially, s/he would see only shadows, reflections of people and things. Secondly, s/he would be able to see the people and things -the furniture of the physical world-themselves. Thirdly, s/he would look towards the heavens and see the light of the moon and stars. Finally, s/he would appreciate the Sun and full daytime itself. With the latter, our emancipated friend understands that the Sun is the source of the seasons, the growth of plants and illumination of the world.

With his newly acquired knowledge, the ex-prisoner of the cave would reflect upon the still remaining occupants in the cave and appreciate his new position against his old one. Remembering how the prisoners used to assign credit and prestige to those who could predict and correctly identify the passing shadows on the wall; s/he would now reject such ‘credit and prestige’. S/he fully appreciates that this was not knowledge but the lowest level of ignorance.

If the illuminated ex-prisoner returned to the cave, s/he would not be able to see amidst the gloom. As such, not being able to compete in the prisoners identification of shadows, they would laugh at him, they would be critical of the value of leaving the cave for to the surface and ultimately, if they too were to be forced out of the cave, they would kill those trying to make them [e.g. the fate of Socrates].

Allegory

The upward journey of the prisoner from the darkness of the cave to the blinding light of wisdom, mirrors the mind’s ascent from the Visible World [To Horaton] to the Intelligible World [To Noeton] of the Forms as described in the ‘Divided Line’. Shadows and illusions on the caves wall represent opinion, conjecture -the lowest section of the Divided Line [D]. As the prisoners predict and identify the shadows passing before them, they act with confidence in the belief that their activity identifies the truth of things. This is the second section of the divided Line [C]. The prisoner might agree with this when s/he sees the statuettes and what is done with them-they are similar to the shadows on the wall.

This is the condition of the average person in the everyday world. How wrong he is.

The truth of things does not lie with the similarities between objects or their representations. Yet s/he will not appreciate this until the cave is exited. The prisoner is ‘forcibly dragged’ out of the cave as at the moment, s/he is a ‘sightseer’-content with impressions from the sense impressions and that this constitutes what it is to ‘know’. After again going through sections D and C on the surface, the ex-prisoner also passes through section B. Here, thought itself begins with the particular objects of the everyday, visible world but becomes its own object of analysis. Maths, Geometry can be said to exist here as does Dialectic. It might also be said that this is where ‘a-priori’ thinking comes into its own. This is where the implicit nature of things is distilled by the thinker until the truth of things is found in the Forms. This brings out knowledge in the thinker [Section A of the Line]. The philosopher knows the Forms. Thus whilst there are many particular acts of justice in the visible world, no-one knows what justice is-in itself save the Philosopher Kings.

Socrates states that the Philosopher would rather stay in the realm of the Forms than deal with the tedious ugliness of the everyday world. Unfortunately in the ideal Republic, Philosophers are educated to discover knowledge so as to rule. Only those with the knowledge of a particular skill can practice it: farmers are to be farmers and philosopher kings, philosopher kings. The alternative to this just state of affairs is illness in the Polis just as if the functions within the body cease to do what they do or do it badly. Plato’s favours Aristocracy not in a ‘class sense’ -that only the Aristocrats as a class should rule; he favours Aristocracy as the those who possess knowledge to rule are the best to rule – the best/Aristos’. Members of the latter can originate in any social strata in the Republic. The education system selects them on their merit and abilities regardless of their social origins.

So knowledge is essential to good governance. Those who do not have it within them to acquire it cannot rule – if justice is to be done. Hence the ‘Athenian democrats’ would belong to section C and D in the Divided Line. They do not possess knowledge, only opinions. They are like the prisoners in the cave, they cannot appreciate the truth of things [the Forms] but only deal with the superficial, mere appearance and relations between objects and not, the Truth those particular objects partake of/in. Perhaps the democrats are the ones who carry the statuettes in front of the fire. Thereby they create the shadows, the reflections of things on the cave wall. This gives the impression of ‘reality’, of what is real to the prisoners and, they seem content to accept this insofar as they compete with each other to guess which image is coming next. Gratification through untruth is preferred to the Truth. Anyone who disrupts this with talk of the ‘Truth’ is regarded as a disruptive nuisance and like Socrates, runs the risk of being executed.

Martin Jenkins received the ISFP Fellowship for his dissertation ‘Aristocratic Radicalism or Anarchy? An Examination of Nietzsche’s Doctrine of Will to Power’. He is a Pathways Mentor.

 

Debbie asked:

Frege said ‘a fact is a thought that is true. Does that mean that truth is factual thoughts?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

You can’t just turn the sentence around and draw conclusions from the spurious fact that the same words appear in the sentence! You should note that Frege says nothing about truth: he is speaking of facts.

You should accordingly attend to how Frege defines ‘fact’. As a thought first; then as a thought that is true. This order tells you something important about facts, though nothing at all about truth.

What it tells you is that facts are things and events which we can perceive and understand. But perceiving and understanding is in some way connected to our thoughts. So a fact relates to this understanding. For example you see a chair, you sit on it and verify that it is actually a chair. Thereby you have ‘understood’ a fact, which is now part of your empirical experience and sedimented in your memory, so that you may think about it. Similarly with events.

Those issues in the world which we have ascertained, verified and perhaps experimentally proved we may call ‘facts’. But you know that this ‘factuality’ is a judgement of your mind. You also know that sometimes your assessments are mistaken. The ball you play with might be made of plastic, but you call it a rubber ball. So this is not a fact, and not a true thought. But we often speak that way, for convenience. Convenience and convention turns many facts into little falsehoods, which generally do no harm at all. But it means that these are not facts; and then, according to Frege, our thoughts about them do not meet the facts of the world.

Bear in mind also that Frege was a mathematician. So we must include certain kinds of facts which do not occur in the world, but only in minds. What is the square root of 81? There is only one answer: The thought ‘9’. So you can then make the claim that it is factual to entertain the thought, ‘the square root of 81 is 9’.

‘Truth’ is a much wider concept than factuality. A poor boy is hungry; he has no money and steals a bread roll from the baker while no one is looking. Does that make him a thief? Questions like this are too often settled along the lines of a rigid truth. The boy may not ever in his life steal again, so where does that leave the ‘truth’ of the word thief? What is the truth in this very human context, which arbitrarily divides people in such a way that children sometimes have to suffer and end up on the wrong side of ‘truth’?

So, to finish: Frege is not talking about the truth. He is concerned with ‘truth’ as a concept which sometimes meets actuality in a one-to-one correspondence, as above. It is actually a very dangerous attitude to turn such claims around and make them say something which they don’t say and don’t mean!

Especially ‘truth’, on which too many people in the world have rigid opinions, mostly based on insufficient experience to guard from mistaking it for something which it isn’t.

Jürgen Lawrenz at PhiloSophos.com

 

Jenny asked:

What is the main philosophical teaching of the philosopher Aristotle? (in 1 or 2 sentences).

Answer by Craig Skinner

Other than as a bit of fun, I dont think there is point to so compressing this very great philosopher’s vast output.

But, in that spirit, how about:

‘Aristotle teaches a system of logic, since expanded but not retracted, a four-cause account of explanation, four categories of being, a this-world-only rejection of Platonic forms, immanent universals, and the good life as pursuit, in a community, of the proper ends for humans.’

Or how about a bad limerick I have just made up:

    His logic’s grown symbols since yore
    Categories and causes still four
    The good life depends
    On virtue and ends
    And one world’s enough, forms mere lore.

But why stop at two sentences. How about one, a phrase, or a word:

Heraclitus: flux
Democritus: atoms and the void
Plato: forms are reality
Descartes: doubt
Locke: blank slate
Berkeley: no matter
Hume: slavish reason, scepticism
Leibniz: monadism
Kant: categories and duty
Mill: utilitarianism
Russell: descriptions
Lewis: possible worlds are real
Quine: dogmas disputed
Gettier: justified true belief isn’t knowledge
Goodman: gruesome

For McTaggart, we have no time, whilst keeping an open question about Moore.

However, learning anything worthwhile in philosophy is hard work with no shortcuts, but this can still be fun.

Craig Skinner at PhiloSophos.com

 

Vic asked:

According to philosophy, and science. Humans decisions are based on human experience, and past genetics thus humans have no free will. So if I choose the color blue, its really not me choosing by my brain choosing for me. If I make a decision, is really not me making a decision but my brain based on predetermined historic genetics. In some cases even free will can be an illusion. How can all of this make any sense? If my life is an illusion of my genetics then how can I even trust a scientist who makes conclusions on a topic? what if the scientist in question and his conclusion is an illusion? or a conclusion based on his genetics?

Also, how or where does reasoning or intelligence fall under if assuming that all of our thoughts are controlled by genetics?

Answer by Tony Fahey

Hi Vic, as the above contains several questions relating loosely to the same issue, I have decided to answer that which I believe is the most central to the matter at hand, that your claim that, ‘According to philosophy, and science. Humans decisions are based on human experience, and past genetics thus humans have no free will’. First of allI would love to know from whence came the evidence to support such an assertion. As one whose interests cover both philosophy and science, I must say I have never come across arguments from either discipline supporting such a claim. Whilst I agree, to some extent, that empirical experience, social conditioning,and genetics have, what might be described as a determinist influence on one’s thinking, emotions, and behaviour, in general, to argue that these influences obviate one’s ability to think for oneself is a step too far.

Indeed, I would go further and argue that it is actually science and philosophy that provides one with the knowledge and courage to shed one’s self of these influences, to think for oneself: to have free will, and to live an authentic life.

http://www.tonyfahey.com

 

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

I would emphasize the very good point you make, Vic, about the scientist ‘drawing conclusions’ about our lack of free will. What the scientist who rejects free will has to say is that there is no such thing, in reality, as ‘drawing a conclusion’. Depressing as this may seem, some are prepared to say this for the sake of (what they perceive as) consistency. But then, why should we be obliged to listen?

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html