Brendan asked:

Space and time are named by Kant as the structures of our mind which shape sense data into perceptions, from which we formulate our ideas about the world. If you wouldn’t mind, could you tell me how Kant figures that space and time specifically are the mental structures by which we perceive the world? Through what order of propositions does Kant arrives at these specific structures? Why does he not simply conclude that the mind shapes perceptions, thus suspending judgment about why this is so?

I hope I am making myself clear. My understanding so far is that the human being is not a passive observer of objective reality; our knowledge of the world, from experience, is necessarily molded by the mind. We do not perceive the noumenal realm, because the noumenal realm is that which transcends perception. But that further step which posits ‘categories’ is what escapes me. Thanks!

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

The further step, as you call it, is in fact the opposite: It is the step that must come before all others; and this is precisely what escaped everyone before Kant worked it out and laid the foundations for our understanding of the mind. After all, the mind is not a Just-so story. It must have a capacity!

You might ask yourself: How does a newborn baby learn to see, hear, touch etc. and sort out what meaning those impulses have? And then, at a later stage, with the onset of a more refined degree of consciousness, what is the source of directional and temporal discrimination?

So you should ask ‘what is this capacity’? To approach this subject, let us ask how mechanical sensors (e.g. fire alarms, radios) detect impact. Here the answer is obvious: Certain parts of these contraptions have the disposition to react in a certain way upon the impact of specific causal occurrences. We call this disposition rather pathetically ‘sensitivity’. But it assists our understanding of the Kantian categories, as these implements possess a structure, imparted to them by their designer, which makes them react in a predictable way to a specified cause. Structure therefore has a clear meaning: if there is smoke, the detector’s equilibrium is disturbed and a stream of data ensues that will trigger a mechanical response, e.g. opening a water pipe to sprinklers. This outcome we might call the ‘contents’ of the structure. Evidently if there is no smoke, there is no content. The smoke alarm does not have the capacity to detect anything other than smoke. Therefore it’s normal state is the rest state.

From here we go on to examine the interaction of nerve strands and the mind. For simplicity’s sake, let us suppose that nerves conduct their data into the brain, where they are manipulated in order to derive a content. But this only brings us back to the aforementioned presupposition that the mind must have a capacity.

Before I proceed: you will observe that neither time nor space is an actually existing part of the operations. The space is presupposed and defined as ‘omnidirectional extension’. If the timing of the operations is important, a further mechanical or electronic device must be added. You should take particular note here of the fact any type of clock measures time in instrumental terms, i.e. the distance travelled by the hand of a clock or a specific number of electronic pulses. This gives you a first hint that time and space are intimately bound up with human understanding. Neither of them is an objective datum: The movement of the pointer is not time, nor the pulses.

But by these means we have cleared our path to an appreciation of the Kantian structures and categories.

Take any consciously aware human being, such as yourself: You find yourself situated in a crosshatch of dispositions which assign all knowable events to two kinds of locations inside a volume relative to the embodied self. The first of these, called ‘space’, is a measure of distance and an indicator of orientation; the second, called ‘time’, recognises some events as prior, and other events as simultaneous with the embodied self. We are furthermore disposed to anticipate more events to transpire in the future, though they cannot be known.

You will note in this conception of time that it can be interpreted as equivalent to space, in the sense that distance is also a duration, namely as much time as it takes for one object to come to a proximate spatial location to another. Remember that clocks with hands do not tell the time — this is a mental act you perform — but measure out a distance on a circular dial. This argument can naturally be reversed as well, so that distance is the time it takes by a moving object to transfer from one location to another at a certain velocity.

What Kant is telling us, therefore boils down to a predisposition on our part to spontaneously perform a spatiotemporal interpretation of any event relative to the embodied self, or scientifically to a posited residual observer. Although all animals and plants as well can act on analogous impulses, with humans it developed into a conscious mental performance.

As Kant correctly points out, this ordering of events into temporal and spatial intuitions is given. There is no compelling argument, nor demonstration, that time or space actually exist. Moreover, as this is done spontaneously, it need not be worked out by the mind. To this extent, the capacity for assigning all events and occurrences to a location in a spatiotemporal grid indicates that such is the structure of our mind. It is structural because it precedes perception, and ascertains that perceptions are of this kind, and not otherwise.

With the categories, we have an altogether analogous story. Once again, the point of Kant’s categories is not that he invented them, but that he subtracted from our multitudinous performances a handful of constantly recurring templates, or forms, or dispositions through which we sort out of what these experiences mean to us. His tables basically inform us that, when we form judgements on an event through such templates (innate dispositions), we do it by making a choice from among three alternatives — e.g. whether the event is actual, necessary or contingent.

Collectively the tables demonstrate the form of our thinking, therefore it is plain-sailing to refer to them as a structure of the mind.

One point to bear in mind is, that hypothetically there may be creatures in the universe whose thinking includes other categories than those named by Kant. But for us, such a perspective seems impossible (you can’t jump out of your skin!). We cannot perceive what is not part of the structure of our mind. We can only experience those occurrences to which in virtue of the Kantian dispositions we are able to decipher under their structuring. To mention just one instance, it is not possible for our mind, owing to its structure, to entertain any kind of intuition of six-dimensional space.

I hope you can see now that Kant’s categories and his disquisitions on time and space, are bottom up — foundations. If this is not clear when you study Kant, you are bound to miss much in the later discourse, where all this is now supposed as established.

Jürgen Lawrenz at philosophos.org

Answer by Henk Tuten

An essential problem is that Kant without any doubt presumes that ‘mind’ exists. If mind does not exist the whole discussion about ‘structures of our mind’ is rubbish. That Kant believes in ‘mind’ is no surprise in our western in origin catholic civilization. Catholicism settled the dualist split of mind and matter. Two millennia of belief in immaterial things like ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ make belief in immaterial thing like ‘space’ and ‘time’ and also ‘understanding’, ‘consciousness’, ‘intelligence’ almost natural.

When you try to make sense of a notion like ‘intelligence’ you’ll notice that you meet the same problem as when you try to make sense of ‘space’ and ‘time’. You get lost in a jungle of basics/ presumptions to have been accepted since the Enlightenment. Then you recognize that all we can say is that we humans have got very specialized in using memory of experience when meeting daily challenges.

Kant just made a good guess. If you try to situate yourself in reality then sequence is always what you meet first. Sequence is that whose signal makes most sense (translated as ‘distance’ in ‘space’, and sequence in whose signals you noticed first made linear in ‘time’).

Kant’s view of reality was one with Laws of Nature, presuming that nature needs human made laws (morals). But Kant is clear that in his view our ‘mind’ creates a virtual reality. Part of this virtual reality is in Kant’s view always ‘space’ and ‘time’.

Henk Tuten at philosophos.org

Ray asked:

John Arthur argues that without a moral standard provided by God through divine commands, there is no reliable means to distinguish between right and wrong behavior.

Answer by Stuart Burns

I would think that the existence of the moral teachings of Confucius (Kong Qiu, 551-479 BC) and Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama, circa 5th century BC) would demonstrate that Mr Arthur’s arguments are based on incorrect factual information. The peoples of India and China, where Buddhism is popular, and the nations of East Asia where the moral teachings of Confucius have had a huge influence on their history and culture, would argue that Mr Arthur is simply incorrect in his statement.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/saburns/pg00cv.htm

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

What interests me about this question is that it presents the divine command theory as a decision procedure for discovering the correct answer to questions of ‘right and wrong behaviour’ — that is to say all moral or ethical questions.

This is a different, and stronger claim, from the theory that divine command, or the fact that God wills that we behave in a particular way and not in other ways, is that in virtue of which there exists a right or wrong answer to any ethical question; in other words, a theory of truth for ethics.

The view that God’s existence provides the ultimate basis for ethical truth is argued eloquently by Peter Geach in his chapter, ‘The Moral Law and the Law of God’ in God and the Soul (Routledge 1969). (See my answer, God, ethics and Euthyphro’s dilemma.)

Geach’s case, succinctly, is that if you believe in God, then you must believe that what God commands is what must be done, regardless of the consequences. You might try to argue for an objective basis for ethics without God, but then you are forced to embrace the view that any action, however bad in itself, can in principle be justified by a cost-benefit analysis. You can say that you will stick to your principles come what may, but at some point you will be forced to concede.

It is harder to justify the claim attributed to John Arthur, that divine command (the Ten Commandments, say, although this might also include the Koran, or the Talmud, or etc.) provides a reliable means to distinguish between right and wrong. Of course, there is always the option to say, ‘You can’t determine the correct action in every case, but you are still better off than if you reject the Bible’ (or the Koran, or Talmud or etc.). Problem is, the whole attraction of appealing to God is that we fallible human beings don’t have to reason out/ invent/ discover ethical answers for ourselves. Don’t worry, it’s all in the Book. But if it isn’t all in some book, then there will come a time when we are left in the lurch, having to think for ourselves — and lacking the means to do it, because we have always relied on the book answer.

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

Donald asked:

Do you agree with Professor Roger Scruton that “there are no ‘central questions’ of philosophy”? (Modern Philosophy, p. ix).

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

I completely see where this is coming from. Just compare Roger Scruton’s book with, e.g. Ayer The Central Questions of Philosophy. (Both books can be found in the Pathways Introductory book list.)

As it happens, Scruton taught me when I was an undergraduate at Birkbeck during 1972-6. He was highly respected as a teacher, and fondly regarded even by those whose political views were very much more to the left of Scruton’s brand of conservative philosophy.

I credit Scruton in particular with exciting my interest in the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and F.H. Bradley.

The first point to make is that if you are going to write a book on philosophy with lots of chapters (lots of topics!) you need to make a statement explaining why you didn’t narrow down your choice. This is what authors do in a Preface. Scruton’s philosophical interests are broad, if not encyclopaedic. However, it is fair to say that the emphasis is more on the practical and social significance of philosophy.

Philosophy can be many different things, the one uniting thread according to Scruton is the analytic method. That’s something Scruton and I agree on. What he taught us was respect for philosophers who are underappreciated by the analytic tradition.

How do we differ? I see metaphysics as being the core of philosophy, so its problems are for me the ‘central problems of philosophy’. For Scruton, aesthetics, moral psychology, social and political philosophy are equally if not more ‘central’.

So what use is there in trying to identify the central questions of philosophy? Is there a point in doing so? If you look at the pages of Ask a Philosopher going back to 1999 (when I was the only person answering the questions) you will see an incredibly broad range of questions, covering every aspect of human life and endeavour.

And yet, there do seem to be a just a few, constant threads that connect many of these. One thread is the question of human knowledge and how views about about every kind of belief can be justified. What counts as knowledge? when is an argument for a knowledge claim valid? Another thread concerns the questions of metaphysics, such as the nature of causality or time (which is also, as it happens, a question in the philosophy of physics). Another thread connects metaphysics with problems of logic and language, looking at the concepts of truth, existence, meaning.

Which of these threads you identify as being of particular importance says something about you as a philosopher. As does the refusal to make such a judgement.

So I am with Ayer, in his quest for the central or ultimate questions of philosophy, but also with Scruton with his emphasis on the amazingly broad sweep of philosophical questions.

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

Chun Lok asked:

In Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, he outlines his overall political philosophy. Explain Locke’s view as to what a just and legitimate government is.

Answer by Martin Jenkins

According to Locke, what constitutes a just and legitimate government is one which is based upon the consent of the people and which governs wholly in the common interest. People originally exist in a State of Nature prior to the passage to Political or Civic Society.

State of Nature

Locke proposes three factors which characterise the State of nature. Firstly, there is Freedom. The individual can order its actions without the leave of any other person or authority. Secondly, there is Equality. Each person has the same Power and jurisdiction precluding the rule of a select few or individuals based on claims of nature or Divine Right. Finally, what normatively justifies the above and guides people in this condition is Natural Law/ Right.

“The state of nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges everyone and reason (which is that Law) which teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that all being equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions, for men being the work of one omnipotent and infinitely wise maker, all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by his order and about his business, they are His property whose workmanship they are made to last during his, and not another’s pleasure.” (#6)

Natural Law prevents the rather bestial view of the state of Nature as espoused by Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan. Although Hobbes would equally maintain that there are Natural Laws, he held human nature to be too strong to observe and be restricted by them. Hence for him, the State of Nature is identical with a State of War.

Luckily for Locke, the State of Nature and its Natural Law appears to be a Christian one which is guided by Scriptural law concerning the preservation of Life, Liberty and Estates and the right of punishment for their violations. Every individual has this right, the right to punish offenders being termed the Executive Power of Natural Law. (#7) Although everyone has the right to do this, not every one, despite the equal possession of Natural Law/ Reason, agrees on the appropriate punishments. The State of nature increasingly becomes unsafe as ‘the greater part do not apply nor recognise equity and justice. Some are ignorant of the apparently apodictic teachings of Natural Law and allow their passions to cloud their judgements. As there is no consistent application of the Natural Law, it increasingly becomes evident that it might be a good idea if there could be an Impartial authority which could disinterestedly and impartially apply the Law (#131)

Despite the obvious disagreement between people concerning Natural Law, an agreement is to be reached to find a common and consistent application of Natural Law with each other. To achieve this, a Compact is composed, agreed upon and made with each other. This Compact requires that each and every one give up their right to execute the Natural Law. They further agree that this executive power shall be pooled together to be put at the disposal of the community — or at least, those who have managed to agree to the Compact. Thus the State of Nature is suspended and a Civic or Political Society is arrived at.

“Men, being… by nature free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and be subject to the political power of another, without his own consent, which Is done by agreeing with other men to join and unite in a community for their comfortable, safe and peaceable living, one amongst another in a secure enjoyment of their properties and in a greater security against any that are not of it.” (#95)

Civic or Political Society

Note the Compact is made between people and not between the people and a government. The people are bound to each other and not a govt. This then allows the people to decide on the type and nature of a political power to govern them, make laws to this end and, to invest their trust in it.

“Political Power then, I take to be the right of making laws with penalties of death and consequently all less penalties for the regulation and preservation of property and, of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws and in defence of the Commonwealth from foreign injury and all this only for the defence of the common good.” (#3)

The end and justification of a Government is ‘for the defence of the Common Good’. As there is no compact made between the governed and their government, the former can enact their Natural Law and rebel against government, whatever its form, if it ceases to defend the common good. So on Locke’s view, illegitimate government can never arise on the grounds of de jure — of legal and moral right. If such a government does arise, it has departed from moral right, positions itself outside the Moral Law and ipso facto, the People have the right of not obeying it and more importantly, of outright rebellion to replace it.

So a ‘just and legitimate’ government is one which is based upon Natural Law. By means of its laws, institutions, it must internally and externally observe and defend the right of its peoples’ to life, liberty and property. Government exists at the consent of the People and not vice versa. This is quite a revolutionary declaration that Government should be the servant of the people: that the People are sovereign in terms of the justification of the very existence of Political Society.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Politically, the Two Treatises was written in response to the political crisis in England in the 1680’s. The Monarch was inching toward a restoration of Absolute Powers which had been overthrown in the English Revolution of the 1640’s. Many personages feared such a reactionary move would prescribe their liberties and property. The Treatises, in particular the Second, justify and promulgate such liberties. Further, elements and influences of the Second Treatise can be found in the republican Constitution of the United States of America viz: ‘Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness and arguably the right of the People to bear arms in the interest of morally justified rebellion against a usurping government and for the protection of liberty.

As such, Locke can be regarded as one of the philosophical authors of what would later be termed Liberalism. This is viewed as a just and legitimate society by many. The problems Locke reflected upon still remain contentious issues today such as what can be understood as the liberty of citizens and, by what means or none, government could or should defend them. This relevance is further exemplified by his chapter on Property. Here, Locke gives numerous justifications for the recognition, justification and protection of private property. Numerous commentators (such as CB MacPherson in his The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism) perceive this as an ideological defence of private property of the then emerging capitalism. Hence Locke can be regarded as an early defender of Capitalist Liberties and Property rights: a just and legitimate society for some, unjust and illegitimate for others. The debates initiated the Two Treatises on Government continues.

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 and an Editors of Philosophy Pathways

Zhoravlik asked:

Regarding valid/ invalid deductive arguments.

We use knowledge as the basis to make true statements to form valid arguments, but the knowledge may be flawed, does that mean that logic is?

Answer by Craig Skinner

I will say what an argument is, distinguish a deductive from an inductive one, distinguish the three features of a good deductive argument, then answer the queries you raise.

An argument is a movement of thought in which a series (one or more) propositions (premises, Ps) warrant a final one (conclusion, C).

Arguments can be deductive, inductive or abductive. I wont say any more about the last two, except that they are not logically watertight, lacking the logical feature of entailment which is intended in a deductive argument.

A deductive argument has the intended feature that the Ps logically entail the C. If the Ps are true, the C must be true. It is impossible for the Ps to be true and the C false. The C is a logical inference from the Ps.

A good deductive argument is:

* valid

* sound

* persuasive

Let’s deal with each:

Validity: the C does follow from the Ps. The logic is correct, the intended feature (entailment) is present. This is decidable from the form of the argument. No knowledge of the world is needed.

e.g.

P1 All As are Bs
P2 All Bs are Cs
C All As are Cs

A useful way to see this (and other deductive arguments) is Venn diagrams: make a small circle (the As); make a bigger circle around it (the Bs); then a yet bigger circle around the Bs (the Cs). You can now see that if all As are Bs and all Bs are Cs then all As are Cs.

Notice that validity says nothing of truth, the Ps may be true or false, the C true or false. Validity only guarantees is that if the Ps are true, then the C is definitely true.

Soundness: the C is true because the Ps are true and the argument valid. In short, a sound argument is a valid one with true Ps, so that the C can be relied on. These are the arguments we want in real life (including philosophy).

Persuasiveness: this is not just a question of arguments of course (flattery, threats, bribes, images, endorsement by authority or a celebrity may all make a poor argument more persuasive). However an argument is more likely to be persuasive, especially to a critical, impartial listener, if it is sound, short and simple. As an aside, Lewis Carroll dreamed up ‘fun’ arguments with, say, twenty connected Ps, so that long before the C one had completely lost the thread.

Now to the points you raise:

Your Ex 1 could be called a non-argument (as you suggest) or else a very bad one (invalid, unsound, unpersuasive). The fact that it’s set out with Ps and C, and that the C implicitly, as in all arguments, starts with an unstated ‘Therefore’, inclines me to call it a very bad argument.

You ask for an invalid argument with true Ps and true C. Here is one:

P1 Poodles are mammals
P2 Dogs are mammals
C Poodles are dogs

Make a Venn diagram: in the circle for mammals are two smaller circles, one for dogs, one for poodles. But, from what is said in the Ps, these little circles needn’t connect or overlap. In short, if As are Bs and Cs are Bs, we can’t say whether or not any As are Cs.

This argument fails on logic, not on knowledge, as you asked. In fact the knowledge, that all poodles really are dogs, just gets in the way of seeing the invalidity.

Your Ex 2 is invalid. It has the same form as my above example i.e. As are B and Cs are B, and it doesn’t follow that Cs are As. Again draw a Venn diagram. The invalidity, to repeat, is a logical notion, decidable from the form of the argument without reference to the world, so that knowledge about oxygen isn’t needed and isn’t what makes the argument invalid. Substituting ‘oxygen’ for ‘hydrogen’ simply illustrates that the argument is flawed. Substituting more familiar terms is often an alternative to a Venn diagram in illustrating validity/invalidity. For example, the following has the same form as your Ex 2 and helps convince us of its invalidity:

P1 Ants are tiny
P2 Dust specks are tiny
C Dust specks are ants

You talk about knowledge being flawed, and could logic be flawed.

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘flawed’ knowledge. Certainly, some of the things we take as knowledge turn out to be untrue (mere gossip, misleading appearances or deceit, say). Or knowledge may be incomplete. But knowledge by definition is true.

As regards logic being flawed, I think we can take it for all practical purposes, including argumentation, that classical logic is correct. Paraconsistent Logic holds that classical logic is incomplete because some contradictions are true, but that’s a wholly different matter and irrelevant to your question.

In conclusion, distinguish validity (a purely logical matter of entailment), soundness (combines validity with truth) and persuasiveness (a practical, pragmatic matter); and, if unsure about validity, use Venn diagrams to picture all Xs are Ys, some Ys are Zs etc.

Craig Skinner at philosophos.org

Kelwin asked:

Where is time?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

Wrong question. Time is not anywhere. Rather, it is an abstract name we give to the sum of all occurrences in the universe.

To follow this, conceive of the universe as a space with contents, all of them motionless objects. It is hard to envision this, because (for a start) there could be no stars. But as it happens, there is a also a residual potential in the objects, as some of them possess characteristics which conflict with the characteristics of their neighbours. For ease of reference, think of magnets which can either attract or repel each other. If two such objects physically repel each other, there is evidently something happening that will have consequences. Namely that each is going to be propelled into a different neighbourhood, where the same thing might happen again.

What you witness here is a succession of events. In due course, many of these will occur simultaneously; but on the whole the nature of succession is such that some events occur before and others after those which are simultaneous. Further, as the objects in the universe range from extremely small to extremely large, the succession of events is complicated by the duration which objects of different magnitude require to complete a specific occurrence.

We humans possess an innate sense of succession, based on the fact that as we age, our bodies keep changing. In addition, we have to make many voluntary changes of locality, some of which may take us a long way from home — such as shopping for food. While we do this, many other people do things at the same time, others have already done and yet others will do later.

As we humans are social creatures and also depend on many occurrences in the natural world for the organisation of our lives, we started looking at ways of assessing all the events which we can witness, in terms of human events. Some occur in the blinking of an eyelid or the flash of a lightning; others may transpire from sunrise to sunset; yet others in accordance with the seasons; and so on. And now, at some juncture in human history, people set about elaborating a system of occurrences and tied them to these observable natural phenomena. Very recently — after the invention of mechanical clocks — that system acquired the form which we still maintain today: whereby a day is divided into 24 hours, which in turn have 60 minutes, while they each have 60 seconds; and on the other side 7 days a week, 365 days for a set of 4 seasons; as well as some astronomical nomenclatures.

So you can see from this that time is not a thing, nor an event, nor a location: indeed nothing at all. It is a gauge devised by humans to correlate occurrences in the world to make them intelligible to ourselves in terms of past, present and future. In other words, it is a creation of the human intellect. Accordingly it does not make much sense to speak of time as if it were an existent in itself. It is a human invention, and has no relevance to any existent other than ourselves.

So as not to disregard one other issue: Science (still done by humans!) is of course obliged to work on a definition of time which purports to be an absolutely objective. But as we pry deeper and deeper into the subnuclear realm, this brings defects of the system to the fore in the apparent ‘travel backward in time’ of some phenomena. Richard Feynman used to say to his students, ‘don’t worry about it — as long as the equations work out, everything is fine!’ I make mention of this, because time travel is such a fashionable topic today, as if such events could be magnified into our common time scales without being cranked into the succession/simultaneity factor. Whereas (as I said) it simply reveals a flaw in the system; and it helps to understand this simple issue so as to get out of the rut of believing things that don’t pertain or exist, just because some mathematical equation in an almost inconceivably small dimension ‘comes out right’ that way!

Jürgen Lawrenz at philosophos.org