|
|
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
Were we talking about Kant or pedants?
I never liked Kant very much. Mostly because I don't understand him.
I've read Prolegomena three times and it's still a complete mystery to me. (The only other books, excepting comics, that I've read three times is Khun's Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Asimov's I, Robot.) I really felt stupid. Okay, I often feel stupid when I read philosophy - like when I read Martin Heidegger talking about the "nearness of the farness" - I'm never sure if this guy's serious or if he full of it.
Supposedly Kant was an able geometer and had somehow proven (not geometrically, of course, but through, I suppose his metaphysics) that Euclidean geometry was the only possible geometry. Gauss (a personal hero of mine) had meanwhile discovered, OTOH, that Euclid's fifth postulate (AKA Playfair's axiom) was a little different in that one could make other assumptions and develop other perfectly consistent geometries (none of which I know anything about, BTW). But Gauss didn't publish right away which might have been due to his few-but-ripe philosophy, but might also have been due to the fact that he had no interest in wasting time in a public brawl with the old man (they were contemporaries, but Kant was a deal older). This might be the origin of a comment I had heard about Gauss stating that everything Kant said was either trivial or false.
Heisenberg, in his autobiographical Physics and Beyond, talks about how after he and his buddies had published some of their results on QM, that they received a visit from some neo-Kantian professors who tried to convince them that they didn't really mean to publish what they said. I don't recall the details of the exchange, but it was pretty funny. I highy recommend the book for anyone who likes that sort of thing.
I guess my problem with Kant is my understanding of his idea of categorical imperatives. I'm guessing this is a formalized statement of what most people innately understand to be true about morality, even if they've never given it a moment's thought. My comic-book understanding of categorical imperative is that whenever multiple values collide there is always a higher value (that may or may not be known) to which one might refer for resolution. This is okay for Kant, because I'm guessing he also just assumed the existence of a god. Even before I was an atheist this was a little hard for me to swallow. Nowadays I look at it as a kind of brain pollution driving us to pretend (or at least to believe) we know more than we really do. Example: we have two conflicting values, espoused by two diametrically opposed parties. The temptation to just manufacture a higher value is tremendous.
I think it's easier for a believer like Kant to believe that somehow right and wrong are built into the universe than for a non-believer to believe such a thing. There are several takes (at least) and innumerable variations --
Absolute Right and WRONG (ARAW) exist. There *IS* *exactly* *ONE* set of principles corresponding to right and wrong. They exist externally to man and are imposed on man (by God, the universe, whatever).
RAW exists, but it is intrinsic to groups of people. It's not built into the fabric of the universe, but into the fabric of society. Some things just don't work and cause society to implode. Note that this is *not* absolute, because a change in environment can cause a change in what makes a society viable. This is sort of a minimalist view, almost utilitarian. A conflict can be resolved in either of several ways and any way that results in sustainable society can be viewed as right. (A trivial variation with major ramifications is that only the resolution that results in the most sustainable society is right.) I'm tempted to think a genetic view of right and wrong might be a variation on this -- or maybe it's a fourth category, I'm not sure.
ARAW do not exist. Only relative right and wrong exist. There are numerous, conflicting values. There may or may not be a resolution to a given conflict. There may or may not be a higher value that trumps the values in conflict. In some sense, right and wrong are completely fabricated. Very scary possibility for me because a clear implication is that we really have to be careful what what we work towards. No god will save us if we screw up. Even our own sense of survival (as a species) is circumvented.
ah, well, enough rambling...i gotta go.
k
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,027
old hand
|
|
OP
old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,027 |
A conflict can be resolved in either of several ways
Spontaneously this reminded me of a recent declaration, of UNESCO I think, that "the number of starving children should be halved by the year 2010" - My first reaction had been shock...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
knowledge is not truth
Indeed, as Godel demonstrated and Hosftadter rephrased in Godel,Escher,Bach, "Truth is a stronger notion than provability," meaning that there are statements that are true but whose truth (or falsehood) cannot be proved logically.
There is a constraint on this, which while I don't recall the exact verbiage, goes something along the lines of "in any sufficiently complex logical system" (where "sufficiently complex..." means anything able to handle the integers).
A really curious effect of this simple statement is that say X is a true statement in our system that cannot be proven to be true. Let's say we just assume X is true. There will yet be another statement Y that is unprovable in the system. No matter how many assumptions you make, you will either a) continue to have unprovably true statements, or b) run into an inconsistency. (I've never actually read the details of the theorem - though I imagine it's similar to the computability theorems - but I think this only applies to consistent systems.)
Many moons ago, we believed that if we knew the start state of the universe in sufficient detail and all the rules governing the system, that we could theoretically predict the future (or describe the past). Now we know it aint so.
In the past couple centuries or so we have been bombarded with a bunch of crazy ideas. Not that I'm in the mode of patronizing our forebears. Had I lived in some other time, I would probably be one of the guys who thought the promulgators of these deviant notions were complete loons.
Gauss told us that playfair's axiom (statement of euclid's 5th postulate) is different than the first four. That we can assume other things and get other, perfectly consistent geometries. (Historical comment - for centuries everyone *knew* the 5th postulate was different. They thought perhaps that it was derivable from the first four.) But..but...I can draw a line and a non-colinear point on a piece of paper and it's very obvious there's EXACTLY ONE line I can draw through the point that is parallel to the line! SEE! SEE!
Cantor told us that there are some infinities larger than infinity, i.e. there are orders of infinity. There are more real numbers than there are integers. In fact, there are more irrationals (numbers like pi and square root of 2) than there are rationals (numbers like 6/1 and 3/7 and 23/444 that can be expressed as the ratio of two integers in lowest terms). How could someone even think that infinity could be such a thing as there could exist more than one of them?
Einstein told us, among other things, that distance varies with an object's speed. But distance is distance, dangit. How can a distance not be exactly what it is? If X != Y, then either the distance is X or the distance is Y. It can't be both!
Heisenberg told us that we can't measure an object's speed and momentum simultaneously - that the act of observing changes the system.
Goedel told us that even if we knew all the rules, we still wouldn't be able to know everything.
Turing (a personal hero) did the same thing for computer problems. He says there are some computer programs, the input for which cannot be proven in advance to halt.
These last three are just nonsense. Crazy talk. All of it. Madmen's musings. These are some of the prominent loons, but there were many other loons, some of lesser, some of equally loony stature who contributed to our common loony "understanding" (if you want to all it that).
k
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
I was rambling and was not clear.
My post was an attempt to categorize, on a very gross level, views about right and wrong and what some of the implications of those views were. Obviously there are uncountable variations on each of these and there is some overlap. No after the fact taxonomy will be perfect.
(Also, I just realized that the "things" thread is different than the "right" thread, but somehow we got onto Kant and whenever I think Kant I think "right vs wrong". But anyways ....)
The views are:
1. ARAW (absolute right and wrong) exists. I think maybe Kant would go in this lot.
2. ARAW does not exist, but there may be a right and wrong that exist de facto if we take social sustainability as a primary value. Jeremy Bentham?
3. ARAW does not exist. All values are artificial or man-made. Nietzsche?
Again, I know the taxonomy is seriously flawed (incomplete map as well as overlapping taxa). Regardless of the taxonomy, however, there are a number of things that don't make sense to me in the details of what certain philosophers (and those who use their writings) expound as well as their reasoning.
Example: That many religious people are in set 1 is not surprising, but I know many atheists who are in group 1. I don't claim that the atheists I know is representative of the general lot, but still, I don't understand this.
Example: C. S. Lewis would clearly go in both groups (not as stated, but in the nebulous areas described by 'minor' variation). His Abolition of Man was like a chicken bone going down sideways, but there's still some merit in it. ARAW exists. Not only that, but we can actually know it - we *do* actually know it. It strikes me as a very humanistic view in that everyone and every belief has access to this spring of moral knowledge.
Ah, boogers. I've taken to rambling again. It's difficult to speak or write clearly on a subject that suffuses me with confusion.
k
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210 |
doesn't it come down to naming? as soon as we call something something, we suddenly open up that ground on which it sits, giving us a whole new "thing" to name.
infinite infinities, indeed...
formerly known as etaoin...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
doesn't it come down to naming? as soon as we call something something, we suddenly open up that ground on which it sits, giving us a whole new "thing" to name.
infinite infinities, indeed...
Well, I reckon that's part of it. It starts with our perception that there's a "thing" to name in the first place. So we name it and then we realize that the "thing" we named is actually several things that are distinguished by some quality.
But there's also the entire mindscape that gets opened up to us. New thoughts, new ways of thinking. I've always been fond of Ecclesiastes "There is no new thing under the sun," but I think it's a bit of an exaggeration. (True writ small in that there's not a whole lot of new things, but not writ large in that there certainly are *some* new things, or so I believe.)
The more experience we have with the object and with the label the more we come to understand how well the label corresponds to the object (or how the *real* object corresponds to our connotations about the object). "Oh, wait! This doesn't work how we thought it worked! Do we come up with a new label or do we revise our definition?"
k
|
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,913
Posts229,334
Members9,182
| |
Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
|
0 members (),
729
guests, and
2
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
