> Marvin:
> >Or one can turn the question around and ask: if humans ceased to
> exist,
> would bees cease to pollinate flowers? Would fire ants no >longer build
> colonies in what used to be my lawn? Would elephants >no long roam in
> Africa?
Dan:
> The answer would be yes, of course. All of these are phenomenon.
> Reality would continue to unfold, but the universe: the organization of
> impressions of reality made by human minds, would cease to exist.
Um, isn't there a certain metaphysical arrogance is defining the universe
as "the organization of impressions of reality made by *human* minds?" I
have no problem with a statement such as, "the human viewpoint will vanish
when humans do" (perhaps barring the presence of extraterrestrial
anthropologists)...but that ain't the same thing.
So here's another question--probably still yet to be definitively
answered--which is: can the limitations of the human viewpoint be
explained in purely phenomenal terms, i.e. by science? It would be
arrogant to assume that this is the case, but I can imagine that
eventually we will understand well enough the functions of the brain and
our perceptory organs to say, "A creature built this way can only see a
universe governed by these physical laws in this manner." It wouldn't
prove non-transcendance, but it would be one more bit of evidence
indicating that a concept of transcendent reality is just
plain unnecessary.
(I think Darryl has made this argument in the halcyon past....)
> marvin wrote:
> >Would it take another fully intelligent and conscious species, or would
> animals >the level of my neighbor's cat suffice? Granting that a cat
> wouldn't see >exactly what I see when I look at a tree, would the tree still
> exist?
Dan:
> My guess is no, but my real answer is "we just don't know." A similar
> question is whether cats have reflective self awarenesses. We just don't
> know. We do know that we do not need to posit them having this awareness to
> explain their behavior.
The questions are similar but not necessarily interdependent. On a purely
empirical basis, I can say that a cat has in common with me the ability to
climb a tree and to negotiate the halls and corridors of a building. This
implies that the cat's perceptual scheme has something in common with
mine--perhaps the synthetic a priori category of space, even if the cat
has no word for "space." Otherwise it would forever bump into walls.
Moreover a cat likes to stalk its prey, which means it can track movement,
which suggests that it enjoys a perceptual category corresponding to time,
even if it has no word for time. And although cats are pretty tough to
train, we might upgrade our example to a nobler animal <g>, the dog, and
deduce that it has a perceptual category corresponding to cause and
effect.
One could argue that I have no knowledge of the cat's real behavior, only
of its phenomenal behavior, but then one really does begin to lapse into
solipsism. Do I have knowledge of my own real behavior or only of my own
phenomenal behavior, including merely phenomenal knowledge of my inner
states?
Or one could argue that cats and dogs are "mechanistic," lacking any
reflective self-awareness, but that would be irrelevant, since as
mechanisms they must still manage the same reality/universe that human
beings inhabit. (If we can explain percpetual structures in terms of
evolution, is it necessary to posit them as conceptual categories as
well?)
So one could say: hey, if cats and dogs and humans all have the ability
to navigate the same observed reality, despite their vastly different
cognitive abilities, then maybe it's because they all evolved the same
basic cognitive structures in response to something that exists quite
independently of any one of them. That something must be both real and it
must correspond very closely with the phenomenal world, otherwise their
behaviors wouldn't mirror our own so precisely.
> Well, there are some interesting clues in work that has been done over the
> past 50 years. For example, renormalization: do electrons really have
> infinite charge? Or, virtual partons...do they really exist? Or, what
> happens when we have two formulations of a theory with vastly different
> ontological connotations for a realistic perspective; how do we decide which
> is right?
Or should we decide that the ontological connotations stem from obsolete
assumptions of language--worlds like "exist" and "reality" have embedded
in them some commonplace and macrorealistic, if you will, assumptions that
"matter" is made of "stuff" that's "solid" and so on. Transcendentalism
always seems to me to be saying, "Well, it turns out that stuff isn't as
'real' as we thought; therefore there must be some OTHER, that is behind
stuff, and it truly exists and is real in a way that gratifies the
certainties that we are accustomed to investing in words like 'reality'
and 'to exist.'"
In other words, language is inaccurate, but instead of blaming language
transcendentalism "blames" the universe.
> You mean, please describe that which is beyond words and beyond our
> experiences in 500 words or less? I have no idea and can have no idea what
> that's like. Nomenon is simply a word for that which is as it is. One
> should assume that words fail to describe it.
Well, yes! :-))
And this brings us back to the problem of mixing science and metaphysics,
which is how can a theory like QM, which exists (as a theory) as a system
of math and words, imply or suggest something that no words and no math
can even begin to touch?
One can respond that the transcendental is implied by the absence of a
realistic description of QM phenomena, but that only works if one assumes
that there are only two possible metaphysics, one of which *must* be true,
and if one assumes that realism and transcendentalism (defined in specific
ways) are those binary options.
As far as I know, transcendentalism must assume some kind of unknowable
thing-it-itself; I'm not convinced that all possible realisms must assume
things that violate QM or other branches of established science.
>
> > Referring specifically to Kant's noumenon, how can there be a
> >thing-in-itself when all criteria for defining a thing are absent?
>
> Why must a thing be defined by us to exist? He is speaking of that which
> exists apart from our mind.
Ok, but if I can say that X exists without ever saying what exactly X is,
then I can claim existence for anything I want, really, so long as I
describe is as being beyond human knowledge. God, for instance.
>
> If we finally got to the point where we could no longer peer into the next
> layer of mechanisms, then there would not be a metaphysical problem. We
> just would state our basic axioms and be happy with our mechanistic
> worldview. But, observations were not consistent with that worldview.
At the risk of going in circles, why does QM not fit the description of
"can longer peer into the next layer of mechanisms?" Granted, we don't
yet have a Grand Unified Theory (which wouldn't necessarily solve any
metaphysical problems) but why can't it be said that we now have a new
concept of what a mechanism can be, rather than assume that there are
only two possiblities, transcendentalism and the old mechanicalism ?
> >
> > Suppose you reached a point at which you had tiny marble-like
> > irreducible particles with mass and volume and maybe charge, and you'd be
> > faced with the contradition of a solid but indivisible item. We'd wonder
> > what's inside one of the little beasties and be endlessly frustrated by
> > the demonstrated impossibility of knowledge beyond this seemingly
> > arbitrary point.
> >
>
> I'm not sure we'd be endlessly frustrated.
I don't see why not, in the metaphysical sense. Of course, the math would
be simpler without QM, thus inviting less speculation, but the debate
between Kant's Transcendental Idealism (which doesn't depend upon QM) and
the realists would still go on.
>
> > The natural metaphysical steps would be either to say 1) that's all she
> >wrote, folks, or 2) to hypothesize an idealistic explanation for the
> >mystery. It would be really hard to prove either position.
>
> Or, just say that's as far as we can see, for now.
Like Copenhagen?
> >And why Kant's noumenon, anyway?
>
> That which we cannot define, and exists apart from our observations.
Which, again, could describe God, or the High and Almighty Grubensplat.
> God, if he exists, would be part of the nomenon. The nomenon is sort of a
> general catch all for everything that exists without us having direct access
> to it. Our own minds have existence, but they are not part of the nomenon.
> I don't think Kant got into the question of the minds of other people.
If you have God, though, do you really need a noumenon? Why not suppose
that QM supports a somewhat modified view of Berkley instead of a somewhat
modified view of Kant?
> Actually, the last statement is not true at all. One of the most radical
> parts of the Critique of Pure Reason is the proposition that God cannot be
> arrived at via pure reason. Kant tore apart, rather successfully, the old
> proofs of God's existence.
Sorry, my bad. I had forgotten about the way he ripped up the ontological
proof.
Marvin Long
Austin, Texas
