Bo > This uncanny conclusions was what Kant called "reinen Verunft" (pure > reason) and set out to criticize in his grand work "Kritik Der Reinen > Vernunft". His conclusions was that much of reality (space, time and > causality, is subjective but there is a residual "Thing in itself" (out > there) and this has been the "last word", not until Pirsig has Western > philosophy moved forward after Kant. [Pirsig ZaMM] Kant is trying to save scientific empiricism from the consequences of its own self-devouring logic. He starts out at first along the path that Hume has set before him. "That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt," he says, but he soon departs from the path by denying that all components of knowledge come from the senses at the moment the sense data are received. "But though all knowledge begins with experience it doesn¹t follow that it arises out of experience."
"Kant says there are aspects of reality which are not supplied immediately by the senses. These he calls a priori. An example of a priori knowledge is "time." You don¹t see time. Neither do you hear it, smell it, taste it or touch it. It isn¹t present in the sense data as they are received. Time is what Kant calls an "intuition," which the mind must supply as it receives the sense data. [Dave] Did Kant reject empiricism? No, after accepting the original premise, he goes on attacked the conclusions the British Empiricists drew from it. And ended up with "a priori knowledge" and "thing in itself" proposal which science and philosophy in the ensuing years has clarified to the point where both phrases are quaint artifacts of good, yet 200 year old thought. To those who trace their positions back to Kant's " empiricism" now means something different than before. That is "philosophical evolution" if you will. I could go on and show that further evolution has move "empiricism" on and science has by and large accounted for "a priori", but you know all this Bo. I'd rather investigate some other issues with the MoQ that may bear on this thread that have come to me based on our recent "discussions" (I stretch the meaning of that I know) and my recent investigations of the "Science Wars" One is the whole issues of levels and the hierarchies shown in the ZaMM and SODV diagrams; Are these graphic models helpful or deceiving? Second are RMP descriptions of the codes associated with the levels and their relationships correct? Do they jive with current science? Third is what happened to Romantic Quality and pre-intellectual awareness in the transition between the ZaMM and Lila? But first maybe a brief synopsis of my limited understanding of the "Science Wars" First there was/is "hard science"(physics, biology etc) and "soft science"(anthropology, sociology etc) the former looking down on latter as being a form of subjectivism. Not real science. Second, starting almost with the Greeks there was an ever increasing specialization and professionalization of science such that by the start of the 20th century there were so many specialized branches each with its own jargon, language, that communication and understanding breaks down. No one can understand it all let alone try to figure out the philosophical consequences. Enter Thomas Kuhn, a Harvard trained Ph'd physicist and a scientific fence jumper who went to the dark side devoting most of his career to the history and philosophy of science. That's not science. Or was it? What he proposed was, if science is so good at what it does why not use science to study science itself? The "Softies" jumped with joy. Between 1962 when he published his first book on the subject and the early 90's every research university or institute worth its salt rushed to establish the biggest and best history of science department they could afford. Initially these "wars" were not primarily between research scientists doing theory and experiments. They just ducked and covered. The wars were principally between all these newly created or beefed-up history of science departments. This does not mean that "real" science did not get a few sharp sticks in the eye. Or that science education is not morphing to absorb the blows. [Wikapedia snip] Kuhn has made several important contributions to our understanding of the progress of knowledge: Science undergoes periodic "paradigm shifts" instead of progressing in a linear and continuous way. These paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding that scientists would never have considered valid before. Scientists can never divorce their subjective perspective from their work; thus, our comprehension of science can never rely on full "objectivity" - we must account for subjective perspectives as well. Of course after a while "real" scientists fought back. But the cat had already pissed in the sandbox. The "softies" quickly point out what commonsense already knew, that science is created by social institutions of all shapes and forms all of which have underlying values which have direct affects on what and how science is done. And that "real" science made a whole bunch of claims about how science was done, or ought to be done, that was just not what they doing day to day. Who'd a thunk it! Dave > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
