John, Dan, List,
In holding that our presentation of space as a whole has an a priori in character, I do not believe that Kant was arguing in the first Critique that we have a biological instinct to see things in a Euclidean way. Again, I believe that Smyth's Forms of Intuition: an Historical Introduction to the Transcendental Aesthetic provides an interpretation that is sensitive to the texts and the sources from which Kant was drawing in developing these arguments. It is worth noting that from early on (e.g., see "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man"), Peirce interprets Kant's account of our experience of space in a similar way and points out in a long footnote that his own remarks about our perceptions involving spatiality and temporality should not be interpreted as contrary to Kant's views on the main points. Attributing to Kant the view that the a priori character of the presentation of space implies that we have a biologically "instinctive" theory of space that is inherently Euclidean in character runs directly at odds with the fact that Kant was engaged in close discussions with Lambert who developed a fairly extensive system of perspective geometry. In the transcendental aesthetic, Kant is asking "what are the formal conditions for mapping in our common sense and our scientific cognitions from one temporal or spatial perspective onto another?" As far as I am able to determine, Peirce's phenomenological theory is an attempt to generalize on this sort of question. For both Kant and Peirce, biological explanations of what is or is not instinctive will not answer philosophical questions about the formal relations that are necessary for making valid inferences. Having said that, I acknowledge that Peirce is keen to provide explanations in philosophy that (a) fit with our common sense and (b) can be tested in the special sciences such as biology. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________ From: Dan Everett <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, April 8, 2019 8:33:28 AM To: John F Sowa Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Recovery from blindness (was Phaneroscopy and logic John, Great stuff. There is a huge amount of information that Kant was wrong about these things. Someone today mentioned Michael Polyani’s work on personal knowledge/tacit knowledge. And, at the risk of being a bore, there is my book, Dark Matter of the Mind: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Matter-Mind-Articulated-Unconscious/dp/022607076X, in which I survey a lot of the literature, proposing my own theories (not as much interaction with Peirce as there should have been, I am sure). There is also a point that Kant missed entirely and that Peirce had little chance to observe: cross-cultural variation. Dan On Apr 8, 2019, at 11:17 AM, John F Sowa <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: This morning, I remembered some case studies of people who were blind from early childhood and later recovered their sight. Those studies cast doubt on Kant's claim that people have a complete innate theory of space and time. The brain may have innate structure that facilitates learning about space and time, but a lot of experience is necessary to fill in the details. For example, Sydney Bradford lost his sight at age 10 months, went to a school for the blind, and had a successful career as a machinist. He lived independently, could make his way through traffic, and took public transportation to work. Then at age 52, he had an operation that restored his sight. Instead of being a confident, independent blind man, he became a fearful, depressed man, who was terrified of crossing a street in traffic, even with a friend holding his arm. For a Wikipedia article about Sydney B. and others, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_from_blindness For a 44-page article with much more detail about SB, see http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/recovery_blind/recovery-from-early-blindness.pdf By the way, that site has links to other articles by Richard G. For example, see the attached "impossible" figure. But it's possible to construct an actual 3D object that looks like that. See the article http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/brainmodels/illusions-and-brain-models_all.htm Peirce wrote a lot about illusions, and he would have loved to see that object. It has implications about form, index, and percepts. John <impossible.gif> ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
