Kierkegaard on Human Understanding

"It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox. The paradox is not a concession but a category, an ontological definition which express the relation between an existing cognitive spirit and eternal truth"

Working in a climate of Danish Hegelian philosophy which claims everything could theoretically become knowable, Kierkegaard cherished the age-old notion that philosophy begins with wonder, not doubt. In his Journals in 1847, Kierkegaard writes:



For Kierkegaard, there are two types of questions, questions that have definite answers and which can be understood, and questions that are inherently unanswerable. Questions of the former type include questions like: what is the product of 4x82, when was Rio de Janerio founded, what is the distance from Medicine Hat, Alberta to Rochester, New York. Questions of the latter type include, is there a first cause, what is the Good, what lies beyond the universe.

Questions of the former are important, but once those questions are answered, that's it; the question is rendered inert for the asker. Whereas questions of the latter continually inspire philosophy as wonder, and expresses human awe and creativity (an existing cognitive spirit) with the grand mystery of existence (eternal truth). Even though we may never find a definite answer for any of these questions, Kierkegaard hopes that these questions will never be deemed meaningless and abandoned by philosophy.

As long as there is someone willing to embrace the paradox, philosophy lives.

Imagine some ancient Greek wondering if there was a way to create a system which transmits data at near real-time around the world. 2500 years later, we've answered it: Internet Protocol. Once questions are definitively answered, then that's the end of the road for that question in philosophy, it's become a science. Questions that are yet to be answered will always inspire. (i.e., is there a better way than the Internet we have now?)

Most of what nowadays flourishes best of all under the name of scientific research is not science at all but curiosity. To say simply and profoundly that we cannot see with the naked eye how consciousness comes into existence is perfectly in order. But to put your eye to a microscope and look and look and look and still not see it, that is comedy.

Kierkegaard assumes that even if everything could be answered, the question why does anything exist in the first place would be unanswerable, which takes place outside of human observation. But there are many things that cannot be observed within the limitations of our own perceptions.

That's our duty to find out what those things we cannot understand are. The sparrow may never know about economics and quantum theory; the human being may be limited in some way as well; we're not perfect after all. The old classics remain like, what's the meaning of life, how should I live, or what was before the Big Bang, if the theory is correct. Kierkegaard thought Kant was on to something when he discussed the noumena-phenomena distinction and Socrates with his discussion on immortality.

As I said, our human perceptions are finite, temporal, and limited to observational phenomena, and we cannot possibly grasp questions which posit things eternal, timeless, or outside human observation. Telescopes and microscopes enhance our observational range, but still have to pass through human perceptions which are still finitely limited.

What are those things and ideas outside human understanding, indeed. If the sparrow have limits on understanding, is it not reasonable to suppose we have limits of our own? We do indeed have to figure out what things are worth questioning, and if those questions, be they observational, conceptual, etc, will be able to be definitively answered by human understanding, and which will remain open-ended, inspiring new and different ways of answering it. Dare I say, sometimes questions are more important than the answers.

Science gives us only mental-models. Not Reality. What the stars are "made of" changes with every advance of quantum physics. The truth is the whole, and we cannot handle the whole. Instead we have our useful little mental models that we forget are merely mental-models. What the stars are made of is our human descriptions of them.

Philosophy should not be the slave-girl of science. Science is its grown up child and can take care of itself now. Positivism is a hideously shallow flight from the difficult and more dignified mission of philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom. And wisdom, for me, transcends the pragmatic. Philosophy is art, myth, poetry, the invention of concept, the cutting edge of man's abstract imagination....

Yes, they are supposed to be models of reality. And they are quite useful. But they are only models, not Reality Prime.

Reality Prime is a quasi-religious myth. It's the scientistic replacement of God. It's the non-rational myth of the scientist as intellectual hero. I think it also powers the hero-myth of the logician.

Self-esteem based on proximity to the Truth or Reality in contrast to all the poets and sophists. Inherited from Plato.

You say "only reality is reality," but "reality" is itself a mental-model. In a very significant way, the map is the territory. Which is something children to do not know, because they do not know that what adults call reality is also just a map.

Yes, they are supposed to be models of reality. And they are quite useful. But they are only models, not Reality Prime.

Reality Prime? What is Reality Prime, and who has access to that? Optimus Prime?