This so-called "Eastern Perspective" (whatever that is) is no more veridal that this so-called "Western Perspective." No. Drawing this distinction is just another bias philosophy departments hear all the time from undergraduate students who are not very familiar with the discipline of how philosophy is undertaken at all.

I'm not sure what you pretend to know about Descartes, but I'm sorry to say this: as a practicing philosopher who has been studying this stuff in the academic community for over 10 years, it is clear you have a very limited understanding Kant, as if you picked up some of his ideas here and there; but I can tell you never took the time to really work through them at all because you continue to try to assimilate Kantian ideas into a Berkelian framework--which just doesn't work at all. Of course, I understand it is because you haven't had any "in depth" formal training in these areas at all. And that is ok. But being exposed to an environment where everyone is reading, studying, and talking about the text together, along with various philosopher's scholarship and commentary, is what is really required to grasp what is going on.

For instance, Kant said Metaphysics was impossible altogether because it attempts to apply the Ideas of reason beyond the bounds of all possible experience which can't be done--he wasnt' trying to "put metaphysics aright," as you say,--he was discarding it completely.

Many people have this mistaken notion that anyone can conduct a kind of critical philosophical discourse without the formal training, as if philosophy wasn't as rigorous as any of the sciences. But this is such a common misunderstanding that it leads many untrained in these areas to fail to recognize the numerous blunders that are made in thier trying to grapple with metaphysically loaded and detailed concepts which have a wide range of application to very particular and fine-grained distinctions. Undertaking actual philosophical discourse is always taken with the most extreme caution, and it is not for those unwilling to apply themselves as rigorously as they would toward learning something like Linear Algebra. So all of us need to maintain our reservations about what we are willing to say, and what we should commit ourselves to actually believing.

I don't deny Berkeley had an interest in support his belief in the existence of God. But what makes you think this was his primary purpose? And even if it were, how would that change his task of answering the skepticism presented by Descartes' Evil Demon hypothesis in the context of philosophy as it was discussed at the time? You have to remember this was the dawn of Science and the Enlightenment where intellectuals were fervently interested in man's capacity to know and change the world around him...so naturally, skepticism is going to crop up as a huge problem for philosophers to contend with.

Can you please identify and list what all these alleged "strawmen" are? I spite of all this talk, I STILL don't know what exactly you are referring to (except for perhaps Johnson's demonstration).

What? Within the full context of his philosophy and what Berkeley thought he was doing, his texts SHOULD be taken literally. He's a philosopher, after all. And philosophers don't argue in metaphors.

This is exactly what I was just referring to in my last post. You can easily construe what Berkeley was saying based off of how he conceived his own strategy and by looking at his entire philosophical work as a whole. Just read the beginniing of the first Dialogue. He sets himself the task of answering skepticism with Idealism--and then composes the rest of the Dialogue to show that his denial of the existence of a world existing independent of all Minds was "not that bad after all" because it is presumably still in tune with common sense. So he was trying to show that the non-existence of matter was OK.

Berkeley's strategy is essentially ad hoc. He denies that Material Substance exists to answer skepticism about the external world, but then shows that it is perfectly rational to believe that things don't exist independently of the Mind anyway (which is not a common sense--but B. tries to convince you that it is).



This is so unbelievably frustrating. WOULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME WHAT ON EARTH THESE DEEP ESOTERIC MEANINGS OF "PERCEPTION," "IDEAS," "MATTER," "MATERIAL SUBSTANCE," ARE SUPPOSED TO BE??

I am seriously tired of asking this question!

You don't just get to invent new meanings, and then not tell anyone what the heck you are talking about. Please, for the umpteenth time, tell me what they are.

Not really. He thought the Mind was completely passive, not active at all. So he wasn't any more a "philosopher of mind" than Hume or Locke were philosophers of mind.

And he was definitely not a "philosopher of mind" to the extent that Kant was! Berkeley was a Metaphysical Idealist, not a Trenscendental Idealist.

And you must remember that he also denied the existence of abstract general ideas (which Hume so highly credited Berkeley for doing), while saying that "it is received maxim that everything that exists is a particular." This amounts to denying concepts altogether which are abstract entites. So for Berkeley, all Ideas are particular, individual sensations. And these particular sensations get "annexed to a general word" making them appear as if the particular sensation has representational capacity of other sensations, which he thinks actually does not. The mind is completely passive. All Ideas are particular, individualized sensations.

You don't just get to invent anything you want to say about Berkeley. The task is to charitably represent what exactly he said. It simply doesn't matter if he didn't actually call himself an "idealist." It wasn't even a term used by philosophers back then, just like the term "Realist about Universals" wasn't used by Plato either, but that's what everyone says his philosophy is about because Plato talked about the Forms.

This is just dischotomy for effective communication sake.
Whilst the Earth is one, it is still necessary divide it into North and South, East and West for whatever the purpose.

But from what i can recall, he did not propose to discard metaphysica completely.

This is what i noted from the Preface to the 2nd Edition.

Metaphysics has to deal only with principles, and with the limits of their employment as determined by these principles themselves, and it can therefore finish its work and bequeath it to posterity as a capital to which no addition can be made.
Since it is a fundamental science, it is under obligation to achieve this completeness. We must be able to say of it: nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.
But, it will be asked, what sort of a treasure is this that we propose to bequeath to posterity?
What is the value of the metaphysics that is alleged to be thus purified by criticism and established once for all?

On a cursory view of the present work it may seem that its results are merely negative, warning us that we must never venture with speculative reason beyond the limits of experience. Such is in fact its primary use.
But such teaching at once acquires a positive value when we recognize that the principles with which speculative reason ventures out beyond its proper limits do not in effect extend the employment of reason, but, as we find on closer scrutiny, inevitably narrow it.
These principles properly belong [not to reason but] to sensibility, and when thus employed they threaten to make the bounds of sensibility coextensive with the real, and so to supplant reason in its pure (practical) employment.
So far, therefore, as our Critique limits speculative reason, it is indeed negative; but since it thereby removes an obstacle which stands in the way of the employment of practical reason, nay threatens to destroy it, it has in reality a positive and very important use.
At least this is so, immediately we are convinced that there is an absolutely necessary practical employment of pure reason -- the moral -- in which it inevitably goes beyond the limits of sensibility. [27]

If Kant wanted to discard metaphysics, why is he talking about bequeathing it to posterity.
Previously, i was trying to find in the CoPR where Kant condemned metaphysics outrigh but cannot find one.
Do you have any reference on that?
From what i understand, one can deal with metaphysics but one but understand its limits.

The only problem when one do not has formal philosophical training is only the inability to conform to the rules as establish by formal philosophy.
While formal training in philosophy does help, sometimes it's rigid rules and 'straightjacket' does more harm than good in enabling one to understand real philosophy and what philosophy really is.

As a matter of interest, give me the toughest principle part in the CoPR
that is difficult to understand.
I will try to answer that.
As i said, i don't have Kant's idea in my finger tips, but your question would help to expedite my project to do so.

So there is not a REAL difference then?Yes, no REAL difference.

Quote:

NO!! READ IT AGAIN. The negative value of metaphysics is the obvious truism that it has failed because it pretends to go beyond the bounds of all possible experience. Therefore, our attempt to apply metaphysical principles beyone experience doomed to fail--that's the warning Kant speaks of. The positve value of metaphysics is that its failure has uncovered what all those metaphysical principles are which make experience possible that lie within the understanding and inform the backdrop of all possible experience. This is why Kant calls his Deduction of the Categories "The Metaphysical Deduction." He is uncovering the following principles:

All things have quantity.
All things have a degree.
All things are either substances, inter into causal relations, and/or into relations of community and reciprocity.
All truths are either necessary, possible, or contingent.

It is obvious Kant is speaking rhetorically here. "nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum" means

Nothing has been done if something remains to be done,

This is exactly the problem--turn the statement around:

If something remains to be done, then nothing has been done.

Kant tells you the reason why metaphysics, in princple, fails all over his Critique: metaphysics is the attempt to talk and say something assertable about objects "beyond all possible experience." Kant doesn't say "beyond this or that particular experience," he says "beyond all possible experience." So to assert something without first knowing it is possible to be perceived within experience, is to make the mistake that you can have knowledge about something of which you actually cannot. This is why he says that actually engaging in the practice of metaphysics is a "dialectical illusion"--it is not going to reveal any results about actual things for which you could know.

And he shows why metaphysical arguments are illusions in the Dialectic. He takes classic "proofs" for existence of God, the Soul, and the Origin of the Universe, and shows how for each metaphysical argument, the arguments results in a paradox--or a contradiction that cannot ever hoped to be resolved.

Therefore, Metaphysics is impossible. Here,

"For if no intuition could be given corresponding to the concept, the concept would still be a thought, so far as its form is concerned, but would be without any object, and no knowledge of anything would be possible by means of it. So far as I could know, there would be nothing, and could be nothing, to which my thought could be applied. B147"

He says this right in the passage that metaphysics must never venture beyond experience here,

"negative, warning us that we must never venture with speculative reason beyond the limits of experience."

The positive value Kant speaks of are the metaphysical principles that are discoverable within the Mind:

But such teaching at once acquires a positive value when we recognize that the principles with which speculative reason ventures out beyond its proper limits do not in effect extend the employment of reason, but, as we find on closer scrutiny, inevitably narrow it.

As is well-known, Kant reserved actual "metaphysics," if you want to call it that, for the realm of the Moral, only.--the study of which is guided by practical principles--not the metaphysical principles listed in the Critique concerning objects in experience.

I fully understood his views on the restricting of metaphysics beyond objects in experience.
But he did not condemn or discard metaphysic totally.
From what i read, Kant targetted to 'kill off' the elitist and dogmatic metaphysical claims of the "Schools".

Quote:

You have no reason to think this at all. How would you know anyway? You don't have any formal education in it, so you're going to be qualified to see these kinds of empty accusations. Philosophy has always been guided by reason and logic. So why would logic suddenly not be applicable? And where do you draw the line, Mr.?
I've noticed time and again that only the completely ignorant of how philosophy is actually undertaken says this. You seem to think philosophy just amounts to doing and saying anything you want, as if you were immune from logical criticism. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

I am not a philosopher, but i do like to learn and practice philosophy.

Kant stated the following in his 'Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics'

"All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion,
and only in experience is there truth."


Accordingly your reason and logic is also nothing but sheer illusion, albeit of a lesser degree from pure reason.

(Below is just rhetorical, just to give an idea of how i view philosophy,
and i am lazy to explain all the details you would demand.
You can ignore at your discretion.)
Philosophy is about knowledge, wisdom and truth.
Meanwhile i rely my philosophy, based primary on experience and logic & reason
as secondary supporting tools.
In addition to reinforce my understanding of philosophy, i make the attempt
the find out the necessary neural correlates (roughly) that is necessary for good proper philosophy.
I made an attempt to develop the efficiency and competency of
those neurons.
That is why i am confident of stating what i know of philosophy.

Why are you harping on individual analytic philosophers like Russel and Stove as if they were representative of everyone else in the discipline, or as if there were something terribly wrong with the discipline itself? .

Which spiritual experience did you have mind? Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims. There are literally thousands of different kinds of "spiritual experience," not to mention thousands of different religions and cultures.

Analytic philosophical methodology is under no particular demand to represent any of the thousands of religious views out there any more than mathematics is.

What do you think Philosophy of Religion does?

Alvin Plantinga, Peter Geach, Richard Swinburne, Wes Morriston, William Craig, etc, etc,

YOU just seem to want a philosopher to represent YOUR world view and dogma. Then either go dig one up, or do it yourself. There are tons of philosophers out there.

Extrain;145084 wrote:

So there is not a REAL difference then?Yes, no REAL difference.


I fully understood his views on the restricting of metaphysics beyond objects in experience.
But he did not condemn or discard metaphysic totally.
From what i read, Kant targetted to 'kill off' the elitist and dogmatic metaphysical claims of the "Schools".



.

As I understand Kant's intentions, he attacked (with the great help of Hume) what can be called, "deductive metaphysics", the great example of which was Spinoza's Ethics. Deductive metaphysics tells us to begin with necessary, a priori principles, and derive substantive conclusions from them, i.e. truths about the world (in the widest sense that includes morality and God). Like Hume (and following Hume) Kant attacked this conception of metaphysics, and proposed a substitution of his own "critical philosophy". That was why the central question of the First Critique was "How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?" so important, because he held that only the answer to this question could save the enterprise of metaphysics and philosophy. That is why he writes that the answer to the question is, "a matter of life or death" for philosophy. Otherwise, there would be no replacement for the discredited deductive metaphysics.

As I understand Kant's intentions, he attacked (with the great help of Hume) what can be called, "deductive metaphysics", the great example of which was Spinoza's Ethics. Deductive metaphysics tells us to begin with necessary, a priori principles, and derive substantive conclusions from them, i.e. truths about the world (in the widest sense that includes morality and God). Like Hume (and following Hume) Kant attacked this conception of metaphysics, and proposed a substitution of his own "critical philosophy".

That was why the central question of the First Critique was "How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?" so important, because he held that only the answer to this question could save the enterprise of metaphysics and philosophy.

That is why he writes that the answer to the question is, "a matter of life or death" for philosophy. Otherwise, there would be no replacement for the discredited deductive metaphysics.

NO. His own "critical philosphy" is the Tanscendental Philosophy--not metaphysics. Kant's own "Metaphysical Deduction" of the Categories is a Transcendental enterprise that takes as it's point of departure the failure of metaphysics altogether, from which Kant shows the reader all the necessary synthetic Metaphysical a priori Principles of the Understanding--all of which make sense-experience cognitively possible--meaning truth-valuable. But these metaphysical principles applied beyond the bounds of experience is what makes the practice of metaphysics a "Dialectical Illusion." You can try using these metaphysical principles like this, but you're not going to succeed in telling us anything about the world--this is what Kant calls the "Negative" value of metaphysics--which gives us the "warning" that this cannot succeed in doing anything at all. So the actual practice of Metaphysics is the "BAD BOY'S" misuse of the Metaphysical Categories by Applying Speculative Reason of the Metaphysical Categories beyond the bounds of all possible experience.

As Kant explicitly says, the "positive value" of metaphysics just is this principled failure, because it has exposed and left behind the the synthetic a priori principles that makes all experience possilbe. These synthetic a priori principles certainly makes us able to "reason metaphysically," but these synthetic a priori principles applied beyond the bounds of all possible experience results in the Dialectical Illusion. So the entire subect matter in Kant's Transcendental philosophy is thought, not the world.



No, he didn't say this. He wanted to know how the application of synthetic a priori principles are possilbe within experience, not beyond experience. He wasn't trying to "save metaphysics." He was trying to save Science from Hume's devastating skepticism, since Metaphysics is dead because science has replaced it. (You could even definitely say that Kant paved the way for the later logical positivism in philosophy which denies that metaphysics is possilbe too.)



The problem isn't deduction, reason, or the understanding. The problem is the application of all these things beyond the bounds of experience.

It seems to me that Kant was responding to Hume's attack on deductive metaphysics which awoke him "from his dogmatic slumber".

And, that was what philosophy was in the 18th century. His response was to argue that there was a different kind of metaphysics, namely critical metaphysics (or "transcendental philosophy" if you like.

That philosophy was to argue that there are synthetic a priori judgments, and, as important, how it is evenpossible for there to be such judgments in the light of Hume's fork between the relations of ideas, and matters of fact (the analytic and the synthetic) since if that dichotomy were allowed to stand, there could be no metaphysics, and no philosophy.

How it is possible for there to be synthetic a priori propositions is of course Kant's Copernican Revolution in philosophy.

I am finding these exposition of Kant's principles very interesting. I have some questions which you might be able to throw some light on.

I recall reading that a major part of Kant's overall interest was in establishing and safeguarding the ground for 'God, freedom and immortality' in the face of the discoveries of the scientific revolution. If his Critique more or less demolishes the prior religious philosophical tradition of metaphysics, how does he understand understand the relationship between 'reason and revelation' in its absence? Any readings on that topic would be appreciated.

At the time I did philosophy at Sydney, the 'Traditional' department was run by a materialist (Armstrong) and the alternative department by Marxism and feminism. Of course that influenced my view of philosophy - why shouldn't it?

It is not a matter of this or that religious view. What interested me, and continues to interest me, is the cross-cultural and trans-historical phenomenon of spiritual enlightenment.

'Religious views' are sometimes formed by the followers of those who realize this state, but the state itself is not actually a religious phenomenon in the sense that it is usually understood

This is why it forms a kind of common core across all of the cultures, which is a part of the perennial philosophy. Calling it 'religion' is dangerously misleading because all of it is extra-ecclesia.

Not in the least. Some philosophers of religion are interested in the 'idea of enlightenment' and some are not. John Hick is a favourite, and I often quote him on the forum. I have respect for neo-Thomism as I mentioned previously. William Lane Craig seems extremely clever indeed and I have his 'believable faith' on my wishlist. There are numerous writers and thinkers in these areas that I am familiar with.

However I still maintain that analytical philosophers are not generally aware of the idea of enlightenment, and tend to often think it is likely a delusion and a fantasy. (I have conversed with a prolific analytic philosopher on the Forum about it, and that is exactly what he thinks - left me in no doubt whatever.)

What is the point of all this? I maintain, at the origin of the Idealist tradition in Western philosophy, there was an understanding of this kind, which has subsequently been forgotten, suppressed, abandoned, relegated to religious studies, or whatever.

And without this element within philosophy, it is not possible to really understand what the ancients, and even medievals, thought of as 'the higher knowledge'.

It is not there in Anglo-American analytical philosophy in its secular (predominant) form, but it is somewhat more in the European traditions. Nagel opens Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament with this very observation.

And this insight is preserved in (for example) comparative religion departments, some philosophy of religion (as you suggest), Buddhist and Christian monasticism, and probably, very probably, in Classics departments everywhere. It is something very akin to a religious viewpoint, but it is definitely not like anything in current Western religious practice. (In fact, it is probably nearer to a Christian heresy a lot of the time.)

The Buddhist attitude to metaphysics is similarly skeptical. There are '10 unanswered questions' in Buddhism, dealing with many of the topics which are traditionally associated with metaphysics - whether the world has a beginning, or not; whether the soul is identical with the body, or different; whether after death the Buddha continues to exist, or not; and so on. Buddhism does deal with 'matters of ultimate concern' but maintains a focus on the development of the mental discipline to 'see directly' into such questions, instead of engaging in metaphysical speculation (which is a definite no-no in Buddhism).Creation of the world, etc. See T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, for a critical comparison of Buddhist philosophy with Kant, Hegel and related themes in Western philosophy.

(It is also interesting to note that Thomas McEvilly believes that the skeptic Pyrrho traveled to India from where his type of skepticism was derived from dialogs with the Buddhists philosophers. See The Shape of Ancient Thought.)

As regards 'who is truth' - I am, and I feel I have to be, a pluralist.

I can't accept that there has been only one divine revelation in the history of the world. This has been best described, I think, by John Hick in 'God and the Universe of Faiths'. He is thoroughly Christian, but also pluralist. My whole quest was shaped by having had spiritual experiences which I needed to find an explanation for. There was something I experienced, much earlier in life, which I was too real to be denied. Where did that come from?

Hence the study of various spiritual traditions and as you say, an approach similar to that of James, Jung, Hillman, and so on. Like tracking a quarry. After some time, I began to develop a genuine affinity with the Buddhist way. The Buddhist attitude is not like the Christian one, in that it is concerned with practical ethics, insight into the nature of mind, and liberation from the hindrances and inner conflicts through meditation.

It is not about religion at all in the sense most often understood in the Western world. And it is not necessarily a question of conversion at all, in the way that changing from Christianity to Islam would be.

Besides, I am still a 'cultural Christian', and still retain a core of Christian understanding, and I am now a lot more clear on what is meant by 'a personal relationship'. As regards 'the common core of religious belief' - it is probably true to say that there will never be such a thing. But there is a common core of human experience - all beings seek happiness, all beings fear suffering. The Dharma operates at that level. It is not ideological in that respect. It is not a matter of making everyone Buddhist!

I would find it impossible to actually be Catholic, but I do respect the faith. I went to the Catholic funeral of a friend of the family, in January. He was a great man and a great Christian. I am able to respect his faith, and was greatly moved by the spiritual depth of the service I attended, without feeling the need to either argue against it or to agree with it. I understand a lot of the symbolism now, and have a lot of appreciation of it, without feeling for or against it. And I feel that having come to this point is a liberation, and has taken some doing.

On the other hand, I have to say that in the world situation we are in, the idea that there is The One True Faith and that all the others are the way to perdition, I find much more problematic than pluralism.

but I am also mindful of the history of conflict and intolerance that is behind it. It is quite probable that my philosophic forbears were put to the torch by the Catholic Church (and I am not just speaking hyperbole here.)

And what do you make of Buddhist and Hindu hells?

That image of 'buddha with a fat belly' incidentally, has nothing to do with buddism, it is Ho, the Chinese God of Good Fortune.

When you realise the power of compassion, it has no particular source, it is after all 'before all things', religions included. But I would never try and talk you or anyone out of that relationship.

Well, again, glad you see it like that. I have read something of Maritain, Gilson, a lot of Thomas Merton, and am a long-term student of Eckhardt (who of course is often called crypto-Buddhist.) There is actually a whole sub-culture of Zen Catholicism - Reuben F Habito, Ama Samy (a Jesuit Zen master) and others. I think if I were Christian I would be a lot closer to Catholicism than Protestantism - I have an abiding distrust of Luther and Calvin.

I don't actually have a large social circle here in Sydney and aside from the family I mentioned I don't have, I think, any Catholic friends (most of my friends are boringly secular)...

Hope never to find out. Although if I do, it will be solely my responsilbilty.

Sure. But look at how healthy and serene the Buddha is....he always has a cute plump little face...and his eyes are typically shut. It was this general image I was driving it that is the direct outcome of the philosophy behind with which I was saying I can't identify with.