990116 1515 - conforming of objects and knowledge

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Von: Philip McPherson Rudisill <pmr@mindspring.com>
An: Multiple recipients of list <kant-l@bucknell.edu>
Betreff: conforming of objects and knowledge
Datum: Samstag, 16. Januar 1999 15:15

This exchange may be provocative with regard to the conformity question
that is swirling about just now.

Philip wrote (with regard to HUme's Enquiry, section 118):

>>I am presently resting my case with regard to Hume on this point. He doubts
>>any certainty, except the certainty that his own movements do not affect
>>the objects. And that is purely synthetic and unwarranted and unsupportable
>>(in his system), and that is one of the two reasons that Hume is simply
>>wrong.
>
>
Philip's friend replied:

>I don't think so. I don't see how a metaphysics fixed this
>"problem". Why is it a problem. I really don't understand this.
>Why do you "need" more certainty than "it works".
>
>
>
Philip now comments:

Two things quickly. I agree that metaphysics cannot do almost nothing. Kant
was thoroughly one with Hume in his desire to rid the university of
metaphysics. That was the primary reason for the Critique of Pure Reason.
Only Kant did not want to toss out science as Hume was doing in order to
win the case against Metaphysics.

Secondly, the notion "it works" is very suggestive. It will work to think
of yourself in a world in which things are themselves exactly as they
appear to be, e.g., that objects around you move as you do, like telephone
poles that approach you as you approach them. Very simple hypothesis:
things are as they appear. The fact that you can function and get around
very well in a world like that (where doors are small at a distance, but
grow large enough for transition through upon approach) is proven by the
maneuvering skills of animals and also pilots in training cockpits

Humans (but perhaps not the animals) reject that hypothesis and conclude
that things are _not_ as they appear, but that they appear the way they do
due to our subjective make up, e.g., two eyes which present two pictures of
things which are merged in the brain. It is by means of the latter
hypothesis that we can make sense out of the spectral split-finger which
haunts our noses occasionally; although it would work more simply to say
that the finger splits and that there is only a contingent correlation
between touch and sight.

I have been looking around for some descriptive definition of humans, and I
think it is something like this: humans are beings who 1. figure things out
and 2. who resist being forced.*

[* and I almost want to add: 3. who delight in pattern.]

With regard to the current "conformity" question of this Kant forum, it
would seem indeed that the objects must conform to our way of cognizing
(which is a figuring out via experiments driven by the categories and the
ways of time determination); for otherwise we are stuck with things on
their own, like fingers which split in two without the least feeling
associated with that splitting.*

[* At least I have no remembrance of any feeling associated with the
splitting of the finger, although sometimes there is a odor. ;-) ]

Btw: it is really odd, when you think about it, that we do not speak in
this wise: our two left index fingers (let us say) merge into one as they
get further from the nose.

Philip McPherson Rudisill

The Bishop of Assisi: "But Francis, you have to own _something_!"
Francis: "If we owned anything, my lord Bishop, we would have to own a
sword to defend it!"
Analysis: the first property is always a weapon (for property entails: a
_right_ to keep the hands of others away from what it is that is
possessed).

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