Posted on 11/04/2002 7:52:21 AM PST by thinktwice
Descartes was a geometrician. He found only in mathematics and geometry the certainty that he required. Therefore, he used the methods of geometry to think about the world. Now, in geometry, one begins with a search for axioms, simple undeniable truths – for example, the axiom that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. On the foundations of such “self-evident” propositions, whole geometrical systems can be built.
Following his geometrical model, Descartes proceeds to doubt everything – de onmibus dubitandum. He will suspend belief in the knowledge he learned from childhood, all those things “which I allowed myself in youth to be persuaded without having inquired into their truth.” Doubt will be his method, a deliberate strategy for proceeding toward certainty. (Descartes is a doubter not by nature, but by necessity. What he really wants is secure understanding so he can stop doubting.)
Descartes finds that he has no trouble doubting the existence of real objects/events – our senses too easily deceive us. And we can doubt the existence of a supernatural realm of reality – figments and fantasies are too often conjured by our native imaginations. But now his geometrical model pays off: in trying to doubt everything, he discovers something that he can’t doubt. What he can’t doubt is that he is doubting. Obviously, I exist if I doubt that I exist. My doubt that I exist proves that I exist, for I have to exist to be able to doubt. Therefore I can’t doubt that I exist. Hence, there is at least one fact in the universe that is beyond doubt. “I am, I exist is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.
Descartes thus becomes the author of the most famous phrase in Western philosophy: Cognito ergo sum, or, in his original French, Je pense, donc je suis. – I think, therefore I exist. With roots in St. Augustine, this is certainly one of the catchiest ideas yet created by the human mind.
Knowing requires thought, and thought requires reason.
Newborn babies find themselves launched into a world of sensual chaos. Even with all their on-board sense mechanisms working, they know nothing as to meaning within those sensual inputs.
Focusing the eyes is a learned function, even listening is a learned function (Please, people, read to your little ones).
Focusing the mind onto sensual inputs requires ... learning, and then ... knowing.
P.S. These thoughts are based on my reading of Ayn Rand's "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" -- it is an incredibly impressive book.
Absolutely correct!
...and thanks for the nice comments.
Hank
From Ayn Rand's essay "Philosophical Detection."
"Don't be so sure -- nobody can be certain of anything." Bertrand Russell's gibberish to the contrary notwithstanding, that pronouncement includes itself; therefore, one cannot be sure that one cannot be sure of anything. the pronouncement means that no knowledge of any kind is possible to man, i.e., that man is not conscious. Furthermore, if one tried to accept that catch phrase, one would find that its second part contradicts its first: if nobody can be certain of anything, then everybody can be certain of everything he pleases -- since it cannot be refuted, and he can claim he is not certain he is certain(which is the purpose of that notion).
I've read almost all of Rand's books. She introduced me to Aristotle and from there I progressed to Aquinas' philosophy.
You might want to contrast her theory with that of Aquinas, but begin with these few paragraphs on the problem of he knower and the thing known.
She's absolutely correct about Russell. But her statement doesn't address the problematic "gap" between the "knower and thing known." I don't recall her addressing the issue in any of her writings.
So, I question the author's motive? What is the underlying objective of the "Thomistic Philosophy Page"?
Is it an attack upon reason?
You asked: As what?
Why, as existence, of course. But, before that can happen, a very long chain of learning and reasoning must go on as one develops their cognitive heirarchy at the conceptual level. First one learns to differentiate various percepts and to identify them in relationship to each other as concepts. One identifies objects, and people, and events. Having learned something about objects, one might discover that an expected object does not appear where expected. One looks where it should be, and finds it isn't. It is from such experiences one can develop the concept of existense, that is, of being, as opposed to not being. It is unlikely that "existence" as a concept could be developed where expected existence were never dissappointed.
"Existense," is a concept, a very complex concept as a matter of fact. We are conscious of what we eventually identify as "existense" long before we make that identification. It is correctly taken for granted, because, existense is axiomatic. Until the opposite concept, non-existense is conceived, there is no need for the concept existense.
Perhaps this will help. My cat is conscious, of herself, her food, of all the objects in her environment, be she does not know any of them exist, because my cat has no concepts at all, only percepts. All that my cat can be conscious of exists, but for my kitty, the questions never comes up.
I said: Again, I say, at the perceptual level, we know nothing.
You aksed: Then how do we know anything? Are you a nominalist? I honestly don't understand your point.
I have already answered this. All knowledge is in the form of concepts, and all our knowledge is about and derived from percepts. Percepts are our direct consciousness of material existense, but they are non-cognitive. It is at the conceptual level our percepts are identified, analyzed, and interpreted. That is why there is really no such thing as an optical illusion (or any other kind of perceptual illusion). The stick that looks bent in the water has not fooled our perception. The moon looking larger near the horizon is not a illusion to perception. The bent stick and the 'large' moon are true percepts, it is our interpretation of what the bent stick percept and large moon porcept mean that suffers from any illusion. Our conceptual assumptions about what the percepts mean is what is mistaken.
You said: Aquinas would identify the apprehension of existence and essence (which includes composition [the substantial unity of this particular thing] and division [this thing is not that thing]) as the "first act of the mind."
Aquinas would be wrong. Mysticism frequently clouds clear reason, as in his case. LogicWings comments about reification at post #216 correctly describe Aquinas' error.
Hank
She didn't. There is no such, "problematic 'gap' between the "knower and thing known." In fact, the, "knower," is as much a, "thing known," as any other thing. There is no, "gap," it is the invention of the mystic schoolmen.
It also confuses the real question which is how do we know anything, or epistemology. That Ayn Rand addressed very well.
Hank
Your proclamation doesn't solve the problem.
Rand contends that some chemicals in the brain ("thoughts") correspond to an external reality. The problem is this. How does she know that the chemicals in her brain correspond to an external reality? How could she possibly know?
There is, then, the obvious problem of knowing that our impressions are true representations of reality. There is no way to check them that does not itself rely on sensation and so is open to the same possibility of error. And since, on this view, one cannot tell if one's senses are delivering accurate information, one has reason to doubt that there is any referent for what one senses. One can reasonably (?) say that there is no extramental object (solipsism), or that there may or may not be an object, and we may or may not observe it accurately (relativism).
Quite the opposite. Aristotelian/Thomistic realism provides a rock-solid foundation for truth. If you've read Rand, you probably know that she claims to admire Aristotle. But she either rejected Aristotle's epistemology or ignored it. Aquinas' epistemology is based on Aristotle's epistemology.
Aristotelian/Thomistic realism solves the problem of the knower/thing known. Both Aristotle and Aquinas taught that in the act of knowing a thing, the form (see "Formal Cause" on linked page) of the thing becomes one with the mind, without the destruction of the form of the thing known.
A background in Aristotelian/Thomist terms is essential to coming to an understanding of this explanation.
Why, as existence, of course...
You said: Aquinas would identify the apprehension of existence and essence (which includes composition [the substantial unity of this particular thing] and division [this thing is not that thing]) as the "first act of the mind."
Aquinas would be wrong.
How can he be wrong if he agrees with you?
Aquinas would be wrong.
How can he be wrong if he agrees with you? Because he does not agree with me at all.
The first disagreement is minor, I would not call "apprehension" and act of the "mind" at all, because when talking about the mind I would be referring to the conceptual level of consciousness, not the perceptual, which is what a simple apprehension (or percept) is. Percepts do not include any cognitive elements such as "composition" or "unity" or "divisions." Aquinas confuses perception and conception, which is what I originally pointed out, and this confusion makes his epistemology hopeless.
Hank
Let's say that the knower is physically, you; and that the known is something you know conceptually -- in essence we are talking about your body and soul.
Add to that your identified "problem" ... the obvious problem of knowing that our impressions are true representations of reality ... and we're talking about the split Ayn Rand identifies as the "Soul-Body Dichotomy," of which she writes ...
As products of the split between man's soul and body, there are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness. Both demand the surrender of your mind, one to their revelations, the other to their reflexes. No matter how loudly they posture in the roles of irreconcilable antagonists, their moral codes are alike, and so are their aims: in matter -- the enslavement of man's body, in spirit -- the destruction of his mind.
Because they cannot correspond to anything else, by definition. Ask yourself, how do you know there was a Rand, an Aristotle, an Aquinas, a church or anything else? The problem here is you are ignoring the incalcuble learning curve you yourself went through from the moment of being born until you began thinking independently. How do YOU know there are chemicals in anybody's brain, let alone Rand's? It presupposes the very correspondence you question.
You see, you steal so many concepts here that it becomes impossible to see that these questions make absolutely no sense without the stolen concepts, which are all, unequivocably and without exception, based upon the very correspondence that you question, otherwise you wouldn't know about any such things to ask the question.
There is, then, the obvious problem of knowing that our impressions are true representations of reality. There is no way to check them that does not itself rely on sensation and so is open to the same possibility of error.
Once again, how is it you can make a distinction between 'true representations' of reality as opposed to 'error' without already having objective definitions within your own brain as to what these terms mean. In other words, why isn't your observation that we are subject to error, subject to the same error which would therefore prove that we cannot know we are subject to such error.
This whole line of reasoning negates itself.
If there were error, that was in fact, all pervasive and undetectable, then it would be invisible to us and irrelevant for all intents and purposes. And if it can be proven, objectively, that there is such error, the proof demonstrates that it isn't 'error' but faulty conceptualization which is corrected by other observation and more accurate conceptualization. There is no problem here.
Statements like this need to be proven before they can be taken seriously, not just asserted.
Actually, Rand took Aristotle's basis for epistemology and created something that far surpassed it, that answered the questions that he had raised yet was, at that time, unable to answer. She didn't reject it, she surpassed and outdated it.
Thank you.
Ayn Rand's esthetics, presented in the "Romantic Manifesto," similarly updates and -- far -- surpasses Aristotle's monumental Poetics.
Can you say, reification? "Form" is a rather high level abstract concept, not a 'thing' that can 'become one' with the mind. (I feel the tugs of Daoism returning, I am one with all, I am one with the form, I am one with the Dao - I'm so happy now!) [and who said Christianity was different from Daoism?]
This was one of Aristotle's ideas that Rand corrected and surpassed. This is akin to the problem of universals that Rand's conceptual development epistemology answered once and for all. The problem here is mistaking the way our minds work, and projecting as actual 'existence' those mental processes into the external world. There is no 'essence' of cat, no 'platonic forms' no 'causal forms' that represent a metaphysical template for the physical existence of all cats. This is simply reifying the 'concept' as a 'platonic form' or a 'causal form.'
This is the most common error that is almost universally committed in these discussions and elsewhere. Failing to make the distinction between a concept, especially an abstract, and a physically existent object - or even a universal principle. Renders the whole argument meaningless.
I assure you Ayn Rand never mad such an assertion, did not believe such a thing, and never said anything that could be interpreted to mean this.
This begins with nonsense, "There is, then, the obvious problem of knowing that our impressions are true representations of reality...." What is meant be reality? If reality is something other than what we are conscious of, how did the writer learn about it? He couldn't have. There is no gap.
Hank
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