Transcendental This, Transcendantal That

Ok, I know that I have to be wrong about this, but for the life of me I can't seem to sort through my own mess. Maybe someone can help me!

We touched on this topic in class a bit. I am having trouble figuring out the logical necessity for the "I", or what seems to be something of a transcendental ego, coming before the transcendental aesthetic. My confusion is this:
1. The transcendental aesthetic is the condition for the possibility of experience.
2. The transcendental ego is the condition for the possibility of experiencing the transcendental aesthetic.
3. We have an intuition of the transcendental ego as a focal point for all experience. (this an intuition through time and space)
4. isnt the intuition of our transcendental ego the condition for having a focal point?
5. if so, isnt the transcendental aesthetic the condition for the possibility of the intuition of the transcendental ego?

So if we are only aware of our centrality (focal point) through time and space, doesn't that give logical priority to the aesthetic as before the ego? musn't there be a transcendental aesthetic in order for our focal point to exist? and also musn't there also be an ego for our intuition of space and time to exist?

Ok, now i am repeating myself. The logical priority of one of these coming before the other is unclear to me. It seems like they both must necissarily exist prior to the existance, or at least the experience of the other; or perhaps the aesthetic must exist for the ego to exist, but the ego must only exist for us to have access to the aesthetic. By that I'm simply trying to avoid "experience the aescthetic" because I don't want to imply they are things in themselves...even though the aesthetic must exist in order for the ego to exist...

Why Modern Philosophy?

The focus of this blog is consider possible reasons why modern philosophy came about and where philosophers are to go from this point.

Starting with Bacon, the modern project began to develop. Post-renaissance natural science and philosophy (or natural philosophy, if you're Bacon) shifted to obtaining knowledge in a new way, i.e. with Descartes' skeptical idealism over Aristotle's objective realism (to speak broadly). Descartes' skepticism began a philosophical route that was never shaken, for even though Kant successfully overcame the Humean problem, he recognized that Descartes' fundamental doubt holds when experience is considered as a direct channel to reality. Soon, philosophy resulted in Nietzsche, and eventually resulted in Rorty. I am not one to claim that these two examples are necessary or inevitable--I am merely pointing out they did come along, and in all likelihood would not have if they lived during Aristotle's time. They were timely.

Was modern philosophy, then, just so timely? Did it come about merely because of historical influences? Or were the modern philosophers on to some aspect of Truth on which the ancients did not pick up? It seems as if we are left with few choices: (1) Admit of the necessity of a Kantian-based philosophy, (2) Reject the modern project and revert to ancient ideals, or (3) Become skeptics or nihilists or Rortians.

After now studying both modern and contemporary philosophy (albeit in meagre amounts compared to the whole), I continue to hold an ancient philosophical perspective. But I also maintain that it is ineluctably apropos for the philosophy student to not ignore the history of philosophy and admit of the advances that have been made in the history as a whole. If anything (and this a stretch in the conservative direction), modern philosophy sufficiently shows the shaky ground on which mere subjective experience leaves us, and calls either itself or the possibility of the knowledge of Truth into question altogether. It seems to be, at bottom, a necessary tenet of living the philosophical life in the modern world to be familiar with a broad range of (if not all) systems of thought and philosophical ideas, for not until we know how we got here will we honestly know where we stand.

Modern Philosophy and Science-envy

Looking back upon all we have read this semester, the theme of science is prevalent. Many of the moderns seem to have a sort of science-envy, and this may be for good reason. After the Renaissance, the natural sciences started making leaps and bounds in terms of inventions and discoveries. Looking around, philosophers noticed that the philosophy of the ancient and middle ages didn't do as much as they wanted it to do. On top of this, much of it seemed to be founded on something shaky. I will offer a short summary of the ways in which the moderns tried to emulate the natural scientists of the day. I will then briefly look at how this changed philosophy.

Starting with Bacon, many of the old ideas were out. The most important of these included knowledge for its own sake. Bacon wanted fruits. He wanted theories only insofar as they could produce tangible results which benefited man in a material way.
Descartes took from science a method. He insisted that we break things into their smallest parts. He also insisted that we not accept anything as true of which we are not evidently certain. With these in mind, Descartes is thinking of geometrical deduction.
Hobbes wanted to turn politics into a legitimate science. He started by taking the first few chapters of his book and doing nothing but defining terms. Once he had defined everything necessary, he merely had to deduce the outcomes.
To be honest, I am not sure how Locke or Rousseau fit into this schema...
Hume, realizing that this scientific method based on experience could not support itself, proved that if we have nothing but experience to work with, the certain, universal, and scientific knowledge that everyone wanted was impossible.
In response to this, Kant found a way to save the sciences. He saved metaphysics by the only means possible--turning it too into a science.

As I said earlier, the reason that the moderns went in this direction was because of the unprecedented success of science. It seems to me that the character of philosophy is different post-Kant than it was pre-Bacon. The Ancients, although extremely worried about truth, had more on their minds. Plato and Aristotle were looking for the beautiful and noble life and not just certainties. As someone like Dr. Anderson might say, they were looking for wisdom and not just true propositions. My question is (and it is a serious question): Are certainties as valuable as the moderns make them seem? What can we do with absolutely certain truths, and have we found any? If we accept Bacon's general hypothesis that we should seek after fruits, what has philosophy actually produced? Other than jobs I can't think of much.
Compared to Science, philosophy is an abysmal failure at producing fruits. Looking at contemporary analytic philosophy, one sees a lot of philosopher who do little more than stand over the shoulders of scientists and check their logic. Maybe this is good, but it is philosophy of a different type. But what does this mean? The first thing this indicates is that the goal of philosophy has not been unanimously decided upon. This is most clear today when one can go to Borders and can find books by Foucault, Ayer, and Joseph Owens all headed under philosophy. Although science and philosophy both look for "truth," what this means is different in each case. The moderns have directly pointed to the question "what is philosophy?" Modern philosophy is different than ancient and contemporary philosophy, because they all have different answers to this question. This semester has helped me think about this question in new ways. Although I don't yet have an answer, those of us studying philosophy in a post-modern and pluralistic world must answer this question in a way different than a man from ancient Greece or a man from 18th century Germany did.

P.S. It seems at once evident that even if one can answer this question, it is not as clear as that. What the moderns teach us about epistemology is important whether you accept it all or not. One cannot simply choose a philosophy and ignore the rest. A follow up question to "what is philosophy?" might be "What the hell is everyone else doing and in what way is it useful?" Because, even if others are wrong, they may still be on to something. Or as someone like Hegel might say, no one is completely wrong.

Kant and the Brick Wall of Experience

Kant begins the B Deduction with the observation that sensibility offers us a manifold of representations, but the understanding combines these representations. This combination cannot be given in sensibility, for only intellectual intuition (which we do not have) could directly intuit the combination of objects. Thus we must have a spontaneous faculty, the understanding, which takes the manifold of sensibility and combines it into one coherent whole of experience.

I wonder about this. Is it really the case that, at the deepest level of understanding, intuitions are manifold and diverse? This is Kant’s picture, which I will call the “brick wall” picture of experience. Experience is a diverse manifold of plural experiences, each of which is a tiny brick. For Kant, the understanding is the bricklayer that builds these bricks into a coherent whole. My use of the brick metaphor is not meant to imply that Kant says experiences are capable of being broken into individual, irreducible atoms of experience (sense-data). As far as I can tell, space and time are continuous, not discrete, and thus such a picture would not work. Instead, I mean to bring attention to the fact that experience arises when smaller parts are worked up into a whole.

Is it fair to question the way Kant has set up the problem? What if, instead of a brick wall, we said that experience was a fundamentally whole lump of clay? Rather than building up a whole experience from parts, the understanding, then, is a sculptor that breaks apart the clay into different figures, that divides the given unity into different individuals. As the last sentence shows, I think many of Kant’s basic insights about the understanding would still hold. If the unity were given, the fact we can represent it as manifold would require a spontaneous act of the understanding, but one that posits differences, breaks apart, and individiuates rather than one that joins together. So something would look different, and I wonder what it would be.

Kant's clarification of "I think, therefore I am."

In Section 25 of Deduction (B), Kant is clearly talking about the Cartesian Cogito, or, "I think, therefore I am." He deals with it right after discussing the nature of inner sense, and I believe that he sheds some much-needed light on the limitations of Descartes' famous phrase.

To quickly restate Kant's theory(?) of knowledge, the understanding must combine an intuition and a concept of the same object under a unified self-consciousness. This knowledge is only of appearances, and does not extend to the thing-in-itself, which would require some kind of intellectual intuition combined with a concept, and Kant admits that he does not know if we can have any intuition besides a sensible one.

From here, Kant takes the "I think" and renders it as a concept of our existence. Yet it is still a concept, and needs an intuition in order to become knowledge. Here, Kant makes use of "inner sense." It is by inner sense that we have an intuition of ourselves as an object of which we can have knowledge. The inner intuition that we have combines with our concept of "I think," and allows us to know that we do, in fact, exist. However, we do not exist any more so than other objects that we experience externally. We do not have some sort of special intellectual intuition that allows us to know ourselves as us-in-ourselves.

There are two (and possibly more) ways to view Descartes' Cogito. If one takes it as the starting point that Descartes uses to deduce everything else that follows in his Discourse, then it is plain that, in light of Kant, we cannot deduce things like God or the Soul from a knowledge that is only of appearances. However, one can also see the Cogito serves only as an example of a "clear and distinct" idea that Descartes is searching for so vehemently. While I believe Kant would agree that, while ambiguous in certain terms (The "I" of "I think," for example), it is clear that thinking implies existence of some sort, and that this idea is clear and distinct. But unless Descartes can provide some sort of intuition to accompany this idea, it will remain just an idea, and never knowledge.

Owens, the Cartesian starting point, Hume, and Kant

In "An Introduction to Christian Metaphysics," giving a summary of the history of metaphysics, Owens says that Kant never once thought of denying the Cartesian starting point. Owens of course is objecting to Kant's refusal to deny the cartesian starting point. One finds later in the book that although he does make it appear that he deals with the problem of the uncertainty inherent in the senses, Owens really just ignores it.

Owens simply says that the sentiment we feel when we come into contact with a sensible object is much stronger than the belief in something in our minds and much stronger than our belief in the supersensible. He concludes from this forcible sensation that sensible objects are grasped intellectually--that is, he says it is no sort of belief that grasps these objects. But Owens offers no way to demonstrate such certainty. He can't, yet he is determined to say that we have full evidence and that this evidence is that we do in fact see something. Like I said, he offers no evidence to get around the uncertainty inherent in our senses. He simply restates himself in various intellectual ways.

Now, this does nothing but introduce doubt into Owen's account of metaphysics (because it is based on the fact that we have direct cognitive access to the world). It doesn't falsify it. But how did Hume and Kant come to such doubt concerning their senses? They could only do so by enquiring into the relationship between their minds and the world. But if they conclude that the senses are to be doubted, since the phenomena of experience (sensible things) play a fundamental role in our enquiry into the mind, then it seems that their conclusions, too, can be doubted. They can only delve into their minds by observing the relations between their minds and sensible objects. Sensible objects are too be doubted. Thus, the conclusions arrived at by relying on sensible objects to enquire into the mind also can be doubted.

Now, Let's say that Owens (or another Thomist or Aristotelian) brings this objection against Hume or Kant: "Your conclusions concerning the doubt of the senses, too, can be doubted, since you partly relied on the senses to come to your conclusions regarding the limits of the human understanding."

This may at first seem like a forceful objection. It is, but perhaps not as forceful as the Owens/Aristotelian might like. Both Hume's and Kant's conclusions can be doubted. But such an objection doesn't falsify Hume or Kant (just as the doubt of the senses doesn't falsify Thomism), but merely introduces a little doubt--a tincture of Pyrrhonism, if you will. If Owens uses the doubt concerning the senses concluded by Hume or Kant against their conclusions regarding human understanding, then Owens is accepting their doubt, and using it against them. In doing so he doesn't dismiss or dispel the doubt, he uses it against Hume and Kant. The conclusion: there is a little doubt, a tincture of Pyyrhonism, in all 3: Owens, Hume and Kant.

Our senses can be doubted because of the uncertainty regarding the mind's relation to the external world. Thomism can be doubted because of the inherent uncertainty regarding our senses. Hume and Kant can be doubted because they do, in part, rely on their senses to enquire into their minds.

( Yes, it does seem that I am playing the role of the Pyrrhonist here; But lest one think that it is useless, it should be kept in mind that Hume is quite dogmatic in his claim that his enquiry into the human mind cannot be doubted and that Owens very much thinks that his dogmatic conclusions are quite certain. Kant, too, seems confident in his restructuring of metaphysics.)

Kant's Premises

It seems to me that all of Kant's arguments are founded upon the grounds that the ONLY thing humans receive from objects is their appearance. This is expressed well enough at the conclusion of the A Deduction: "For the reason that our knowledge has to deal solely with appearances, the possibility of which lies in ourselves, and the connection and unity of which (in the representation of an object) are to be met with only in ourselves." From this premise Kant freely asserts the 'exaggerated and absurd' conclusion that "the understanding is itself the source of the laws of nature." [A 127]

I am wondering if this premise, namely, that appearance is all we receive of objects, and that therefore we can never reach or know the thing in itself (the =x), is the entire foundation of Kant's Critique, and if one wished to challenge Kant's arguments one would perhaps endeavor to explain how we do indeed have some contact with objects in themselves, therefore proving that appearances do not have to conform to our intuition, sensibility, apperception, etc.