I guess I’ll be the first one to post then! (Sorry Mijia >_<)
The reading was really dense, and a lot of ideas I still need time to digest but I’d like to throw out a few to get it started (so I might be completely wrong, and, yeah…)
For “Cause and effect”, Hume believed that the connection between these two things is empirical and unnecessary (p.59). It almost sounds like he is saying that things only happen the way they are because we have certain expectation (due to our experiences) for them. The real cause lies within us, so does the effect, which means that these two things have nothing to do with nature. Kant, however, said that there are definitely some relations that in fact underlie experience. He claimed that “space and time are basic framework of this kind [necessary relations]: we know them a priori. (p.60)” Kant concluded that “nature can only be understood if we see that under empirical experience lies a framework of a priori knowledge(p.60).” and that “the behavior of nature…presupposes some underlying necessities, such as time and space. The behavior of men…presupposes the existence of underlying necessities without which their conduct would be meaningless; and these necessities are pieces of a priori morality (p.61).” Thus, priori can be understood as the basis of all human behaviors and minds. Hegel’s opinion on cause and effect resembles his idea of knowledge and knower. He reminds me a lot of Aristotle, saying that there’s no coincidence in life, everything happens for a reason and change to the almost opposite of its original state. “The essential step of progress is the synthesis of the two—is, becoming (p.63).” He talks about how thinking doesn't prove existence, but rather creates it (p.63). To me it almost seems like Hegel is saying human is the cause and effect is what happens in nature, yet the cause and effect accord, which Kant also believed.
About the knower and the known, Kant thought that the most original and basic knowledge, or priori, as well as priori morality, were born in men. The rest humans perceive as they experience. Yet they are not simply passive receivers. “The knower and what he knows influence on another; what is known is in part imposed by the knower; so that the knower is active, is creative, and thereby becomes…a self or ego (p.63).” But Kant also believed this ego is dependent on the universe and that reality is independent of men. To Hegel, however, “there is no reality until we know it (p.63)” for “we exist by virtue of knowing the outside world” when at the same time “the world also exists only by virtue of our knowing it (p.63).” This makes me think of a theory basically saying that the world which is out of our vision simply doesn’t exist because there’s no way of proving, which further makes me think of Quantum mechanics and how we can’t prove how the electrons move because when we are looking it would always be different. Hegel also claimed that “the knower and what is knows, thesis and antithesis, are fused in a single synthesis of experience (p.63).”
My thoughts aren't very organized at all sorry!
Question: Hegel believed that “every process in life calls out its contradictory process – and life takes its important steps only when synthesizes these two into a higher form (p.63)” He then gave the example of the flower, but I still don't quite get how could every process be contradictory within itself. Also what did he mean by important steps? He did he define what was important or not? How did he know his “important” would be the same as mine or anyone else’s?
I'm still entangled..... so I'll reply to Mingwei's question and come back later.
Quote:
Question: Hegel believed that “every process in life calls out its contradictory process – and life takes its important steps only when synthesizes these two into a higher form (p.63)” He then gave the example of the flower, but I still don't quite get how could every process be contradictory within itself. Also what did he mean by important steps? He did he define what was important or not? How did he know his “important” would be the same as mine or anyone else’s?
From my understanding of Hegel's dialectic process, one of the predication is that everything is transient and in the process of becoming. The dialect begins with a thesis and then an antithesis to negate the thesis so that it can finally land in a resolved synthesis. This method can be used to find the flaws in a statement and therefore approach the truth more. Therefore the process is essential in understanding the end product.
In this example of flower, the bud getting "refuted" by the blossom and then the fruit replacing the blossom can be viewed as a process of getting to the final truth we're looking for by negating the previous thesis. Since Hegel started to view things as progressions or "succession of revolutionary steps", each step can be seen as an antithesis that's important for us to land in the next synthesis on our way to the ultimate truth.
Both Kant and Hegel believed that there was a connection between the knower and what they know. To Kant, someone and their knowledge need to be in accord for them to understand the universe around them. A person must have a priori knowledge about time and space in order to understand the nature of the world. To Hegel, the knower and what they know had to be connected. it was the conflict between the knower and what he knows that synthesized knowledge itself. People are not passive in the synthesis of knowledge, instead they are an integral part of its creation.
Thomas Hobbes believed that "every effect has a material cause- and the same cause always has the same effect" (5. Kant seems to agree with this statement, but he does not believe that one is able to understand the natural world with just this information. There must be some previous knowledge about the universe that cannot be derived from sensory experiences or viewing effects and their causes. Hegel talks of knowledge being the effect of the conflicting thesis and antithesis. The product, or effect, of knowledge is caused by a contradictory process.
Question: Is Kant arguing that every human is born with the same set of morals or just a sense of morality?
Going off of the post before mine, Kant and Hegel continue to examine the relationship and connection between man and nature, mind and outside the mind. They abandon the previous views that man and nature are separate, and mind and matter outside mind are separate and do not affect each other, only use the sense as a form of man observing the world outside us. They come at it from the point of view that there is some kind of need connection, for example Hegel’s dialectic speaking about how “there is no reality until we know it, we exist by virtue of outside world, but that exists because we know the outside world. A sort of loop that he does not try to explain the begging of. His theory reminds me about the question of a tree falling and if it real depending on weather someone heard or saw it. Same kind of idea.
Kant touches on the impossibility of human and nature being separate because of the wondrous way that “human minds so naturally understand what goes on outside it (themselves)”. But the part of Kant that I found most interesting was his idea of priori knowledge. The things that maybe were overlooked by many philosophers, who were busy looking at all we don’t know, and did not explain how there are some things we “know” so deep and so easily that we do not even know or comprehend we know them, as Kant says like time and space. Without these assumptions or not-questioned things, we could not be able to question or even know anything else. These are the prior knowledge, the unacknowledged knowledge to some extent. (haha)
Anyways question: how did Hegel’s “man is history “ affect anyone’s definitions so far?
"a priori" seems to mean knowledge that is ingrained in the human consciousness, which is what both Kant and Hegel were arguing; they both believed that although a lot of knowledge must be experienced, there is some that can be logic'd through due to their being natural to the human brain. Hegel even went so far as to believe that the knowledge was gained in steps, from the outside world eventually being able to synchronize with the world inside of a person's head. In Hegel's mind, the knower and what he knows directly affect one another; the knower even partially creates what he knows. Cause and effect is also touched on; Kant says that causality must exist in nature, because it is the only way the human mind to understand it, believing that the cause and effect must be directly related to each other.
whatisthis
In response to Nica's question, going off of the whole "man and nature influence each other" thing, I believe Kant was a big believer of free will, and that perceptions and reality was somewhat subjective. And so it makes sense that a subjective reality would offer up the potential for individuality. I think Kant says morality as a concept is a priori, but it is then influenced by the reality that the person grows up in, and as such becomes different from the next person.
Question: If Kant believes the knower and what he knows to be true directly influence each other, what would he define as Truth (with a capital T)?
Hegel on the know er and what is known approached it in an odd way (well maybe not for a philosopher and just me) that the outside world is only real because we believe it to be so and that our senses are just as much a fabrication as what we know and experience, with this it would seem we know nothing and what we do know we only think we know. (deep i know) Kant believes that what is known and the know er influence each other what is known is made by the know er making the known to the know er different than to other knowers but saying that he also said that there was a truth to the known behind the knowers reality which Kant called "the thing itself."
what do you think of Hegel's reasoning for war as a practice? page 65 right hand side top paragraph
This reading wasn’t as hard to read as I thought it was – I thought the Aristotle was the most difficult by far - but it was still dense with theories and contradictions. After reading it, I still can’t define a priori – nor do I have a clue what in the reading was supposed to answer or help answer that question. My post is shorter than the reading deserves, but I’ve written about all the stuff in it that I can make sense of.
Kant argues that Nature conforms to time and space, so in this sense time and space are a cause of nature, because without them nature could not exist. (60) Similarly, Hegel considered time a creative force driving everyday events (64)
Hegel viewed the connection between the knower and what they know as a “unity of opposites.” Thus, such a connection creates knowledge in the knower. I think Hegel viewed this connection as becoming (the synthesis of life’s states being and not being). Kant argued that the knower and what he knows influences on another (63). Kant also said that there is a reality independent of men (63), where the “reality” is “what is to be known” by man… I think.
Hegel disagreed with Kant, arguing that man creates his own reality. He seems to consider History to be the ultimate reality, because he argues men create their own realities, which then becomes History. Furthermore, man’s understanding of history – ultimately, an understanding of other men’s realities – enables man to understand himself. (64)
Hegel loses me when he connects history as a universal spirit to the state, where it expresses itself. (65) However, the page before says Hegel’s theories of reality “assert the importance of the individually more forcefully than Kant ever did.” Question: Since any state is ultimately a temporary association of many men – my definition – how can Hegel emphasize the state over the men who existed in it?
Responding to Zoe’s question, I’ve added Hegel’s idea of man as history to my understanding of history. I think the past is different from history. The past includes pre-human events, but those events became history only when man discovered and recorded them.
Kants philosophy seems to rely heavily on the existence of forms, rules structures, necessities, and truths which seemed to align him more with Platonic thought. Patterns of cause and effect can be observed and processed empirically, and they have validity in this sense, as long as there are accepted priori to serve as a framework. (These priori embody idea of external, absolute truths, ones that must be accepted for there to be any basis for empirical knowledge.) Truths can be found only in contexts that must be accepted for their truth to exist, nothing could even have an observable nature without the priori of space and time. Again showing parallels with Plato, Kant believed that there is truth independent of observation, "reality which is independent of men..." (63). That the object possessed truth within itself.
Hegel, on the other hand, saw cause and effect not as a linear process where the end refuted all the stages passed through, but as continuous process of becoming with the all points valued, and the focus on the progression. "Hegel, for the first time, saw all progress whether in the history of man of in the evolution of life, as a succesion of revolutionary steps" (63). To Hegel knowledge was born out of the synthesis between the knower and the known. Additionally there was no reality separate from our understanding of reality, and so thought created/dictated reality. In Hegel's words "Being is thought"
What role does freewill seem to play in this mind-focused, subjective, worldview?
Although the concept of a priori almost implies that it comes before experience and lays in our consciousness as a bass of knowledge, I think the apriori knowledge itself comes before experience. I project the a priori knowledge as a kind of "common sense" that is elicited by experience. And once we know it, it is settled in our mind as a framework by the help of logic and requires no more experience, and we take this kind of knowledge for granted when using it.
Hume's idea was super interesting in how he saw causal relationship comes from experience and not from reasoning or reflection: "custom alone determines the mind to suppose the future conformable to the past" (474) Kant developed from this to say that there's a underlying framework in nature and in our mind so that we things are "conformed" to happen in the way that's "supposed". And this led him to the claim that "some knowledge must be apriori in order to make empirical science possible at all" (477).
I can't say I understood Hegel entirely... I think in Hegel's view, there is not an absolutely solid and correct reality and we have to keep refuting our known knowledge to reach the truth. Hegel saw things as being in the process of becoming and by the necessary steps of contradicting each other, they make their way to the "better". I am a little confused about how "there is no reality until we knew it", since as he realized, "if the outer world owes reality to the mind, then all matter becomes somewhat unreal". So I suppose Hegel's reality is an "imagined" reality in our mind?
Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2013 2:23 am Post subject: I love this reading...
Cause and Effect: Kant believed that there were a mixture of connections, some of which were based on the senses and our experiences, and others that were ingrained in us from birth (priori).
Question: What did Hegel say about cause and effect? I got lost..
Knower and The Known: For the topic of "The Knower and The Known," I think it's first important to realize what question Hegel and Kant were trying to answer, which was, "How does it come about that the human mind so naturally understands what goes on outside it?" (61) They wondered whether or not there was some framework we all start off with when we are born. Kant believed that the knower and the known were unified and that they influenced each other. He believed that there was the "known" waiting to found and the knower searching for the known, and when the knower found the known, knowledge would be created. (wow, that's a lot of know's). He also believed that when we are born we have "priori" and "priori morality." I followed Kant up until the point where he brought in the "thing-in-itself" (what a brilliant name) which is the reality separate from man. Hegel didn't believe in the "thing-in-itself" and argued that there is "no reality until we know it." (63) He also said, "my thinking does more than prove my existence, it creates it." Pretty scary stuff right there. It's like Inception or The Matrix, "things only exist because the mind thinks them, just as the mind exists only because it thinks." (63)
My BIG Question from the reading" One of the most interesting parts I pulled out of the reading was Kant's belief in the, "Priori Morality," which is" "the behavior of man [that] presupposes the existence of underlying necessities without which their conduct would be meaningless." (59) Or, being born with some sort of basic morals. Do you think were are born with some kind of morals ingrained in us?
I personally believe that morals are based on society... so interesting to think about!)
Tracking my definition of a priori felt very helpful, and I suspect the definition will prove useful in my ultimate definition of truth.
One of my initial definitions of priori was that it is a context or background in front of which other things happen. Take a woman in a brown dress. Imagine she is standing in front of a white wall. The white wall is always there and it's always been white, but the woman may change her clothes and she may leave the location of the white wall. We can say that she has a dark dress on because we can compare it to the wall behind her. The white wall is the priori from which we can understand that the woman's dress is dark. If there was just a woman and no wall we'd have no idea how light or dark her dress was nor where she was.
Anothe word for priori could be a "constant." Priori's are meant to stay true all the time. On p. 61 Kant talks about the morality of men, that there are underlying necessities and laws which men must follow, "without which their conduct would be meaningless." He believes that morality is a constant, that humans naturally tend to follow morals. Humans can of course not follow their morals but morality is the standard by which all actions are judged.
"Some knowledge must be a priori in order to make empirical science possible at all." - Kant. A common method of proving something to be true is the formula of "because this is true, then this is true, and because that is true, etc." All angles on a triangle must add to 180, because that is true and two of the angles add to 130, then the final angle is 50 degrees. Any statement like this must begin with an undeniable truth to which you can say "because this is true." IN the triangle example it's the fact that all angles must add to 180 in a triangle. This initial truth is a priori.
Hegel talks about the ego being universal because "it shares the priori concepts which are common to all men." This made me think of a slightly different definition of priori. A priori is a concept which is agreed upon by many people and is consistently applicable to the real world. The tomato is red because me john tommy sally and kim all saw it as red, and every tomato they've seen after that one has also been red. Maybe truth is what a given society agrees upon
Causality is the way us humans understand the world. Kant said "Causality is the only way the mind can grasp the world's workings." Though there may be no evidence of causality in nature, it is how we are able to make sense of nature. It is how we understand which plants are poisonous, by observing what effects they cause in our bodies. Even though a rash on my arm is technically only a phenomenon occurring on my arm, thinking of it as having been caused by a plant that i touched helps me to understand my relationship with nature.
Kant saw the relationship between the knower and the known as incredibly important and influential to how the known exists, but Hegel went further and said that the known only exists within the context of being known by the knower.
"The ambition of these supermen is the stuff of history." Hegel talked about supermen like Napoleon and Alex the Great as expressing the spirit of a people and being the cause of history. What is the role of supermen today in which we have a massive media? How do they come to power? are they chosen or do they seize their power?
I found a priori to refer in the reading to something that is known without evidence. It is used frequently in terms of Kant's philosophy in regards to the priori knowledge we all have that lets us operate within the world, or our priori morals. Unlike the rest of our knowledge, which we have gathered from experience, priori knowledge is simply something that is known, without having to examine or deduce.
In terms of cause and effect I feel that this was most directly addressed in the Hegel part of the reading. He believed that all change begins with a thesis, and encounters an opposite anti-thesis. As the two combine and work themselves out, a synthesis is created. The effect of this change is always an advancement, and thus change is not just change but progress to Hegel. Kant took Hume's general idea that cause and effect are unrelated and added a caveat: that there is an underlying priori knowledge that we all have that links the concepts of cause and effect within our minds, on which we build with experience.
Kant believed in a reality independent of the knower, with a "thing-in-itself" as the true form of all objects. But this reality is not the one we perceive, because man is not a passive receiver of it. The knower is in accord with nature, taking a priori knowledge of its workings and adding on top layers of experience to create what it knows. Hegel's philosophy is even more human-centric. To him, there is no "thing-in-itself." There is no divide between the mind and nature, all nature is what is perceived by man. The thing exists only because it is known.
Big question: Hegel's philosophy starts off strong, and then takes a sharp right into a contradictory, oddly totalitarian view of the world. Can we take his early work on its own, or are his credentials as a philosopher tainted because of what his work led up to?
They abandon the previous views that man and nature are separate, and mind and matter outside mind are separate and do not affect each other...
Both Kant and Hegel challenged the previous views on the relationship between the knower and what he knows by finding connections between the two.
I guess what Kant was arguing that men cannot automatically "know" from experiences. Instead, people have innate connections with the universe, so what they later become to know cannot be separated from themselves. "Priori", the "framework" of nature is what our knowledge is built on. In Kant's view, priori includes space and time, and since those two things would never change (which is not exactly true), we could put our knowledge into a holistic scheme. Priori knowledge allows us to grasp the meanings of some events and human behaviors so that what we see/experience doesn't end up being accidental or totally incomprehensible.
Kant said that causality is important for us to understand the world. But I'm still confused about how cause/effect links to his theory of "priori knowledge". On Hegel's side, I didn't see much of the roles of cause and effect but rather the co-existence of two opposites and the final resolution that transcends both sides. This reminds me of yin-yang theory in eastern philosophy. Neither side could exist without the other, and the combination of two results in a unity that's more than their sum.
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(so I might be completely wrong, and, yeah…)
. Kant seems to agree with this statement, but he does not believe that one is able to understand the natural world with just this information. There must be some previous knowledge about the universe that cannot be derived from sensory experiences or viewing effects and their causes. Hegel talks of knowledge being the effect of the conflicting thesis and antithesis. The product, or effect, of knowledge is caused by a contradictory process.
