Cause and effect:
Thomas Hobbes believed that cause and effect could be understood intellectually, without experience of any kind. Humes finally challenged this claim by pointing out that without the use of experience, there is no way to actually prove that one thing is the cause of another. He added that even with experience, our perceptions often make us assume that something is the cause of another but we cannot prove it based on only our prior experiences. Philosophers after Hume took his argument to mean that no process in nature is dictated by cause, an extreme assumption that in my opinion doesn’t really make sense. Finally, Kant came along and found the balance of the two positions, saying that some things in nature are related because otherwise, our perceptions of them would be different. He claimed that space and time created a framework for everything else we know and that because we cannot imagine a world in which they are different, they must be unchanging.
The knower and the known
Kant believed that the human mind naturally understands its surroundings and the world in general. He did not make a distinction between man and nature, which meant that when man understands nature he is essentially understanding himself because they are one and the same. Hegel took this farther, saying that the unity, but also the conflict, that exists between the knower and what he knows creates knowledge itself when the conflict is resolved. He saw the “known” as synonymous with reality and therefore believed that what is real is entirely determined by what one knows. While Kant made the distinction between the known and the “thing-in-itself,” Hegel did not even separate these. He did not believe things exist without the knowledge of them, a philosophy much like Plato’s.
Big question:
If reality is entirely determined by our own judgment and knowledge, but at the same time each person has their own understanding and level of knowledge of any given thing or idea, how can we decide which is the true reality? Is there one reality? One truth about anything? Does it even matter what is the Truth or is Truth a fictional idea because there are so many different truths?
If it is true that reality only exists through our perceptions of it, would anything exist without humans? Would anything exist if we lost even just one person’s perception of reality?
To both Kant and Hagel, it could be said that they believed the knower and the known exist and interact within the same medium (which was contrary to what most empiricists thought at the time). Kant was thinking about this in the context of cause and effect, and how our minds are "attuned" to certain universal foundations that connect the cause to the effect. Hagel thought a similar thing, but in a much more existential light. He went further, and believed that the knower and the known not only exist and communicate on the same plane, but believed that the cause relied on the effect as much as the effect relied on the cause. To Hagel, the knower could not exist as anything beyond a spirit without the known to influence it's existence. He believed that behind everything - both in thought and practicality, there was a thesis and an antithesis (two opposites -- like the knower and the known, or the cause and an effect), and that these opposites merged, or "synthesized" to become reality, or as he put it, to set forth "progress" (for better or worse). I say for better or worse, because "progress" isn't meant to mean "good" as much as it does "to fill" [life?]. Hagel was interesting, in that "war protects the people from corruption which an everlasting peace would bring upon it."(pg.65) -- an intriguing quote that I had to think about for a while.
My question:
"...any scheme which disregards history...is thought Utopian"(pg.65)
According to the quote and reading, history -- while playing an essential role in who we are and how we exist (According to Hagel), is also the thing keeping us from being utopian. We have talked/read a lot about how history influences the present, but how does history limit our future potential, and keep us from making "progress"?
Hegel and Kant had an incredible perspective on the world and its functionality. The main idea behind their philosophies was that all things are in some way naturally connected and balanced. That our ability to comprehend the workings of the world, shows that the natural order of things is directly related to our understanding. Since we can understand and observe how things work and are connected, this was a predestined connection of the world and our reasoning ability. Our reasoning is the cause and the effect is that everything in our world naturally conforms to that understanding. Without this balance between the cause and effect in the world, natural reactions in the world would be in chaos. Our ability to know affects the knowledge that is perceivable. If we cannot perceive it, it does not exist because that would violate the natural order or “framework” that the world is set into. Everything that we know and will know is meant to be and is part of the natural evolution of life and experience. There are no known and understood things that are outside of the correct and natural order, because if they were then we couldn’t understand it.
Question: Does this philosophy have any exceptions with things that naturally violate the order of things? If we can comprehend that something is outside the natural realm causality, then is it truly outside that realm? If we CAN perceive the idea of things being outside the natural order, then how is it outside the natural order? If it is understood, it should be natural and correct.
Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2014 9:47 pm Post subject: Kant and Hegel
If you're reading this Rachel, I fixed it! No more sending you emails with my posts, I'm all good!
Opinions on Cause and Effect:
- Thomas Hobbes: Every effect has a material cause, and the same cause always has the same effect. Effects flow from their causes logically, by inner necessity.
- David Hume: The sequence from cause to effect seems necessary to us only because it is familiar, and we should not expect this sequence to occur again.
- Immanuel Kant: There are SOME necessary connections in nature because they underlie experience.
Knower and Known: The main connection is that knowledge is a requirement for... well, everything. In order to understand something, you need knowledge. There also has to be a connection between the knower and their knowledge, otherwise it would be impossible.
Question: Why does the connection between cause and effect HAVE to be a logical necessity? Wouldn't it be possible to the cause to have a more indirect effect on something, instead of it being absolutely inevitable?
First off: Hegel -- or at least the representation of him we're given -- is scary, like monsters-under-the-bed terrifying. For me, his philosophy demonstrates a kind of solipsism that is not entirely irrational but at the same time eerily repellent -- e.g, "To Hegel, there is no reality until we know it. We exist by virtue of knowing the outside world -- but the world also exists by virtue of our knowing it"(63). This touches on the relationship between the knower and the known, or, in other words, why it is little kids are so afraid of the dark (i.e., when they can't see things they simply go away, cease to exist). It doesn't seem like Hegel is endorsing solipsism as some absolute fact, but he does seem to be recognizing that we all experience life through a "creative" lens, and that -- in a weird way -- solipsism binds us together (not my phrase), forming some kind of collective consciousness that informs historical progression (in all honesty, the reading kind of lost me when it linked Hegel's understanding of thought to his understanding of history). Hegel's theory of thought not only affirming existence (as Descartes said) but also some external world lead me to think this: Does thought really affirm anything other than thought?
I found Kant's perspective to be somewhat more soothing, though perhaps not as elaborately or beautifully conveyed (which is no slight to Kant, 'cause most of my knowledge w/r/t his ideas comes not from his language but from some guy who's a bit goofy at times): "And equally, Kant believed that there is a reality which is independent of men; behind the thing as it is known, there is what Kant called a thing-in-itself"(63 -- brief side note: doesn't this phrase come from Plato?). But so I guess my question to Kant is: What lends us the authority to assume the existence of some eternal form or thing-in-itself? Kant was able to move the knower and the known closer to each other, but yet somehow maintained that there remains an existence of forms outside of our skulls. I don't really understand how this is.
This whole issue of cause and effect -- especially in relation to Hegel and Kant -- is giving me a pretty big headache: I know that good old Soren K. once wrote that while life must be understood backwards, it also must be lived forwards, and that this is why an understanding of life is always impossible. I kind of liked that the significance of Aristotle's final cause was refuted by both Kant and Hegel -- everything is put in a place of perpetually becoming.
I guess I still don't understand how an understanding of morality can exist w/o a belief in God. Does anyone else know!?!
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