03 Aug 11
'Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but ...let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition'.
He aimed to resolve disputes between empirical and rationalist approaches. The former asserted that all knowledge comes through experience; the latter maintained that reason and innate ideas were prior. Kant argued that experience is purely subjective without first being processed by pure reason.
He also said that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to theoretical illusions.
He also credited David Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumber" (circa 1771).[15] Hume stated that experience consists only of sequences of feelings, images or sounds. Ideas such as 'cause', goodness, or objects were not evident in experience, so why do we believe in the reality of these? Kant felt that reason could remove this scepticism Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority All the preparations of reason, therefore, in what may be called pure philosophy, are in reality directed to those three problems only [God, the soul, and freedom]. However, these three elements in themselves still hold independent, proportional, objective weight individually. Moreover, in a collective relational context; namely, to know what ought to be done: if the will is free, if there is a God, and if there is a future world. As this concerns our actions with reference to the highest aims of life, we see that the ultimate intention of nature in her wise provision was really, in the constitution of our reason, directed to moral interests only. Conceptual unification and integration is carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time. The latter are not concepts,[28] but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself" The notion of the "thing in itself" was much discussed by those who came after Kant With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanity – understood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as others – as an end in itselfrather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold. Analytic
"All bodies take up space."
Synthetic
"All bodies have weight."
The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside of their linguistic content. In this instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of the body Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (cf. Hume) and rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience in order to be known.
Kant, however, contests this: he claims that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge, but knowledge that is not derived from experience mathematic judgments are synthetic a priori and in addition, that Space and Time are not derived from experience but rather are its preconditions. Without the concepts, intuitions are nondescript; without the intuitions, concepts are meaningless—thus the famous statement, "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
before knowledge can be objective, it must be incorporated under an a priori category of the understanding
For example, say a subject says, “The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm”, which is all he perceives in perception. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says, “The sunshine causes the stone to warm”, he subsumes the perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine with the concept heat, producing a necessarily universally true judgment
In other words we filter what we see and hear
the mind plays a part in producing objective knowledge
Kant also posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that there is a difference between preferences and values and that considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept that is an axiom in economics Rechtsstaat (German: Rechtsstaat) is a concept in continental European legal thinking, originally borrowed from German jurisprudence, which can be translated as "legal state", "state of law", "state of justice", or "state of rights". It is a "constitutional state" in which the exercise of governmental power is constrained by the law,[1] and is often tied to the Anglo-American concept of the rule of law.In a Rechtsstaat, the power of the state is limited in order to protect citizens from the arbitrary exercise of authority. In a Rechtsstaat the citizens share legally based civil liberties and they can use the courts. A country cannot be a liberal democracy without first being a Rechtsstaat. about 1 hour ago - Remove He opposed "democracy," which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He stated, "...democracy is, properly speaking, necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all' decide for or even against one who does not agree; that is, 'all,' who are not quite all, decide, and this is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom."[73] As most writers at the time he distinguished three forms of government i.e. democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy with mixed government as the most ideal form of it. Hegel was one of his first major critics. In response to what he saw as Kant's abstract and formal account, Hegel brought about an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community
Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's most basic concerns
Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy They have each argued against relativism,[98] supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy
Encyclopedia (see Lisa Shabel's entry on Kant's philosophy of mathematics
The fourth question follows on the heels of the third: what is the content of our idea or representation of space and time?
the content of a representation might provide us with a guide as to its possible origin
there may be reason to think that the content of our representation must somehow reflect what we know about space from Euclidean geometry.
The fifth and final question is closely connected with the third and fourth questions, and indeed, raises issues that connect all four previous questions with one another: what is the relationship between space and time, on the one hand, and the human mind, on the other?
within the context of Kant's work
are space and time somehow dependent upon the mind for their existence?
Although Newton originally formulated his conception of space and time in response to Descartes's views in thePrinciples of Philosophy
This reflected, in part, the famous priority dispute regarding the calculus, but it also reflected some of Leibniz's fundamental criticisms of Newton's views of space, time and motion articulated in the Principia
Kant attempts to engage the Leibnizian “relationalist” and the Newtonian “absolutist” conceptions of space with transcendental idealism
he refers to the Newtonians as the “mathematical investigators” of nature, who contend that space and time “subsist” on their own, and to the Leibnizians as the “metaphysicians of nature,” who think that space and time “inhere” in objects and their relations
articulates
that space and time are transcendentally ideal, that they are mere “forms” of intuition, that they depend upon the “subjective constitution of the mind,” and so on—do not obviously make contact with the Leibniz/Newton debate.
Does Kant regard himself as needing to undermine either, or both
The fact that Kant focuses on the debate between the Leibnizians and the Newtonians is especially perplexing given his evident lack of interest, within the context of the Critique, in problems concerning motion.
Newton construes the true motion of an object, as opposed to its merely “apparent” motion, not in terms of its change in relations to other objects, as Descartes had done in his Principles, but in terms of its change of absolute place
Kant is perfectly well aware
but he
wishes to bracket questions concerning the motion of objects, because motion is an empirical concept
Kant does discuss the important notion of the “motion of the subject” in a famous footnote in §26 of the Transcendental Deduction
Kant evinces considerable interest in various attempts to reconcile certain aspects of Leibnizian metaphysics with the Newtonian view of nature
Kant regards an intuition as a conscious, objective representation—this is strictly distinct from any sensation, which he regards not as a representation of an object, property, event, etc., but merely as a state of the subject.
Kant then distinguishes intuitions and concepts
intuitions are singular, immediate representations, concepts are general, mediate ones
To represent my desk in intuition is to represent it as something I point to, as that there. This does not indicate, of course, that this is a desk, my desk, a piece of furniture, made of wood, etc.
To represent my desk with a concept is to represent it as a desk, or as a piece of furniture, or as a wooden thing, etc. From Kant's point of view, this is to represent my desk mediately at least in the sense that the concept, <desk>, represents an object through other concepts, such as <furniture>
One of Kant's surprising ideas is that each type of objective representation, intuition and concept, can be either empirical or a priori.
we can have pure—or a priori, i.e., non-empirical—intuition at all. This idea comprises a central piece of
Kant's views on space and time, for he famously contends that space and time are nothing but forms of intuition
This means, as we have seen, that we have non-empirical, singular, immediate representations of space and of time.
By a concept (Begriff) I take Kant simply to mean a representation.
Kant suggests that the representation of space cannot be empirical:
the representation of space cannot be obtained through experience from the relations of outer appearance; this outer experience is itself possible at all only through that representation
a classic empiricist
such as that found in Locke.
a version of which was also defended by Hume (Treatise, 1.2.3), we obtain a representation of space—not of places, but of the one all-encompassing space, which may be akin to geometric space—from the perception of spatial relations.
Kant may be contending that in order to represent objects as in different places from one another, I must represent them as in space.
then I would already have, as it were, the representation of space, and could not obtain it in the way Locke outlines.
Leibniz claims that in order to obtain a representation of space, one can consider a system of objects, some of which are in motion, and abstract the notion same place from that system.
One can never forge a representation of the absence of space, though one can quite well think that no things are to be met within it.
Kant claims that although we can represent space as empty, we cannot represent to ourselves the absence of space.
we can in fact conceive of space to be devoid of objects.
Leibniz thinks that space is the order of the possible relations among
but it seems he cannot claim that space is altogether empty, for then object relations would be absent.
Kant claims that we cannot represent the absence of space, but that we can represent space as empty of objects.
In these first two arguments, Kant considers, perhaps among other things, the origin of our representation of space, concluding that it is not empirical.
In the third and fourth arguments, Kant contends that the representation of space has a specifiable content that is incompatible with it being a conceptual representation.
our representation of space is not a concept, but is in fact an intuition
it is helpful to recall Kant's attitude toward concepts.
o fall “under” a concept means to be part of a concept's extension
the extension of a concept
it is the class of concepts that function as sub-groupings falling under this more general heading
The intension of a concept consists of those concepts that collectively constitute it. Hence the concept <human> has this intension: “rational animate material created being.”
To construct the concept <human>, one puts together the concepts <rational>, <animate>, <material>, <created>, and <being>. To formulate or to grasp the concept <human> just is to grasp these constituents.
Space is not a discursive, or as one says, general concept of relations of things in general, but a pure intuition. For, firstly, one can represent only one space
and if one speaks of many spaces, one thereby understands only parts of one and the same unique space.
It follows from this that an a priori intuition (which is not empirical) underlies all concepts of space.
in a triangle two sides together are greater than the third, can never be derived from the general concepts of line and triangle, but only from intuition and indeed a priori
if the representation of space were a concept rather than an intuition, one ought to be able to construct it by placing its parts together
part-whole relation of the representation of space is distinct from the part-whole relation that obtains for concepts.
his fourth and final argument
Space is represented as an infinite given magnitude
no concept, as such, can be thought as if it contained an infinite number of representations within itself.
Therefore the original representation of space is an a priori intuition, not a concept
concepts can have an infinite extension—a potentially infinite number of subordinate concepts under them—they cannot have an infinite intension, an infinite number of representations within them.
A concept that is infinite in the latter sense could not be grasped by a finite mind.
that we do not represent space either
by representing it through other concepts
For instance, if one wishes to place <space> somewhere on the conceptual tree, one must presumably find a place for it under some concept such as <substance> or <being>.
perhaps we could place <space> under <magnitude>
Kant highlights the accepted fact that we represent space as an infinite Euclidean magnitude
the claim that the representation of space is neither empirical nor conceptual is important in general for Kant's transcendental idealism and, in tandem, it is significant for understanding what he regards as the philosophical mistakes embodied in transcendental realism, and in what Kant will later call “dogmatic idealism,” both of which he strongly opposes. These are discussed in the next section.
part of Kant's goal here is to explain how a non-empirical, singular, immediate representation of space is possible. (This is parallel to explaining how synthetic a priori knowledge within geometry is possible.)
Space represents no property at all of any things in themselves, nor any relation of them to one another, i.e., no determination of them that attaches to objects themselves and that would remain even if one were to abstract from all subjective conditions of intuition. For neither absolute nor relative determinations can—prior to the existence of the things to which they pertain, thus a priori—be intuited.
Kant returns here to the debate concerning space and time between the Leibnizians and the Newtonians
Kant intends his view to be contrasted with the Newtonian view of space, which apparently tells us something about its “absolute” determinations, and also with the Leibnizian view of space, which apparently tells us something about its “relative” determinations.
Kant reaches the famous conclusions that we can speak of space “only from the human standpoint” (A26/B42) and that space has “transcendental ideality”
Various confusions can plague one's understanding of the modern debate
For instance, absolutism is sometimes conflated with realism, and idealism with relationalism.
By our lights, realism and anti-realism concern the question of whether something is in some sense dependent on the mind.
But when Leibniz and Clarke discuss the “reality,” or the “absolute reality,” of space, they are typically concerned with the question of space's status vis-à-vis objects.
Leibniz denies that space is “absolute” (L3: 2-3, L3: 5, L4: 16, L4: 9-10), or contends that it is “relative” (L3: 4). Hence in this context, for space to be real is for space to exist independently of objects and relations.
For Kant, asking whether something is real or ideal concerns its status vis-à-vis the mind.
there is no treatment here of the status of space and time vis-à-vis objects per se.
Kant consistently writes in the Critique of ideality and reality in the more familiar modern sense, where mind-dependence is at issue.
The absolutist construal of transcendental realism contends that space and time “subsist” on their own, i.e., independently of objects. The relationalist construal of transcendental realism contends that space and time “inhere” in the objects, that is, they do not exist independently of them.
Leibniz denies that we have an a priori, singular, immediate representation of space. Instead, he thinks we begin with an empirical representation of space, remove the confused elements of that representation, and thereby obtain a clear and distinct idea, i.e., a conceptual representation of an abstract mathematical entity.[20 Kant's fundamental disagreement with the Leibnizians regarding what Kant calls “sensibility” and “understanding.”
Thus Kant does not merely think that we have a non-empirical, singular, immediate representation of space. He thinks—if we borrow Leibnizian terminology—that our clear and distinct representation of space is singular and immediate
. For Kant, intuition can be a genuine source of clear and distinct representations.
If we return to Kant's fundamental conception of representation
they conflate intuition with sensation, or construe intuition as a kind of sensation.
He criticizes the Newtonians for holding a transcendental realist position concerning space and time
emphasizes that on the Newtonian view, space and time are akin to substances—in that they are independent of all objects and relations, on the one hand, and independent of the mind (and of intuition), on the other—and yet lack causal relations.
Kant adds that the Newtonian view seems to conflict with what he calls “the principles of experience”
Kant notes that absolute space is not an object of possible experience and that one cannot prove its existence by appealing to experience.
Kant's criticisms of the Newtonian view seem
to be largely divorced from the sort of specific views of intuition and of representation that played a substantial role in Kant's criticisms of Leibniz.
for Kant seems to view Berkeley as a fellow idealist, but one who does not defend a transcendental variety of this position.
Ironically, the view that Kant is—perhaps despite his fervent wishes—an idealist of the Berkeleyan variety arose in one of the first critical appraisals of the Critique, the so-called Garve-Feder review of 1782
idealists, and among them especially Berkeley, saw space as a merely empirical representation, a representation which, just like the appearances in space together with all of the determinations of space, would be known to us only by means of experience or perception; I show on the contrary, first, that space (and time too, to which Berkeley gave no attention), along with all its determinations, can be cognized by us a priori, for space, as well as time, inheres in us before all perception or experience as a pure form of our sensibility and makes possible all intuition from sensibility, and therefore all appearances
Kant admits that one cannot “blame” Berkeley for falling into a radical version of idealism in an attempt to avoid the “absurdities” of transcendental realism, absurdities into which Kant takes the Newtonians to have fallen (B70-1)—these are the very absurdities discussed above in the section on Kant's criticisms of Newton.
From Kant's point of view, Berkeley correctly avoids transcendental realism, but does so by falsely claiming that space is dependent on empirical intuition.
04 Aug 11
Transcendental idealism is a doctrine founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. Kant's doctrine maintains that human experience of things is similar to the way they appear to us — implying a fundamentally subject-based component, rather than being an activity that directly (and therefore without any obvious causal link) comprehends the things as they are in and of themselves. Leibniz, had decided that space and time were not things, but only the relations among things.
Newton, maintained that space and time were real things or substances.
Kant was aware of problems with both of these positions. He had been influenced by the physics of Newton and understood that there is a physical chain of interactions between things perceived and the one who perceives them.
However, an important function of mind is to structure incoming data and to process it in ways that make it other than a simple mapping of outside data.[1] Kant argues, essentially, that incoming data must be organized into a form that human minds can process.
The mind imposes structures on incoming data. In the case of the rope perceived to be a snake, the initial structuring must be abandoned. The snake disappears from consciousness and is replaced by a rope.
04 Aug 11
A posteriori knowledge is dependant on experience or empirical evidence
A posteriori predication involves a here-and-now, a space and time.
The concept belongs properly to the domain of essence (a priori). As a judgement of essence the predicate is contained in the concept. “Bodies are extended” (5) is analytic judgement because the concept of “body” cannot be thought without the concept of “extension.”
Extension inheres in the concept of the body through inclusion.
Concepts, or judgements of essence, are analytic conditions of possible experience. Existence, the sensible a posteriori, on the other hand, is essentially synthetic
An a posteriori judgement links or combines two heterogeneous concepts: A is B. “The Rose is Red” (6).
For Leibniz, space and time are attributable concepts while for Kant space and time are irreducible to the concept.
consider Kant’s example for a priori synthetic judgements
the proof that the sum of the angles in a triangle is equal to 180 degrees. The proof is essentially Pythagorean
Theorum: If ABC is a triangle, then <ABC + <BCA + <CAB = 180°
Proof:
Extend line a through points A nd B.
Draw line b through point C such that it is parallel to line a.
Define arbitrary points A’ and B’ on line b.
Sinces lines a amd b are parallel, <BAC = <B’CA and <ABC = <BCA’
Therefore, <B’CA + <ACB +<BCA’ = 180°
Thus, <ABC + <BCA +<CAB = 180°
As the concept of the triangle is defined as “three straight lines enclosing a space,” the demonstration that the sum of its angles being equal to 180 degrees cannot belong to the concept of the triangle. Why? Because the geometrical operations involved in the demonstration (tracing of two parallel lines and determination of exterior points (A’ and B’)) are not contained in the concept of the triangle itself. The parallel is a concept exterior to the triangle.
Therefore, for Kant, the proof is a synthetic judgement, but a very peculiar form of synthetic judgement: a universal and necessary form of judgement. In other words, an a priori synthetic judgement - a universal judgement which is determined in time and space.
The a priori synthetic judgement is a synthetic judgement which does not depend on the contingency of experience. Two or more concepts may be linked, and form necessary relations with one another from the “moment that there are rules of production.” In the case of the sum of the angles of the triangle, the concept of the triangle and the concept of the parallel are synthetically welded together according to a rule of production, which is essentially a determination of space and time.
The rule of production is the schemata, the scheme.
What is important is that the schemata is not an attribute.
Deleuze: “the straight line is the shortest path between two points”
Epicurean notion of the clinamen (the minimum angle between a straight line and curve which constitues the curvature of the deviation of the movement of an atom)
straight line
The act of tracing the tangent to the curve
curve
is the schemata, or rule of production.
“Shortest” is not an act of attribution, it is a relation, or rule of production.
As Deleuze himself put it: “a concept, at best, will give you the beat or the tempo...which is to say a homogeneous beat, but rhythmicity is something entirely different.”
the force of gravity still declines as the square of the distance
Both space and time and our conceptual principles and processes pre-structure our experience.
For something to become an object of knowledge, it must be experienced, and experience is structured by our minds—both space and time being the forms of our intuition
Since one experiences it as it manifests itself in time, which Kant proposes is a subjective form of perception, one can know it only indirectly: as object, rather than subject. It is the empirical ego that distinguishes one person from another providing each with a definite character Kant held that there are two kinds of knowledge: sensible (sensual) and logical. Sensible knowledge is based on sensation; logical knowledge is based on reason.
Kant distinguished between the matter and the form of appearances. The matter is "that in the appearance which corresponds to sensation"
The form is "that which so determines the manifold of appearance that it allows of being ordered in certain relations"
the form of appearances — which he later identifies as space and time — is a contribution made by the faculty of sensation to cognition, rather than something that exists independently of the mind. A sensible intuitor must be affected by objects other-than-themselves in order for experience to arise. This is contrasted with an intellectual intuitor
As epistemic agents capable of cognizing our manifolds of intuition, sensible intuitors must be have certain representations at their disposal
1) They are in need of a representation of processuality [
2) they are need of a representation of external relatedness [a term that likely invokes some connotation of space
two persistant themes: A) WE are in possession of both 1) a representation of proccessuality; we call it Time, and the science of that representation is called Arithmetic: the science of the successive addition of homegenous unit to homogenous unit; and 2) WE are in possession of a representation of external relatedness; we call it Space; and the science of that representation is called Geometry
and B) there may be other sensible intuitors who possess alternative representations of processuality and external relatedness.
A consequense of this view is that spatial and temporal predicates are determinations that pertain to objects as appearances only - that is, they pertain to experience as we structure it through our modes of intuition.
What then are time and space? Are they real existences? Or, are they merely relations or determinations of things, such, however, as would equally belong to these things in themselves, though they should never become objects of intuition; or, are they such as belong only to the form of intuition, and consequently to the subjective constitution of the mind, without which these predicates of time and space could not be attached to any object?
The answer that space and time are real existences belongs to Newton. The answer that space and time are merely relations or determinations of things even when they are not being sensed belongs to Leibniz. Both answers maintain that space and time exist independently of the subject's awareness. This is exactly what Kant denies in his answer that space and time belong to the subjective constitution of the mind
the concept that two straight lines cannot enclose a space does not follow from the mere logical relations obtain between the concepts two, line, straight and space. Rather, it follows from the real relation that holds between the things that those concepts stand for.
; otherwise, we would lose the necessary and universal character of geometry.
But in this case, it was not experience that furnished the third term
thus it must then be a priori.
geometry doesn't proceed by measurements—it proceeds by demonstrations. time makes it possible to deviate from the principle of non-contradiction: indeed, it is possible to say that A and non-A are in the same spatial location if one considers them in different times, and a sufficient alteration between states were to occur
The Kantian thesis claims that in order for the subject to have any experience at all, then it must be bounded by these forms of presentations
Kant's view of space and time reject both the space and time of Aristotelian physics and the space and time of Newtonian physics.
Kant's distinction between the appearance and the thing-in-itself is not intended to imply that nothing knowable exists apart from consciousness, as with subjective idealism. Rather, it declares that knowledge is limited to phenomena as objects of a sensible intuition.
defining his position as a transcendental idealism in accord with empirical realism
The idea of a transcendental logic is that of a logic which gives an account of the origins of our knowledge as well as its relationship to objects.
This is contrasted by Kant with the idea of a general logic, which abstracts from the conditions under which our knowledge is acquired, and from any relation that knowledge has to objects. What things are in themselves, or, other than being appearances, are completely unknowable by any animal or human mind.
Kant aims to derive the twelve pure concepts of the understanding (which he also calls "categories") from the logical forms of judgment. Table of Categories has be the foundation of the system and not the Table of Judgment Forms.
Table of Categories is more fundamental, but in the order of exposition, given Kant's philosophical milieu, presenting the Table of Judgments as the foundation of the Table of categories is reasonable and justifiable.
Kant makes it clear that analytic judgments concern the logical relations among the concepts within the judgment, whereas, synthetic judgments concern the real relations between the things that the concepts stand for.
"All bachelor's are umarried" is almost universally intended as an analytic judgment.
"All dogs in my household weigh between 2 and 80 pounds," can only be reasonbly regarded as a synthetic judgment.
In Kant's view, every judgment in the Leibnizian-Wollfian system is, in principle, an analytic judgment!
Most of our concpets remain confused.
A judgents based on confused concepts would be confused analytic judgmenst.
The Table of Judgments in Kant's system, is all that a Leibnizian-Wollfian would ever need. It lays out the various modes in which concepts can stand in logical relation to each other. Monads are not in real relation to one another.
Analytic judgments concern the logical relations among concepts. The Table of Judgments, therefore, is sufficient to sum up any system of analytic judgments. Synthetic judgments concern the real relations between the things that the concepts stand for.
Real/ subject/real predicate is a pure category of the understanding. It is a concept of an object in general, based upon the logical function of subject/predicate.
"Substance," to us, means something that endures through time Yet this first abstract concept of a real subject should be abstract enough that it applies to the hypothetical "other sensible intuitor" whose mode of inner intuition is not time but some other representation of processuality
So, I will use the term real subject/real predicate.
If we abstract from the temporal connotations of substance (which are valid only for us as temporal intuitors) we have the pure category of real subject/real predicate.
In the Table of judgments we have the hypthetical judgment form, which is the relation of logical ground to logical consequent:e.g., If X is a bachelor X is unmarried.
Hume was concerned to find a justification for the use of the schematized category cause/effect.
He then sought to explain why it is illegitimately used anyway. We observe that event A precedes event B; We observe this again and again and again on many occasions. He claimed that eventually when we merely think of event A we are naturally led to think of event B. And noting that event B now seems to necessarily follow event A we mistakenly take what at best has become a psychological necessity for an objective necessity - A causes B.
Abstracting from the temporal connotations of "cause' we have the pure concept of real ground/real effect which differs from the concept of logical ground/logical effect only in regard to the thought of an object-in-general.
The thought of an object-in-general is a transcendental content that the understanding introduces to give unity to the manifold of intuition. It is not abstracted from the empirical content of experience.
logical universality and real universality; between logical particulars and real particulars; logical negation and real negation; logical possibility and real possibility; logical necessity and real necessity
Since we are in fact spatial/temporal intuitors most of our vocabulary is likely saturated with spatial and temporal connotations. Finding words that capture the distinction between the mere logical relations (judgment forms) and the real relations (categories) but which do not pre-suppose temporal connotations (as in the schematized categories) may be next to impossible
pure categories
1.Categories of Quantity
Unity
Plurality
Totality
Reality
Negation
Limitation
Inherence and Subsistence (substance and accident)
Causality and Dependence (cause and effect)
Community (reciprocity between agent and patient)
Possibility—Impossibility
Existence—Non-existence
Necessity—Contingency
categories, then, are the fundamental, primary, or native conceptions of the understanding
the understanding is never active, until sensible data are furnished as material for it to act upon
and so it may truly be said that they become known to us "only on the occasion of sensible experience.
the categories exist only in the mind
How is pure physical science, or sensible knowledge, possible?
thoughts, without the content which perception supplies, are empty
Philosophy begins with reflection on experience. The task of the philosopher is to carefully tease apart the various components of experience and assign each to its correct origin.
Thoughts of objects-in-general are what Kant means by "categories."
We do not reach the logical functions of judgment without abtracting away the reference to any object
Reference to objects is, necessarily, reference to categorial thought.
But the Table of Judgments is the natural starting point for an exposition of the system. Aristotelian syllogistic had been accepted for 2000 years
by the time Kant was writing.
Kant indicates that one principal purpose of a metaphysical deduction is to show that we are in possession of pure concepts. Since pure concepts cannot be derived from empirical experience
the concept of a cause as something through which something else (an effect) must necessarily arise are clearly pure concepts on this criteria.
A logical function of judgment can provide a "determination" of the thought of an object.
A more determinate concept of an object-in-general would be the schematized category of real subject: substance
. From the schematized category there arises a principle: Substances endure.
So only in virtue of making empirical cognition possible is it entitled to be called a pure cognition.
Only empirical intuition can provide a fully determinate judgment
The schematized category arises from the pure category by application of the pure intuition of time to the pure category.
the principle that arises from the schematized category exhibits the pure form of cognition
traditional metaphysics wished to employ the categories without reference to any even merely possible empirical intuition.
was demonstrate our possession of pure concepts of objects, (while indicating that there are twelve such concepts, based upon kant's amendations to generally accepted logic. Beyond the two which could easily be identified (cause and substance)
The right to use the concepts "cause" and "substance" (which are derived from the pure categories) has been seriously challenged by Hume and the philosophical criticisms of Locke's epistemology.
The task of the Transcendental Deduction is to defend our use or employment of these concepts.
The "object" is not presented in the empirical contents of experience; it is spontaneously thought by the understanding as a means of giving unity to the empirical manifold of inutition
The epistemic need for a "vehichle" for the represented unity of the manifold of intuition
Transcendental Apperception requires consciousness of the act unifying the manifold of intuition. And that, in turn, will require the thought of an object in general.
are conditions of all possible experience.
this ground of all experience is the self-consciousness of the experiencing subject, and the constitution of the subject is such that all thought is rule-governed in accordance with the categories. The Schematism
In order for any concept to have meaning, it must be related to sense perception. The 12 categories, or a priori concepts, are related to phenomenal appearances through schemata. Each category has a schema. It is a connection through time between the category, which is an a priori concept of the understanding, and a phenomenal a posteriori appearance. Succession is the form of sense impressions and also of the Category of causality
Therefore, time can be said to be the schema of Categories or pure concepts of the understanding.
he refutes both Descartes' problematic idealism and Berkeley's dogmatic idealism. According to Kant, in problematic idealism the existence of objects is doubtful or impossible to prove while in dogmatic idealism, the existence of space and therefore of spatial objects is impossible
Kant holds that external objects may be directly perceived and that such experience is a necessary presupposition of self-consciousness
it is not given to us to observe our own mind with any other intuition than that of inner sense
and that it is yet precisely in the mind that the secret of the source of our sensibility is located.
we, who after all know even ourselves only through inner sense and therefore as appearance
Kant introduces a whole set of new ideas called "concepts of reflection": identity/difference, agreement/opposition, inner/outer and matter/form.
These special concepts just help to make comparisons between concepts judging them either different or the same, compatible or incompatible. It is this particular action of making a judgement that Kant calls "logical reflection.
The Transcendental Dialectic shows how pure reason should not be used. According to Kant, the rational faculty is plagued with dialectic illusions as man attempts to know what can never be known
Kant introduces a new faculty, human reason, positing that it is a unifying faculty which unifies the manifold of knowledge gained by the understanding. Kant had shown in the Second Analogy that every empirical event has a cause, and thus each event is conditioned by something antecedent to it
which itself has its own condition, and so forth. Reason seeks to find an intellectual resting place which may bring the series of empirical conditions to a close, to obtain knowledge of an 'absolute totality' of conditions, thus becoming unconditioned.
Kant: a liberdade, o indivíduo e a república
Regis de Castro Andrade
A metafísica da moral, como filosofia moral pura, é dividida emduas partes. A primeira diz respeito à justiça; a segunda, à virtude.
A norma moral tem a forma de um imperativo categórico
amoralidade da ação consiste precisamente na sua universalidade segundo arazão (que implica a desejabilidade da sua universalização).
imperativocategórico:
"Aja sempre em conformidade com o princípio subjetivo, talque, para você, ele deva ao mesmo tempo transformar-se em lei universal"
O imperativo "não mentirás", por exemplo, nãodeve ser obedecido em razão das conseqüências do seu cumprimento - pode-se, aliás, imaginar situações em que seja vantajoso mentir - mas porque näo poderíamos racionalmente desejar que a mentira, e não averdade, se transformasse em norma geral de conduta
obedecer às suas próprias leis é ser livre.
Kant opõe-se explicitamente ao utilitarismo
a moral utilitarista é incompatívelcom a justiça
A liberdade, em Kant, é a liberdade de agir segundo leis.
Nos seres racionaisa causa das ações é o seu próprio arbrtrio (por oposição ao mero desejo ouinclinaçäo que nãosão objetos de escolha)
o conceito posi- tivo de liberdade; ele designa aliberdade como autonomia, oua propriedade dos seres racionaisdelegislarem para si próprios.
conceito kantiano da transição do estado de natureza àsociedade civil.
o cumprimento desses deveres pode ou não ser coativamenteexigido. No primeiro caso, trata-se de leis morais; no segundo, de normas jurídicas.
Quanto aos deveresmorais, os homens são responsáveis perante si mesmos; na esfera jurídica,são responsáveis perante os demais.
"Ageexternamente de tal maneira que o livre uso de teu arbítrio possa coexistir com a liberdade de cada um segundo uma lei universal"
A relação jurídica diz respeito, antes de mais nada, à relação externa com ooutro. Essa relação envolve dois sujeitos capazes e responsáveis, cujas pretensões sobre um objeto devem ser juridicamente coordenadas.
Não tem sentido, por exemplo, dizer quetal operação de compra e venda "foi injusta porque o preço foi muito alto".O que importa é a forma do ato jurídico
Segundo Kant, a sociedade se organiza conforme a justiça,quando, nela, cada um tem a liberdade de fazer o que quiser, contanto quenão interfira na liberdade dos demais. Kant é possivelmente o mais sólido eradical teórico do liberalismo.
o direito
realiza
a liberdade, tanto no sentido negativocomo positivo do termo.
As normas jurídicas säouniversais; elas obrigam atodos,independentemente de condições de nascimento, riqueza etc.
A coerção é parteintegrante do direito; a liberdade, paradoxalmente, requer a coerção.
Duassão as condições para o uso justo da coerção. A primeira é a seguinte: "Seum certo exercício da liberdade é um obstáculo à liberdade [de outrem]segundo as leis universais [isto é, se é injusto], então o uso da coerção para
opor-se a ele [...] é justo" (cf. MEJ, p. 35-6). A segunda decorre dauniversalidade das leis violadas: a coerção só é justaquando exercida pelavontade geral do povo unido numa sociedade civil
A distinçãokantiana entre direito privado e público ressalta a existência, no estado denatureza, deum certo tipo desociabilidade natural derivadadaracionalidade humana: "O estado de natureza não é oposto e contrastado aoestado de sociedade, mas à sociedade civil, porque no estado de natureza pode haver uma sociedade, mas não uma sociedade civil"
É necessário, portanto, pensar que, originalmente, todostêm a posse coletiva de todos os bens, e que a base legal da posseindividual é o ato da vontade coletiva que a autoriza
Tudo isso nos ensina que no estado de natureza os homens näo serelacionam apenas segundo a força de cada um. Se assim fosse, nãohaveria posse jurídica.
O estado de natureza é instável: "Não há nele um juiz comcompetência para decidir com força de lei as controvérsias sobre direitos".
Os indivíduos que serelacionam emconformidade com leispublicamente promulgadasconstituem uma sociedade civil (status civilis); vista como um todo emrelação aos membros individuais, a sociedade civil se denomina Estado
Os termos "sociedade civil" e "Estado", portanto,referem-se ao mesmo objeto, considerado de pontos de vista distintos
A transição à sociedade civil é um dever universal e objetivo, porque decorre de uma idéia a priori da razão.
Trata-se de um imperativomoral: o estado civil é a realização da idéia de liberdade tanto no sentidonegativo como positivo
o ato pelo qual se "constitui" o Estado é o contrato orig
oncebido como idéia a priori da razão: sem essa idéia, não se poderia pensar um legislador encarregado de zelar pelo bem comum, nem cidadãosque se submetem voluntariamente às leis vigentes
contrato originário não "constitui" a sociedade; ele a explica talcomo ela deve ser.
A idéia do contrato remete não à origem mas ao padrãoracional da sociedade, isto é, remete a algo fora da história
A teoria kantiana da obrigação política, vinculada à sua concepção apriorística do contrato, estabelece odever de obediência às leis vigentes, ainda que elas sejam injustas. Nisso,ele difere de Hobbes, para quem as leis do soberano são sempre justas, e por isso devem ser respeitadas, e de Locke, que admite o direito deresistência no caso de leis injustas.
A primeira
se há Estado, ele contém um princípio de ordem segundo leis, e, por pior que seja, deve ser resguardado, porque representa um progresso em direçãoao Estado ideal.
A segunda versão está na "Paz perpétua". Se os direitos do povo são violados, não há injustiça em depor o soberano. Mas se o povofracassa é punido, também não pode reclamar de injustiça.
NenhumaConstituição pode outorgar ao povo o direito à revolta, sob pena decontradizer-se a si própria.
Portanto, a revolta é ilegal.
O sucesso eventual de umarevolta apenas demonstra que a necessária suposição de que o soberanodetinha, efetivamente, o poder supremo era falsa, e a questão da justiça nãose coloca
A terceira versão do argumento encontra-seem "Sobre o ditado popular...":[A idéia do contrato originário] obriga todo legislador a considerar suas leis como podendo ter sido emanadas da vontade coletiva de todo o povo, e a presumir que todo sujeito, enquanto ele deseja ser umcidadão, contribuiu por seu votoà formação da vontadelegislativa. Tal é a pedra de toque da legitimidade de toda lei pública.
Se,com efeito, essa lei é tal que seja impossivel que todo o povo possa dar aela seu assentimento[se, por exemplo, ela decretaque uma classedeterminada de sujeitos deve ter hereditariamente o privilégio da nobreza],essa lei não é justa. Mas se for simplesmente possivel que o povo a aprove
então temos o dever de considerá-la justa
No sistema kantiano, nega-se às autoridades públicas odever e o direito de promover a felicidade, o bem-estar ou, de modo geral,os objetivos materiais da vida individual ou social. A razão disso é aseguinte: a legislação deve assentar sobre princípios universais e estáveis,ao passo que aspreferências subjetivas são variáveisde indivíduo aindivíduo e cambiantes no tempo. Além disso, a ninguém é dado o direitode prescrever a outrem a receita da sua felicidade.
Ao Estado incumbe promover o bem público; o bem público
manutenção da juridicidade das relações interpessoais.
"As leis do direito público referem-se apenas à forma jurídicada convivência entre os homens"
A autoridade pública deve prover a subsistência dos que não podem viver por seus próprios meios (porque a sua própria existênciadepende de que eles façam parte da sociedade, dela recebendo proteção ecuidado).
São características dos cidadãos aautonomia(capacidade de conduzir-se segundo seu próprio arbítrio), a igualdade perante a lei (não se diferenciam entre si quanto ao nascimento ou fortuna)e a independência (capacidade de sustentar-se a si próprios)
NenhumaConstituição, por exemplo, poderia autorizar a escravidão
A melhor forma de Estado - o Estado ideal - é a república.
NaConstituição legítima, ou republicana (a) a lei é autônoma
ada pessoa tem a posse do que é seu peremptoriamente, visto que podevaler-se da coação pública para garantir seus direitos.
O princípio daConstituição republicana é a liberdade; nela se conjugam a soberania popular (a vontade legislativa autônoma) e a soberania do indivíduo
The fundamental idea
is human autonomy.
the human understanding is the source of the general laws of nature that structure all our experience; and that human reason gives itself the moral law
Kant was paid directly by the students who attended his lectures, so he needed to teach an enormous amount and to attract many students in order to earn a living.
twenty hours per week on logic, metaphysics, and ethics, as well as mathematics, physics, and physical geography.
Kant used textbooks by
David Hume
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
develop an original argument for God's existence as a condition of the internal possibility of all things
In Negative Magnitudes Kant also argues that the morality of an action is a function of the internal forces that motivate one to act, rather than of the external (physical) actions or their consequences
anthropology (Kant's was the first such course in Germany and became very popular)
and military fortifications.
Kant distinguishes between two fundamental powers of cognition, sensibility and understanding (intelligence)
Kant therefore rejects the rationalist view that sensibility is only a confused species of intellectual cognition
he replaces this with
sensibility is distinct from understanding and brings to perception its own subjective forms of space and time
sensibility and understanding are directed at two different worlds: sensibility gives us access to the sensible world, while understanding enables us to grasp a distinct intelligible world
Kant never surrendered the views that sensibility and understanding are distinct powers of cognition, that space and time are subjective forms of human sensibility
according to which the understanding (like sensibility) supplies forms that structure our experience of the sensible world,
while the intelligible (or noumenal) world is strictly unknowable to us
Critique of Pure Reason (1787); the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), a fuller discussion of topics in moral philosophy that builds on (and in some ways revises) the Groundwork; and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), which deals with aesthetics and teleology. Kant also published a number of important essays in this period, including Idea for a Universal History With a Cosmopolitan Aim (1784) and Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786)
Kant himself continued publishing important works in the 1790's. Among these are Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), which drew a censure from the Prussian King when Kant published the book after its second essay was rejected by the censor; The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), a collection of essays inspired by Kant's troubles with the censor and dealing with the relationship between the philosophical and theological faculties of the university
Doctrine of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Kant's main works in political philosophy
metaphysics in terms of “the cognitions after which reason might strive independently of all experience,”
metaphysics for Kant concerns a priori knowledge, or knowledge whose justification does not depend on experience; and he associates a priori knowledge with reason.
The Enlightenment was a reaction to the rise and successes of modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The spectacular achievement of Newton in particular
confidence and optimism about the power of human reason to control nature and to improve human life.
One effect of this new confidence in reason was that traditional authorities were increasingly questioned.
if each of us has the capacity to figure these things out for ourselves?
Our age is the age of criticism
reason grants only to that which has been able to withstand its free and public examination
Enlightenment is about thinking for oneself
Kant also expresses the Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress.
seemed unclear whether progress would in fact ensue if reason enjoyed full sovereignty over traditional authorities
See China nowadays
mechanistic
original inspiration for the Enlightenment was
here is no room for freedom
or anything but matter in motion
This threatened the traditional view that morality requires freedom. We must be free in order to choose what is right over what is wrong, because otherwise we cannot be held responsible.
This was the main intellectual crisis of the Enlightenment.
The Critique of Pure Reason is Kant's response to this crisis
authority of reason was in question.
According to the Inaugural Dissertation, Newtonian science is true of the sensible world, to which sensibility gives us access; and the understanding grasps principles of divine and moral perfection in a distinct intelligible world, which are paradigms for measuring everything in the sensible world.
our knowledge of the intelligible world is a priori because it does not depend on sensibility, and this a priori knowledge furnishes principles for judging the sensible world because
in some way the sensible world itself conforms to or imitates the intelligible world.
Kant expressed doubts about this view.
if such intellectual representations depend on our inner activity, whence comes the agreement that they are supposed to have with objects — objects that are nevertheless not possibly produced thereby?
this question, of how the faculty of understanding achieves this conformity with the things themselves, is still left in a state of obscurity.
how is it possible for the human understanding to conform to or grasp an intelligible world? If the intelligible world is independent of our understanding
However, Kant's revolutionary position in the Critique is that we can have a priori knowledge about the general structure of the sensible world because it is not entirely independent of the human mind.
The sensible world, or the world of appearances, is constructed by the human mind from a combination of sensory matter that we receive passively and a priori forms that are supplied by our cognitive faculties.
“we can cognize of things a priori only what we ourselves have put into them”
it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects
Hence let us once try
that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them
objects, or what is the same thing, the experience in which alone they can be cognized (as given objects) conforms to those concepts
since experience itself is a kind of cognition requiring the understanding
whose rule I have to presuppose in myself before any object is given to me, hence a priori, which rule is expressed in concepts a priori, to which all objects of experience must therefore necessarily conform, and with which they must agree.
pure understanding
is limited to providing forms
now both sensibility and understanding work together to construct cognition of the sensible world
that structure our cognition of the sensible world
the a priori intuitions of sensibility and the a priori concepts of the understanding.
both require contributions from the observer to be factored into explanations of phenomena
although neither reduces phenomena to the contributions of observers alone
The way celestial phenomena appear to us on earth, according to Copernicus, is affected by both the motions of celestial bodies and the motion of the earth, which is not a stationary body around which everything else revolves.
reconciling modern science with traditional morality and religion
First
placing modern science on an a priori foundation.
the sensible world necessarily conforms to certain fundamental laws — such as that every event has a cause — because the human mind constructs it according to those laws
it would be impossible for us to experience a world in which, for example, any given event fails to have a cause.
if “we can cognize of things a priori only what we ourselves have put into them,” then we cannot have a priori knowledge about things whose existence and nature are entirely independent of the human mind, which Kant calls things in themselves
with this faculty we can never get beyond the boundaries of possible experience
rejecting knowledge about things in themselves is necessary for reconciling science with traditional morality and religion.
This is because he claims that belief in God, freedom, and immortality have a strictly moral basis
“I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith”
Restricting knowledge to appearances and relegating God and the soul to an unknowable realm of things in themselves guarantees that it is impossible to disprove claims about God and the freedom or immortality of the soul, which moral arguments may therefore justify us in believing
modern science no longer threatens the freedom required by traditional morality, because science and therefore determinism apply only to appearances
We cannot know (theoretically) that we are free, because we cannot know anything about things in themselves.
Kant replaces transcendent metaphysics with a new practical science that he calls the metaphysics of morals
the metaphysics of experience (or nature) and the metaphysics of morals, both of which depend on Kant's Copernican revolution in philosophy.
Freedom is universal in the proper sense because, unlike happiness, it can be understood in such a way that it is susceptible to specification without losing its universality. Right will be based on the form of free choice.
State action sustains the maximal amount of freedom consistent with identical freedom for all without reducing it.
principles underlying the state
The freedom of every member of the state as a human being.
His equality with every other as a subject.
The independence of every member of a commonwealth as a citizen.
Equality is not substantive but formal
this equality supports an equality of opportunity: every office or rank in the political structure must be open to all subjects without regard for any hereditary or similar restrictions.
The basic law is willed by each subject in the sense that the "will of all" or a "public will", or "general will" (Kant uses Rousseau's term) determines the basic law.
Particular laws, in contrast, are to be determined by a majority of the citizens with voting rights,
The sovereign must recognize the "original contract" as an idea of reason that forces the sovereign to "give his laws in such a way that they could have arisen from the united will of a whole people
original contract, Kant stresses, is only an idea of reason and not a historical event.
The idea of an original contract limits the sovereign as legislator. No law may be promulgated that "a whole people could not possibly give its consent to"
His first example is a law that would provide hereditary privileges to members of a certain class of subjects. This law would be unjust because it would be irrational for those who would not be members of this class to agree to accept fewer privileges than members of the class.
The possible consent is not based upon a hypothetical vote given actual preferences but is based on a rational conception of agreement given any possible empirical information.
Kant's is similar to the social contract theory of Hobbes in a few important characteristics.
The social contract is not a historical document
The social contract is a rational justification for state power, not a result of actual deal-making among individuals or between them and a government.
Hobbes bases his argument on the individual benefit for each party to the contract, whereas Kant bases his argument on Right itself, understood as freedom for all persons in general, not even just for the individual
benefit that each party to the contract obtains in his or her own freedom.
"equal rights of citizens" is inherent to the idea of Republic. A form of government whose head of state is not a monarch; "the head of state in a republic is usually a president". Democracy and Republic, are not only dissimilar but antithetical, reflecting the sharp contrast between (a) The Majority Unlimited, in a Democracy, eventually lacking any legal safeguard of the rights of The Individual and The Minority, and (b) The Majority Limited, in a Republic under a written Constitution safeguarding the rights of The Individual and The Minority. A good definition of a Republic is: a constitutionally limited government of the representative type, created by a written Constitution--adopted by the people and changeable (from its original meaning) by them only by its amendment--with its powers divided between three separate Branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. Here the term "the people" means, of course, the electorate.
To be Enlightened is to emerge from one's self-incurred minority (juvenile) status to a mature ability to think for oneself.
"What is Enlightenment" distinguishes between the public and private uses of reason
For example, a member of the clergy (who in Kant's Prussia were employees of the state) is required to espouse the official doctrine in his sermons and teachings. The public use of reason is the use an individual makes of his reason as a scholar reaching the public world of readers. For example, the same member of the clergy could, as a scholar, explain what he takes to be shortcomings in that very same doctrine.
Kant classifies governments in two dimensions
The first is the "form of sovereignty", concerning who rules, and here Kant identifies the traditional three forms: either rule by one person, rule by a small group of people, or rule by all people.
The second is the "form of government" concerning how those people rule, and here Kant offers a variation on the traditional good/bad dichotomy: either republican or despotic.
By "republican," Kant means "separation of the executive power (the government) from the legislative power".
Republics require representation in order to ensure that the executive power only enforces the public will
But a republic is compatible with a single individual acting as legislator provided that others act as executives; for example, a king would issue laws in the name of the people's will but the king's ministers would enforce those laws.
Whether elected or unelected, the moral person who holds legislative power is representative of the people united as a whole, and is thus sovereign.
The people themselves are sovereign only when they are electing a new set of representatives.
"It is, I admit, somewhat difficult to determine what is required in order to be able to claim the rank of a human being who is his own master."
Kant also leaves women out of the voting populations for what he calls "natural" reasons but does not specify.
The book "Doctrine of Right" begins with a discussion of property
Property is defined as that "with which I am so connected that another's use of it without my consent would wrong me"
Kant calls this "physical" or "sensible" possession.
Rightful possession must be possession of an object without holding it so that another's use of the object without my consent harms me even when I am not physically affected and not currently using the object. Kant calls this "intelligible possession".
His proof that there must be this intelligible possession and not merely physical possession turns on the application of human choice
Rightful possession would be the right to make use of such an object.
So all objects within human capacity for use must be subject to rightful or intelligible possession.
Intelligible possession, then, is required by right in order for free beings to be able to realize their freedom by using objects for their freely chosen purposes. This conclusion entails the existence of private property but not any particular distribution of private property.
Kant further worries that any unilateral declaration by one person that an object belongs to him alone would infringe on the freedom of others
The only way that intelligible possession is possible without violating the principle of right is when each person agrees to obligate mutually all others to recognize each individual's intelligible possessions.
Since no individual will can
this mutual obligation is possible only
enforce such a law
in a civil condition
The state itself obligates all citizens to respect the property of other citizens.
Without a state to enforce these property rights, they are impossible.
Prior to a social contract the only manner in which human beings can control things is through empirical possession
enter into a social condition in order to defend their own and everyone's property rights. Only in such a society can persons exercise their freedom
Hence a social contract is the rational justification of the state because state power is necessary for each individual to be guaranteed access to some property in order to realize their freedom.
property as the basis of a social contract explains why individuals are in fact rationally required to enter into a social contract.
where does the original assignment of property to individuals occur?
By "mixing" one's labor with an object in the commons, one comes to have property in the object. Kant objects to Locke's theory of property on the grounds that it makes property a relation between a person and a thing rather than between the wills of several persons
Provisional property is initial physical appropriation of objects with the intention of making them rightful property in a state
Property is of three types for Kant
First is the right to a thing, to corporeal objects in space.
land.
The second is the right against a person, the right to coerce that person to perform an action. This is contract right.
The third is the "right to a person akin to a right to a thing"
, the most controversial of Kant's categories in which he includes spouses, children, and servants.
The very idea of a right to rebel against the government is incoherent
Any state embodies the general legislative will better than no state.
People who argue for a right to revolution, Kant claims, misunderstand the nature of a social contract.
Kant mentions that citizens are obligated to obey the sovereign "in whatever does not conflict with inner morality" (6:371). He does not elaborate on the term "inner morality".
Nor does Kant always reject the actions of revolutionaries. If a revolution is successful, citizens have as much obligation to obey the new regime.
Since the new regime is in fact a state authority, it now possesses the right to rule.
Kant argues that progress in the long run will come about in part through violent and unjust actions such as wars.
The spectators endorse the revolution not because it is legitimate but because it is aimed at the creation of a civil constitution. Revolution, then, is wrong but still contributes to progress.
In fact, Kant did believe that the French Revolution was legitimate, and a look at his argument illuminates some of his complex terminology.
The state is authorized to use its coercive force to defend freedom against limitations to freedom
Retributivist theory holds not only that criminal guilt is required for punishment, but that the appropriate type and amount of punishment is also determined by the crime itself.
The retributivist theory of punishment leads to Kant's insistence on capital punishment.
Kant rejects
Marchese Cesare Beccaria, who argued that in a social contract no one would willingly give to the state power of his own life, for the preservation of that life is the fundamental reason one enters a social contract at all.
Kant complains that the German word used to describe international right, "Völkerrecht", is misleading, for it means literally the right of nations or peoples.
which would better be called "Staatenrecht", the right of states.
States must be considered to be in a state of nature relative to one another. Like individuals in the state of nature, then, they must be considered to be in a state of war with each other. Like individuals, the states are obligated to leave this state of nature to form a union under a social contract, in this case, a league of states
States are obligated to leave this state of nature among states and enter into a congress, or league, of states.
Kant recognizes that states will balk at such a surrender of their sovereign power, so accepts that the second best option, a league of states in which each state retains the right to leave, must be adopted. In a league of states, wars are replaced with negotiated settlements of differences.
To institute an international order that can genuinely bring about perpetual peace, Kant offers three "definitive articles".
The first of these is that every state shall have a republican civil constitution
In a republican constitution, the people who decide whether there will be a war are the same people who would pay the price for the war, both in monetary terms (taxes and other financial burdens) and in flesh and blood.
The second definitive article is that each state shall participate in a a federalism of states
The third definitive article advocates a cosmopolitan right of universal hospitality
He argues that incessant wars will eventually lead rulers to recognize the benefits of peaceful negotiation.
Individuals can relate to states of which they are not members and to other individuals who are members of other states. In this they are considered "citizens of a universal state of human beings" with corresponding "rights of citizens of the world"
A citizen of one state may try to establish links with other peoples; no state is allowed to deny foreign citizens a right to travel in its land. Settlement is another matter entirely.
iolations of cosmopolitan right would make more difficult the trust and cooperation necessary for perpetual peace among states.
"Social philosophy," can be taken to mean the relationship of persons to institutions, and to each other via these institutions, that are not part of the state. Family is a clear example of a social institution that transcends the individual but has at least some elements that are not controlled by the state.
economic institutions such as businesses and markets,
religious institutions
race and gender, and endemic social problems like poverty.
Kant advocated the duty of citizens to support those in society who could not support themselves, and even gave the state the power to arrange for this help
the opposite of state of nature is not a social but the civil condition, that is, a state
It is thus not obvious how there can be any social institutions that can exist outside the civil condition, to the extent that social institutions presuppose property relations.
Another approach to the issue of social philosophy in Kant is to view it in terms of moral philosophy
Kant talks about the obligation to develop friendships and to participate in social intercourse
In these cases Kant's social philosophy is treated as an arm of his theory of virtue
His own personal views, considered sexist and racist universally today and even out of step with some of his more progressive colleagues, pervade his direct discussions of these social institutions.
Hume's method of moral philosophy is experimental and empirical; Kant emphasizes the necessity of grounding morality in a priori principles.
Hume says that reason is properly a “slave to the passions,” while Kant bases morality in his conception of a reason that is practical in itself.
brief overview of Kant
Kant places special importance on the a priori or “pure” part of moral philosophy
First
By “pure” or “a priori” moral philosophy, Kant has in mind a philosophy grounded exclusively on principles that are inherent in and revealed through the operations of reason.
, which is grounded in a posteriori principles, principles inferred through observation or experience.
with empirical moral philosophy
contrasts
Second, Kant's notion of autonomy is one of the more central, distinctive, and influential aspects of his ethics. Kant defines autonomy principally as “the property of the will by which it is a law to itself
Heteronomous wills, on the other hand, are governed by some external force or authority
nonhuman animals, for example, are heteronomous
According to Kant, only autonomous legislation can yield a categorical imperative; whereas heteronomous legislation can yield only hypothetical imperatives.
Third, Kant conceives of the human agent as having both noumenal and phenomenal aspects—or, as Kant sometimes puts it, being members of both the intelligible world and the sensible world.
Fourth, Kant believes that morality presents itself to human agents as a categorical imperative
It is an imperative because it commands and constrains us; it is a categorical imperative because it commands and constrains us absolutely
A hypothetical imperative, by contrast, expresses a command of reason, but only in relation to an end already set by the agent
universal law
“act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”
formula of the end in itself
“So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means”
Fifth, Kant believes that morality gives rise to a notion of the highest good.
Five important aspects of Hume's moral theory are the following
Hume often seems more interested in explaining morality as an existing natural phenomenon than in setting out a normative ethical theory.
Hume often compares humans with other animals, tracing the bases of human morality to features we share with them. Hume talks about morality and virtue as independent of religion and the supernatural
Second, according to Hume, moral judgments are essentially the deliverances of sentiment
We recognize moral good and evil by means of certain feelings: the calm pleasure of moral approval or the discomfiting displeasure of moral disapproval
Although Hume believes that only human beings experience moral sentiments, he believes that nonhuman animals also have sympathy, and thus share with us one of the essential foundations of morality.
he divides virtues into the categories of natural virtues (e.g., beneficence and temperance) and artificial virtues (e.g., justice and fidelity to promises).
Hume provides only a limited (though not unimportant) role to reason in ethics. The principal role that Hume gives to reason in ethics is one of helping agents see which actions and qualities are genuinely beneficial or efficacious
Reason makes inferences, but neither sets ends, nor motivates action.
Our ends depend on what we desire
which depends on what we feel (with respect to pleasure and pain).
Once feeling has established utility as one of the primary objects of morality, reason is essential to determ
ine which character traits or modes and conduct conduce to it.
Fifth, Hume takes morality to be independent of religion.
he excludes God as a moral assessor.
few things about Hume's influence on German philosophy
First, works by prominent British philosophers received much attention in Germany and Prussia in Kant's day
Second, it is hard to know exactly which works of Hume and other British moral philosophers Kant read
Third, whether direct or indirect, the influence of Hume and other moral sense theorists on Kant was profound—according to Kant himself.
Despite the appeal that sentimentalism clearly held for Kant in the 1760s, by the late 1760s it was a theme of Kant's notes and lectures that moral sense theories could not provide adequate accounts of moral obligation.
What, then, is the basis of morality?
… From what power does the principle come, and how does it run?
Kant has a lengthy list of related reasons why moral sense theories are inadequate
No empirical principles can ground moral laws, because moral laws bind all rational beings universally, necessarily, and unconditionally
Variance in moral feelings makes them an inadequate standard of good and evil
eelings cannot be the source of the supreme moral principle, because the supreme moral principle holds for all rational beings, whereas feelings differ from person to person
Indeed, if morality were grounded in feeling, it would be arbitrary
Nevertheless
Kant suggests that even if one rejects moral sense “as a principle for the judgment of moral action” one might still accept it as a theory “of the mind's incentives to morality”
Kant's later works give an important role to certain moral feelings—moral feeling, conscience, self-respect, and love of one's neighbor—as constituting subjective conditions for moral obligation
Kant develops his notion of moral feeling as
“a feeling that is produced by an intellectual ground, and … the only one that we can cognize completely a priori and the necessity of which we can have insight into”
Hume sets out his views concerning freedom of the will
liberty is simply, “a power of acting or not acting; according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may.” Every person “who is not a prisoner and in chains” has this liberty
Kant rejects Hume's view that moral and natural actions must be viewed as part of a single chain of causes, effects, and explanations
Indeed, if they were, and if we accepted natural causal laws as universal and deterministic, there could be no freedom of the sort Kant is ultimately after for his moral philosophy (i.e., autonomy)
Kant says: “There is in man a power of self-determination, independently of any coercion through sensuous impulses”
Kant's solution is to argue that freedom and determinism are not impossible to reconcile, if we posit two different points of view (standpoints): the standpoint he associates with the intelligible (or noumenal) world, according to which we are wholly independent of causal laws and instead subject to our own laws, and the standpoint he associates with the sensible (or phenomenal) world, according to which we are determined according to natural causal laws.
Kant issues the explicit caveat that he has not been able to
“establish the reality of freedom as one of the faculties which contain the cause of the appearances of our sensible world”
“to prove the possibility of freedom.”
fter explaining the negative conception of freedom as a will's ability to bring about effects in the world without itself being determined by “alien causes,” he argues that any negatively free will must also be free in the positive sense, i.e., autonomous.
Kant contrasts the negative sense of freedom (independence of sensible determination) with the positive sense (self-legislation or autonomy)
Our consciousness of our ability to do what we judge that we ought to, in spite of temptations to act otherwise, makes us conscious of our freedom
Hume is a moral anti-rationalist famous for his claim, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them”
the motivating force behind an action must come from passion.
“reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will”
Abstract (or demonstrative) reasoning, which involves a priori inferences and judgments pertaining to relations of ideas, cannot influence the will, but only assist us in our pursuit of an end we already have (e.g., if mathematical calculations would facilitate our achievement of our end).
information about cause and effect can never motivate action on its own
Simply believing that one thing causes another will not motivate action; there must be a desire, fear, or other passion
reason “can never oppose passion in the direction of the will”
The only thing that can oppose an impulse to action generated by one passion is a contrary impulse.
Hume as a precursor of contemporary cognitive science
For Hume, all the materials of thinking — perceptions — are derived either from sensation (“outward sentiment”) or from reflection (“inward sentiment”)
He divides perceptions into two categories, distinguished by their different degrees of force and vivacity. Our “more feeble” perceptions,ideas, are ultimately derived from our livelier impressions
Complex ideas are composed of simple ideas, which are fainter copies of the simple impressions from which they are ultimately derived, to which they correspond and exactly resemble.
Hume presents the Copy Principle as an empirical thesis
Hume asks us to consider “a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly well acquainted with colours of all kinds, excepting one particular shade of blue…”
the instance is so particular and singular
Hume plausibly maintains that we would first notice that there is a gap where the shade is missing from our mental ordering of the shades of blue, just as we would also easily notice when a chip was missing from the physical array.
the paint store also has a formula for mixing paint of that shade. The formula gives the proportions of the component color pigments that are needed to create paint of that exact shade.
We can't decompose the paint, once mixed, in the way that (say) we can take apart a car. In Humean terms, our idea of the shade of blue is simple, while our idea of the car is complex.
although the missing shade is now mentally mixed from two simple ideas, the result is a single shade of blue, and so should also be a simple idea
Although the missing shade has no direct antecedent in impressions, it is not totally independent of them, either.
While Hume's empiricism is usually identified with the Copy Principle, it is his use of its reverse in his account of definition that is really the most distinctive and innovative element of his system.
Hume believes that “the chief obstacle…
is the obscurity of the ideas, and ambiguity of the terms”
defining terms in terms of other terms — replicate philosophical confusions by substituting synonyms for the original and thus never break out of a narrow “definitional circle.”
To make progress, we need “to pass from words to the true and real subject of the controversy”
“a new microscope or species of optics”
Begin with a term.
Ask what idea is annexed to it.
If there is no such idea, then the term has no cognitive content
If there is an idea annexed to the term, and it is complex, break it up into the simple ideas that compose it
If the process fails at any point, the idea in question lacks cognitive content
whenever we are suspicious that a “philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is too frequent), we need but enquire,from what impression is that supposed idea derived?
bringing ideas into so clear a light
“there is a secret tie or union among particular ideas, which causes the mind to conjoin them more frequently together, and makes the one, upon its appearance, introduce the other”
eidetic atomism — a set of discrete, independent ideas
Eidetic atomism thus fails to explain how ideas are “bound together,”
Eidetic atomism is thus a prime source of the philosophical “hypotheses” Hume aims to eliminate
His introduction of these “principles of association” is the other distinctive feature of his empiricism, so distinctive that in the Abstract he advertises it as his most original contribution:
Hume identifies “three principles of connexion” or association: resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect.
Of the three, causation is the strongest:
Causation is also the only associative principle that takes us “beyond the evidence of our memory and senses.”
It establishes a link or connection between past and present experiences
Hume suggests that his identification of the principles of association is the equivalent, for the science of human nature, of Newton's discovery of the Law of Gravitation for the physical world
the “original principles” he has identified, impressions and the associative mechanisms:
Belief
To believe is in this case to feel an immediate impression of the senses, or a repetition of that impression in the memory.
lays the foundation of that reasoning, when we trace the relation of cause and effect.
“We form a kind of system” of these strong impressions of sense and memory,“
every particular of this system, joined to the present impressions, we are pleas'd to call a reality”
So although impressions are not, strictly speaking, capable of truth or falsity, the systematic character of the “universe of the imagination” gives us a means of accepting or rejecting impressions. The standard, roughly, is coherence:
We may draw inferences from the coherence of our perceptions, whether they be true or false; whether they represent nature justly, or be mere illusions of the senses.
Only ideas can represent something beyond themselves; they represent the impressions that caused them, which they copy.
Hume's “system,” however, isn't complete when “the universe of the imagination” is populated only with impressions of sense and memories. As he stated earlier, the senses and memory are only “the first acts of judgment.”
The first of these systems is the object of the memory and senses; the second of the judgment.
Causal inference, Hume maintains
my senses and memory. By means of it I paint the universe in my imagination, and fix my attention on any part of it I please.
saying that perceptions are “original existences.”
the scientist of man as being perfectly entitled to observe people seeing, hearing (etc.) things, and perfectly entitled to discriminate between perceptions that are sensations (seeing, hearing, etc., something) and those that are not.
When I wake up and hear certain familiar sounds, I come to believe that it is raining.
My expectation is representative, and capable of truth or falsity. So if I go to the window to look at my roses, and see that Charlotte is hosing off the screen on our bedroom window
then my belief misrepresented the facts, and what I believed was false.
Just as individual impressions are corrigible, the system as a whole is fallible,
calls “mitigated scepticism.”
Metaphysics tempts us to regard these answers as making claims about the ultimate nature of reality. Hume shows us how to resist that temptation. It is in this that the depth and originality of his project for the reform of philosophy consists.
Hume's project clearly involves both a negative or critical phase, the elimination of metaphysics, as well as a positive or constructive phase of developing an empirical, descriptive science of human nature.
Hume's empiricism is defined by his treatment of the science of human nature as an empirical inquiry, rooted in experience and observation
and his repudiation of any attempt to discover “ultimate original qualities” in the study of human nature.
Hume's scepticism has two aspects: the first is scepticism about the possibility of metaphysical theories, or any “hypothesis or system” that attempts to go beyond experience and observation.
The second aspect
it consists of the recognition of our cognitive limitations and proneness to cognitive errors
Politics, Criticism, History, and Religion
Hume's political essays range widely, covering not only the constitutional issues one might expect, but also venturing into what we now call economics, dealing with issues of commerce, luxury, and their implications for society.
Hume stresses that current events and concerns are best understood by tracing them historically to their origins.
accentuated by his willingness to point out the bad effects of superstition and enthusiasm on society, government, and political and social life
Hume's History of England
offers what he believes is an impartial account that looks at political institutions as historical developments
The Natural History of Religion is also a history in a sense, though it has been described as “philosophical” or “conjectural” history. It is an account of the origins and development of religious beliefs
began in the postulation, by primitive peoples, of “invisible intelligences” to account for frightening, uncontrollable natural phenomena, such as disease and earthquakes.
But polytheism eventually gives way to monotheism, when the followers of one deity hold sway over the others. Monotheism is dogmatic and intolerant; worse, it gives rise to theological systems which spread absurdity and intolerance
Intuitively, a proposition is true when its content is adequate to the situation in the world to which it refers. For example, “the sky is gray” is true if and only if the thing out there in the world called “the sky” is actually the color called “gray”
raises issues about the relationship of language to the world and what “adequacy” consists in.
The predicate is what is asserted; the subject is what the assertion is about. All true propositions, then, can be expressed by the following general form: “subject is predicate.”
Truth, according to Leibniz, is simply a proposition in which the predicate is contained in the subject
such as “Blue is a color,” which has more to do with the definition of blue than it does with the world.
in the basic logical truth “A is A,” the predicate is not just contained in the subject, it is the subject.
“Peter is ill.” Intuitively, this proposition is true only if it refers to a real world in which Peter is
Mas Leibnitz estabelece uma diferença entre a frase Pedro é doente, quer dizer é da essência de Pedro ser doente, e a frase Pedro está doente. Em inglês o verbo é o mesmo.
One must distinguish the concept of truth from pragmatic or methodological issues
For if some person were capable of completing the whole demonstration by means of which he could prove this connection of the subject (which is Caesar) with the predicate (which is his successful enterprise [winning the battle of Pharsalus, etc.]), he would then show that the future dictatorship of Caesar had its foundation in his notion or nature, that a reason can be found there why he resolved to cross the Rubicon rather than stop, and why he won rather than lost the day at Pharsalus…
Or, Caesar’s ambition and boldness explains why he decided to cross the Rubicon. So, many (at least) of the predicates that are true of a subject “hang together” as a network of explanations.
Leibniz goes further still by claiming that for every predicate that is true of a subject, there must be a set of other true predicates which constitute a sufficient reason for its being true. This he calls the principle of sufficient reason–that there must be a sufficient reason for why things are as they are and not otherwise.
Unless this were true, Leibniz argues, the universe would not make any sense, and science and philosophy both would be impossible
it would be impossible to account for a basic notion like identity unless there was a sufficient reason why Caesar, for example, with his particular properties at a given time, is identical with the Caesar who existed a week prior with such different properties
That is, working forward, one coulddeduce that Caesar will cross the Rubicon from a all the predicates that have been true of him; or, working backward, one can deduce from all those predicates true of Caesar at his death the reasons why he won the battle of Pharsalus. The “whole demonstration,” then, is the revelation of the logical structure of the network of explanations that make Caesar who he is.
… [he who completed the whole demonstration would then show] that it was rational and therefore definite that this would happen, but not that it is necessary in itself, or that the contrary implies a contradiction
It is not necessary IN ITSELF
necessarily true. This might entail that Caesar did not choose to cross the Rubicon, but that he was acting in a determined manner, like a machine.
First, Leibniz claims that Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon is not necessary in the sense that “A is A” is necessary. Because while “A is not A” is a contradiction, Caesar’s deciding not to cross the Rubicon does not imply a contradiction.
Caesar chose to cross the Rubicon for many complex reasons, but they all boil down to this: that was the kind of individual Caesar was.
4. Substance, Briefly
For the moment, simply observe that for humans (though not for God), complete concepts are always concepts of existing substances–that is, of really existing things.
5. Necessary Being
The complete concept of Caesar, according to Leibniz, cannot explain itself in its entirety. Expressed ontologically, this means that Caesar himself provides no explanation of why Caesar should have existed at all–Caesar is a contingent being.
God, according to Leibniz, is the necessary being which constitutes the sufficient explanation of the totality of contingent things
God could not create a universe in which there are both more sheep than cows and more cows than sheep. God could choose a universe in which there is the greatest possible quantity of pizza, or in which everything is purple, and so on. However, according to Leibniz, God chooses the universe that is the most perfect. This principle of perfection
There may be a difficult theological implication here: must God be thought of as constrained, first by the concept of perfection, and then by the systemic nature of his creation?
6. Problems of Freedom, Sin, and Evil
It seems that what one means by “freedom” is that the outcome is not predictable, as opposed to, for example, the way in which the operation of a washing machine or the addition of two numbers is predictable.
compatibilism
Truths of Essence
These come in two varieties:
Primary/original truth: the law of non-contradiction, for example.
Eternal, metaphysical, or geometrical truths: the laws of arithmetic or geometry, for example, which Leibniz claims can be reduced by a finite process of argumentation and substitution of definitions to primary truth. These are valid in all possible universes.
Truths of Existence, of Fact, or of Hypothesis
conception of human free will:
(i) Freedom as “unpredictability” might be taken to mean freedom as an act uncaused.
(ii) A necessary ignorance of the future is practically, perhaps even logically, equivalent to freedom.
(iii) A famous scholastic debate concerned the so-called “Sloth Syllogism.” If everything is fated, the argument goes, then whatever action one “does” will or will not happen whether or not one wills it, therefore one need not will anything at all.
(iv) What many philosophers mean by “contingent” is that an individual predicate “could have been different,” and everything else the same. For Leibniz, this is impossible. To change one predicate means to alter the whole complete concept, the substance, and with it the whole universe.
7. Space, Time, and Indiscernibles
a. Against the Absolute Theory Newton, and after him Clarke, argued that space and time must be absolute (that is, fixed background constants) and in some sense really existent substances in their own right (at least, this was Leibniz’s reading of Newton).
For the water rising against the sides of the bucket can be understood if the water is moving within a stationary universe, but makes no sense if the water is stationary and the universe is spinning. Such curved acceleration requires the postulation of absolute space which makes possible fixed and unique frames of reference.
Leibniz’s most famous arguments for his theory of space and time
the principle of the identity of indiscernibles
if “two” things are alike in every respect, then they are the same object, and not two things at all.
b. The Relational Theory
For Leibniz, the location of an object is not a property of an independent space, but a property of the located object itself (and also of every other object relative to it)
That is, if the leaf were located elsewhere, it would be a different leaf. A change of location is a change in the object itself, since spatial properties are intrinsic (similarly with location in time).
First, there is no absolute location in either space or time; location is always the situation of an object or event relative to other objects and events.
Second, space and time are not in themselves real (that is, not substances). Space and time are, rather, ideal.
It is sometimes convenient to think of space and time as something “out there,” over and above the entities and their relations to each other, but this convenience must not be confused with reality. Space is nothing but the order of co-existent objects; time nothing but the order of successive events. This is usually called a relational theory of space and time.
Take the analogy of a virtual reality computer program. What one sees on the screen (or in a specially designed virtual reality headset) is the illusion of space and time. Within the computer’s memory are just numbers (and ultimately mere binary information) linked together. These numbers describe in an essentially non-spatial and temporal way a virtual space and time, within which things can “exist,” “move” and “do things.”
This, however, raises a serious logical problem for Leibniz. Recall Leibniz’s theory of truth as the containedness of a predicate in a subject. This seemed acceptable, perhaps, for propositions such as “Caesar crossed the Rubicon” or “Peter is ill.” But what about “This leaf is to the left of that leaf?
The latter proposition involves not one subject, but three (the two leaves, and whatever is occupying the point-of-view from which the one is “to the left”)
But can all relations be so reduced, at least without radically deforming their sense?
Leibniz thinks that one simply needs to provide a rule for the reduction of relations.
For linear motion the virtual relation is reducible to either or both the object and the universe around it. For non-linear motion, one must posit a rule such that the relation is not symmetrically reducible to either of the subjects (bucket, or universe around it).
Rather, non-linear motion is assigned only when, and precisely to the extent that, the one subject shows the effects of the motion. That is, the motion is a property of the water, if the water shows the effects
That is, the motion is a property of the water, if the water shows the effects
comparar com o movimento forçado do vinho no copo
His theory of monads is meant to be a superior alternative to the theory of atoms that was becoming popular in natural philosophy at the time. Leibniz has many reasons for distinguishing monads from atoms.
monads are non-extended (recall that space is an illusion on Leibniz’s view).
a. Monads and Complete Concepts
a substance (that is, monad) is that reality which the complete concept represents
Thus, just like space and time, cause and effect is a “well-founded” illusion. According to Leibniz, causation is to be account for by saying that one thing, A, causes another, B, when the virtual relation between them is more clearly and simply expressed in A than in B. But metaphysically, Leibniz argues, it makes no difference which way around the relation is understood, because the relation itself is not real.
Consider the common analogy of two clocks. The two clocks are on different sides of a room and both keep good time (that is, they tell the same time). Now, someone who didn’t know how clocks work might suspect that one was the master clock and it caused the other clock to always follow it.
another person who knew about clocks would explain that the two clocks have no influence one on the other, but rather they have a common cause (for example, in the last person to set and wind them)
Since then, they have been independently running in sync with one another, not causing each other.
in monitoring a nation’s economy, it is sometimes convenient to speak of a retail price index, which is a way of keeping track of the average change in the prices of millions of items. But there is nothing for sale anywhere which costs just that amount. As a measure it works well, provided one does not take it literally. Science, in order to be possible for finite minds, involves that kind of simplification or “abbreviation
where one is conscious of some perception, it will be of a blurred composite perception. Leibniz’s analogy is of the roar of the waves of the beach: the seemingly singular sound of which one is conscious is in fact made up of a vast number of individual sounds of which one is not conscious–droplets of water smacking into one another.
First and foremost, this relates to one of Leibniz’s main general principles, the principle of continuity
Leibniz claims, “never makes leaps”
Second, little perceptions explain the acquisition of innumerable minor habits and customs
Finally, Leibniz’s idea of little perceptions gives a phenomenal (rather than metaphysical) account for the impossibility of real indiscernibles: there will always be differences in the petite perceptions of otherwise very similar monads.
A coffee cup, for example, is made of many monads (an infinite number, actually). In everyday life, one tends to call it a single thing only because the monads all act together.
One’s soul, however, and the soul of every other living thing, is a single monad which “controls” a composite body.
An innate idea is any idea which is intrinsic to the mind rather than arriving in some way from outside it. During this period in philosophy, innate ideas tended to be opposed to the thorough-going empiricism of Locke.
