Home | Community | Message Board

Edabea
Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Original Sensible Seeds Bulk Cannabis Seeds   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   North Spore North Spore Mushroom Grow Kits & Cultivation Supplies

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
InvisibleSkorpivoMusterion
Livin in theTwilight Zone...
 User Gallery

Registered: 01/30/03
Posts: 9,954
Loc: You can't spell fungus wi...
An Aristotelian Foundation for Objectivity
    #5535727 - 04/19/06 10:01 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

by H. Acstonus

Objectivity has been under attack for generations. Today, it?s under a particularly destructive assault. Postmodernists reject the very notion of objective truth, and many hold that there are separate realities-as well as truths-for separate groups based of such things a economic status, gender, race, and culture. This approach is self-contradictory, and if taken literally would amount to the complete destruction of all knowledge. It has come to the forefront because of epistemological confusion: the concept of objectivity has not been properly understood, and is consequently in danger of being abandoned. This confusion is the fault of the philosophers.

Rather than showing the other disciplines proper methods needed to acquire knowledge, philosophers for the last two hundred years have been proclaiming that knowledge is impossible. Kant, one of the most influential philosophers in history, proclaimed: ?All attempts which have hitherto been made to answer natural questions ? have always met with unavoidable contradictions, we cannot rest satisfied with ? the pure faculty of reason itself.? Once the possibility of real knowledge is rejected, only subjective or social ?reality? is left standing. The world becomes an arbitrary social construct. Truth becomes mere fiction.

Most of humankind?s past has been spent mired in supernaturalism, faith, and tradition. For brief periods, like sparks in a sea of darkness, limited progress in epistemological methodology was made. But the Enlightenment changed everything-for the first time since Ancient Greece a rational outlook on the world became widespread. Rather than being a brief spark, the Enlightenment set the world afire. It seemed that humankind would finally be free from the constraints of superstition. But the scientific outlook on the world was incomplete, and it was not long before the Enlightenment came under attacks which its advocates could not defend against. Reason as a method of achieving knowledge was not fully understood, and could not be properly defended against critical scrutiny.

As soon as it seemed the debate over science vs. faith had been won by the advocates of the Enlightenment, several thinkers dealt a series of crippling blows to the very notion of rational enquiry. Philosophical objections were leveled against science and reason by thinkers such as Hume and Kant, and these objections have yet to be answered by any prominent modern thinker. Consequently, an intellectual revolt against reason occurred during the nineteenth century, and by the twentieth century most intellectuals had abandoned the Enlightenment. One could even say that an Anti-Enlightenment Project has been under way-an intellectual assault on reason and science. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the assault continues.

Because thinkers throughout history have overwhelmingly spent their efforts on the negation of knowledge rather than the search for it, little is known about how to attain it. Millennia dominated by supernatural views of existence, with comparatively little effort spent on developing a philosophy of reason, have left our civilization with an impoverished understanding of rational inquiry.

What would a defense of objectivity, and of reason and science, consist of? Such a defense would have to do several things: it would have to answer the attacks on the validity of sense experience, ground the basic principles of logic in irrefutable first principles, formulate a proper understanding of causality, and show how abstract conceptual knowledge can correspond to an external reality. Twenty-four centuries ago the foundations for such a defense were already laid by the philosopher Aristotle, and it is from an essentially Aristotelian base that a modern attempt to refute the attacks against reason and science must be made.

Aristotle is considered, along with Plato and Kant, to be one of the three most influential thinkers in the history of western civilization. But Aristotle?s thought has never dominated western civilization in the way Plato?s used to and Kant?s does now. Lost for hundreds of years, his work was not even seriously studied by westerners until one and a half thousand years after his death, in the thirteenth century. After the re-discovery of Aristotle?s major works, Catholic theologians such as Thomas Aquinas began to incorporate certain aspects of his system into their religious views. A kind of Aristotle-by-proxy was consequently advocated by medieval scholastics.

By the renaissance, philosophers and scientists were already beginning to reject Aristotle as part of their revolt against the dogmatism of the Catholic Church. But they threw the baby out with the bathwater. What they were rejecting was not really Aristotle?s system at all, but the rationalistic fantasy of medieval scholasticism. Whereas medieval monks would argue about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, the real Aristotle collected biological specimens. Aristotle the earthly, ancient Greek thinker was never fully understood or discovered in the twenty-four centuries after his death.

Aristotle was very much a this-worldly thinker. Between Plato, Kant and Aristotle, only Aristotle concentrated on the natural world of experience. Plato was a metaphysical dualist, dividing reality into an imperfect material realm and a supposed ?higher? world of forms. Kant also divided reality in two. In his system there is a noumenal world of ?things-in-themselves? and a phenomenal world of mere ?appearance.? A proper defense of reason and science would require a complete rejection of dualism in any form-an Aristotelian approach. It would require the discovery of principles applicable to everything which is.

Aristotle grounded his first principles in what he called ?being qua being?-the very nature of reality itself. Aristotle?s world was not split in two, but a single whole. His first principles applied to all of existence. In his work Metaphysics, Aristotle says the job of the philosopher is to discover the most basic principles which are the foundation of all knowledge: ?The discussion of these truths will belong to him whose inquiry is universal ? he whose subject is existing things qua existing must be able to state the most certain principles of all things ... this is the philosopher.?

To exist, according to Aristotle, is to be something in particular, as opposed to the nothing of a contradiction: ?Evidently then there is a principle which is most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect.? This formulation is known as the principle of non-contradiction. Everything which exists is what it is, and cannot be what it is not. Modern philosophy would decry this as a tautology, but Aristotle did not lock himself inside of language-he looked outward at the world. The modern objection to tautologies is a function of Kant?s noumenal-phenomenal dichotomy, and would be dismissed out of hand by Aristotle.

According to Aristotle, the contents of a human mind are not circular linguistic constructs, but abstract formulations derived from a straight-line relationship between the subject and external reality. Thus the principle of non-contradiction is not an arbitrary linguistic convention, but the understanding of a universal attribute of existing things qua existing. Aristotle derived the method of logic from the principle of non-contradiction. Logic is the non-contradictory integration of one?s knowledge, and is therefore crucial to the foundation of a proper epistemology. In any analysis of one?s thinking logic calls a halt when a contradiction is discovered. Thus logic is a check on one?s understanding and a means of rooting out error. What is commonly called ?common sense? is merely an implicit understanding of logic.

Importantly for Aristotle, logic was a practical tool meant to be applied to the real world. The method of non-contradictory integration is to be applied to knowledge derived from sense experience. Aristotle identifies sense experience as simply a component of certain living organisms, a means by which they process information about the external world. All attacks on the validity of the senses have stemmed from the notion that because sense experience is a process, it distorts. But for Aristotle, the fact that the sensory apparatus apprehends the world via a certain process is not a disqualification, but a confirmation that the senses are valid. The sensory apparatus interacts in a necessarily predictable manner with the external world because that apparatus and the world are causally linked to each other. Thus, in whatever sensory form a particular organism is aware, that organism is aware of the external world, and its senses are valid.

Causality, at least since Hume, has been conceived of as a chain of events, each antecedent event causing the other. This conception has led to confusion. While it is true that antecedent factors play a role, a proper conception of causality would have to incorporate a wider context. In Aristotle?s view, cause and effect is rooted in the identity of acting things. What a thing is, says Aristotle, will determine what it does. An acorn can become an oak tree, and not a catfish, because that is its nature. The actions an entity can take are determined by what that entity is. On this view, when one billiard ball strikes another it sends it rolling because of the nature of the balls and their surroundings, not just antecedent events.

The incompleteness of modern science lies in the fact that it rests on a purely mechanistic, non-Aristotelian view of causation. Consequently it cannot be defended against critics such as Hume. Aristotle?s view provides a basis for a better understanding of cause and effect, and has the potential to ground science and induction in first principles. Aristotle has the potential to provide for modern science the philosophic foundations it never had.

Aristotle also has a unique understanding of abstract knowledge. For him, knowledge does not exist in a vacuum, but is built on previous knowledge and must be related to the whole of one?s understanding. Discovery is not a passive process of diaphanously absorbing truth, but an active process of identification and integration. This is why we need logic-because we need a self-correcting method of inquiry. Applied to sense data, logic becomes a powerful tool with which we can constantly check, double check, and adjust our abstract understanding accordingly. If a contradiction is discovered in one?s understanding, Aristotle?s approach calls a halt. If one?s understanding contradicts the data of sense experience, Aristotle?s approach calls a halt. One must always check one?s premises, making adjustments when new evidence contradicts them. This is the proper foundation for science, and the basis for the scientific method.

The scientific method has been criticized because, it is claimed, it can never arrive at certainty. But this objection is based on an incoherent formulation of the concept ?certainty.? The human mind is not omniscient; indeed the very notion is impossible. At any stage, the amount of knowledge a mind has available to it will be limited. This is not just an attribute of human consciousness, but of any consciousness. On the Aristotelian view a conscious organism, like any other entity, has identity. Because existing things qua existing must have a specific, delimited nature, any form of awareness must also have a specific, delimited nature. Thus any conception of certainty which demands omniscience is based on an impossible standard and should be rejected as nonsense.

The fact that science does not lead to epistemic certainty-to infallibility-is not a valid objection to its validity. Rather than being a liability, it is the very self-correcting nature of the scientific method which gives it its tremendous power. It is precisely because of the fallibility of human understanding that we need a proper epistemological methodology. And only by using a proper methodology can we discover facts.

Reality is not merely a ?construct.? What actually exists actually exists. But as long as the notion of objectivity continues to be attacked, our confidence in our ability to discover truth will be shaken. To be defended, objectivity must be properly defined and validated. What is objectivity? Metaphysically, it is the notion that facts exist independently of our understanding of them. Epistemologically, it is the notion that we can discover those facts.

Postmodernism is the result of two centuries of post-Kantian philosophy. To refute it would require a counterattack against Kant and other philosophers such as Hume. Indeed the entire modern philosophic tradition which has been derived from such thinkers must be challenged. Of the great thinkers of the past, only Aristotle provides an adequate base for such a challenge. Any modern attempt to vindicate reason, science, and objectivity must therefore start with a re-discovery of Aristotle.







--------------------
Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineRedNucleus
Causal Observer
Male User Gallery

Registered: 02/26/01
Posts: 4,103
Loc: The Seahorse Valley
Last seen: 2 years, 4 months
Re: An Aristotelian Foundation for Objectivity [Re: SkorpivoMusterion]
    #5535831 - 04/19/06 10:24 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I'm ignorant of much of anything about the others you mentioned besides Aristotle. We used to learn about his math work in junior high school. He estimated the size of the earth using shadows and angles if I remember correctly.

Could you explain those duality philosophies? I want to talk about this stuff but I'm way too ignorant about it all.

I read all that but still don't see how Aristotle is a good way to defend attacks on epistemology or objectivism.


--------------------
Namaste


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleSkorpivoMusterion
Livin in theTwilight Zone...
 User Gallery

Registered: 01/30/03
Posts: 9,954
Loc: You can't spell fungus wi...
Re: An Aristotelian Foundation for Objectivity [Re: RedNucleus]
    #5535928 - 04/19/06 10:50 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

You'll have to understand that I am on an increasingly limited time/motivation/interest impetus to delve into time-consuming, massive discussions or debates [here or anywhere else]. On the other hand, I hope others may be more accommodating to your ailing questions.

At any rate, there is nowhere for me [or others] to even begin answering your questions if you don't show what specific points of epistemology or objectivity or Aristotelianism you are having difficulty in understanding.

Although my intent was more or less to share an article that I found quite brilliant, some succinct Q & A may do.




--------------------
Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineRedNucleus
Causal Observer
Male User Gallery

Registered: 02/26/01
Posts: 4,103
Loc: The Seahorse Valley
Last seen: 2 years, 4 months
Re: An Aristotelian Foundation for Objectivity [Re: SkorpivoMusterion]
    #5535936 - 04/19/06 10:52 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Not necessary. I'm tired.


--------------------
Namaste


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleLakefingers

Registered: 08/26/05
Posts: 6,440
Loc: mumuland
Re: An Aristotelian Foundation for Objectivity [Re: SkorpivoMusterion]
    #5536481 - 04/20/06 03:40 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:
by H. Acstonus

Objectivity has been under attack for generations. Today, it?s under a particularly destructive assault. Postmodernists reject the very notion of objective truth, and many hold that there are separate realities-as well as truths-for separate groups based of such things a economic status, gender, race, and culture. This approach is self-contradictory, and if taken literally would amount to the complete destruction of all knowledge. It has come to the forefront because of epistemological confusion: the concept of objectivity has not been properly understood, and is consequently in danger of being abandoned. This confusion is the fault of the philosophers.





Generally postmodernists reject the notion of truth, but few postmodernists are relativists. As Rorty writes: Except for the occasional cooperative freshman, one cannot find anybody who says that two incompatible opinions on an important topic are equally good" (Consequences of Pragmatism 1996:166).

The sentence could be revised: "Many postmodernists reject the very notion of objective truth, for they see truth as a justified by intersubjective agreement; many postmodernists hold that the social and linguistic groups that individuals belong to decide, filter and/or
contribute to their understanding of truth and reality."

The statement "[t]his approach is self-contradictory, and if taken literally would amount to the complete destruction of all knowledge." is interesting, but has no support in the argumentation of the text; it is thrown out at the reader as an epithet towards postmodernists. This is an old debate: does the loss of objective truth categories result in loss of knowledge? No, it doesn't; the non-Western bodies of knowledge, the non-epistemological traditions, have no problems. It is only nihilists that are concerned with values (because they have none), it is only epistemologists that are concerned with objectivity (because they have none). It is only for the philosopher (scientist or thinker) working from within an epistemological or metaphysical tradition that knowledge becomes useless without objective categories.

So in that sense, on this level for the epistemologist, knowledge would be rendered meaningless; but as a whole, beyond the small reign of onto-epistemology, knowledge would be as present as it ever has been.

"It has come to the forefront because of epistemological confusion: the concept of objectivity has not been properly understood, and is consequently in danger of being abandoned. This confusion is the fault of the philosophers."
Of course, the philosopher that works within the epistemological paradigm will have rights as to define epistemology: this easily becomes a regress or an endless ad hoc defence of epistemology to which the attacker can never respond -- even if the attacker tries to use epistemological categories against the epistemologist to criticize his activity.

Once again, few of the philosophers that are often lumped in (in quite an epithetic way) as postmoderns, wish to destroy traditional epistemology. Heidegger, Gadamer, Wittgenstein and Dewey for instance, wish to make epistemology more rigorous and demonstrate it's place as an understanding, or a field of inquiry, not ultimately superior to any other. They wish only to show epistemological understanding for the limitations it ultimately has, but to overcome those limitations by freeing our relationship to it, and enabling us to understand our pre-epistemological grounds of thinking and understanding.

Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:
Rather than showing the other disciplines proper methods needed to acquire knowledge, philosophers for the last two hundred years have been proclaiming that knowledge is impossible.





This presupposes that philosophy should have an intent to give methods to acquire knowledge and that it can do that. This is the presupposition of the Platonic epistemological paradigm. I mention this to show the author's bias -- that is what he is willing to attack and what of his own bias he does not motivate nor justify.

Has the idea occurred to him that he might be wrong? That he might simply be caught in a way of thinking and researching that seems productive for that its standard (the search for objective truth) can be continued on for ever...? After all, we have no criterion to test what objective truth really is if it is ever to be found, although absolutists and realists search for it...The author is caught in a vocabulary and sees it everywhere in his intellectual desert.

Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:
Kant, one of the most influential philosophers in history, proclaimed: ?All attempts which have hitherto been made to answer natural questions ? have always met with unavoidable contradictions, we cannot rest satisfied with ? the pure faculty of reason itself.? Once the possibility of real knowledge is rejected, only subjective or social ?reality? is left standing. The world becomes an arbitrary social construct. Truth becomes mere fiction.





Kant does not reject the possibility of real knowledge. Kant rejects the possibility of pure knowledge that is not accumulated through the senses. Kant rejects the notion 'pure rationality'. What is "real knowledge" (of course, we can have idea of what the author means, but why does he choose to call it 'REAL knowledge'?--more epithets, more circular thinking/presumption about the worth of his own thinking).

For Kant truth is not mere fiction, that is what his entire philosophy is based on: building a structure to rest the new sciences upon, building a meta-structure/epistemology/metaphysic for all inquiry through an understanding of perception and a hope in the a priori.

Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:
Most of humankind?s past has been spent mired in supernaturalism, faith, and tradition. For brief periods, like sparks in a sea of darkness, limited progress in epistemological methodology was made.





What is the point of expressing this other than to confirm one's own prejudice? Of course the epistemologist will see periods of flowering epistemology as golden. Of course, this is a British thing and the dark periods are often the golden ages of other empires (of power, thought, etc).

Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:
But the Enlightenment changed everything-for the first time since Ancient Greece a rational outlook on the world became widespread. Rather than being a brief spark, the Enlightenment set the world afire. It seemed that humankind would finally be free from the constraints of superstition. But the scientific outlook on the world was incomplete, and it was not long before the Enlightenment came under attacks which its advocates could not defend against. Reason as a method of achieving knowledge was not fully understood, and could not be properly defended against critical scrutiny.




Making problems where there perhaps were none. Superstition is only a problem from the perspective of the Western epistemological tradition.

Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:
As soon as it seemed the debate over science vs. faith had been won by the advocates of the Enlightenment, several thinkers dealt a series of crippling blows to the very notion of rational inquiry. Philosophical objections were leveled against science and reason by thinkers such as Hume and Kant, and these objections have yet to be answered by any prominent modern thinker.





Develop and support this last generalization...?

Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:
Consequently, an intellectual revolt against reason occurred during the nineteenth century, and by the twentieth century most intellectuals had abandoned the Enlightenment. One could even say that an Anti-Enlightenment Project has been under way-an intellectual assault on reason and science. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the assault continues.





Yes, well if we look back to the Enlightenment we see that they abandoned scholasticism. The paragraph could read (to demonstrate the conservatism and the shortsightedness of the author) "Consequently, an intellectual revolt against logics and theology occurred during the
Sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and by the eighteenth century, most of the intellectuals had abandoned scholasticism. One could even say that an Anti-Scholasticism Project had been under way--an intellectual assault on logics, mysticism, theology and pre-humanist Europe...."

Yes, the assault continues--should we feel sorry those that are assaulted. I smell as strong ressentiment from the author. Pity him and the lost probject of objectivity!

Philosophy has degenerated so much that postmoderns can discuss the death of philosophy within philosophy; philosophy has degenerated so much that the ruling elite (the objectivists) play pity cards and discuss where to go with philosophy. Philosophy is paralyzed, dying and suffers from terrible indigestion.


Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:
Because thinkers throughout history have overwhelmingly spent their efforts on the negation of knowledge rather than the search for it, little is known about how to attain it. Millennia dominated by supernatural views of existence, with comparatively little effort spent on developing a philosophy of reason, have left our civilization with an impoverished understanding of rational inquiry.

What would a defense of objectivity, and of reason and science, consist of? Such a defense would have to do several things: it would have to answer the attacks on the validity of sense experience, ground the basic principles of logic in irrefutable first principles, formulate a proper understanding of causality, and show how abstract conceptual knowledge can correspond to an external reality. Twenty-four centuries ago the foundations for such a defense were already laid by the philosopher Aristotle, and it is from an essentially Aristotelian base that a modern attempt to refute the attacks against reason and science must be made.





This is quite a fair sounding proposal of such a defence of objectivity, reason and science. Of course, I think it is doomed to fail the test of all time and understanding, but nevertheless humans reach their zenith in their creations.


Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:

[Description of Aristotle deleted ? the description is fair enough to not criticize the smaller points]

....





A proper defense of reason and science would require a complete rejection of dualism in any form-an Aristotelian approach. It would require the discovery of principles applicable to everything which is





Yet we still have not been given any justification for why we should have this, why we would want this and why we even believe this is possible.

At this point, and after reading the other half of the essay, it is clear that the author wishes to make a vague, perhaps unfounded, polemic attack on postmodernism in the first portion of the essay; the second portion is a disjointed attempt to give inspiration for a reinvigoration of transcendent philosophy. The first portion of the essay is not motivated in any sufficient way for the skeptical reader and the second portion is not motivated in any (new and) inspiring way for the sceptically reader.

I see little difference in the author's proposition of a new Aristotelian metaphysic than what I see in the majority of English-speaking philosophy. As aforementioned, many postmoderns are not out to destroy such paradigms as a new Aristotelian paradigm, but to demonstrate it's pretheoretical understanding and its place in the conceptual schemes (social, rational, hermeneutic and linguistic).

Furthermore, the author proposes the Aristotelian paradigm as Pascal proposed one should believe in God: It is good for you, epistemologists and objectivists (hence ?Civilization and the English Speaking World?), to accept and strive for objectivity, or else we turn into barbarians, and think if we were wrong ? what we will have los--?! For those that are not convinced by Pascal's wager there should be no implication that any eventual loss of the belief in the narrative of objectivity should imply an attachment to such a system. In addition, preparing for a new metaphysical system inspired by Aristotle does not prove that anything discovered within this is ultimately objective, but rather demonstrates that if we accept a way of seeing the world, we will definitely fit our empirical observations and rationality to suit that way of thinking and being. Aristotle: ?Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.?

As you see, the author, nor any epistemologist, at this time, has any valid justification for accepting any metaphysical or epistemological paradigm ? other than it suits their bias of what philosophy and society should be like.

I propose that if one is to continue with an objectivist tradtion, or to create one that is sufficiently convincing, one must demonstrate with methods that are neither objectivist/epistemologist that that way of doing philosophy is necessary. As it stands it is not necessary and the attack it has been under for almost two hundred years has only shown that it is way of thinking built upon sand ? that is how weak and useless philosophy has become: that within its own sphere philosophy is questionining whether it should kill itself or find some reason to live.


Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:

....

Causality, at least since Hume, has been conceived of as a chain of events, each antecedent event causing the other. This conception has led to confusion. While it is true that antecedent factors play a role, a proper conception of causality would have to incorporate a wider context. In Aristotle?s view, cause and effect is rooted in the identity of acting things. What a thing is, says Aristotle, will determine what it does. An acorn can become an oak tree, and not a catfish, because that is its nature. The actions an entity can take are determined by what that entity is. On this view, when one billiard ball strikes another it sends it rolling because of the nature of the balls and their surroundings, not just antecedent events.

The incompleteness of modern science lies in the fact that it rests on a purely mechanistic, non-Aristotelian view of causation. Consequently it cannot be defended against critics such as Hume. Aristotle?s view provides a basis for a better understanding of cause and effect, and has the potential to ground science and induction in first principles. Aristotle has the potential to provide for modern science the philosophic foundations it never had.





Aristotle's concept of causality is much more radical than this. Unfortunately we have inherited the concept of causality from Roman thinking (causa in Latin) ? cause, the cause ? is only one of four forms of causality that Aristotle mentions. Already 2,000 years ago the Aristotelian understanding of causality was destroyed.

Our concept of causality today ? in philosophy, science, or with laymen ? is still a result of thinking from the Dark Ages -- a mistranslation of Aristotle. Aristotle's view of cause and effect is essentially nothing like our conception of it, and is much more complicated, phenomenological and less mechanistic.

Heidegger writes:
?But suppose that causality, for its part, is veiled in darkness with respect to what it is? Certainly for centuries we have acted as though the doctrine of the four causes had fallen from heaven as truth as clear as daylight. .... what does ?cause? really mean? .... For a long time we have been accustomed to representing cause as that which brings something about. In this connection, to bring about means to obtain results, effects. The causa efficiens, but one among the four causes [causa materialis (that material from which objects are made), causa formalis (the form material takes on in becoming an object), causa finalis (the teleology determining the form), causa efficiens (that which brings forth/creates the object) ? Lakefingers], sets the standard for all causality. This goes so far that we no longer even count the causa finalais, telic finality, as causality. Causa, casus, belongs to the verb cadere, ?to fall?,? and means that which brings it about that something falls out as a result in such and such a way. The docrine of the four causes goes back to Aristotle. But everything that later ages seek in Greek thought under the conception and rubric ?causality,? in the realm of Greek thought and for Greek thought per se has simply nothing at all to do with bring about and effecting. What we call cause [Urascahe) and the Romans calls causa is called aiton by the Greeks, that to which something else is indebted [das, was ein anderes verschuldet]. The four causes are the ways, all belonging at once to each other, of being responsible for something else? (Heidegger The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays 1977;p6-7).

Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:
Aristotle also has a unique understanding of abstract knowledge. For him, knowledge does not exist in a vacuum, but is built on previous knowledge and must be related to the whole of one?s understanding. Discovery is not a passive process of diaphanously absorbing truth, but an active process of identification and integration. This is why we need logic-because we need a self-correcting method of inquiry.

Applied to sense data, logic becomes a powerful tool with which we can constantly check, double check, and adjust our abstract understanding accordingly. If a contradiction is discovered in one?s understanding, Aristotle?s approach calls a halt. If one?s understanding contradicts the data of sense experience, Aristotle?s approach calls a halt. One must always check one?s premises, making adjustments when new evidence contradicts them. This is the proper foundation for science, and the basis for the scientific method.

The scientific method has been criticized because, it is claimed, it can never arrive at certainty. But this objection is based on an incoherent formulation of the concept ?certainty.? The human mind is not omniscient; indeed the very notion is impossible. At any stage, the amount of knowledge a mind has available to it will be limited. This is not just an attribute of human consciousness, but of any consciousness. On the Aristotelian view a conscious organism, like any other entity, has identity. Because existing things qua existing must have a specific, delimited nature, any form of awareness must also have a specific, delimited nature. Thus any conception of certainty which demands omniscience is based on an impossible standard and should be rejected as nonsense.





What makes Aristotle think that one can transcend one's whole of understanding, or at the least, one's previous knowledge, through logic?

Interestingly, Aristotle was not nearly as neurotic about objectivity ? why is this so important now?

Quote:

SkorpivoMusterion said:
The fact that science does not lead to epistemic certainty-to infallibility-is not a valid objection to its validity. Rather than being a liability, it is the very self-correcting nature of the scientific method which gives it its tremendous power. It is precisely because of the fallibility of human understanding that we need a proper epistemological methodology. And only by using a proper methodology can we discover facts.

Reality is not merely a ?construct.? What actually exists actually exists. But as long as the notion of objectivity continues to be attacked, our confidence in our ability to discover truth will be shaken. To be defended, objectivity must be properly defined and validated. What is objectivity? Metaphysically, it is the notion that facts exist independently of our understanding of them. Epistemologically, it is the notion that we can discover those facts.

Postmodernism is the result of two centuries of post-Kantian philosophy. To refute it would require a counterattack against Kant and other philosophers such as Hume. Indeed the entire modern philosophic tradition which has been derived from such thinkers must be challenged. Of the great thinkers of the past, only Aristotle provides an adequate base for such a challenge. Any modern attempt to vindicate reason, science, and objectivity must therefore start with a re-discovery of Aristotle.





Postmodernism is not nearly so. It's essential doctrine has existed within the philosophical tradition for 2,500 years. The term "postmodern(ism)" is simply a denunciation of all those thinkers, scientists, philosophers and seekers ? lovers of wisdom ? that have come to realizations that make them abstain from the temptations of objectivist thinking.

Why refute postmodernism? More of the sickness of philosophy...it is time, for the objectivist or not, to stop with the ?vindication? which is the symptom and great cause of the death of objectivity and other philosophy. To whom and by what standard is objectivity to be vindicated? -- those that belief or those that don't ? those that may vindicate are already believers (the only possible believers), they are the bureaucrats of academic philosophy.


?Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.?
- Αριστοτέλης


Edited by Lakefingers (04/20/06 04:15 AM)


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleLakefingers

Registered: 08/26/05
Posts: 6,440
Loc: mumuland
Re: An Aristotelian Foundation for Objectivity [Re: Lakefingers]
    #5539894 - 04/21/06 01:11 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Considering that this thread was started as a thoughtful attempt to renew and continue the philosophical tradition -- a rare thing around here -- I'm bumping the thread.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinefresh313
journeyman
 User Gallery

Registered: 09/01/03
Posts: 2,537
Last seen: 11 years, 11 months
Re: An Aristotelian Foundation for Objectivity [Re: Lakefingers]
    #5540315 - 04/21/06 08:20 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

"The scientific method has been criticized because, it is claimed, it can never arrive at certainty."

true , nothing is certain, the real question is, in what way do i obtain the best odds of probability. i hope noone is looking for certainty in this world anymore.

"What makes Aristotle think that one can transcend one's whole of understanding, or at the least, one's previous knowledge, through logic?"

its easy, use logic to arrive at your conclusion and integrate your conclusions, after enough time u will have re-programmed all your previous conclusions, be they right or wrong, they were probably learned in a 2nd hand fashion.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleLakefingers

Registered: 08/26/05
Posts: 6,440
Loc: mumuland
Re: An Aristotelian Foundation for Objectivity [Re: fresh313]
    #5543164 - 04/22/06 03:57 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

...nothing objective about that logic, it's just a paradigm to learn (or unlearn!)


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinefresh313
journeyman
 User Gallery

Registered: 09/01/03
Posts: 2,537
Last seen: 11 years, 11 months
Re: An Aristotelian Foundation for Objectivity [Re: Lakefingers]
    #5543188 - 04/22/06 05:40 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

theres nothing objective about anything if u want too see it that way, yes it a purely subjective world. yet we still live in it, and we have to be objective about it to survive and grow.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: Original Sensible Seeds Bulk Cannabis Seeds   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   North Spore North Spore Mushroom Grow Kits & Cultivation Supplies


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* epistemology and logic Axiom420 3,208 17 01/16/03 11:23 AM
by Axiom420
* Epistemology and the Primacy of Existence
( 1 2 3 all )
SkorpivoMusterion 3,318 48 01/30/06 07:55 PM
by blaze2
* Rationality, Objectivity and Logic
( 1 2 3 all )
SkorpivoMusterion 6,517 45 10/15/05 11:19 AM
by BlueCoyote
* Aristotle Noetical 2,396 18 10/14/07 12:19 AM
by backfromthedead
* Aristotle VoidOfsPg 1,074 9 10/20/06 07:54 PM
by shroomydan
* can you prove the existence of absolute, objective morality?
( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 all )
Anonymous 21,392 157 12/21/04 06:31 AM
by deafpanda
* More Epistemology (for the hardcore)
( 1 2 3 all )
Sclorch 4,326 43 05/16/03 02:26 PM
by Anonymous
* Are You a Platonist or an Aristotelian? Another Quiz MarkostheGnostic 4,107 12 11/16/13 11:55 PM
by MarkostheGnostic

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Middleman, DividedQuantum
1,444 topic views. 1 members, 2 guests and 3 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2023 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.031 seconds spending 0.008 seconds on 14 queries.