Mao and other Marxist-Leninists, and especially those under the balloon term of cultural relativists hammer on the futility of metaphysical thinking, but Kant seems to be the foundation of modern cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Does this mean there are a priori judgments that can be made about reality, or is such a question even considered worthwhile today? Are there any assessments that can be made about human thought and our ability to understand and interact with reality that can be made using metaphysical thinking? ie, that something is true because it is necessary (apodeictic truth), or that space and time are objective, etc.? Where is contemporary metaphysics going in the face of the onslaught from subjectivism and moral/cultural relativism?

It's highly unlikely that "modern cognitive science" owns much of anything to Kant. Their methods are empirical, not based on apriori methodology.

Also, you assume that a metaphysical position can only be justified through apriori methods. If that were so, then I'd have to say there's not much hope for any form of metaphysics. But it's in fact possible to justify metaphysical views through empirical methods. See John Post's little book "Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction".

Paradoxically, Kant attempt aided more the destruction of metaphysics than its construction. hye wanted to dispell with "silly metaphysics" in order to start with sober inquiry, but after he did this nothing esle was actually left.

I agree with you here. I was told last week by a metaphysician/epistemologist that it was the case that Kant is the "Grand daddy" of modern neuroscience. I was skeptical. Hence, the post. What does our inability to come up with working formulas for human thought say about the nature of thought? It seems to me that this is one to chalk up with the biological/evolutionary interpretation of thought, ie. thought/language as a very highly advanced adaptive mechanism. I'll assert that I don't agree with a priori notions of thought (ideas like apodeictic truth and abstact categories like "the Understanding" or "conceptions" & categorical imperatives, etc.) I will surely check out the book you recommended. Thanks for your thoughts.

Isn't this what Heidegger tries to do in works like Being and Time? It would seem to me that any empirical analysis of "thought"(whatever that is) would outweight a priori asserions, because of the fact that they are verified by experience. How can you contest research done on the computation of neurons with (absurd) notions compiled through "necessity" or based upon assumptions that are not necessarily true or verifiable? It seems to me that this would be a contradiction of methods.


I've heard this is the case. In undoing the mistakes of past metaphysicians, he in essence pulled out the rug from under metaphysics as a legitimate science. Plus, much of his observations--particularly the Transcendental Logic in the Critique of Pure Reason-- has been outmoded by modern theories. Who is to say there is an absolute science of thought? It would seem to me that as thought and human beings evolve, what constitutes a "thought" shifts and changes. For instance, the Egyptians and Greeks used to think that the soul and mind were in the heart, and that has been disproven through modern physiology and anatomy (biology). Seems like a failed project from the outset.

I have outlined why any future metaphysics is impossible, here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/self-t1058...53#post1408653

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...0&postcount=20

Thanks, Rosa. I find your posts insightful and intelligent. I lower my hat to you. What do you do professionally that allows you so much time to read and write, if you don't mind me asking?

Those posts are extracts from essays at my site, and I have been writing those essays since July 1998.

I do not have a profession; I am now an ordinary worker. However, I was a part-time university Philosophy lecturer in the 1980s, for a while.

You say in your other post "Language is not a container." What do you mean by this? How can you say what language is not? What if I were to say "Language is a shoe", or conversely, "language is not a shoe", or anything else. How could I prove that this is the case without resorting to a priori arguments?

The sentence "Tony Blair has a copy of Das Kapital" is valid because I know who Tony blair is, I know what Das Kapital is, and I know what to have x is. Whether this says anything about anything actually existing is another matter, the point is that I understand the proposition itself. As Bertrand Russell argues, Now, in order not to immediately dismiss this claim, it seems to me that we have to have a working definition of to know, and this gets us back to the primary problem of the Theaetetus: what is it to know? And to answer this is to solve the mind/matter riddle--whether there is an objective world for us to know at all, and what that world constitutes, ie. is it an idea or derivation of the mind, or does it hold some objective status outside the mind? How can we have true and proper knowledge of anything that exists outside the mind?

I have more questions but I don't have much time.

Long live the revolution.

GB:

The point of that comment is to remind readers to distrust a certain metaphor (or as Wittgenstein used to put it "To free oneself from a certain picture"), that is, that language dictates to us what it means, that there is an a priori structure to language which tells us how to use it.

It's not a case of proving anything, it is more one of knowing how to use language and seeing that this metaphor is inappropriate.

Well, a sentence cannot be valid, but an argument can. And the point of my argument was to highlight the difference between empirical propositions and metaphysical ones.

For example, if someone thought language was a shoe, then that would reveal they had some odd ideas about shoes, or that they did not know how to use this word.

However, why we hold certain empirical propositions true was of no concern to me in that essay -- it's a separate issue.

And I reject this dichotomy of Russell's:

But we can debate that another time.

You will, however note that Russell asserts several a priori 'truths' here dogmatically.

I think it's more important to see how we actually use the verb 'to know' than it is to listen to Plato tell us how we must use it.

And, there is no mind/matter riddle; this is just another confusion -- another pseudo-problem -- based on the systematic misuse of language we have inherited from Descartes and the Christians.

These patterns of thought have dominated the 'west' since ancient Greek times, as Marx noted: "The ruling ideas are always those of the ruling class".

Here is how I explained this in an earlier thread on why dialectical materialism is a world view:

Hence, the fondness for a priori dogmatics among ruling-class hacks (like Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Hegel...) and Dialectical Marxists alike.

Sounds alot like that Bob Dylan lyric: "20 years of schooling and they put you on the day shift." I can sympathize.

Great song...!

re: empirical basis for metaphysics:

It's impossible to say. Heidegger is impenetrable, in my opinion. I'm generally suspicious of his entire orientation to constant neologisms and obscure expressions. It makes it hard to figure out what would make his sentences true.

The best thing to read on Heidegger is this:

Paul Edwards (2004), Heidegger's Confusions (Prometheus Books).

Rosa you have quite clearly not studied enough philosophy to give an informed explanation of Dialectical Materialism. First, Dialectics was established by finding the flaws in traditional/absolutist logic and positivism:

From an Introduction to Soviet Psychology.

Next it was discovered no system of thought can escape contradictions:

Next Hegel admitted the contradictions as real, and not just illusions that we will one day see past:

Next Marx/Engels (mostly Engels) showed that materialism was superior to idealism because it is more coherent. You do not have an idealistic theory of medicine or gravity. [/quote]



Dialectical Materialism was thus established by a series of arguments within philosophy itself, it was not just presented ex nihilo. All points of the philosophy can be justified with logical argument. It is not a matter of faith.


If you believe:


1- There are real contradictions. i.e. contradictory thoughts, opposing forces.



2- Reality is material.


You are a Dialectical Materialist.


For more extensive arguments I suggest reading Christopher Caudwell's "Reality: A Study in Bourgeoisie Philosophy" available online. I will share some excerpts:


Note that Caudwell accepted General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, as both true, while they were still controversial and predicted that they would not be united into a unified theory for some time.



Last, you note Marx/Engels were not working class (the founders of Dialectical Materialism were not working class)- that makes sense. You would expect a more educated person with more resources and a liberal education in philosophy to develop Dialectical Materialism. The point of the left is to make it so there is no working class- not to romanticize the working class.


I would not take the statement of a fast food worker over a physicist, or biologist or psychologist in the relevant fields of expertise just because he or she was a worker. See my thread on the "Labor Theory of Value as a Prescriptive" in the "Theory" forums.

Marx made no judgments on psychology, and if he did he was probably wrong.

As for Kant's a priori knowledge, that is very different then cognitive mechanisms found in evolutionary psychology and modern day neuroscience. That is dealing more with instincts, which may be matters of prescription nor just knowledge. Likewise, you are not conscious of instincts like you are knowledge.

As for objective/subjective truth, the Dialectical response is that both exist. Ultimately the subjective exists as a material entity within an objective world. Saying everything is objective, or everything is subjective is one sided and inaccurate and ridiculous.

As for moral/cultural relativism, the idea of any weird sort of "pure" relativism is in fact anti-Marxist insofar as it implies people can be conditioned to just enjoy being slaves in a capitalist system. Or that barbaric practices like murder, rape, thievery, etc, are okay and just dismissed as cultural constructs.

Again I do not know of anywhere Marx wrote on this matter, and if he wrote anything like human behavior is 100% determined by environmental factors he is very clearly wrong. I do know he made statements about morality, implying there is a bourgeoisie and proletariat morality, and those statements may have been in error as is evident by modern day evolutionary psychology and the evidence for instinctive altruism.

I'm not to sure telling someone with a PhD in Philosophy they haven't studied enough philosophy is the best way to disagree with someone. Now I'm no Philosopher, but I'll take a crack at this.

It looks like this whole thing looks at logic before Frege. From that point on formal logic has grown significantly. So Kant, Leibniz and Hume aren't the best people to look to for information on logic. In fact, they only knew of Aristotolean Logic and nothing of anything like Predicate Logic etc.

Once again, the Logic you speak of is pre-modern logic.

None of these statements support the idea that contradictions exist everywhere.

Finally, your premise that all forms of thought can escape contradictions is in no way supported by psychology, cognative science or any other form off study.

Hegel here isn't admitting that contradictions are real. All this says is that Hegel, through pure thought alone came up with his dialectic. No scientific analysis, just sitting on his ass and thinking.

None of what you wrote above supports this, other than that it came out of philosophical arguementation. You have yet to show that logic supports dialectical materialism.

I don't believe the first. Guess I'm not a Dialectical Materialist

Well this just reads like a whole bunch of nonsense to me. It would seem that it assumes that everything is ever changing, without having ever measured everything changing. There is no possible way to know that everything is constantly changing (becoming, as philosophers stupidly call changing).

Also, reality is not by definition change. In life reality is used as a word to distiguish between what we believe to be true and what we imagine. It is not used to mean change.

So what?

But their more liberal education had them learning traditional philosophy, which was done through pure thought experiments, a priori reasoning. A priori reasoning assumes the universe is dialectical without measuring how it is. Why people believe this without proof is amazing.

Does predicate logic admit to contradictions or does it primarily measure consistency? Recall Kant's entire point was that logic primarily measures consistency. To my knowledge, there is no logic yet that measures anything but consistency. That's why you can't know today's weather by means of logical deduction.

So correct me if I'm wrong, maybe I am, but let's say I am debating a creationist, and for odd reason, have decided to eschew all empirical data and instead go by pure logic. How am I supposed to win this argument exactly? Am I 100% supposed to look for a contradiction, and if I cannot find one, do I then admit the creationist is correct just because he or she has remained consistent?

Or let's say I am trying to study Big Bang Theory, or the Origin of the Universe in general, but this time instead of doing research I am going to use pure predicate logic. Tell me, without background radiation, red shift detection, or measurements of primordial elements how I am going to establish Big Bang Theory over Steady-State or a Monotheist myth.

If you can that would be amazing. It would be the first time ever someone proved real-world empirical truths with pure logic. If you cannot, which I am assuming (again correct me if I'm wrong), you will have to admit that logic is a matter of measuring consistency and Kant's argument still applies.

I do look forward to your response.

It does not admit to these so-called contradictions. Why would it? Hell, why should it?

Also, Predicate logic is one example of the vast expansion of logic in the last century.

I don't think you know what a contradiction is. Here is the dictionary definition:

–noun1.the act of contradicting; gainsaying or opposition.

2.assertion of the contrary or opposite; denial.

3.a statement or proposition that contradicts or denies another or itself and is logically incongruous.

4.direct opposition between things compared; inconsistency.

5.a contradictory act, fact, etc.






I actually said the opposite, no systems of thought can escape contradictions, primarily because perception cannot be completely reduced to cognition.

As for whether this is supported by psychology, I will not say psychologists generally take a stand on matters of philosophy. According to your reasoning psychology doesn't support any philosophy at all, even the conclusion that philosophy is meaningless or worthless.

However if you go by an actual definition of contradiction, you can note that we see material contradictions everywhere in modern psychology, particularly evolutionary psychology. Contradictions between man's instincts developed during our ancestral evolutionary environment, and their maladaptive nature in the modern era. Contradictions with respect to how our body evolved to work no more then 4 hours a day of relatively easy work, and now we must work roughly 8 hours of very stressful work. Contradictions between the sexes. Contradictions in sibling relations. Between shared and non-shared environmental influences, between primary soiciopaths, secondary sociopaths, regular people and moralists. There are all kinds of material contradictions in psychology.