Is Kant relevant to the modern world?

I recently wrote a comment on Quora that addresses this very question, but I need to backtrack a couple of decades. When I studied philosophy, I wrote an essay on Kant, around the same time I wrote my essay on Christianity and Buddhism. 

Not so long ago (over Christmas) I read AC Grayling’s The History of Philosophy, which, at 580+ pages is pretty extensive and even includes brief discussions on Hindu, Chinese, Islamic and sub-Saharan African philosophy. Any treatise you read on the history of Western philosophy will include Kant as one of the giants of the discipline. Grayling’s book, in particular, provides both historical and contextual perspectives. According to Grayling, Kant brought together the two ‘opposing’ branches of analytical philosophy of his time: empiricism and idealism.

I’ve read Critique of Pure Reason (in English, obviously) and it’s as obscure in places as Kant’s reputation presumes. Someone once claimed that Kant’s lectures were very popular and a lot less intimidating than his texts. If that is true, then one regrets that he didn’t live in the age of YouTube. But his texts, and subsequent commentaries on them, are all we have, including this one you’re about to read. I will include the original bibliography, as I did with my other ‘academic’ essay.

The essay was titled: What is transcendental idealism?

Kant, I believe, made two major contributions to philosophy: that there is a limit to what we can know; and that there is a difference between what we perceive and ‘things-in-themselves’. These two ideas are naturally related but they are not synonymous. Transcendental idealism arose out of Kant’s attempt to incorporate these ideas into an overall philosophy of knowledge or epistemology. Kant is extremely difficult to follow and this is not helped when many of the essays written on Kant are just as obtuse and difficult to understand as Kant himself. However there are parts of Kant’s Critique that are relatively plain and easy to follow. It is my intention to start with these aspects and work towards an exposition on transcendental idealism.

I think it is important to note that our understanding in science and psychology has increased considerably since Kant’s time, and this must influence any modern analysis of his epistemology. For example, in Kant’s time, it was Newton’s physics that provided the paradigm for empirical knowledge and therefore a deterministic universe seemed inevitable. With the discovery of quantum mechanics and Chaos theory, this is no longer the case, and Kant’s third 'antimony' on ‘freedom’ does not have the same relevance as it did in his time. A contemporary analogy to this might be materialism as the current paradigm for consciousness, because current theories are based on our knowledge of genetics, biochemistry and neuroscience, and the limitations of that knowledge. It is quite possible that future developments may overturn materialism as a paradigm because our knowledge of consciousness today is arguably no greater than our knowledge of physics was during Newton’s time.

In view of what we’ve learnt since Kant’s time, it seems to me that he had a remarkable, indeed almost prophetic insight, yet I cannot help but also believe that his philosophy contains a fundamental flaw. The fundamental flaw is his insistence that space and time are purely psychological phenomena, or in Kant’s own terms, that space and time are apriori ‘forms’ of the mind. ‘But this space and this time, and with them all appearances, are not in themselves things; they are nothing but representations and cannot exist outside our minds.’ One of my objectives, therefore, is to provide a resolution of this flaw with aspects of his philosophy that I find sound. Ironically, I believe that time and space give us the best insight into understanding Kant’s transcendental idealism, though not in a manner that he could have foreseen.

A philosophy of knowledge naturally includes knowledge acquisition, and for Kant, this required an analysis of human cognitive abilities. I believe this is a good place to start in understanding Kant. Kant realised that there are two aspects of knowledge acquisition in humans: what we gain directly through our senses or ‘sensibilities’ and what we ‘synthesise’ into concepts through ‘pure understanding’. Kant realised that this synthesis is in effect consciousness. Kant explains how concepts can go beyond experience, which is what he calls pure understanding. This in effect is transcendental idealism, which is speculative as opposed to empirical realism which is based on experience. Another perspective to this is that most animals, we assume, can synthesise knowledge at the sensibility level, otherwise they would not be able to interact with their environment, whereas humans can synthesise knowledge at another level altogether which I believe is Kant’s transcendental level. Note that Kant is not talking about metaphysical knowledge in his reference to the transcendental, but knowledge of the object-in-itself, a concept I will return to later.

Whether Kant realised it or not, this synthesis of concepts is also the way in which we remember things in the long term - that is through association of concepts. I’m talking about knowledge type memory rather than physiological type memory which allows us to remember how to do tasks, like driving a car or playing a musical instrument. These are different types of memory which are dependent on different physiological mechanisms within the brain. The point is that this synthesising of concepts is a memory function as well as a means of understanding. It is virtually impossible to remember new knowledge unless we synthesise it into existing knowledge.

Both in the Study Guide and in Allison’s essay on The Thing in Itself, perception of colour is used as an example of knowledge gained through the senses, and in the Study Guide is contrasted with space and time, which according to Kant are apriori knowledge, and therefore independent of experience. This leads to the problem I have with Kant, because space and time are also sensed by us, despite Kant’s objections that space and time are not entities. It should be pointed out that colour is purely a psychological phenomenon. In other words, colour, unlike space and time, does not exist outside the mind. In fact colour is probably the best example for explaining the difference between what we perceive (our ‘representations’) and ‘things-in-themselves’. Colour as it is-in-itself is a wavelength of light, and so is radar and radio waves and cosmic rays. It is believed that some animals can see in ultraviolet light so that for them ultraviolet light is a colour. Colour best explains Kant’s philosophical point that appearances or representations are not the same as the phenomenon as it exists-in-itself.

So colour only exists in the mind as the result of sensory perception, as Kant himself explained. It is not that appearances or representations of objects as perceived are different entities to what exists in the real world, but that we are only aware or can only sense specific attributes of these objects. This is an important point that is not often delineated.

So in what respects are space and time different? Space and time are different because they are the manifold in which the universe exists - without space and time there would be no universe, no physical universe anyway; no universe that we could perceive in an empirical sense, therefore no empirical realism. According to Kant however, space and time are apriori ‘forms’ that we impose on the universe. There are many aspects to this issue so let’s start with sensory perception. In regard to space, we have a sense in addition to the five known ones called proprioception, discovered by Sherrington in the 1890s. This is a sense that tells us where every part of our body is in space. Oliver Sacks in his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, describes a case he called ‘The Disembodied Lady’, of a woman who lost this sense completely overnight. She was literally like a rag doll and had to learn to do even the most simple motor tasks, like sitting, anew. But of course we also sense space with our eyes, and all animals that depend on their dynamic abilities, from insects to birds, to mammals, have this ability. Bats and dolphins of course sense space with echo-location.

As for time, we have two means of sensing time. The most obvious is memory. Again Sacks describes the case of a man suffering retrograde amnesia, which in his book he called ‘The Lost Mariner’. Sacks met the man in 1975, but although he displayed above average intelligence, the man could create no new memories. In fact he was permanently stuck in 1945 when he had left the US Navy after the War. This is like being colour blind or deaf beyond a certain frequency. The other sense of time is through our eyes which capture images at a very specific rate. Without this ability we would not be able to detect motion. All photographs, to use an analogy, need time, no matter how small an increment, in order to be realised at all. Again different animals capture these images at different rates so they quite literally live at different speeds. Birds and many insects see the world in slow motion compared to us, whereas other animals like snails and sloths see it much faster. Sometimes in the event of trauma, like a car accident or an explosion, our internal clock changes its rate momentarily and we see things as if we are watching a slow motion film.

We sense space and time the same way we sense colours, sounds and smells. In fact our ability to sense space and time is a matter of life and death - just take a drive in traffic. The idea that we impose space and time on the universe is absurd unless one believes in solipsism which apparently Kant did not. For Kant time and space are apriori knowledge that is ‘given’. Our mind has an inbuilt sense of time and space, yes, but it is a necessary sense no different to our other senses so that we can interact with a world that exists in time and space. This is the distinction I make with Kant. The reason we have a sense of space and time is so the world inside our heads can match the world outside our heads, otherwise we could not do anything - we could not even walk outside our front doors. To argue otherwise, in my opinion, is disingenuous.

This contention on my part has consequences for Kant’s philosophy. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution of philosophy’ is: ‘...the assumption not that man’s knowledge must conform to objects but that objects must conform to man’s apparatus of knowing.’  I would turn this argument on its head because it is my belief that the human mind is a mirror of the physical world and not the other way round. Michio Kaku and Jennifer Thompson in their book, Beyond Einstein, describe the hypothetical experience of meeting someone from a higher dimensional universe. They explain that whilst we can perceive things in 2 dimensions of space, if we lived in a 2 dimensional space, 3 dimensions would be incomprehensible to us. If we lived in a higher dimensional universe we would think in those higher dimensions. This is why we can’t create a higher dimensional universe in our imaginations but we can express it mathematically. This I believe also gives us an insight into transcendental idealism, but I will return to this point later.

In terms of our sensibilities, Kant is correct: our ability to perceive is limited by the cognitive powers of the human mind. We cannot see colours outside a certain range of wavelength of light or hear sounds outside a specific range of frequencies. But Kant goes further than this: he realised that our cognitive reasoning ability to understand the things-in-themselves is also limited. Kant quite correctly realised that there is a trap or an illusion, that we often perceive concepts which we synthesise through our reasoning ability as being derived from experience when they are not. We have these ideas in our head which we believe to match reality, but in truth we only think we understand reality and the thing-in-itself escapes us. This is the kernel in the midst of Kant’s philosophy which is worth preserving. Our knowledge acquisition is in fact an interaction between experience (the empirical) and theory (the transcendental). Kant himself showed an insight into this interaction in A95 when he refers to the synthesis of ‘sense, imagination and apperception’. 

‘All these faculties have a transcendental (as well as an empirical) employment which concerns the form alone, and is possible apriori.’  By ‘apriori’ and ‘form’, Kant of course is referring to space and time, but he is also referring to mathematical forms, as he explains on the next page in B128. There is then, this relationship between transcendental idealism and empirical realism; a relationship that is mediated principally through mathematics.

But there is another aspect of our knowledge acquisition that Kant never touched on and relates to the thing-in-itself. We have discovered that nature takes on completely different realities at different levels which means that the thing-in-itself is almost indefinable as a single entity. To describe something we have to conceptually isolate it in our minds. For example the human body is a single entity made up of millions of other entities called cells. It is virtually impossible to conceptualise these two levels of entities simultaneously. But the human mind has a very unique ability. We can create concepts within concepts, like words within sentences, or formulas within mathematical equations, or notes within music, and realise that on different levels all these things take on different meanings. So the human mind is uniquely placed to understand the universe in which we live, because it also takes on different meanings at different levels.

This is even true regarding the number of dimensions of the universe. Michio Kaku, whom I referred to earlier, informs us that according to M theory, the universe may very well exist at one level in 11 dimensions, but at our level of everyday existence, we can only perceive the 3 dimensions of space and the 1 dimension of time. This for me is the irony of Kant’s philosophy. Relativity theory and quantum mechanics suggest that space and time are not how we perceive them to be, which makes Kant’s concept of the thing-in-itself quite a prophetic insight. However Kant would never have conceived that space and time could exist as things-in-themselves at all, because for Kant, space and time are not entities. He is right in that they are not entities in the same way that objects are, but they are the absolutely essential components for the universe to exist at all.

Some people would argue that space and time are no more than mathematical entities, because that is the only way we can express space and time, as opposed to how we experience it. From this argument it could be suggested that by using mathematics we are imposing our sense of space and time on the universe, irrespective of all the arguments I have already made concerning how we are able to sense it. But what I find significant is that mathematical laws are not man made and that nature obeys them even if we weren’t here to express them. So I would argue that transcendental idealism is mathematics, even though I’m not at all sure if Kant would concur. I think Pythagoras showed remarkable insight when he claimed that all things are numbers, even though he was talking from a religious perspective. But metaphysics aside, Pythagoras was one of the first philosophers to understand that mathematics gives us a rare and unique insight into the natural world. What would he think today? What’s more I think Pythagoras would be quite agreeable in thinking that Kant’s transcendental idealism was indeed the world of mathematics.

Bibliography

Kaku M., Hyperspace, Oxford University Press, 1994.

Kaku M. & Thompson J., Beyond Einstein, Oxford University Press, 1997.

Kant I., Smith N. (trans.), Critique of Pure Reason, Macmillan, London, 1929.

Philosophy, The History of Western, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol.25, Edition 15, 1989, pp.742-69.

Reason And Experience, Theories of Knowledge B, Reader, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia, 1989.

Reason And Experience, Theories of Knowledge B, Study Guide, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia, 1989.

Ross K., Immanuel Kant, web page http://www.friesian.com/kant.htm

Sacks, O., The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Picador, London, 1986.

Sternberg R., In Search of the Human Mind, Yale University, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1995.

Philosophy in politics

I wrote a letter to Philosophy Now (April last year) in response to an article about whether philosophy is still relevant in the modern, economically and technologically, driven world. (Yes, they published it.)

Basically, I said that philosophy is not considered of any economic value, either to governments or corporations, and that is the measure of everything these days, from education to infrastructure to charities. Yes, even charities are being privatised in my part of the world, where you can legitimately make a profit without paying taxes; why else would an overseas corporation want to ‘own’ a charity in Australia?

No, the reason I’m writing this is purely political. But, first, I need to give some context and backstory. You need to understand where this is being written in history, because that’s relevant. Donald Trump is facing an election for a second term as President of the United States (POTUS) in November this year. In his first term, he faced down an investigation into Russian meddling in his inaugural election (Nov. 2016), which saw a number of his colleagues and close associates face gaol time. And more recently, he survived an impeachment trial that centred around his alleged attempt to coerce a foreign power into investigating a political rival in exchange for military aid, which had already been approved by Congress. In my lifetime, only Richard Nixon sat at the centre of a more damaging constitutional storm whilst President. Trump has successfully weathered his storm and even come out stronger, I’d suggest.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the UK has just left the EU, after 3 years of anguish and political infighting, but with a lot of details still to be sorted (as I understand it). However, both countries show a determination to insulate themselves from the travails of the wider world. It’s called isolationism. Trump has methodically sought to exit all treaties, on the premise that they are of no benefit to the US, only its rivals. He’s yet to exit the nuclear arms treaty, but one expects he’ll seek to do that if he wins a second term.

I need to point out that I’ve come to philosophy via science and that’s relevant as well. In science, you learn how to analyse, not just data but the theories themselves, and to value evidence over everything else. There is also an historical relationship between science and philosophy (in Western culture) that goes back to the Ancient Greeks.

Politics has become increasingly partisan in recent decades and that is evident, not only in America and the UK, but also Australia. Our conservative party, called, confusingly, the Liberal party (we say ‘large L Liberal’ and ‘small l liberal’ to signify the difference), has been effectively hijacked by its most conservative adherents in the last decade, and that has deepened the political divide in this country, as it has in other parts of the world.

All over the world, you can divide political groups into so-called ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, which corresponds to liberal and conservative agendas. ‘Conservative’ means exactly what it says: to maintain the status quo and keep to traditional norms, values and customs. ‘Liberal’ generally means open to change and expanding people’s freedoms. Historical examples include the abolition of slavery and women’s right to vote. Gay marriage will one day be viewed in the exact same light. Hindsight would suggest that conservatives have found themselves on the wrong side of history.

But the Left are not immune to intransigence, nor the temptation to censor voices they disagree with. As I’ve said before, intolerance begets intolerance against itself. The partisanship we are witnessing everywhere is a direct consequence of this. Militance in religion, for example, creates militance in its opposite, which is atheism. The same is true for politics.

You’re probably asking, what has any of this to do with philosophy? Well, the split in politics is arguably symptomatic of a deeper philosophical divide. You can view everyone as a potential competitor or you can view them as a potential collaborator. I know from personal experience that people achieve a lot more when they stop working against each other. It’s common sense, but it’s the exception and not the rule in politics.

The relationship between philosophy and politics has a long history. Socrates died as a consequence of a political motion. He supposedly said, ‘I was too honest to be a politician and live.’ We don’t know the details, but we know that Socrates had proven himself courageous in battle. He’s probably one of the very few people in history who literally died for his principles.

If you go on social media, virtually everything is being perceived through a political lens. An obvious example is climate change. I keep asking myself: how did a thoroughly scientific issue become a political one? On top of which, it became one of the most divisive and partisan of our time. The answer is that it requires substantial change to address, and conservatives resist change by definition.

But here’s the thing: the strongest and most virulent argument against climate change is that it’s a ‘hoax’ – the whole thing is a conspiracy. I would put this in the same category as other conspiracy theories, like astronauts never went to the moon, the Earth is flat and the Universe is 6,000 years old. Something else they all have in common is that they are all anti-science, even though their proponents claim otherwise. I don’t find it surprising that Trump’s campaign promoted a lot of conspiracy theories, and his Presidency has been rife with purported conspiracies and hoaxes.

I have a working definition of philosophy: it’s argument augmented by analysis. Philosophy requires argument – that’s its method – and is what distinguishes it from dogma. Analysis is another method intrinsic to science. 

The issue with conspiracy theories is that they entail a wider body of people than you might expect. For example, the moon landing footage was received by a radio telescope in Australia, so they would have had to be part of the conspiracy. With climate change, you have data from organisations like NASA in the northern hemisphere and CSIRO in the southern hemisphere, not to mention Europe, South America and elsewhere. The extent of the conspiracy is mindboggling in its complexity.

But there is a deeper philosophical issue here than just trying to maintain a rational perspective in the face of conspiracy theories. We are on a path of mass extinction as a consequence of a philosophy that infinite economic growth is the only criterion for political success. The issue I have with the modern world is that we are totally dependent on science and technology to the extent that we are paradoxically unaware of that dependency; yet we ignore what science is telling us about the future of our planet.

Our long-term future is dependent on a philosophical choice. We can choose that humans are separate to nature, or that we are part of nature. And science plays a role in this, because science can’t be ignored, whichever path we choose to take.

Addendum: I’ve changed the title so it matches the content.

The confessions of a self-styled traveller in the world of ideas

Every now and then, on very rare occasions, you have a memory or a feeling that was so long ago that it feels almost foreign, like it was experienced by someone else. And, possibly it was, as I’m no longer the same person, either physically or in personality.

This particular memory was when I was a teenager and I was aflame with an idealism. It came to me, just today, while I was walking alongside a creek bed, so I’m not sure I can get it back now. It was when I believed I could pursue a career in science, and, in particular, physics. It was completely at odds with every other aspect of my life. At that time, I had very poor social skills and zero self-esteem. Looking back, it seems arrogant, but when you’re young you’re entitled to dream beyond your horizons, otherwise you don’t try.

This blog effectively demonstrates both the extent of my knowledge and the limits of my knowledge, in the half century since. I’ve been most fortunate to work with some very clever people. In fact, I’ve spent my whole working life with people cleverer than me, so I have no delusions.

I consider myself lucky to have lived a mediocre life. What do I mean by mediocre? Well, I’ve never been homeless, and I’ve never gone hungry and I’ve never been unable to pay my bills. I’m not one to take all that for granted; I think there is a good deal of luck involved in avoiding all of those pitfalls. Likewise, I believe I’m lucky not to be famous; I wouldn’t want my life under a microscope, whereby the smallest infraction of society’s rules could have me blamed and shamed on the world stage.

I’ve said previously that the people we admire most are those who seem to be able to live without a facade. I’m not one of those. My facade is that I’m clever: ever since my early childhood, I liked to spruik my knowledge in an effort to impress people, especially adults, and largely succeeded. I haven’t stopped, and this blog is arguably an extension of that impetus. But I will admit to a curiosity which was manifest from a very young age (pre high school), and that’s what keeps me engaged in the world of ideas. The internet has been most efficacious in this endeavour, though I’m also an avid reader of books and magazines, in the sciences, in particular.

But I also have a secret life in the world of fiction. And fiction is the best place to have a secret life. ELVENE is no secret, but it was written almost 2 decades ago. It was unusual in that it was ‘popular’. By popular, I don’t mean it was read by a multitude (it unequivocally wasn’t), but it was universally liked, like a ‘popular’ song. It had a dichotomous world: indigenous and futuristic. This was years before James Cameron’s Avatar, and a completely different storyline. I received accolades like, ‘I enjoyed every page’ and ‘I didn’t want it to end’ and ‘it practically played out like a movie in my head’.

ELVENE was an aberration – a one-off – but I don’t mind, seriously. My fiction has become increasingly dystopian. The advantage of sci-fi (I call mine, science-fantasy) is that you can create what-if worlds. In fact, an Australian literary scholar, Peter Nicholls, created The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and a TV doco was made of him called The What If Man.

Anyway, you can imagine isolated worlds, which evolve their own culture and government, not unlike what our world was like before sea and air travel compressed it. So one can imagine something akin to frontier territories where democracy is replaced by autocracy that can either be beneficiary or oppressive or something in between. So I have an autocracy, where the dictator limits travel both on and off his world. Where clones are exploited to become sex workers and people who live there become accustomed to this culture. In other words, it’s not that different to cultures in our past (and some might say, present). The dictator is less Adolf Hitler and more Donald Trump, though that wasn’t deliberate. Like all my characters, he takes on a life of his own and evolves in ways I don’t always anticipate. He’s not evil per se, but he knows how to manipulate people and he demands absolute loyalty, which is yet to be tested.

The thing is that you go where the story and the characters take you, and sometimes they take you into dark territory. But in the dark you look for light. “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in” (Leonard Cohen). I confess I like moral dilemmas and I feel, I’ve not only created a cognitive dissonance for one of my characters, but, possibly, for myself as a writer. (Graham Greene was the master of the moral dilemma, but he’s in another class.)

Last year I saw a play put on by my good friend, Elizabeth Bradley, The Woman in the Window, for Canberra REP. It includes a dystopian future that features sex workers as an integral part of the society. It was a surprise to see someone else addressing a similar scenario. The writer was Kiwi, Alma De Groen, and she juxtaposed history (the dissident poet, Anna Akhmatova in Stalin’s Russia) with a dystopian future Australia.

I take a risk by having female protagonists prominent in all my fiction. It’s a risk because there is a lot of controversy about so-called ‘culture appropriation’. I increase that risk by portraying relationships from my female protagonists’ perspectives. However, there is always a sense that they all exist independently of me, which one can only appreciate if you willingly enter a secret world of fiction.

Australia’s bush fires; 2019-2020

The one word that was used over and over again to describe this ongoing event over a period of 4-5 months was ‘unprecedented’. Australia is a continent unique in the world, not just because of its fauna and flora, but also because of its landscape and its weather. 

We are the second driest continent in the world (after Antarctica) and our river systems are unique. In the northern hemisphere, ‘flow ratios’ (maximum to average flows) for rivers and natural waterways are in the order of 10 to 1, but in Australia they are in the order of 100 to 1. We have the largest overflows on our dams compared to other countries. We are a country of droughts and floods, and bush fires are a part of the environment ever since I can remember in my half a century (and more) of living here.

Having said all that, in the 200 plus years since 'White European settlement’, no one had witnessed anything of this magnitude and ferocity in Australia, over this period of time and over such a large area of the country. ‘Unprecedented’ is the absolutely right word to describe this event.

Personally, I know of no one who was directly impacted by the fires. Correction: I know of one person who sustained property damage and whose business was affected, but who experienced no serious loss. I spent the Christmas, New Year period in an area directly affected called the Southern Highlands of NSW (it gets a special mention in the imbedded video) and I saw firsthand the aftermath of a very small part of this whole catastrophe. Also, I have a niece who works full time in the RFS (Rural Fire Service) in NSW. She works in logistics, and I didn’t see her this Christmas.

One has to make special mention of the people, many of whom are unpaid volunteers, we call the ‘fireys’ who risk their lives to save people and their property. I can’t watch this video without ‘tearing up’ in places. Once you start watching, you’ll find it very compelling viewing, and you’ll find it hard, if not impossible, to stop watching for its 48 min duration.

Four Corners is a renowned investigative programme in Australia that has won numerous awards for excellence in TV journalism. The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has taken the unusual step of posting this episode on YouTube the day after it went to air (3 Feb 2020). Normally, you can’t view this outside Australia, but this is far too important for the world not to see.

I hope this is a turning point in the world’s consciousness on the subject of climate change. It’s a contentious subject, even in Australia, even after this event, but I’ve expressed my views on it, on this blog, as early as a decade ago.

This post is directly relevant to my previous post, if you haven’t read it.