The Critique of a Postmodern Trope continues...

“[Hayek produced] a terrific steam hammer in order to crack a nut—and then he does not crack it.”—Piero Sraffa’s critique of Friedrich von Hayek’s book “Prices and Production,” (1932).

The Fallacy of Equivocation between the terms Doubt and Skepticism 

Hicks completely missed the different types of skepticism. Skepticism can be a methodological technique to engage in doubt for testing hypotheses, and/or skepticism can be an attitude of doubt “toward all the beliefs of man, from sense experience to religious creeds”(Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, p.19, pdf.). Hicks’ initial look at Kant suggests skepticism in the first methodological sense, but then the book equivocates to the attitudinal sense of doubt, and then later creeps over into nihilism. Hicks states, “Kant’s point was deeper, arguing that in principle any conclusion reached by any of our faculties must necessarily not be about reality. Any form of cognition because it must operate a certain way, cannot put us in contact with reality”(Loc: 1130). And he writes, “Earlier skeptics had their negative conclusions, continued to conceive of truth as correspondence to reality”(Loc: 1163). So there are philosophers that are not pure skeptics such as Descartes. But yet, Hicks points to Kant as the archetypal skeptic. Kant is not the lone skeptical “all-destroyer”(Loc: 1157).

Kant understood his transcendental criticism of speculative metaphysics as necessary to avoid falling into harmful dogmatic philosophies motivated by mere philodoxy, or in Greek ϕιλόδοξος (ϕιλό-love; δοξος- belief), meaning love of belief, or opinion. Kant argues a critical philosophy is needed to avoid dogmatism.

”It is only by criticism that metaphysicians (and, as such, theologians too) can be saved from these controversies and from the consequent perversion of their doctrines. Criticism alone can strike a blow at the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which are universally injurious—as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous to the schools, but can scarcely pass over to the public (Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant, trans., Meiklejohn, 1781, p. 21)(pdf)."

Kant was not a theist in the traditional sense, but likely a non-theist for his goal in the Critique was to make room for faith whereas Hume was a faithless atheist because natural-scientific positivism forces him there—another difference between Kant and Hume that the generic term skepticism does not acknowledge. Hicks uses the label of skepticism, and other labels, in the most generic sense such as relativism. 

The Fallacy of Equivocation between Barroom Relativism with Relationalism 

And yet another Fallacy of Equivocation is committed with the term relativism which claims all judgments have no universal validity. Hicks wrote, “Hegelian dialectical reason also differs from Enlightenment reason by implying a strong relativism, against the universality of Enlightenment reason”(Loc: 1336). Hegel is categorized by philosophy as an absolute idealist---not as a relative idealist. Hegel is best known as the philosopher that affirmed universal reason as the necessary condition for freedom.  A relative idealist believes there are many interpretations of many different realities; and like a solipsist, think only their own experiences and thoughts are real with no objective standard by which to judge any one worldview as more real than another. Absolute idealists believe in one reality because there is only one mind. This is another case of equivocation of the concept relativistic idealism with absolute idealism.

Another version of relativism is the belief there is no absolute truth since the concept of truth itself is relative to space and time. The relativist’s flawed argument is the following: “It was once true that the capital of Brazil was Rio de Janeiro, but now it is false since the capital of Brazil today is Briazilia. Therefore, truth is not absolute, but relative to time.” In another example the relativist might argue, “’The light is above John’ is a true proposition; however, in a different location Y the proposition is false; therefore, truth is not absolute, but is relative to space.” The problem with these arguments is the relationships of space and time are omitted from the propositions themselves. It is true the capital of Brazil in 1960 was Rio de Janeiro, and it will always be true. And for today’s date, it will always be true that the capital of Brazil is Briazilia. There is no contradiction here as the relativists claim. That the light was above John at location X is true regardless of what new location Y he has moved to later. There are no sane philosophers that hold to this crude version of relativism--not Kant, Hegel, and certainly not Einstein. Hicks is confusing this un-sophisticated version of epistemological relativism (Loc: 1088) with relationalism. Relationalism, however, only holds that all elements of meaning in a given situation refer to other elements of meaning in a reciprocal historical interrelationship. Relationalism is a term coined by sociologist Karl Mannheim (Ideology and Utopia, 1936, Harvest books, p. 86).

The Fallacy of Ambiguity between the terms Kantian Idealism and Berkeleian Idealism

“Can this be called idealism? It is the very opposite of it!… This doctrine of mine doesn’t destroy the existence of the thing that appears, as genuine idealism does; it merely says that we can’t through our senses know the thing as it is in itself.”—Kant, “Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics,” p.21-22(pdf.).  

Kantian Transcendental Idealism is the critical science of the logically necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. The term “transcendental” is used by Kant to mean a priori, or before experience. For example, the pure forms of sensibility are space and time which are necessary a priori conditions to have sense experience (intuition) of any object of knowledge. Berkeleian idealism holds that “to be (exist) is to be perceived.” Kant absolutely did not hold this version of idealism, but instead confirmed the thing-in-itself which cannot itself be perceived (Ibid., p.77). Kant wrote, “the unconditioned does not lie in things as we know them, or as they are given to us, but in things as they are in themselves, beyond the range of our cognition”(Critique, p.15). Hicks’ use of the term idealism to describe Kant is very misleading because he again never goes beyond their generic meaning except to equivocate. Kant wrote (italics in original text):

"...it would be an unpardonable misunderstanding—almost a deliberate one—to say that my doctrine turns all the contents of the world of the senses into pure illusion."--Kant, Prolegomena, p. 22).

Post hoc Explication is Not Refutation

“Dispute the validity of a definition, and he is completely at a loss to find another. He has formed his mind on another’s; but the imitative faculty is not the productive”--Kant in Critique, p. 466.

The best counter-argument that directly refutes Hick’s epistemology is the second edition fifteen-paged Preface to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1782) then compare it with Hick’s chapter on ”Kant the Turning Point.” You can get a free preview of Hicks’ book online. Kant’s second edition preface to the Critique is aimed precisely at critics similar to Hicks who are often referred to by Kant as metaphysical dogmatists. Kant defined dogmatism as “… the dogmatic procedure of pure reason without previous criticism of its own powers….”(Critique, p. 22). These metaphysical dogmatists include the religious thinkers of his day who were stunned by Kant’s devastating refutation of the traditional proofs of the existence of a supreme being in the Critique, “Transcendental Logic: Second Division. Transcendental Dialectic: Introduction. I. Of Transcendental Illusory Appearance,” ([A:292-294; B:349-350], Ibid., p. 209).

Post hoc explication alone is not a refutation. However, Hicks refutes himself constantly. He makes a statement and then walks it back by reciting limited summative statements of Kant’s so called radical relativistic skepticism distantly scattered throughout the book without actually integrating them into his assessment of Kant. Throughout the entire book he makes academically obligatory boilerplate acknowledgements to some of Kant’s concepts as a post hoc camouflaged repair patch job, but then jumps out in the open to interject Maoist like anti-Kantian slogans. Bare assertion is not refutation. Hicks never engages Kant’s arguments, but only gives short-change summaries of Kant’s epistemology. Hicks noted that “Kant did not take all the steps down to postmodernism, but he did take the decisive one” (Loc: 1157). But, he then states, “Kant is a landmark…Kant went a step further and redefined truth on subjective grounds” (Loc: 1157). Kant’s landmark status is not for being an irrational subjective relativistic skeptic, but for other important reasons such as defeating all the traditional arguments for the existence of a supreme deity, and resolving the problem of the origin of knowledge, which hounded Rationalism and Idealism. Kant wrote to the religious dogmatists,

“These unavoidable problems of mere pure reason are God, freedom (of will), and immortality. The science which, with all its preliminaries, has for its especial object the solution of these problems is named metaphysics—a science which is at the very outset dogmatical, that is, it confidently takes upon itself the execution of this task without any previous investigation of the ability or inability of reason for such an undertaking”(Critique,[A:3-4; B: 4-8]). 

The Fallacy of Equivocation between the terms Real₁ and Reality₂

Take for example Kant’s concept of noumenon and phenomenon, which are the foundational concepts of Kantian epistemology. Hicks wrote after reviewing Kant,  “Abstracting from the above quotations yields the following. Metaphysically, postmodernism is anti-realist, holding that it is impossible to speak meaningfully about an independently existing reality”(Loc: 526).

"He has learned this or that philosophy and is merely a plaster cast of a living man."--Kant in Critique, p. 466. 

He only mentions the term noumenal, but doesn’t go into detail of what noumenon means. Kant’s epistemological dichotomy of appearance and reality is the foundation of Representational Epistemology: there is mediation between the thing-in-itself, and the thing as it appears to the observer—a distinction that can be traced back to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The thing-in-itself can only be known indirectly through appearances (phenomena) as experience, which is the domain of Reason.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Hick’s refuses to seriously examine the concept of noumenon that can be traced back to ancient Platonic epistemology.

For Plato, empirical observation was the lowest of all states of mind of which there are two: lowest level of knowledge is opinion Doxia (δόξα) “belief” as in orthodoxy, and the higher level is scientific knowledge (ἐπιστήμη, epistēmē) related etymologically to the “Epistles,” or letters, for example.

The lowest form of knowledge is opinion based on empirical image (εἰκών, icon), and observing biological life (ζωὴ, Zoa, or 'life' as in the word ‘Zoo’).

The higher levels of knowledge include mathematics (μαθηματικά, method) and the highest level of knowledge is of the Forms (ἀρχή, archetype). Only in the state of mind of Noesis (νόησις) meaning “understanding, concept, or notion” is there intelligibility of the invisible (Forms) as opposed to opinion, and belief based on visible empirical images.

The allegory of the cave found in Plato’s Republic (514a–520a) is about epistemological progress and transformation of human worldviews. Plato has Socrates describe to Glaucon, the brother of Plato, a story of a group of prisoners within a cave who are chained to a low wall for their entire lives while only facing the cave’s opposing wall which has moving shadows projected on it by firelight burning behind the prisoners. Persons behind and above the prisoners make sounds and move patterned shaped shadow images across the cave wall. This shadow-world of (εἰκασία) or “apprehension by images and shadows” is reality₁ for these chained prisoners who even give names to the shadows (see lecture: Dr. Harrison Kleiner lectures on Plato's Allegory of a Cave).

Socrates imagines what would happen if a prisoner were released to freely walk out of the cave. Socrates thought the prisoner may have to be forced away from the shadows of their reality₁, and would even try to kill the man that tried to release them. Reality₁ is the reality of the empirical images and shadows (Doxia). Plato is subtly drawing an analogy to Socrates as the man executed by the Athenian State for attempting to release its citizens from ignorance. As the freed slave walks out of the cave, they enter the sunlight. This walk to sunlight could be interpreted as religious and/or a historical-epistemological journey from mere Doxia, or belief, to Noesis,(νόησις), meaning understanding, concept, or notion.

What does the sun symbolically represent? The sun is “…the domain where truth and reality shine….”(508d). The cave’s firelight provided the shadow show and is historically interpreted allegorically as deceptive rhetoric, distorted politics, and sophistry posing as wisdom. The second light is the noumenal sunlight of ultimate reality₂. Interestingly, Plato described the human eye as “…the most sunlike of all the instruments of sense”(508b). However, he also said, “Neither vision itself nor its vehicle, which we call the eye, is identical with the sun”(508a). Socrates may be implying to himself there is mediation between the subject and object of knowledge. Plato seems to have recognized the meaning-bestowing activity of consciousness in shaping the objects of sense perception. This is typical of Plato to foreshadow an entire Western philosophical school of thought in one summary sentence. However, Hicks seems to have forgotten about Plato's hierarchy of knowledge when he wrote that Kant's, "...arguments based on the relativity and causality of perception, the identity of our sense organs is taken to be the enemy of awareness of reality”(Loc: 1102).

The cave firelight could also be interpreted ontologically as Nature itself. For the ancient Greeks, “phusis” (meaning “Nature,” or “physics”) characterize both Logos (Reason) and of what-is (all things). Nature gives what-is the ability to manifest itself, but does not show itself as the activity of manifesting” (see “Heidegger and the Greeks,” by Dr. Carol J. White, p.127)[Pdf].

We may interpret the Kantian term phenomenon as the reality₁ of the shadows, and noumenon as reality₂ of the thing-in-itself. The shadows are empirically real₁, but they are not reality₂. The categories of reason only apply validly to the shadow play reality₁; however, nothing can be said conditionally, or objectively about the noumenal reality₂ according to Kant: “…the unconditioned does not lie in things as we know them, or as they are given to us, but in things as they are in themselves, beyond the range of our cognition”(Critique, p.15). This heterogeneous division between, “cognition of things as phenomena, and of things in themselves”(Ibid., p.15) is known as the “Kantian Block.” Plato believed the forms are within the realm of intelligibility. Hegel’s objection to Kantian epistemology is that knowledge of the noumenal realm is possible, but only after human consciousness has traveled up the long suffering road of historical experience passing through the hierarchies of knowledge to the complete holistic Notion—or in Hegelian language—to Calvary. The “notion” could be interpreted to mean paradigm.

Hicks continually equivocates between the two meanings of reality throughout the book. To remain consistent Hicks could have written, ”Plato has no concept of objective reality! He only acknowledges the shadows within the cave!” For both Plato and Kant there is an epistemological noumenal sun. Hicks conveys an anti-Classical sense of reason by failing to clearly address the appearance and reality distinction in Western Representational Epistemology, and specifically Kantian Transcendental Idealism. Instead, he carefully avoids the noumenon concept, and endlessly repeats anti-realist anti-Kantian slogans. There are classic philosophical arguments critical of Kant’s concept of noumenon, but Hicks does not seem to know any of them.

For some philosophers the problem of knowledge is not that we cannot know reality₂, but that we can know reality₂ in so many ways.  

...to continue with lots more.