“… they may try to disguise
themselves by the assumption of a popular style and by changes on the language
of the schools, unavoidably fall into metaphysical declarations and
propositions, which they profess to regard with so much contempt”—Kant, Critique of Pure
Reason, trans. Meiklejohn, p.5.
The Fallacy of Tunnel History
Hicks’ historical narrative
presents a too narrow view by selecting Kantian epistemology as the landmark
philosopher who destroyed realist epistemology. Over emphasis of a few
historical events, or persons can lead to distortion and misinterpretation.
There were other forces that brought about the decline of an intelligible
religious world-order having a clear hierarchy of authority inherited from the
Middle Ages. Kant, Descartes, and Leibnitz were part of the rationalistic
current that was sweeping the world. Hobbes (1588-1679) Locke, Berkeley
(1685-1753), and Hume all constructed psychological oriented
epistemologies and were forces in themselves bring about the Enlightenment and
Scientific Revolution. Others interpret Kant as contributing to the
empiricist-mechanistic-scientific realist epistemology that reduced modern
science to the technology of subject-object manipulation. Of course those who blame
Kant as responsible for this trend of Enlightenment science should also consider
the explosion of new technology resulting from the destabilizing effects of
capitalist factory production that encouraged scientific empiricist
instrumental rationality. Marx was one of the first to note hyper-technical
innovation in Capitalist production, “The inanimate machinery not only wears
out and depreciates from day to day, but a great part of it becomes so quickly
superannuated, by constant technical progress, that it can be replaced with
advantage by new machinery after a few months” (Capital Vol. I, p. 400).
Historical events and persons may act as both cause and effect in the movement
of history.
Hicks commits the Fallacy of
Tunnel History as formulated by historian J. H. Hexter in “Reappraisals of
History,” (Evanston, Ill., 1961, p. 194-95).
Let us construct a
hypothetical historical matrix with twenty historical events. *
Time________Past events
(Past)
1____ A B C D E
2 ____B C D A B
3 ____C D A B C
4 ____D A B C D
5 ____A B C D E
(Present)
There are other economic,
political, culture, religious, and philosophical forces that Hicks overlooked
by misinterpretation and over emphasis. If we place Kant as the central figure
in the historical event matrix, it would have the following pattern:
Time________Past events
(Past)
1__________
B
2 ________B
3 ______B
4 ____B
5 __B
(Present)
A more likely historical
narrative would look at the larger historical picture and not just reduce
history to one person, issue, or event. A more inclusive historical event
matrix would have a somewhat different pattern:
Time________Past events
(Past)
1_A_C_D_ B_E
2 ___________
3 _B_ D_A_C_
4 __________
5 _B_C_A__E_
(Present)
* Historian David H. Fischer created
this clever historical matrix diagram in “Historians’ Fallacies” (1970),
Harper Perennial, p.142.
The Fallacy of Difference
The fallacy of difference is
an attempt at a special definition of a group by genus (common traits), and
differences in which the genus is omitted or forgotten.
Hicks claimed skepticism is
a unique trait of postmodernism, making it different from modern realism.
Pyrrho, Plato, Kant, Hume,
Descartes, and Locke were all skeptics in some since, not just Kant. The single
word “skepticism” has many meanings such as Humean scientific empirical
skepticism, Descartes’ rationalist methodological doubt, attitudinal
skepticism, atheistic doubt of any type, or simply mean non-dogmatic. All of
these philosophers applied methodological doubt—even Pyrrho (360
B.C.)—in their respective fields of study so Kant is not unique as a skeptic in
this sense.
To help clarify this fallacy
American Puritanism is again a good example. Puritanism is often identified
with witch burning as its special characteristic from other religious sects of
its time and region. However, historian Dr. Fischer noted that much of Puritan
theology was Anglican, a greater amount was Protestant, and the majority was
Christian (source: David Hackett Fischer, The Historians’ Fallacies, 1970,
Harper/Perennial, p. 222).
The attempt to define
postmodernism by the special characteristic of skepticism does not make
postmodernism distinct from modernism for want of an insight into a criteria of
difference.
The Converse Fallacy of Difference:
This
fallacy attempts to render a definition of a group by a quality, which is not
special to it. Fischer’s Puritan historical example is helpful for
understanding this fallacy also. Historical records show that the Puritans
engaged in the fewest witch killing, and burned none. However, this difference
among the other sects is ignored and the Puritans are especially distinguished
as witch burning fanatics instead.
Hicks tries to group
together epistemological skepticism which “cannot put us in contact with
reality,” and postmodernism (the shadow of circularity still hangs over this
term) with philosophers Kant and Hegel. However, Kant and Hegel had opposite
views about this very question of the possibility knowledge. Again skepticism
is being used as a special characteristic of postmodernism. Kant argued the thing-in-itself
(noumenon) could not be known determinately. Hegel argued that absolute
knowledge (as opposed to knowledge of appearances) is possible; therefore,
Hicks should not point to Hegel as an example of a postmodern skeptic, yet he
does by ignoring this and other differences. Hicks also links David Hume with
postmodernism (Loc: 786). Kantian faithful non-theism is much different than
Humean atheistic empiricist skepticism. Kantian skepticism is not cynical
attitudinal skepticism. Kantian Transcendental Idealism is wholly different
than Berkeleian Psychological Idealism.
Since the terms skepticism,
idealism, and relativism have multiple meanings, the attempt to define
postmodernism by these special characteristics does not make postmodernists
distinct even from themselves for want of an insight into a criteria of sameness.
Consequently, Hicks
committed both the Fallacy of Difference and the Fallacy of Converse
of Difference as a result of committing the Fallacy of Equivocation
at the very beginning. We can think of these fallacies as multiple compounding
felonies.
The
Static Fallacy Relating to Process, Truth, and Falsity.
The
Static Fallacy is another formulation of the False Dilemma Fallacy.
This fallacy attempts to
conceptualize a dynamic process in static terms. Hicks views various schools of
philosophy as isolated ahistorical monads by treating them as inert elements
having only the two possible values of true and false (bivalence). Historical
process is absent in this tunnel vision narrative of postmodernism except for
the continuous thread of ill-defined Kantian skepticism. Instead of thinking in
terms of true and false, Hegel understood the history of philosophy in terms of
parts and whole in which historical process is included so that a school of
philosophy (bud) will past away to only reappear as a new fuller form
(blossom), and then as truth:
“The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one might say that the former is refuted by the latter; similarly, when the fruit appears, the blossom is shown up in its turn as a false manifestation of the plant, and the fruit emerges as the truth of it instead” (Preface; Section: 2. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807, trans. by A. V. Miller, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1977. Preface, Paragraph: 2.). See lecture: The Complete Phenomenology of Spirit (Preface, section 2) by Professor Gregory B Sadler.
Hicks’ understandable
longing for a lost world-order of essential meaning, identity, hierarchy, and
faith—a lost substantial world of meaning (Lifeworld)-- is what Hegel
spoke of in tracing the history of philosophical movements. The pre-scientific
worldviews and past religious orthodoxy are now just dead empty husks. A
distressed humanity is now demanding from philosophy the recovery of this lost
world of certainty. Hegel wrote that Geist (Mind, or Spirit),
“…has not only gone beyond all this into the other extreme of an insubstantial reflection of itself, but beyond too. Spirit has not only lost its essential life; it is also conscious of this loss, and of the finitude that is its own content. Turning away from the empty husks, and confessing that it lies in wickedness, it reviles itself for so doing, and now demands from philosophy, not so much knowledge of what it is, as the recovery through its agency of that lost sense of solid and substantial being.” (Original italics) Hegel’s Spirit, Paragraph 7.
Hegel warned that in desperation for meaning
dogmatists would seek to restore that lost sense of substantial being by
engaging in metaphysics, “He will find ample opportunity to dream up something
for himself. But philosophy must beware of the wish to be edifying“(Hegel, para. 9). Kant uses the terms metaphysics in a
variety of ways that are both negative and positive (Critique, p.471).
Metaphysics in its negative sense means the attempt to apply the cognitive
categories of a priori reason to the non-empirical--not within the
sphere of possible experience. Kant wrote this kind of metaphysics, “…deals
with mere conceptions—not, like mathematics, with conceptions applied to
intuition—and in it, reason is the pupil of itself alone”(Critique, p.12).
The real issue for
scientific philosophy is knowledge and truth, but instead dogmatic philosophy
has become (my italics)...”no more than a device for evading the real
issue, a way of creating an impression of hard work and serious commitment to
the problem, while actually sparing oneself both. For the real issue is not
exhausted by stating it as an aim, but by carrying it out, nor is the whole,
but rather the result together with the process through which it came
about” (Hegel, para. 3). The static view of history fails to perceive
the process of Mind (Spirit). Tillich tells us that at these historical moments
of paradigm shifting reason must not deny itself, does not abdicate, but turns into itself to transcend itself, within itself.
…Next are collected
quotations by Kant contradicting Hicks’ straw man interpretation of The
Critique of Pure Reason.
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