Second Counter-Argument: MacIntyre as an Aristotelian-Thomist Realist contradictorily embraces Anti-realist Epistemology.
“What I learned from Kuhn, or rather from Kuhn and Lakatos read together, was the need first to identify and then to break free from that framework and to inquire whether the various problems on which I had made so little progress….”--Alasdair MacIntyre (pdf.)
Deconstructing the Devil, Kant, and Thomas Kuhn
The devil here is referring to postmodernism. What could “Kant on wheels” possibly mean? We must first consider certain aspects of Kant’s philosophy of knowledge in order to understand MacIntyre’s embrace of anti-realist epistemology in the form of Thomas Kuhn’s famous study of the nature of scientific revolutions, and the role paradigms have in scientific research. Consistent with other postmodernist critics today, After-Virtue is virulently anti-Kantian in regard to both ethics and epistemology. MacIntyre’s epistemology is inadequate for addressing these difficult questions of ethics and scientific epistemology forcing him to resort to an unconscious yet skillful slight-of-hand by introducing Kantian idealism in the disguise of Thomas Kuhn. This ideological swap is done repeatedly with other philosophical concepts by replacing historical teleology, ethical intuition, and ought/is dichotomy with his anti-postmodern left hand and giving back with his conservative right hand intentionally impaired concepts such as “tradition,” “telos,” and “narrative” stripped of their dynamic mind-dependent functions and meanings.
This second specific counter-argument points to an inadequacy of his version of Aristotelian realism; to compensate, he is forced to present a lobotomized version of Kantian critical idealism wearing the mask of Kuhnian paradigmatic epistemology. Yet, Kuhn is not mentioned in any of his four books After-Virtue (1981); Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988 ); Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry (1990); Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (1999) of which the last three books are elaborations of the themes in After Virtue. He instead expresses Kuhnian hypotheses through the pseudonym of “Hamlet” in his essay, “Epistemological Crisis” (pdf.). An ”Emma” works within a paradigm model, and a Hamlet challenges the model with a new paradigm.
I have written in detail on Thomas Kuhn’s famous theory of scientific paradigms (Ideological Paradigms) and Kantian critical theory. Kuhnian epistemology is an anti-realist epistemology (The Genealogy of Kuhnian Antirealism video lecture by Paul Hoyningen). What is the difference between realist and anti-realist epistemology? Why does MacIntyre need postmodern Kuhnian epistemology to critique postmodernism, and to understand the meaning of virtue?
Paradigms of Epistemological Realism and Anti-realism
Epistemological realism and anti-realism can be reduced to six key components. Dr. Lee Braver, professor of philosophy at Hiram College, Ohio, has written an excellent book with the beautiful title of “A Thing Of This World: A history of Continental Anti-Realism,” (2007), Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois. Braver created two powerful realist (positivist) and anti-realist (Kantian) matrices to organized, compare, and help memorize key principles of these models of knowledge (Braver, p. 15-30 passim). I will briefly summarize each principle, but will focus on three that are most relevant to this polemical study. Braver named these constituent theses of the definition of realism as the following:
Realism1=Independence: What is real is independent from any idea, statement, or examination by the self. The world, objects, and situations are separate from the mind and do not depend on thought. This metaphysical principle of realist detachment is the first, and some say, complete definition of realism.
R2=Correspondence: However, there is also the possible epistemological congruous correlation (knowledge) of subjective ideas, beliefs, and words (mind) with objective things, objects, and states of affairs (world). This view is called the correspondence theory of truth: a true proposition in this theory is one that corresponds to the state of something in the world, or a fact. A belief is said to be true if it corresponds to an existing object. Historically, there are differences among logicians and philosophers on whether truth is an attribute of an object, or a proposition, or belief (for greater detail see: “Bertrand Russell's Critique of Fregean Logico-Mathematical Objects”).
R3=Uniqueness: There is only one truth, and one complete description of all reality. This principle is known as metaphysical realism claiming, “There exists at least ideally, a full knowledge of all of the Forms which would constitute the complete knowledge of all natural kinds about which there could be no legitimate disagreement.13 This view is also attributed to “Aristotelian realism…(Braver, p.18 ).” This is “knowledge by definition” as the single unique self-sorting self-identifying world of objects presents themselves appearing the same to all potential observers (Ibid.). Braver points out that Aristotelian realism is the combination of R1, R2, and R3.
R4=Bivalence: This is the semantic view
that all meaningful sentences are determined to be either true or false with no
other third possibility, and is named the law of the excluded middle.
Some charge that bivalence disregards process, or becoming within
a dynamic world. Frege, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein combined bivalence
with logical atomism,
and set theory to construct symbolic truth-tables of
variables (p and q) and constant logical operators (if, then, either,
or, and) to determine consistency; that is to say, validity of deductive
inferences. This is a radical shift from metaphysics to the philosophy of
language where truth is not epistemic, nor dependent on verification, but
rather “…that human access to evidence is wholly irrelevant to what the
truth is (Ibid., p .21).”
“…the
passivity of a thinking which only needs a mouth agape.”
—Hegel in“The Difference between Fichte and Schelling’s System of Philosophy.”
R5=Passive knower: With this epistemic model the knower receives knowledge like the sun warms a stone. The subject is a passive receiver of knowledge from the independent external world; that the observer abstain from contributing any subjective influence to the self-contained object is essential for undistorted truth corresponding to reality. A personal creative interpretation of the world is not allowed in this version of non-participating epistemic objective realism.
R6=Realism of the Self: This sixth thesis of realism is the contribution of Kant that states all observers at all times see the world through the same conceptual lenses universally. All subjects contribute to the object in the same way through the a priori forms of sense intuition (space and time) and the a priori categories of the understanding (Kant’s table of analytic concepts) for they are the necessary conditions for the possibility of sense experience and knowledge. I cannot imagine an object, or point not in space and time, and you cannot either. Everything we know about the world must first be filtered through the lenses of our perceptual nervous system.
Realism and Anti-realism Paradigm Entailment
This
transition point to anti-realism is a good place to bring up once again Dr. Kai
Nielsen’s study of entailment relations discussed regarding metaethical and
normative theses where we found that some relations are neutral and others
non-neutral. Braver tells us that realist and anti-realist ideas can be “mixed
and matched” without having to reject the other theses so it is not a
matter of anti-realism being diametrically opposed point by point with realism:
the relationships between the two paradigms are mostly neutral to use
Nielsen’s definition (Ibid., p .38 ).” This
means that the passive knower (R5) could be replaced with an active
knower (A5) without necessary falsifying the other theses of realism. Braver’s matrices show just how revolutionary Kant’s critical
theory is when compared with metaphysical realism that was the dominant
epistemological paradigm of his time (Ibid., p. 35). Kantian antirealism requires by necessity
the active contributing constructing creative self to achieve knowledge.
“Socrates says that when we posit flute-playing we must also posit a flute-player….”
-Kierkegaard
Anti-Realism1=Mind-Dependent:
Noumena (things-in-themselves) are independent of mind (R1), but
phenomena (appearances) are mind-dependent (A1) representations of the
active knower (A5) (Ibid., p. 39). Plato also has a two-worlds
view of appearances and the eternal ideal forms that objectively exist
behind them. For Kant the noumenal is the unperceivable non-sensible limit of Reason,
analogous to Wittgenstein’s standpoint that language is the limit of our world.
An epistemology of limitation is not self-contradictory and is
plausible.
A2=Rejection
of Correspondence Theory of Truth: Kant’s correspondence theory of truth
corresponds not to the inaccessible unknowable noumenal, but to the knowable
accessible phenomenal (Ibid., p. 44). The sensible
manifold of experience (intuition) is only given if organized according
to the a priori concepts of space, time, quantity, quality, relation,
and modality; otherwise, our perceptual lens would be blind. Correspondence now
means congruence to the subjective a
priori structural forms of sensibility which all perception must first be mediated
before we experience the world of things, objects, and
states of affairs.
A3=Ontological
Pluralism: Kant embraces R3 by way of the necessary table of categories
that are the lenses by which all phenomena is interpreted in the same
way for all observers. Instead of a perspectiveless objectivity, Kant
presents the necessary concepts for the possibility of experience as the
next best standard of objectivity (Ibid., p. 56). Braver shows
how Kant achieves a unique single reality (R3) by rejecting the passive knower
(R5), and mind-independent world (R1) by substituting the active knower (A5)
who provides the universal a priori principles of perception (R6). Hegel
describes the necessary historical forms of life in Western
thought (sense-certainty, observing reason, ethics, Enlightenment,
understanding, religion) that go through an advancing teleological
cycle of historical conflicts and resolutions, but he is not a relative
idealist: rather, Hegel is an absolute idealist believing in only
one reality because there is only one universal Reason, or Mind. On the
other hand, Kant’s table of categories, and the transcendental cognito
are logical presuppositions that are completely ahistorical.
A4=Rejection
of Bivalence: Kant accepts bivalence in the phenomenal realm, but
not the noumenal realm that include belief in a god, immortality, and
human autonomy (Freedom). This ontological division of reality offers one world
that can be known wherever the categories of perception are applied to
phenomena, and the other unknowable region of things-in-themselves.
Adorno coined the term “Kantian block” to describe this Kantian barrier
that limits reason to phenomenal experience otherwise thought succumbs to the tradition
of dogmatic metaphysics. Hegel’s standpoint rejects bivalence as blind to
historical change and the process of becoming in history. For Kant and
Wittgenstein bivalence only apply to the experiential phenomenal world of
appearances, and not noumenal reality.
.
A5=Active
Knower: Kant needs the active knower (A5) as the correspondent
to phenomena (R2)—not unknowable noumenon (R1) to
establish a fixed unique single reality (R3) universal to all observers (R6) (Ibid.,
p.44, 57).
Neo-Kantian Relative Categories on “Wheels”
Some readers would
object to Kant’s thesis that phenomena is processed the same for all
observers since persons clearly have different interpretations of the same
phenomenon otherwise there would be no disagreement about what is real. We must
remember again Kant’s transcendental idealism is referring to the necessary
conditions for the possibility of experience and not what is unnecessary
for experience. The Neo-Kantian distinction between absolute a
priori category, and a relative epistemological category is
important since paradigms function in the same manner as the lenses of
absolute a priori categories. This distinction of absolute and
relative apriority can be found in the works on culture of the last
great philosopher of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, Ernest Cassirer
(1874-1945). A relative a
priori concept, for example, could be the Ptolemaic geocentric
conception of the sun’s orbit around earth; however, the opposing Copernican heliocentric
universe is an opposing model of earth’s orbit, but neither of these
two astronomical orbital paradigms are necessary
to experience the darkness of night, or the light of day—in fact, the movement
of the sun across the sky appears the same to the ordinary observer embracing
either paradigm.
The orthodox Kantian
School understands the table of categories as “absolute,” or necessary
for all experience—even for the angels! The Neo-Kantian thesis is that
necessary a priori concepts are functionally
indistinguishable from "relative" a priori concept. Relative
categories are unnecessary for experience, and yet still contribute
to constructing the object by the way perception is pre-organized and pre-structured.
Relative categories are not just a formal static internal set of logical
concepts, but are changing socio-historical-cultural lenses that organize
and reorganize experience by creating a meaningful lifeworld that varies from
peoples, geographies, and histories—these paradigms are “on wheels,”
or variable. It is these unnecessary dynamic cultural paradigms of
perception that partly account for the vast multiplicity of worldviews. I noticed that Kant, Braver, nor Kuhn
explicitly mention this distinction of absolute and relative apriority.
MacIntyre wrote: "Kant presented as the universal and necessary principles of the human mind turned out in fact to be principles specific to particular times, places and stages of human activity and enquiry…"Kant took to be the principles and presuppositions of natural science as such turned out after all to be the principles and presuppositions specific to Newtonian physics... Thus the claim to universality foundered. (AV., p. 266)."
This
comment suggests that the Neo-Kantian relative/absolute distinction is
not fully understood. MacIntyre rejects Kant’s transcendentalism, but embraces
Kuhnian paradigms that function as relative categories and this exposes his
realist epistemology to the pluralism of relativistic anti-realist Kuhnian
paradigms.
…next:
Third Counter-Argument:
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