Concluding critique of a postmodern trope….

Concluding critique of a postmodern trope….

“Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind.”— Kant, Critique, trans. Meiklejohn, p.64 (pdf.).

“But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.”— Ibid., p. 27.

Appearance and Reality in the Copernican Revolution

Kant’s Copernican Revolution is his version of Plato’s cave allegory. Remember that the prisoners with “…the most sunlike of all the instruments of sense”(508b) named the shadows created by a maintained firelight behind a wall. We discussed the two senses of real and reality that Hicks overlooks which the following two quotations reflect:

“Thus Kant, that great champion of reason, asserted that the most important fact about reason is that it is clueless about reality”-(Hicks, Loc: 917).

“In the 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”-(Hicks, Loc: 1088).

Hicks referenced Galileo (1564-1642) five times in his writing as a free speech hero, but never discussed the reason why the state church censored Galileo. Galileo asserted against the accepted interpretation of the appearances that the sun is the center of the known universe (Heliocentric model) and not the earth (Ptolemy’s Geocentric model). From an ordinary observer’s point of view the sun’s movement appeared the same in both models of the universe. Kant wrote, 

“We here propose to do just what Copernicus did in attempting to explain the celestial movements. When he found that he could make no progress by assuming that all the heavenly bodies revolved round the spectator, he reversed the process, and tried the experiment of assuming that the spectator revolved, while the stars remained at rest. We may make the same experiment with regard to the intuition of objects. If the intuition must conform to the nature of the objects, I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori. If, on the other hand, the object conforms to the nature of our faculty of intuition, I can then easily conceive the possibility of such an a priori knowledge. [B:xiii-xvii]”(Critique, trans. Meiklejohn, p.13).

The categories a priori are necessary for experience, and are the standard of objectivity. “And he [Kant] held that reality conforms to reason, not vice versa”(Loc: 1130). Hicks’ grammar is misleading of Kant’s meaning of conform. Notice the ambiguity (The Fallacy of Amphiboly) of “conform” when he writes of Kant “the object must conform to the subject”(Loc: 1047), which suggests Berkeleian Idealism: “To be (exist) is to be perceived.” Kant’s meaning is that “the object conforms to the nature of our faculty of intuition,” so that when Galileo imagined, and later concluded, that the earth obits the sun, Galileo didn’t change the earth’s movements one iota, but scientific understanding advanced.

When I perceive the color blue (sense perception, or sense impression is the empiricist relation to the object, or thing--John Locke, David Hume) that state of consciousness (seeing blue) is subjective. Even empiricism cannot be entirely objective. Locke used the term “ideas” with three meanings: sensible qualities, sense-data, and concepts/universal ideas. In this epistemological model empiricism is idealism. And when scientific empiricism demands the universal categorical imperative that all judgments be founded on verified sense experience to be considered objective, then empiricism has become pure speculative idealism. Positivism is really a disguised metaphysical doctrine of language, and not about the world. Worse, it presupposes the very world and language that it is supposed to explain. The world is constructed sense datum, and makes assumptions about its construction.

The Copernican Revolution is another example of how objects conform to consciousness in knowledge. Copleston explained Kant’s reasoning as “If objects, to be known, must conform to the mind, and if this means that they must be subjected to the categories of the understanding in order to be objects in the full sense, no further justification of the use of the categories is required”(Copleston S.J., The History of Philosophy, Vol. 6, Part II, Kant, Doubleday/Image, p. 47). The categories have objective validity.

Hicks is not defending the values of Western Civilization with an incoherent attack on Kant that is simultaneously an assault on the foundational principles of Western Christian theology and ethics. He fails to mention that Kant was critical of metaphysical speculative free-thinking. Kant wrote, “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, p. 21). Kant was concerned about the very epistemological, religious, and moral “isms” that Hicks claimed Kant is responsible for bringing about in postmodernism. Kant wrote,

“…all the objections urged against them [speculative dogmatists] may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say, by proving the ignorance of the objector. For, as the world has never been, and, no doubt, never will be without a system of metaphysics of one kind or another, it is the highest and weightiest concern of philosophy to render it powerless for harm, by closing up the sources of error”(Critique, p. 20).

The Limitation of Knowledge is not a Denial of Knowledge

“Epistemologically, having rejected the notion of an independently existing reality, postmodernism denies that reason or any other method is a means of acquiring objective knowledge of that reality”-(Hicks, Loc: 529).

“One purpose of the Critique accordingly, was to limit severely the scope of reason”-(Hicks, Loc: 949).

These quotes represent another equivocation by the author between the distinction of the limits of knowledge and absolute skepticism. Recognizing the limits of reason is not necessarily a rejection of the possibility of knowledge. An epistemology of limitation is possible. For Kant such an epistemology avoids the airless space of pure ideas that metaphysics seek such as for example, the Platonic Forms, and speculative dogmatic theology. Plato abandoned the world of sense perception; however, Kant wanted to turn back to the appearances, but newly understood as sense experience necessarily organized by the a priori categories of knowledge.

“It is true that the mathematician occupies himself with objects and cognitions only in so far as they can be represented by means of intuition…Deceived by such a proof of the power of reason, we can perceive no limits to the extension of our knowledge. The light dove cleaving in free flight the thin air, whose resistance it feels, might imagine that her movements would be far more free and rapid in airless space. Just in the same way did Plato, abandoning the world of sense because of the narrow limits it sets to the understanding, venture upon the wings of ideas beyond it, into the void space of pure intellect….”(Critique, p.27).

The Scandal of Philosophy

“For all of their differences, the empiricists and rationalist had agree with the broadly Enlightenment conception of reason-that human reason is a faculty of the individual, that it is competent to know reality objectively, that it is capable of functioning autonomously and in accordance to universal principles”-(Hicks, Loc: 951).

Kant recovered rationalism and empiricism by making a synthesis of the two opposing epistemologies. The Empiricists were having difficulty with the problem of induction and causation such as the ancient skeptic Prryho. The Rationalist Cartesians were unable to prove the mere existence of anything except their own selves with any certainty. The situation was a philosophical scandal. Kant most likely had Berkeley (1685-1753) in mind when he wrote:

“However harmless idealism may be considered—although in reality it is not so—in regard to the essential ends of metaphysics, it must still remain a scandal to philosophy and to the general human reason to be obliged to assume, as an article of mere belief, the existence of things external to ourselves (from which, yet, we derive the whole material of cognition for the internal sense), and not to be able to oppose a satisfactory proof to any one who may call it in question”(Critique, p. 23).

Science in Disrepute

 “…philosophers, ignorant of the path they ought to pursue and always disputing with each other regarding the discoveries which each asserted he had made, brought their science into disrepute with the rest of the world, and finally, even among themselves” (Critique, p. 470).

Hicks falsely believes that modern science was some kind of pre-lapsarian epistemological utopia. Cartesian and Humean realism turn out to be completely solipsistic. This problem was an epistemological trap that Cartesian rationalism and Humean empiricism could not escape, and not a matter of negotiating “pay offs and trade-offs”(Loc: 1066) with science losing and religion winning credibility: the business metaphor is greatly misleading. Transcendental logic in not psychology as with empiricist psychological oriented epistemologies, but rather concerns the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience—not what is accidental to experience. One cannot negotiate that the categories and forms of intuition are optional for experience anymore than one can negotiate that a triangle should have two sides instead of three. Kant wrote, “It is therefore not merely possible or probable, but indubitably certain, that space and time, as the necessary conditions of all our external and internal experience….”(Critique, p.59). This is why the Critique is organized by transcendental deductions. Hicks completely misunderstands the meaning of transcendental logic as a critical science of a priori logical necessity and not of the accidental attributes of psychology. For Kant, the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience universally apply to all sentient self-conscious beings—even to the angels. 

“It is, in fact, a call to reason, again to undertake the most laborious of all tasks—that of self-examination, and to establish a tribunal, which may secure it in its well-grounded claims, while it pronounces against all baseless assumptions and pretensions, not in an arbitrary manner, but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws. This tribunal is nothing less than the critical investigation of pure reason”(Critique, p. 5).

Hicks does not understand the Critique of Pure Reason as a solution to anything because he is unaware of exactly what were the epistemological problems. He provides no architectonic non-Kantian epistemological answers to the problem of solipsism in rationalism or empiricism. He laments, “Reason is clueless about reality,” but is seeking edification instead of seeking truth as Hegel warned.

Kant Recovered Rationalism, Empiricism, and Spiritual Faith

“I have not returned an evasive answer to the questions of reason, by alleging the inability and limitation of the faculties of the mind; I have, on the contrary, examined them completely in the light of principles, and, after having discovered the cause of the doubts and contradictions into which reason fell, have solved them to its perfect satisfaction”(Critique, p.6).

The Kantian concept of the thing-in-itself recovers both rationalism and empiricism from solipsism. This is contrary to Hicks’ interpretation of Kant. The synthesis with transcendental idealism not only rescued rationalism and empiricism together as coherent epistemologies for science, but also expunged the solipsistic character of both with the noumenon doctrine of which nothing determinate can be said of the thing-in-itself.* Kantian transcendental idealism is not solipsistic which means for Hicks it is not real_undefined or objective.

*I must add this note: Kant’s argument that the noumenon is indeterminate and nothing can be said determinate about the noumenal without contradiction is a rejection of solipsism. Tillich duplicates this same Kantian logical move in defining God as “being-itself” which has “no qualities, beyond everything, above and beyond all determination, above essences”(see, ”Tillich and the Postmodern,” by John Thatamanil in “Paul Tillich Cambridge Companion,” p. 288)(pdf). This is why Tillich cannot be called onto-theological, and Kant cannot be understood as a solipsist.

Conclusion

"So the reviewer understood nothing of what I wrote...."-Kant, Prolegomena, p. 81.

The term postmodernism as used by Hicks is a trope, and a style of rhetoric. “Trope” from Greek “tropos” means “style, a turn, or related to turning.” He consciously constructs a Kantian straw man to create a false stereotype, which is then used to smear all the other philosophers he identifies as postmodern, and later as the forefathers of terrorism (Loc: 3725) and cultural Marxism which is yet another trope. The same poor reasoning is duplicated with each philosopher he describes as postmodern so that there are endless errors based on his initial Kantian straw man constructed from circular argument and informal fallacies of content. Unfortunately, Hicks’ book will turn some readers away from the philosophers he smeared while those that are still interested will have special difficulty understanding Kantian epistemology having unknowingly embraced distorted and distorting assumptions.

"The Future"

by Leonard Cohen

(1992)

  

Give me back my broken night

my mirrored room, my secret life

it's lonely here,

there's no one left to torture

Give me absolute control

over every living soul

And lie beside me, baby,

that's an order!

Give me crack and careless sex

Take the only tree that's left

and stuff it up the hole

in your culture

Give me back the Berlin wall

give me Stalin and St Paul

I've seen the future, brother:

it is murder.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions

Won't be nothing you can measure anymore....

You don't know me from the wind

you never will, you never did

I'm the little jew

who wrote the Bible

I've seen the nations rise and fall

I've heard their stories, heard them all

but love's the only engine of survival

Your servant here, he has been told

to say it clear, to say it cold:

It's over, it ain't going

any further

And now the wheels of heaven stop

you feel the devil's riding crop

Get ready for the future:

it is murder

There'll be the breaking of the ancient

western code

Your private life will suddenly explode

There'll be phantoms

There'll be fires on the road

and the white man dancing

You'll see a woman

hanging upside down

her features covered by her fallen gown

and all the lousy little poets

coming round

tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson

and the white man dancin'

Give me back the Berlin wall

Give me Stalin and St Paul

Give me Christ

or give me Hiroshima

Destroy another fetus now

We don't like children anyhow

I've seen the future, baby:it is murder...

…Continuing the critique of a Postmodernism Trope.

…Continuing the critique of a Postmodernism Trope.

“… 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.

The Critique of a Postmodern Trope continues...

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.

The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism

The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism

“…the whole system of reason finally leads to some point at which reason does not deny itself, does not abdicate, but transcends itself within itself. “- Paul Tillich

By chance I discovered a video, Critique of Stephen Hicks’ “Explaining Postmodernism,” which is a critique of the book “Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault,”(2010) authored by the writer Stephen R. C. Hicks who refers to himself as a Randian Objectivist. The video is well versed in Kantian epistemology and critiques Hicks’ attack on a philosophical school known as postmodernism. I want to go into greater detail than the video to give additional counter-arguments against Hicks’ understanding of postmodernism.

I never liked generalized philosophical labels such as Idealism, Libertarianism, Socialism, or Rationalism since there is nearly always some mixture of these views influencing a philosopher’s thinking with close analysis. These terms are useful as tools for topical organization, but are limited at a certain level of granularity especially while examining specific logical arguments of an intellectual tradition. The term and concept of postmodern seems particularly ambiguous and I have wanted to investigate this issue for sometime now because it is often used as an ad hominem truncheon in discussions today.

The Fallacy of Circular Reasoning:

The most important step of philosophical analysis is to methodologically define the term postmodern, which turns out to be a big problem for this book. Since Hicks is authoring a book on postmodernism the burden of proof is on him to define how this term is used. Hicks refers to postmodernism as “anti-realist,” “denies reason,” “subjective,” and “radical.” Early in his book Hicks wrote, “The term “post-modern” situates the movement historically and philosophically against modernism”(Loc: 546). In other words postmodernism is bad since the opposite, modernism, is good.

Hicks describes his methodology as, “…understanding what the movement sees itself as rejecting and moving beyond will be helpful in formulating a definition of postmodernism. The modern world has existed for several centuries, and after several centuries we have good sense of what modernism is”(Loc: 546). Defining any group by what they think of themselves might not be the best methodological approach anymore that judging the moral character of a person by what they say about themselves. Do we really have a good sense of what modernism is?

However, there is a second even more serious methodological problem by using how “the movement sees itself,” as a definition since we are faced with the problem of deciding which movement we will select as postmodern. Hicks already presupposes what postmodernism is otherwise how else could Hicks identify any group as a member of the movement! How can one recognize postmodernism independently of Hicks’ judgment?  It seems that the term postmodernism has no essence. Wittgenstein used the word “game” as an example of a concept that had no essential meaning. The word’s meaning is how it is used. Likewise, the meaning of postmodern is whatever Hicks points to since it has no essence. Omnium-gatherum as a methodology for collecting the particulars of a universal concept will not work if one does not already have a universal concept of postmodernism. So the reader must rely on Hicks to point at any particular group he declares as postmodern. This behavior suggests that Hicks has an unstated criterion for identifying postmodernism that precludes his identifying some group as postmodern. And, Hick consciously and unconsciously carries out this circularity through out the entire book.

The Fallacy of False Dilemma:

This problem of an essential definition gets worse for Hicks. His concept of postmodernism is extremely vague so that its scope of meaning can be expanded, or contracted by mere pointing depending on the effectiveness of any criticism. To better understand Hick’s use of the term postmodern-ism we can divide speculative philosophy into two general types of theories of knowledge: The realistic theory of knowledge and the idealistic theory of knowledge. In the realistic theory knowledge meaning is receiving. In the idealistic theory meaning is bestowing. Hicks names everything “objective” as realistic, and everything subjective is “postmodern.” The problem with this crypto-definition of postmodernism is that objective and subjective elements cross over into both philosophies of knowledge. Hicks uses an array of synonyms to describe the realistic epistemologies as the following:

Realistic: Modern, Enlightenment, rational, competent, universal, absolutist, individualistic, conservative, and objectively true.

On the other hand Hicks describe postmodernism with synonyms such as:

Idealistic: Non-realist, postmodern, anti-Enlightenment, anti-reason, incompetent, contingent, relativistic, collectivist, extremist, and subjective.

With this matrix of dialectical polarities Hicks can setup pre-constructed fallacies presented as false dilemmas, “Either P, or Q, and ~P, therefore Q.”

Or symbolically written: [(P v Q) * ~P ] ⊃ Q. 

“Either P, or Q” can be expressed as disjunctive propositions: “either accept Kantian relativism, or embrace objectivism; either accept postmodernism or embrace the Enlightenment; either embrace Objective truth or accept postmodern relativism.”

Interestingly, these false dilemmas can be rhetorically disguised giving the impression that an additional sound argument is being offered:

“Either not P, or not Q, and P; therefore not Q.”

Or symbolically written: [(~P v ~Q) * P] ⊃ ~Q

This expression can be disguised as “Either reject all truth with skeptical subjective Kantian relativism, or reject realism based on universal objective reason. Obviously, those who accept Kantian relativism are in fact rejecting Objective truth which realism is based.”

The argument’s fallacy is not that its disjunctive argument form is invalid—that is why it is called an Informal Fallacy, but that other disjuncts [(P v Q) v (R v S) v (Φ v ψ)] are excluded by definition, or oversight, or to logically force a false conclusion based on false disjunctive choices.

Objectivists mindlessly repeat this trope ad infinitum.

And yet another disguise for [(~P v ~Q) * P] ⊃ ~Q,

is the expression: [ P * (~Q v ~P) ] ⊃ ~Q

Which reads as,"For all those that accepted skepticism, they failed to understand the problem of knowledge as essentially rejecting objective science as the key to knowing reality, or avoiding relativism that denies the possibility of all knowledge. Consequently, they fell into relativism."

Now this sophistry is repeated over, and over again throughout the book. Just change Kant's name to Hegel, Kuhn, Heidegger, or whoever is associated with these philosophers for any reason. The author simply pours different content into the same form to reach the same distorted false conclusion.

The Insidious Metaphor Logical Fallacy: Φ

Hicks wrote, “Kant was the decisive break with the Enlightenment and the first major step toward postmodernism” (Loc: 1139). These synonyms are as ambiguous and misleading as the term postmodern itself. For example, the term “Enlightenment” has a positive meaning that is unconsciously imported through a metaphor influencing the reader’s thinking. Not everything that happened in the Enlightenment was Enlightening; not everything modern is good; nor was everything in the “Dark Ages” conceptually backwards; and the “Cold War” had millions of human casualties; and even “Realism” can be an idealist theory of knowledge subjectively biased. What Hicks referred to as the “Modern Era,” Kant and Hegel a history of errors. Even if the belief in objectivism is objective, then that belief provides no evidence whatsoever for the truth of objectivism. Beware of bare assertions based on insidious metaphors that unconsciously influence critical thinking.

The Fallacy of Ambiguity: ψ

Hick’s critique of postmodernism is based on the thesis that Kant’s epistemological skepticism is irrational. “Kant was thus different from previous skeptics and religious apologists…But earlier skeptics had never been as sweeping in their conclusions.”(Loc: 1130). If Hicks’ thesis is false, then the book’s entire philosophical narrative collapses.  Hicks wrote, “Thus, the argument runs, Kant should be placed in the pantheon of Enlightenment greats.[27] That is a mistake“ (Loc: 897). And again he writes, “His [Kant’s] philosophy is thus a forerunner of postmodernism’s strong anti-realist and anti-reason”(Loc: 1191). In another passage he writes, “Any thinker who concludes that in principle reason cannot know reality is not fundamentally an advocate of reason” (Loc:1130). This is just one of Hick’s shocking summary judgment of Kantian epistemology.

Hicks wrote, “Bacon, Descartes, and Locke are modern because of their philosophical naturalism, their profound confidence in reason, and especially in the case of Locke, and their individualism,” (Loc: 574). Hicks avoids any in-depth look at Locke and Descartes because they are counter-examples to his claims that Kant (1724-1804) is an extreme skeptic. Kant was a skeptical philosopher of the Enlightenment, but so was the Enlightenment philosopher Descartes (1576-1650) famous for emphasizing methodological doubt; and the empiricist David Hume (1711-1776) is the most famous Enlightenment skeptic of the Western World. Hicks claims “With Kant then, external reality thus drops almost totally out of the picture, and we are trapped inescapably in subjectivity—and that is why Kant is a landmark.” (Loc: 1157). Descartes most famous argument in the “Mediations” is “I think; therefore, I am,” which is a subjective argument. Would Descartes’ anchoring all knowledge in the subjectivity of “I think,” be as irrational as Kant? I believe Hicks has his philosophers mixed up, or his concept of postmodern is simply empty.

In fact, radical skepticism can be traced back all the way to ancient times such as the Greek philosopher Pyrrho (360 B.C.- 270 B.C.). “Pyrrhonism is credited with being the first Western school of philosophy to identify the problem of induction”(Wiki). Pyrrhonism dealt with the same problems of induction as the radical empiricist skeptic Hume. A strong current of skepticism can be found throughout the history of Western ideas.

Science today has fundamental questions going back to Isaac Newton (1642-1726) that are still unsolved today. Newton understood that the machine paradigm of nature and the absurd observable phenomena of interaction at a distance such as the non-physical interaction of gravity, or magnetic repulsion and attraction were scientific mysteries. During Newton’s era these phenomena were believed to be occult ideas yet modern scientific mechanical philosophy concluded that there could be no physical interaction without physical contact. Newton, Hume and Locke agreed that the scientific machine paradigm could not explain non-physical interaction. Newton wrote, “The notion of action at a distance is inconceivable. It’s so great an absurdity, I believe no man who has in philosophical matters that competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it…we concede we do not understand the phenomena of the material world….”(see Chomsky lecture, “The Machine, the Ghost, and the Limits of Understanding”). Newton’s conclusion is nothing works by machine principles—there are no machines!

The empiricist, John Locke (1632-1704), wrote further concerning these scientific mysteries:

“It being, in respect of our Notions, not much more remote from our Comprehension to conceive that God can, if he pleases, superadd to Matter a Faculty of Thinking, than that he should superadd to it another Substance, with a Faculty of Thinking; since we know not wherein Thinking consists, nor to what sort of Substance the Almighty has been pleased to give that Power, which cannot be in any created Being, but merely by the good pleasure and Bounty of the Creator” (Locke, John. 1823: The Works. Ed. by Thomas Tegg, London, IV.III.6).

Consequently, the “modern” scientists lowered the standard of scientific intelligibility by adopting the machine paradigm of nature regardless of the non-material interaction at a distance theoretical problem thereby reducing science to pragmatic object-manipulation. Pragmatism is the epistemological foundation for the denial of knowledge (Tillich). The history of modern science is the very opposite of Hicks’ thesis that modernism is the paradigm of realism. Hicks assumes modern scientific reasoning had no theoretical problems explaining reality. “Epistemologically having rejected the notion of an independently existing reality, postmodernism denies that reason or any other method is a means of acquiring objective knowledge of that reality” (Loc: 546). By ignoring the history of modern Western Science, Hicks’ concept of science is a philosophical caricature of scientism rendering him incapable to understanding the most fundamental ideas of Kantian epistemology.

And there are many more serious logical problems with this book’s thesis…to continue!