Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Skeptics Hating On Kant
G.E. Schulze is a supporter of Hume and a skeptic. His paper, Aenesidemus, is a criticism of Reinhold's support of Kant's philosophy and Kant himself. He basically brings up a defense of skepticism and Hume. He begins by questioning the connection between our representations and the things outside us, (105) i.e. the existence of causality, the soul, or the thing-in-itself. The Philosophy of the Elements however will be the center of this blog since Schulze dedicates quite a bit his attention to it. So what is the Philosophy of the Elements? Basically it is a theorem of the nature/concept of the faculty of representation. It is the cause and ground of the actual presence of representations; is present prior to ever representation , and is so in a determinate form; differs from representation as cause from effect and may be inferred only from its effect.(107) However, it implies causality of the representation but of course Schulze does not agree because it is not mentioned to be a proof unlike the Theory of the Faculty of Representation (Reinhold's support of Kant), which claims that the being and the actuality of a faculty of representation, which must exist objectively, can not be thought apart. In other words, the there must exist a cause which has some effect from the being of another which takes a physical form/ or a form all together.(?)( the faculty of representation) Not sure if I follow this at all. But overall Schulze is basically saying that the Philosophy of the Elements is a contradiction to the Critique of Pure Reason. The reason for Schulze's disagreement is because he believes that causes require that it be thought of as different from their effects but not manifested through the effects.(110-111) In other words, Schulze claims that the cause that Kant and Reinhold claims to have proven is really a fallacy of begging the question. (111)
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Reinhold writes that the sole (if I recall correctly) cause of our representations (i.e., the faculty of representations)is within us. It seems then that all of our representations are internally created. So Reinhold is saying that we definitively have no access to the outside world of things-in-themselves, since all representations of seemingly objective things and events are actually created by us. (I see this as in contrast to Kant's position of uncertainty about the relation between our representations and things-in-themselves) So we're there is no possibility of empirical knowledge (insofar as 'empirical' implies experience of the objective). Even if Reinhold allows for purely rational knowledge, his absolutely cutting us off from the objective leaves the taste of solipsism in my mouth. After all, doesn't this rational knowledge come entirely from within me? Whereas I think Kant's thinking results in skepticism, I think Reinhold's leads to solipsism. Not that such a conclusion invalidates his thought--maybe I'm just talking to myself here.
I have never seen so many people so into solipsism.
But are you really seeing them, professor?
"Haha"
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