RE: Transcendental Knowledge?
October 16, 2014 at 11:36 am
(This post was last modified: October 16, 2014 at 11:38 am by Mudhammam.)
Lol sorry guys, I thought that wall of text captured the problems with realism so well (though as I said, the E.F.J. Payne translation, which I wasn't able to directly copy and paste, is much better). I'll try to summarize:
Basically, everything that we perceive about the empirical world is shaped by our brains processing sense data; there are objects (perceived by our brains to be external, "out there") impressing themselves onto our senses, and in turn our senses respond by forming a mental picture or a "re-presentation" that results in the world of color and sounds, etc. that we take to be the "objective world." Schopenhauer, like other Idealists, argue that required for all such experiences of the world is an already certain intuitive understanding of basic axioms, or logical principles (Kant' Twelve Categories, which Schopenhauer reduces to a single one: the law of causality), from which the world appears, or is, coherent at all. In another popular quote from a work I have not read, Schopenhauer writes, "It is quite appropriate to the empirical standpoint of all the other sciences to assume the objective world as positively and actually existing; it is not appropriate to the standpoint of philosophy, which has to go back to what is primary and original. Consciousness alone is immediately given, hence the basis of philosophy is limited to the facts of consciousness; in other words, philosophy is essentially idealistic. Realism, which commends itself to the crude understanding by appearing to be found in fact, starts precisely with an arbitrary assumption, and is in consequence an empty castle in the air, since it skips or denies the first fact of all, namely, that all we know lies within consciousness... There can never be an existence that is objective absolutely and in itself; such an existence, indeed, is positively inconceivable. For the objective, as such, always and essentially has its existence in the consciousness of a subject; it is therefore the subject's representation, and consequently is conditioned by the subject, and moreover by the subject's forms of representation, which belong to the subject and not to the object."
It's interesting that the comparison to an understanding of quantum physics in the 1920s was brought up, as Schopenhauer wrote about 80-100 years before them. They were probably influenced by him a great deal, though whatever phenomena in QM Idealists wish to relate to consciousness, while interesting, to my knowledge, is still largely puzzling and misunderstood.
Basically, everything that we perceive about the empirical world is shaped by our brains processing sense data; there are objects (perceived by our brains to be external, "out there") impressing themselves onto our senses, and in turn our senses respond by forming a mental picture or a "re-presentation" that results in the world of color and sounds, etc. that we take to be the "objective world." Schopenhauer, like other Idealists, argue that required for all such experiences of the world is an already certain intuitive understanding of basic axioms, or logical principles (Kant' Twelve Categories, which Schopenhauer reduces to a single one: the law of causality), from which the world appears, or is, coherent at all. In another popular quote from a work I have not read, Schopenhauer writes, "It is quite appropriate to the empirical standpoint of all the other sciences to assume the objective world as positively and actually existing; it is not appropriate to the standpoint of philosophy, which has to go back to what is primary and original. Consciousness alone is immediately given, hence the basis of philosophy is limited to the facts of consciousness; in other words, philosophy is essentially idealistic. Realism, which commends itself to the crude understanding by appearing to be found in fact, starts precisely with an arbitrary assumption, and is in consequence an empty castle in the air, since it skips or denies the first fact of all, namely, that all we know lies within consciousness... There can never be an existence that is objective absolutely and in itself; such an existence, indeed, is positively inconceivable. For the objective, as such, always and essentially has its existence in the consciousness of a subject; it is therefore the subject's representation, and consequently is conditioned by the subject, and moreover by the subject's forms of representation, which belong to the subject and not to the object."
It's interesting that the comparison to an understanding of quantum physics in the 1920s was brought up, as Schopenhauer wrote about 80-100 years before them. They were probably influenced by him a great deal, though whatever phenomena in QM Idealists wish to relate to consciousness, while interesting, to my knowledge, is still largely puzzling and misunderstood.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
