Forwarded message:

> From: Elliot Temple <curi@curi.us>
> To: FI <fallible-ideas@yahoogroups.com>, FIGG
> <fallible-ideas@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: [FI] Popper on Kant
> Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2017 11:40:01 -0700
>
> Let's reread some Popper on Kant! Popper's positive comments on Kant are one
> of the reasons many Objectivists refuse to learn what Popper's views are.
>
> C&R, ch 7, Kant’s Critique and Cosmology:
>
> Popper calls Kant:
>
>> a teacher of the Rights of Man, of equality before the law, of world
>> citizenship, of peace on earth, and, perhaps most important, of emancipation
>> through knowledge.
>
> Those sound good.
>
>> Kant believed in the Enlightenment. He was its last great defender. I realize
>> that this is not the usual view. While I see Kant as the defender of the
>> Enlightenment, he is more often taken as the founder of the school which
>> destroyed it—of the Romantic School of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. I
>> contend that these two interpretations are incompatible.
>
> That sounds interesting.
>
> Note: Popper's sometimes overly nice to other thinkers, so be careful with his
> praise. He goes out of his way to acknowledge anything he thinks they got
> right. Except Hegel, who Popper is harsh to in OSE. Popper may want to
> separate Kant from Hegel because he likes Kant and dislikes Hegel. Or,
> alternatively, Popper may like one and not the other because he saw major ways
> they are separate.
>
> Example of Popper giving too much credit:
>
> _The Philosophy of Karl Popper_, vol 2, edited by Schilpp, part 3, ch 3,
> section 13, page 1014:
>
>> Although I am fully aware of the fact that I may be mistaken, I think that I
>> have solved the problem of induction, this major philosophical problem first
>> raised by David Hume. Perhaps I should be more wary; I claim only to have
>> solved the other half of the philosophical problem whose more fundamental
>> half was already solved by Hume, in his early *Treatise on Human Nature*,
>> 1739. With a little generosity the problem may even be described as the
>> *problem of human knowledge*.
>
>
> Popper solved the problem of induction, and Hume didn't, but Popper wants to
> give Hume more than half the credit! Meanwhile, Popper criticizes Hume's views
> extensively here and elsewhere. Popper mostly disagrees with Hume about this.
> He thinks Hume got one part right (induction doesn't logically work) and
> basically went badly wrong from there. Hume was led to irrationalism because
> he thought induction didn't work but was unwilling to reject it. I sympathize
> with that difficult problem. Coming up with an alternative to induction is the
> really hard part. Which is why I think Popper's contribution was the big
> breakthrough.
>
>
> Back to C&R:
>
>> In *A Public Declaration Concerning Fichte*,[6] which is too little known,
>> Kant wrote: ‘May God protect us from our friends. … For there are fraudulent
>> and perfidious so-called friends who are scheming for our ruin while speaking
>> the language of good-will.’
>
> That's a good sign.
>
>> Kant chose [the name] ‘Transcendental Idealism’. He soon regretted this
>> choice,[14] for it made people believe that he was an idealist in the sense
>> of denying the reality of physical things: that he declared physical things
>> to be mere ideas. Kant hastened to explain that he had only denied that space
>> and time are empirical and real— empirical and real in the sense in which
>> physical things and events are empirical and real. But in vain did he
>> protest. His difficult style sealed his fate: he was to be revered as the
>> father of German Idealism. I suggest that it is time to put this right. Kant
>> always insisted[15] that the physical things in space and time are real.
>
>
> Popper thinks Kant has been misunderstood. But in a rather different way than
> Rand claims.
>
> There's some overlap though. That difficult writing style was criticized by
> Rand too.
>
> I think that's an important matter. Did Kant do it on purpose? Was he bad at
> writing? Did everyone write like that, given the date and country?
>
> Today some people write badly on purpose. They try to be impressive. They try
> to imitate old thinkers like Kant or Locke. And sometimes they use dense
> writing because they have little to say and that'd be too obvious if they
> wrote clearly.
>
> But it's much harder to judge this issue for thinkers from the past,
> especially via translation. (Though Popper didn't need a translation.)
>
>> For what the *Critique* criticizes is pure reason; it criticizes and attacks
>> all reasoning about the world that is ‘pure’ in the sense of being untainted
>> by sense experience. Kant attacked pure reason by showing that pure reasoning
>> about the world must always entangle us in antinomies.
>
> People get confused by reductio arguments a lot. You argue that X implies Y,
> and that Y is wrong. They often think you're advocating X or Y.
>
> I (and Rand too) agree that it's important to connect our reasoning to the
> real world using sense data.
>
> In C&R ch 8, Popper finds pieces of his own solution to the problem of
> induction in Kant. E.g.
>
>> Thus Kant wrote in the preface to the 2nd edition of the *Critique of Pure
>> Reason*:
>>
>>> When Galileo let his globes run down an inclined plane with a gravity which
>>> he had chosen himself; when Torricelli caused the air to sustain a weight
>>> which he had calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a column of water
>>> of known height; … then a light dawned upon all natural philosophers. They
>>> learnt that our reason can understand only *what it creates according to its
>>> own design: that we must compel Nature to answer our questions*, rather than
>>> cling to Nature’s apron strings and allow her to guide us. *For purely
>>> accidental observations, made without any plan having been thought out in
>>> advance, cannot be connected by a … law—which is what reason is searching
>>> for.*[5]
>
>
> I can see why Popper likes this. Popper would read it as contradicting e.g.
> Bacon's view that we should open our minds, empty them of designs, plans and
> biases, and let observation teach us.
>
> Popper sees here the need to have ideas first, and then search *selectively*
> for relevant observations which can help test those ideas.
>
> I have a hard time thinking of how a non-Popperian would interpret this Kant
> passage and make much sense of it.
>
> For example, someone could read, "reason can only understand what it creates"
> and think it's anti-realism. Does that mean only products of your own mind are
> comprehensible to you, and the rest of the universe will always be a
> mysterious jumble?
>
> And someone could read the comment on accidental observations as meaning the
> law of gravity only connects different data points if you think of it in
> advance, but gravity won't apply if you observe haphazardly.
>
> Popper goes on to say Kant made an error:
>
>> [Kant] was convinced that Newton’s theory was *true*.
>
> Popper says the error was basically unavoidable until Einstein, which I think
> is overly generous. I think William Godwin, for example, was a post-Newton,
> pre-Einstein fallibilist.
>
> Popper basically says Kant recognized induction doesn't work, and that this
> clashes with Newton's claims. Popper then gives arguments on the matter and
> it's unclear which aspects of them come from Kant.
>
> Popper attributes to Kant the view that:
>
>> *the world as we know it is our interpretation of the observable facts in the
>> light of theories that we ourselves invent.* As Kant puts it: ‘Our intellect
>> does not draw its laws from nature … but imposes them upon nature.’
>
> I agree with Popper's version, though it requires various elaborations to
> avoid the undermining all human knowledge as arbitrary and subjective.
>
> Kant's version, quoted here, I read as ambiguous. I can see how it could mean
> Popper's view. That sentence could also mean other things, e.g. that man's
> consciousness has control over reality. And it could mean that our minds are
> outside of nature and not controlled by the laws of physics.
>
> "Impose" is the wrong word. We're trying to understand nature, not impose our
> will on it. The point is to take an active and (tentatively, fallibly)
> opinionated role in understanding the world.
>
>> Since Kant believed that it was his task to explain the uniqueness and the
>> truth of Newton’s theory, he was led to the belief that this theory followed
>> inescapably and with logical necessity from the laws of our understanding.
>> The modification of Kant’s solution which I propose, in accordance with the
>> Einsteinian revolution, frees us from this compulsion. In this way, theories
>> are seen to be the *free* creations of our own minds, the result of an almost
>> poetic intuition, of an attempt to understand intuitively the laws of nature.
>> But we no longer try to force our creations upon nature.
>
> Popper apparently does think Kant meant something about forcing our ideas on
> nature, and wants to revise that part.
>
> Elliot Temple
> www.curi.us
>
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Forwarded message:

> From: Elliot Temple <curi@curi.us>
> To: FI <fallible-ideas@yahoogroups.com>, FIGG
> <fallible-ideas@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: [FI] More Kant Popper Quotes and Comments
> Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2017 12:32:10 -0700
>
> I'm searching previous discussion of Kant. I found some Popper quotes I used
> the past. Some emphasis is probably missing from these quotes. If someone
> knows more (especially primary source info) or wants to discuss (positively or
> negatively) any of the ideas from these quotes, please reply!
>
> From _Objective Knowledge_:
>
>> When Kant said that our intellect imposes its laws upon nature, he was
>> right-except that he did not notice how often our intellect fails in the
>> attempt: the regularities we try to impose are psychologically a priori, but
>> there is not the slightest reason to assume that they are a priori valid, as
>> Kant thought.
>
> That sounds to me like Kant was mistaken.
>
> I also broadly disagree with *anything* being a priori valid. I think that
> epistemology and logic depend on the laws of physics. Under different physics,
> evolution (which is how I think knowledge is created) doesn't have to work at
> all. And physics controls the results of computations, including for the logic
> operations AND, OR, NOT, etc.
>
> _Objective Knowledge_:
>
>> This solved for him [Kant] Hume's problem. But was it a tenable theory? How
>> could the truth of the principle of causality (for example) be established a
>> priori?
>>
>> Here Kant brought in his 'Copernican Revolution': it was the human intellect
>> which invented, and imposed, its laws upon the sensual morass, thus creating
>> the order of nature.
>>
>> This was a bold theory. But it collapsed once it was realized that Newtonian
>> dynamics was not a priori valid but a marvellous hypothesis-a conjecture.
>
>
>
> From Open Society (OSE):
>
>> Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, asserted under the influence of Hume
>> that pure speculation or reason, whenever it ventures into a field in which
>> it cannot possibly be checked by experience, is liable to get involved in
>> contradictions or 'antinomies' and to produce what he unambiguously described
>> as 'mere fancies'; 'nonsense'; 'illusions'; 'a sterile dogmatism'; and 'a
>> superficial pretension to the knowledge of everything'. He tried to show that
>> to every metaphysical assertion or thesis, concerning for example the
>> beginning of the world in time, or the existence of God, there can be
>> contrasted a counter-assertion or antithesis; and both, he held, may proceed
>> from the same assumptions, and can be proved with an equal degree of
>> 'evidence'.
>
> I agree with this. One can take any idea and then manufacture infinitely many
> contradictory claims which equally fit (do not contradict) the identical set
> of empirical evidence.
>
> This is why, as Deutsch explains, we criticize most ideas with arguments (e.g.
> saying why it's a bad explanation, contains contradictions, contains non
> sequiturs, etc) and only use empirical tests when there's contradicting
> empirical claims to adjudicate.
>
>> In other words, when leaving the field of experience, our speculation can
>> have no scientific status, since to every argument there must be an equally
>> valid counter-argument. Kant's intention was to stop once and forever the
>> 'accursed fertility' of the scribblers on metaphysics. But unfortunately, the
>> effect was very different. What Kant stopped was only the attempts of the
>> scribblers to use rational argument; they only gave up the attempt to teach,
>> but not the attempt to bewitch the public (as Schopenhauer puts it 29 ).
>
> Oh dear! And that effect, which Popper attributes to Kant, is one of Rand's
> biggest complaints about Kant as well.
>
>> For this development, Kant himself undoubtedly bears a very considerable
>> share of the blame; for the obscure style of his work (which he wrote in a
>> great hurry, although only after long years of meditation) contributed
>> considerably to a further lowering of the low standard of clarity in German
>> theoretical writing 30 .
>
> :(
>
>> None of the metaphysical scribblers who came after Kant made any attempt to
>> refute him 31 ; and Hegel, more particularly, even had the audacity to
>> patronize Kant for 'reviving the name of Dialectics, which he restored to
>> their post of honour'. He taught that Kant was quite right in pointing out
>> the antinomies, but that he was wrong to worry about them. It just lies in
>> the nature of reason that it must contradict itself, Hegel asserted; and it
>> is not a weakness of our human faculties, but it is the very essence of all
>> rationality that it must work with contradictions and antinomies; for this is
>> just the way in which reason develops. Hegel asserted that Kant had analysed
>> reason as if it were something static; that he forgot that mankind develops,
>> and with it, our social heritage. But what we are pleased to call our own
>> reason is nothing but the product of this social heritage, of the historical
>> development of the social group in which we live, the nation.
>
> If anyone knows something good about Hegel, I'd be interested to hear it.
>
> I recall Bryan Magee was positive about some German philosophers in
> _Confessions of a Philosopher_, particularly Kant and Schopenhauer. But he
> failed to convince me. The index has a lot of entries for Hegel. I found Magee
> quoting Schopenhauer on pp 361-2:
>
>> Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are in my opinion not philosophers, for they lack
>> the first requirement of a philosopher, namely a seriousness and honesty of
>> enquiry. They are merely sophists who wanted to appear to be, rather than to
>> be, something. They sought not truth but their own interest and advancement
>> in the world. ... they have excelled in one thing, in the art of beguiling
>> the public ..."
>
> But Magee says he disagrees with Schopenhauer. Magee goes on to discuss three
> of Schopenhauer's arguments against them. He does concede that they
> deliberately wrote obscurely, as Schopenhauer and Rand charge. But did Kant do
> that too? Popper above offers the explanation that Kant rushed his writing.
>
>
> Back to quoting OSE:
>
>> The sociology of knowledge can be considered as a Hegelian version of Kant's
>> theory of knowledge. For it continues on the lines of Kant's criticism of
>> what we may term the 'passivist' theory of knowledge. I mean by this the
>> theory of the empiricists down to and including Hume, a theory which may be
>> described, roughly, as holding that knowledge streams into us through our
>> senses, and that error is due to our interference with the sense-given
>> material, or to the associations which have developed within it; the best way
>> of avoiding error is to remain entirely passive and receptive. Against this
>> receptacle theory of knowledge (I usually call it the 'bucket theory of the
>> mind'), Kant argued that knowledge is not a collection of gifts received by
>> our senses and stored in the mind as if it were a museum, but that it is very
>> largely the result of our own mental activity; that we must most actively
>> engage ourselves in searching, comparing, unifying, generalizing, if we wish
>> to attain knowledge. We may call this theory the 'activist' theory of
>> knowledge. In connection with it, Kant gave up the untenable ideal of a
>> science which is free from any kind of presuppositions. (That this ideal is
>> even self-contradictory will be shown in the next chapter.) He made it quite
>> clear that we cannot start from nothing, and that we have to approach our
>> task equipped with a system of presuppositions which we hold without having
>> tested them by the empirical methods of science; such a system may be called
>> a 'categorial apparatus' 3 . Kant believed that it was possible to discover
>> the one true and unchanging categorial apparatus, which represents as it were
>> the necessarily unchanging framework of our intellectual outfit, i.e. human
>> 'reason'. This part of Kant's theory was given up by Hegel, who, as opposed
>> to Kant, did not believe in the unity of mankind. [it continues by talking
>> about Hegel]
>>
>> Both Kantians and Hegelians make the same mistake of assuming that our
>> presuppositions (since they are, to start with, undoubtedly indispensable
>> instruments which we need in our active 'making' of experiences) can neither
>> be changed by decision nor refuted by experience; that they are above and
>> beyond the scientific methods of testing theories, constituting as they do
>> the basic presuppositions of all thought. But this is an exaggeration, based
>> on a misunderstanding of the relations between theory and experience in
>> science.
>
> That sounds like Kantians basically think we're born biased and can't fix it.
>
> I agree with Popper's view that we're born with something like some initial
> ideas, expectations and biases, but that we can change them and make progress.
>
> Some things are very difficult to change, e.g. changing our eyes to see
> infrared light. That would require some sci fi technology. But we can use
> tools to help us see the world better, so it's OK and doesn't present some
> kind of fundamental limit on human knowledge.
>
> I acknowledge the common experience that people's minds are tangled messes and
> it's daunting to try to fix their biases. But I don't think we're screwed from
> birth by some ideas which are too hard to change. I think people create their
> own messes and could, step by step, untangle their thinking.
>
>
> OSE:
>
>> A critical interpretation, however, must take the form of a rational
>> reconstruction, and must be systematic; it must try to reconstruct the
>> philosopher's thought as a consistent edifice. Cp. also what A. C. Ewing says
>> of Kant (A Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 1938, p. 4):
>> '.. we ought to start with the assumption that a great philosopher is not
>> likely to be always contradicting himself, and consequently, wherever there
>> are two interpretations, one of which will make Kant consistent and the other
>> inconsistent, prefer the former to the latter, if reasonably possible.' This
>> surely applies also to Plato, and even to interpretation in general.
>
> I like Popper's method.
>
>
>
>> I may remark, in this connection, that Kant's ardent liberalism is very
>> little appreciated in English and American writings on political philosophy
>> (in spite of Hastie's Kant's Principles of Politics). He is only too often
>> claimed to be a forerunner of Hegel; but in view of the fact that he
>> recognized in the romanticism of both Herder and Fichte a doctrine
>> diametrically opposed to his own, this claim is grossly unjust to Kant, and
>> there can be no doubt that he would have strongly resented it. It is the
>> tremendous influence of Hegelianism that led to a wide acceptance of this, I
>> believe, completely untenable claim.
>
> I'm doubtful of Kant's liberalism, on Popper's statement, because I consider
> Popper to misunderstand liberalism. For example Popper said, "if there could
> be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a
> socialist still"
>
>
>
> OSE:
>
>> It is astonishing to see that, thanks to a conspiracy of noise, a man like
>> Fichte succeeded in perverting the teaching of his 'master', in spite of
>> Kant's protests, and in Kant's lifetime. This happened only a hundred years
>> ago and can easily be checked by anybody who takes the trouble to read Kant's
>> and Fichte's letters, and Kant's public announcements; and it shows that my
>> theory of Plato's perversion of the teaching of Socrates is by no means so
>> fantastic as it may appear to Platonists. Socrates was dead then, and he had
>> left no letters.
>
> and
>
>> I agree with Nietzsche that Kleist's words are moving; and I agree that
>> Kleist's reading of Kant's doctrine that it is impossible to attain any
>> knowledge of things in themselves is straightforward enough, even though it
>> conflicts with Kant's own intentions; for Kant believed in the possibility of
>> science, and of finding the truth.
>
> this says Kant contradicted himself. that would help explain confusion about
> his views.
>
>
>
> From C&R:
>
>> Kant believed that Newton's dynamics was a priori valid. (See his
>> Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, published between the first and
>> the second editions of the Critique of Pure Reason.)
>
>
>> His Critique of Pure Reason is one of the most difficult books ever written.
>> Kant wrote in great haste, and about a problem which, I shall try to show,
>> was not only insoluble but also misconceived.
>
> it's conceivable that Kant himself was OK but his legacy is awful.
>
>
>> What lesson did Kant draw from these bewildering antinomies? He concluded
>> that our ideas of space and time are inapplicable to the universe as a whole.
>> We can, of course, apply the ideas of space and time to ordinary physical
>> things and physical events. But space and time themselves are neither things
>> nor events: they cannot even be observed: they are more elusive. They are a
>> kind of framework for things and events: something like a system of
>> pigeon-holes, or a filing system, for observations. Space and time are not
>> part of the real empirical world of things and events, but rather part of our
>> mental outfit, our apparatus for grasping this world. Their proper use is as
>> instruments of observation: in observing any event we locate it, as a rule,
>> immediately and intuitively in an order of space and time. Thus space and
>> time may be described as a frame of reference which is not based upon
>> experience but intuitively used in experience, and properly applicable to
>> experience. This is why we get into trouble if we misapply the ideas of space
>> and time by using them in a field which transcends all possible
>> experience--as we did in our two proofs about the universe as a whole. To the
>> view which I have just outlined Kant chose to give the ugly and doubly
>> misleading name "'Transcendental Idealism'". He soon regretted this choice,
>> for it made people believe that he was an idealist in the sense of denying
>> the reality of physical things: that he declared physical things to be mere
>> ideas. Kant hastened to explain that he had only denied that space and time
>> are empirical and real--empirical and real in the sense in which physical
>> things and events are empirical and real. But in vain did he protest. His
>> difficult style sealed his fate: he was to be revered as the father of German
>> Idealism. I suggest that it is time to put this right. Kant always insisted
>> that the physical things in space and time are real. And as to the wild and
>> obscure metaphysical speculations of the German Idealists, the very title of
>> Kant Critique was chosen to announce a critical attack upon all such
>> speculative reasoning. For what the Critique criticizes is pure reason; it
>> criticizes and attacks all reasoning about the world that is 'pure' in the
>> sense of being untainted by sense experience. Kant attacked pure reason by
>> showing that pure reasoning about the world must always entangle us in
>> antinomies.
>
>
>> KANT'S COPERNICAN REVOLUTION Kant's faith in his theory of space and time as
>> an intuitive frame of reference was confirmed when he found in it a key to
>> the solution of a second problem. This was the problem of the validity of
>> Newtonian theory in whose absolute and unquestionable truth he believed, in
>> common with all concontemporary physicists.
>
>
>> It was inconceivable, he felt, that this exact mathematical theory should be
>> nothing but the result of accumulated observations. But what else could be
>> its basis? Kant approached this problem by first considering the status of
>> geometry. Euclid's geometry is not based upon observation, he said, but upon
>> our intuition of spatial relations. Newtonian science is in a similar
>> position. Although confirmed by observations it is the result not of these
>> observations but of our own ways of thinking, of our attempts to order our
>> sense-data, to understand them, and to digest them intellectually. It is not
>> these sense-data but our own intellect, the organization of the digestive
>> system of our mind, which is responsible for our theories. Nature as we know
>> it, with its order and with its laws, is thus largely a product of the
>> assimilating and ordering activities of our mind. In Kant's own striking
>> formulation of this view, 'Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature,
>> but imposes its laws upon nature'. This formula sums up an idea which Kant
>> himself proudly calls his 'Copernican Revolution'. As Kant puts it,
>> Copernicus, finding that no progress was being made with the theory of the
>> revolving heavens, broke the deadlock by turning the tables, as it were: he
>> assumed that it is not the heavens which revolve while we the observers stand
>> still, but that we the observers revolve while the heavens stand still. In a
>> similar way, Kant says, the problem of scientific knowledge is to be
>> solved--the problem how an exact science, such as Newtonian theory, is
>> possible, and how it could ever have been found. We must give up the view
>> that we are passive observers, waiting for nature to impress its regularity
>> upon us. Instead we must adopt the view that in digesting our sense-data we
>> actively impress the order and the laws of our intellect upon them. Our
>> cosmos bears the imprint of our minds. By emphasizing the role played by the
>> observer, the investigator, the theorist, Kant made an indelible impression
>> not only upon philosophy but also upon physics and cosmology. There is a
>> Kantian climate of thought without which Einstein's theories or Bohr's are
>> hardly conceivable; and Eddington might be said to be more of a Kantian, in
>> some respects, than Kant: himself. Even those who, like myself, cannot follow
>> Kant all the way can accept his view that the experimenter must not wait till
>> it pleases nature to reveal her secrets, but that he must question her. He
>> must cross examine nature in the light of his doubts, his conjectures, his
>> theories, his ideas, and his inspirations. Here, I believe, is a wonderful
>> philosophical find. It makes it possible to look upon science, whether
>> theoretical or experimental, as a human creation, and to look upon its
>> history as part of the history of ideas, on a level with the history of art
>> or of literature. There is a second and even more interesting meaning
>> inherent in Kant's version of the Copernican Revolution, a meaning which may
>> perhaps indicate an ambivalence in his attitude towards it. For Kant's
>> Copernican Revolution solves a human problem to which Copernicus' own
>> revolution gave rise. Copernicus deprived man of his central position in the
>> physical universe. Kant's Copernican Revolution takes the sting out of this.
>> He shows us not only that our location in the physical universe is
>> irrelevant, but also that in a sense our universe may well be said to turn
>> about us; for it is we who produce, at least in part, the order we find in
>> it; it is we who create our knowledge of it. We are discoverers: and
>> discovery is a creative art.
>
>
>> Thus Kant wrote in the preface to the 2nd edition of the Critique of Pure
>> Reason: 'When Galileo let his balls run down an inclined plane with a gravity
>> which he had chosen himself; when Torricelli caused the air to sustain a
>> weight which he had calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a column of
>> water of known height; . . . then a light dawned upon all natural
>> philosophers. They learnt that our reason can understand only what it creates
>> according to its own design: that we must compel Nature to answer our
>> questions, rather than cling to Nature's apron strings and allow her to guide
>> us. For purely accidental observations, made without any plan having been
>> thought out in advance, cannot be connected by a . . . law which is what
>> reason is searching for.' This quotation from Kant shows how well he
>> understood that we ourselves must confront nature with hypotheses and demand
>> a reply to our questions; and that, lacking such hypotheses, we can only make
>> haphazard observations which follow no plan and which can therefore never
>> lead us to a natural law. In other words, Kant saw with perfect clarity that
>> the history of science had refuted the Baconian myth that we must begin with
>> observations in order to derive our theories from them. And Kant also
>> realized very clearly that behind this historical fact lay a logical fact;
>> that there were logical reasons why this kind of thing did not occur in the
>> history of science: that it was logically impossible to derive theories from
>> observations. My third point the contention that it is logically impossible
>> to derive Newton's theory from observations follows immediately from Hume's
>> critique of the validity of inductive inferences, as pointed out by Kant.
>> [The details of the argument follows]
>
>
>> As I have said, Kant, like almost all philosophers and epistemologists right
>> into the twentieth century, was convinced that Newton's theory was true. This
>> conviction was inescapable. Newton's theory had made the most astonishing and
>> exact predictions, all of which had proved strikingly correct. Only ignorant
>> men could doubt its truth. How little we may reproach Kant for his belief is
>> best shown by the fact that even Henri Poincaré, the greatest mathematician,
>> physicist and philosopher of his generation, who died shortly before the
>> First World War, believed like Kant that Newton's theory was true and
>> irrefutable. Poincaré was one of the few scientists who felt about Kant's
>> paradox almost as strongly as Kant himself; and though he proposed a solution
>> which differed somewhat from Kant's, it was only a variant of it. The
>> important point, however, is that he fully shared Kant's error, as I have
>> called it. It was an unavoidable error--unavoidable, that is, before
>> Einstein.
>
>
>> We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the
>> tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our
>> knowledge. This would agree better with what is desired, namely, that it
>> should be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori, determining
>> something in regard to them prior to their being given.
>
> To actually judge Kant well would require looking at primary sources.
> Preferably in German, which I can't read.
>
> However one can judge something like Kant's influence on the world today, and
> the meaning most people have taken from him, just from secondary sources in
> English.
>
>
> Elliot Temple
> Get my philosophy newsletter:
> www.fallibleideas.com/newsletter
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Forwarded message:

> From: Elliot Temple <curi@curi.us>
> To: FI <fallible-ideas@yahoogroups.com>, FIGG
> <fallible-ideas@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: [FI] Kant Quotes
> Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2017 12:50:11 -0700
>
> http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm
>
>> The understanding was defined above only negatively, as a non-sensuous
>> faculty of cognition. Now, independently of sensibility, we cannot possibly
>> have any intuition; consequently, the understanding is no faculty of
>> intuition. But besides intuition there is no other mode of cognition, except
>> through conceptions; consequently, the cognition of every, at least of every
>> human, understanding is a cognition through conceptions—not intuitive, but
>> discursive. All intuitions, as sensuous, depend on affections; conceptions,
>> therefore, upon functions. By the word function I understand the unity of the
>> act of arranging diverse representations under one common representation.
>> Conceptions, then, are based on the spontaneity of thought, as sensuous
>> intuitions are on the receptivity of impressions. Now, the understanding
>> cannot make any other use of these conceptions than to judge by means of
>> them. As no representation, except an intuition, relates immediately to its
>> object, a conception never relates immediately to an object, but only to some
>> other representation thereof, be that an intuition or itself a conception. A
>> judgement, therefore, is the mediate cognition of an object, consequently the
>> representation of a representation of it. In every judgement there is a
>> conception which applies to, and is valid for many other conceptions, and
>> which among these comprehends also a given representation, this last being
>> immediately connected with an object. For example, in the judgement—"All
>> bodies are divisible," our conception of divisible applies to various other
>> conceptions; among these, however, it is here particularly applied to the
>> conception of body, and this conception of body relates to certain phenomena
>> which occur to us. These objects, therefore, are mediately represented by the
>> conception of divisibility. All judgements, accordingly, are functions of
>> unity in our representations, inasmuch as, instead of an immediate, a higher
>> representation, which comprises this and various others, is used for our
>> cognition of the object, and thereby many possible cognitions are collected
>> into one. But we can reduce all acts of the understanding to judgements, so
>> that understanding may be represented as the faculty of judging. For it is,
>> according to what has been said above, a faculty of thought. Now thought is
>> cognition by means of conceptions. But conceptions, as predicates of possible
>> judgements, relate to some representation of a yet undetermined object. Thus
>> the conception of body indicates something—for example, metal—which can be
>> cognized by means of that conception. It is therefore a conception, for the
>> reason alone that other representations are contained under it, by means of
>> which it can relate to objects. It is therefore the predicate to a possible
>> judgement; for example: "Every metal is a body." All the functions of the
>> understanding therefore can be discovered, when we can completely exhibit the
>> functions of unity in judgements. And that this may be effected very easily,
>> the following section will show.
>
> This is terribly hard to understand, and also I'm suspicious of the
> translation. Consider, "besides intuition there is no other mode of cognition,
> except through conceptions". What? The original text could be bad. But it
> could easily be that the words "intuition" and "conceptions" are inadequate
> translations. (It also presumably makes more sense if you read the whole
> book.)
>
> I'm not motivated to try to make sense of passages like these unless someone
> can tell me the value to be gained. But I've read some pro-Kant secondary
> sources and wasn't convinced of the value.
>
> Here's one more which is relevant to the Popper quotes I posted.
>
>> It appears to me that the examples of mathematics and natural philosophy,
>> which, as we have seen, were brought into their present condition by a sudden
>> revolution, are sufficiently remarkable to fix our attention on the essential
>> circumstances of the change which has proved so advantageous to them, and to
>> induce us to make the experiment of imitating them, so far as the analogy
>> which, as rational sciences, they bear to metaphysics may permit. It has
>> hitherto been assumed that our cognition must conform to the objects; but all
>> attempts to ascertain anything about these objects a priori, by means of
>> conceptions, and thus to extend the range of our knowledge, have been
>> rendered abortive by this assumption. Let us then make the experiment whether
>> we may not be more successful in metaphysics, if we assume that the objects
>> must conform to our cognition. This appears, at all events, to accord better
>> with the possibility of our gaining the end we have in view, that is to say,
>> of arriving at the cognition of objects a priori, of determining something
>> with respect to these objects, before they are given to us. 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. Now
>> as I cannot rest in the mere intuitions, but—if they are to become
>> cognitions—must refer them, as representations, to something, as object, and
>> must determine the latter by means of the former, here again there are two
>> courses open to me. Either, first, I may assume that the conceptions, by
>> which I effect this determination, conform to the object—and in this case I
>> am reduced to the same perplexity as before; or secondly, I may assume that
>> the objects, or, which is the same thing, that experience, in which alone as
>> given objects they are cognized, conform to my conceptions—and then I am at
>> no loss how to proceed. For experience itself is a mode of cognition which
>> requires understanding. Before objects, are given to me, that is, a priori, I
>> must presuppose in myself laws of the understanding which are expressed in
>> conceptions a priori. To these conceptions, then, all the objects of
>> experience must necessarily conform. Now there are objects which reason
>> thinks, and that necessarily, but which cannot be given in experience, or, at
>> least, cannot be given so as reason thinks them. The attempt to think these
>> objects will hereafter furnish an excellent test of the new method of thought
>> which we have adopted, and which is based on the principle that we only
>> cognize in things a priori that which we ourselves place in them.[*]
>
> Note e.g., "It has hitherto been assumed that our cognition must conform to
> the objects". Then Kant appears to say let's try assuming reality will match
> some of our a priori ideas.
>
> You have to be really careful though because the book is a *criticism* of pure
> reason. When you read an isolated passage you don't know if Kant actually
> agrees with it or is just discussing it.
>
> Elliot Temple
> www.curi.us
>
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Forwarded message:

> From: Elliot Temple <curi@curi.us>
> To: FI <fallible-ideas@yahoogroups.com>, FIGG
> <fallible-ideas@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: [FI] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Kant
> Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2017 13:30:19 -0700
>
> Regardless of what Kant meant to say, let's look at what he means to English
> speaking philosophers today. I think this should be a reasonably
> representative source:
>
> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/
>
> by Michael Rohlf
>
>> The problem is that to some it seemed unclear whether progress would in fact
>> ensue if reason enjoyed full sovereignty over traditional authorities; or
>> whether unaided reasoning would instead lead straight to materialism,
>> fatalism, atheism, skepticism (Bxxxiv), or even libertinism and
>> authoritarianism (8:146). The Enlightenment commitment to the sovereignty of
>> reason was tied to the expectation that it would not lead to any of these
>> consequences
>
>
> My position: reason properly understood doesn't lead to those things. But
> misunderstandings of reason are common and can lead there. (That is what
> happened in the French Revolution which Burke criticized.)
>
>> Kant's main goal is to show that a critique of reason by reason itself,
>> unaided and unrestrained by traditional authorities, establishes a secure and
>> consistent basis for both Newtonian science and traditional morality and
>> religion. In other words, free rational inquiry adequately supports all of
>> these essential human interests and shows them to be mutually consistent. So
>> reason deserves the sovereignty attributed to it by the Enlightenment.
>
>
> The page also says Kant thinks something like: metaphysics = a priori thinking
> = the domain of reason.
>
>
>> Kant's revolutionary position in the Critique is that we can have a priori
>> knowledge about the general structure of the sensible world because it is not
>> entirely independent of the human mind. The sensible world, or the world of
>> appearances, is constructed by the human mind from a combination of sensory
>> matter that we receive passively and a priori forms that are supplied by our
>> cognitive faculties.
>
> and
>
>> For Kant, analogously, the phenomena of human experience depend on both the
>> sensory data that we receive passively through sensibility and the way our
>> mind actively processes this data according to its own a priori rules.
>
> and
>
>> we cannot have a priori knowledge about things whose existence and nature are
>> entirely independent of the human mind, which Kant calls things in themselves
>
> and
>
>> That is, Kant's constructivist foundation for scientific knowledge restricts
>> science to the realm of appearances and implies that a priori knowledge of
>> things in themselves that transcend possible human experience — or
>> transcendent metaphysics — is impossible.
>
> and
>
>> [Kant] claims that rejecting knowledge about things in themselves is
>> necessary for reconciling science with traditional morality and religion
>
>
>
> This denies that science deals with the real world with things "independent of
> the human mind".
>
> So either science can't deal with rocks, or rocks don't exist in nature as
> things in themselves apart from humans.
>
> Does someone have a more positive reading of this?
>
> The only way I see to make much sense of this is to interpret it heavily along
> Popperian lines. Something like this:
>
>> Humans don't have pure, unbiased, or a priori knowledge. We use our fallible
>> sense organs and our fallible reasoning. We try to understand the real world
>> from limited, imperfect information. That's OK. We can still find and correct
>> errors in order to make progress in scientifically understanding objective
>> reality.
>
>
> But I don't actually read the Kant material as saying this.
>
> I can agree with Kant that "human beings experience only appearances, not
> things in themselves". We don't have direct knowledge of reality. Our eyes,
> for example, are tools, like a camera, which detect a small
> evolutionarily-determined slice of the available information and which can
> malfunction. (This claim deeply disturbs some Objectivists, but I don't recall
> Rand herself contradicting it.)
>
> As to what Kant meant:
>
>> But scholars disagree widely on how to interpret these claims, and there is
>> no such thing as the standard interpretation of Kant's transcendental
>> idealism.
>
>
> The article presents two main types of interpretation:
>
>> According to the two-objects interpretation, transcendental idealism is
>> essentially a metaphysical thesis that distinguishes between two classes of
>> objects: appearances and things in themselves.
>
> ok, sort of. i wouldn't call appearances "objects". the photons i see which
> carry information to me about a chair are a different sort of thing than the
> chair. also this is sounding similar to Plato's cave.
>
>> Things in themselves, on this interpretation, are absolutely real in the
>> sense that they would exist and have whatever properties they have even if no
>> human beings were around to perceive them. Appearances, on the other hand,
>> are not absolutely real in that sense, because their existence and properties
>> depend on human perceivers.
>
> This reading sounds neither valuable today nor particularly bad for an old
> view. It's kinda confused by the gist is trying to understand the difference
> between 1) a chair  2) my perception of a chair. I get that that's a hard
> problem. This stuff is much easier to understand if you're familiar with
> modern physics, photons, cameras, information theory, etc.
>
>> Moreover, whenever appearances do exist, in some sense they exist in the mind
>> of human perceivers.
>
> This statement isn't very clear. It's trying to talk about something without
> knowing all the details: that photons carry information about objects to our
> eyes which is then processed by our brains which are computers. In this modern
> physics view, one can understand what information exists at what locations at
> what times.
>
>> Kant is walking a fine line in claiming on the one hand that we can have no
>> knowledge about things in themselves, but on the other hand that we know that
>> things in themselves exist, that they affect our senses, and that they are
>> non-spatial and non-temporal.
>
> This kind of statement worries me about translations and context. What did
> Kant actually mean by "no knowledge"? Maybe he meant no justified, true
> believe. Maybe he meant no infallible knowledge.
>
> This passage directly asserts (according to the two-objects interpretation)
> that Kant was a skeptic. No knowledge of the real world! But it doesn't leave
> me confident the author is conveying Kant's meaning correctly.
>
>> even if that problem is surmounted, it has seemed to many that Kant's theory,
>> interpreted in this way, implies a radical form of skepticism that traps each
>> of us within the contents of our own mind and cuts us off from reality.
>
> My primary opinion of this is I don't really care. People are confused
> (perhaps Kant, and certainly many of his interpreters) and a much better view
> of the matter is available today.
>
> The article goes on to talk about the "two-aspects reading" of Kant, which I
> again don't see the value in.
>
>
> Elliot Temple
> Get my philosophy newsletter:
> www.fallibleideas.com/newsletter
>
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Forwarded message:

> From: Elliot Temple <curi@curi.us>
> To: FI <fallible-ideas@yahoogroups.com>, FIGG
> <fallible-ideas@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: [FI] Kant and Liberalism
> Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2017 14:45:14 -0700
>
> I want to find some information about Kant's political views, separate from
> his complex, abstract views about reason. Was he liberal or anti-liberal? Did
> he have a view on free trade or small government? That's a different sort of
> thing than e.g. discussion of the Categorical Imperative which only relates to
> human life indirectly.
>
>
> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/
>
>> Kant defines virtue as “the moral strength of a *human being’s* will in
>> fulfilling his duty” (MM 6:405)
>
> This sounds really bad. It sounds like a recipe for obedience to authorities
> who say what your duty is.
>
> Why should it take strength and will to act morally, instead of being
> pleasant? Why should you fulfill duty instead of self-interest?
>
> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/
>
>> According to Kantian contractualism, “society, being composed of a plurality
>> of persons, each with his own aims, interests, and conceptions of the good,
>> is best arranged when it is governed by principles that do not *themselves*
>> presuppose any particular conception of the good…” (Sandel, 1982: 1).
>
>
> This might mean a tolerant society where the laws don't discriminate against
> people with different moral views.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_philosophy_of_Immanuel_Kant
>
>> Kant's most significant contribution to political philosophy and the
>> philosophy of law is the doctrine of *Rechtsstaat*. According to this
>> doctrine, the power of the state is limited in order to protect citizens from
>> the arbitrary exercise of authority.
>
>
> That sounds good. But it doesn't sound like a big contribution. Wasn't that
> idea already known by e.g. Locke?
>
>> Kant opposed "democracy" – which, in that era, meant direct democracy –
>> believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty.
>
> Guess who else criticizes democracy similarly. Ayn Rand! e.g.
>
> http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/democracy.html
>
>> “Democratic” in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule . .
>> . a social system in which one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s
>> life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at
>> any moment for any purpose.
>
>
> I found a discussion of whether Kant is a classical liberal at Cato Unbound.
> It's new (Oct 2016) and I hadn't seen it before!
>
> Mark White argues in favor, and an Objectivist and Gregory Salmieri (an
> Objectivist) and two others write replies. Let's take a look:
>
> https://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/october-2016/immanuel-kant-classical-liberalism
>
> Quotes are from individual pages and I mention when I switch authors.
>
> White says Kant favors autonomy, meaning:
>
>> the ability to make moral choices without undue regard or deference to either
>> external authority or internal inclinations
>
> sounds good.
>
>> Kant wrote that his categorical imperative was nothing but a formalization of
>> the moral intuitions of the common person on the street: treat everyone the
>> same and, if you need their cooperation, convince them to work with you,
>> rather than lying or forcing them to
>
>
> sounds good.
>
>> the categorical imperative generates two types of duties. *Perfect duties*,
>> also called strict duties, allow for no exceptions in one’s own interests,
>> and are normally negative in nature: do not lie, do not steal, do not kill,
>> and so forth.
>
> And there's weaker duties which are like general guidelines such as "help
> others, cultivate your talents", etc.
>
> The perfect duties concern me because there are no conflicts between morality
> and self-interest! Does Kant think lying, stealing and murdering are actually
> in one's self-interest?
>
> White makes an accusation about Rand but doesn't footnote a Rand quote. That's
> a bad sign!
>
> White denies that Kant advocated extreme altruism.
>
>> Given the negative nature of duties and the ubiquity of conflicts among them,
>> our judgment ends up being more useful than the duties themselves, which are
>> just the building blocks of moral behavior. The need for judgment to decide
>> how to implement and balance duties and obligations also has the effect of
>> highlighting the surprising degree of flexibility in Kant’s ethics, where
>> even perfect duties can be overridden by an imperfect duty if the latter has
>> a stronger ground of obligation. This flexibility belies caricatures of Kant
>> as a cold, rigid moralist, and reveal him to be a true supporter of freedom
>> within the bounds of sociality.
>
> This sounds like an unprincipled mess. If your principles conflict, some of
> them are wrong! Don't ignore the contradiction and then take different sides
> of it as it suits you!
>
> The details of those bounds on freedom concern me too.
>
> White says Kant advocated small government.
>
> On to Salmieri:
>
>> Kant coopted some of the Enlightenment’s language and used it to defend a
>> purified form of the dogmas that had long been accepted as common sense but
>> were newly under attack.  In particular, by defining morality in
>> contradistinction to prudence, Kant gave a new prominence to the idea that
>> morality requires sacrifice. The “freedom” (or “autonomy”) he extols is not
>> the Enlightenment’s freedom to conceive and pursue ambitious, life-affirming
>> goals, nor is it the freedom to follow one’s whims. Rather, it is the ability
>> to obey a morality the entire content of which Kant derives from the notion
>> that there must be *something* for the sake of which one must be always ready
>> to sacrifice the whole of one’s happiness.
>
>
> Scathing! And footnoted:
>
>> See especially Ak. IV 405–407 and Ak. V 73.
>
>
> I wish people would just link public domain works, it'd be way easier to find
> the right passage. I could also Google the passage if he'd given any quote.
> I'll look for this later.
>
> Salmieri also denies White's claim that sometimes perfect duties can be
> overridden.
>
>> [Kant insisted] that motives of philanthropy give us no right to lie to
>> murderers who inquire after the locations of their intended victims.
>
>
> Awful! And Footnoted to Ak. VIII 425–430.
>
>> This Kantian conception of morality as something essentially different from
>> prudence was widely adopted by subsequent ethicists, who disagreed with Kant
>> on specific content of morality.
>
> In other words, Kant may bear substantial responsibility for a disaster: the
> current widespread anti-commonsense belief that morality and practicality are
> in massive conflict.
>
>> For Locke, rights defined the freedoms a rational and industrious person
>> needs to pursue his happiness in the world. The Kantian conception of
>> morality, which accords no value to this pursuit as such, leaves these rights
>> with no foundation. Appeals to Kantian dignity are of no help, because a
>> person has this dignity only qua being able to act dutifully, and acting
>> dutifully has little to do with charting one’s course through the world or
>> supporting oneself in it. How is one’s ability to be dutiful infringed upon
>> by, for example, a political system that redistributes money?
>
>
> If someone could refute this, I'd be interested.
>
> But part of the difficulty is that people disagree about what Kant actually
> said and meant. So it can be better to move on and talk about what's true and
> false, rather than  worrying too much about Kant.
>
> Moving on to Hicks:
>
>> [Kant] did argue for a robust freedom of speech, at least for the
>> philosophical use of reason. He advocated property rights. He resisted some
>> types of commodifications of human beings. And on numerous matters in foreign
>> policy he called for more peace-oriented and humanistic policies.
>>
>> Yet he also argued against allowing the smallpox vaccination: “So that states
>> do not become overcrowded with people and thus stifled from the outset, two
>> evils are placed in them as antidotes: smallpox and war.”
>
>
> Hicks says Kant was against the freedom to sell your hair to a wigmaker, and
> thought it's no crime for an unmarried mother to kill her child because
> bastards are illegitimate.
>
>> Also, given Kant’s many negative remarks about Jews,[4] women,[5] and blacks
>> and other races,[6] it is far from clear that he believes the majority of
>> human beings are capable of agency at a level worthy of moral dignity.
>
> :(
>
>> I will argue that the anti-liberalism is much deeper in Kant’s philosophy
>> than the liberalism.
>
> ok let's see.
>
>> What some philosophers mean by *self*, *individual*, and *freedom* is the
>> opposite of what other philosophers mean.
>
>
> i agree with Hicks's methodological point about interpretation, and
> specifically that terms like these get used in widely different ways.
>
>> incorporating [Kant's] fundamental distinction between phenomenal and
>> noumenal realms is essential.
>
> ok
>
>> Kant argues that we experience only the phenomenal world with its features of
>> time, space, cause and effect. This world is bounded, finite, and
>> Isaac-Newton-physically deterministic. Yet beyond the phenomenal world is the
>> noumenal, which is perhaps the realm of God, freedom, and immortality.
>>
>> Kant also believes that if there is to be morality, it must come from a place
>> of freedom. Consequently, that freedom must be outside of the phenomenal
>> world, since the phenomenal is ruled by deterministic cause and effect in
>> space and time. In other words, since morality depends upon freedom and the
>> phenomenal realm is unfree, the origin of morality can only be noumenal.
>
> really bad if correct.
>
>> So when Kant says that human selves are moral agents, that they have a
>> capacity for dignity, and that their freedoms ought to be respected, he is
>> speaking only about *noumenal* selves. He is *not* speaking about our
>> phenomenal selves. Our phenomenal selves are not free and are consequently
>> not in the realm of morality.
>
> ewwww
>
>
> moving on to Long:
>
>> I think Kant’s political writings have strong classical liberal, even
>> libertarian strands, and that these stem in large part from his more basic
>> principles. I also think his political writings contain deeply illiberal
>> elements. In many cases, I take these to be the result of Kant’s
>> misapplication of his own principles, and would expect a more consistent
>> application of those principles to result in a still more thoroughgoingly
>> libertarian set of policies.
>
>
> and he says Kant is good on the principle of property rights. and something
> about everyone gets as much freedom as possible without coercing each other.
>
> he says overall he sides with Kant's defenders against Rand, but accepts she
> had some correct points.
>
>> But however libertarian Kant’s theory of property may be in its basic
>> outlines, it is far less so in application. And here I cannot agree with Dr.
>> White’s statement that “Kant did not support forced beneficence,” or that
>> Kant’s political theory “rules out any state welfare system.” As part of the
>> social contract (a *fictional* social contract – more on that anon), Kantian
>> citizens are understood to cede to the ruler a degree of ownership over their
>> private holdings; hence Kant explicitly defends
>>
>>> the right of the supreme commander … as supreme proprietor (lord of the
>>> land), to *tax* private owners of land, that is, to require payment of taxes
>>> on land, excise taxes and import duties, or to require the performance of
>>> services (such as providing troops for military service) …. On this supreme
>>> proprietorship also rests the right to administer the state’s economy,
>>> finances, and police.[11]
>
>
> That services clause, including conscription, is a big deal!
>
>> the taxing power also includes “the right to impose taxes on the people … to
>> support organizations providing for the poor, foundling homes, and church
>> organizations,” which sounds like a state welfare system to me. Kant even
>> stresses that such public support is to occur “not merely by voluntary
>> contributions” but “by way of coercion,” explaining that taxpayers “have
>> acquired an obligation to the commonwealth, since they owe their existence to
>> an act of submitting to its protection and care, which they need in order to
>> live.”[12]
>
> that really doesn't sound liberal to me.
>
>> Kant’s (classically) illiberal streak goes much farther than mere support for
>> state welfare. He holds that illegitimate children have “stolen into the
>> commonwealth … like contraband merchandise” and so stand outside the
>> protection of civil law;[13] he denies citizens a right of self-defense
>> against the state by declaring the ruler to be above the law and not to be
>> rebelled against;[14] he denies wage workers the right of self-defense
>> against the wealthy classes by depriving them of the vote;[15] and he is so
>> enamored of capital punishment as to insist that “if a civil society were to
>> be dissolved by the consent of all its members … the last murderer remaining
>> in prison would first have to be executed.”[16]
>
> and there's more, e.g. that husbands should dominate wives because they're
> naturally superior.
>
> i'm now curious what *good* things Long is going to say about Kant! so far
> Long is basically like: "Kant mentioned a few good principles from which I can
> derive great political views which Kant would disagree with."
>
> well i read the rest and it has more really bad things about Kant and I didn't
> find the good things very convincing.
>
>
> there's some back and forth discussion after the first 4 pieces. White follows
> up once and makes some concessions, then stops responding when further
> criticism comes in. read more if you're interested.
>
>
>
>
> in the big picture my takeaway is that Kant is bad. if someone knows a good
> thing to read to change my mind, please point me to it.
>
>
> Elliot Temple
> www.curi.us
>
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Forwarded message:

> From: Elliot Temple <curi@curi.us>
> To: FI <fallible-ideas@yahoogroups.com>, FIGG
> <fallible-ideas@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: [FI] Looking at Kant Cites
> Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2017 17:04:01 -0700
>
> I managed to look up the three Kant primary source cites from:
>
> https://www.cato-unbound.org/2016/10/12/gregory-salmieri/kant-ideal-statement-classical-liberalism
>
> Many Kant cites are a mess to deal with because they give the volume and page
> number from a German collection. Then you have to try to figure out which
> English book it's in, which I'm told is usually reasonably easy to guess once
> you've read a lot of Kant... And you can't use public domain copies of Kant
> that I've found because they don't have the German page numbers in the
> margins. I've never found cites for any other author to pose this kind of
> difficulty to look up.
>
> This page helps:
>
> http://users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSNaragon/Kant/Helps/AcadEd.htm
>
> But if you expected (like my first guess) to find everything from Volume 8,
> Essays after 1781, in the Cambridge _Theoretical Philosophy after 1781_ you'd
> be wrong.
>
> I found the 3 cites in the Cambridge *Practical Philosophy*.
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Philosophy-Cambridge-Works-Immanuel-ebook/dp/B00AKE1RYO/
>
> OK so let's actually check Salmieri's claims about Kant against his footnotes.
>
>> Kant coopted some of the Enlightenment’s language and used it to defend a
>> purified form of the dogmas that had long been accepted as common sense but
>> were newly under attack.  In particular, by defining morality in
>> contradistinction to prudence, Kant gave a new prominence to the idea that
>> morality requires sacrifice. The “freedom” (or “autonomy”) he extols is not
>> the Enlightenment’s freedom to conceive and pursue ambitious, life-affirming
>> goals, nor is it the freedom to follow one’s whims. Rather, it is the ability
>> to obey a morality the entire content of which Kant derives from the notion
>> that there must be *something* for the sake of which one must be always ready
>> to sacrifice the whole of one’s happiness. Though a softer face is often put
>> on it by present-day Kantians, this point is crucial to his derivation of the
>> first formulation of the categorical imperative.[7]
>
>
> There's two cites. First: 4:405–407.
>
> Kant says people's needs, inclinations and satisfaction (in sum, happiness)
> are a powerful counterweight against the commands of duty. Kant says reason
> tells us of this duty while having disregard and contempt for our happiness.
> So Kant says there's a "*natural dialectic*" to argue against duty, corrupt
> it, and destroy its dignity, in order to try to make duty better suited to
> human happiness.
>
> Kant says moral worth requires doing your duty because it's your duty. If you
> do the same actions for a different reason (e.g. because they are practical)
> you don't get any moral credit.
>
> Kant says even if you carefully introspect and think there's nothing powerful
> enough in yourself to move you to moral duty -- "move us to this or that good
> action and to so great a sacrifice" -- then there could still be covert
> self-love as the real cause of your will. We can never be morally pure no
> matter how hard we try. (Note the comment abruptly equating good action with
> great sacrifice .)
>
> Second cite: 5:73
>
>> we can see a priori that the moral law, as the determining ground of the
>> will, must by thwarting all our inclinations produce a feeling that can be
>> called pain
>
>
> Morality is pain!? This is sure separating morality from practical concerns
> like human happiness, as Salmieri claimed.
>
> Kant then uses the word "freedom" to mean "an intellectual causality", rather
> than in the usual way.
>
> Kant calls *satisfaction with oneself* "self-conceit" and says the moral law
> strikes it down. He also says reason restricts self-love and self-benevolence.
>
>
> Salmieri's next paragraph is:
>
>> It is this observation about the structure of Kant’s position, rather any
>> concern about rigidity or heroic amounts of charity, that is the essence of
>> Rand’s objection to Kantian ethics.[8]She recognized that Kantian ethics is
>> flexible in many of the ways White describes, and she did not consider it a
>> point in Kant’s favor.[9] (This is as good a spot as any to mention one
>> interpretive claim White makes about Kant’s ethics that was new to me: he
>> writes of “the surprising degree of flexibility in Kant’s ethics, where even
>> perfect duties can be overridden by an imperfect duty if the latter has a
>> stronger ground of obligation.” It would certainly be surprising if Kant
>> thought this, especially given his insistence that motives of philanthropy
>> give us no right to lie to murderers who inquire after the locations of their
>> intended victims.[10] I’d be interested to hear more about which texts
>> support this interpretation.)
>
>
> And footnote 10 is 8:425–430, a short essay titled, "On a supposed right to
> lie from philanthropy"
>
> Kant says if you speak, then you must speak the truth. That's your duty to
> everyone no matter how much harm it causes, and even if lying would do no harm
> to the person you're speaking to. Kant says lying harms humanity in general
> even if no individual is harmed.
>
> Kant himself discusses the case of a murderer at your door who wants to kill
> someone in your home. Kant says if you try to lie and say "he's not home", and
> you're mistaken (he actually isn't home, but you thought he was) and then the
> murderer leaves (since you said he's not home) and finds and kills him
> elsewhere, you "can by right be prosecuted as the author of his death". I
> wondered if Kant really meant you'd be legally prosecuted, rather than just
> morally guilty. He makes this clear by bringing up paying a penalty in civil
> court.
>
> Kant states very clearly that being truthful in all your declarations is a
> "sacred command of reason" which is unconditional regardless of convenience.
>
> Kant says if you tell the truth and aid in a murder, you bear no moral guilt
> because you had no freedom to choose in the matter because truthfulness is
> your duty. Kant says an "accident *causes* the harm" in that case (not the
> murderer!?)
>
>
> ----
>
> From this reading, I judge Salmieri's claims about Kant's positions to be
> reasonable. Cite check passed!
>
> I thought all the Kant I read in this post was really bad. Does anyone
> disagree?
>
> Elliot Temple
> www.curi.us
>
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