note: this discussion has turned for the better;read pgs/Where do the laws come from?

Whoa, I do not understand this claim. Under other circumstances I'd probably say something sarcastic, but your clarity of writing and level of understanding make me want to know if I have missed something.To my understanding Descartes set up Hume, who created the paradigm shift. One does not need Kant for anything more, who seems to be only a responder to Hume. His laborious writings do not reveal much beyond perhaps an attempted explanation of how things are done rather than how they ought to be done (in the field of epistemology). Further one of his more useful ideas, which could be applied to Ont and Esp but not necessarily drafted for those fields, can be invented rather easily without him.Perhaps this simply suggests that I had no use for him, and neither did my instructors. Since you find him eminently useful, and I value your input rather highly, I'm interested in finding out why you hold him as so important.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

Hmmmm, I was wondering if there was anything we'd end up disagreeing on. It appears Kant is it.I understand your "model" of development, and it is not so much invalid as it is inaccurate due to overstatement. Absolutely. Anyone reading Hume and understanding him realizes that he had scorched the earth (of knowledge). That is why I view him as the paradigm shift. Where Descartes attempted a blank slate approach, and indeed instituted his own scorched earth policy with his demon, Hume really broke the back of Descartes' attempt to build something new.What I don't find impressive is what Kant did. And I maintain that he, and his writings were unnecessary. The seeds... that our minds are what produce the order from experience... are within Hume's writings. The step of understanding that lack of Absolute Knowledge does not mean an end to Practical Knowledge (valid knowldge) is not that large.I'm also not sold on his discussion regarding a priori judgements. That's a bit of an exercise which we can leave alone in this thread, but I will state that it does not change how we have to view knowledge, or how we have to work to gain knowledge. The limits were set by Hume. I am interested in this claim, particularly the first sentence. That does not seem obvious to me, particularly because scientific theories were formed before Kant, which stand up to modern concepts of theories. And I don't feel hesitant in claiming that most scientists formulating theories today do so without knowledge of Kant or by using any of his arguments (even as hidden premises).I am sympathetic to the idea that psychology might have greater attachment to things he said, but that goes to what I was trying to state in my earlier post. To me he is more trying to describe the nature of acquiring knowledge, the way we actually do it, rather than come up with any new statements about what those limits are and so how they should effect our researches.I just don't see the revolution you are claiming. That to me stands in absolute disagreement with itself (a standing contradiction) as well as with what was just laid out by Hume.Let me put it this way. To my mind, Descartes started by destroying absolute knowledge and then tried to think his way past that problem to reinvent/recapture the knowledge and moral landscape he held prior to his experiment. Hume simply destroyed that capacity for absolute knowledge. That leaves us with practical knowledge alone.Kant, like Descartes, tried to think his way past that problem by reshaping absolutes as practicals in order to reinvent/recapture the knowledge and moral landscape he held prior to Hume's experiment. And worse (to my mind) he ends up appealing to Absolutes all over again... particularly in his moral philosophy... which are unable to be discussed according to the very points he had set out.The above is a perfect example. Instead of exploring the blasted landscape left by Hume, he wants to prop up something familiar. Good? Universal Law? These make no sense. I agree that because it exists and it is well known and it was an attempted answer to Hume, that people generally will have to address what it says. But that is not the same as saying that it delivered anything of high value and paradigm shifting with regard to knowledge.I read Hume wayyyyy before I knew of Kant and figured out where that left knowledge, as well as that it did not invalidate knowledge per se. I came to the same relative conclusion Kant did, only embraced the concept of subjective knowledge and moral reality rather than replaying Descartes' initial error.When I finally read Kant, I found no use for him. He added nothing to what I already understood, and in fact felt like a repeated error... though much more longwinded about it.I suppose one can argue that since Kant came before me, I received instruction in his answers to Hume (without knowing it) and so benefited from Kant's influence without having to read him. That I did not come up with my answer to Hume on my own at all.Eh, maybe so. I don't believe that to be the case, and I am not trying to blow my own horn, particularly as I don't believe that Kant's answer was that impressive. I believe it is rather obvious, once one meditates on the fact that after reading Hume one continues to get up each morning and put on one's pants. Or should I say appears to do so? Again, it seems to me the seeds are directly in Hume's work.I will say this though, I am thankful for this discussion as in researching (brushing up on) Kant, I did find something of his I had not read before and like. His essay "What is Enlightenment?" was interesting and inspiring.I will note that at the end of the Wiki entry on Kant you will see that some western philosophers prefer to draw their lineage to Hume and not to Kant. I understand that some would choose to go through Kant, I just don't believe anyone has to (which is why he is not the primary paradigm shifter), and I don't think I was influenced by him at all.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

We can drop the debate on Kant, however your exit commentary was so strongly stated, that I feel compelled to clarify any misconceptions as well as set down a strongish statement of my own (and people can feel free to choose). I hope you won't take offense in that portion of this reply, even if it is meant to be left hanging. I recognize that Kant is important in that he ended up influencing a lot of people. His work was essentially the first solid reply to Hume. He had a lot of followers as well as people that went on to challenge his works and so he played a part in developing discussion within western philosophy.But influence, to my mind, is not the same as opening a whole new perspective that is a wholesale change in how we have to think and deal with things.To make matters worse, his writing is derivative or a synthesis of earlier writings (eg his ding an sich parallels with plato, berkely, and locke), which ultimately fail to answer the problem he was addressing, and others have/had to tackle the same problem all over again. Your commentary championing him, leaves out the fact that his solutions were not necessary and not really in use, even if some of his verbiage might be. Nice. I feel the barb. And indeed B. Russell (Hist. Wes. Phil. p#704) says "Immanuel Kant... is generally considered the greatest of modern philosophers. I cannot myself agree with this estimate, but it would be foolish not to recognize his great importance."Of course he also goes on to note regarding the topic I was discussing "Hume, by his criticism of the concept of causality, awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers - so at least he says, but the awakening was only temporary, and he soon invented a soporific which enabled him to sleep again."Let me suggest another analogy. Columbus was unquestionably important for those in Europe. A whole new world was suddenly available for exploration. Lewis and Clark were quite important to understanding the extent of the landscape for those venturing out into the western portions of that New World. While both were important for western world exploration, were both paradigm-shifters?Our exchange, to my mind, feels a bit like someone claiming how important Lewis and Clark were for Western exploration of the world, putting their work above Columbus's.Yeah people today end up discussing features L&C wrote about first, as well subsequent western explorers having taken the "route" they trailblazed, but this leaves out the fact that others had been there in some fashion before L&C, and would certainly have to discover those areas anyway. Eventually their discoveries were made moot or were overturned with later work, some not even having taken L&C into consideration.Because of this, one can get away with discussing important world exploration (from the point of view of Western interests) without discussing L&C but it is hard to do so without mentioning Columbus. It is hard to discuss historic epistemological and metaphysical explorations (which still hold meaning for the modern student) without discussing Hume, but one can do just fine without discussing Kant.So analogously, to me, L&C were important, incredibly important in that they shaped how the western US went on to be understood and discussed for a long time, but Columbus was the paradigm shifter.I will point out that Kant was not touted much in my own studies, and in a history of science class for psychology students which my gf just took, they did not include Kant. They did however cover descartes, hume, and locke. Locke's approach indeed seems more suitable to modern psych, which is gaining in mechanistic approaches, rather than Kant who would seem more suited to generalized cognitive approaches which do not emphasize what is happening. This oversight is not the case for Darwin in biology circles. Okay, back to the thread topic. I totally agree with this. And it is true that Kant supplied better critiques of "proofs of God" than Hume did, taking it on very directly. I think the very concept of a proof for the existence of God, flies in the face of having Faith. If Gods were so obvious from evidence or logic, religion wouldn't be considered "faith" at all... it wouldn't even be important in a conceptual sense, as it would be like everything else we deal with: a practical reality.It seems to me people have become less honest about the limits of what they know, or can know, and want to prop their rational doubts with pillars of seemingly sound argument, rather than rationally admit they don't know and so practice faith. (Note: your awesome post on creos exhibiting science envy may very well be addressing an extension of this phenomena).I found Kant's argument for accepting the existence of God pragmatic, yet ultimately Pascalian and flawed in the same way. Unfortunately it may very well be the best argument any individual theist will ever have... even if it falls short of a proof.Edited by holmes, : clarityEdited by holmes, : aborted attemptEdited by holmes, : typos n more

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)