JW,
I have written the following multiple times as well, but it has been ignored, so I will write it again. The reason you conclude what you do in your last comment is, ironically, you have stopped observing the development of philosophical and scientific-mathematic systems over human history and
reasoning through their manifestations as soon as you reach your desired conclusion (Reason cannot lead to deeper understanding of reality). All error in the modern age is born of
incompleteness in that manner, and your metaphysical errors here are no different. They are metaphysical because they have nothing to do with the scientific results per se, but only your interpretation of them based on dualist and naive realist assumptions. (this is why Eugene agrees with you... he holds the same assumptions).
JeffreyW wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 5:29 am
The claim that reason is the means to a unified living reality is merely a metaphysical assertion, and one that current understanding of the universe flatly contradicts. It gives me no basis to believe that
the fragments themselves aren’t indicative of reality and Reason is merely our practical construction.
The bold is clearly naive realism (and functionally equivalent to Kant's epistemology). It is basically saying that any process extended through time is
only reflecting our inner conceptual reality (which also embeds subject-object dualism) and nothing belonging to the temporal phenomena we are observing, such as a rosebud growing. The only way around that is to then claim the momentary fragments also do not indicate anything about reality, i.e. they are only 'pixels' on our computer screen which do not resemble the underlying 'hardware' whatsoever (which I partially agree with). What is missed in such an argument is that one must first
assume naive realism to avoid naive realism in that manner. This is what Kant and Schop did - they had to assume some aspect of perception is naively real in order to provide a foundation for ruling out those aspects which come to us via thoughtful reasoning activity. I am providing the argument for why below and will come back to your other points later, because this one really needs to be contemplated and understood first.
Let us look a little closer at the way it has been constructed. One starts with what is given in naïve consciousness, with the thing as perceived. Then one shows that none of the qualities which we find in this thing would exist for us had we no sense organs. No eye — no color. Therefore the color is not yet present in that which affects the eye. It arises first through the interaction of the eye and the object. The latter is, therefore, colorless. But neither is the color in the eye, for in the eye there is only a chemical or physical process which is first conducted by the optic nerve to the brain, and there initiates another process. Even this is not yet the color. That is only produced in the soul by means of the brain process. Even then it does not yet enter my consciousness, but is first transferred by the soul to a body in the external world. There, upon this body, I finally believe myself to perceive it. We have traveled in a complete circle. We became conscious of a colored body. That is the first thing. Here the thought operation starts. If I had no eye, the body would be, for me, colorless. I cannot therefore attribute the color to the body. I start on the search for it. I look for it in the eye — in vain; in the nerve — in vain; in the brain — in vain once more; in the soul — here I find it indeed, but not attached to the body. I find the colored body again only on returning to my starting point. The circle is completed. I believe that I am cognizing as a product of my soul that which the naïve man regards as existing outside him, in space.
As long as one stops here everything seems to fit beautifully. But we must go over the whole thing again from the beginning. Hitherto I have been dealing with something — the external percept — of which, from my naïve standpoint, I have had until now a totally wrong conception. I thought that the percept, just as I perceive it, had objective existence. But now I observe that it disappears together with my mental picture, that it is only a modification of my inner state of soul. Have I, then, any right at all to start from it in my arguments? Can I say of it that it acts on my soul? I must henceforth treat the table, of which formerly I believed that it acted on me and produced a mental picture of itself in me, as itself a mental picture. But from this it follows logically that my sense organs and the processes in them are also merely subjective. I have no right to speak of a real eye but only of my mental picture of the eye. Exactly the same is true of the nerve paths, and the brain process, and no less of the process in the soul itself, through which things are supposed to be built up out of the chaos of manifold sensations. If, assuming the truth of the first circle of argumentation, I run through the steps of my act of cognition once more, the latter reveals itself as a tissue of mental pictures which, as such, cannot act on one another. I cannot say that my mental picture of the object acts on my mental picture of the eye, and that from this interaction my mental picture of color results. Nor is it necessary that I should say this. For as soon as I see clearly that my sense organs and their activity, my nerve and soul processes, can also be known to me only through perception, the train of thought which I have outlined reveals itself in its full absurdity.
The way of thinking here described, known as critical idealism, in contrast to the standpoint of naïve consciousness known as naïve realism, makes the mistake of characterizing the one percept as mental picture while taking the other in the very same sense as does the naïve realism which it apparently refutes. It wants to prove that percepts have the character of mental pictures by naïvely accepting the percepts connected with one's own organism as objectively valid facts; and over and above this, it fails to see that it confuses two spheres of observation, between which it can find no connection.
Critical idealism [Kant and Schop] can refute naïve realism only by itself assuming, in naïve-realistic fashion, that one's own organism has objective existence. As soon as the idealist realizes that the percepts connected with his own organism are exactly of the same nature as those which naïve realism assumes to have objective existence, he can no longer use those percepts as a safe foundation for his theory.
It must also be pointed out once again that everything that you conclude about math and science in your last comment
presupposes Reason as a means to deeper reality. To be truly consistent, you would have to refrain from writing anything at all about modern science and what it tells us about the ability or inability of Reason to penetrate deeper layers of reality. I know this seems "unfair" to most people, because it is an immediate refutation of the anti-Reason argument, which is self-defeating in that manner, but that does not make it any less true or any less of an argument you must contend with.