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This is a nice try, but there are a lot of parts that made me wince. 1. The essay starts off with "If you are interested in truth..." without ever defining wha
by mykowebhn 3y ago
This is a nice try, but there are a lot of parts that made me wince.
1. The essay starts off with "If you are interested in truth..." without ever defining what exactly they mean by "truth".
2. What is with this "inside" and "outside"? I don't think Kant ever used such philosophically imprecise terminology. They define rationalists as understanding the world "from the inside" and empiricists as understanding it "from the outside". By framing it in such terms, they have already put a metaphysical stake in the ground. And really, how do empiricists understand the world "from the outside"? Do they mean that the thinking is done from the outside, or that they receive sensory input from the outside and then understand it..."from the outside"? This is so ridiculous it makes me wince. Also, rationalists understand the world "from the inside" why? Because their sensory input comes from the inside? When they frame it this way--as inside versus outside--it really amounts to do the same thing, doesn't it? Kant is weeping in his grave.
3. It's too bad they didn't mention Kant's Copernican turn. Mentioning that would have been quite revealing.
4. This may have been too complex for such a short summary, but Kant's Synthetic Unity of Apperception is extremely important.
- woodruffw 3y agoI don't think this was meant to be a scholarly explanation, and the author hints as much at the end of the post. Kant was my main focus (now some time ago), and I thought this was a reasonable explainer for an audience that probably hasn't read much metaphysics.
- Merrill 3y agoDoes Kant focus this way on the individual's experience and reason? It seems to me that we only reach some provisional truth when communicating minds agree on their experiences and how they are reduced by reason to concepts. Only by formal processes for reaching agreement with past and candidate truths by multiple individuals do we avoid error, delusion and fantasy.
- woodruffw 3y agoIt’s been a while, but I don’t think Kant has much to say about individual experience vis a vis interpersonal consensus. But maybe there’s something I’m not remembering.
- Notatheist 3y agoYou want an article that takes 5 minutes to read to define "truth"? The author even says they're just trying to get you hyped and in my opinion I think they did a great job.