Pantheism Controversy

1
Pantheism Controversy

• Lessing as a prominent Protestant minister was
  supposed to be a theist.
• On his deathbed he confessed (to Jacobi) to being
  a pantheistic Spinozist, which meant being an
  atheist.
• Some (Mendelsohn) denied this deathbed
  confession, many condemned Spinoza for it, some
  (Romantics like Herder) upheld pantheistic heresy
  as true. Kant rejected the debate because it
  presupposed the possibility of dogmatic
  metaphysics.

2
Kant and the Pantheism Controversy

• Kant rejected theism and pantheism as different
  forms of a false metaphysical dogmatism.
• Dogmatism claimed to have certain knowledge of
  reality, which Kant as a metaphysical skeptic
  denied.
• Many dogmatic systems had existed. Kant was the
  first in history to make skepticism into a
  system.

3
Kants Three Skeptical Critiques

• 1. The Critique of Pure Reason.
• Pure reason seeks to know reality as it is in
  itself, as distinct from what it appears to be
  for us.
• 2. The Critique of Practical Reason.
• Pure reason is really practical reason. Instead
  of receiving into itself the true forms of
  reality, it imposes the forms of the human mind
  on reality.
• 3.The Critique of Judgment. Instead of imposing
  the forms of the human mind on reality, in the
  experience of beauty and life it finds in the
  other an other equal to itself. This third
  critique denies knowledge of reality, but leads
  to a feeling of what it is. It feels the world to
  be identical with itself.

4
Kants Copernican Revolution in his Concept of
Knowledge

• Before the knower revolved around the object
  known.
• Now the object known is seen as revolving around
  the knower.
• The knower manufactures the object known.
• Instead of conforming to the object known, the
  knower makes the object conform to its own
  internal structure.
• Theoretical reason is an illusion replaced by
  practical reasons.

5
Concept of Knowledge (1)

• Knowledge is the application of the
  categories/concepts of the human understanding to
  what is given in sensory intuition.
• Hence what lies beyond sensory experience cannot
  be known.
• What is given in sensory intuition is structured
  by space and time, the two forms of sensibility
  internal to the human knower.

6

• Two types of proposition
• analytic propositions and synthetic propositions
  
• Two types of knowledge
• a posteriori knowledge, a priori knowledge
• More precisely, four types of knowledge
• A posteriori knowledge of synthetic propositions
• A posteriori knowledge of analytic propositions
  (?)
• A priori knowledge of analytic propositions
• A priori knowledge of synthetic propositions

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Synthetic A Priori Knowledge

• It is necessary and universal knowledge.
• Examples
• All events are caused.
• All red things are extended in space.
• Such knowledge is not possible by making
  propositions conform as a posteriori empirical
  knowledge to the object known.
• Such knowledge is possible only by making the
  object known conform to the structure of our
  knowledge. Knowing in information processing.

8
Space and Time

• Space is the form of external sensibility, of
  simultaneous objects side by side.
• Time is the for of internal sensibility, of
  objects in succession.
• Each totality of objects side by side is before
  or after another such totality.
• Hence time is a more comprehensive form of
  sensibility than space.

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The Concept of Knowledge (2)

• Sensory experience is passive, it depends on the
  future knower being acted upon by things in
  themselves outside the knower.
• Knowledge depends on subjecting sensory objects
  to information processing. The thing in itself is
  responsible for sensory inputs in the knower, who
  then transforms such inputs into spatio-temporal
  object and finally objects of knowledge
  understood as the outputs of information
  processing.

10
The Transcendental vs the Transcendent

• The categories of the understanding are innate,
  transcendental.
• Objects of no possible sensory experienceGod,
  the soul, the worldare transcendent.
• What is transcendent lies beyond experience, what
  is transcendental underlies experience.
• Unlike empirical concepts, the categories are
  universal and necessary concepts.

11
Categories Derived from Judgments

• Universal and necessary categories are derived
  from the table of universal and necessary
  judgments.
• Hence the categories used in knowledge are
  derived from the types of judgment necessarily
  used in logic.
• Judgments are classified qualitatively,
  quantitative, reflectively, and modally.

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The Three Categories of Quality

• 1. Qualitative judgments are positive, negative,
  or indefinite. Corresponding categories are
  quality (e.g., green), definite negation (the
  grass as not green), and indeterminate negation
  (Monday as not green).

13
The Three Categories of Quantity

• 1. From singular judgments (One man is bald) we
  derive the category of oneness.
• 2. From particular judgments (Some men are
  bald) we derive the category of some or
  plurality.
• 3. From singular judgments (This man is bald)
  we derive the category of totality, the whole, or
  singularity.

14
Three Categories of Reflection

• From subject-predicate categorical judgment
  (e.g., John is successful) we get the category
  of substance.
• From if-then hypothetical judgment (If John is
  successful he works hard) we get the category of
  causality.
• From either-or alternative judgment (Either John
  is not successful or he works hard) we get the
  category of reciprocal interaction (between
  success and hard work.)

15
Three Categories of Modality

• 1. From assertoric judments that assert without
  any modal qualification to the assertion (It is
  a fact that) we get the category of factuality.
• 2. From problematic judgments made with
  possibility as the mode of the assertion (It is
  possible that) we get the category of
  possibility.
• 3. From apodictic judgments with necessity as the
  mode of the assertion (It is necessary that),
  we get the category of necessity.

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Metaphysics

• Application of categories of the understanding to
  objects of no possible experience. DIALECTIC
• Hence there is no metaphysical knowledge, only
  metaphysical ideas.
• Three objects of no possible experience God, the
  soul, and the world.
• Three branches of special metaphysics rational
  theology, rational psychology, and rational
  cosmology
• General metaphysics ontology

17
Regulatory Ideas

• Metaphysical ideas serve in a practical or
  regulatory function.
• The idea of the world regulates the endless
  extension of knowledge.
• The idea of God regulates our search for
  perfection.
• The idea of the soul and its free will regulates
  our assumption of moral responsibility.

18
Rational Theology

• Rational theology applies the category of
  causality to God, creator of the world, an object
  of no possible experience.
• Rational theology attributes the category of
  existence to God, but existence is not an
  attribute.
• Rational theology attributes purposefulness to
  God, but purposefulness is a regulatory idea, not
  a category of the understanding and of knowledge.

19
Rational Cosmology

• Rational Cosmology cannot decide between viewing
  the world as infinitely extended in space and
  time (since everything is caused and causal) and
  as finite (since if the world is infinite it
  contains points from which the present cannot be
  reached). ANTINOMY I
• Rational cosmology cannot decide between viewing
  world as 19collection of indivisible atoms and as
  infinitely divisible. ANTINOMY II

20
Rational Psychology

• Rational Psychology attributes the category of
  oneness to the soul, an object of no possible
  experience.
• Rational Psychology attributes free will to the
  soul, whereas every object of knowledge is
  governed by the law of universal causality.

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Criticism of Kant (Jacobi)

• In asserting things in themselves as external
  conditions of the possibility of our sensory
  experience of the world, Kant himself engages in
  the metaphysics he finds impossible.
• He applies categories of factuality, oneness, and
  causality to things in themselves, objects of no
  possible experience.

22
From Theoretical to Practical Reason

• The preceding critique of pure reason by Kant is
  a critique of knowledge as theoretical reason.
• Theoretical reason puts the object in conformity
  with the subject or knower.
• The critique of theoretical reason is that it is
  really practical reason.
• Practical reason puts the object in conformity
  with the subject or agent.

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• Practical reason, as distinct from practical
  activity generally, is moral reason.
• Theoretical reason has revealed itself to be
  practical reason, moral reason, in disguise.
• Theoretical reason establishes the character of
  the known world of interacting objects in which
  practical reason must act (Fichte)

24
Critique Practical Reason

• Inclination vs. duty.
• Categorical vs. hypothetical imperative
• Three versions of the categorical imperative.
• 1. logical possibility of the generalization of
  the maxim of ones action to all.
• 2. treating persons as ends in themselves, each
  with his or her own self-assigned agenda.
• 3. Be autonomous as a rational being, not
  heteronomous.
• Three postulates of practical reason freedom of
  the soul, immortality, and possibility of justice.

25
Critique of Judgment

• The critique of pure reason critiques the
  pretension of judging sense objects by the
  categories to be knowledge or conformity the
  object.
• The critique of judgment critiques the pretension
  of teleological judgment to be knowledge,
  conformity to the object.
• In teleological judgment we suspend the
  categories by knowledge by which the world is a
  collection of deterministically (mechanically)
  interacting things. The object is not externally
  determined but now exists as an end in itself.

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Four Types of Teleological Judgment

• Teleological judgment of that we exist as
  persons, each as an end in him or herself, as an
  example of internal rather than external
  teleology.
• Teleological judgment that we have an affinity
  with all biological organisms, which are also
  ends in themselves.
• Aesthetic teleological judgment that that a work
  of art exists as an end in itself.
• Teleological judgment of the world is that it is
  a complete self-determined totality, so that
  science that leaves anything unexplained is
  incomplete.

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• Judgments of internal teleology are not
  knowledge, since they suspend the category of
  universal causality.
• But such judgments anticipate human
  self-realization in the world. Ego meets ego,
  like meets like.
• Theoretical reason would be dominated by the
  world. Practical reason would dominate it. Both
  exclude self-realization. Teleological judgment
  makes it possible by anticipating equality
  between us and the world.