Difference between revisions of "The Historircal overview of the phenomenological cage"

Latest revision as of 08:07, 27 July 2012

The Pyrrohnes method of putting any belief in to the test of doubt was used to establish the most profound seminal thoughts of western philosophy. From Descartes, through Hume, Kant, Mach and Popper, building theories that will stand the Pyrrohnien test, was the mark for our progress of human reason. Yet, although much thought was given in this subject, a good enough theory that will connect proof-tested assumptions and modern days scientific reasoning is still not available. Most of present day theories of reasoning are standing on assumptions that will not stand the Pyrrohnien test. For example inductive reasoning, was put to the test by Goodman riddle of induction, and was refuted. But still, because induction is a major part of any scientific thoughts or human thoughts, Bayesianism and other philosophies of science and reason still uses induction to establish their theories. They do so, on pragmatic grounds.

Yet to develop a coherent system of reasoning that will stand the Pyrrohnes test, we have to continue and try to explain how knowledge is built in an unrefutable way. In this paper I'll try to establish an explanation for simplicity and induction that will stand the Pyrrohnes test. To do so, it is useful to go along the work done by by great thinkers in this field of philosophy. The first of them will be Descartes.

The Pyrrohnes had asked themselves what are the foundations of our knowledge? To answer this they tried to refute any unsound assumption, and thus leave standing only the assumptions that will stand the most vigorous refutations. In his book Meditations on First Philosophy, (Descartes 1641) Descartes start doubting his perceptions and logic. He noticed that he cold not always distinguish between illusions of his dreams and perception brought by reality. Our reason can be deceived by bad mental health or by a evil demon. He then continue to notice that he has no real access to the world, and he can only know that he exists, and later on that he think. Any assumption other then that, would be put to doubt. Descartes try to get out of this isolation by assuming that there is a God, that will assure that our reason and perceptions do no mislead us.

While Descartes' later conclusions on God as the foundation of knowledge was rejected, his conclusions of the "Cogito argo sum" was widely received by philosophers as a ground on which any further foundational philosophy should be built, and it is taught to philosophy students till today. This conclusion suggest that we have no sure knowledge on the world, and we are confind to our thoughts only, until some future philosopher will find way to go out from the isolated island of thoughts. Following the pyrrohnitic way came also the sceptic David Hume. In his book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hume 1748) Hume showed that our mind connects between events, although no such connections can be seen directly, or can be proved beyond doubts. By this argument, he was able to shake the dogmatic conceptions layed behind the scientific method that Nature behave according to cause and effect and that Nature, is necessarily build on laws. Hume suggested that the reason that we believe in cause and effect and the laws of nature, is due to a habit of our mind.

The argument made by Hume Shook Kant's world view. To answer Hume's challenge on the scientific method, Kant devised a complex theory that aimed at explaining why we observe laws in nature, although nature is not necessarily built on them. He suggested that the mind is composed of faculties that carry inputs from the senses to a terminal faculty that process and interpret the inputs into categories. This process of categorization is, according to Kant, the mechanism which creates the perceptions of laws in nature. Kant admit, as Descartes' on the 2nd meditation, that Nature, the thing in itself, will always be beyond our reach. As he puts it "it follows that the understanding can not go beyond the limits of sensibility, within which alone objects are given to us." (Kant 1787/1881, book II, chap. III). According to Kant, we are forever domed to stay in our phenomenological cage. Whatever we except to understand about the outer world, will be confined to the phenomena we perceive and the way we interpret the phenomena. What Kant did was to try to understand, is how we think inside our cage.

Although Kant's work is very influential, it is hard for laymen and even to philosophers to except the axiom that we can not reach the world beyond our mind. It is hard to grasp and accept that no matter how hard we will work, our conclusions will not implement a thing on the "real world". The axiom of the phenomenological cage, may implement solipsism, and it put us into a void that most of us can not tolerate. This bring us to try over and over again, to finds ways to have a saying about the Objective World, that lay beyond our phenomena.

One of these, was Edmund Husserl. Husserl, how began his work, accepting the limitations of phenomenological barriers to the outside world, and concentrated espacialy in the iner-investigation of things as themsevels, as they looked from within the mind. But after criticism he was criticized for building solipsistic theory, he tried to ask himself how can he get out of the phenomenological cage. He asked himself "As a natural man, can I ask seriously and transcendentally how I get outside my island of consciousness and how what presents itself in my consciousness as a subjective evidence-process can acquire Objective significance?" (Husserl 1931/1999). The answer Husserl found was in others. Husserl concluded that in what ever direction he will look for, all knowledge that he will gain, may come from his imagination or memory. But when he find "others", they may have knowledge he did not possess, and will of their own. By checking if "others" have knowledge he is not acquainted to, or have self integrated precived will, this means that the knowledge they brought was not brought by him, or that their will did not come from him, so the knowledge and the will should really come from the outside world (ibid., 5th meditation). (For this paragraph, please continue reading Husserl). What is the story you are trying to tell....

Phen cage... we are locked....

Another thought experiment demonstrating the phenomenological delimitation, is 'the brain in a vat' thought experiment. In the thought experiment, we are asked to imagine that we are a brain in a vat, which is connected to a computer. The computer is sending signals to the brain and simulate a virtual realty to the brain. The question that is being asked, is can we find any way to distinguish between a brain in a skull to a brain in a vat. Is there a way to know that we perceiving a real world, and not a simulated world. The answer most of us give, after some time of thought, is that if the computer can create vivid virtual reality, then we will not be able to distinguish real from virtual.

In the philosophical literature, many point to Hillary Putnam's solution to this problem. Putnam figure out that a computer and a human being will not sense the world in the same manner, and therefore will perceive it differently. Therefore we will talk to a cumputer, the world as he sees it, will be different from the world as we see it, so we will be able to notice the differences. To consolidate the walls of the cage (The brain in the vat - putenm) and popper What Hillary Putnam basically says is that there is no reference to anything not to if we were brain in a vat, or brains in a scull (and there fore strength my argument). please look at the last sentence in her work 1982.

In this line of thoughts stand also Karl Popper, that set the demarcation criterion for scientific logic. The demarcation criterion states the scientific theories are theories that can be put to the test by many and can potentially be refuted. A theory that can not be tested, would be unscientific theory. Thus, as Kant proposed, we can only test our assumptions against phenomena. This line of thought would be addressed by Habermas (Habermas 1986) as observational knowledge. That is, when one try to manipulate the world and achieve his goals efficiently, we can say he has rational knowledge of the world. and thus, the phenomena assure his presuppositions.

References

Descartes R, 1641, Meditations on First Philosophy, Hume D., 1748, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Husserl E., 1931/1999, Cartesian meditations : an introduction to phenomenology, trans. by Carins D., Kluwer Publishing, Kindle edition.

Kant, 1787/1881, Critique of pure reason, trans. by Max Muller, The Macmillan co. London, first published 1881. From an electronic copy by the online library of liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org)

Left-outs

Going with this line of thought (although not dismissing reality) was the scientist and philosopher Ernest Mach. He (Mach 1896/1943) postulated that the laws of nature are just a an economic way to describe phenomena (or facts as he called it). Mach E., 1896/1943, The economical nature of physical inquiry, in popular scientific lectures by Ernest Mach, trans. by T.J. McCormack, pp.188-213 the open court publishing co. La Salle, Illinois 1943