Philosophy: Metaphysics and modernity

[FightingFat]

Do you think that metaphysics is an outmoded philosophical notion in today’s world?

Do you think it is possible to argue for objective knowledge of reality since the writings of Kant and Hume?

 

[Truthstalker]

Do you think that metaphysics is an outmoded philosophical notion in today’s world?

Do you think it is possible to argue for objective knowledge of reality since the writings of Kant and Hume?

No and yes.

 

[cpayne]

No and yes.

Kant argues we cannot have noumenal knowledge of the object in itself, but only phenomenal knowledge, conditioned by our categories of understanding. But our perceptions can contradict each other: “This shirt is green”; “No, the shirt is not green.” Since genuine knowledge cannot contradict itself, perceptions aren’t genuine knowledge, and one of the two speakers is correct and the other isn’t (law of excluded middle). Our knowledge is knowledge, not just of phenomena, but of the object itself.

This position is sometimes called “direct realism” (Panayot Butchvarov, for instance), but I think it’s just plain old Thomistic epistemology in modern clothes.

 

[FightingFat]

Hume says that philosophy need not deal with all contingent beings (which would include non-sensible beings) but only the material world. For our knowledge starts from sense-experience, and everything that we know is about things that we have experienced. From our sense-experiences we cannot legitimately infer anything concerning the properties, the essence or the existence of anything supra-sensible. Therefore the investigation of anything supra-sensible in philosophy is unjustifiable.

Do you think he’s wrong?

 

[cpayne]

Hume says that philosophy need not deal with all contingent beings (which would include non-sensible beings) but only the material world. For our knowledge starts from sense-experience, and everything that we know is about things that we have experienced. From our sense-experiences we cannot legitimately infer anything concerning the properties, the essence or the existence of anything supra-sensible. Therefore the investigation of anything supra-sensible in philosophy is unjustifiable.

Do you think he’s wrong?

Well, yeah. Not just wrong but massively wrong. One can infer legitimately, I think, God, the soul, substance, and causation, just for starters–all of which Hume rejected because they are not directly perceivable by the senses. However, Hume accepted numerical relationships as genuine knowledge, even though they also are not directly perceptible.

As Hume himself wrote, these are things he thought about while alone in his home, but he knew no one could ever actually live by his radical skepticism even for half an hour.