Humanities 102
26 March 2014
Enlightenment: Copernicus to Kant
Matthew Gumpert
1.Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary
Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (1957):
The idea that the earth moves seems . . .
absurd. Our senses tell us all we know of
motion, and they indicate no motion for the
earth.
2.Isaac Newton, Principia (1686):
. . . the whole burden of philosophy seems to
consist in this: from the phenomena of motions to
investigate the forces of nature, and then from
these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena
. . . from these forces . . . I deduce the motions of
the planets . . . I suspect that they may all depend
upon certain forces by which . . . bodies, by . . .
causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually
impelled toward one another . . . or are repelled . .
. from one another.
3a.David Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
(1748):
All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be
founded on the relation of Cause and Effect. By means
of that relation alone we can go beyond the evidence of
our memory and senses . . . A man finding a watch . . . in
a desert island, would conclude that there had once
been men in that island . . . it is constantly supposed
that there is a connexion between the present fact and
that which is inferred from it . . . The hearing of . . . [a]
voice in the dark assures us of the presence of some
person . . . Heat and light are collateral effects of fire,
and the one effect may justly be inferred from the other.
3b.A priori vs. a posteriori knowledge:
• A priori knowledge is knowledge based upon
ideas which have nothing to do with
experience = knowledge about which we can
be absolutely certain = knowledge which is
non-contradictable.
• A posteriori knowledge is knowledge based
solely upon experience.
4.Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding:
. . . the knowledge of this relation is not, in any
instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises
entirely from experience, when we find that
particular objects are constantly conjoined with
each other . . . No object ever discovers, by the
qualities which appear to the senses, either the
causes that produced it, or the effects which will
arise from it; nor can our reason, unassisted by
experience, ever draw any inference concerning
real existence . . .
5a.Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics
(1783):
I openly confess, the suggestion of David Hume
was the very thing, which many years ago first
interrupted my dogmatic slumber, and gave my
new investigations in the field of speculative
philosophy quite a new direction.
5b.Speculative philosophy
Speculative philosophy = metaphysics =
philosophy in search of the true and hidden
nature of reality
Reality = things in themselves = the noumenal
(as opposed to the phenomenal) realm
Appearances = perceptions = the phenomenal
realm
5c.Transcendental idealism
• Transcendental = that which goes beyond the
senses or experience.
• Idealism = the belief that knowledge can be
acquired through the operations of the mind
independently of experience; opposed to
empiricism = the belief that knowledge is
based in the senses.
6a.Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781):
I entitle transcendental . . . all knowledge
which is occupied not so much with objects as
with the mode of our knowledge of objects in
so far as this mode of knowledge is to be
possible a priori . . . what here constitutes our
subject-matter is not the nature of things,
which is inexhaustible, but the understanding
which passes judgment upon the nature of
things . . .
6b.Objects and things in Kant’s transcendental subjectivism
• Objects = the objects of our senses =
appearances = phenomena = perceptions.
• Things = things in themselves = the realm of the
noumenal as opposed to the phenomenal
• Transcendental Subjectivism = philosophy
concerned with the human mind (as opposed to
the world external to the mind)
7. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason:
Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform
to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by
establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of
concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must
therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the
tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our
knowledge. This would agree better with what is desired, namely,
that it should be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori,
determining something in regard to them prior to their being given.
We should then be proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus’
primary hypothesis. Failing of satisfactory progress in explaining the
movements of the heavenly bodies on the supposition that they all
revolved around the spectator, he tried whether he might not have
better success if he made the spectator to revolve and the stars to
remain at rest . . .
8.P.F. Strawson, P. F., The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s
«Critique of Pure Reason» (1966); on Kant’s transcendental
idealism as -
. . . the theory of the mind making Nature . . . It
is only . . . because objects of experience must
conform to the constitution of our minds that
we can have the sort of a priori knowledge of
the nature of experience which is
demonstrated . . . in the Critique itself . . .
9.Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy (1964): on Kant’s
Copernican revolution:
Kant’s «Copernican revolution» does not imply the
view that reality can be reduced to the human
mind and its ideas. He is not suggesting that the
human mind creates things, as far as their
existence is concerned, by thinking them . . . It
means rather that the mind imposes, as it were,
on the ultimate material of experience its own
forms of cognition, determined by the structure of
human sensibility and understanding, and that
these things cannot be know except through the
medium of these forms . . .
10.Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy (1964); the
Kantian subject as . . . . a man with red-tinted spectacles. On the one hand it is obvious that
the man who sees the world as red because he is wearing red-tinted
spectacles does not create the things which he sees . . . On the other hand,
nothing could be seen by him, that is, nothing could be for him an object of
vision unless it were seen as red . . .
A man who puts on red-tinted spectacles does so deliberately . . . We have
to imagine, therefore, a man who is born with his power of vision so
constituted that he sees all things as red. The world presented to him in
experience is then a red world . . . Two hypotheses are then possible. It may
be that everything is red. Or it may be that things have different colours,
but that they appear as red because of some subjective factor (as is, indeed,
the case in the analogy) . . . the man would naturally embrace the first
hypothesis . . .
11a.Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (1797)
There is no possibility of thinking of anything at
all in the world, or even out of it, which can be
regarded as good without qualification, except a
good will.
11b.Duty vs. Inclination
A will which acts for the sake of duty is a good
will.
To act out of duty is to act solely out of respect
or reverence for a moral law.
The law = principle = imperative: tells us what
we ought to do.
12.Hypothetical vs.Categorical Imperatives
hypothetical imperative: represents “the
practical necessity of a possible action as a
means for attaining something else that one
wants.”
categorical imperative: represents “an action as
objectively necessary in itself, without reference
to another end.”
13.Principles vs. Maxims
Principle = imperative = universalizing
moral law
Maxim = a subjective principle of volition
(= willing)
14.The Categorical Imperative
Act only according to that maxim
whereby you can at the same time
will that it should become a
universal law.
15.Freedom
Freedom Must Be Presupposed as
a Property of the Will of All
Rational Beings.