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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (42300)	1/15/2002 11:28:08 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Kant had nothing to do with mysticism, first of all. His main concern, in the Critique of Pure Reason, was to uphold Newtonian mechanics. He sought to explain how an idea like causality was essential to our analysis of experience, against the skeptical reflections of Hume. To do this, he pointed out that we do not experience objects as they are in themselves, but according to our form of consciousness. Since the things have to be reconstituted in our consciousness as phenomena, and since they have to synthesized into one experience, the categories of reason (quantity, quality, modality, and relation) are embedded int the phenomena. Causality is the way in which phenomena are connected temporally in the flow of experience. Second, Kant did not argue that only self- sacrificing acts were moral. In fact, he made the pursuit of individual happiness one of our duties. Rather, he observed that the closest we could come to knowing that we were acting out of duty rather than inclination was when our will conflicts with our inclinations. The argument is that morality is a system of law which regulates the behavior of rational beings, and that we give ourselves the law through reflection. In other words, we are each of us autonomous, insofar as we each have the capacity of conscience. We discover the law by framing maxims and seeing which ones can be universalized. Our motive in following the moral law is due to our nature as rational beings. We have "reverence for the law", that is, it is natural for rational beings to conform to rules when they are recognized. Finally, Kant makes the argument that there are ideas that cannot be validated by experience which nevertheless cannot be disproven, and which are reasonable to believe given our moral nature. Because we are guided, as moral beings, by the pursuit of justice, three ideas are worth believing. First, that we have free- will, despite the apparent iron law of causality among phenomena, so that we can hold people accountable. Next, since we see that vice often prospers and virtue is sometimes trampled in this life, we believe in immortality, to permit a final reckoning beyond this life. Finally, we postulate a Just Judge, that is, God, who will set the moral universe right, in the end. Be it noted, none of this is mystical, it does not depend on esoteric knowledge or experience, nor is it asserted to be scientific. Kant describes these things as rational beliefs, rational because they can be argued from our idea of the world as ultimately under the moral law, beliefs because they are never subject to empirical confirmation, by their very nature. Why is Rand not a philosopher? Because she is too shallow. That is the short answer. I may try a longer one later......