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Religion paper!

Eric Bleys

Religion 240

3/27/2017

Bruce Chilton

Gandhi as a Religious innovator

The argument of the paper, “Gandhi and his gita,” is that Gandhi was a religious thinker whose method of religious thought and practice was deeply integrated with his social and political activism. Gandhi’s approach to spirituality lead to his distinctly pacifist approach to the socio-political world. The reasons, according to the article, behind his moral approach to politics is rooted in these spiritual practices. These spiritual practices included religious universalism, religious syncretism, the incorporation of life into religious texts, and the texts into life. They also included the incorporation of personal and social experience into the same interpretive structure of religious truth along with the reading of religious texts. Another spiritual practice was a non literal approach to a famous passage of the Gita that seems to justify violence.

Religious innovation, is often a process in which truth is approached through a wide range of methods in such a way as to produce original ideas or interpretations of older traditions. And Gandhi, is presented in the paper as someone who was essentially a religious innovator. A thinker who incorporates multiple methods into producing a single outcome. The teachings of Jesus, the Buddha, and the Gita, were all inspirations for Gandhi’s thought. The paper presents Gandhi as a religious thinker who is essentially anti-fundamentalist in his theology. His thought is presented as anti fundamentalist in one sense because the literal nature of religious texts and traditions is not regarded as absolute. Instead, a reflective and critical approach to faith is utilized within Gandhian religious thought. One which allows contextual information to shape the message of particular texts. If a religious text is interpreted through a social and philosophical process, and given meaning through that process, then the meaning of the text no longer sticks to the “letter of the law,” but produces an original meaning in harmony with the process which exists from outside the text.

If religious truth does not come from only one source then the potential for innovation is increased. One of the central points of the paper was that Gandhi’s diversity of sources for religious truth, and his integration of religious learning with his own life, led him to his unique moral approach to politics.

“As Gandhi observes of his nineteen year old self, “My young mind tried to unify the teachings of the Gita, The Light of Asia, and the Sermon on the Mount” (3) The beginning of the paper depicts Gandhi as a religious universalist. Or in other words, a thinker who is operating in a tradition of religious syncretism and religious universalists. Gandhi, according to the paper, is also someone who combined his campaigns for social justice with his spiritual insights. “He wrote two retrospective books during this period, Satyagraha in South Africa (1925) and An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927, 1929), and he began to set forth his own interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita in the form of essays, translation, and commentary” (5). These two sources reflects the idea that Gandhi had multiple epistemic sources of religious truth. These epistemic sources include, the experience gained from his socio-political projects, the rational interpretation of diverse religious traditions into a unified message, the textual sources such as the sermon on the Mt, the Light of Asia, and the teachings of the Gita, as well as his interactions with other religious intellectuals.

The paper argues for Gandhi as a religious innovator, whose innovation significantly shapes his moral approach to politics. This thesis is argued by drawing upon the history of his intellectual development. The process of this history is used to show how Gandhi’s innovation allowed him to use war like texts to promote his pacifist agenda. Gandhi’s ability to add new meaning to old religious texts is embedded in his very personality. The argument is supplemented by the documentation of the way in which he was perceived by hindus as someone fit to rewrite Krishna’s teachings for the present age. By showing that his social role was one of religious innovation in the minds of believers the text shows the way in which Gandhi’s own creative religious thought lead to its own unique fruits. By presenting Gandhi as a creative thinker as well as someone occupying a social role as a religious leader reshaping religious practice, the paper invites us to see the connection between the originality in the thought as well as the social impact of Gandhi’s life.

The paper makes it clear that Gandhi was viewed as someone reinventing the ancient teachings of Krishna, “Just as Gandhi was sometimes identified by Hindu believers as a new avatar come to restore dharma, so his rendering of the Gita could be understood as a rewriting of Krishna’s teachings for the present age (7).” The situation described in the paper can be compared to the role of Christ in the Christian faith. Jesus, is presented as the fuller of the Torah and the prophets who comes to recreate the meaning of an ancient tradition for a new age. By describing the way in which Gandhi used personal experience as a source of religious truth while also presenting Gandhi as a source of new religious revelation, the conclusion which follows from these premises is that personal experience is itself a source of religious innovation. This implies that the nature of religious truth is not one which emerges through direct revelation of absolute truth at a given moment in time, but that instead it is something progressive, which emerges incrementally along with the advancement of human wisdom. The advancement of human wisdom comes at least in part from great religious innovators who are able to improve upon ancient truths in the light of new and original experience. If revelation is perfected by time then religious truth is progressive rather than staid. And the paper uses this concept to argue for Gandhi as a religious creative whose theology shaped his political innovation. “Although he emphasized the role of the inner voice, Gandhi’s own quest for interpretive Truth was not just an interior process. Truth was also to be explored, sought, and discovered through interactions with others (10).” So this passage presents Gandhi as having two non textual, and also personal, sources of religious truth. Gandhi approaches religious issues through internal meditation as well as personal interaction with others. The passage makes it clear that interpretative truth, for Gandhi, was found both through interactions with others as well as through his own inner voice. So Gandhi, with this epistemic stance, has the ability to cast shades of meaning upon the text, both internally, through the inner emotions or rational thoughts, as well as through the human social network which is rooted in the empirical. The writer of ancient wisdom, herself or himself being human, was subject to the same processes that Gandhi was subject to, in both the social and internal aspects of life.

And therefore to search for meaning in these places of the internal and the social is to search for the source from which the textual wisdom was composed. For even if a religious story is lacking in any historical or empirical content, it may very well be the abstraction of true and real experience. And this abstraction, may be designed to present the wisdom of another without putting oneself perfectly in another's shoes. And therefore to connect oneself and one's experiences with the text may give one the ability to lift the veil of metaphor to a certain extent. But more importantly it provides for a method of religious learning in which the wisdom which is developed is collectively produced, rather than merely being the expression of one person's understanding of the enormously complex issues that are at the heart of religious thought.

The paper's argument uses the following passage to show that Gandhi’s religious thinking needed to depart from the most direct meaning of an important passage of the Gita, “Yet he recognized the tension between his commitment to nonviolence and Krishna’s command to Arjuna in the Gita to engage in a violent battle. Other prominent Indian nationalists like Aurobindo and Tilak had seen in Krishna’s directive a warrant to struggle, and to use violence if necessary, in pursuit of a righteous cause. Independence from foreign rule, swaraj or self-rule, was just such an objective. The interpretive conundrum comes up repeatedly in Gandhi’s writings on the Gita, and Gandhi often uses the challenges posed by others, like Swami Anand here, as a starting point for his own explications of the work” (12). By showing Gandhi’s political need to move past a direct or literal reading of the text, the paper demonstrates how essential non textual sources are for Gandhi’s construction of religious truth, and how this unique method of developing religious truth was essential to his political agenda. The fact that he “recognized the tension between his commitment to nonviolence and Krishna’s command to Arjuna in the Gita to engage in a violent battle,” shows that he understood the need for outside sources to alter the meaning of the text. If the text is meant to be interpreted in the context of life itself, then the meaning of the text need no longer stick entirely to its original meaning. Since Gandhi was applying the text to politics he was clearly searching for the meaning of the text in relation to the real, concrete world. And by relating the text back to the world a different meaning can emerge.

If religious truth, for Gandhi, is a progress process, what provides a given religious truth with the ability to remain authoritative? What prevents the truths of non-violence from being revoked by the truths of further experience? And how can a religious text maintain the integrity of its meaning of it is always altered by outside sources? In other words, what is the origin of stability for religious truth, for Gandhi, if religious truth emerges from an organic, multifaceted, and progressive process?

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10512-blog · 6 years

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Classics paper of mine!

Eric Bleys

Classics 209

11/18/2016

William Mullen

Why does Pythagorean thought see mathematics as something capable of describing the empirical world as well as the realms of the moral and the metaphysical? Perhaps it is because pythagoras did not have the idea of a separation between these two realms. So therefore he did not see a reason to describe them differently. An interesting subject that is relevant to the entirety of philosophy and intellectual history is the question of which forms of language are appropriate for describing particular aspects of reality and which communication forms are needed to answer particular questions? It is true that mathematics, as a language, or form of communication, is more appropriate for describing the exact dimensions of a building than is written language. But it is also true that many physical patterns in the visual arts are themselves mathematical structures and that these same works of art often testify to moral and spiritual ideals. So in some sense because math is predicated about art, and art is predicated about morality, so therefore math, in this particular case, is predicated about morality. However this doesn’t seem to be the typical situation in regards to the way in which we express our moralistic ideals. Certainly ethics and Religion are expressed primarily through written and spoken language. And if one were to express one's moral disagreement with a given person's behavior one would not express this through a math problem but through spoken or written language. Or perhaps Pythagoras believed in the effectiveness of math for describing these two realms because of the innate clarity and lack of ambiguity within the nature of mathematics itself? This paper will explore why and how pythagoras thinks math can describe both realms. And the paper will also explore the similarities between pythagoras’s views in regards to math and Hericlitus’s idea of the logos. The respective roles of each way of thinking will be described.

McKirahan summarized Pythagoras’s views on math’s ability to describe the world in the following way, “The essence of the order in the world, the Pythagoreans believed, is located in the connections of its parts, that is, kosmos depends on harmonia, especially on harmonia based on number. This doctrine first applied to musical harmonia but was later extended more widely” (Philosophy Before Socrates, 92). What is meant here by essence? How can we define the term essence and determine its most fitting definition in this given context? One of Merriam-Webster dictionary definitions of essence is “the permanent as contrasted with the accidental element of being.” If we applied this definition to the description of Pythagoras's views then we would reach the understanding that he viewed the permanent structure behind the order of the world as mathematical. So the mathematical structures would not themselves be temporal but would be the unchanging source of the order which is empirical and temporal. This concept would foreshadow Platonic forms, a concept which posits the existence of abstract entities of which the empirical world is merely a shadow. The order consists in the way in which objects relate to one another. This is similar to the way in which laws of mathematical physics describe relationships between objects. What they can describe is not the nature of objects within a vacuum, but of the relational harmony between objects.

Let us take note that the way in which Pythagoras’s position is described in the previous paragraph actually posits a metaphysical nature for mathematics even as it is being posited as something which describes the empirical world. This understanding presents a cohesive unity between the idea of math as empirically descriptive and yet metaphysical. This is because the metaphysical stability which produces the order of the empirical world is itself mathematical. So then the empirical world testifies by its own patterns to a metaphysical order. And that metaphysical order is itself a mathematical structure. These ideas of Pythagoras are described by Aristotle’s metaphysics in the following way, “In numbers they thought they observed many resemblances to the things that are and that come to be… such and such an attribute of numbers being justice, another being soul and intellect, another being decisive moment, and similarly for virtually all other things...since all other things seemed to be made in the likeness of numbers in their entire nature” (Philosophy before Socrates, quotation 9.19).

What is meant by the idea that numbers resemble things that are and that come to be? Time is conceptually divided into the past, the present, and the future. Things that are refers to existent things as opposed to non existent things. There is an issue in the philosophy of time as to whether or not the past still exists. So there is the possibility of interpreting the statement that as meaning that the term “things that are” would refer to the present and the past. However in popular usage the term “things that are” would refer to the present. The passage implies that numbers bear an innate similarity to the present as well as things that will come to be. And so therefore numbers bear a similarity to objects across all times, or at least to the present and the future. The ability to predict the future is predicated on the notion that at least to some extent or at least in certain ways the future will resemble the present which we have observed. We believe the sun will rise after the darkness which will come tonight because after every night which we have experienced the sun rose in the morning. We believe that these experiences of the past give us insight into the future because they attest, we believe, to a pattern which is innate and fundamental. We believe that the future will conform to this pattern. And therefore we believe that the pattern transcends the realm of immediate experience. Because we expect the pattern to tell us something about something which we do not yet have direct empirical access to. So in some sense the pattern itself could be called metaphysical. It in some sense exists “beyond” the physical because the pattern contains information about something which does not yet exist.

The rest of the description from Aristotle describes numbers as things which resemble all things, which include justice, the soul, as well as intellect. Justice, as a concept is abstract in a different sense in comparison to the mathematical patterns behind empirical events. Justice is a concept which is related to the rightness and the wrongness of behaviors as well as the just consequences for these actions. Whereas the mathematical order of empirical events need not have ethical insight. However, there is a similar quality which is the same between mathematical descriptions of empirical patterns and the concept of justice which is they are both irreducible to the empirical reality which is immediately present. The intellect itself is a notion which bears witness to the idea of intellectual order. Or, in other words, patterns of thought. For how can we conceive of the intellect without thought? A mathematical algorithm is a step by step process for solving a problem. It is a method of thought. Mathematics itself testifies to methods of thought and in this way testifies to intellect. There are functions of the mind that we do not typically associate with thought, such as dreaming. However, it is difficult to deny that the notion of thought does not imply some sort of intellect. Because one of the most common and essential definitions of the word intellect is the capacity for intelligent and rational thought.

What about the notion of the soul? It is the immaterial or spiritual element of a person. So what does it mean to say that numbers resemble the soul? What aspect of the soul do they resemble? We can say that there are mathematical truths that exist across all times. We can know that 2 + 2 = 4 in the same way as someone from two thousand four hundred years ago can know this to be true. And we cannot conceive of the possibility that one day it would not be understood to be true within a human mind. The meaning of the number 2 means the same thing across these ages. Because it does not exist in any one material place but exists in human minds across thousands of years it does in fact resemble the spiritual. Because the spiritual exists within people but it does not exist in any particular physical place. Perhaps the reason for the Pythagorean view on the significance of Mathematics is because Math possesses this great quality of being able to have qualities similar to the spiritual while also being capable of describing the empirical world. Perhaps Mathematics is itself the intellectual link between the physical and the spiritual world.

Interestingly, Aristotle claims that the Pythagorean reason for calling numbers the substance of all things is because the limited and the unlimited are not distinct substances but are predicated of one another. If the limited and the unlimited are A) metaphysically united with one another, and B) mutually predicate things about one another, then what understanding can we infer from these two positions? First of all let's clarify what can be meant by the unity between the limited and the unlimited. A finite object can be thought of as a part of an infinite set. And this means that they can exist within one object. It also means that both the infinite and the finite in this case can tell us things about one another. Because the finite would be a sub pattern within a larger pattern as well as an example of the nature of the larger pattern. It is also true that the larger pattern would be able to tell us the structure of the finite pattern. The two concepts are composed of one another without possessing exact equivalence.

It is important to analyze the text in which Aristotle makes this claim about Pythagorean thought, “The Pythagoreans similarly posited two principles, but added something peculiar to themselves, not that the limited and the unlimited are distinct natures like fire or earth or something similar, but that the unlimited itself and the one itself are the substance of what they are predicated of. This is why they call number the substance of all things” (Philosophy before Socrates, McKirahan, quotation 9.27). So this passage indicates that the limited and the unlimited are not distinct from one another in the same way in which fire and earth are distinct from one another. Fire and earth do not share the same quality of being the same substance and we do not say that one exists within the other. Studying earth does not give us direct access to the nature of fire. Whereas if we study one composition of something of which fire is built then we do have access to the nature of fire from understanding that smaller component. Therefore what is being explained is that the relationship between the limited and the unlimited is not the relationship between two things in which one is not composed of the other. Instead the unlimited is at least partially composed of the limited. And hence they predicate things about one another. And because they predicate things about one another then it is likely true that a medium of thought and expression which is held in common between the two can be used understand them both.

This understanding presented in the preceding paragraph supplements and does not contradict the view that mathematics is the intellectual bridge between the spiritual and the material worlds. Because the spiritual is understood to be unlimited whereas the material world is understood to be limited. On one hand Mathematical thoughts and numbers are rational truths which are understood within the human mind. But they are also capable of describing the dimensions of a building. The ability of Math to describe both, from a Pythagorean perspective, is rooted in the view that Mathematics resembles both realms. And in fact, as we discussed early, the order of the empirical world itself (for Pythagoras) testifies to an abstract reality which is the essence behind the events.

Here is another relevant description of Pythagorean thought in regards to Mathematics which describes his views on the generation of the physical world, “It is absurd to construct an account of the generation of things that are eternal, or rather it is an impossibility. There is no need to doubt whether or not the Pythagoreans construct such an account, since they say clearly that when the one had been constructed - whether from planes or surfaces or seed of from something they are at a loss to specify- the nearest parts of the unlimited at once began to be drawn in and limited by the limit. But since they are constructing a kosmos….” (Philosophy Before Socrates, quotation 9.29). This passage means that after the unlimited began to be itself in some sense, limited, a process of constructing a kosmos began. So there's no need to describe the eternal past before the kosmos because it would be describing the non temporal with a temporary events. The kosmos itself is the derivation of the infinite. It is the particularization of something which existed infinitely. What does this imply for the philosophy of Mathematics? It means that the metaphysical and the physical are fundamentally united. That the physical is a derivation of the metaphysical. Because both the unlimited and the limited are composed of numbers Mathematics is a study which can give us knowledge of both realms. And because one intimately originates from the other and the limited is part of the unlimited we can conclude that both have the potential to provide us understanding of one another. Knowing the limited will help us understand the unlimited. And knowing the unlimited can help us understand the limited. Because Math helps us to understand both it can serve as an intellectual bridge between the two. And understanding the infinite then is a way of understanding the origin of the empirical world. And so therefore the patterns of the empirical world can be understood through the abstract Mathematical laws which themselves describe the eternal. The past, present, and future all originate from the infinite. And so it is highly conceivable that eternal mathematical laws could help us to understand and predict empirical patterns.

Heraclitus posited a concept which plays a similar role to the position of Math in Pythagorean thought. He posits the existence of the logos. An all encompassing, rational order, which is composed of great diversity, which is also fundamentally rational. The concept is given many of the same traits as Math in Pythagorean thought, “Likewise, the word “logos” has connotations of rationality, not irrationality, and is linked with other concepts of positive value, notably justice but also law (which preserves things from anarchy) and soul (which is responsible for life, a condition with positive value)” (Philosophy Before Socrates, P 137). These three concepts, of order, of justice, and of the soul, are all said to resemble numbers in Pythagorean thought. Furthermore rationality is playing a similar role to Math because it is a method of thought which itself is a tool for understanding all things. So this rationality exists metaphysically as well as in the human mind. It is a way in which the mind can apply itself to understand existence.

The logos is described as a special language with the unique capability of describing the world. If language is deeply linked to understanding then the language which we use must be presented as an essential aspect of one's epistemology. Just as describing a thought requires a particular kind of statement, in the same way, a particular kind of language is needed for the purpose of understanding. Ambiguity is the enemy of understanding. The need to think and articulate thought in the clearest possible way is a core part of the epistemological enterprise. Ultimately, in the same way in which a statement without context losses much of its meaning, a language which does not describe the totality of things does not describe the particular thing accurately. And this is the significance of the way in which Heraclitus and Pythagoras use the concept of the total and the divine in relation to the particular. The total or the unlimited provides a context for the particular in such a way as to illuminate the particular and provide a deeper understanding of its position in the world. The ability to predict the future exists within this framework. Because if we know the place of the particular within the pattern of the eternal framework then we can know how the pattern will cause the future of that particular.

The need to transcend ordinary insight is likened to a growing similarity to the divine, “In contrast to the normal human state of ignorance and unbelief, the divine has knowledge and insight (10.28) and is the only truly wise being (10.30) Neither this claim nor the observation that we are like babies in comparison with god (10.29) means that we must remain wholly ignorant any more than the thesis that understanding is common to all (10.31) means that we all possess the very insight Heraclitus denies we have (10.28). Rather, as Children grow into maturity, we may grow in insight. Our ultimate goal is thinking (10.31), self-knowledge and thinking rightly (10.32). To the extent that we attain this insight and wisdom we transcend the human and resemble the divine (10.28, 10.30).” (Philosophy Before Socrates, P. 127). In a way similar to Plato’s allegory of the cave in the Republic, or Paul’s description of the journey to spiritual maturity in first Corinthians, Heraclitian thought posits the existence of a higher level of thought and reality which we must obtain through the expansion of our minds in a way which is tied together with moral and spiritual growth. Correct thinking, for both Pythagoras and Hericlitus, is more than just a process of understanding concrete facts about the world. In contrast to logical positivism, moral and metaphysical insight has logical value and is an essential realm of inquiry for the application of rational thought. Ultimately the contemporary world view often lacks these same insights. Mathematics is deeply associated not with morality and metaphysics but with science and technology. Logical positivism's position that all proposition which can be deemed true must have direct empirical grounding ultimately fails to search for the same kind of ultimate context for things which are temporal. The search for meaning and the search for the positioning of the temporal world in relation to a grand abstract eternal reality possess the quality of a key Religious impulse. The impulse is the search for ultimate meaning and the search for the eternal amidst the temporal. This is unsurprising considering Pythagoras’s role as a Religious leader. The key similarity between Hericlitus and Pythagoras’s views on a method of thought describing all things is that they both posit the need for a highly sophisticated and refined method of rational thought which expresses itself in a special form of language which is both spiritual and temporal, as well as both moral and empirical.

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10512-blog · 6 years

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A recent poem of mine! (Flower, night, temple, and sword.)

Out in the high streaks of the jungles dawn

High moon draping it's kind face on thy horizon

Through the winding paths of the dark wood

There is found the oblivion of the never ending night

And yet there is also the cup of life

On the Mayan temple

Amid the piles of thine crushed Spanish swords

There abides by these shattered metals

Deep flowers in the mist

As the mystic glass of memory strings our hearts together

Liberation is to fear neither life nor death

As both fears can be in the spirit of terror

But in the new image of the heart

I renounce them both

And therein live truly

By the paths to life and death

As each are intertwined

By the flower, the night, the temple, and the sword.

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10512-blog · 6 years

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Kant paper from my undergraduate days

Eric Bleys

Philosophy independent study

1/11/2017

Garry Hagberg

The Kantian contribution to epistemology in the prolegomena

In the “Prolegomena to any future metaphysics,” Immanuel Kant presents a critique of the metaphysical systems which were available to him. Kant begins his inquiry with several core questions about the possibility of differing forms of rational truth. The possibility of knowing objects within themselves is dismissed. However, in contrast to a purely empiricist epistemology, Immanuel Kant does propose the idea that we can know a priori truths. These a priori truths, however, in contrast to the pure metaphysics of traditional rationalism, which would attempt to prove the existence of God or the immortal soul with abstract concepts alone, only analytical and synthetic a priori truths are possible. The following paper will describe the ideas presented in Kant’s prolegomena, and it will analyze the implications of these ideas for the discipline of epistemology as well as their differences with other epistemological positions.

Analytical truths merely break down terms into their constituent definitions. An example of this would be the a priori truth that “all bachelors are male.” An example of a synthetic a priori truth would be that 7 + 5 = 12. Neither of these a priori methods for determining rational truths can tell us about metaphysical objects which Kant refers to as “things in themselves,” but instead, we can only know possible truths of experience as synthetic a priori truths in addition to the analytical a priori truths. For example, if we encounter a bag of seven apples and five apples fall into the bag then there will be twelve apples in the bag. Experience, for Kant, is only a series of appearances which do not tell us about things in themselves. This is true because these empirical experiences only occur through the structure of our minds. The function of a priori reason is therefore only to determine the definitions of concepts as well as to determine the nature of possible empirical experiences. The synthetic a priori truths are rational apprehensions of possible experience. And these possible experiences involve combinations of appearances which themselves resemble the synthetic a priori truths.

What can these ideas proposed by Immanuel Kant contribute to the discipline of epistemology? First we ought to analyze the subject of epistemology down into its constituent elements. Epistemology is the discipline which is the study of the problems of knowledge. Some of the tasks of epistemology include the following problems. How are we to formulate an adequate definition of knowledge? How are we to determine the method(s) by which knowledge can be obtained? And how are we to determine the respective roles, of sense perception and reason, in the formulation of knowledge? The core question of Kant’s “prolegomena to any future metaphysics” is, what can be known a priori? This is a question about a form of knowledge and by asking for an understanding of the limitations of this form of knowledge, it is, in fact, looking for a definition of this form of knowledge by providing an understanding of what it can and cannot be. Therefore, Kant is presenting ideas about a solution to an important aspect of epistemology. How then, can Kant, utilize this understanding to develop a broader epistemic worldview? Because this question deals with the distinction between empirical and non empirically derived understanding, it is therefore true that the question has implications for one of the core functions of epistemology as I listed them above. The function of determining the proper roles of experience and reason deals not just with these two things as separate units but also as interrelating tools which are both used to formulate knowledge claims. The prolegomena is a summary of the critique of pure reason. And the critique of pure reason, clearly, by its very title, is a book about what can be known with reason alone. But if reason and experience are the only tools of knowledge. And some form of knowledge, x, cannot be obtained by reason without experience or reason combined with experience, and yet is knowable, then it can be known exclusively by experience. This argument is designed to show that definitions of the possible scope of one particular means of gaining knowledge have implications for the other tools of obtaining knowledge, in terms of their scope, and in terms of their validity for uncovering certain truths.

Even though, the primary goal of the text is to analyze the scope of a priori truth, the book does discuss the epistemic significance of empirical experience. And the essential concept which is presented about the empirical world is that it is a string of experiences which are mere appearances which do not tell us about things within themselves. These things within themselves are presented as metaphysical objects. However, Kant also acknowledges that human reason naturally leads to problems which deal with the metaphysical world which is above and beyond the empirical world. And this is because of a natural curiosity of the human intellect to search beyond the empirical to questions of ultimate importance. And thus, as was argued above, the core questions of Kant in the prolegomena, although not directly addressing the entirety of epistemology, ends up having implications for the discipline as a whole. Seeing that epistemology deals with how it is that we find knowledge, regardless of whether or not this knowledge is of the empirical world or of the metaphysical world.

However, it should be pointed out that the prolegomena, does not, like cartesian thought, attempt to create a cohesive attempt to solve epistemology as a whole by finding an undoubtable starting point for further inquiry. The difference between these two methods is that one searches for a single perfect starting point for building up the entire field of epistemology whereas Kant in the prolegomena attempts to address the problems of epistemology by formulating a series of highly relevant questions to the problems of epistemology, with no clear singular starting point (question or premise), which serves as a holistic beginning of the whole discipline of epistemology. The strength of the Kantian approach, is that it does not overemphasize one core epistemological question but proceeds through the multifaceted nature of the diverse, and subtly interrelated questions which are involved in epistemology. The ability to approach a complex discipline through multiple questions and lines of inquiry following from these questions then allows for more particular definitions of particular forms of knowledge. Let us say that we were to define knowledge with multiple definitions, which involve all the things which the term knowledge can refer to. Then we could distinguish categories of knowledge, and if we have a series of definitions of knowledge, then these definitions can serve as potential answers to the problem then the common qualities of these definitions can be used as a cohesive definition of knowledge.

This process in some respects resembles the Kantian method presented in the Prolegomena, because by asking a series of nuanced questions about the possibility and epistemic scope of various forms of knowledge, a series of definitions are indirectly presented, and of these definitions a cohesive vision of what knowledge is can be constructed. On the other hand, the method of finding a singular, undoubtable starting point for epistemology, has the advantage of eliminating the use of false assumptions which may be held as true and then used as premises for further investigation. Another strength of this method, is that investigations into one aspect of epistemology will not be tainted by false assumptions about other aspects of epistemology because if epistemology only proceeds from true assumptions about the discipline as a whole then there will not be false assumptions originating from pre-suppositions about epistemic truth as a whole, because the project of epistemology, as a whole, has not yet been investigated. One method can be described as an attempt to define the whole of epistemology to investigate the smaller branches of the study, whereas the Kantian approach within the prolegomena is to use very refined and subtle investigations of some of the particular branches of epistemology as a foundation for approaching epistemology as a whole.

How can Kantian ideas presented in the prolegomena be used to approach the problems of epistemology? How can such questions be addressed such as, should we believe the empirical world to be real? Can pure reason tell us about something like Platonic forms? What is the role of reason in formulating knowledge? How are we to decide which empirical experiences we are to value above others? The last of these questions is very relevant for developing a scientific investigation of any kind.

I will discuss the following question from a Kantian perspective to try to address the questions presented above in the beginning of the paragraph. If we observe a stick in the water which appears muddled in the water and then we observe the stick outside the water, which of the two appearances should we regard as being the accurate, or at least the more accurate, depiction of the actual stick? One way to solve this epistemic problem is to create a hierarchy of epistemic perceptions in which some perceptions are deemed to be more accurate representations of reality than others. However, if we approach the problem from a Kantian perspective, then how would we try to answer this question? Under the Kantian paradigm, all empirical experiences are mere appearances. And this is true because all experiences exist only through our own ability to process the world which is itself defined by the structure of the mind. Just as another non human species is able to perceive colors that we do not perceive, in the same way what we are capable of experiencing is a series of experiences which themselves are structured from the very nature of the way our minds process the world. This answers the question about how we are to regard the empirical world. So therefore how are we supposed to determine which experiences have more validity? By what principle do we deem judgements to be true or false?

If an a priori truth can tell us something about the structure of our own minds then it can tell us about the structure of the world which is dependent upon that mind for its very nature and existence. A priori truths tell us what our minds can conceive as accurate definitions of a concept, and they can also tell us about the structure of possible experiences. As all experiences are processed through the mind. If there are principles about how this mind must operate then these principles will determine the way in which this same mind processes the world. If we understand that the human mind possesses certain universal features then we can determine universal truths about the world of human experience. However we cannot determine truths about the world within itself.

The truths of pure reason, because they are understood to be true by all human minds, are themselves universal truths. All that is needed, therefore, is that these truths of reason can be used to understand the world experience, or can predicate something about our experiences, and therefore create universal laws about the nature of human experience. “The possibilities of experience in general is therefore at the same time the universal law of nature, and the principles of experience are the very laws of nature. For we know nature as nothing but the totality of appearances, i.e., of representations in us; and hence we can only derive the law of their connection from the principles of their connection in us, that is, from the conditions of their necessary unification in a consciousness, which constitutes the possibility of experience” (Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, p. 56-57). We can determine that under all circumstances which blend certain particular appearances a certain other experience will follow because the principles of these experiences are the same as certain rational truths about the possibility of these experiences. If four people walk into a room in which there were already three people there beforehand then it is necessarily true that there will then be seven people in the room. This truth is discovered by the very structure of the human mind. And it is by these very same principles of the human mind that we would understand that there are seven people in the room if we were to actually experience this event for ourselves with our own empirical sensations. If we now move back to the question about the stick in the water as opposed to the stick outside of the water we can think about the problem from a new angle which opens up more possibilities about how to solve the problem. This an example of a Kantian way of solving the problem of the role of reason in formulating knowledge.

Our original question was predicated on the belief that one of the two perceptions somehow must better represent the stick as an abstract metaphysically existent thing. But if both experiences of the stick are merely appearances then we need not judge which gives us greater access to the Platonic form of the stick. Instead we can approach the problem as a matter of what the stick will be if it is presented to us under certain conditions. And we can then determine the truths of the possible experiences which we would have if we were to observe the stick under certain conditions. And if we think about the nature of fire and the nature of the stick then we can come to a scientific understanding of what would happen if the stick were burnt in the fire. So therefore singular empirical experiences are not linked to singular metaphysical abstractions but universal truth is found in the structure of the way the mind processes combinations of actual experiences as well as hypothetical truths of possible experience. This is an answer to the question about whether or not pure reason can tell us about platonic forms.

The Kantian approach to epistemology involves a systematic attempt to define the scope of various forms of knowledge. In particular Kant seeks to understand the capacities and limitations of pure, a priori, reason. This paper has highlighted the way in which this particular question about the nature and scope of a priori reason has implications for epistemology as a whole. The core questions of epistemology, are deeply intertwined with this one question. Any theory allows for further inquiry in regards to the field of epistemology as a whole. And the Kantian paradigm opens up the possibility of understanding a relatively original way of construing the balance and interaction between reason and experience in the development of knowledge.

works cited page

Kant, Immanuel, and James W. Ellington. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001. Print.

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