Naive realism is the theory that supports the position closer to common sense, that which every man adheres spontaneously before any philosophical reflection on knowledge: the bodies exist, they are out of me. But then how do explain the epistemological problems that lead to idealism? In reality it is a false problem. When for example transcendental idealists argue that the true reality of things' exists independently of our intellect "formulate expressions unclear: how do you know that there is something that can not be known with the intellect?
Critical realism argues, instead, that bodies exist as a reality independent of the subject. It is called critical realism because unlike the previous one does not refuse to ask any epistemological problem. Admitted, in fact, that bodies exist, as claimed by the naive realism, it should be explained why are present in them some subjective elements (e.g. color). The response of critical realism is that the bodies have primary quality and secondary qualities: the first - the most important - are those that exist by itself; others - less important, called indeed secondary - are subjective and negligible. The image of the real world - for critical realists - is not given by our senses, but by what is out of the laborious analysis of physics.
Compared to what has been mentioned in the beginning on the form of knowledge next to common sense, there are forms of thought more appropriate to grasp the deeper layers, complex and elusive of reality and better suited to compete with the growing sense of the unspeakable and unthinkable. With their help we can go deeper: a) the person that tries, he will know and thinks; b) experience as analogic source rather than univocal of knowledge; c) knowledge as "organization" instead of "accumulation" of data; d) logic as an imperfect and relative tool; e) doubt and self-criticism as systematic components of scientific thought; f) the unavoidable incompleteness, partiality and provisional nature of any theory; g) the unsurpassed ‘partisanship’ and uncertainty of any knowledge.
For this deepening, the theory of knowledge is instrumental because it deals with the analysis of the fundamentals, limits and validity of human knowledge, essentially understood as a relationship between knower and known object. The survey through reason produces a pure knowledge, which is opposed to the unstable reality perceived by the senses. Aristotle agreed with Plato in the affirmation of the possibility of a scientific and true knowledge but it denied that it dealt with essences separated from the world of experience. According to Aristotle all knowledge comes directly from practical experience, through abstraction of the peculiar traits of a species, or indirectly, through the deduction of conclusions starting from premises already known according to the rules of logic.
Let us examine the main consequences of the epistemological theories on the metaphysical view of the world:
1) The first problem arising from the metaphysical theory of knowledge has to do with the theory of knowledge developed by Plato and concerns ideal objects.
Plato argues that our knowledge comes only by reason and not by the senses. But who knows what the reason is? According to Plato, it captures entities that are only in thought and are inaccessible both to the perception and the representation: it is ideas. An example of ideas or entities that can be grasped only conceptually is the following:
Beauty, goodness understood as concepts of beauty and goodness, and not as specific objects (objects beautiful or good deeds) that can be perceived with the senses.
From these reflections on knowledge, Plato drew a very particular vision of the world whereby only the world of ideas is the true reality, while the world of individual things is made from copies of ideas; the world of copies, which are gathered by the senses, is not the true reality.
The epistemological and metaphysical doctrine of Plato caused a big problem:
it is a challenge to 'common sense' and this has attracted a lot of criticism; many have found it difficult to accept. Given, in fact, that we frequently use abstract concepts to acquire knowledge and that relative concepts are really something very important for the functioning of our mind, one might wonder what is their ontological reality: how they exist? On what plane of reality? What consistency have these general ideas so frequently used?
In the Middle Ages was much debated the question of the existence of general objects, known to history as the problem of universals, because in Latin general objects were called "universal".
In this regard, various positions have been developed:
Realism: the universal actually exists, but as ideal object in a world separate from the real one;
Conceptualism: the universal exists only in our minds;
Nominalism: refusing the realistic position, according to which universals exist as ideal objects, nominalists approach the conceptualists, but go even further because they argue that it is not conceivable any form of abstraction.
In philosophy realism is the belief that there is a reality independent of our conceptual schemes, from our linguistic practices and beliefs. The philosophers who declare themselves realists typically think that truth consists in some form of correspondence of thoughts to reality. In a broader sense, typical of Scholastica, realists are those that give reality to entities of thought.
While acknowledging a practical utility to 'common sense', especially as a guide of judgment in the ethical-moral field (ability to apply the rules to particular cases), Kant devalues the role in terms of epistemological and cognitive point of view, in favor of the ‘pure’ use of intellect (faculty to determine the rules and concepts). The notion of 'common sense' is back however in the center of the reflection of Kant's Critique of Judgment, with specific reference to the founding of the judgments of taste; in these, in fact, the claim of a universality unbound by rules and concepts would pre-suppose the idea of a shared feeling, which in general makes it possible to communicate the experience.
The critical line initiated by Kant undergoes a sharp radicalization in the post-Kantian idealism, especially by Hegel, who interprets 'common sense' as a form of "immediate knowledge," in which expresses itself the attitude of ordinary consciousness , which "maintains its view that the truth rests on the sensitive reality, that thoughts are only thoughts [...] and that reason as it is in and of itself does not give out that dream."
Dear Artur, I am sorry but I I am not sure of having understood your last sentence.. Gianrocco
Thank you for sharing with me your thoughts. Unfortunately, I don' know German, but your closing words about Ingmar Bergman's knight touched me. If I may say, you are a person with an extraordinary sensitivity. Fortunate the people who are close to you. Gianrocco
Dear Gianrocco,
I think that you should define first the concept of "intellect". Do you mean by it the "conscious brain" ? Cognitive scientists tell us that knowing and knowledge represent a dynamic interaction between conscious brain and non-conscious brain. How shall I understand "intellect" with respect to this continuum of our brain?
As I'm sure you know, Bhaskarian Critical Realism holds that in order to have knowledge of the real, we have to transcend empirical facts to theorize about what the state of nature must be for the phenomenon under investigation to have occurred.
In doing this we abduct various potential theories about the structure and relationship of the entities involved and how the stimulus caused the response that we observed. We then choose the one that has the greatest explanatory power for the phenomena described.
Dear Michael,
thank you for having stimulated my immediate reactions to your reasoning
What comes to my mind is that Fichte first and then Schelling made of the ‘I’ the absolute principle to which bring back the whole reality, that for reason can become the object of science. But while in them reason simply recognized the creative act with which the subject puts the object (which remained the prerogative of a supreme intellectual intuition), it will be with Hegel that reason itself becomes creative, attributing to itself the right to determine what is real and what is not.
In the system of transcendental idealism (Opera (1800) by Friedrich Schelling it is exposed the complete system of idealism. Philosophy itself and its parts are showed according to progressive continuity within a unified design in which self-consciousness rises up to the Absolute, caught by an intellectual intuition.
Intellectual intuition is "the organ of transcendental philosophy," which moves from consciousness to consciousness, composing the conflict between 'nature' and 'I' without recourse to the Kantian 'thing in itself'.
One character even more singular had then Kantian idealism as a doctrine of "ideas" or "ideals", seen as concepts of reason not constitutive but regulative of the intellectual experience, terms that would never have been able to achieve but to which one ever heads .
When transcendental idealists argue that the true reality of things' exists independently of our intellect formulate expressions unclear: how do you know that there is something that can not be known with the intellect?
With transcendental idealism Kant holds that we can know well only our experiences and the construction of our intellect; while we can only think that something exists beyond our experiences, but do not know it.
All the best, Gianrocco
Hi,
Knowing by using our intellect is a structured way of acquiring knowledge. The other ways are by intuition and by serendipity.
Gianrocco,
When I was discussing Bhaskarian Critical Realism, I was talking about transcendental realism. In transcendental realism, we recognize that for a scientific enterprise to succeed, there must a real world independent of our us and our conceptions of it that exists. When scientists do experiments for example, they put a stimulus into this real world and see what the even is that occurs. Therefore to identify the real world mechanisms that cause the phenomenon to exist, we must transcend the empirical facts and reason to answer the question, "What must the real world be like in order this phenomenon to exist in the way that it does?" We abduct possible real world structures and then we accept the one that has the most explanatory power.
Our knowledge therefore of the real world is fallible and provisional. It and in fact,our knowledge of "facts" are theory laden. New information may be developed that invalidates our provisional knowledge and so therefore we are always open to new ideas because we do not have infallible knowledge. As new information comes along, we review our existing theories to see if they can explain this new phenomenon well or if we must develop better theories that have greater explanatory power.
Bhaskar (1975) rejects transcendental idealism because it does not provide a basis on which to base science. If all we have is a set of possible models but no real world to test them against, how can we possibly know anything?
So going back to your original question. How can we know something that cannot be known with the intellect? BCR argues that through the process of abductions and retroduction (Peirce) we can develop theories of what the real world must be like to produce the phenomenon under consideration that have explanatory power for it.
Best regards,
Mike
Dear Michael,
I believe that especially in your last sentence you are right. Now, I wish to add some reflections.
Every person has a unifying consciousness and, therefore, all research on human life and the relationship with the universe requires a plurality of harmonic routes and outcomes that are intertwined in the uniqueness of the person. Human knowledge that is not monodic, (emphasizing the distinct or soloistic role of the main melody) is not only rational and formal, but also symbolic-affective. At one moment reason is stopped and in the final route, which is a risky climb, we advance with a different company that looks from above indicating paths comprehensible only to those who take another way of listening and seeing.
Laplace and Kant, sensed the futility of conceptual fiction and artifice of a God surveyor, engineer or watchmaker of the universe. To explain a universe reduced to mere machine, scientific knowledge was sufficient. Metaphysics, philosophy, theology were replaced by scientism, a ideological hybrid and pretentious mixture, that had nothing more to say to knowledge, and vice versa
Just as there is homo ludens, that is the human person who releases its creative, artistic, cultural potentialities through its athletic and aesthetic works conducted in the gratuitousness, freedom and creativity, so God creates the universe and, as suggested by the Book of Genesis in its opening page, stops amazed to contemplate his work: "God saw that it was beautiful / good." The Hebrew adjective tob has, in fact, a meaning both aesthetic and ethical: it is an expression of the "beautiful" but also of the "good" and the '' useful.
As said by Freeman Dyson (theoretical physicist and mathematician, known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering) it seems that "the universe was waiting for us," meaning that it is done on purpose to give birth to life. This idea of course, that is also the question of the "anthropic principle", puts man at the center of the universe, by colliding with the hypothesis of a neo-Darwinian mechanism that has at the base only "chance and selection."
All the best,
Gianrocco
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