Clearings

on critical epistemology

© Wim van den Dungen
Antwerp, 2006 - 2008.

"... science is apparently increasingly able to construct and reconstruct itself in response to problem challenges by providing solutions to the problem ..."
Knorr-Cetina : The Manifacture of Knowledge, 1981, p.11.

this text forms a triad with :

Behaviours : On Critical Ethics
Sensations : On Critical Esthetics

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract
Introduction

I : Transcendental Logic :

A. The dyad of formal thought.
B. The fact of reason.
C. The groundless ground of knowledge.

II : Theoretical Epistemology :

01. The normative solution.
02. The object of knowledge.
03. The subject of knowledge.
04. Categories (mind) & ideas (reason).
05. Idealistic & realistic transgressions.
06. Regulations towards unity & expansion.
07. Correspondence versus consensus.
08. The coherency-theory of truth.
09. On methodology.
10. The fundamental norms of knowledge.
11. The scientific status of a theory.
12. Metaphysics and science.
13. Language and the criteria of discourse.

III : Applied Epistemology :

14. The practice of knowledge.
15. Methodological "as if"-thinking.
16. Practical communication.
17. Judgments a posteriori.
18. Optimalisations.
19. Producing facts.
20. The opportunistic logic of knowledge-production.

Suggested Reading

Abstract

The various parts of the equiaeon-system* are assisted by a critical epistemology. Earlier, its tenets were extensively published in Dutch (Prolegomena, 1994 & Kennis, 1995), whereas an English summary was proposed as a set of Rules of the Game of True Knowing (1999). An application of these rules in the field of hermeneutics also saw the light (Kennis en Minne-mystiek, 1994).

In order to develop an ontology, a more rigorous explicitation of this theory and practice of knowledge is necessary. This is the aim of the present text, which recapitulates and develops the epistemological distinctions recently proposed in Does the Divine exist ? (2005), a prolegomena to a natural religious philosophy.

The foundational approach of knowledge (stating that "true" knowledge is rooted in a sufficient ground) is relinquished. True knowledge is terministic, fallible and probabilistic. No ontology is able to ground knowledge outside itself. This does not necessarily lead to universal relativism or skepticism, both avoided.

Indeed, to produce knowledge which we, for the time being, may consider paradigmatic, two perspectives are used simultaneously : correspondence with objective reality (experimentation) and an overall consensus between all sign-interpreters (discourse). Scientific knowledge is the product of both. They are the "natural" result of the concordia discors of thought, the armed truce between subject and object of all possible thought and the groundless ground of all possible knowledge. The two possible reductions of this "essential tension" (Kuhn), to wit : metaphysical realism & metaphysical idealism, are curtailed.

Metaphysics is deemed a discipline accommodating a total, arguable picture of the world, assisted by the facts produced by science. Its nature is not scientific but speculative, its results are not factual but heuristic, its method is not experimental but argumentative.

These critical ideas, establishing new borders, are "clearings" in the muddy, confused and dark epistemo-ontological forests of the past and aim to avoid the recurrent infestation of epistemology by contemporary materialism and various ideologies (like humanism and spiritualism). They make the mind aware of its limitations and of its longing after the unconditional and the eternalizing.

For preliminaries read : Prolegomena (1994), Kennis (1995), Rules (1999)

Introduction

§ 1

This introduction serves to highlight a few remarkable historical landmarks in the field of epistemology, the philosophical study of knowledge, its possibility and expansion.

Briefly discussing these examples paves the way for the critical approach (not skeptical, nor dogmatic) fostered in the main body of this work piece, called in as an epistemological preamble to a possible ontology.

The choice of what is an outstanding achievement in this domain is subjective insofar the author was touched by the exemplaric excellence made present by certain texts. But, these options also cover objective ground, because at each station, our understanding of knowledge grows.

This effort is flanked by an essay on the existence of the Divine, concluding in favour of an immanent, conserving cause of the universe (as in Late Stoic materialist "logos" metaphysics).

On the one hand, strong reliance on a critical epistemology brings the natural limitations of knowledge to the fore and so delimits the scope of what there is to be known. The outcome will be an immanent stance, one staying within the borders of a possible knowledge. So immanence will be at the core of this natural philosophy, however not without reference to the transcendent, both as a regulative limit-concept (a construct) and an objective infinity (or absolute absoluteness).

On the other hand, making the onto-categorial scheme explicit, shows how the proposed naturalism is in accord with a view on consciousness, information and matter, and this based on contemporary sciences like physics, biology and psychology. The options demanded by the scheme give shape to a metaphysical research program at work in the background. By making its tenets clear beforehand, our naturalism operates without implicit untestable propositions. Being conscious of them in an explicit way, may avoid their subreptive infiltration in the domain of science proper (i.e. as part of empirico-formal propositions, which are arguable and testable).

Both investigations prepare the philosophical study of nature. Calling this effort "ecstatic" implies (a) the discovery of traces of the transcendent within the immanent order and (b) the acknowledgment of the creativity of nature, the urge of all things to become and develop into greater complexities and this while introducing novelty. This disclosure will not be prompted by any metaphysical axiomatics (incorporating such ecstasy a priori, either out of choice or by adherence to a creed), nor by a theory of knowledge accommodating ontology (endorsing realism or idealism as the constitutive ideas of the possibility of knowledge). These unsuccessful strategies proved to be vain, leading to "perversa ratio", to quote Kant. Indeed, the critical instrument sought, will be indebted to nominalism and critical thought. However, although largely constructivist, it thinks thought as an unfolding process, of which formal thought is not a priori in conflict with ante-rationality and meta-rationality, nor does it denies the importance of both in a multi-dimensional concept of rationality. The latter is in accord with the author's definition of philosophy.

Philosophy or love of wisdom, is a multi-dimensional, comprehensive, cognitive answer to this call rooted in our bio-psychological & spiritual evolution, to knowingly push limits, transcend limitations, producing more complex, refined & subtle states of consciousness, information and matter. This answer is rational, dialogal, open, critical, personal and seeks the unconditional. Philosophy allows recurrent & multiple transferences between, on the one hand, reason and intuition or meta-reason, and, on the other hand, reason and instinct or ante-reason. It is open to the wonderous, ineffable, luminous, spontaneous & meaningful.
Synopsis

In the course of this intro, salient epistemological perspectives put forward by the examples, are highlighted in tables.

§ 2

Thinking is of all cultures, as are imagination and speculation. But the solidification of the philosophical approach of thought by thought in well-formed glyphs or signs (like signals, icons and symbols) is rather rare. Oral traditions exist, but their historical authenticity cannot be ascertained, except by testimony. Without signs, imposing a definitive form upon matter and so leaving a meaningful trace, thought does not in effect leave the mythical, neither does it initiate history, a traceable community of sign-interpreters. Even if a scribal tradition is installed, one needs strong media to ensure historical continuity. If texts are carved into stone, they are likely to survive better than when recorded on very perishable materials, like wood or clay. Although the latter have the advantage of facilitating the speed with which signs can be recorded, they nevertheless are less sustainable over long periods of time. To keep them for posterity, they need to be copied again and again ...

Philosophical cultures become possible when a society has reached the stage of a leisure-economy, implying that a small elite, close to the ruling powers, no longer has to work for a living. This upper class is made free to exclusively perform an intellectual task. Moreover, to accommodate the formation of schools of thought, an explicit desire to transmit speculative information must be present in the cultures at large. This implies a classical language, a scribal tradition, an educational method, specific buildings, copyists, etc. And these are costly investments for any society, let be those of Antiquity. In a historical sense, these philosophical schools become "real" insofar original texts or reliable testimony are extant.

In Antiquity, speculative thought was never divorced from religious and ceremonial considerations. In the East, the Vedas (ca. 1900 BCE) and their commentaries, the Upanishads (starting ca. 700 BCE), record the musings of the enlightened seers of India, as well as their Brahmin rituals. But these texts were recorded on lasting media much later, and their originals are lost. Were did the first speculative scribal tradition make solid history ?

"Along with the Sumerians, the Egyptians deliver our earliest -though by no means primitive- evidence of human thought. It is thus appropriate to characterize Egyptian thought as the beginning of philosophy. As far back as the third millennium B.C., the Egyptians were concerned with questions that return in later European philosophy and that remain unanswered even today - questions about being and nonbeing, about the meaning of death, about the nature of the cosmos and man, about the essence of time, about the basis of human society and the legitimation of power."
Hornung, 1992, p.13, my italics.

Indeed, in the Middle East, Ancient Egyptian culture, because of its long and outstanding scribal tradition, brought together a number of remarkable characteristics. The latter influenced Western civilization, notably the pre-Socratic Greeks, a fact our history books have yet to come to grips with :

• the words of god and the love of writing : it should be emphasized, that in Ancient Egypt, both spoken and written words were deemed very important : hieroglyphs were "divine words", a gift of the god Thoth, endowed with magical properties, "set apart" and distinguished from everyday language and writing (namely Hieratic and later Demotic). They were protected against decay, either by underground tombs, exceptional climatic conditions or by carving them into hard stone. Pharaoh Unis (ca. 2378 - 2348 BCE), to assure his ascension and subsequent arrival in heaven, was the first to decorated his tomb with hieroglyphs, the so-called Pyramid Texts. So even if the offerings to his double (or "ka") would end, the hieroglyphs -hidden in the total obscurity of the tomb- contained enough "inner" power (or "sekhem") to assure Wenis' felicity ad perpetuam ... In its iconicity, Egyptian civilization was quite unique in the Mediterranean. But, although producing a vast literary corpus, Egyptian culture never acquired the rational mode of cognition. Its attachment to the contextual and the local (provincial), as well as the special pictorial nature of the "sacred script", all point to highly iconic, rather "African" ante-rational mentality ;

• accomplished discourse : the fundamental categories of Egyptian wisdom were "heart/tongue/heart" insofar as theo-cosmology, logoism and magic were at hand and "hearing/listening/hearing" in moral, anthropological, didactical and political matters. The first category reflected the excellence of the active and outer (the father), the second the perfection of the passive and inner (the son). The active polarity was linked with Pharaoh's "Great Speech", which was an "authoritative utterance" ("Hu") and a "creative command" based on "understanding" ("Sia"), which no counter-force could stop ("Heka").
  
  
  
  "The tongue of this Pharaoh is the pilot in charge of the Bark of Righteousness and Truth !"
  Pyramid Texts, utterance 539 (§ 1306).
  
  The passive polarity was nursed by the intimacy of the teacher/pupil relationship, based on the subtle and far-reaching encounters of excellent discourse with a perfected hearing, i.e. true listening. The "locus" of Egyptian wisdom was this intimacy. Although Pharaoh was also called "wise", the sapiental discourses alone name their (possible) author and restrict their reference to the Divine by using the expression "the god" ("ntr") in the singular. Wisdom ("saa") was always linked with a "niche" defined by the vignettes of life the sage wished to impart as good examples to confer his wisdom to posterity.
  
  
  
  "No one is born wise."
  Maxims of Ptahhotep - line 33
  
  The wisdom teachings are parables helpful to understand how, in all circumstances, the wise balanced Maat and made the social order endure by serving "the great house" ("pr aA" or Pharaoh), being at peace with himself and "the god". This sapiental tradition is not a fixed canon, and undergoes several transformations ;

• truth and the plummet of the balance : in Middle Egyptian, the word "maat" ("mAat") is used for "truth" and "justice" (in Arabic, "Al-Haq", is both "truth" and "real").
  
  Truth is an equilibrium (a bringing together hand in hand with a keeping apart), measurable as the state of affairs given by the image, form or representation of the balance :

  "Pay attention to the decision of truth and the plummet of the balance, according to its stance." Papyrus of Ani 18th Dynasty Chapter 30B - plate 3

  This exhortation by Anubis, the Opener of the Ways, summarizes the Egyptian practice of wisdom and pursuit of justice & truth. By it, their "practical method of truth" springs to the fore : serenity, concentration, observation, quantification (analysis, spatiotemporal flow, measurements) & recording (fixating), with the sole purpose of rebalancing, reequilibrating & correcting concrete states of affairs, using the plumb-line of the various equilibria in which these actual aggregates of events are dynamically -scale-wise- involved.
  
  This causes (a) Maat to be done for them and their environments and (b) the proper "Ka", or vital energy, at peace with itself, to flow between all parts of creation (truth and justice are personified as the daughter of Re, equivalent with the Greek Themis, daughter of Zeus - cf. "maati" as the Greek "dike").
  
  The "logic" behind the operation of the balance involves four rules : 

  1. inversion : when a concept is introduced, its opposite is also invoked (the two scale of the balance) ;

  2. asymmetry : flow is the outcome of inequality (the feather-scale of the balance is a priori correct) ;

  3. reciprocity : the two sides of everything interact and are interdependent (the beam of the balance) ;

  4. multiplicity-in-oneness : the possibilities between every pair are measured by one standard (the plummet).

Although these speculations were embedded in religious thought, an independent sapiental tradition existed. In the Old Kingdom (ca. 2670 - 2205 BCE), the scribes were talented individuals around the divine king and his family. By the Middle Kingdom (ca. 1938 - 1759 BCE), a scribal class emerged. These exceptional thinkers produced the masterpieces of classical Egyptian literature. They were attached to a special building in the temple precinct, the so-called "per ankh" or "House of Life" (in El Amarna, the "House of Life" abuts upon "the place of the correspondence of Pharaoh" - Gardiner, 1938).

§ 3

In the Early New Kingdom (ca. 1539 - 1292 BCE), Late Ramesside Memphite theology and philosophy (ca. 1188 - 1075 BCE), was dedicated to Ptah, the god of craftsmen and the patron deity of Memphis. This theological move balanced the Theban hegemony of the "king of the gods", Amun-Re. Memphis was allegedly founded by a divine king, who, for the first time around ca. 3000 BCE, if not a little earlier, united the Two Lands, i.e. Upper (South) and Lower (North) Egypt.

These first kings were the "shemsu Hor", the "followers of Horus" ("Hor" means "he upon high"). Their names were written within a rectangular frame, at the bottom of which is a recessed paneling (like on false doors). On top of this "serekh" or palace facade, was perched the falcon of Horus, hence the appellation "Horus-name".

The Horus-falcon symbolized the overseeing qualities of the king present in his palace, representing a transcendent and uniting principle. This bird of prey glides high up in the sky on the hot air and with a watchful eye overlooks its large territory, soaring down on its prey at a 100 miles per hour, combining speed with endurance ...

In the Old Kingdom, Memphis had been the capital of Egypt and throughout Egypt's long Pharaonic history (ca. 3000 - 30 BCE), it remained the city where the divine king was crowned. In the Late Period (664 - 30 BCE), the priests of Memphis were renowned for their scholarship and wisdom (in his Timaeus, Plato lauds the nearby priests of Sais, worshipping the goddess Neith). Indeed, Egypt's sapiental tradition was born in the milieu of scribes and priests.

In Memphis, these thinkers envisioned the process of acquiring knowledge thus :



"The sight of the eyes, the hearing of the ears, and the breathing of air through the nose, these transmit to the mind, which brings forth every decision. Indeed, the tongue thence repeats what is in front of the mind. Thus was given birth to all the gods. His (Ptah's) Ennead was completed. Lo, every word of the god (Ptah) came into being through the thoughts in the mind & the command by the tongue."
Memphis Theology, lines 56-57.

This ante-rational reflection, by the intellectual elite of Memphis, on the origin of knowledge, is part of the Memphis Theology, a text carved ca. 700 BCE on the Shabaka Stone exhibited at the British Museum. It goes back to a lost original composed between ca. 1291 and 1075 BCE, if not earlier.

We read how the events recorded by the sense of hearing and the sense of sight in the living, breathing body are brought up to the mind (or "heart" = ). The notion of moving upwards is suggested by the determinative of the double stairway ( / 041), leading to a high place. This elevated place is nothing less than the realm of the divine mind of Ptah, to which all possible impressions ascend.

The two phases of the empirico-noetic process (registering and deciding) are put forward. This happens in the context of an affirmation of the theo-noetic origin of everything. Indeed, the passage is part of a cosmogony, explaining how every thing came into being by the divine words uttered by Ptah. Every law of nature (the "netjeru" or deities) and everything these laws operate, is conceived in the divine mind and spoken by the divine tongue. Nothing comes into existence without them.

Although the Aristotelian distinction between the passive and the active intellect is absent as such (for no formal, abstract concept has yet been established), it is clear our authors are aware of the registering faculty of the mind and know that after registering, the mind produces "every decision", i.e. works to solve problems. These ideas stand before rationality (ante-rational), because, as is general in Egyptian thought, they do not fix the mind in terms of categorial, formal rationality (initiated by the Greeks). As will be explained later, ante-rational thought covers the first three stages of human cognition, namely mythical, pre-rational and proto-rational thought.

The activity of Ptah's divine mind is all-comprehensive. His law (thought and spoken) is also moral :

"Thus all the witnessing faculties were made and all qualities determined, they that make all foods and all provisions, through this word. {Justice} is done to him who does what is loved, {and punishment} to him who does what is hated. Thus life is given to the peaceful and death is given to the criminal. Thus all labor, all crafts, the action of the arms, the motion of the legs, the movements of all the limbs, according to this command which is devised by the mind and comes forth by the tongue and creates the performance of everything."
Memphis Theology, lines 57-58.

This remarkable theology does not contemplate a realm of "pure" thought outside of the operations, contextual limitations, conditionings or determinations of physical reality (a world of ideas, a Greek "nous"). Instead of working with a clear-cut division between object and subject, both are understood as emerging and co-existing with (not transcending) the context in which they happen. No formal distinction between facts and so no decontextualized "theoria" (or contemplation) of events.

The description thus necessarily lacks formal abstraction. So there is no Greek Being, Logos, idea of the Good, First Intellect or Divine mind ("logos"), considered to be radically independent from and different than the world of the senses and action (in logic, "formal" means independent of contents). In Egyptian thought, the "word" only exists when it is spoken ! Like idea and reality, mind and speech are simultaneous.

§ 4

The Greek miracle did not fall out of the sky. By the end of the Dark Age (ca. 1100 - 750 BCE), the Greek cultural form had already acquired persistent "Aryan", Indo-European characteristics of its own. Although mythical, they were outstanding enough to leave their archeological traces.

The Greek mentality had been around before the collapse of the Pax Minoica (in ca. 1530 BCE, the Thera volcano on Santorini erupted), and at least emerged at the beginning of the Mycenæan Age (ca. 1600 - 1100 BCE). These Mycenæans were Helladic warlords entertaining an active commercial economy (based on indirect consumption) and a high level of mostly imported craftsmanship. They had "tholos" burials, with their dome shaped burial-chambers. Their palaces followed the architectural style of Crete, although their structure was more straightforward and simple.

Their Linear B texts reveal the names of certain gods of the later Greek pantheon : Hera, Poseidon, Zeus, Ares & perhaps Dionysius. There are no extant theological treatises, hymns or short texts on ritual objects (as was the case in Crete). Their impressive tombs indicate their funerary cult was more developed than the Minoan, and in the course of their history, outstanding features ensued. Despite the Dorian devastations and their obliterating and repressing effects, these persisted :

• linearization : "Mycenæan megaron", "geometrical designs", mathematical form, peripteros ;

• anthropocentrism : warrior leaders, individual aristocrats, poets, "sophoi" and teachers ;

• fixed vowels : the categories of the "real" sound are written down & transmitted ;

• dialogal mentality : the Archaic Greeks enjoyed talking, writing & discussing ;

• undogmatic religion : the Archaic Greeks had no sacred books and hence no dogmatic orthodoxy ;

• cultural affirmation : the Archaic Greeks were a "young" people who needed to affirm their identity ;

• cultural approbation & improvement : the Archaic Greeks accepted to be taught and were eager to learn.

The Egyptian sage never relinquished the religious. The divine was a given and speculative thought at all times an expression of the deity. Although deep, remarkable and vitalizing, Egyptian philosophy remained contextualized and defined by a "milieu" it could not escape. Exceptional individuals, like Akhenaten, may have had access to formal thought. The Ramesside Hymns to Amun and the Memphis Theology also testify to this. Although more than one aspect of Egyptian thought, like the virtual adverb clause and its pan-en-theist henotheism, may assists speculative naturalism, no systematic approach of wisdom ever gained ground.

The Indo-European mentality of the Archaic Greeks differed from the African tradition (of which Egyptian thought was the best example). Between ca. 750 and 600 BCE, we find the crystallization of their city-states and the rise in power of the non-aristocrats, allying themselves with frustrated noble families and putting the hereditary principle under pressure. The two main leitmotivs of this age are discovery (literal and figural) and the process of settlement & codification. In some towns, a leisure-economy ensued, and with it, the free time to speculate.

The influence of Egyptian thought on Thales of Milete (ca. 652 - 545 BCE) and Pythagoras of Samos (ca. 580 BCE - 500) has been studied elsewhere.

Despite these and many other influences, the Greeks developed their own systematic, linearizing approach. They focused on :

• Milesian "arche", "phusis" & "apeiron" : the elemental laws of the cosmos are rooted in substance, which is all ;

• Pythagorean "tetraktys" : the elemental cosmos is rooted in numbers forming man, gods & demons ;

• Heraclitean "psyche" & "logos" : becoming and a quasi-reflective self-consciousness, symbolical & psychological, prevail ;

• Parmenidian "aletheia" : the moment of truth is a decision away from opinion ("doxa") entering "being" ;

• Protagorian "anthropos" : man is the measure of all things and the relative reigns.

From the start, ontological questions dominated Greek thought. What is the "physis" or fundamental stuff of nature (Ionic branch) ? How to know the truth as "being" (Eleatic branch) ? Can indeed anything truly be known (Sophists) ? Why is there something rather than nothing (Plato, Aristotle) ?

§ 5

Parmenides of Elea (ca. 515 - 440 BCE), inspired by Pythagoras and pupil of Xenophanes (ca. 580/577 - 485/480 BCE), was the first Greek to develop, in poetical form, his philosophical insights about truth ("aletheia"). Thanks to the neo-Platonist Simplicius (490 - 560), 111 lines about the Way of Truth are extant. In it, the conviction dominates that human beings can attain knowledge of reality or understanding ("noos"). But to know the truth, only two ways are open : the Way of Truth and the Way of Opinion. These are defined in terms of the expressions "is" and "is not".

The first is the authentic way, leading to the unity and uniqueness of "being". When using the copula "is", Parmenides points to the perfect identity of substantial "being", ascribed in a single sense. Hence, what is other than "being" itself has no being at all ... This is the second way, that of mere opinion ("doxa").

To develop his argument, Parmenides uses a three-tiered disjunction. To answer the question : "Is a thing or is it not ?", three answers are possible : (a) it is or (b) it is not or (c) it is and it is not.

By using the necessities of logic, the formal conditions of knowledge become apparent. Two ways of inquiry are alone conceivable. The first, the journey of persuasion, attends on reality, on the fact a thing is, while the second, is without report and deals with that a thing is not and must not be. As one can neither know what is not (deemed impossible), nor tell of it, the second way is pointless. Only one story of the way is left : "being" is ungenerated, imperishable, entire, unique, unmoved and perfect. It never was nor will be, since it is now all together, one, indivisible. It has no parentage.

Let us consider the three answers. If a thing is and is not, then this either means that there is a difference due to circumstance or that "being" and "nonbeing" are different and identical at the same time. This answer is relative (circumstantial) or contradictory. If a thing is not, then it cannot be an object of a proposition. If not, not-being exists ! This answer is pointless. As the last two answers are clearly false, and only three answers are possible, so the first answer must, by this reductio ad absurdum, be true, namely : the object of thought "is" and equal to itself from every point of view.

With Parmenides, pre-Socratic thought reached the formal stage of cognition. Before the Eleatics, the difference between object and subject of thought was not clearly established (cf. the object as psychomorph). The formal laws of logic were not yet brought forward and used as tools to back an argument. The strong necessity implied by the laws of thought had not yet become clear. Ontologically, the proto-rational concept of change of Heraclitus (540 – 475 BCE) is indeed opposed to the static, single being of Parmenides, but epistemologically, the latter was the first to underline the importance of the formal characteristics a priori of all thought. The mediating role of the metaphor is replaced by an emphasis on the distinction between the thinking subject (and its thoughts) and the reality of what is known.

"... remaining the same and in the same state, it lies by itself and remains thus where it is perpetually, for strong necessity holds it in the bondage of a limit, which keeps it apart, because it is not lawful that Being should be incomplete, for it is not defective, whereas Not-being would lack everything. The same thing is for conceiving as is cause of the thought conceived ; for not without Being, when one thing has been said of another, will You find conceiving. And time is not nor will be another thing alongside Being, since this was bound fast by fate to be entire and changeless."
Parmenides, fragment 8, 29-35.

§ 6

Ironically (or by force of apory ?), the idealism of Parmenides, thinking the necessity of the object of thought, confuses between a substantialist and a predicative use of the verb "to be" or the copula "is". That something "is" (or "Dasein") is not identical with what something "is" (or "Sosein"). Properties (accidents) do exist apart from the "being" of the substances they describe.

From the substantialist point of view, not-being is pointless. Only an all-comprehensive "Being" can be posited. We know Parmenides asserted further predicates of the verb "to be", namely by introducing the noun-expression "Being". The latter is ungenerated, imperishable, complete, unique, unvarying and non-physical ...

He did not conceive the absence of certain properties as not-being, nor could he attribute different forms of "being" to objects. What Parmenides calls "Being", is an all-comprehensive being-there standing as being-qua-being, as "Dasein" in all the entities of the natural world (and their "Sosein"). In that sense, namely in his mysticism, he is closer to Heraclitus as one would suspect.

If Parmenides core interest was formal, then he mainly wanted to show what sense attaches to the verb "to be" in asserting and thinking. But modern exegesis attributes to his thought an existential understanding of the verb, or worse, an archaic failure to distinguish between both uses.

The difference between object and subject of thought, at the core of formal rationality, allows for two radical reductions : an object without a subject and a subject without an object.

Without object, thought cannot say anything about the world and its propositions are all tautologies and analytical. None of the accidents refer to anything outside thought, to an entity, so must we think, which is kickable and which kicks back. In an all-comprehensive subjectivism, the sole laws are the formal rules themselves, pointing to a set of ideas. Lack of object is an outstanding characteristic of idealism.

Without subject, observation is impossible. For there can be no observation without an observer and no two observers occupy the same space-time. Moreover, there is no observation without interpretation. The thinking subject is an integral part of the act of observation. Theoretical connotations co-determine what is observed (even in the brain, various levels of sensoric interpretation are at work). In an all-comprehensive objectivism, sense-data are the sole bedrock, pointing to a real world out there. Inability to regard the constructed nature of reality is the outstanding feature of realism.

As soon as formal rationality envisaged the crucial difference between object and subject of thought, the apory resulting from radical reductions became possible. As a result of the continuous complexification of thought, these extreme positions were and are still advocated. Grosso modo, realism in materialism and the natural sciences, idealism in humanism and the sciences of man. It is one of the tasks of epistemology to elucidate this concordia discors and make it operational in terms of the growth of knowledge.

§ 7

"All thinkers then agree in making the contraries principles, both those who describe the All as one and unmoved (for even Parmenides treats hot and cold as principles under the names of Fire and Earth) and those too who use the rare and the dense. The same is true of Democritus also, with his plenum and void, both of which exist, he says, the one as being, the other as not-being. Again he speaks of differences in position, shape, and order, and these are genera of which the species are contraries, namely, of position, above and below, before and behind ; of shape, angular and angleless, straight and round."
Aristotle : Physics, book 1, part 5.

Democritus of Abdera (ca. 460 - 380/370 BCE), geometer and known for his atomic theory, developed the first mechanistic model. His system represents, in a way more fitting than the difficult aphorisms of Heraclitus, a current radically opposing Eleatic thought.

The evidence of perception cannot be denied. The Eleatics are obviously wrong. Instead of relying on the formal conditions of thought only, the origin of knowledge is given with the undeniable evidence put forward by the senses. Becoming, movement and change are fundamental. Hence, not-being exists. It is empty space, a void. If so, then being is occupied space, a plenum. The latter is not a closed unity or continuum, a Being, but an infinite variety of indivisible particles called "atoms".

The atoms are all composed of the same kind of matter and only differ from each other in terms of their quantitative properties, like extension, weight, form and order. They never change and cannot be divided. For all of eternity, they cross empty space in straight lines. Because these atoms collided by deviating ("clinamen") from their paths, the world of objects came into existence (why they moved away from their linear trajectories remains unexplained). Hence, the universe is composed of a multiplicity of atoms moving and colliding in empty space ... Each time this occurs, they form a vortex separated from the rest of the universe, thus forming a world on its own. Hence, an infinite number of simultaneous and successive worlds are in existence.

Objects emerge by the random aggregation of atoms. Things do not have an "inner" coherence or "substance" (essence). Everything is impermanent and will eventually fall apart under the pressure of new collisions. Atoms are characterized by quantitative features only. Thus, all spiritual, psychological and mental processes can be reduced to conglomerates of atoms moving without inner principle of unity. Thoughts, feelings, volitions and the like, are nothing more than mechanical activities between atoms. Qualities are subjective interpretations of quantities. Hence, the universe is material, quantitative, deterministic and without finality.

Regarding knowledge, Democritus conjectures the senses are all derived from the sense of touch. The atoms bombard the senses and give a picture of the object emitting them. As a function of their speed, form etc. we can speak of sweet, blue etc. These names are only conventional and do not convey any real characteristic of the object in question. But, we are able to discover the true, real features of a thing behind the dark veil of the senses. This is intellectual knowledge. Indeed, without the latter, it would not be possible to develop the mechanistic model !

The logical difficulty facing this model is clear : if all things are atoms, then how can rational knowledge be more reliable than perception ? Moreover, how can atomism describe atoms without in some way transcending them ? In epistemological terms : how can the subject of knowledge be eclipsed hand in hand with a description of this "fact" ? There is a contradictio in actu exercito : although refusing the subject of knowledge any independence from the object of knowledge, the former is implied in the refusal.

The problems facing Democritus are those of realism (materialism) in general. They mirror those of Eleatic idealism (spiritualism). In pre-Socratic philosophy, both represent the two poles of the essential tension characterizing thought.

§ 8

The Eleatic effort to posit the necessity of logic & unity was turned into rhetoric by the wandering Sophists. By so introducing the relativity of thought (skepticism and humanism), they prompted a new quest for a comprehensive system. In it, the various facets developed since Thales would have to be brought together in such a way that true knowledge would remain certain and eternal (and not circumstantial and probable).

"Nothing exists. If anything existed, it could not be known. If anything did exit, and could be known, it could not be communicated."
Gorgias of Leontini : On What is Not, or On Nature, 66 - 86.

Greek concept-realism, in tune with the  tendency of thought to fossilize and substantialize, developed two radical answers and two major epistemologies. These were foremost intended to serve ontology, the study of "real" beings and being, as does the logic that underpins them. Indeed, neither Plato or Aristotle developed the quantitative view of the world as proposed by Democritus. Their systems are devoid of mathematical physics.

In concept-realism, concepts must refer to something "real". Our thoughts are always about some thing. The "real" is a sufficient ground guaranteeing the identity of every thing. For the Greeks, the "real" had to be universal ("ta katholou", or applicable everywhere and all the time). Either these universals exist by themselves outside the sensoric world (the real is ideal) or they only exist as the form of things in each individual thing (the ideal is real). In the former, a cleavage occurs and dualism emerges (between being and becoming), in the latter, a monism ensues. Again two reductions of the ongoing, crucial tension of thought, i.e. the continuous, shocking confrontations between object and subject of knowledge : the concordia discors.

For Plato (428 - 347 BCE), strongly influenced by Pythagoras and the Eleatics, there is a real, Divine world of ideas "out there" or, as in neo-Platonism, "in here", a transcendent realm of Being, in which the things of this fluctuating world participate. Ideas are those aspects of a thing which do not change.

Obviously then, truth is the remembrance (anamnesis) of (or return to) this eternally good state of affairs, conceived as the limit of limits of Being or even beyond that. These Platonic ideas, like particularia of a higher order, are no longer the truth of this world of becoming but of another, better world of Being, leaving us with the cleaving impasse of idealism : Where is the object ?

The Platonic ideas exist objectively in a reality outside the thinker. Hence, the empirical has a derivative status. The world of forms is outside the permanent flux characteristic of the former, and also external to the thinking mind and its passing whims. A trans-empirical, Platonic idea is a paradigm for the singular things which participate in it ("methexis"). Becoming participates in Being, and only Being, as Parmenides taught, has reality. The physical world is not substantial (without sufficient ground) and posited as a mere reflection. If so, it has no true existence of its own (for its essence is trans-empirical). Plato projects the world of ideas outside the human mind. He therefore represents the transcendent pole of Greek concept-realism, for the "real" moves beyond our senses as well as our minds. To eternalize truth, nothing less will do.

Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE) rejects the separate, Platonic world of real proto-types, but not the "ta katholou", the generalities ("les généralités", "die Allgemeinen"), conceived, as concept-realism demands, in terms of the "real", essential and sufficient ground of knowledge, the foundation of thought. So general, universal ideas do exist, but they are always immanent in the singular things of this world. There is no world of ideas "out there". There is no cleavage in what "is" and there is only one world, namely the actual world present here and now. The indwelling formal and final causes of things are known by abstracting what is gathered by the passive intellect, fed by the senses, witnessing material and efficient causes. The actual process of abstraction is performed by the intellectus agens, a kind of Peripatetic "Deus ex machina", reflective of the impasse of realism : Where is the subject ?

"The faculty of thinking then thinks the forms in the images, and as what is to be pursued or avoided is already marked out for it in these forms, the faculty can, by being engaged upon the images, be moved, and this also in a way independent from perception."
Aristotle : De Anima, III.7.

How is this first intellect able to derive by abstraction the universal on the basis of the particular ? How does it recognize the forms in the images without (Platonic) proto-types ? Even a very large number of particulars does not logically justify a universal proposition, as Aristotle knew. Induction has no final clause, for all past causes can never be known. How does this active intellect then recognize the similarities between properties offered by the passive intellect, if not by virtue of a measure which is independent from perception (and so again introducing a world of ideas) ?

Aristotle posits the objective forms in the actual world. In the latter, both being and becoming operate. This was a major step forward, for ontological dualism is explicitly avoided, although implicitly reintroduced within psychology. The forms are realized in singulars, but known by accident of a universal intellect he does not study. For him, the "real" is known through the senses and the curious abstracting abilities of the mind. The workings of the intellectus agens remain dark. This concept-realism is immanent. All things are explained in terms of four causes : causa materialis, causa efficiens, causa formalis and causa finalis. Experience of the first two causes, triggers the process of cognition and knowledge of material bodies. Abstracting the last two causes, allows one to understand the "form" or essence of things.

In Platonic concept-realism, one cannot avoid asking the question : How can another world be the truth of this world ? The ontological cleavage is unacceptable. Peripatetic thought summons a psychological critique, for how can the human soul possibly know anything if not by virtue of this remarkable active intellect ? Both reductions are problematic. Because they try to escape, in vain, the Factum Rationis, and so represent the two extreme poles of the concordia discors of thought, they form an apory. Plato, being an idealist, lost grip on reality. Aristotle, the realist, did not fully probe his own mind. Composite forms of both systems do not avoid the conflict, although they may conceal it better. The crucial tension of thought was not solved by Greek concept-realism. How to evolve formal rationality ?

§ 9

In Late Hellenism, and particularly in Stoicism, language became an independent area of study. Logic was not longer embedded in metaphysics, but part of the new science of language (linguistics). The technical apparatus developed by the Platonic and Peripatetic schools, as well as the mechanics of logic had been fully mastered. An overview of knowledge was sought, and concept-realism still prevailed. Concepts were either rooted in universal ideas or in immanent forms. Both ideas and forms were "real", i.e. agents working "outside" the mind and delivering the foundation of thought and true knowledge. Throughout the Mediterranean, the Egyptian school of Alexandria was renowned. In 529, under the Christian emperor Justinianus, who commissioned the Hagia Sophia, the Platonic Academy at Athens was closed.

Physics studies things ("pragmata" or "res"'), whereas dialectica and grammatica study words ("phonai" or "voces"). This is the approach of the first scholastic and the last Roman, Boethius (480 - 524 or 525). He created the term "universalia" (the Latin of "ta katholou") to denote the logical concepts genus and species. The apory between Plato's world of ideas and Aristotle's immanent forms, is no longer part of the Stoic context. A simplification took place which brought logic and linguistics to the fore.

In his Isagoge, a work translated by Boethius, Porphyry (232/3 - ca. 305) had written :

"I shall not say anything about whether genera and species exist as substances, or are confined to mere conceptions ; and if they are substances, whether they are material or immaterial ; and whether they exist separately from sensible objects, or in them immanently."
Porphyry : Isagoge, 1, introduction.

For Boethius, considering these matters to be "very deep", the answer is Aristotelian : the universals have an objective existence in particular physical things, but the mind is able to conceive genera and species independent of these bodies.

For Isidore of Sevilla, who died in 636, etymology was the crucial science, for to know the name ("nomen") of an object gave insight into its essential nature. Hence, there exists an implicate adualism between the name (or word) and its reality or "res". This symbolic adualism does not differentiate between an "inner" subjective state of consciousness and an "outer" objective reality, which is a typical characteristic of ante-rationality (cf. psychomorphism). This view was a return to Plato and the Eleatic cleavage between "is" and "is not". And indeed, this Platonism accommodated the Augustinian interpretation of Christianity. Here, symbolical adualism walks hand in hand with ontological dualism : the true name of a thing reveals its unchanging, transcendent essence intuitively, precisely because there is a radical division between the perfect, true world of Being and the incomplete, false world of becoming.

Thanks to the Carolingian Renaissance, and the organization of the Palatine School, a remote ancestor of the Renaissance "university" ("turned towards unity") was created. Europe, under the political will of Charlemagne, was awakened to its "rational" inheritance and embraced the importance of education and learning (for the upper classes). Although short-lived, its influence would not completely vanish.

Clearly the problem of universals touched the foundation of fideist thought, which tried to identify general names (like "God") in the mind with universal objects in reality. On the one hand, there was the ultra-realistic position, or "exaggerated realism", found in the De Divisione Naturae of John Scotus Eriugena (ca. 810 - 877) and the work of Remigius of Auxerre (ca. 841 - 908), who taught that the species is a "partitio substantialis" of the genus. The species is also the substantial unity of many individuals. Thus, individuals only differ accidentally from one another. All beings are thus modifications of one Being. A new child is not a new substance, but a new property of the already existing substance called "humanity" (a kind of monopsychism avant la lettre may be noted).

On the other hand, very soon heretics in dialectic rose. For Eric (Heiricus) of Auxerre (841 - 876), general names had no universal objects corresponding to them. Universals concepts arise because the mind gathers together ("coarctatio") the multitude of individuals and forms the idea of species. This variety is again gathered together to form the genus. Only individuals exist. By the process of "coarctatio", many genera form the extensive concept of "ousia" ("substantia"). In the same line, Roscelin (ca. 1050 - 1120) held that a universal is only a word ("flatus vocis") and so "nihil esse praeter individua" ...

§ 10

In the Middle Ages, this apory between exaggerated realists ("reales") and nominalists ("nominales"), itself a logico-linguistic transposition of the ontological apory between Plato and Aristotle, is best illustrated by the confrontation between William of Champeaux (1070 - 1120), and Abelard (1079 - 1142). The latter was a rigorist dialectic arguing against the "antiqua doctrina", and, according to the famous Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 - 1153), an agent of Satan !

Abelard argued, that according to William of Champeaux, only ten different substances or "essences" exist (namely the 10 categories of Aristotle). Hence, all living beings, subsumed under "substance", are substantially identical, and so Socrates and the donkey Brunellus are the same. In his early days, William of Champeaux taught, against his teacher Roscelin, that the individual members of a species only differ accidentally from one another. But this identity-theory came under severe attack and so he changed it. Some say as a subterfuge, William later replied to Abelard with his indifference thesis, according to which two members of the same species are the same thing, not "essentialiter" but "indifferenter". Peter and Paul are "indifferently" men (they thus possess humanity "secundum indifferentiam"), because as Peter is rational, so is Paul, whereas their humanity is not the same, i.e. their nature is not numerically the same, but like ("similis"). In fact, he is saying the universal substances of both are alike, applying indifferently to both or any other man. This position was also part of Abelard's polemical interpretations.

Abelard's "nominalism" is a denial of ultra-realism in epistemology, i.e. against the adualism between "vox" and "res". He does not refute Platonic "ideae" preexisting in the mind of God, but understands these as the metaphysical foundation of the real similarities in status between objects of the same species, and not of the objects (as Platonism insists). So the ideas explain how two things may be alike, but objects do not participate in ideas, nor are these ideas the "ousia" or "substantia" of objects.

Abelard's analysis states the distinction between the logical and the real orders, but without the denial of the objective foundation of the universals. This early nominalism is a moderate realism. He demonstrated how one could deny exaggerated realism without being obliged to reject the objectivity of genera and species.

For Abelard, universals were by nature inclined to be ascribed to several objects. They are only words, not things (against the "reales"). When identified with words, universals are not reduced to mere "sound" (which is also a "res"), but to the signifying power of words (against the "nominales"). This "significatio" of words is not a concept accompanying the word (a mere contents of mind, i.e. exclusively subjective), but gives expression or meaning to the objective status of the word (semantics). This status is a human convention based on real similarities between the particulars, but these real "convenientia" are not a "res", not "nihil" but a "quasi res" : it is not the substance "homo" that makes human beings similar, but the "esse hominem".

For Abelard, objectivity, found in universal propositions, is a human convention based on real similarities between particulars. The latter exist on their own. Ideas are the metaphysical foundation of the similarities between objects. They are not the "ousia", "eidos", essence or substance of things. These conventions have a special status, for they stand between being and nothing.

The extraordinary contribution of Abelard to epistemology is that he was able to avoid the apory of the concordia discors by introducing a third option :

1. universale ante rem : the universals exist before the realities they subsume : Platonism ;

2. universale in re : the universals only exist in the realities ("quidditas rei") of which they are abstractions : Aristotelism ;

3. universale post rem : universals are words, abstract universal concepts with a meaning, given to them by human convention, in which real similarities between particulars are expressed. The latter are not "essentia" and not "nihil", but "quasi res".

This juggling may conceal the larger issue at hand : if extra-mental objects are particulars and mental concepts universals, then how to think their relationship ? Does an extra-mental foundation of universals exist ? The Greeks as well as the Scholastics answered affirmatively. The idea of a foundation of knowledge was still present.

For the Scholastics, given their preoccupation with God, the problem was to know whether an objective, extra-mental reality corresponded to the universals in the mind ? If so, then the mere concept of "God" might entail Divine existence, as the a priori proof tries to argue. If not, rational knowledge resulted in skepticism and Divine existence might be argued a posteriori only. Greek rationalism was conceptual and ontological, whereas Medieval dialectics was foundational and logico-linguistic (psychological).

Abelard's solution involves a crucial distinction : universals are not real, but they are words (real sounds) with a significance referring to real similarities between real particulars. Because of their meaning, they are more than "nothing". The foundation of his nominalism is "the real" as evidenced by similarities between objects, whereas the "reales" supposed an ante-rational symbiosis between "verbum" and "res", between Platonic ideas and material objects ("methexis").

A similar Abelardian line of argumentation is found in David Hume (1711 - 1776), ending in a skepticism preventing Kant (1724 - 1804) from sleeping (indeed, Hume rejected rationalist intuitionism and so could not back the observed similarity between objects). When Aristotle was finally translated into Latin, Abelard could and was recuperated by High Scholasticism.

§ 11

"Although it is clear to many that a universal is not a substance existing outside the mind in individuals and really distinct from them, still some are of the opinion that a universal does in some manner exist outside the mind in individuals, although not really but only formally distinct from them. (...) However, this opinion appears to me wholly untenable."
Ockham : Summa totius logicae, I, c.xvi.

With the Franciscan monk William of Ockham (1290 - 1350), theologian & philosopher, the "via moderna" received its most logical of defenders. Thomists, Scotists and Augustinians formed the "via antiqua". It is their realism, Platonic (the essence is transcendent) as well as Aristotelic (the essence is immanent), which was firmly rejected. Instead, nominalism was promoted, but one without objective universals. It was hence more radical than Abelard's. No reality ("quid rei") is ever attained, but only a nominal representation ("quid nominis").

For Ockham, the metaphysics of essences was introduced into Christian theology and philosophy from Greek sources. So, contrary to Abelard's moderate nominalism, his strict nominalism did not incorporate them. There are no universal subsistent forms, for otherwise God would be limited in His creative act by these eternal ideas. Indeed, every idea is limited by its own individuality. This non-Christian invention has no place in Christian thought. Universals are only "termini concepti", final terms signifying individual things which stand for them in propositions.

It was Peter of Spain (thirteenth century), who's exact identity is unknown, who had distinguished between probable reasoning (dialectic), demonstrative science & sophistical reasoning. Ockham was influenced by this emphasis placed on syllogistic reasoning leading to probable conclusions. Hence, arguments in philosophy (as distinct from logic) are probable (terministic) rather than demonstrative. Formal logic is demonstrative, whereas terministic logic is probable.

For Ockham, who took the equipment to develop this terminist logic from his predecessors, empirical data were primordial and exclusive to establish the existence of a thing. The validity of inferring from the existence of one thing to the existence of another things was questioned. He distinguished between the spoken word ("terminus prolatus"), the written word ("terminus scriptus") and the concept ("terminus conceptus" or "intentio animæ"). The latter is a natural sign, the natural reaction to the stimuli of a direct empirical apprehension. Only individual things exist. By the fact a thing exists, it is individual. There cannot be existent universals, for if a universal exists, it must be an individual, which is a contradictio in terminis (for universals are supposed to subsume individuals).

This focus on the objects which are immediately known, goes hand in hand with the principle of economy to get rid of the abstracting "species intelligibiles". What is known as "Ockham's Razor" was a common principle in Medieval philosophy. Because of his frequent usage of the principle (cf. the Franciscan vow of poverty), his name has become indelibly attached to it. In Ockham's version it reads : "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate." (plurality should not be posited without necessity). In general terms, this principle of simplicity or parsimony is to always prefer the least complicated explanation for an observation.

Radical nominalists, like Nicolas of Autrecourt (ca. 1300 - ca. 1350), who belonged to the Faculty of Arts, would say no inference from the existence of one thing to the existence of another thing could be demonstrative or cogent, but only probable. Hence, necessity and certainty, idolized by the foregoing metaphysical systems, were gone. No demonstration of God's existence was possible. Such matters have to be relegated to the order of adherence to revealed knowledge or faith. At this point, theology and philosophy separate and the latter becomes a "lay" activity. This is not yet apparent in Ockham, who remains a theologian seeking to find a way to rethink the "proof" of God's existence in merely a posteriori terms.

Against his predecessors, Ockham accepts "being" as a concept common to creatures and God, meaning "being" is predicable in a univocal sense to all existent things. Without such a concept, the existence of God could not be conceived. But, this does not mean this concept acts as a bridge between empirical observation of creatures and the existence of God. It is univocal in the sense it is common to a plurality of things, neither accidentally or substantially alike (thus avoiding pantheism).

These thought bring the distinction between "scientia realis" and "scientia rationalis" to the fore. The former is concerned with real, individual things. He agrees with Aristotle that only individuals exist, but rejects the doctrine that science is of the universal. The latter are not forms realized in individuals (realities existing extra-mentally). Real science is only concerned with universal propositions, i.e. with their truth or falsity (for example : "Man is capable of laughter."). To say a universal proposition in science is "true", is to say that it is verified in all individual things of which the "terms" of the proposition are the natural signs. The terms known by real science stand for individual things, whereas the terms of the propositions of rational science (like logic) stand for other terms.

Ockham's contribution is remarkable, although his terminology is still scholastic and he considered revelation as a source of certain knowledge.

§ 12

"Il y a déjà quelque temps que je me suis aperçu que, dès mes premières années, j'ai reçu quantité de fausses opinions pour véritables, et que ce que j'ai depuis fondé sur des principes si mal assurés ne saurait être que fort douteux et incertain ; et dès lors j'ai bien jugé qu'il me fallait entreprendre sérieusement une fois dans ma vie de me défaire de toutes les opinions que j'avais reçues auparavant en ma créance, et commencer tout de nouveau dès les fondements, si je voulais établir quelque chose de ferme et de constant dans les sciences."
Descartes, R. : Meditations, 1, § 1a.

To seek indubitable truth, René Descartes (1596 - 1650) turned to methodological doubt. He left the Jesuit college of La Flèche and was ashamed of the amalgam of doubts and errors he had learned there. Traditional philosophy consisted of various contradicting opinions, grosso modo Platonic or Peripatetic. History was a series of moral lessons (cf. Livius) and philosophy was still restricted to logic. The experimental method was absent, and various authorities ("auctoritates") were studied (Galenus, Aristotle, Avicenna, etc.). Aim was to harmonize the magisterial contradictions (cf. the "sic et non" method). In the interpretation of these sources, a certain creativity was at work. However, in the mind of Cartesius, the only constructive point of his education, so the Discourse on Method (1637) tells us, was the discovery of his own ignorance.

This prompted him to reject all prejudices and seek out certain knowledge. Nine years he raises doubts about various conjectures and opinions covering the whole range of human activities. Eventually, doubt is raised regarding three sources of knowledge :

1. authority : as contradictions always arise between authorities a higher criterion is needed ;

2. senses : maybe waking experience is just a "dream" or a "hallucination" ? Can this be or not ? Also : the senses give confused information, so a still higher criterion is needed ;

3. reason : how can we be certain some "malin génie" has not created us such, that we accept self-evident reasoning although we are in reality mislead and in fatal error ?

However far doubt is systematically applied, it does not extend to my own existence. Doubt reveals my existence. If, as maintained in the Principles of Philosophy, the word "thought" is defined as all which we are conscious of as operating in us, then understanding, willing, imagining and feeling are included. I can doubt all objects of these activities of consciousness, but that such an activity of consciousness exists, is beyond doubt.

Thus, the "res cogitans", "ego cogitans" or "l'être conscient" is the crucial factor in Cartesian philosophy. Its indubitable, intuitively grasped truth ? Cogito ergo sum : I think, therefore I am. That I doubt certain things may be the case, but the fact that I doubt them, i.e. am engaged in a certain conscious activity, is certain. To say : "I doubt whether I exist." is a contradictio in actu exercito, or a statement refuted by the mere act of stating it.

The certainty of Cogito ergo sum is not inferred but immediate and intuitive. It is not a conclusion, but a certain premiss. It is not first & most certain in the "ordo essendi", but as far as regards the "ordo cognoscendi". It is true each time I think, and when I stop thinking there is no reason for me to think that I ever existed. I intuit in a concrete case the impossibility of thinking without existing. In the second Meditation, Cogito ergo sum is true each time I pronounce or mentally conceive it ...

Having intuited a true and certain proposition, Descartes seeks the general criterion of certainty implied. Cogito ergo sum is true and certain, because he clearly and distinctly sees what is affirmed. As a general rule, all things which I conceive clearly and distinctly are true. In the Principles of Philosophy, we are told "clear" means that which is present and apparent to an attentive mind and "distinct" that which contains within itself nothing but what is clear.

Although he has arrived at a certain and clear proposition, he does not start to work with it without more ado. Indeed, suppose God gave me a nature which causes me to err even in matters which seem self-evident ? To eliminate this "very slight" doubt, Descartes needs to prove the existence of a God who is not a deceiver. Without this proof, it might be so that what I conceive as clear and distinct, is in reality not so.

Both in the Meditations and the Principles of Philosophy, substance is demonstrated after proving the existence of God. However, the "I" in Cogito ergo sum, is not a transcendental ego (a mere formal condition of knowledge), but "me thinking". Despite various contents of thought, the thing that cannot be doubted is not "a thinking" or "a thought", but a thinking ego conceived as a substance. This ego is not formal, nor the "I" of ordinary discourse, but a concrete existing "I". Descartes uncritically assumes the Scholastic notion of substance, while this doctrine is open to doubt. Thinking does not necessarily require a thinker, and the ego cogitans must not be a thing which thinks, but a mere transcendental ego accompanying every cogitation (cf. Kant).

At this point, the apory resulting from a mismanagement of the concordia discors which animates all possible thought, reappeared and entered modernism.

Transcendental logic makes both terms of the formal equation offered by the Factum Rationis necessary and irreducible. In terms of acquiring knowledge, this implies object and subject of knowledge have to be used simultaneously. But like Plato and the "reales" after him, Descartes eclipses the object of knowledge by inflating an ego cogitans in terms of a substantial ego, solely reflecting on itself, and as Leibnizean monad, without windows on the world and the alter ego. The Spinozist definition of God and freedom being the mature example of the substantializing (ontologizing) effect of this idealistic reduction of the discordant concord or armed truce of thought.

"By God, I mean the absolutely infinite Being - that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses for itself an eternal and infinite essentiality."
Spinoza : Ethics, Part I, definition VI.

"That thing is called 'free', which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone. That thing is inevitable, compelled, necessary, or rather constrained, which is determined by something external to itself to a fixed and definite method of existence or action."
Spinoza : Ethics, Part I, definition VII.

Because he did not rely on the object of knowledge (deemed doubtful), Descartes rooted his whole enterprise in an ideal ego constituting the possibility and expansion of knowledge. All idealists after him would do the same. The end result of this reduction is a Platonic theory of knowledge. At the end of the line, truth is identified with a consensus between sign-interpreters (cf. Habermas).

§ 13

In his Treatise of Human Nature (1739) and Enquiry concerning human Understanding (1748), David Hume (1711 - 1776) seeks to develop a science of man. As Locke (1632 - 1704), he envisages a critical and experimental foundation.

"Nature is always too strong for principle."
Hume, D. : Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, 12, 2, 128.

"Perceptions" are the contents of the mind in general, divided in impressions and ideas. The former strike the mind with vividness, force and liveliness, whereas the latter are faint images of these in thinking. Impressions are either of perception or of reflection. The latter are in great measure derived from ideas.

Like Ockham, Hume is a nominalist. Real or ideal universals are not the foundation to erect the science of man. Unlike Descartes, he is an empirist : the senses are the foundation of knowledge. Two kinds of propositions are possible :

1. analytic : the predicate is part of the subject - these tautologies are universal and necessary, but restricted to geometry and arithmetic. All a priori propositions are analytic and have nothing to say about the world of fact ;

2. synthetic : the predicate is not part of the subject and an extra-mental reality is implied. All synthetic propositions are a posteriori and have always something to say about the world.

The extra-mental reality sought can be no other than the one offered by direct or indirect empirical experience.

1. direct synthetic propositions : the predicate is attached to the subject because of what is immediately empirically perceived here and now ;

2. indirect synthetic propositions : the predicate is attached to the subject because we move from what be know to be a direct, given fact to a state of affairs which is not (yet) empirically given. These propositions are problematic because a necessary and objective connection between our idea of causality and real events cannot be demonstrated. Moreover, logically the move from a finite series of particular observations to an infinite, necessary law can never be warranted (cf. the problem of induction in naive realism).

Suppose the observed psychological connection between fact A and fact B is continuous. Is it necessary ? My (or our) witnessing the connection more than once, does not imply that it will work tomorrow. Skepticism results. The universal value of scientific laws cannot be demonstrated, neither can the reality of the world (within and without). Science is restricted to statements of probability.

The Achilles Heel of this position is the status of the sense-data and the formation of concepts. It is not clear how sense-data can be identified without some conceptual connotation, which is not a sense datum. Moreover, perception is introduced as a sufficient ground. "Adequatio intellectus ad rem" is presupposed (as in all forms of realism). Finally, how can similarities between sense-data be observed ? At the end of the line, empiricism identifies truth with the naive correspondence between concept and fact.

§ 14

"We thus see that all the wrangling about the nature of a thinking being, and its association with the material world, arises simply from our filling the gap, due to our ignorance, with paralogisms of reason, and by changing thoughts into things and hypostatizing them."
Kant, I. : Critique of Pure Reason, A394-398.

With his "Copernican Revolution", Kant (1724 - 1804) completes the self-reflective movement initiated by Descartes, focusing on the subject of experience. Integrating the best of rationalism and empirism, he avoids the battle-field of the endless (metaphysical and ontological) controversies by (a) finding and (b) applying the conditions of possible knowledge. An armed truce between object and subject had to be realized. Inspired by Newton (1642 - 1727) and turning against Hume, Kant deems synthetic propositions a priori possible (Hume only accepted direct synthetic propositions a posteriori). There is a categorial system producing scientific statements of fact which are always valid and necessary (for Hume, scientific knowledge is not always valid and necessary). This system stipulates the conditions of valid knowledge and is therefore the transcendental foundation of all possible knowledge.

So Kant's aim was to find the conditions enabling statements of fact to be universal & necessary, i.e. as binding as the analytics of mathematics. Hence, a universal and necessary science is possible. Without apory, philosophy explained how the universal physical laws of Newton are what they are. The scandal is over ...

With Kant, rational thought matured. Unlike concept-realism (Platonic or Peripatetic) and nominalism (of Ockham or Hume), critical thought, inspired by Descartes, is rooted in the "I think", the transcendental condition of empirical self-consciousness without which nothing can be properly called "experience". This "I", the apex of the system of transcendental concepts, is "of all times" the idea of the connected of experiences. It is not a Cartesian substantial ego cogitans, nor an empirical datum, but the formal condition accompanying every experience of the empirical ego. Kant calls it the transcendental (conditional) unity of all possible experience (or apperception) a priori. Like the transcendental system of which it is the formal head, it is, by necessity, shared by all those who know.

"What can I know ?" is the first question asked. Which conditions make knowledge possible ? This special reflective activity was given a new word, namely "transcendental". This meta-knowledge is not occupied with outer objects, but with our manner of knowing these objects, so far as this is meant to be possible a priori (A11), i.e. always, everywhere and necessarily so. Kant's aim is to prepare for a true, immanent metaphysics, different from the transcendent, dogmatic ontologisms of the past, turning thoughts into things.

Let us summarize how this typically happened.

For Plato, the supreme thing is the idea of the Good. The ontology implied is dualistic, for the world to which this idea belongs represents the static, eternal truth in which all shifting temporal particulars participate. To know, it to remember the world of ideas. In short, Plato made his thoughts into an ideal thing separated from this world. The Peripatetics do the opposite ; they idealize the world of becoming, and attribute a final ground to it which is realized in every particular (cf. hylemorphism). This ontologism is realistic, for the "ousia" of a thing is real, but exists as an integral part of the individual things only (cf. the soul as the form of the body). Subsequently, with the division between "reales" and "nominales", nothing new was achieved. Abelard was the first to avoid the apory (cf. universale post rem), but he retained the ideas as metaphysical foundation for the similarities in status between objects of the same species. Although his mild nominalism avoids the trap of symbolical adualism, it fails to adequately explain these similarities.

The transcendental system of the conditions of possible knowledge (or transcendental logic) is a hierarchy of concepts defining the objective ground of all possible knowledge, both in terms of the synthetic propositions a priori of object-knowledge (transcendental analytic covering understanding), as well as regarding the greatest possible expansion under the unity of reason. These transcendental concepts are not empirical, but are the product of the transcendental method, bringing to consciousness principles which cannot be denied because they are part of every denial. They are "pure" because they are empty of empirical data and stand on their own, while rooted in (or suspended on) the transcendental "I think" and its Factum Rationis. For Kant, reason, the higher faculty of knowledge, is only occupied with understanding, while the latter is only processing the input from the senses. Reason has no intellect to inform it. There is no faculty higher than reason.

"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds thence to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason for working up the material of intuition & comprehending it under the highest unity of thought."
Kant, I. : Critique of Pure Reason, B355.

The process of acquiring knowledge runs as follows :

1. transcendental aesthetic : empirical knowledge : a variety of direct, multiple, unordered, nameless impressions (Hume), called "Empfindungen" (or perceptions) are synthesized by the forms of representation "space" (related to geometry) and "time" (related to arithmetics) and turned into "Erscheinungen" (or phenomena). These representations reflect the structure of our receptive apparatus. They are meant to structure perceptions into phenomena ;

2. transcendental analytic : scientific knowledge : phenomena are objectified by thought, but do not constitute an object of knowledge, for this is realized in propositions. The phenomena need to be structured by the 12 categories of understanding, corresponding to 12 different types of propositions (quantity, quality, relation and modality, each viewed from three angels). This categorization of phenomena leads to object-knowledge (synthetic propositions a priori). The categories are meant to structure phenomena into object-knowledge ;

3. transcendental dialectic : metaphysical knowledge : the variety of objects known is brought to a higher unity. A last, sufficient ground is sought and found in the ideas of reason : "ego", "world" and "God" (derived from the category of relation). These words are not things and only serve understanding, nothing more. While stimulating the mind's continuous expansion, these ideas regulate understanding and bring it to a more comprehensive, reasonable unity. They are meant to structure understanding into an immanent metaphysics.

The 2 forms of representation, 12 categories (brought to unity by 3 ideas) make the object possible, rather than vice versa. The human mind is the active originator of experience, rather than just a passive recipient of perception, as Hume thought. The mind can not be a tabula rasa, a "blank tablet", so Descartes is right. The whole transcendental system is innate. Even on the level of the transcendental aesthetics, perceptions, the only source of knowledge acknowledged, as Locke claimed, must always be processed to be recognized, or they would just be "less even than a dream" or "nothing to us". Both perceptions, representation and categorization are necessary to constitute an object of knowledge.

In his "transcendental dialectic", Kant works with the negative, deceptive meaning of the word "dialectic", namely as antinomy and paralogism. These scandals occur each time the barriers given by our  transcendental logic are not upheld and the ideas are changed into things, which is far worse than a mere mistaken use of the categories. Kant was fully aware of the unwholesome habit of thought to fixate itself or its objects into so-called realities, filling in the "gap" which, for Kant, cannot be crossed.

"I do not mean by this the transcendental use or abuse of the categories, which is a mere fault of the faculty of judgment, not being as yet sufficiently subdued by criticism nor sufficiently attentive to the limits of the sphere within which alone the pure understanding has full play, but real principles which call upon us to break down all those barriers, and to claim a perfectly new territory, which nowhere recognises any demarcation at all. Here transcendental and transcendent do not mean the same thing."
Kant, I. : Critique of Pure Reason, B350.

When the landmarks are removed, transcendental illusion ensues, or reason forgetful of its own, changing thoughts into things. This fundamental falsehood perverts the principles of reason itself. This natural "dialectic" of reason does not go away once realized, but requires to be removed again and again, for it "will never cease to fascinate our reason" (B354). Human reason has a natural inclination to grossly overstep these limits, to give in to the pull of the "unconditional" idea, to fill the gap between what we can know and what we fancy to know, thereby regarding the transcendental ideas as real things, whereas they are wholly subjective, only needed to organize understanding and have no meaning outside this regulative, non-subreptive way. This reveals a fundamental demarcation or difference in the use of the transcendental ideas : regulative (as it should) or constitutive (as hypostases). In the latter case, they step outside the barriers of transcendental logic.

With Kant, a totally new perspective unfolded : criticism highlights the limitations, demarcations, frontiers and borders of thought. It is not possible to step outside ourselves and witness the world. The subjective structure cannot be removed and so what is "objective" can never be identified with an observation without interpretation. The latter is impossible. There is no point of intersection between the lines created by our thoughts and reality-as-it-is. They bounce off on the mirror-surface of phenomena and do not allow us to probe into reality itself. A fundamental distinction is made : humans only know reality as it appears, not as it really is. Hence, the world is epistemologically divided between "phenomena" and "noumena", between what is processed by our understanding (by virtue of the categorial scheme) and the intellectual intuition of things as they are in themselves (an intuition Kant rejected). Needless to say that this new division is problematic. Has Kant, without knowing it, given in to the transcendental illusion he uncovered himself ?

§ 15

Kant wished to retain for science the certainty of the sufficient ground. To understand his epistemology properly, this aim is of paramount importance. He wished to do for philosophy what Newton had done for physics : a universal system allowing one to explain the movements of planets as well as those of apples. He could not accept skepticism and the relativism it engenders. Not finding this firm ground in the objective, outward reality (as a world of Platonic ideas or universal forms immanent in matter), his transcendental method cleared the foundations of the (universal) subjective apparatus of thought. By thus viewing the subject of experience as active after the reception of the perception (analytic object-knowledge after the aesthetic synthesis of phenomena), all possible knowledge was about the "thing-for-us" and never about the "thing-as-such" or reality-as-it-is.

Where did Kant miss out on his own Copernican revolution ?

The first to point to the major flaw was F.H.Jacobi (1743 - 1819), who -in 1787- asked : Were does the "matter" of the perception ("Empfindung") turned into phenomena ("Erscheinung") come from ? Kant supposed our perceptions were somehow caused by reality-as-such, the famous "Ding-an-sich". How can this be ? Causality cannot be invoked, for the nameless perceptions are pre-categorial. Neither can the world-as-such be thought as temporally first and the perceptions last, for the former is outside time. Hence, the way our senses receive information is obscured, compromising Kant's epistemology. If Kant needs the "noumenon" to start up the engine of the categories, then he clearly does not use the "thing-as-such" as a negative, formal and empty limit-concept, and the Copernican Revolution is incomplete. And if this is the case, and it is, then his attempt at justifying knowledge a priori fails. So far the idealists were correct : knowledge cannot find a sufficient ground in the transcendental apparatus, for the latter depends on the very thing it tries to avoid : a direct, unmediated contact with reality.

Kant's system, although transcendental, and thus devoid of any attempt to explain the possibility of knowledge by ontology, retains the postulate of foundation, by which true knowledge is certain, universal and necessary. Scientific knowledge is seen as a system of synthetic propositions a priori, and so indirect synthetic statements pass Kant's critical test (while for Hume only direct propositions were