(Dec 10, 2021 06:36 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [ -> ]Interesting, but he underestimated Heisenberg in this regard.
In Huxley’s book, "Literature and Science", he quotes Heisenberg as saying, "for the first time in history, man, on this planet, is discovering that he is alone with himself, without a partner and without an adversary." He says, "For the writer, atomic physics is interesting, above all, for the in which it illustrates the workings of the scientific mind as it moves from a set of sense perceptions to a set of unobservable, hypothetical entities and back again to another set of sense perception, in relation to which the concept of the atomic hypothesis are operationally validated."
He goes on and he writes…
Surely, it’s obvious.
Doesn’t every schoolboy know it?
Ends are ape-chosen; only the means are man’s.
Papio’s procurer, bursar to baboons,
Reason comes running, eager to ratify…
Comes with Calculus to aim your rockets
Accurately at the orphanage across the ocean;
Comes, having aimed, with incense to impetrate
Our Lady devoutly for a direct hit.
[...] For Heisenberg, reality is "the continuous fluctuation of the experience as gathered by the conscience. In this respect, it is never wholly identifiable to an isolated system."
"It is possible to ask whether there is still concealed behind the statical universe of perception a ‘true’ universe in which the law of causality would be valid. But such a speculation seems to us to be without value and meaningless, for physics must confine itself to the relationship between perceptions." —Heisenberg
"It is clear that the ordering of the regions must substitute the gross division of world into a subjective reality and an objective one and to stretch itself between these poles of subject and object in such a manner that at its inferior limits are the regions where we can completely objectify."—Heisenberg
Memorable times... Back in those days, many German physicists (and European ones in general) had a firm foot in philosophy -- variously descended torturously from Kant, positivism (Mach's influences at the tail end of the latter), etc.
Quote:[...] The reality we talk about is never the reality, in and of itself. We’ve given it form with the information that we’ve accumulated. [...]
I'll grant that people can project whatever they want upon Kant's noumenal world, or
The Matrix, or whatever metaphor. As long as it applies after they're dead -- so that it doesn't interfere with how things work in this world survival-wise.
Of course, there might be exceptions if this conditioned realm truly undermined freedom, immortality and God (actually human rights, morality, etc -- see footnote at bottom).
Otherwise, scientific realism about spacetime offers immortality (eternalism); potential re-conceptions of "free will" can rescue FW; and if social activists can argue for the validity of leftist agendas without appealing to the supernatural, then surely similar applies to "rights and morality" in general. Not saying, however, that beliefs of some sort rubbing shoulders with imagination are not vaguely recruited in any way at all to facilitate the three _X_s in the context of naturalism.
With regard to that "projecting" on the metaphysical unknown or blankness, in the context of beliefs argued as "necessary" by one group or another, to hold civilization together or add meaning to life, or whatever they're working up a sweat about...
Kant (CPR, NKS translation): [P 026] . . . To know an object I must be able to prove its possibility, either from its actuality as attested by experience, or a priori by means of reason. But I can think whatever I please, provided only that I do not contradict myself, that is, provided my concept is a possible thought. This suffices for the possibility of the concept, even though I may not be able to answer for there being, in the sum of all possibilities, an object corresponding to it. But something more is required before I can ascribe to such a concept objective validity, that is, real possibility; the former possibility is merely logical. This something more need not, however, be sought in the theoretical sources of knowledge; it may lie in those that are practical.
[P 617] . . . But as will be shown, reason has, in respect of its practical employment, the right to postulate what in the field of mere speculation it can have no kind of right to assume without sufficient proof. [...] In the practical sphere reason has rights of possession, of which it does not require to offer proof, and of which, in fact, it could not supply proof.
The burden of proof accordingly rests upon the opponent. But since the latter knows just as little of the object under question, in trying to prove its non-existence, as does the former in maintaining its reality, it is evident that the former, who is asserting something as a practically necessary supposition, is at an advantage (melior est conditio possidentis).
For he is at liberty to employ, as it were in self-defence, on behalf of his own good cause, the very same weapons that his opponent employs against that cause, that is, hypotheses. These are not intended to strengthen the proof of his position, but only to show that the opposing party has much too little understanding of the matter in dispute to allow of his flattering himself that he has the advantage in respect of speculative insight.
Hypotheses are therefore, in the domain of pure reason, permissible only as weapons of war, and only for the purpose of defending a right, not in order to establish it. But the opposing party we must always look for in ourselves. For speculative reason in its transcendental employment is in itself dialectical; the objections which we have to fear lie in ourselves. We must seek them out, just as we would do in the case of claims that, while old, have never become superannuated, in order that by annulling them we may establish a permanent peace.
- - - footnote - - -
In
Opus Postumum (collected last writings near his death), Kant fully revealed that "God" is a personification of concepts -- moral law, practical reason, etc -- rather than, say, a literal Abrahamic deity.
In other works, he did allow that rank and file believers could still construe that "philosophical god" as their own, as part of a gradual passage over generations from biblical literality to the scholarly understanding or apprehension. After all, with the very advent of the Critique of Pure Reason, he was introducing a series of books of which one of the purposes was to save the traditions of the West from the march of materialism and science (by providing them a refuge).
Kant did go through a period where he had to go into "quiet" mode about a variety of things do to Wöllner's witch-hunt (quote at bottom).
Note that the first sentence/excerpt below can probably be excused as over-zealousness. (I.e., probably not every species in the universe that thinks reifies morality as a god at some stage of development, or personifies other important concepts as deities).
KANT (Opus Postumum): (21:83) Reason inevitably creates objects for itself. Hence everything that thinks has a God.
(22:118) The concept of God is the idea of a moral being, which, as such, is judging [and] universally commanding. The latter is not a hypothetical thing but pure practical reason itself in its personality, with reason's moving forces in respect to world-being and their forces.
(22:123) It is not a substance outside myself, whose existence I postulate as a hypothetical being for the explanation for certain phenomena in the world; but the concept of duty (of a universal practical principle) is contained identically in the concept of a divine being as ideal of human reason for the sake of the latter's law-giving [...breaks off...] There is contained in man, as a subordinate moral being, a concept of duty, namely, that of the relation of right; to stand under the law of the determination his will, which he imposes upon himself, and to which he subordinates himself -- which, however, he also treats imperatively, and *asserts* independent of all empirical grounds of determination (and [which] is determining merely as a formal principle for willing).
(22:129) In moral-practical reason, there is contained the principle of the knowledge of my duties as commands, that is, not according to the rule which makes the subject into an [object], but that which emerges from freedom and which [the subject] prescribes to itself, and yet as if another higher person had made it a rule for him. The subject feels himself necessitated through his own reason (not analytically, according to the principle of identity, but synthetically, as a transition from metaphysics to transcendental philosophy) to obey these duties.
- - -
Paul Cliteur: "
Kant was writing under Frederick William II (1744–1797), King of Prussia from 1786 till 1797. As long as Frederick the Great was alive (1712–1786) there was no official interference with Kant’s publications.
This changed when Frederick died in 1786 and was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick William II. [...] Frederick William was a bigoted opponent of Enlightenment thought and one of the first things he did was to appoint a culture minister by the name of Wöllner. Wöllner issued two important edicts.
The first threatened the dismissal of all civil servants (including university teachers) who deviated from adherence to biblical doctrines. The second had to do with censorship. It required an official imprimatur for all publications dealing with religious topics.
Despite the edicts, Kant managed to have his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone published in 1793, but in October 1794 he received peremptory notice from the king.
[...] This was no encouragement to Kant to further develop his ideas on moral autonomy, as can be easily understood. Kant decided to cave in. He replied that his books had been misunderstood. He tried to convince the king that he had not aimed to undermine Christianity"
