Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Theory vs Fact

#1
Magical Realist Offline
Does theory count as real knowledge about the universe? We like to think so. We are certain that by knowing how or why something happened that we have increased our overall knowledge about reality. But have we really? It is certainly true that we can have knowledge of facts. We can know THAT certain events have happened or are happening. But as to the explanations for HOW those events occurred, what are we really doing other than forming generalizations and reasons based on those facts? Do these generalizations and laws and causal agencies really exist as empiricle facts? No. They are abstractions of thought and language which are inferred from empiricle fact, but not necessarily so. They are idealizations of events and properties that exist only as defined BY the theory itself.

There is thus always a probablistic quality to our theories, true only to the extent that they make plausible how empiricle events occur, while not corresponding to anything beyond the abstract schemata or model they are constructs of.So a theory or an explanation is more a way of putting empiricle facts together such that they form a coherent self-contained system of generalizations rather that any kind of true knowledge about reality. A scientist can thus never leave his house for three months and come up with a new theory without having increased one iota the total amount of information he has about the universe. Either we admit that he has somehow psychically divined actual states and events about the universe without perceiving, or we must concede that theory and explanation do not in fact reveal anything empirically true or factual about the universe at all.
Reply
#2
C C Offline
Even though the world seems direct and our recognitions transparent, it's difficult to separate the perceived from the understood (the immediate versus the meditative; the reception of "now" versus extended reasoning about it; the particular versus the general). Unlike its usage in philosophy of mind today, Kant considered experience to actually be a merger of the two. Only an infant supposedly encounters its sensations in a pure way without the cognition of memory / reflective thought, the biases of the past and formulas of ideation. Which is surely a questionable belief since even then there are innate responses / reactions and existing information sorting processes at work in the tiny newborn.

KANT:

No knowledge is possible without a concept, however obscure or imperfect it may be, and a concept is always, with regard to its form, something general, something that can serve as a rule. Thus the concept of body serves as a rule to our knowledge of external phenomena, according to the unity of the manifold which is thought by it. It can only be such a rule of intuitions because representing, in any given phenomena, the necessary reproduction of their manifold elements, or the synthetical unity in our consciousness of them. Thus the concept of body, whenever we perceive something outside us, necessitates the [thought] representation of extension, and, with it, those of impermeability, shape, etc.

- - - - -

Reason with all its concepts and laws of the understanding, which suffice for empirical use, i.e., within the sensible world, finds in itself no satisfaction because ever-recurring questions deprive us of all hope of their complete solution. The transcendental ideas, which have that completion in view, are such problems of reason. But it sees clearly, that the sensuous world cannot contain this completion, neither consequently can all the concepts, which serve merely for understanding the world of sense, such as space and time, and whatever we have adduced under the name of pure concepts of the understanding. The sensuous world is nothing but a chain of appearances connected according to universal laws; it has therefore no subsistence by itself; it is not the thing in itself, and consequently must point to that which contains the basis of this experience, to beings which cannot be known merely as phenomena, but as things in themselves. In the cognition of them alone reason can hope to satisfy its desire of completeness in proceeding from the conditioned to its conditions.

- - - - -

The understanding has thus far been explained merely negatively, as a non-sensible faculty of knowledge. Now since without sensibility we cannot have any intuition, understanding cannot be a faculty of intuition. But besides intuition there is no other mode of knowledge except by means of concepts. The knowledge yielded by understanding, or at least by the human understanding, must therefore be by means of concepts, and so is not intuitive, but discursive. Whereas all intuitions, as sensible, rest on affections, concepts rest on functions.

By 'function' I mean the unity of the act of bringing various representations under one common representation. Concepts are based on the spontaneity of thought, sensible intuitions on the receptivity of impressions. Now the only use which the understanding can make of these concepts is to judge by means of them. Since no representation, save when it is an intuition, is in immediate relation to an object, no concept is ever related to an object immediately, but to some other representation of it, be that other representation an intuition, or itself a concept.

Judgment is therefore the mediate knowledge of an object, that is, the representation of a representation of it. In every judgment there is a concept which holds of many representations, and among them of a given representation that is immediately related to an object. Thus in the judgment, 'all bodies are divisible', the concept of the divisible applies to various other concepts, but is here applied in particular to the concept of body, and this concept again to certain appearances that present themselves to us. These objects, therefore, are mediately represented through the concept of divisibility.

Accordingly, all judgments are functions of unity among our representations; instead of an immediate representation, a higher representation, which comprises the immediate representation and various others, is used in knowing the object, and thereby much possible knowledge is collected into one. Now we can reduce all acts of the understanding to judgments, and the understanding may therefore be represented as a faculty of judgment.

For, as stated above, the understanding is a faculty of thought. Thought is knowledge by means of concepts. But concepts, as predicates of possible judgments, relate to some representation of a not yet determined object. Thus the concept of body means something, for instance, metal, which can be known by means of that concept. It is therefore a concept solely in virtue of its comprehending other representations, by means of which it can relate to objects. It is therefore the predicate of a possible judgment, for instance, 'every metal is a body'. The functions of the understanding can, therefore, be discovered if we can give an exhaustive statement of the functions of unity in judgments. That this can quite easily be done will be shown in the next section....
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Distinguishing Fact, Opinion, Belief, and Prejudice Magical Realist 1 213 Feb 8, 2020 10:42 PM
Last Post: Leigha
  Distinguishing Fact, Opinion, Belief, and Prejudice Magical Realist 0 131 Feb 8, 2020 08:42 PM
Last Post: Magical Realist



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)