tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post6192764749612984938..comments2024-03-18T10:05:26.015-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: Kant on Killing Bastards, on Masturbation, on Wives and Servants, on Organ Donation, Homosexuality, and TyrantsEric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger100125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-59112512349229640532021-06-24T12:05:59.546-07:002021-06-24T12:05:59.546-07:00The passage you're referring to isn't foun...The passage you're referring to isn't found in Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, but is from his 1850s lectures on Physical Geography, which were published from student lecture notes without any input from Kant himself. The reason that this is important is that Kant's views on race changed quite drastically in the years following his critical turn, and as a result, they're aren't any comments about race like this at all in his Anthropology. So far as we can tell, that is, Kant didn't accept those kinds of ideas at all anymore by that point.<br /><br />If you're interested in learning more about Kant's move away from his earlier racist views, I'd check out the following article: <br />https://academic.oup.com/pq/article-abstract/57/229/573/1539720?redirectedFrom=fulltext#:~:text=The%20claim%20that%20Kant%20had,stable%20during%20the%20Critical%20periodMatthew Coatenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-68238811434062094342019-09-06T09:14:24.991-07:002019-09-06T09:14:24.991-07:00So Kant is just describing laws, without taking a ...So Kant is just describing laws, without taking a stand on whether he agrees or disagrees? To me, that seems an unlikely reading of the text.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16274774112862434865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-28731857509258155522019-09-04T13:23:03.370-07:002019-09-04T13:23:03.370-07:00Very much of this, your Kant quotes, looks differe...Very much of this, your Kant quotes, looks different in context. You present Kant as having all of these opinions. But when he is for example talking about what the law owes to bastard children, this is not his own 'should', it's just a description of where the law is at. Similarly for wives and servants, I think his angle is more of a cold-blooded summary of the existing principles of the law, as opposed to him being a fount of opinions about how things ought to be done. A bastard does not legally posess the right to claim the recognition of a parent, and therefore cannot legally inherit, and is born from illegitimate circumstances, which are legally defined. I say this, not give give out anything about my own identity, it's just depersonalized stuff. Even with Kantian condemnation of commerce in organs, there is a context here. If you sell an integral part of your body, do you violate a prijnciple, and thereby act wrongly? I view the discussion more as a logical exploration, a thought experiment. This traces back to 'respecting the dignity of ends in themselves', though what dignity is cannot specify *itself* in detail, and neither can what it means to respect it.. Dannyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11915977609430813824noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-35587724299725717832016-07-18T11:12:31.679-07:002016-07-18T11:12:31.679-07:00No. We don't need emotion to follow a Moral Co...No. We don't need emotion to follow a Moral Code. Even Paul Bloom is writing a book rejecting empathy as a source of morals. He and others prefer impartiality to empathy.<br /><br />Gonçalo Manuel Moreira Mouzinho de Albuquerque Cupertino<br /><br />goncalo.manuel@hotmail.comAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-33203643358863518272016-07-18T10:56:01.689-07:002016-07-18T10:56:01.689-07:00Kant seemed to turn away from Moral Law and toward...Kant seemed to turn away from Moral Law and towards Civil Law to a point of contradiction as with servants. But the obvious explanation divides in two parts: one, we are free, and thus free even from helping bastards; another, he was getting ill, and, at the end of his life, he couldn't even recognize his very own friends. The rest was just ignorance over races.<br /><br />Gonçalo Manuel Moreira Mouzinho de Albuquerque Cupertino<br /><br />goncalo.manuel@hotmail.comAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-86221365776173790232014-04-25T01:40:16.317-07:002014-04-25T01:40:16.317-07:00I try and take the bad with the good. Nobody is 10...I try and take the bad with the good. Nobody is 100% perfect, my grandma is equal or more racist than Kant she is also one of the top 3 most influential people in my life but of course her racist remarks are disregarded waste. I think we are all guilty of waste to some degree. I enjoyed your blog, thanksAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16494849011048828094noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-42164532480578886902013-04-09T06:30:00.309-07:002013-04-09T06:30:00.309-07:00I agree with Kant with regard to masturbation, wiv...I agree with Kant with regard to masturbation, wives, gays etc. That is why I love him so much that I am calling myself 'a Kantian philosopher'. <br /><br /><br /><br />Tom, Ph. D., PolandAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-74976226424649925002012-08-28T15:45:59.357-07:002012-08-28T15:45:59.357-07:00Kant's morality certainly follows from his met...Kant's morality certainly follows from his metaphysics.<br /><br />If all we can know are "appearances" and not objects in themselves then of course his morality would perfectly reflect and amplify the corrupt morals of his generation.<br /><br />These observations and rules are not objective, but rather how they appeared to Kant. He had no method for this madness other than "how do things appear to me?"<br /><br />This line of thinking has even corrupted modern physics. http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com/entry/2012-08-12T08_45_48-07_00Mike Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05956442265347654942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-5650513030858501122012-08-28T10:40:06.452-07:002012-08-28T10:40:06.452-07:00I don't see the issue with those arguments. Th...I don't see the issue with those arguments. They are unsound, but they are not *laughably* or otherwise ridiculously unsound. They are perfectly reasonable arguments to make. They could only be interpreted as unreasonable by someone begging the question against them. The premises are perfectly sensible for someone in 2012 or someone in 1800 to believe, just as the premises in, say, arguments about abortion, like thomson's violinist or Marquis' future-like-ours argument, are. <br /><br />For instance, isn't it a clear intuition people have that giving into animalistic desires makes one less human? C.f. rape, hunting animals with your bare hands, running naked in the streets, etc. It seems clear you could make an argument from that to the conclusion that masturbation is depreciates your humanity, etc.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15020739098073409227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-76736842661034282272012-08-28T10:39:31.672-07:002012-08-28T10:39:31.672-07:00I don't see the issue with those arguments. Th...I don't see the issue with those arguments. They are unsound, but they are not *laughably* or otherwise ridiculously unsound. They are perfectly reasonable arguments to make. They could only be interpreted as unreasonable by someone begging the question against them. The premises are perfectly sensible for someone in 2012 or someone in 1800 to believe, just as the premises in, say, arguments about abortion, like thomson's violinist or Marquis' future-like-ours argument, are. <br /><br />For instance, isn't it a clear intuition people have that giving into animalistic desires makes one less human? C.f. rape, hunting animals with your bare hands, running naked in the streets, etc. It seems clear you could make an argument from that to the conclusion that masturbation is depreciates your humanity, etc. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15020739098073409227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-13602625196053685262012-08-21T04:38:05.347-07:002012-08-21T04:38:05.347-07:00If our moral judgments are unquestionably right, m...If our moral judgments are unquestionably right, moral philosophy is really a waste of time, no?Shalom Becknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-75871296314755115792012-01-28T08:03:38.154-08:002012-01-28T08:03:38.154-08:00Roy, you're welcome to post comments. The old...Roy, you're welcome to post comments. The old posts were getting a lot of spam, so I put up a filter, and I need to approve them first -- that can take a day or two sometimes.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-35383787818119392592012-01-27T12:23:17.626-08:002012-01-27T12:23:17.626-08:00Sorry that I posted here earlier - it was an accid...Sorry that I posted here earlier - it was an accident - I forgot that this was an older post of yours and not the recent one. And I agree that you were right not to accept it.<br /><br />And not to worry, I'll not make any further comments on this blog in future. I'm not a professional philosopher, and should not expect comments from my peanut gallery to be taken seriously.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07573847127040276949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-62075779760875860602012-01-27T09:54:31.972-08:002012-01-27T09:54:31.972-08:00Kant denied the right to lie or deceive for any re...Kant denied the right to lie or deceive for any reason, regardless of context or anticipated consequences.<br /><br />Dumb.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07573847127040276949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-63229603293754368752011-09-07T05:52:24.808-07:002011-09-07T05:52:24.808-07:00Right, except I didn't say the whole corpus wa...Right, except I didn't say the whole corpus was gobbledy-gook, just some of it.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-6694122139490918922011-09-06T21:11:45.867-07:002011-09-06T21:11:45.867-07:00I am not quite sure how pessimism, either in the o...I am not quite sure how pessimism, either in the ordinary or philosophical sense, really comes into play here. In your post, you assert two propositions:<br /><br /><b>(1)</b> Kant's work is gobbledy-gook.<br /><br /><b>(2)</b> Kant is an exceptional philosopher.<br /><br />A contradiction will arise if we add the third proposition:<br /><br /><b>(3)</b> If Kant's work is gobbledy-gook, then Kant is not an exceptional philosopher.<br /><br />It follows from (1), (2), and (3) by elementary logical rules:<br /><br /><b>(4)</b> Kant is an exceptional philosopher and Kant is not an exceptional philosopher.<br /><br />Now, one can avoid the contradiction (4) by denying (3), that is, by attenuating the notion of "exceptional philosopher." If we drop the idea that being an exceptional philosopher requires better work than gobbledy-gook, then we can consistently maintain (1) and (2). <br /><br />So, logical consistency requires that you hold it to be possible for an exceptional philosopher to produce a gobble-gook corpus. But that's a meaning of "exceptional philosopher" I don't think we should accept.Timmohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04095596090336782085noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-87022892686520810972011-09-06T08:28:56.206-07:002011-09-06T08:28:56.206-07:00Why is that contradictory? Pessimism could be tru...Why is that contradictory? Pessimism could be true.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-61103850990032272242011-09-05T16:36:00.405-07:002011-09-05T16:36:00.405-07:00Hello Eric:
Have you considered that the two less...Hello Eric:<br /><br />Have you considered that the two lessons you draw in the post are <i>contradictory</i>? You say, on the one hand, that transcendental deduction is "gobbledy-gook" and that Kant is a master at "effusing a haze of words" that deceive philosophers into thinking there is "something profound underneath." At the same time, you say that we should not expect too much insight from ordinary people who are not as "philosophically capable" as Kant. You are maintaining that Kant is an exceptional philosopher, but also maintaining that he has nothing profound to teach us.Timmohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04095596090336782085noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-71161236654767895262010-10-27T11:38:12.040-07:002010-10-27T11:38:12.040-07:00"Second, we cannot expect ordinary people to ..."Second, we cannot expect ordinary people to be better philosophical moral reasoners than Kant. Kant's philosophical moral reasoning appears mainly to have confirmed his prejudices and the ideas inherited from his culture. Therefore, we should be nervous about expecting more from the philosophical moral reasoning of people less philosophically capable than Kant."<br /><br />The aristoi are stupid but we can't expect the hoi polloi to be better than those who are nonetheless their betters. <br />So who are "We", Kemo Sabe?<br /><br />Lesson #3472.5 on why philosophy professors should stay away from politics.D. Ghirlandaiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06283931383770759507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-75570928530764552302010-10-22T05:38:37.309-07:002010-10-22T05:38:37.309-07:00I've always thought that this was the simplest...I've always thought that this was the simplest explanation of what is wrong with Kant:<br /><br />"This…is the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Kant’s system. How we conceive of reality–that is, the structure and content of our thought about reality — is itself just a part of reality, not something that could intelligibly be set in opposition to reality as a possible object of our knowledge, in the way that the rest of reality is allegedly not.” E J LoweUNiMEDiAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-3008284532161806702010-10-21T09:28:59.277-07:002010-10-21T09:28:59.277-07:00@ Carbondale and Phil: I can see why you might ass...@ Carbondale and Phil: I can see why you might assume that is my perspective, since I think you are right that it is the perspective of some people who say similar things. However, if you read my work you will see that there is a fair bit of history in many of my papers. In fact, I have two published papers that are straight history of philosophy: One on Zhuangzi's skepticism and one on the idea of "human nature" in Mencius, Xunzi, Hobbes, and Rousseau. In fact, my most recent (non-humorous) blog post is a complaint about the quality of the translation of Comte. I also published a brief essay in an APA newsletter chiding Anglo-American philosophers for not knowing classical Chinese philosophy. Although I am not fluent in any non-English language, I have enough reading knowledge of German, French, Spanish, and classical Chinese to struggle through texts in those languages when there is no good English translation or when it is important to me to get the interpretative details exactly right. I even sometimes brave Greek and Latin if I am highly motivated (but then only very short passages).<br /><br />I believe that am egalitarian in my view of gobbledygook: I won't accept it from contemporary philosophers, whether "analytic" or otherwise, but neither will I accept it from the giants of history.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-2793812242874250052010-10-21T06:27:00.887-07:002010-10-21T06:27:00.887-07:00Carbondale -
Methinks that Eric and his ilk secr...Carbondale - <br /><br />Methinks that Eric and his ilk secretly - and perhaps subconsciously - wish philosophy departments would get folded into psychology/cog sci departments, linguistics departments and possibly physics departments. <br /><br />Consign all else - except Lewisean metaphysics, of course - to the flames! <br /><br />No big shock, then, that Kant gets the gobbledygook treatment.phil in nycnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-58243362658835708142010-10-21T01:49:07.010-07:002010-10-21T01:49:07.010-07:00Calling a historical text filled with gobbledly-go...Calling a historical text filled with gobbledly-gook bespeaks several things that come to mind. First, it comes from an entire tradition of analytic philosophy that is lazy with respect to its history. This trend is exemplified in several ways, but among my favorite is for top analytic programs to substitute logic for the language requirement that would allow one to read the history of philosophy. Moreover, it contributes to the growing insularity of philosophy departments in the English speaking world to generally not look outside of its own tradition for any type of philosophy other than what passes for philosophy in Anglo-American countries<br /><br />After one is capable of reading a text in, say, German and acquires the historical sense of Kant, I can assure you that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason does become intelligible. It is only at the point where one is willing to engage with the actual history that constitutes the possibility of having a philosophical conversation that one begins to cross the threshold of the hermeneutic challenges in doing philosophy. Any analytic worth their weight will object fervently that we can ahistoricize a problem, rip it apart from history and conceptually engage with it to the point that you start to get examples of "cottage industries" of papers. Yet, the point is always a sobering one. You cannot do philosophy without the historical situated character that has made possible your having that conversation in the first place. This is the chief reason we pay attention to the history of philosophy, and why the gobbledly-gook comment is so out of place. <br /><br />A friend of mine working on moral psychology at a mid-range PGR-ranked school has also lamented to me this dearth of history. He said he was scared going on the job market a year from now, and being so over-specialized to the point that his dissertation, prospectus and comprehensive exams were bound to his overly specialized focus. His knowledge of scholarship is a blemish that can be rectified but not in the time allowed while he writes his dissertation. Now, the reason I mention this is simple. It is only from such an analytic style of philosophy that would deny the very history that makes our being philosophers possible.Carbondale Chasmitehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13594688764570047726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-10251249763345896172010-10-20T08:53:13.766-07:002010-10-20T08:53:13.766-07:00@ Sam: Perhaps I put my point about the relationsh...@ Sam: Perhaps I put my point about the relationship between abstract theory and example too self-attributively. What I should have said is that it is in fact the case that abstract theories get an important dimension of their content from how they apply to examples. Their content is often rather indeterminate independent of application, so when we look at Kant's applications, we see the content of his abstract theories. Now someone *else* might want to resolve similar-sounding abstractions into a different content, but I'm not sure that should be regarded as Kant interpretation.<br /><br />And I think you are quite off base about the attractions of abstract theories, for the weird sort of person who becomes a philosopher. For example, some people find various forms of realism attractive, while others find various forms of antirealism attractive. Some find weird, radical views exciting, while others find them annoying. Etc. These attractions arise very early in people's philosophical educations, before they have any good knowledge of the arguments pro and con.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-87785086722499002302010-10-20T05:58:20.207-07:002010-10-20T05:58:20.207-07:00Eric said: "And I suppose that many Kant inte...Eric said: "And I suppose that many Kant interpreters think that this is what they have done -- but interpreters' lack of consensus is one reason to be suspicious of such claims. (Where there's lack of consensus on Hume, Plato, etc., too, there may be less behind their remarks than meets the eye; but for them at least there are islands of clarity.)" <br /><br />I'm not sure if the situation is that different with Kant. In the specific case of the B Deduction, for example, at least since Dieter Henrich's article, there is a remarkable consensus on its structure, its aims and scope. Obviously, interpreters diverge on the details of what it's about and how it intends to argue its point, but I think this divergence operates on a wide background of agreement. <br /><br />Furthermore, at least since the publication in the early 90's of the works of Brandt, Wolff, and Longuenesse, there is also an overall consensus on how to understand Kant's logic (both in its general and in its transcendental variety) and how it relates to the Deduction as a whole. In fact, this consensus in Kantian scholarship is, to my mind, a notable achievement and a good testimony to the possibility of progress in understanding a philosophical text.Daniel Nagasehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09389957277629676271noreply@blogger.com