The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics

[Newberry]

J:

Upon which fundamentals do you think that we disagree or are different?

A signature.

[George H. Smith]

I have explained several times what Kant meant by the noumenal world. It is the world beyond the realm of "all possible experience." Kant didn't think we can reasonably talk about things that cannot possibly be experienced.

George, a question.

I preface by saying that I've only sporadically dipped into this thread, I haven't tracked the argument. However, what you state above is the conclusion I came to from reading some of Kant's works in the (translated) original back in 1964 or 1965 when I was taking a course on ethics with Henry Veatch at Northwestern.

As I understood Kant, he indeed was saying that knowledge of ultimate reality -- real reality -- is forever impossible, that the only way we can have confidence in what we know is because our minds impose it on real reality.

Do you disagree that this is a correct interpretation? If yes, maybe you could give links to a post or two or three in the above long thread explaining your disagreement.

I delayed answering your question because I wanted to brush up on the subject by rereading some Kant and a number of commentaries. The key text in Kant is Chapter III of Critique of Pure Reason, "The Ground of the Distinction of all Objects in General Into Phenomena and Noumena."

Even sympathetic interpreters of Kant concede that he can be vague and even inconsistent on this topic. I don't think any commentator would disagree with Ernst Cassirer's observation (in Kant's Life and Thought, p 256), that "Kant's doctrine of the thing in itself...is admittedly paradoxical and ambiguous as he expresses it."

If, however, we consider Kant's discussion in Critique of Pure Reason, while bypassing complications that arise in Critique of Practical Reason, then I think several basic points are tolerably clear. I will express these in very general terms for now, reserving more detailed remarks for future posts, should anyone care to pursue the matter further.

It is a mistake to view noumena as "ultimate reality" or "real reality." The distinction between noumena and phenomena, in substance if not in name, goes back at least to Plato, for whom the world of forms is indeed the ultimate reality -- a reality that, as illustrated by the allegory of the cave, we can grasp only dimly.

But this is not how Kant approaches the distinction. Noumena, for him, do not comprise a higher or more ultimate reality than phenomena. It is misleading in this respect to speak of a noumenal world in contrast to a phenomenal world. Phenomena are simply the world as it is perceived and understood according to the nature of the knowing subject. Noumena, or things in themselves, pertain to the same world, but they are things that supposedly can be known (according to the "dogmatic" rationalists) by reason alone, without the aid of sense perception. (I am using "reason" in a generic sense; in this context, Kant speaks of the "understanding" instead of "reason," but I want to steer clear of these technical distinctions for now.)

Kant claims that such noumenal knowledge is impossible, because knowledge can only be acquired through a synthesis of sense perception and reason. Indeed, at one point Kant says that to speak of knowledge without sense perception "signifies nothing at all." In other words, Kant does not posit a noumenal world and then claim that we can never know it; rather, he claims that the very notion is itself unintelligible, because without the forms provided by sense perception, we would need to "know" things that exist in neither time nor space, which is inconceivable.

Here is how one commentator puts the matter:

The thing-in-itself is known as an appearance. By definition that is the only way that it could be known. To say that we know only appearances and not things in themselves is to state an obvious tautology, namely that objects are known only as they are known. (George Schrader, "The Thing In Itself In Kantian Philosophy," in Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert Paul Wolff, p. 173).

Kant (Critique, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, p. 268 ff.) distinguishes between two notions of noumenon: a negative sense and a positive sense. We arrive at a negative notion of noumenon when, through a process of abstraction, we detach (so to speak) a concept from its moorings in sense perception and consider it in isolation.

The positive notion of noumenon is quite different. It posits a cognitive faculty, the intellect, that is able to attain knowledge without the aid of sense perception. This positive notion, which was the ideal of Leibniz and other rationalists, is curtly rejected by Kant. We possess no such faculty, Kant declares; indeed, we "cannot comprehend even the possibility" of acquiring knowledge of the world apart from sense perception. This is so because our concepts "can never extend further than to the objects of our experience." The notion of noumenon in the positive sense, which divides the world "into a world of the senses and a world of the understanding, is therefore quite inadmissible...."

Kant maintains that only the negative notion of noumenon serves a legitimate philosophical function. Specifically, it serves as a "limiting concept" -- a concept with the "negative function" of reminding us that our knowledge is limited to what we can perceive.

I have stated what I understand to be Kant's basic approach to this issue. Even if I have erred in a few technical details -- which is always a possibility with Kant -- I think the preceding clearly shows that he was not positing the existence of some "ultimate" but unknowable reality. To the extent that a positive notion of the noumenon is "unknowable," this is because the very idea is itself unintelligible.

In sum, I think it is fair to say that, for Kant, the distinction between noumenon and phenomenon is epistemological, not metaphysical.

As I mentioned earlier, things get more complicated when we turn to Kant's discussion in the Critique of Practical Reason. There, at times, he does seem to invest noumena with a metaphysical status. Various commentators (such as Schrader, quoted above) have noted this inconsistency, but they have generally insisted that Kant's exposition in Critique of Pure Reason should be taken as definitive. Kant was scarcely unique among philosophers in developing ideas that were inconsistent with his basic premises.

Ghs

[Newberry]

George,

Thanks for taking the time to write post # 202. Reading your posts is a little like watching a flowing creek; it's pleasurable to see how you navigate through complex stuff.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

George and Stephen,

Thanks to both of you for your replies.

I always feel, trying to get a grip on what Kant was "really" saying, that now I see it, now I don't -- and what I seem to see seems subtly different on different occasions. I suppose part of the problem is paradoxes and inconsistencies in his own presentations, as George noted, such that even different expert explicators give a different cast in interpreting.

Back when I was taking that course with Veatch and got the "take-home" I've described, I was distressed for weeks, thinking, But this is terrible! It leaves us unable to know "real reality," and yet Kant's right that you can't perceive except in a form, all awareness is in some *form* of awareness. I used to go for long drives in those days and one day, when taking one of my longer standard routes, driving around the perimeter of the O'Hare airport property, I was hit with such power by an insight, I nearly drove off the road (Cermak, sp?, road). I thought, But that IS knowledge! What knowledge is is a relationship between the perceiver and the thing perceived, it doesn't invalidate knowledge that we have to perceive in some particular way. It IS knowledge.

Later, upon studying Rand's ITOE, I thought that that was what she was saying. But then I thought that "really" this was what Kant himself was trying to say, that the difference between Kant and Rand was a hair's-breadth, and that maybe the problem was that Kant was groping for how to express his insight, hampered because of the language and the criteria of knowledge of the philosophers who preceded him.

I still feel unsure how much "real" difference there is between Rand and Kant.

I'll print out both your posts (George's and Stephen's, not Rand's and Kant's) and study them.

Ellen

[BaalChatzaf]

Why has this thread been devoted so much to Kant? Kant was a Newtonian to the core, so much so that he believed the laws of physics as stated by Newton were necessarily the case synthetic a priori. The focus of discussion ought to be on how much of physics is reached inductively (or abductively) and how much by mathematical necessity.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Guyau]

I wanted to append a note to #190, but as it pertains to the noumena in Kant’s critical philosophy and George has had time to get his summary on the board, I’ll put the note here, above a repeat of #190.

In his Inaugural Dissertation of 1770, Kant sets out that an object that comes before the subject by the senses is to be called a phenomenon and that an object that comes before the subject by and only by the intellect is called a noumenon. Things that are thought sensitively are representations of things as they appear, whereas intellectual representations can be of things as they are (2:393). There is a paradigmatic concept that can be conceived only by pure understanding, and this paradigm is noumenal perfection, which in the theoretical sense of perfection is the paradigm God and in the practical sense of perfection is the paradigm moral perfection (2:396).

In this work of 1770, Kant has entered the development of his distinctive critical philosophy, transcendental idealism, a development that will require a lot more development before its square issue in Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Already in the 1770 work, Kant has rejected the idea that we can have intuitive understanding of noumena. Our access to the purely intelligible is purely symbolic (2:396). By 1781 Kant’s conception of the determinate character of noumena has so contracted as to have made it nearly unintelligible. Critics from both the reactionary fideist side and the rationalist Enlightenment side rushed in to challenge the coherence of hanging onto the reality of noumena while taking fundamental conceptual categories such as causality to be confined to phenomena and inapplicable to the relation between noumena and phenomena.

The note I had wanted to add to #190 is simply to observe how sweetly the dark-beyond-dark noumena of Kant’s critical period fits with standard Lutheran doctrine about how little humans can rationally know or prove about God.

The article about Kant is on the website of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America which is a theologically leftist organization (unlike the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Synod).

Beware the conflation of theological conservatism and political conservatism packaged into phrases like “theologically leftist organization” when characterizing a denomination. That one denomination accepts the virgin birth of Jesus and the other does not, or that one accepts the eventual resurrection of each person’s body and the other does not, or that one accepts the six-day creation of the world and the other does not are not the same as political differences. As a matter of fact, I read through what this theologically liberal (relatively liberal, within the Lutheran spectrum in America) denomination had to say about the moral and legal issue of abortion at their site while I was there, and I can’t imagine how the Missouri Synod of my childhood would have said anything different, notwithstanding it being theologically more conservative.

Here is one glimpse into German history of Kant and Lutheranism. (I had this one already for a study I’m preparing for another site; I’ll let you know more about what I learn of the Lutheran reception of Kant as I go along; that Herder would oppose Kant is, of course, part of that story, but not all.) In Germany and the Next War (1911), Friedrich von Bernhardi wrote:

Two great movements were born from the German intellectual life, on which, henceforth, all the intellectual and moral progress of man must rest: the Reformation and the critical philosophy. The Reformation, which broke the intellectual yoke, imposed by the Church, which checked all free progress; and the Critique of Pure Reason, which put a stop to the caprice of philosophic speculation by defining for the human mind the limitations of its capacity for knowledge, and at the same time pointed out in what way knowledge is really possible.

[merjet]

I used to go for long drives in those days and one day, when taking one of my longer standard routes, driving around the perimeter of the O'Hare airport property, I was hit with such power by an insight, I nearly drove off the road (Cermak, sp?, road).

That's really driving off the road. The shortest distance between Cermak Road and O'Hare is more than 5 miles. Cermak runs east-west south of O'Hare.

I have sometime thought Kant had a respectable intuition about noumena and phenomena, but he did a poor job of making the point. Other species of animals have different ways of perceiving their universe than do humans. So which phenomenal world is "really real"? The human's, the dog's, the eagle's? No good answer to that, so posit a noumenal world that none perceives. Of course, such questions wouldn't save some room for theology.

[Brant Gaede]

I used to go for long drives in those days and one day, when taking one of my longer standard routes, driving around the perimeter of the O'Hare airport property, I was hit with such power by an insight, I nearly drove off the road (Cermak, sp?, road).

That's really driving off the road. The shortest distance between Cermak Road and O'Hare is more than 5 miles. Cermak runs east-west south of O'Hare.

I have sometime thought Kant had a respectable intuition about noumena and phenomena, but he did a poor job of making the point. Other species of animals have different ways of perceiving their universe than do humans. So which phenomenal world is "really real"? The human's, the dog's, the eagle's? No good answer to that, so posit a noumenal world that none perceives. Of course, such questions wouldn't save some room for theology.

They're all real, but with different perspectives. This is obvious if we merely dump Kant entirely overboard. Who needs him except to refute misrepresentations of him? He may have been actually valuable two hundred plus years ago apropos any nonsense he had to personally confront.

--Brant

[merjet]

They're all real, but with different perspectives. This is obvious if we merely dump Kant entirely overboard. Who needs him except to refute misrepresentations of him?

I can't recall ever having agreed with you more. But there is one more "need" -- to put on one's list of most evil men in history.

[George H. Smith]

George and Stephen,

Thanks to both of you for your replies.

I always feel, trying to get a grip on what Kant was "really" saying, that now I see it, now I don't -- and what I seem to see seems subtly different on different occasions. I suppose part of the problem is paradoxes and inconsistencies in his own presentations, as George noted, such that even different expert explicators give a different cast in interpreting.

Back when I was taking that course with Veatch and got the "take-home" I've described, I was distressed for weeks, thinking, But this is terrible! It leaves us unable to know "real reality," and yet Kant's right that you can't perceive except in a form, all awareness is in some *form* of awareness. I used to go for long drives in those days and one day, when taking one of my longer standard routes, driving around the perimeter of the O'Hare airport property, I was hit with such power by an insight, I nearly drove off the road (Cermak, sp?, road). I thought, But that IS knowledge! What knowledge is is a relationship between the perceiver and the thing perceived, it doesn't invalidate knowledge that we have to perceive in some particular way. It IS knowledge.

Later, upon studying Rand's ITOE, I thought that that was what she was saying. But then I thought that "really" this was what Kant himself was trying to say, that the difference between Kant and Rand was a hair's-breadth, and that maybe the problem was that Kant was groping for how to express his insight, hampered because of the language and the criteria of knowledge of the philosophers who preceded him.

I still feel unsure how much "real" difference there is between Rand and Kant.

I'll print out both your posts (George's and Stephen's, not Rand's and Kant's) and study them.

Ellen

I noted some general similarities between Kant and Rand in a post you may not have read, #124 . Here is the relevant portion:

Although I don't wish to push the point too far, there are interesting parallels between Kant's approach and Rand's. Where Kant speaks of our forms of perception, Rand speaks of our means of perception; and, like Kant, Rand insists that our sensory organs have specific natures which determine how we perceive reality. And, like Kant, Rand insists that to speak of knowing reality as it exists apart from our perception of it makes little if any sense, for this would require knowledge without a means of attaining that knowledge. Lastly, Rand, like Kant, argues that although our knowledge is limited to our specific means of perception, this limitation does not somehow invalidate the knowledge that we acquire thereby.

It is also worth mentioning that when Kant speaks of all knowledge being "conditioned," it is possible in some cases to substitute "contextual" without a significant change in meaning.

In the post quoted above, I go on to say that the differences between Kant and Rand become substantial, despite the general similarities. Rand had two major advantages over Kant: First, with the wisdom of hindsight and innumerable commentaries on Kant, she could see that some of his solutions generated more problems than they solved. Second, Rand never explored many of the knotty problems of epistemology in the meticulous -- some would say excruciating -- detail that Kant did. It is much easier to fly over rough terrain than to hike through it.

I have never been very impressed by the details of Kant's epistemology. Many of them, such as his categories of the understanding, strike me implausible, even arbitrary. Nor do I agree with Kant that our concepts of space and time cannot be be empirical concepts (i.e., derived from experience) and so must be attributed to "forms" of perception.

Despite these fundamental differences, I have great admiration for Kant. His views changed over time, as he encountered problems that he could not solve with more traditional approaches, so he forged his own system instead. That took a remarkable degree of intellectual honesty that few people, including philosophers, possess.

If one can decipher Kant's ponderous terminology, one can see a remarkably lucid mind at work. He had an astonishing ability to pinpoint problems that other philosophers overlooked. I have lost count of the number of times that I had to stop reading Kant as I attempted to think through a problem that had never occurred to me before. Some of those problems still vex me, and I don't know if I will ever resolve them to my own satisfaction.

Such is the nature of the beast called philosophy, and such is part of its charm. I have always felt a certain pity for those O'ists who believe that they possess, via Rand, a ready solution for every philosophical problem. What does one do with a jigsaw puzzle after fitting all the pieces together? The challenge, and with it the enjoyment, are gone.

Ghs

[Philip Coates]

> It is misleading in this respect to speak of a noumenal world in contrast to a phenomenal world. Phenomena are simply the world as it is perceived and understood according to the nature of the knowing subject.

George, if your basic view of what Kant is intending is correct, then he would indeed be saying the same thing as Rand in reagard to how we gain knowledge and in what form. And that we are in contact with reality.

Even so, however, isn't Kant making an exception that contradicts this whole approach? For certain metaphysical truths particularly about God. As well as the self or soul, freedom, immortality? And then how would we know ethics and religion - some flash of intuition? [if memory serves, he did indeed leave himself some such sort of an 'out'.]

In that sense, wanting to limit reason to make room for God.

Edited July 18, 2010 by Philip Coates

[Philip Coates]

> Rand never explored many of the knotty problems of epistemology in the meticulous -- some would say excruciating -- detail that Kant did. It is much easier to fly over rough terrain than to hike through it. [GHS]

What would be important examples?

To be fair to Rand, she did say ITOE is an introduction to a vast field. She spent most of her life as a novelist first and she ran out of time. What's amazing is how much she did accomplish in philosophy, not that she never covered every issue or application, didn't develop a philosophy of propositions, of induction, of law, of science.

Edited July 18, 2010 by Philip Coates

[merjet]

The entire apparatus of Kant's system, like a hippopotamus engaged in belly-dancing, goes through its gyrations while resting on a single point: that man's knowledge is not valid because his consciousness possesses identity. "His argument, in essence, ran as follows: man is limited to a consciousness of a specific nature, which perceives by specific means and no others ... " (ITOE2, 80)

The best image I found to accompany Rand's words.

[Neil Parille]

Phil,

You write:

In that sense, wanting to limit reason to make room for God.

Most philosophers until recent times believed in God. There have also been plenty of fideists.

So what makes Kant so evil or unique?

-Neil Parille

[Jonathan]

I guess it is kind of an honor that you care so much about my views.

No, I don't think you should try to find a way to feel honor in being judged as lacking the intelligence and courage to admit your mistakes and correct your errors.

J

[George H. Smith]

I have sometime thought Kant had a respectable intuition about noumena and phenomena, but he did a poor job of making the point. Other species of animals have different ways of perceiving their universe than do humans. So which phenomenal world is "really real"? The human's, the dog's, the eagle's? No good answer to that, so posit a noumenal world that none perceives. Of course, such questions wouldn't save some room for theology.

Kant would say that species with different sense organs perceive the same world in different forms, and that all such forms reveal something about the world, albeit in a limited context. Would Rand have disagreed?

Ghs

[merjet]

I have sometime thought Kant had a respectable intuition about noumena and phenomena, but he did a poor job of making the point. Other species of animals have different ways of perceiving their universe than do humans. So which phenomenal world is "really real"? The human's, the dog's, the eagle's? No good answer to that, so posit a noumenal world that none perceives. Of course, such questions wouldn't save some room for theology.

Kant would say that species with different sense organs perceive the same world in different forms, and that all such forms reveal something about the world, albeit in a limited context. Would Rand have disagreed?

Ghs

I doubt it, provided you didn't tell her you got it from Kant. Did he really say it, though?

[George H. Smith]

> It is misleading in this respect to speak of a noumenal world in contrast to a phenomenal world. Phenomena are simply the world as it is perceived and understood according to the nature of the knowing subject.

George, if your basic view of what Kant is intending is correct, then he would indeed be saying the same thing as Rand in regard to how we gain knowledge and in what form. And that we are in contact with reality.

Even so, however, isn't Kant making an exception that contradicts this whole approach? For certain metaphysical truths particularly about God. As well as the self or soul, freedom, immortality? And then how would we know ethics and religion - some flash of intuition? [if memory serves, he did indeed leave himself some such sort of an 'out'.]

In that sense, wanting to limit reason to make room for God.

I would agree that Kant fudged a little -- more than a little, actually -- in matters pertaining to God, the immortality of the soul, and free will. I don't think this is true of his views on ethics, however.

Some would claim that Rand fudged from time to time as well. Fudging is a popular pastime among philosophers.

As for Kant's views on faith, he did not mean following your feelings instead of your reason, or anything like that. Stephen Boydstun, judging by some comments he posted on another list, knows a lot about Kant's notion of faith, so maybe he will help me out here.

Ghs

[Robert Campbell]

Why has this thread been devoted so much to Kant? Kant was a Newtonian to the core, so much so that he believed the laws of physics as stated by Newton were necessarily the case synthetic a priori. The focus of discussion ought to be on how much of physics is reached inductively (or abductively) and how much by mathematical necessity.

Bob K,

Absolutely.

Discussions of Kant's philosophy are worthwhile, but maybe ought to be conducted on threads devoted to that purpose?

Meanwhile, I've been reading Harriman's opus. I'm about two-thirds of the way through it now. I hope others are taking the time to read it (I'll exempt Dragonfly, who has already had to put up with more than his share of Harrimanism). I've been on the road, but even If I weren't, my preference is to withhold comment on a book until I've read the whole thing.

Interestlngly, although Harriman of course spits and spews in Kant's direction, Kant gets very little attention in The Logical Leap.

Robert C

[Xray]

Can you give an example of quantifying which does not include some form of measuring?

A few people in the audience stood and clapped.

So that's what you mean: An indefinite number.

I can't see any connection to Rand's "ordinal number" system though, via which she claimed love can be "measured". Can you?

And can anyone here answer the question why Rand called ordinal measurement "teological measurement?

Xray: Classic case of evading the answer to a question.

MJ: It's my subjective value that some questions are not worth answering more than once.

Are you trying to wriggle out, MJ? From discussing with you, I know you that you do have interest in epistemology and that you do like to explain, elaborate and point out your discussion opponent's errors. I appreciate this aproach, and am convinced that if you could have answered the question, you would have.

But maybe Objectivists can help you here?

So here is my question again: What are the two or more similar concretes involved in the concept "pride"?

(pride here does not refer to the noun "pride" (as in pride of lions), but to one of the Objectivist "virtues".

There is an interesting discussion of Kant and theology in Joseph Ratzinger's Truth and Tolerance.

Ratziger's unbearable prattle is a pitiful demonstration of circular reasoning where he is trying to justify unsubstantiated claims from mere belief.

Ratzinger also misquoted Kant in his infamous 'Regensburg speech',

as Alan Posener points out in his book: "Benedikts Kreuzzug. Der Angriff des Vatikans auf die moderne Gesellschaft". Ullstein-Verlag, Berlin 2009, 269 Seiten, 18 Euro (ISBN 978-3-550-08793-6)

Transl: "Bendict's Crusade": Vatican's attack on modern society"

Ratzinger claimed that Kant said: "Er (Kant) habe das Denken beiseite schaffen müssen, um dem Glauben Platz zu machen."

Translation: "He (Kant) had to put aside thinking in order to make place for faith."

Posener gives the correct Kant quote: "Ich musste das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen"

Kant insists on separating knowlegde from faith. He does not attack faith a such, but clearly places it epistemologically where it belongs: not in the realm of 'knowledge'.

Ratzinger deliberately disorted this quote, for obvious reasons: it pulls the ground from under the feet of anyone who asserts the alleged truth of a faith; who claims, like Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) propositions to be true such as 'Jesus is God's son who was sacrificed', who claims the original sin myth to be true, the ressurrection of the flesh, etc.

Edited July 18, 2010 by Xray

[Ellen Stuttle]

I used to go for long drives in those days and one day, when taking one of my longer standard routes, driving around the perimeter of the O'Hare airport property, I was hit with such power by an insight, I nearly drove off the road (Cermak, sp?, road).

That's really driving off the road. The shortest distance between Cermak Road and O'Hare is more than 5 miles. Cermak runs east-west south of O'Hare.

Yes, I know, Merlin. Notice I said "driving around the perimeter of the O'Hare airport property." To spell that out (much easier than grappling with Kant). I would drive from Evanston (through the intervening suburbs), then along the road directly bounding O'Hare on the east), then turn left and drive west along a road pretty much parallel to the north boundary, then south to Cermak, then east again, then wend back to Evanston. It was more or less like driving around a large square (once I got to the road along the east boundary), took maybe a couple hours to do the whole route.

O'Hare and surrounds have changed since then in ways I don't like. The area used to be wide-open to vistas now blocked by buildings. The stuff they've built in the middle of the airport especially wrecks some of the views I could get on a different drive, into the airport itself and circling the arrival and departure areas.

Ellen

[merjet]

Are you trying to wriggle out, MJ? From discussing with you, I know you that you do have interest in epistemology and that you do like to explain, elaborate and point out your discussion opponent's errors. I appreciate this aproach, and am convinced that if you could have answered the question, you would have.

Many times I have asked you questions you didn't answer. Why did you evade them? Thanks, but you're wrong, despite your conviction. May I conclude that when you didn't answer my questions you were incapable of doing so?

Edited July 19, 2010 by Merlin Jetton

[Brant Gaede]

I used to go for long drives in those days and one day, when taking one of my longer standard routes, driving around the perimeter of the O'Hare airport property, I was hit with such power by an insight, I nearly drove off the road (Cermak, sp?, road).

That's really driving off the road. The shortest distance between Cermak Road and O'Hare is more than 5 miles. Cermak runs east-west south of O'Hare.

Yes, I know, Merlin. Notice I said "driving around the perimeter of the O'Hare airport property." To spell that out (much easier than grappling with Kant). I would drive from Evanston (through the intervening suburbs), then along the road directly bounding O'Hare on the east), then turn left and drive west along a road pretty much parallel to the north boundary, then south to Cermak, then east again, then wend back to Evanston. It was more or less like driving around a large square (once I got to the road along the east boundary), took maybe a couple hours to do the whole route.

O'Hare and surrounds have changed since then in ways I don't like. The area used to be wide-open to vistas now blocked by buildings. The stuff they've built in the middle of the airport especially wrecks some of the views I could get on a different drive, into the airport itself and circling the arrival and departure areas.

Ellen

Jesus H. Christ, Ellen, just rent a plane and fly over the airport!

--Brant

[Neil Parille]

I've only been able to skim the book. I thought Harriman's attack on Descartes was unfair. Whatever one thinks of Descartes I don't think his "feelings" were the center of his philosophy.

Is it fair to call Poincare' and Duhem the equivalent to members of the "Flat Earth Society"?

Just what are Harriman's contributions to science? Rewriting Rand's Journals?

-Neil Parille

[Robert Campbell]

Neil,

From what I've read so far, I see David Harriman as a pure Peikovian in epistemology—as pure at least, as anyone other than Leonard himself. His book is valuable insofar as it documents that standpoint.

Also from what I've seen so far, I have well-developed doubts as to whether Harriman applies the same standards to people he thinks are basically OK (e.g., Aristotle) and people he thinks are basically horrible (e.g., Descartes).

I've got some more reading to do.

Robert Campbell