The illusions of our cause-and-effect rules
May 7th 2007 10:39
Ladies and gentles, that's not my idea. That's not even new.
This comes from Kant, and to better understand it, you should read on Critic of Pure Reason. A second but great presentation on the subject is on Kant - An introduction to the 3 critics, by Luc Ferry. The third option would be to read this post..
Concepts, Ideas and Intuitions. These 3 things help us explain why Spinoza, and plenty of people, forgot to think about their thinking before getting conclusions applying causality to any degree they wanted.
All the knowledge we can get from the world passes throught some steps before being completely in our minds. By the time they are there, plenty of information is already lost, and one thing we allways try to is when creating Concepts to things.
Example to help you understand Concepts.
Let's take a triangle for example. Somewhere in your life, one of your teachers showed you plenty of representations of possible triangles. These representations helped you create in your mind the Concept of triangles. It would be like a set of rules you have to follow to draw or identify a triangle.
Notice that, if someone tells you to imagine a triangle, you'll be taking the Concept in your mind and creating an Idea, a representation of ONE triangle in your head. The concept is general, it can be applied to all triangles you see.
When you see a triangle, an Intuition is created in your mind. This Intruition is used to find the similarity with the triangle's Concept, and thus allowing you to say "its a triangle".
So Concepts are needed for us to reason and take conclusions. Concepts help us creating models, finding analogies. One of these models, prehaps one that we've been following for quite a long time, without thinking of its own validation (deconstructing it) is causality.
Concepts by no means obly "real" to follow it's conclusions. It's an illusion to think that form our Concepts we can imagine something in the world.
To show an example, think of God. God is a Concept, and no matter the image you try to make of him, you'll be creating an Idea of it, as programmers would possibly think, instantiating an object from a class.
Causality is one of these "illusions of metaphysics" (to use Kant's term) men created. When thinking about Concepts, men should realise (as Heidegger said quite a long time after Kant) that these reasonings are bind to exist as Concepts, not in "real".
As Fitche once said: "Spinoza is maybe one of most coherent phylosophers in history, but he forgot to think something: his own thinking." (maybe it's not excatly the good sentence, but it's something really close to this, hehe)
You see how a work of deconstruction of our system of thinking can help us validate the conclusions we're making?
cheers. Uula
This comes from Kant, and to better understand it, you should read on Critic of Pure Reason. A second but great presentation on the subject is on Kant - An introduction to the 3 critics, by Luc Ferry. The third option would be to read this post..
Concepts, Ideas and Intuitions. These 3 things help us explain why Spinoza, and plenty of people, forgot to think about their thinking before getting conclusions applying causality to any degree they wanted.
All the knowledge we can get from the world passes throught some steps before being completely in our minds. By the time they are there, plenty of information is already lost, and one thing we allways try to is when creating Concepts to things.
Example to help you understand Concepts.
Let's take a triangle for example. Somewhere in your life, one of your teachers showed you plenty of representations of possible triangles. These representations helped you create in your mind the Concept of triangles. It would be like a set of rules you have to follow to draw or identify a triangle.
Notice that, if someone tells you to imagine a triangle, you'll be taking the Concept in your mind and creating an Idea, a representation of ONE triangle in your head. The concept is general, it can be applied to all triangles you see.
When you see a triangle, an Intuition is created in your mind. This Intruition is used to find the similarity with the triangle's Concept, and thus allowing you to say "its a triangle".
So Concepts are needed for us to reason and take conclusions. Concepts help us creating models, finding analogies. One of these models, prehaps one that we've been following for quite a long time, without thinking of its own validation (deconstructing it) is causality.
Concepts by no means obly "real" to follow it's conclusions. It's an illusion to think that form our Concepts we can imagine something in the world.
To show an example, think of God. God is a Concept, and no matter the image you try to make of him, you'll be creating an Idea of it, as programmers would possibly think, instantiating an object from a class.
Causality is one of these "illusions of metaphysics" (to use Kant's term) men created. When thinking about Concepts, men should realise (as Heidegger said quite a long time after Kant) that these reasonings are bind to exist as Concepts, not in "real".
As Fitche once said: "Spinoza is maybe one of most coherent phylosophers in history, but he forgot to think something: his own thinking." (maybe it's not excatly the good sentence, but it's something really close to this, hehe)
You see how a work of deconstruction of our system of thinking can help us validate the conclusions we're making?
cheers. Uula
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Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Hey Uula, I like your concept of concept here. But here's a thought:
Your explanation of how concepts are acquired needs to be supplemented, I think, with something like the teacher pointing to the examples and saying, "This is a triangle", and then to another example "This is also a triangle", etc. So the teacher names the triangles, identifies the separate objects as examples of the same thing.
So, at least in this case, it might be that you don't create the concept from many examples, but that you learn from many examples how to use an already-existing concept -- already-existing, that is, in the group mind of the community of language users.
Comment by Uula Limanski
Thinking The World
But in this case someone someday had to create the "concept" in his mind. He defined what is a triangle, and then started to tell others (with cases) what this "concept" was.
But he can't really teach the "concept" directly: he has to create many triangles so that the other gets the "concept" of them. But, as you said, you're not creating the "concept", you're learning it.
So, each concept is created once, then taught to others by the use of cases.
But what do you think about the existance of "concepts" in "real"? I mean, for me "concepts" are things we can only accept existing in our minds, and in "real" we have only "facts"...and this is the base of the argumentation that gets to the point that "cause-effect" are "concepts", and thus bound to be representations of things in our minds..
cheers! Uula
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Well, I don't think you need to have a concept in your mind to use the concept. I mean, you don't need to represent the concept to yourself.
For instance, the average native speaker of English couldn't tell you the rules of English grammar. He follows them without knowing them. And you can be a brilliant tennis player without being a particularly good tennis coach.
Well, I've got a bias against talking about obscure entities. I don't like talking about "propositions", for instance; and I don't like talking about "meanings" and "concepts" if they're supposed to be things that exist in the head.
But if I were asked, "Well, what's a concept then?", I'd want to claim that it's basically the pattern formed by linguistic usage. We take a sound like "triangle", and then we use that sound in various ways. The concept is the sum of the usage.
I had a sense that you were getting at something similar when you spoke of "rules".