Re: Best Reason
Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2008 1:57 am
This is somewhat of a tangent, but I thought I'd respond...
- "marxiavelli"
The motivation of philosophy since Socrates has been to specifically not simply be content with how we "actually" see the world but to try to see it for what it really is. If Reid wanted to articulate the various beliefs mechanisms by which these "ordinary perceptions" took place, then I would call him a good proto-psychologist. But whether a good psychologist is the same thing as a good philosopher is another matter. I am aware that there are some schools of philosophy that regard the two as basically the same thing; certainly the early natural language analysts did, and I'm told that there is a great revival of Reid's philosophy at Brown's department for perhaps that very reason.The idea hat it died out in formal philosophy has nothing to do with how we actually look at the world. philosophers understand the world in different terms. Reid was taken to have lost to Hume and we move on from Hume to Kant and then other post Kantians. But in fact Reid did not lose. Hume got more press, Reid actually was right and Hume was wrong. Moreover importantly Reid was concerned with the way people really see things not with formal philosophy.
Sure. And there has been plenty written in the philosophy of phenomenology about using phenomenology to ground instrumental reason and reconizing the perils of the latter when it attains power that no longer makes reference to the "subjective". A good essay on this is Adorno's recognition of the inversion of subjective and objective in Minima Moralia. But anyway, that is quite a different claim then saying that the category of the phenomenon can simply replace the ontic simpliciter. I'm not accusing you of saying that, mind you, but it's a risk I'd rather us both be aware of than not.If you think about it you will see what I mean, "do you feel hot or is it only me?" "did you see that?" we are still taken roll of others to determine if our perceptions are regular, consistent, and shared. The shared part is "inter-subjective" which is a phenomenological category.
- "marxiavelli"