Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Objectivity and Virtuality

As has been previously discussed, Kant's representation of Descartes' Certainty-Doubtable distinction as one of Objective vs. Subjective exposes Descartes' confusion between 'If I think, then I exist' and 'I exist'.  But this confusion extends far beyond Descartes' Method for proving the latter.  To begin with, it is the same confusion that, according to Kant, is ingredient in all the Medieval proofs of 'the existence of God'.  Hence, it also afflicts Descartes' versions of those proofs, which are independent of his Skepticism.  Now, the source of that affliction is a broader problem that originates in what has been previously dubbed here as 'Virtual Philosophy'--the scope of which is the contents of a book that have been abstracted from the concrete writing of the book, often inhabited by an Avatar, in the contemporary sense of the term, of the author.  Thus, for example, Descartes proves only the Virtual existences of his Avatar and the deity of his Avatar, just as Hume reduces his Avatar to a Bundle of Perceptions.  Now, the Objective-Subjective distinction is the basis for Kant of not only his Necessary vs. Contingent contrast that is vital to his concept of Causality in the 1st Critique, but to his Law vs. Maxim and Determinate Judgment vs. Reflective Judgment distinctions that are cardinal in the 2nd and 3rd Critiques, respectively.  Nevertheless, he does not go so far as to extend the contrast to Objective vs. Virtual, i. e. to his acts writing his books vs. their contents, in which all his distinctions are merely Virtual.  Accordingly, he does not consider that his criticisms of Descartes and Hume are themselves merely Virtual, the equivalent of dreaming that one has woken up.  The metaphor is more than casual--given Kant's "Hume woke me from my dogmatic slumber", observation, though he seems to not further consider that there can also be skeptical slumber.

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