Monday, November 11, 2019

Parallelism and the Limits of Knowledge

The awakening of him by Hume from "dogmatic slumber" begins with Kant's acceptance of having a sensory basis as a necessary condition of Knowledge.  It continues with his additional necessary condition of having an organization the only source of which is the mental structures that process sensory input.  Now, it is unclear if Spinoza is among those to whom "dogmatic" is a reference.  But if so, it would be an erroneous charge.  For, according to Spinoza, Mind and Body are correlating Parallels.  Hence, Knowledge is not only constrained by the limits of the senses, but of the sense-organs.  Furthermore, the correlation pertains to not only Knowledge, but to Action.  Hence, the functioning of the sense-organs is constrained by their role in organic action, e. g. eye-hand coordination, as is, therefore, sense-information, and, accordingly, Knowledge.  So, his criteria for Knowledge are perhaps even better grounded and more rigorous than those of Kant or Hume, neither of whom is therefore qualified to classify him as 'dogmatic', especially someone whose system depends on the existence of a supernatural realm.

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