(1) There is an argument that David Hume presents on knowledge based on reason. It is that we can check our empirical knowledge. If we see an object we can get closer and check to see what it feels like and make other tests. But knowledge based on reason what can we check it against? What measuring stick do we have but to check it against other knowledge we also know by reason.
This does not seem to me to be a good argument. We check empirical knowledge against other empirical facts and we weigh degrees of certainty. We check a priori knowledge with other a priori knowledge and we weigh degrees of certainty.
(2) Spinoza thought to prove pantheism based on an axiom that is highly doubtful; that no substance can affect another substance. But he was doing this for a good reason. He wanted to answer the Mind Body problem raised by Descartes. He thought to do this by turning Descartes argument inside out.
(3) In any case both these thinkers had something right about them. It was Kant that was able to create his synthesis between these two schools of thought the rationalists and the empiricists.
(4)
Dr. Michael Huemer makes some powerful arguments against Kant, but I think his arguments are answerable. One question he has is against the very beginning of Kant's argument. That is the question how is a priori synthetic knowledge possible. He follows the intuitionist school to answer this. He says that we can perceive a priori synthetic knowledge by reason. And that is true. But the axioms we start with have to be known in a different way than how we reason from axioms. We know the beginnings of reason or unconditioned reality by immediate non intuitive knowledge. (See
Kelley Ross's web site. )
The truth of my assertion here is actually contained in Kant's initial question. How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible. What Kant has done here is he has already created a third category of knowledge. While Hume thought that all reason can do is to deduce things from definitions and see contradictions in those things, Kant has made a direct attack on this and claimed there is a kind of knowledge that sees things that are not contained in their definitions and not perceived by the senses.
But what Kant wanted was synthetic a priori after you know definitions and some basic ground of knowledge. What Kelley Ross and Michael Huemer what is synthetic a priori to tell us axioms and things before we start to reason about them.
(5) In order to defend Torah I depend on both reason and immediate non intuitive knowledge.
I say moral principles are the basis of Torah and moral principles are known by reason. This much is clear from the Rambam in
The Guide for the Perplexed. But reason itself needs to be based on immediate non intuitive knowledge. [He says natural law which was known by Abraham and later on by the ancient Greeks could not have been known by reason but needed to be revealed.]
The idea here is that there are universals.
Here is a proof that universals exist from Michael Huemer:
Paul Benacerraf originally raised it as a problem about mathematics: since we have no interaction with the number 2--we do not bump into it on the street, and so on--how can we have knowledge of it? I might plead that it is not the moral philosopher's job to answer this. Whether or not there is moral knowledge, there is a priori knowledge of other kinds, so there must be some solution to Benacerraf's problem. Whatever the explanation for a priori knowledge in general is, there is no reason to think it would not work equally well for moral knowledge.
'Universals' are abstract things (features, relationships, types) that two or more particular things or groups can have in common. For instance, yellow is a universal. It is something that lemons, the sun, and school buses, among other things, all have in common. Yellow is 'abstract' in the sense that it is not a particular object with a particular location; you will not bump into yellow, just sitting there by itself, on the street. Nevertheless, yellow certainly exists. Here is an argument for that:
1.
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The following statement is true:
(Y) Yellow is a color.
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2.
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The truth of (Y) requires that yellow exist.
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3.
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Therefore, yellow exists.(53)
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Comment: Suppose I say, 'The King of Colorado is fluffy'. Since there is no king of Colorado, some would say the sentence is false; others would say it is neither true nor false. But no one thinks it would be true. Sentence (Y) is of the same form, so it can be true only if 'yellow' refers to something--that is, only if yellow exists.
Some philosophers (the 'nominalists') say that the only thing multiple particulars have in common is that we apply the same word or idea to them.(54) Here is an argument against that:
4.
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Yellow is a color, and lemons have it.
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5.
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No word or idea is a color, nor do lemons 'have' words or ideas.
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6.
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Therefore, yellow is not a word or an idea.
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And moral principles are a priori universals --that is not known by observation.
A proof of this from Michael Huemer:
(1) Moral principles are not observations. The content of every observation is descriptive.
That is, you do not literally see, touch, hear, etc. moral value.
(2) Moral principles can not be inferred from descriptive premises. This principle is just an instance of the general fact that you cannot derive a conclusion within one subject matter from premises in a different subject matter. Just as you cannot expect to derive a geometrical conclusion from premises in economics, or derive a conclusion about birds from premises that don't say anything about birds, you should not expect to derive a conclusion about morality from non-moral premises.
Moral objectivism (like objectivism in general) seems to be entailed by the law of excluded middle and the correspondence theory of truth, along with a couple of what seem equally obvious observations about morality:
(1) There are moral propositions.
(2) So they are each either true or false. (by law of excluded middle) (3) And it's not that they're all false. Surely it is true, rather than false, that Josef Stalin's activities were bad. (Although some communists would disagree, we needn't take their view seriously, and moreover, even they would admit some moral judgement, such as, "Stalin was good.")
(4) So some moral judgements correspond to reality. (from 2,3, and the correspondence theory of truth)
(5) So moral values are part of reality. (which is objectivism)
How do we know moral principles? One can ask how can we know anything?
For if we know some particular thing, then there are only three possibilities as regards its justification:
(a) it is infinitely regressive. That is, there is a reason for it, and a reason for the reason, and then a reason for that, and so on indefinitely.
(b) it is circular. That is, it is based on some chain of reasoning in which something ultimately is supposed to (directly or indirectly) justify itself.
(c) it is foundational. That is, the item of knowledge itself is, or is based upon, a fact that is known directly and without any argument or reason given.
Imagine an argument with person that thinks every piece of knowledge
requires proof.
\
Me: I know that it's wrong to torture people just for the fun of it.
Skeptic: What's your reason for thinking that?
Me: Isn't it self-evident? Why do I need a reason?
Skeptic: Because if you don't have one, then it's just an arbitrary claim.
Me: How do you know that?
Skeptic: Why, that's self-evident.
(6) The way to understand immediate non intuitive knowledge is this. The best place to start is with the Sidur (prayerbook) of the Gra (Elisha ben Shelomo the Gaon from Vilnius). In one comment on the hagadah on ברוך המקום ברוך הוא there the Gra explains everything has a hidden aspect and a revealed aspect. כל דבר יש לו נגלה ונסתר
That means when we see a sidur we see get information about that object. We we then feel it we get more information about it. The more senses we use we get more information. We might open it and read it and get even more information. But we are only getting information about the object. But what is the object we still know nothing. Lots of people knows lots of information about you. But no one knows who you really are inside.
The dinge an sich. The thing i itself. What is it that tells us there is some difference between what we sense about an apple and the apple in itself?
If you were to remove from the apple its redness and roundness, sweetness and hardness, coldness and smoothness, would there be any apple left? Yes. The thing in itself.
How we know unconditioned realities is different than how we process information based on senses or reasonable deductions.
(7) The Torah is holistic. It encompasses all of human life. Religious and political and interpersonal. But it considers all its laws to be from One Divine source. It makes no distinctions between laws that are between man and fellow and man and laws between man and God.
That is it avoids the common mistake that religious people make. They get all excited about serving God and therefore emphasis commandments that are between God and Man thinking that that is the source of meaning and value. The Torah could not be more explicit that this is a mistake. The holy and numinous aspect of the Torah, its unconditioned reality, is both for commandments that are between man and his fellow man and between man and God.
(8) The practical way to keep Torah is by learning Torah in an authentic Lithuanian Yeshiva and to avoid cults like the Black Plague. Since the religious world has become infested with cults that means in effect that one can't pray in a religious Synagogue. In fact, even some authentic yeshivas are borderline cults. But at least they are teaching authentic Torah--so they are OK to learn in and pray in. I would not go anywhere near an religious synagogue because I think they are dens of the Sitra Achra (Dark Side) and I fear for my life and soul.
