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12.12.21

Robert Hanna wants to get back to Kant and to me that makes some sense.

 Robert Hanna wants to get back to Kant and to me that makes some sense. Except that it leaves the problem that I think Kant Kant's argument about against Berkley does not seem to work. The reason is the step of the difference between dreams which are not rule based and the categories which are the rules by which the mind processes data. But this step seems weak. The rules are themselves synthetic a priori. --the very things Kant is setting out to prove. 

Now you could ignore Kant and go like Michael Huemer, but that seems to be a sort of quietism [things are the way they are because that is how they are.] Huemer is based on the Intuitionists [Prichard, Ross, G.E. Moore] but also on the insight of Bryan Caplan who noticed that Hume never proved a very basic point that all philosophers after him assumed to be true. [The pure reason can only tell us what is implied in definitions.] {A idea based on Euclid's Geometry. You start with the axioms and go from there.

I have long thought that Hegel is away to get around the problem in Kant that in similar to Huemer in this: why place arbitrary constraints on Reason?  

There is also Kelley Ross's idea that the categories of Kant [Why When where how--space time causality etc.] are known not by reason nor by sense perception, rather immediate non intuitive knowledge.

(At least that is what I think Dr. Ross is saying. Lack of time and energy has caused the sad fact that I have not read the actual writings of Leonard Nelson. But from what I understand, he uses the idea of non intuitive immediate knowledge to justify the categories.[That is to say they are not based on reason nor the senses.]

[If it is not clear my own view let me just say I see there are three different schools of thought, Kant Hegel and the Intuitionists that each has some aspect of truth and I think they are all pointing in the same direction and I think some kind of synthesis ought to be possible to combine them.


Dr. Huemer is modifying the Intuitionists [GE Moore, Prichard. Ross] in a way that takes account of some odd fact that Hume never proved his point about that reason can only tell us about contradictions. In that way the point of Berkley seems not even to start. So one question that Kant was addressing in the CPR does not even start. However this does not seem to answer the questions exactly.  For I still think that Kant and Hegel were addressing real concerns. Even Thomas Reid saw that Berkley had a point.