There was a group of people in Rome that were religious followers of Plato. They followed Plato and learned him religiously just like we learn Gemara {Talmud.} They sat in the Beit Midrash all day and learned his writings. The Rosh Yeshiva gave  a shiur klali [class for the whole yeshiva]every week and every day there were classes in Plato. One practice was someone would give a seminar. That is for young married men they would give something that would approach a regular class of a Rosh yeshiva but on a slightly lower level.

The unique thing about this place that I find fascinating is the efforts of the Rosh yeshiva to consider Aristotle as a commentary of Plato and not as an adversary.
There was no denying that Aristotle disagreed with Plato on important points but still they sought insights into Plato by means of Aristotle.

What became of this? It became the pillar of all Western Thought. The Neo Platonic school of thought became the basis of Saadia Gaon, the Rambam (Maimonides), Crescas, Hegel, the Ari (Arizal, Isaac Luria), Augustine, Ibn Gavirol.

The reason I bring this up is that I think people have made too much of  a big deal out of the arguments between Kant and Hegel. Way too much. What I see is a kind of learning of Kant that would use insights of Hegel to understand Kant much like the Neo Platonic, Plotinus, used Aristotle as a commentary of Plato.

I mention this because I have been troubled for a long time about what you would call intellectual intuition. This I think is at least one major difference between Kant and Hegel. And On this issue I definitely go with Kant. But I can not see why that would cancel the insights of Hegel.

I admit i am nervous about saying this because of my lack of  knowledge. Still I see this as a promising approach.

Meta-magical thinking and schizoid personality disorders.

Meta Magical thinking is something I have seen a lot of in the world of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on.
The leaders of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on almost certainly have schizo-typal personality disorders as do many of their followers. People have been able to discern the line between normal thinking, schizo-typal thinking and downright schizophrenia.

So the obvious question is what happens when there are real objective phenomena that seem to be above the natural order?

The awareness that there is spiritual thinking that is downright sick is a strong part of the Lithuanian yeshiva experience, and any slight suggestion of this kind of thinking is rigorously excluded.
They are very well aware that there are people that are very religious, but not from a healthy standpoint.

It would be helpful to have a useful measure of such things.

The problem is that this kind of thinking is sanctioned and when people are not outright schizophrenic and have some control they can direct  their thinking in socially accepted direction and become the holy man of the community.

The problem that I see is that hanging out with sick people can make one sick --even if he starts out as perfectly normal and healthy.  Furthermore following a sick person can make a whole community sick. These are the basic problems I see here.

I know this group likes to think of themselves as super Jews, beyond reproach. It is sad that the truth is just the opposite and the numbers of broken lives and broken homes they leave behind is horrific.
So I would say to be careful to adhere to what the Gra said in all subjects, and especially in this.

Meta-magical thinking and schizoid personality disorders.

Meta Magical thinking is something I have seen a lot of in the world of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on.
The leaders of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on almost certainly have schizo typal personality disorders as do many of their followers. People have been able to discern the line between normal thinking, schizo typal thinking and downright schizophrenia.

So the obvious question is what happens when there are real objective phenomena that seem to be above the natural order?

The awareness that there is spiritual thinking that is downright sick is a strong part of the Lithuanian yeshiva experience. and any slight suggestion of this kind of thinking is rigorously excluded.
They are very well aware that there are people that are very religious, but not from a healthy standpoint.

It would be helpful to have a useful measure of such things.

The problem is that this kind of thinking is sanctioned and when people are not outright schizophrenic and have some control they can direct  their thinking in socially accepted direction and become the holy man of the community.

The problem that I see is that hanging out with sick people can make one sick --even if he starts out as perfectly normal and healthy.  Furthermore following a sick person can make a whole community sick. These are the basic problems I see here.

Hegel is like Aristotle

What Kelley Ross does is he has discrete steps in the a priori. That is not a continuum. That is one thing will be contingent to some higher a priori, but necessary for a lower level.

But within one area of value, he will have continuous values.

This again seem to me to  go along with Hegel. Hegel does not want any universal to be contingent. But to him there is certainly a hierarchy of universals.

In other words though Hegel is like Aristotle in many ways, still in this one area he diverges. With Aristotle the universal is definitely dependent on the particular. Hegel does not want that. He wants the universal to contain the particular. Hegel calls the universal an independent immediacy. [Shorter Logic pg 159.]

Social revolutionary.

Social revolutionary asked on my comment on his blog:

"I think it would be extremely helpful and revolutionary if we could determine where in the continuum one gives way to the other. Or is there no continuum?"


I did not mention it in my answer to him but I think he is  dealing with the issues brought up by Frege and later on people. That is a good deal of 20th century philosophy tried to deny the existence of the a priori. They tried to use Frege for that. But I do not know. I think Michael Huemer also gives a great account of lots of levels of a priori knowledge.
I am reluctant to go further than this because I am kind of on thin ice. I perceive some connection between Kant and Hegel which would be great as far as Shalom Sharabi and Isaac Luria are concerned. But I am afraid to go too far with this. [What I mean is my level in philosophy has not gone much further than what I learned in high school. People like Kelley Ross and Michael Huemer have done a lot of great thinking about these things.

 

Reason perceives universals--not prime substance. The idea of dinge an sich

 "The thing in itself." And that is a concept that is hard to grasp in all its glory. It refers to both a priori and empirical knowledge. The best treatments of this are from Schopenhauer and Dr Kelley Ross. 

The way I see it is that Aristotle is not that far away from this concept with Prime matter being something that reason can not perceive.That is: not only do we have Plato showing there is a an aspect of reality hidden from reason but I think we have to include Aristotle in this also. For the simple reason that Reason perceives universals--not prime substance. The Gra hints to this also in his statement on the Hagada that everything has an open aspect and a hidden aspect. 


Kant's original idea is modest: "It is easily seen that this object must be thought only as something in general = x, since outside our knowledge we have nothing which we could set over against this knowledge as corresponding to it...."[Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason translated by Norman Kemp Smith, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1965, p. 134. 

Unbelievably simple. 

But this goes further. We can check empirical knowledge. The way  Kant would  put it is: "We have something to set against it". That is we have a measuring stick. A Priori knowledge has no such measuring stick for its first axioms. Thus, "How do we know synthetic a priori?"
The "Obligations of the Heart" [The first Musar book by Ibn Pakuda] (What a name! Pakuda means an "order," or a "command") says it is by prophecy. That is all advances in knowledge are not by reason but by revelation. 
The Rambam also mentions this in the Guide concerning moral knowledge. 
Schopenhauer always refers to the "Ding An Sich" [the thing in itself] not the plural like Kant's dinge an sich things in themselves. And that brings us to the First Cause and also to the sub levels of  contingency.


So then as Dr Ross puts it we do not think a bathtub full of computer chips can do any commutations.The Structures have to be already there for the mind to perceive anything.

The way this works are by Stephen Gould, Sapolsky, and by a recent essay I saw on a nice blog.
That is structures that stick out to perceive more  than what they were designed for, {Stephen Gould}.
Neural networks and chaos. {Sapolsky}. Quantum jumping.  [by "An Unmarried Man".] Dr Hoffman

The way to understand this the way I usually do is by the idea of plane of existence But a more fruitful approach could be through מרחב כיסוי the covering manifold.

That is p: C to X.  That is "p" is a map from the covering manifold to the base manifold. And p^-1 maps in the opposite direction up to your C [cover]. And every point in your base {"X"} has an open area surrounding it, i.e. "U". And every curve in X that can be mapped to curves in upper manifolds U sub Alpha.  All this means is you have lots of covering spaces over one manifold. That tomy way of thinking means lots of things in planes of existence that  when they get "down here" become existing things.


[I mean this as metaphysics. Not as a biological process. But who knows?]

Anyway the place where Hegel comes into this is in the hierarchy of his triads which really are stages of unconditioned reality becoming reality.
You need Hegel because of this fellow The Maverick Philosopher that prime matter is not up to the job.

The song at the end of the Passover hagada "One Goat."

I think that חד גדיא (one goat) is a very important lesson about במדה שאדם מודד בה מודדים לו which comes from a Gemara. That is: What one dishes out to others always comes back a full circle. [Lit. "The measure one measures out to others is the same measure that will be measures out to him from heaven."] 

I have seen this countless of times myself. And I am always shocked when I see people doing evil to others and I wonder to myself why do they not realize that what goes around comes around.

But that is just how I have understood that Piut [song]myself. I think that is clearly what it is saying. 


I should mention that I am not immune to the process of מדה כנגד מדה. [what one gives is what one gets,] Thus I see everything that has gone wrong in my own life as a direct result of my own sins. This comes from a statement in the Talmud. אין יסורים בלי עוון. (There is no suffering without sin.) Now you could ask on that from Job. But still I am just saying how I see things myself based on my experiences in a Musar Yeshiva in NY. That is I try to see what faults there are in me when things do not go my way. This approach I am very happy that I gained in yeshiva. Because I have seen lots of people when things do not go their way their first reaction is to blame others and almost never look into themselves.

I imagine that if I had not learned this in yeshiva from where could I have learned it? Thus I am grateful to God that I spent some important years in an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva. Whether I learned well or not is not the issue. Rather what is important is some amazing lessons in having the right attitude that I gained there.