In
Chapter 11 Binswanger presents an overview of the history of
philosophy. It is a striking contract of two perspectives on
percepts, concepts, and knowledge. The major characters for one
perspective are Aristotle and Ayn Rand. The major characters for the
other are Plato, Descartes, and Kant.
“The
root of the clash between Aristotle and Plato lies in their opposed
views on a fundamental.”
“Aristotelians
uphold the primacy of perception over conception: perceptual
awareness precedes, and supplies the base for conceptual awareness;
concepts are abstractions from perceptual material.”
“Platonists
assert the opposite position – i.e., the primacy of concepts over
perception. Platonists claim that some or all concepts are grasped by
some unspecifiable, ineffable form of awareness of ”universals”
dwelling in another “higher” reality.”
“Only
extreme Platonists hold that the existence of percepts depends on
concepts. E.g., Kant claims that perception is shaped by “categories
of the intuition,” and in contemporary jargon, perception is
theory-laden.” The result in either case is viewing perception as
distorted, biased, “merely relative to us,” or not of “things
as they are in themselves.”
“The
primacy of perception leads to a wider point: knowledge is
essentially “bottom-up,” not “top-down.” Conceptual knowledge
is acquired by building up from perceptual data.”
A
later section, The Kantian Reversal, critiques the ideas of Immanuel
Kant. “Kant
reversed a crucial distinction, between the what
and the how
– between what one knows and how one knows it. Kant turns the means
of awareness into the only objects
of awareness” (385).
Chapter 11 is the last chapter, so this probably is my last post on How We Know.
Chapter 11 is the last chapter, so this probably is my last post on How We Know.
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