the pencil reads

Hegel: A Very Short Introduction
By Peter Singer

Borrowed this book to carry on where my reading in philosophy left off – at Kant. When I read Kant, I was impressed by his argument that what we know is always subject to the construct of time, space and substance, and therefore it is not possible to know reality independently of our sensory and organising framework. In this way, independent reality, or the world of the `thing-in-itself’, is forever beyond our knowledge.

One application of Kant’s philosophy is the refutation of the watchmaker’s theory for the existence of God. This is the logic of the watchmaker’s proof of God:

1. You pick up a watch on the pavement.
2. Because of the intricacies of design and workmanship, you know that the watch has a watchmaker.
3. You look at the intricacies of the world we live in.
4. You conclude by saying the world has to have a maker too.

Kant refutes this theory because while the watchmaker’s logic makes sense for a watch you pick up on the pavement, you cannot extend it to the creation of the world because that is beyond the framework of time, space and substance. It is simply unknowable as all our knowledge, our observations of the laws of nature, our experience, etc. only pertains to what we can perceive. There is no way to know anything independent of our perception.

Hegel tackles this in Phenomenology of Mind which is a search for `absolute knowledge’. This is his line of reasoning.

1. An enquiry into knowing is immediately beset by doubts – does the instrument used to grasp reality distort reality? Take for example the way modern physicists find it impossible to observe the speed and location of subatomic particles because the act of observation interferes with them.
2. One way to discover the true nature of reality is to subtract the distortion. For example, if you know the law of refraction you will be able to calculate the angle of a stick by observing the bent state in water.
3. However, Hegel says knowledge is not like seeing. It cannot be subtracted from. Without knowledge, we would not know the stick at all. If we were to subtract, we would know nothing at all.
4. Should we embrace the sceptical notion then that there is nothing we can truly know? But that in itself is self-refuting. If we are to doubt everything, why not doubt the claim that we can know nothing? Our scepticism also has its own presuppositions, such as there is such a thing as reality, and that knowledge is some kind of instrument by which we grasp reality.
5. Therefore, we ought to plunge boldly into the stream of consciousness that is the starting point of all that we know.

We ought, says Kant, to become acquainted with the instrument, before we undertake the work for which it is to be employed; for if the instrument be insufficient, all our trouble will be spent in vain… But the examination of knowledge can only be carried out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called instrument is the same thing as to know it. But to seek to know before we know is as absurd as the wise resolution of Scholasticus, not to venture into the water until he had learned to swim.


And so Hegel refuted Kant.

Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2005 at 9:29 AM. :)