Monday, October 06, 2003
D'Souza's not too bright
(Via John L) Since I had made more than one post on Brights (one, two), I figured I might as well post an opposing point of view. And of all the places for it to come from, it comes from the Wall Street Jounal opinion page in the form of Dinesh D'Souza. D'Souza ridicules Dennett, Dawkins etc by using Kant's enlightenment fallacy.
The Fallacy of the Enlightenment is the glib assumption that there is only one limit to what human beings can know, and that limit is reality itself. In this view, widely held by atheists, agnostics and other self-styled rationalists, human beings can continually find out more and more until eventually there is nothing more to discover. The Enlightenment Fallacy holds that human reason and science can, in principle, unmask the whole of reality.
In his "Critique of Pure Reason," Kant showed that this premise is false. In fact, he argued, there is a much greater limit to what human beings can know. The only way that we apprehend reality is through our five senses. But why should we believe, Kant asked, that our five-mode instrument for apprehending reality is sufficient for capturing all of reality? What makes us think that there is no reality that goes beyond, one that simply cannot be apprehended by our five senses?
Kant persuasively noted that there is no reason whatsoever for us to believe that we can know everything that exists. Indeed what we do know, Kant said, we know only through the refracted filter of our experience.
Kant isn't arguing against the validity of perception or science or reason. He is simply showing their significant limits. These limits cannot be erased by the passage of time or by further investigation and experimentation. Rather, the limits on reason are intrinsic to the kind of beings that humans are, and to the kind of apparatus that we possess for perceiving reality. The implication of Kant's argument is that reality as a whole is, in principle, inaccessible to human beings. Put another way, there is a great deal that human beings simply will never know.
What I am amused by here is D'Souza using Kant's reasoning as the limitless truth, sort of messing up his own argument about limits etc. And how does his argument hold up against agnosticism? For that matter, one can turn Kant's arguments around to argue against religion (especially the absolutist ones) instead.
I have to wonder -- why did the WSJ take 3 months to come up with a counter? Did it take that long for D'Souza to read (and understand) Kant? The more relevant question might be the one that John posed in his e-mail -- whether the WSJ opinion editors feel a need to write a rejoinder to everything the NYT op-ed publishes. :)
The Fallacy of the Enlightenment is the glib assumption that there is only one limit to what human beings can know, and that limit is reality itself. In this view, widely held by atheists, agnostics and other self-styled rationalists, human beings can continually find out more and more until eventually there is nothing more to discover. The Enlightenment Fallacy holds that human reason and science can, in principle, unmask the whole of reality.
In his "Critique of Pure Reason," Kant showed that this premise is false. In fact, he argued, there is a much greater limit to what human beings can know. The only way that we apprehend reality is through our five senses. But why should we believe, Kant asked, that our five-mode instrument for apprehending reality is sufficient for capturing all of reality? What makes us think that there is no reality that goes beyond, one that simply cannot be apprehended by our five senses?
Kant persuasively noted that there is no reason whatsoever for us to believe that we can know everything that exists. Indeed what we do know, Kant said, we know only through the refracted filter of our experience.
Kant isn't arguing against the validity of perception or science or reason. He is simply showing their significant limits. These limits cannot be erased by the passage of time or by further investigation and experimentation. Rather, the limits on reason are intrinsic to the kind of beings that humans are, and to the kind of apparatus that we possess for perceiving reality. The implication of Kant's argument is that reality as a whole is, in principle, inaccessible to human beings. Put another way, there is a great deal that human beings simply will never know.
What I am amused by here is D'Souza using Kant's reasoning as the limitless truth, sort of messing up his own argument about limits etc. And how does his argument hold up against agnosticism? For that matter, one can turn Kant's arguments around to argue against religion (especially the absolutist ones) instead.
I have to wonder -- why did the WSJ take 3 months to come up with a counter? Did it take that long for D'Souza to read (and understand) Kant? The more relevant question might be the one that John posed in his e-mail -- whether the WSJ opinion editors feel a need to write a rejoinder to everything the NYT op-ed publishes. :)
