Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

[speed]

Kant accepted without reservation that “God, freedom and immortality,” exist but feared that, if science were relevant to their existence at all, it would provide reasons to doubt that they exist. As he saw it and very fortunately, science cannot touch these questions. “I have found it necessary to deny knowledge, … in order to make room for faith.”


Discuss...

 

[Norsemaiden]

I really do agree that one must deny knowledge in order to have faith. Faithful people who are not hypocrits know this and are not afraid to admit it. There are many people who don't realise that they have a faith (because it is not a religion) however. A faith can simply be clinging to any particular conviction regardless of the evidence that one is wrong. It is human nature that we tend to do this. It would take a huge effort not to.

In many respects having a deluded belief in something is genetically programmed into us for survival. I'm especially thinking of the "vain brain" characteristic, where we have an overinflated view of ourselves and our competence. This has been shown to be almost universal, and that the exceptions to the rule suffer from depression - hence this being an important adaptation to survival.

That people have this sort of faith may seem harmless, yet it prevents people from correctly assessing their competence at tasks that can cost lives if incorrectly or recklessly carried out. Faith generally seems to benefit individuals psychologically, even helping them to be cured of disease, yet the effects of a person (or group of people's) faith on circumstances outside of their mind are almost always negative, sometimes deadly, as the above example shows. Many wars have been caused by the clashing of faiths, sometimes religious, sometimes ideological.

Faith is an enemy of science, which requires as inquiring and open a mind as possible.

Many people argue that their faith is based on knowledge, and that evidence supports their view. In the case of religious people, this seems to be a sign of weakness of faith. If one knows something to be true because of the validity of evidence supporting it, then there is no need for faith. Knowledge is not faith, it comes from rational consideration of evidence and it is something that can change should new evidence challenge it. Some people's "knowledge" is not open to change in this way, but that only shows that what they call "knowledge" is really faith.

Some people say "faith does not have to mean 'blind faith'" - I beg to differ. There may be a small amount of evidence considered before arriving at a faith, but it must shut off (be "blind" to) other evidence, otherwise how could it be faith at all?

 

[Mikobass]

Just want to mention that I totally agree with Norsemaiden on this!! Now if I could articulate my thoughts half as well I'd be an happy guy!! ;-)

 

[Norsemaiden]

Thanks! It all comes, I suppose, from having a dad who has always argued with everything I ever said. Infuriating, but maybe it had a good effect too.

 

[speed]

Well, let me offer my point, that Kant was probably mostly wrong, and Hume was mostly right. Kant of course, came up with this idea in response to the convincing rationality of Hume (as well as Hume's rejection of causuality--and thus, of free will and determinism). But did he throw western civ back a few hundred years by taking us off course?(by opening the door to faith, and every other illoigical conclusion: from Nazism to Will-power, to supermen, to dialectical imperatives) Most German philosophers after Kant, borrowed from his tradition. What if we still followed a strictly rational view of thinking for the last 200 years?

 

[Norsemaiden]

The Superman idea doesn't seem irrational to me. I see the Superman as a result of a eugenic attempt to upgrade humanity to a higher form. Man would be overcome, to use the Nietzschean term. As Nietzsche also said, it would be people who recognised they have the qualities that make them "the path to the Superman" breeding together and "choosing themselves out" from the rest of humanity, that would bring this about.

This raises objections about whether people ever would choose themselves out as a group like that and the fact that they could not expect all their children to even be as intelligent or healthy as they were. But why is the idea irrational?

It seems likely to have a real chance of happening because nature causes branches of evolution to split from populations and for some groups to have strategies that allow their type to proliferate and be successful, while other types fail and go extinct. For example, since the advent of reliable contraception, certain types of people have chosen either not to reproduce or to have fewer children than would previously have been the case. These decisions (to some extent) will involve a genetic element of determination. Some people will shun contraception (not just because of religion) but because they wish to have large families or because they are too stupid to use it. The next generation will then contain more people who think this way than the previous one. The ones that are too stupid to understand contraception would form a different group from the ones that had chosen to have children, as they would tend to not socialise with eachother.

I don't need to spell it out so I'll spare you all that! The point is that this is just one of many evolutionary splits going on in our population right now, and eventually these splits become more distinct.

Is that rationality or is it faith?

 

[dargormudshark]

Is that rationality or is it faith?

Rationality, you are making a hypothethis based on human nature.

 

[ARC150]

Faith, IMHO, is typically viewed as a belief that persists despite knowledge to the contrary.

A better understanding of Kant's statement may come from defining Faith as Knowledge that exists despite a lack of reasoning to support it.

Long before theorems and axioms are proven as laws, people belive their truth despite the inability to prove them. By extension, if we are only to believe that which we can presently substantiate by that which is known, we limit ourselves with regard to that which can possibly be known.

I think Kant is reminding us that we may know more than we can explain - and asks us to not limit our vision.

/speed: I think your acknowledgement of Kant's ideas being a response to Hume is valid, but I have decided to side-step it for the moment because that gets into a social aspect of thought that this thread has not yet reached.