[MD] Kant's Motorcycle_Hegal's Moto-cross

[William Robinson]

Conflicting values

According to the original relational dialectic model, there were three core
tensions (opposing values) in any relationship, these were:

*Privacy vs. transparency:* By the sharing of information, a relationship
can grow closer and stronger. However, this need for self-disclosure
conflicts with the need for privacy felt by each individual in the
relationship. When these needs are at odds with one another, a relational
tension is created over how much disclosure is desirable.

*Novelty vs. predictability:* For a relationship to be maintainable there is
a need for structure and stability. At the same time, a relationship in
which nothing out of the ordinary takes place cannot stay dynamic. The
struggle to avoid monotony while maintaining order is the basis for this
tension.

*Independence** vs. consolidation:* All humans have a need for autonomy and
independence. Conversely, they wish to attach themselves to others through
relationships, in which decisions are made on a group level. Tension arises
here when attachment to the group encroaches on the individual members' need
for self-government.

According to the theory, while most of us may embrace the ideals of
closeness, certainty, and openness in our relationships, the communication
is not a straight path towards these goals. Conflicts often produce the
exact opposites (autonomy, novelty, and privacy).
[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_dialectics#_note-Griffin#_note-Griffin>

Later researchers have used other value pairs such as Certainty vs.
Uncertainty, although more orthodox practitioners subsume new pairs under
one of the triumvirate
above.[3]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_dialectics#_note-Sahl#_note-Sahl>



Hegel <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegel>'s dialectic, which he usually
presented in a threefold manner, was vulgarized by Heinrich Moritz
Chalybäus<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Moritz_Chalyb%C3%A4us>as
comprising three dialectical stages of development: a
thesis <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis>, giving rise to its reaction,
an antithesis <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antithesis> which contradicts or
negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means
of a synthesis <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis>. Hegel rarely used
these terms himself: this model is not Hegelian but
Fichtean<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichte>
.

In the *Logic* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_Logic>, for
instance, Hegel describes a dialectic of
existence<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence>:
first, existence must be posited as pure Being (*Sein*); but pure Being,
upon examination, is found to be indistinguishable from Nothing (*Nicht*).
When it is realized that what is coming into being is, at the same time,
also returning to nothing (consider life: old organisms die as new organisms
are created or born), both Being and Nothing are united as Becoming.
[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#_note-1#_note-1>

Karl Marx <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx> and Friedrich
Engels<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels>believed Hegel
was "standing on his head", and endeavored to put him back on
his feet, ridding Hegel's logic of its orientation towards philosophical
idealism <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism>, and conceiving what is now
known as materialist or Marxist dialectics. This is what Marx had to say
about the difference between Hegel's dialectics and his own:

Marx's version: "My dialectic method is not only different from the
Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the
human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of 'the
Idea,' he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of
the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of
'the Idea.' With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the
material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of
thought."

Nevertheless Marx "openly avowed [himself] the pupil of that mighty thinker"
and even "coquetted with modes of expression peculiar to him".

Marx wrote: "The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands, by
no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of
working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on
its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the
rational kernel within the mystical shell."



Marxists view dialectics as a framework for development in which
contradiction plays the central role as the source of development. This is
perhaps best exemplified in Marx's *Capital*, which outlines two of his
central theories: that of the theory of surplus value and the materialist
conception of history. In *Capital*, Marx had the following to say about his
dialectical methodology:

"In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeois-dom and
its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension an
affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time
also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable
breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as
in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not
less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it,
and is in its essence critical and revolutionary."
At the heart of Marxist dialectics is the idea of contradiction, with class
struggle playing the central role in social and political life, although
Marx does identify other historically important contradictions, such as
those between mental and manual labor and town and country. Contradiction is
the key to all other categories and principles of dialectical development:
development by passage of quantitative change into qualitative ones,
interruption of gradualness, leaps, negation of the initial moment of
development and negation of this very negation, and repetition at a higher
level of some of the features and aspects of the original state.

best regards to Wikipedia,
Robbie










On 12/4/06, Ham Priday <hampday1 at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hi Micah --
>
> > Please explain Kant's "noumenal world".
> > The things that are NOT perceived by
> > man, and how he knows of this reality?
>
> Kant's distinguishes 'Ding an sich' [the thing-in-itself] or Noumenon that
> we can not know from 'Erscheinung', the phenomenon that we observe as an
> event or physical manifestation.
>
> In the Transcendental Aesthetic section of the 'Critique', Kant argues
> that
> sensibility is the understanding's means of accessing objects.  The reason
> synthetic a priori judgments are possible in geometry, for example, is
> that
> space is an a priori form of sensibility.  That is, we can know the claims
> of geometry with a priori certainty (which we do) only if experiencing
> objects in space is the necessary mode of our experience.  Without a
> spatial
> representation, our sensations are undifferentiated and we cannot ascribe
> properties to particular objects.  Time is also necessary as a form or
> condition of our intuitions of objects.  The idea of time itself cannot be
> gathered from experience because succession and simultaneity of objects,
> the
> phenomena that would indicate the passage of time, would be impossible to
> represent if we did not already possess the capacity to represent objects
> in
> time.
>
> A very clear presentation of this argument [largely a critique of Hume] is
> accessible at
>
> http://www.london-oratory.org/philosophy/philosophies/epistemology/trancendental/body_trancendental.html
> under the title "Kant's Trancendental Idealism".  (I don't know why the
> word
> "transcendental" is misspelled.)  I've copied the most relevant paragraphs
> below:
>
> "...Hume argued, and Kant accepts, that we cannot empirically derive our
> concepts of causation, substance, self, identity, and so forth.  What Hume
> had failed to see, Kant argues, is that even the possibility of making
> judgments about objects, to which Hume would assent, presupposes the
> possession of these fundamental concepts.  Hume had argued for a sort of
> associationism to explain how we arrive at causal beliefs.  My idea of a
> moving cue ball, becomes associated with my idea of the eight ball that is
> struck and falls into the pocket.  Under the right circumstances, repeated
> impressions of the second following the first produces a belief in me that
> the first causes the second.
>
> "The problem that Kant points out is that a Humean association of ideas
> already presupposes that we can conceive of identical, persistent objects
> that have regular, predictable, causal behavior.  And being able to
> conceive
> of objects in this rich sense presupposes that the mind makes several a
> priori contributions.  I must be able to separate the objects from each
> other in my sensations, and from my sensations of myself.  I must be able
> to
> attribute properties to the objects.  I must be able to conceive of an
> external world with its own course of events that is separate from the
> stream of perceptions in my consciousness.  These components of experience
> cannot be found in experience because they constitute it.  The mind's a
> priori conceptual contribution to experience can be enumerated by a
> special
> set of concepts that make all other empirical concepts and judgments
> possible.  These concepts cannot be experienced directly; they are only
> manifest as the form which particular judgments of objects take.  Kant
> believes that formal logic has already revealed what the fundamental
> categories of thought are.  The special set of concepts is Kant's Table of
> Categories, which are taken mostly from Aristotle with a few revisions:
>
> Of Quantity
> Unity
> Plurality
> Totality
>
> Of Quality
> Reality
> Negation
> Limitation
>
> Of Reality
> Inherence and Subsistence
> Causality and Dependence
> Community
>
> Of Modality
> Possibility-Impossibility
> Existence-Nonexistence
> Necessity-Contingency
>
> "While Kant does not give a formal derivation of it, he believes that this
> is the complete and necessary list of the a priori contributions that the
> understanding brings to its judgments of the world.  Every judgment that
> the
> understanding can make must fall under the table of categories.  And
> subsuming spatiotemporal sensations under the formal structure of the
> categories makes judgments, and ultimately knowledge, of empirical objects
> possible."
>
> I hope this helps you.  It was quite helpful to me.
>
> Regards,
> Ham
>
>
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