History of Philosophy II

How do you know what is real? That ended up (as I recall) the quiz question for today. We started by reviewing Hume's argument concerning the persistent self. I tied this in to what my one colleague says makes him suspicious - and that is contemporary insights into quantum mechanical physics - I mentioned Stuart Hameroff earlier last week (isn't this worth exploring?) Remember too that Thomas Metzinger discusses this in Being No One and Doug Hoffstadter does a similar thing in his I am a Strange Loop - so Hume's puzzle is still very much with us. I also posed his question concerning metaphysics - is metaphysics possible? I used the analogy of arguing over whether Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter would beat the other in a fight. Essentially, Hume says Metaphysics is such a complete waste of time. Arguments between different metaphysical theories amount to the same sort of game. So, apart from the value of studying the history of metaphysics to understand historical behaviors of those influenced by them, including the art, literature, and so on, is there a value to doing metaphysics if those questions can never really be resolved? (Notice Cornel West's book The American Evasion of Philosophy) Notice even Hume's challenge does not make senses unless you are familiar with the history that led to it's being a philosophical position about philosophy! But then we explore the answer posed by Kant - Did Kant Answer Hume? My answer is yes. So I resorted to the board to place Phenomena in the center, the Ego to the left, and The Thing in Itself on the right, with God on top. The noumenal and phenomena - how does Kant use these to answer Hume? He agrees with Hume but attempts to Transcend the dilemma with a method - the Transcendental Method - which allows us to conclude that those things required for phenomena to be experienced must be there for the experience to occur at all. At this point we ran out of time - so the quiz question was left as the thoughtful issue until Monday.