In the unending conflict between metaphysics and science, what is obvious is often obscured by obtrusive arguments that amount to tortuous reasoning with little Light. Truth is elusive because of a lack of boundary demarcation and what constitutes pure science (and natural science) is often predicated on the mathematically possible and the empirically valid. The result of this boundary obfuscation is that some non-linear or ‘synthetically’ and materially coherent thoughts of different form matter are considered untruths. According to Kant, others such as Wolff and Baumgarten have sought the proof of sufficient proof therein in the principle of contradiction (Kant 1976:22). Yet the development of science is the manifestation of the internal components of Light rather than the outward revelation of light. Light is important but what gives Light is in light, which is light enabling and because it is light enabling is light in essence.
A two track approach to understanding Science is yet necessary in order to truly comprehend metaphysics, particularly on the issue of ‘a priori’ judgment. By ‘a priori’ is meant, knowledge that is based on reason, independently of experience’ (Feinberg et al.: 2008:715).David Hume elevated metaphysics to an unprecedented height before judging it unscientific. Kant thereafter resurrected the study with his work on ‘synthetic a priori’ judgment (1950). The general disadvantage to knowledge acquisition is that subject understanding is hampered to the degree that the beneficiary disciplines of truth stand alone. Medical advances are limited to existing methodology until present pure and/or natural science sheds light onto a grey area (Schaffner: 1980). In the recurring question by Zucker (1996) as to whether Medicine can be a science, attention is drawn to the benefit to science of identifying, organizing, and inter-relating all the factors that are now medically intuited (1996:243).
Kant is clear in the role of sense and the senses in the insensible world; but ascribes to the mind, ‘certain intellectual concepts’, such as cause, substance which permit us knowledge of things as they are. The lack of causal determinism is the basis for the repudiation of metaphysics as accepted science by some. Metaphysics did not have a chance especially since David Hume (Hume,1998) once described even the much celebrated cause-effect concept as unscientific; prompting Kant to come to the aid of science with his ‘synthetic a priori judgment’- largely governed by understanding through experience. Today, cause-effect proposition is the staple of natural science and governs acceptable discoveries. In differentiating between analytical and synthetical judgments, Kant explains that the statement; ‘All bodies are extended’ is analytical, but ‘All bodies have weight’ is synthetical because of the predicate in the second statement which gives additional experiential information (1976, 12). But the question really is what does it matter? And if it does, what is the form of the matter? Is it non-body matter invisible or bodily matter visible to the senses?
Kant once said that he once denied knowledge in order to ‘awaken faith’. Yet it is this simple statement that speaks volume of the limitations of not just the elder philosopher but the creative scientist because it stops the search for truth in its tracks. Is a spoken word as weight quantifiable, scalarly and/or vectorially? Does a spoken word carry the same weight when uttered by a General, Sergeant or private? Does the context matter? Here we make the distinction in the form of matter with careful emphasis on the form and ‘materiality’ of the spoken word. In a sense Kant has suggested that truth cannot prove itself or inference truth has not light enough to shed on knowledge at least to the senses or the empirically sensible world. Kant claims: “all properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance” (Ibid, 37).
Kant’s argument is that recognizable metaphysics has to be intuitively deducible by reason and understood by experience. I argue that intuitive reason can be established by essence and essential purpose. A person can experience personhood singularly or wholly as teacher or researcher, student and writer; but the essence is all of these and more in impact, effect and power. The essence is innately all because it is the life or being.
In the prolegomena, Kant set out to resolve the issue-an attempt to establish what he called ‘immanent’ metaphysics. Mindful of the principle inherent in contradiction and the validity of truth as such; Kant concurred with Leibniz (truth of reason), Hume (relation of Ideas) as to logical truths ‘a priori’ proposition that universal truth can be explained by the law of contradiction. Kant called this ‘analytical proposition’ because they depend on the examination of subject concept. There are of course truths that have to be learned from experience (a posteriori).These are synthetic propositions. This is undeniable contribution to the search for the hegemony of truth. Kant’s methodology rests on the pure and natural science because they do not describe things as they are but as they appear to our senses and also because our representations are necessarily organized through ‘association of ideas’ giving rise to judgments of perception’ (1976: XVi).
The science that Kant seeks in metaphysics is the idea that truth is logically intuitively consistent in the scientific concept that ‘a causes b’ because the concept is experientially verifiable. Quite simply, because the concept is alive to the senses, it is empirically verifiable. The essentialist posits the question that if ‘a’ is thought to be responsible for ‘b’; the matter is still unsettled. What, for example in ‘a’ is wholly or partly responsible for ‘b’. Thus cause-effect is not linearly recognized by the essentialist (as it is by Kantians) unless by an enabling intermediary. If ‘a’ + ‘b’= ‘C’, ‘b’ may or may not be what brings about ‘c’, because elements of ‘a’ may have enabled ‘b’. Here value is judged in addition to quantity. One way to measure cause is to remove ‘b’ and ‘a priori a’ becomes probably true but causally more difficult to interpret. Another way is to reflect ‘a’ as other in the same way as light is reflected as heat and then look for effects. Inherent in this argument is that ‘a’ makes sense because there is a “before a” or ‘about a’ which itself is wholly or partially unknown to the visible senses except for essence. The essentialist will rightly assert that a research field such as medicine labors shorthanded in its discoveries using the present limited cause-effect methodology. The essence is more than appearance. It is Value and thus valuable..
There is bodily discomfort as a result of internal conflict. But most conflicts are not immediately manifest (Abraham in Settled identity, 2013).Some cancer patients discover their conditions accidentally. Meaning is given by experience, but is not necessarily the cause of the experience. Let us depend on another example for clarity: We wish not to unduly task the beer drinker with unsolicited exertion. Let us say; ‘Beer drinking is good (or bad)’. And Beer can consist of wheat or corn and water and alcohol. The essentialist view cannot separate beer drinking from the result. Supposing that; the beer drinker claims to drive better with help of beer (a complete improbability). Essentially beer drinking is helpful in this regard. Say the claimant fights always when he or she drinks beer. Then drinking beer is unhelpful especially if our subject loses the fights. Kant would reject the truth of the statement on the basis of experience. The essentialist will look for the alcohol in the beer as the enabler of good or bad result thus adding more knowledge or light to the result of the experienced proposition. As a general proposition, what does the word or name ‘beer’ mean or connote to the corn or wheat farmer, the merry maker, the brewer and even the Law?
The same is true of religion. If the unity of ideas is organized under a belief system; reason dictates that a growing falling away from faith will necessitate an instability or conflict. Similarly, a coming into being with one would be measurable or at least visible even by Kantian notion of synthetic a priori. But the experience will be more meaningful with an intermediate or reflective causal pre-determinative agency that essentially measures a shift in norm; like a shift in thinking (Reisberg, 2010). Thus conceptually, the thought will precede the action(s). Belief functionally becomes reason plus experience plus trust. This trust in the yet unclaimed knowledge is the error factor in science. A delay in reason invites full knowledge of a proposition. The thought process as form matter is different from visible matter, which often in medicine is not helpful. But “acquiring nature’s evidence demands not only acute powers of observation but also a lively imagination and, increasingly sophisticated experimental techniques’ (Hatton and Plouffe, 1997:VII).
The human body consists of cells that are constantly been mapped out. The knowledge of the reflector nature of the cells is as equally important as a priori cell constitution before multiplication. A priori and reflective knowledge of cell condition is useful for the understanding of cell degradation as well as cell cluster organization. Understanding of cell interaction is also helpful to knowledge of cell. Analogously, light is known in effect but its a priori being is understood from its make up depending on the extent of knowledge. What constitute Light might be known because of darkness, but is even better understood because of the condition of its being and the cause and the elements of its being. The meaning of Light is found not just in the experience of Light but in the experience of its opposition to darkness, its brilliance and reflective character, intensity and amplification. But its essence is all powerful.
There is thus meaning in meaning (Davidson, 2007) but the concept is more than meaning in much the same way as the object is more than its presence or effect. The name of an object is encompasses a descriptive totality. But even the name is individuated-essentially specific distinct from any other. The essence is what gives life, meaning and purpose to an object or concept. Understanding of a subject such as metaphysics is a matter of boundary recognition. Critical interaction at the boundary is sometimes difficult to discern, but difference on either side of boundary enables recognition by contradiction.
It is contingent identification only because the boundaries are unclear. Knowledge of the resonant character of an essence (material concept, form or idea) brings reason and experience into science. There are those however like Saul Kripke who believes that clear identity “can be guaranteed only for demonstrative names of immediate sense data” (Kripke in Davidson 2007:89). I argue that the form of the matter is the matter to be transcended in thought.
A non-body like thoughts and words may be discernible in constitutive effect. Thus property, value and weight may be evaluated for accurate measure. This is a separate problem than the instrument for their measure. The resonant character of a body in relation to another is only a part of identity from its descriptive or whole measure-essence. A scientific measure is not necessarily a guarantee of full understanding because such knowledge is itself in part. We are thus in agreement with Kant that reason requires full vision and full understanding (Kant, 1929). A partial referencing of the body is incomplete in essence referencing only because it is non-total. Analogously, one cannot partly believe.
The search for the hegemony of truth implicitly acknowledges the hegemony of truth and works backwards analytically as Kant would say, “as we ascend to the condition under which it were possible” (Kant 1950:23). There would appear to be a limit, even a mathematical limit to the enquiry into an ultimate cause because of the inherently insufficient power or degree of analysis (infinite) and thus at least for now, a delay of reason exists because of the infinite limit of the field of analysis. However, using the model of the elementary mathematical physics; we shall endeavor to sketch the limit of reason and how its expansion helps medical research and methodology. In the words of Kant, “essential distinguishing feature of pure mathematics among all the a priori knowledge is that it cannot at all proceed from concepts, but only means of the construction of concepts” (Kant in the critique of pure reason, “methodology”). Further light is shed on methodology by the adoption of modular light in illumination of constitutive elements and finally the enhancement of the quality of light by such a degree as is possible through analysis of its photo-energetic property i. e the resonant light energy. This light contrasted with darkness illumines light in much the same way in which Wolff sought proof of the principle of sufficient reason in the principle of contradiction(Kant 1950,19), thus going beyond Kantian intuition which recognizes spontaneous or a priori metaphysical intuition because it must refer to the object being intuited (ibid,29).
Kant believes that even concepts require concrete reference or use. This we assert is true if taken within specific domains. Meanings change with domain change. Cancer means something different to the patient and to the Doctor. In essence, the inference drawn from a name is holistic in descriptive totality. Purpose is specific in meaning. Context provides clarity. Essence is all. Understanding is that of manner, place and time. Whether a subject word is open to mathematical or even empirical analysis is a matter of what measurable difference it makes to the individual and the thought process. This then would depend upon an earlier meaning of word or concept; not of having experienced the word exactly but in contextual understanding and purpose realization.
We can take comfort even in Kant’s words: it will always remain a remarkable phenomenon in the history of philosophy that there was a time when even mathematicians who at the same time were philosophers began to doubt, not of the accuracy of their geometric propositions so far as they concerned spaces, but of their objective validity and the applicability of this concept itself and all its corollaries, to nature (ibid, 35).Reference to nature is always imputed to sensory reflections or realization of sensory resonance to objects. Kant’s observation that all properties which are called bodies are so called because of appearance (ibid,37) leaves outside this description a wide array of elements that cannot be seen but felt, measured or graded in action and reaction.
These ‘non-bodies’ are no less real in impact and effects particularly on the ‘real bodies’. What Kant refers to as nature in all its complexity has limits. Yet even within these limits, reference does not permit the observation that nature is all experience nor can it be all experienced. When empirical judgments become the singular measure of nature and its judgments; then we set aside comprehension of everything in infinito since outside of perceived nature lies the existence of the nature of things without the boundary. Whether the other side of the boundary has limits or permeates to nature’s perceived boundary or vice versa is in question and may indeed help to resolve the essential a priori question that so captivated Kant.
Analogously whether light has boundary; and conceding that it does(because of darkness); we need not so quickly denigrate the cause-effect relationship of metaphysics but may yet be able to reach beyond the echoes of our thoughts to the singular voice of the ‘other’ by resonance. All the same, comprehension of that singular voice will have little meaning outside of experience, but more importantly outside the essential boundary. Meaningful communication has to be understood. Kant is brilliant in his observation that it is not the origin of experience that is sought but that which lies within experience (ibid,51). Here then is the difficulty since a priori is hence considered limited. The argument is akin to arguing ‘a priori’ basis of love as in tangible acts of kindness and romantic love in which one or the other is considered spurious. Yet even in this, the boundary issue persists as a condition for scientific judgment. Too much weight is given to appearance.
Another way of organizing this argument might be to mutualize the idea or concept under investigation and then draw analogical comparison as to end. Using the example of cancer cells, aggregation and dispersion of cells have impact for the life of the cell. Metaphysics has indeed benefited from Kant in the sense that “visions” so called are appearance (phenomena) of a kind and as such may fall under Kant’s experience and ‘legislative understanding’. The essentialist perspective argues that the validity and truth of a concept or even name must lie in an original cause or concept upon which are founded questions, answers and even propositions.
The sum of all experiences constitutes experience and the soul will intuit in dreams the excesses above nature’s need. Questions, answers and propositions do not precede the name. Here we are in agreement with Descartes that the idea of God is that there is infinite good (Lagerlund, 2002). Venturing into transcendental theology, Christ’s response to his temptations justifies the original cause concept. Some of the demands by the tempter were right out of the scriptures (strong) but essentially untrue (weak) because of the speaker (source) of the spoken word. Proper identification cannot be removed from objective content. Truth must be objectified in the search for a priori judgment. Independent reason finds validity as truth in research and methodology. Boundaries must always be tested.
There has been progress made since Kant. The unknown remains unreal until it is discerned. Cognition of the essence is possible with knowledge but non-recognition does not entail absence. An object is easily recognized by the senses when it is physicalized but its non-recognition particularly with regards to essence does not negate the fact of its presence especially if it can be objectified in character by other means. Using the model of Light; light is present only partly because there is no darkness but also because the eye can recognize it and it can be reflected to heat. Just as in the difference between a proper name and an associative name, there is a difference between light and heat even if they can be associated by an intermediate agent. Thus the ‘a’ + ‘b’ = ‘c’ with ‘b’ acting as reflector but ‘c’ in essence may be equal to ‘a’ with the help of ‘b’ but nothing has changed in essence even though the light has now some heat property. ‘b’ has enabled communicative changes but has essentially changed nothing.
The resonant character exemplified by a being is at once purposeful with character and essential in existence. Recognition is thus enabled. The healing of a condition requires recognition of that condition- the essential property of that condition that can be analyzed for intent or reflective visible purpose and result and the life of any enabling being. Here then is meaning in word; that something is either clean or dirty but cannot be both. Hence the light that illumines the ‘other’ as in embodiment of light in a dark environment is so recognized because of its difference. The clearest evidence then in support of a non-body influence either alone or on a ‘body’ is the mystical value in relations. Yet Kant is right that this may be insufficient science since dual results have obtained in interpretation. The fault line is then in the interpretation and misunderstood communication, and not in the original message. The communicative identities of the players now become paramount. The resonant character of the original being must be reflected in the message and the players, for context. Synthetic a priori judgment now becomes more important than contingent identification. Self-reference is necessary as basis for understanding.
BibliographyDavidson, Mathew (2007). On sense and Direct Reference: Readings in the Philosophy of Language. New York.
Descartes, Rene and Clarke, Desmond M. (1999). Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings New York : Penguin Classics
Dickers, Georges (1998).Hume’s Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Introduction. New York: Routledge
Fersht, Alan (1977). Enzyme Structure and Mechanism. N.Y., New York: W.H.Freeman Press.
Huether Sue E. and McCance, Kathryn L. (2000). Understanding Human Pathophysiology. New York: Mosby
Kant, Immanuel (1929). Critique of Pure Reason. London, McMillan Press.
Kant, Immanuel (2008). Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Radford, VA: A&D publishing.
Kant, Immanuel(1950,1976)) Prolegomena: to Any Future Metaphysics. New York: Pearson press.
Kolak, Daniel and Martin Raymond (2002). The Experience of Philosophy. New York: Wadsworth.
Klug, William ,S. et al (2006). Concepts of Genetics. New Jersey: Prentice Press.
Lagerlund et. al. eds.(2002). Emotion and Choice: from Boethius to Descartes. Mass., Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishing.
Lewis, Ricki (2008). Human Genetics: Concepts and Applications. New York: Mcgraw-Hill.
Plouffe, Paul B. and Hatton, John (1997). Science and Its Ways of Knowing. New York: Benjamin Cummings
Reisberg, Daniel (2010). Cognition: Exploring the Science of the Mind. New york : Norton Press.
Sawyer, Ralph (1944). Experimental Spectroscopy. New York: Prentice Hall.
Shafer-Landau, Russ and Feinberg Joel (2013). Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy. Stamford, CT : Cengage Publishing.
Streitwieser, Andrew et. al. (1992). Introduction to Organic Chemistry. New York: Macmillan Press.
Voet, Judith and Donald Voet (2004). The expression and transmission of Genetic Information. New Jersey: Wiley Press.
Zucker, Arthur (1996).Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. New York: Pearson Press.