Bas asked:

Recently, I discovered the fascinating world of Kant (and Hume), mainly due to two wonderful books
of Brian Magee. First, Confessions of a Philosopher has brought my view of the science of perception
(psychophysics) into a much broader context. Secondly, the correspondence of Bryan Magee and
Martin Milligan has contributed a lot to the question what the auditory world of the hearing-impaired
(or deaf) person might be. At the University of Amsterdam we try to gain knowledge with respect to
the auditory world of the hearing-impaired person by simulation of deficits. Informal listening and
performance of auditory tasks by normal hearing persons with simulated hearing loss can provide
insight into the world of experiences of the hearing-impaired person, and the effects of deteriorated
auditory performance. Most interesting is comparing a hearing impaired and a normal ear in one
person, but this combination in man is not easy to find.

Reading the books of Kant and Hume, I got stuck on some peculiar statements and some conceptual
problems.

Questions.

1. On the idea of being.

Descartes wrote his famous words: "I think, therefore I am." One could also state "I am, because I
perceive." But is this statement valid? Suppose one could not perceive, due to a lack of all the
senses. Is this possible, and can one be then? And what can such a being conceive?

2. On Kant.

The framework of Kant's Critique of Pure Reasonis very systematic and elaborate. It is finely
structured and every branch is thought over. The formal structure is in a way very mathematical. As I
understand Kant was broadly educated, including knowledge of mathematical physics.

Do you know of famous mathematicians and physicists who read Kant? Did, for example, Einstein
read Kant's Critique and did he criticise him on the ideas about time and space? Are there great
mathematical minds that agree with the created metaphysical world needed to describe reason?

3. On the outer and inner world.

Despite Kant's work I still do not understand how one could distinguish the outer world and the
imagined world. People can never be sure unless maybe by combining different sensations, i.e.
touch, vision, hearing, etc. Although, to be absolutely sure? One of the ideas around schizophrenia is
that people suffering from it cannot distinguish between these two worlds.

4. On Milligan.

Magee has discussed with Milligan about the perception of people who see and do not see and the
concepts they form. Kant wrote something quite bizarre. I hereby give the original German text and a
translation by M.J. Gregor. I am wondering what you think of Kant's rude idea of conception of deaf
people. I think he underestimates the power of sign-language, which is most probably the oldest
language in the world. Moreover his 'analogue of reason' is quite an insult for all blind and deaf
people. Or do I misinterpret Kant?

"
On the Cognitive Powers, On the sense of hearing §18.

Hearing does not give us the shape of an object, and words do not lead us immediately to the idea of
it; but just because of this, and because they have no intrinsic meaning (or at most they signify inner
feelings, but not objects), words are the means best adapted to signifying concepts. So a man who,
because he was deaf from birth, must also remain dumb (without speech) can never achieve more
than an analogue of reason.

On the Cognitive Powers, Questions §22.

Can we use the senses vicariously? that is, can we use one sense as a substitute for another? If a
deaf man was once able to hear, we can get him to speak as he used to by gesturing to him, and so
by means of his eyes. He also uses his eyes to read our lips, or his sense of touch to feel our lip
movements in the dark. If, however, he has been deaf from birth, his sense of sight must begin with
movements of the vocal organs and convert the sounds he has been taught to make into feeling of
moving the muscles of his own vocal organs. But he never arrives at real concepts in this way,
because the signs he uses are not the sort that can be universalised.

Kant, I. (1974/1798 &1800). Anthropology from a pragmatic point of viewtranslated, with an
Introduction and Notes by M.J. Gregor, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague."

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1) You need to read Descartes again, and get a better idea of his arguments. Your objection isn't
relevant; "perception" is included in thinking for Descartes. But that aside, his statement is better
taken as an intuition of consciousness than anything else, I believe. Merleau-Ponty treats it pretty well
in that regard in The Visible and the Invisible.As for not perceiving... do computers think? They don't
perceive, anyway. But the answer to your next question depends on your epistemological position;
the British empiricists would probably deny you could have thought... Descartes probably wouldn't
have. For a "real" answer to that question, if we look at the effects of sensory deprivation on
developing animals, it results in very severe neurological problems... but severe enough so that a
human, totally sensorially deprived as both fetus and baby, wouldn't be able to think? I doubt we've
ever had that situation, given that a 6-9 month fetus can sense and respond to the environment. My
guess would be that degree of deprivation might very well preclude the neural development
necessary for thinking.

2) Probably every one of them, especially the Europeans. I'm sure Einstein did, since he attended a
German school, but I don't know what, if anything, he wrote specifically on Kant. But given other
things Einstein wrote, I do not think that he liked Kant's ontology, i.e., that there is a fundamentally
unknowable noumenon.

3) I assume you saw the movie "The Matrix"? It's an old problem... there's still controversy about
Putnam's "brain in a vat" arguments. As for combining different sensory modalities, that's a very good
idea, and ultimately the basis of consensual validation, if you think about it. However, you can also
see that there is no real refutation of skepticism there. I do not believe that one can refute a strong
skeptical position on this... but so what? I'm not going to try walking through any walls soon.

4) Kant was a product of his time, as are we all. As I recall, deaf people, because of their lack of
language, were regarded as animals before the French invented sign language, surprising everyone.
I do not agree that sign language, as a true language (i.e., with tenses, aspect, etc.), is "old" in any
sense. If you remember your Greeks, language (a consequence of rationality) was considered the
test of the difference between humans and animals. However, I do not believe that if Kant were aware
of sign language his position would change, merely be broadened to include it as a type of language.
Remember Kant's "schemas" and how abstract they are, yet how symbolic... more-or-less the
equivalents of computer programs, if you wish to push the analogy. Given that, you need a symbolism
to carry them, so to speak, yes? And that would be "language" of some sort. Concepts, for Kant,
necessarily included those relations, as I recall.

Steven Ravett Brown