Schopenhauer's Criticism of Kant's use of 'Noumena'
This developed from a diversion in another thread and my exploration of the distinction between phenomenal and noumenal in philosophy. I noted that the term 'noumenal' is mainly understood in terms of Kant's use of the word in his philosophy, but that Schopenhauer had criticized this, saying that:
My notes on this: 'abstract' and 'intuitive' seems a very odd translation. I would have thought the distinction was between 'sensible' and 'rational' cognition, but I can't find the passage in Schopenhauer (if anyone has a precise reference I'd appreciate it.)
My interpretation is that the 'noumenal' refers to 'objects of intellect', i.e., facts that can be known directly by reason without appeal to the evidence of the senses. These were traditionally understood as a priori truths, arithmetical proofs, and the like - truths of reason, which could be known without recourse to empirical evidence, while 'phenomenal' refers to the domain of appearance. Hence the traditional philosophical distinction between reality and appearance which to all intents was declared obsolete by Russell and Moore's rejection of philosophical idealism.
It's also worth noting the original distinction between phenomenal and noumenal which according to the Oxford Companion to Philosophy was:
This was, of course, then transformed by Aristotle, who 'immanentized the forms' by denying them reality in a purported realm of pure form, however preserved the basic principle of form and matter which became the immensely influential philosophy of hylomorphism that is still part of A-T (Aristotelian Thomist) philosophy to this day.
But that Kant uses the term 'noumenal; with reference to things 'in themselves' (ding an sich) which are by definition unknowable, and in so doing, considerably changes the meaning of the word - just as Schopenhauer says.
The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely overlooks, was the very one that ancient philosophers indicated as ????????? [phainomena] and ???????? [nooumena]; the opposition and incommensurability between these terms proved very productive in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later in the scholastics, in the conflict between nominalism and realism. This latter conflict was the late development of a seed already present in the opposed tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms ????????? and ???????? were already in use, then took possession of the terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of things in themselves and their appearances.
My notes on this: 'abstract' and 'intuitive' seems a very odd translation. I would have thought the distinction was between 'sensible' and 'rational' cognition, but I can't find the passage in Schopenhauer (if anyone has a precise reference I'd appreciate it.)
My interpretation is that the 'noumenal' refers to 'objects of intellect', i.e., facts that can be known directly by reason without appeal to the evidence of the senses. These were traditionally understood as a priori truths, arithmetical proofs, and the like - truths of reason, which could be known without recourse to empirical evidence, while 'phenomenal' refers to the domain of appearance. Hence the traditional philosophical distinction between reality and appearance which to all intents was declared obsolete by Russell and Moore's rejection of philosophical idealism.
It's also worth noting the original distinction between phenomenal and noumenal which according to the Oxford Companion to Philosophy was:
Platonic Ideas and Forms are noumenal, and phenomena are things displaying themselves to the senses... This dichotomy is the most characteristic feature of Plato's dualism; that noumena and the noumenal world are objects of the highest knowledge, truths, and values is Plato's principal legacy to philosophy.
This was, of course, then transformed by Aristotle, who 'immanentized the forms' by denying them reality in a purported realm of pure form, however preserved the basic principle of form and matter which became the immensely influential philosophy of hylomorphism that is still part of A-T (Aristotelian Thomist) philosophy to this day.
But that Kant uses the term 'noumenal; with reference to things 'in themselves' (ding an sich) which are by definition unknowable, and in so doing, considerably changes the meaning of the word - just as Schopenhauer says.
Comments (49)
Having said that, as always with Kant, it's complicated. He varies his emphasis and sometimes seems to come close to contradicting himself, so there is some support in the Critique for taking noumena and things-in-themselves as simple synonyms. But this is by no means the dominant thrust of the concept.
Kant wouldn't go along with this. He would use noumena to describe, say, Plato's forms or Leibniz's monads (as well as suggestive of "things as they are in themselves"), which are purported objects in the world that are nevertheless apprehended intellectually. The a priori concepts and structures of the understanding wouldn't be lumped in with these.
So if you're right, then there is indeed a difference between the ancient and the Kantian notions of noumena, but Schopenhauer's accusation remains mistaken.
Quoting Edward Feser
Similarly, Russell's discussion of Universals:
[quote=The World of Universals; https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5827/5827-h/5827-h.htm#link2HCH0009:~:text=it%20is%20something.-,It%20is%20largely%20the,-very%20peculiar%20kind]It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ...In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.[/quote]
(I've bolded the two congruent statements.)
These examples illustrate what I think the traditional meaning of 'noumenal' refers to - just as Schopenhauer says. (I'm still investigating what becomes of 'form and substance' in Kant.)
I can't promise I'll contribute much more though, as I don't have my copy of the Critique any more, and it's quite a commitment. I hope @Mww joins in.
Oh, and also one of my favourite references, Augustine on Intelligible Objects - further grist to the mill....
As I recall, these would either both be elements of the understanding (judgements or categories) or else, in the case of form, either an imposition of the innate structure of the mind's faculty of intuition (space and time), or this as it is applied to the phenomenal and particular (according to the schemata?).
Quoting Wayfarer
The universal is listed in his table of judgements, so it's a pure concept of the understanding, seen as independent of the objects of experience and thus a priori. I'm not sure that addresses your questions about the problem of universals, and I'm not sure Kant comes down fully in either of the nominalist or realist camps.
Are there not more recent schools of thought (especially in postmodernism) that take apart reason and apriori logic and maths and ultimately argue these are just human frameworks that don't really operate as advertised as universal or absolutist truths (Imre Lakatos)? I think @Joshs has written of this.
I'm not educated in these matters, but the ontological status of maths and reason do interest me. It's your view that they transcend human experience and are not somehow formed as a product of human experience, right? How could we know the answer to this, given all we apprehend, all knowledge is from a human standpoint - 'the view from human' - either deliberately created, or implicitly manufactured as part of our perceptual apparatus?
Doesn't Kant argue in COPR that space is a preconscious organising feature of the human mind, a scaffold upon which were able to understand the physical world of objects, extension and motion? I'm assuming there is a view that maths and geometry have a similar status? How could we determine if this is a preconscious organising feature and has origins outside of human consciousness?
SLX recommended a book to me a long time back, Kant's Theory of Normativity, Konstantin Pollok, which I think addresses this subject - how Kant 'sublated' Aristotle's theory into 'transcendental hylomorphism'. It's a heavyweight book, I have started it several times but bogged down - really must persist.
Quoting Tom Storm
Not only my view:
[quote=The Powers of Pure Reason: Kant and the Idea of Cosmic Philosophy, Alfredo Ferrarin]...we may be sorrrounded by objects, but even while cognizing them, reason is the origin of something that is neither reducible to, nor derives from them, in any sense. In other words, reason generates a cognition, and a cognition regarding nature is above nature. In a cognition, reason transcends nature in one of two ways: by rising above our natural cognition and making, for example, universal and necessarily claims in theoretical and practical matters not determined by nature, or by assuming an impersonal objective perspective that remains irreducible to the individual "I".'[/quote]
I see that as being quite in keeping with the mainstream of philosophy, but generally out of keeping with naturalism.
Quoting Tom Storm
Sure. The idea of universals is highly unpopular in the academy, about the only people who still defend it are Thomists (mainly Catholic, I presume), but I find the logic compelling regardless. I'm interested by the idea in ancient and medieval philosophy that reason is the connection between the cosmic order, logos, and the individual intellect, even if it's unfashionable (see this paragraph).
Regarding Kant on space and time, that is in the first section of the Critique of Pure Reason. It's very hard to grasp the detail, but my gloss on it is that space and time have an irreducibly subjective component, in that they must require a perspective. Without perspective, how can anything be nearer or further, larger or smaller, or more or less recent in time? Kant believed that time is a pure intuition that is a necessary condition of our experience - not something that we perceive through our senses, but rather it is a fundamental aspect of the possibility of experience. But it's a notoriously difficult subject.
I think you and I have approached this issue before, but we were incapable of progressing very far. So I'm going to state some principles here in very simple terms (oversimplified perhaps). But if you understand and accept them, that will lay some groundwork toward understanding this difference between Plato and Kant.
What came out of Aristotle's critique of Plato, and Pythagorean idealism in general, was a separation, a division, between the forms of human intelligence (universals, mathematical formulae, etc.), and the independent Forms of the divine realm (God, and the angels).
Aristotle showed that human ideas exist only as potential prior to being actualized by the human mind. Then with his so-called "cosmological argument" he showed that anything eternal must be actual. Simply put, eternal potential could not actualize itself. This excluded human ideas (as based in potential) from the realm of the eternal. But at the same time, the cosmological argument necessitates an actuality (Form) which is prior in time to all material existence, matter being potential.
A thorough reading of Thomas Aquinas will show that he goes through great lengths to explain and expound on this separation. The separation between the forms which are understood by the human mind, and the separate independent Forms, is a consequence of the human intellectual objects (forms) being dependent on the material body, and the senses which are a part of the body. That's why he says that man cannot adequately know God (as a separate independent Form) until his soul is separated from the body, after death. The prior condition, why the soul has been punished by being united to a body in the first place points back to mysticism and the original sin.
So you can see that while Plato allowed that the human intellect can apprehend the separate independent Forms directly, Kant imposes the medium of the human body and its sense apparatus as a divisor between the human intellect and the noumena. However, Kant leaves a large unexplained area, as a priori intuitions, and the pure intuitions of space and time which are deemed necessary for the human mind to receive sense impressions..
Yikes!!!
Understanding. Faculty of. Faculty of thought; faculty of judgement; faculty of synthesis of conceptions; faculty of pure a priori cognitions. All listed, as such, verbatim.
One division containing two books containing five chapters containing eight sections containing 179 pages. Oh .and an appendix. Depending on translation.
No wonder theres mass confusion over just how this thing goes about its business. After 20 years of working on it, two somewhat differing renditions, copious margin jottings, a plethora of peer correspondence .hell, by the time he got done, he might have confused himself.
Kant does overlook the difference between Ss abstract and intuitive cognitions, but S overlooks Kants difference between discursive and intuitive cognitions. If it is discoverable that Kants discursive is not that different than Ss abstract ..Ss criticism is pretty weak.
There is a distinction between Kantian and ancient notions of noumena, following from a distinction between Kantian and ancient philosophy. Whether subversion or progress, it is the way of human intelligence generally: build on or tear down whatever some predecessor said.
..didnt S do the same thing with respect to Buddhist notions, as S accused Kant of doing with respect to the Greeks? You know .change meanings, relations and whatnot? I dunno myself, although I am aware he associated himself with Buddhist thought in some ways. Just asking.
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Kant defines noumena. He stipulates exactly how he intends the conception to be understood in relation to transcendental philosophy in general and the faculty of understanding in particular. Nowhere in the definition is there a clue, an implication, or even a vague hint, of a relation to the ding an sich. Its in the text, black and white, done deal. Take it to the bank.
The misuse of the conception, in opposition to its definition ..thats not on him.
That he elaborates on his intended use of the conception in such a way as to confuse the use with the definition .(sigh) ..that is on him, but only because hes writing for academics, who are supposed to grasp the subtleties on their own, unlike me and those like me, who wouldnt normally even know there is such a thing to begin with, much less a proper/improper use for it.
(Hume and S call us vulgar. At least Kant wasnt so mean, only referring to us as common. Actually, they mean the vulgar or common capacity of our understanding, not us personally.)
Universal is listed in the table of judgements, it is an a priori conception, but it is not a pure conception of the understanding, so named in the text, which are the categories, in which universal is not listed. The conceptions in the table of judgements are thought, are put there .arrived at ..as a part of the process of reason; the conceptions in the table of categories are contained in understanding without being thought, insofar as they are true pure, primitive, original, theyre just there naturally, as integral to our kind of intelligence. Although, there is a bit about the introduction of transcendental content ..whatever that entails isnt given much explanation.
Metaphysical reductionism covering ubiquitous Kantian dualism writ large, for better or worse.
Anyway . I joined. Whether contributing anything beyond mere opinion, thats another matter.
I don't think Schopenhauer's reading of Buddhism is that bad, especially considering he had no interactions with actual Buddhists, who he never could have encountered in his place and time. There's an essay in Magee's book on Schopenhauer on S and Eastern Philosophy.
So the entry in Britannica under Noumenon is wrong? (I'm not baiting you, it's quite possible it is wrong.)
If it is a fair account, and that is how it is presented in many a text on Kant, then I think he can be accused of confusing noumenal and numinous - two words which appear superficially similar, but have very different roots and meanings. His use of the former really implies a meaning far nearer the latter.
Yes and no. Theyre certainly not synonymous, as Britannica implies, but things as they are in themselves and noumena are closely related. Both are only thinkable, though some metaphysicians have also claimed that they can be actually apprehended directly, that is, through reason alone.
Theres no substitute for reading the thing, but there are also some good secondary texts.
Im hardly qualified to criticize the contributors to an encyclopedia. I can say, without equivocation, that entry doesnt reflect any of my understandings.
Those are the three fundamental problems of pure reason, boiled down to the conceptions of the unconditioned, which pure reason seeks as its own nature demands, and never attains. Theres no need of a noumena world in which they abide, insofar as they already abide, at least as conceptions, in this world of human reason.
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. For this result, then, we are indebted to a criticism which warns us of our unavoidable ignorance with regard to things in themselves, and establishes the necessary limitation of our theoretical cognition to mere phenomena.
. We come now to metaphysics, a purely speculative science, which occupies a completely isolated position and is entirely independent of the teachings of experience. It deals with mere conceptionsnot, like mathematics, with conceptions applied to intuitionand in it, reason is the pupil of itself alone.
You be the judge.
I favor the B edition as well. I mean spend a few years re-thinking something, best just go with that one. No sense in using what he thought better of, when talking about what he ended up thinking.
Dunno about precise, but this contains the beginning notations referring to the words in your notes:
. But thus Kant brings thinking into the perception, and lays the foundation for the inextricable confusion of intuitive and abstract knowledge which I am now engaged in condemning. He allows the perception, taken by itself, to be without understanding, purely sensuous, and thus quite passive, and only through thinking (category of the understanding) does he allow an object to be apprehended: thus he brings thought into the perception. But then, again, the object of thinking is an individual real object; and in this way thinking loses its essential character of universality and abstraction, and instead of general conceptions receives individual things as its object: thus again he brings perception into thinking. From this springs the inextricable confusion referred to, and the consequences of this first false step extend over his whole theory of knowledge .
(WWR, 2, App., pg 35, 1844, in Haldane/Kemp, 1909)
Use them in so far as you find them interesting and/or, more importantly, useful.
In so far as Mww knows Kant in a way very few professionals do - despite his claims to the contrary - one need not go this far, unless you are so motivated, which you need not be. There is something to be said about writing clearly, which goes beyond mere aesthetic...
It would require, many, many years to become an expert at that level. But there is so much to read and learn, often people who are ignored of overlooked say interesting things too.
Having said that, it's a good thread, surely some will find plenty of value here.
Kant struggled with his more Platonic side but cast doubt on things of the world and not being intuitively in touch with what only the mind can know, he thought of noumena as beyond categories of thought. For Aristotle, reason was the answer instead of faith. In his thought form and matter consists of a unity of substance and accidents (is prior logically to them) and accidents represent something of the substance. Not so with kant, where the appearance-accident-phenomena says nothing of what is beyond. It's like Kant is always looking over his shoulder wondering what reality could be. So he parted with Spinoza too in affirming practical will and belief
I think your diagnosis is pretty accurate. I'm pondering the possibility that Kant's fundamental definition of what amounts to knowledge precludes the possibility of the transformative nature of spiritual insight (gnosis, jñ?na). The French Thomistic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, said that Kant lacked what he described as 'the intuition of being' - I suspect he might be right in that.
It took me a good 4 to 5 months to read the Critique, and mind you, I've read a decent amount of secondary literature. I won't deny that Kant has some very interesting theoretical observations, particularly concerning the relationship between things-in-themselves and experienced reality.
But I got more from the secondary literature honestly. I will go at it again - this time only reading version B, or however it is called.
You might get more (I know I did, on the whole) reading his Prolegomena, which is considerably clearer than the Critique. But, ymmv.
To me, the absolutely crucial thing about Kant is his recognition that 'things conform to thoughts' rather than vice versa. I still think very few people really get the significance of that. If you understand it, it completely undercuts 'scientism'.
I should add I was introduced to Kant through a book called The Central Philosophy of Buddhism by T R V Murti. Murti was an Oxford-trained Indian scholar and Sanskritist, whose book was on the centrality of N?g?rjuna's philosophy to Buddhism. This was when I was in my twenties or early thirties, in my 'spiritual phase'. Murti draws extensive comparisons between N?g?rjuna, Kant, Hegel, Bradley and other philosophers. Nowadays he is mostly deprecated as being too Euro-centric in outlook but this book was formative for me. Have a look at this brief excerpt.
Thanks, will do.
Yes, I should've added that that's what I found interesting in my reading of the Critique. But the point you mention is quite true and shouldn't require much by way of convincing, to think otherwise.
FYI .the online Guyer/Wood has a fabulous 90-odd page translator introduction, also has standard pagination, but ..sadly .isnt searchable. If some secondary literature references a A/B number, you can scroll to it, but with 700 pages thats potentially a lot of scrolling.
But the intro is worth the time, I think, even if it is technically a second-party interpretation.
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/25851/files/2017/09/kant-first-critique-cambridge-1m89prv.pdf
Oh. Cool.
Quoting Wayfarer
Are you attempting to relate the traditional meanings to form/substance in Kant? Connect them somehow? See how an investigation of the one would get you to the other?
As you said .no entrapment. Just curious.
This book I have, Kant's Theory of Normativity, Exploring the Space of Reason, Konstantin Pollok, seems to be arguing that Kant adapted Aristotle's hylomorphism into his own 'transcendental hylomorphism'.
Yeah, I can see that. Change some terms here and there, but the basics would be pretty similar. Matter belongs to the object, form belongs to the subject, kinda thing, maybe?
Are you supposing that combining them has been attempted?
Ahhh ok.
Matter and form are combined in the material world. A material object has both matter and form. This principle is known as Aristotle's hylomorphism.
It is impossible that form is the result of the matter, because "form" refers to the object's actuality, what it actually is, and "matter" refers to its potential to be otherwise.
Now, the issue is that an object must have form, without this it has no actuality, and is not an object at all. This is how Aristotle excludes infinite potential, "prime matter", as a concept which has no real representation in the material world (in other words its a falsity used in deceptive ontology).
So, when an object comes into being it is necessarily the object which it is, it cannot be other than it is, by the law of identity. That's a statement about the nature of temporal (material) existence. And, the matter (potential) which an object has is necessarily ordered, by the object having a form (actuality). Therefore the form of the object is necessarily prior in time to the object's matter. This principle is covered in Plato's Timaeus, though Plato does not express the logical arguments given by Aristotle.
However, each person's Will-to-Live, itself, has no explanatory motive for willing life -- it just does so.
That is why an unreasoning dreadful desperation usually sets in whenever a person is confronted with the immediate, undeniable, inescapable possibility of personal death. Each person is through and through nothing other than this primordial, unreasoning, blind Will-to-Live.
It is precisely the occurrence of this personal, visceral, subjective experience of the Thing-in-Itself as a Will-to-Live which clearly distinguishes the meaning of Schopenhauer's Thing-in-Itself from the meaning of Kant's Thing-in-Itself as the transcendent Unknowable.
As Albert Camus so aptly put it: "We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking."
Questions:
Why would our senses lie to us? Inversely, why would our senses tell us the truth? Is-ought gap? I seen no necessity that our senses be either truthful or mendacious. The ding an sich, whether it is or it is not, is not the most important problem on our hands, oui?
It's a truism that appearances can deceive. And I think that's because judgement is involved. Even in animal perception, appearances can be deliberately used to deceive, as in the myriad cases of camoflage by predators or prey. On the other hand, the senses can also be extraordinarily accurate - barn owls can hear a mouse moving a kilometer away or see by the light of a single candle the same distance. But only humans are required to make judgements about truth in the abstract, to reflect on the meaning of their experiences, about what experience means.
I've often discussed the two truths doctrine. It's greeted with scepticism from naturalists, because it claims there's a higher truth (paramathasatya). That scepticism is because, I believe, modern thought doesn't have a category for 'the unconditioned' (except for perhaps in formal logic). I think it's a major deficiency. I suppose that is because in Western culture, 'the unconditioned' is nearly always associated with God, which puts it out-of-bounds for naturalist or secular philosophy. But that is a very big question.
(This made me think again about the role of revealed truth in Buddhism. Many would say that Buddhism rejects the idea of revealed truth, but really the Buddha's enlightenment is said to reveal the truth of the cause of suffering and its end. In that sense Buddhism is not so vastly removed from other religions.)
In any case, Buddhism and Schopenhauer both diagnose human ills as originating in a mistaken judgement about the nature of existence (or experience, which amounts to the same). They both, in different ways, say that humans attribute reality to things that have no genuine or real being, so we're attached to an illusory realm which inevitably dissappoints us because it doesn't bring us the joy we thought we could get from it. Schopenhauer and Buddhism are both described as 'pessimistic' on those grounds, but that fails to see that there can be freedom from that condition.
Well said and on point! A Buddhist monk, once, was looking up the English translation of a Tibetan phrase and after much gnashing and gnawing of the teeth (he was suffering, but he didn't seem to realize, I kept me mouth shut), he exclaimed "Aha! The Ultimate Nature of Reality". I guess he was referring to the second of the two truths (post demayafication).
My problem, everyone's except for a few perhaps, is that the only conduit for perception (both of ourselves and the world out there) is our senses (the 5 physical and the sixth, mind) and there's no reason at all why they should be truthful or untruthful. The reality of noumena is not as urgent an issue as the unreliability of our phenomena.
Why would you class the mind as a sixth sense? The idea that the mind acts as a sixth sense was dispelled by Aristotle, a long time ago. The mind unifies the senses, it does not act as a distinct sense.
How, pray tell, did Aristotle dispel the notion of mind as a (the) (sixth) sense?
It's at the beginning of Bk. 3, On the Soul. Basically, if there was one common sense (the sixth sense), which could receive the objects of multiple senses, sound and colour for example, that sense organ would receive both types of sensations through the same medium (the same organ), so that it would not be able to distinguish between a sensation of one type, and a sensation of the other type. So for example, it would not be able to distinguish that a sound is a different type of sensation from a colour, because both would be received through the same medium..
Therefore we must conclude that the mind, which has the capacity to distinguish one type of sensation from another type of sensation, is not itself another sense. This is basic to understanding "categories". The thing which separates or distinguishes one category from another cannot be classed as either.
Interesting. Of course those who claimed the mind is a sense have their own (good) argument.
Quoting Agent Smith
But as I said, humans are self-aware beings. We can make decisions, decide on courses of action, plan to get or to avoid, and so all - all manner of things. Doing that, we constantly make judgements about what matters, what can be ignored, what must be acquired, and so on. That happens from from the autonomic level up to the conscious level, constantly. Sensory perception is only one element in this, the other being intellection or rational judgement (not to mention impulse, desire, emotion....) So what you're talking about is not something simple.
Another good reason why the mind is radically different from a sense, and ought not be classed as a sense.
:up: Indeed, it ain't in any way simple. I'm just questioning the reliability of the entire perceptual and analytical system (mind + senses) - both have been known to lie (delusions + hallucinations + illusions). I'm referring to well-documentesd psychological conditions to support this claim. I guess it boils down to the question "how do you know you're not mad?"
In any case, one of the basic features of the modern liberal political system is to make the world a safe place in which to remain ignorant. Cynical, I know, but there you have it. On the upside, at least in the free West you're allowed to make such criticisms of the culture you're in.
Précisément! If everyone is insane, who do we turn to to lead us to the light? It's like a group of adventurers lost in the woods, each one has a map (model), but all maps (models) are wrong. I suppose my epistemic nihilism is showing.
I wrote a blog post once on the 'bell curve of normality' - on the left, those with severe mental health or personality disorders, then the middle of the bell curve, where most people are (it being a bell curve!) but then on the extreme right the really high-functioning types who are as far above the norm as the left side is beneath it. That can be mapped against Maslow's 'heirarchy of needs', meaning that on the right, there's your highly self-actualised individuals. Very difficult to judge who that might be, of course.
But I'm struggling to think of where you would look for the criteria to make this judgement. As Freud says, his yardstick for sanity was really just the ability to live, work, and maintain relationships. But I think that philosophy looks for something rather deeper than that.
Deeply insightful post. Psychological health is based on, as you said, how adversely one's current emotions/thoughts affect what's a "normal life" (the ability to live, work, and maintain relationships).
Philosophical sanity/insanity is quite a different animal - the "normal life" psychologists value (as described succinctly and completely by you above) is actually what madness really is: Diogenes' home was a tub, he answered nature's calls & masturbated in public, he was a great philosopher; Socrates willingly drank hemlock; the only real philosophical problem is suicide said Camus to whom we're all Sisyphus.