I don't get this paradox

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I’m wondering if someone can elaborate on the passage from a book. I don’t quite understand the paradox being talked about here. Please be clear and dumb it down if you could.

"A similar change of viewpoint in Hobbes, Spinoza, and Harvey with regard to man’s own body and mind opened the way for analogous advances in the control of man.

But control for what? It is man who develops science and who through it controls nature for his own purposes. There lies the paradox: man is understood as a machine, but the use of his knowledge of himself and of the external world is thoroughly purposive. The problem is more urgent than any other in modern philosophy because the two incompatible convictions - the idea of the world as a vast impersonal order and the idea of knowledge as power - are fundamental to our world view and equally deep-rooted. To the extant that Western civilization is based on science, it rests on a paradox."

How is using knowledge of one’s self purposive? How does that make one say they have a purpose? I’m completely confused. And then after the first part when it says knowledge is power seems completely unrelated to the initial way the problem was stated (knowledge of one’s self is purposive) I’m completely confused.

This book is on Kant if you can’t tell…

2

The great and insane Hobbes is the easiest example here, as he used the human body as an analogy for the state, and patently so. It is the control the state has over its citizens that is at issue in Hobbes. He was an obsessive royalist at a time when modern democracy was in its nascent stages.

It’s about men controlling men. The analogy plays to the mechanistic view of the world - a view that Kant did not even attempt to escape. It’s one big machine - smaller machines are analogous. But cience was still being subverted to religion there was a designer of that machine - who was also the maintenance man. The models of science - the procedures used, were still thought to serve God. The state has ever tried to marry itself to the Ultimate Authority.

I can’t really tell much from the passage you quote - I don’t know the full context. But the question of purpose is like the the question of causation - it always reaches its final conclusion in heaven. I suspect, but don’t know, that the author is mistaken in his view that the mechanistic model posits an impersonal universe. It doesn’t - or didn’t at the time of Kant. Perhaps the author makes that clear later. But an impersonal universe is surely not fundamental to the Western world view - not yet, anyway. The science Kant knew - the scientific zeitgeist of that time, was surely not as the author states. God was still watching.

3

Ok, to start, thank you very much for your thought out response. I appreciate it very much.

I’m still having a little trouble understanding what you think this paradox is saying. I think the confusion on my part is coming from the fact that I didn’t post enough of the surrounding context for you to read as well as you talking about the validity of the problem being stated. It’s very hard to try and read your response because you’re both attempting to answer my question and give your thoughts on it at the same time. Although I want to know what you think about it, it makes understanding your explanation of the problem unclear to me. I hope I’m making sense here.

Although the paradox may not really be a problem (and if I’m understanding the point the author is making correctly, I agree with you that it is not), I would like to know what exactly the supposed paradox is. Once I understand that, we could talk about it more in depth.

When I read that section and try to interpret what he is saying the paradox is, it just doesn’t seem to be as big of a deal as he is making it out to be. Yet he calls it one of the biggest problems ever or what not. He also says that it is this exact problem that Kant was attempting to solve. Because of this, I figured it was a commonly known paradox and I would have multiuple responses. Anyway, I’ll type out more of the surrounding text. Keep in mind, this is an introduction to a book about Kant’s philosophy. I don’t think the author is trying to be deep or anything like that. He’s just trying to show the problems that Kant was attempting to solve, an introduction to learning Kant. Here’s more:

======================================

"The ultimate issue which Kant faced consists in the logical incompatibility between the objective and subjective conditions of scientific knowledge. It is the disharmony between the object of science and the human ends science is made to serve. In the Renaissance, after Galilei, (is this a typo? should probably be Galileo but that’s how it’s typed in the book) Descartes, and Newton had banished purpose from nature, nature came to be seen as a vast mechanism. With the replacement of Aristotelian ideas by mechanistic conceptions, science began to achieve unprecedented control over nature. A similar change of viewpoint in Hobbes, Spinoza, and Harvey with regard to man’s own body and mind opened the way for analogous advances in the control of man.

But control for what? It is man who develops science and who through it controls nature for his own purposes. There lies the paradox: man is understood as a machine, but the use of his knowledge of himself and of the external world is thoroughly purposive. The problem is more urgent than any other in modern philosophy because the two incompatible convictions - the idea of the world as a vast impersonal order and the idea of knowledge as power - are fundamental to our world view and equally deep-rooted. To the extant that Western civilization is based on science, it rests on a paradox.

Philosophers before Kant who were aware of this problem attempted to solve it in a variety of ways, and many who were not explicitly conscious of its full implications nevertheless developed philosophies which even now sometimes serve as a framework for attempted solutions. These ventures involved one of four strategies:

  1. The problem was denied by exempting man from the laws of nature through ad hoc hypotheses. (Descartes, many orthodox Christian philosophers)

  2. The problem was declared irresolvable and transferred to a higher court of faith. (Malebranche, sometimes Descartes, and many orthodox philosophers)

  3. The problem was declared illusory because purpose is not ultimate even in man. (Spinoza and Hobbes)

  4. The problem was declared illusory because mechanism is not ultimate even in nature. (Leibniz and Berkley)"
    =============================

It then goes on to explain why each of these attempts fails to resolve the paradox. Not that I understand the paradox or anything, but I seem to agree strongly with 3. Seems to make sense. But then again, I can’t understand the reason this argument apparently fails because I don’t even understand the problem to begin with. Someone please help me out. Many thanks.

4

I don’t think that’s a typo. I think that Galileo is the given name and that Galilei is the surname.

Well, try substituting “intent” for “purpose”. Machines don’t have intentions. Don’t have purpose in the sense of “motive”.

Also, it appears that the writer means, by “modern philosophy”, philosophy since Descartes - which is the common usage of that term. It’s not surprising that you would choose option three - here in the 21st century. It may not have been such a popular choice in the 18th.

I am trying to keep my view to myself.

Does that help?

5

Now that you mention it, his last name absolutely was Galilei. I really cannot believe I didn’t remember that… I feel pretty stupid for that one… Well, now that my intelligence is nice and credible…

Substituting intent into the passage does seem to help. So if man is supposedly a machine, just like nature, how can it have intentions? Machines cannot have intentions. This seems to make sense in connection with the ways the author lists that others have tried to solve the paradox. Why the author couldn’t simply have added the idea that a machine cannot have intentions or purpose is beyond me. Seems to make the issue much more clear. Or perhaps it’s supposed to be obvious…

So if this is right, I KIND of see a problem here. I don’t know, it seems a little odd but it hardly seems as large or a problem or paradox as the passage makes it sound. I’m curious as to what is meant when it says “ultimate” in those supposed solutions listed before. I’m also curious as to why the author uses the word “purpose” and not the word “intent” like you recommended. Purpose doesn’t seem to really work as well to me. Why can’t a machine have a purpose? I have an easier time accepting that a machine such as nature cannot have intents rather than not having a purpose.

And finally, I’m still wondering about the second way the paradox is formulated. The author seems to just pull this idea of “knowledge as power” out of nowhere and I’m failing to see a relation to the topic at hand. I understand the idea of nature being a vast impersonal order, but what does that have to do with knowledge as power? Does he simply mean knowledge as something we feel is important? As in the fact that we feel knowledge is important and it is our intent to get it is paradoxical due to the fact that we are machines just as the natural world? I hope that made sense. If that’s what he meant, it was a very strange way to say it. Instead of power, knowledge as a desire or feeling accumulation of knowledge is our purpose or intent would have been a much better way to phrase the idea.

And one last thing, it’s hard to tell tone on the board so I’m not sure if your last comment was simply you stating you’re trying hard to not put personal biases into your post or if it was in some way tongue-in-cheek in response to what you feel was a rude post by myself. I’m assuming it was the former but just to make sure I’d like to comment that I do want your view on the matter - It’s just that I want it after I understand what you’re giving me your view on. Your opinion on the topic wont have any affect on me if I can’t understand it. So instead of trying to weed through explanation and opinion, it’s easier to simply get a non biased explanation and then talk about it in detail later. Thanks for the responses so far.

6

This is why I don’t generally read introductions and almost never read books “about” philosophers.

My comment was not tongue-in-cheek. Don’t overthink that, and don’t overthink what you are reading in that book. Accept the possibility that the author of the book isn’t very good at what he is doing.

Knowledge is power, though - it allows us to accomplish our goals.

All authors have an agenda. Get an agenda of your own, and trust yourself. Reading philosophy is not like reading a how-to book. Sometimes it takes a while to grasp the subject. What doesn’t make sense now, may later. But also - what seems like an insightful and useful book now may seeem like tripe later.

Keep reading, and trust your instincts, at least a bit. There is a lot of crap out there. Don’t assume that just because some third-rate staffer got a book published, that he really has the subject matter down.

7

Sounds to me that the paradox is just the mind/body problem or the determinism/free-will problem, expressed in a much more convoluted way.