BAD Philosophy Videos! (Philosophy Tube on Kant's Philosophy)

i'm hans georg muller i teach philosophy at the university of macau phi who's producing this video was asking me to talk about this video here on which i found on youtube beginner's guide to currents metaphysics and epistemology by this channel philosophy tube if i was asking me to talk about it because i talked about it in my class i'm teaching a class on i'm teaching khan by the way i'm not an actual researcher on khan i'm not a specialist on khan but i've been teaching ken for many years i was looking for some materials to use in my class and then this is seems to be one of the most popular videos on khan one of the most watched ones it actually has nearly 200 000 views and um i was quite surprised because it's only a five minute video how many substantial glaring mistakes are in the video and that's why we're producing this in order to show how this video is problematic also maybe as an example for generally how such short introductory videos can be problematic that is not to say that all of them are problematic i think there are also many good short introductory videos out there on the web and there may be also a good short introductory videos by philosophy too i'm not implying that what i'm saying is relevant for all videos out there and also not for all videos by philosophy two but this one in particular has specific problems and i'm gonna address three of those so what kant realized was that some concepts like space he also included number and time must be built into us from the beginning our brains must be hardwired to experience the world in that way so there are two major problems with what he just said uh the first one is that he said that kant is saying that time and space are hard wired into our brains now he might be using this as a metaphor it's not very clear if he's using it as a metaphor or not but even if he uses it as a metaphor it would be an extremely misleading metaphor what is doing in the critique of pure reason is a critique of pure reason this means an analysis of philosophical analysis of reason and of pure reason means reason as it is prior to experience now reason is an idealist reason is basically you can call it consciousness and consciousness is by definition different from material things that appear to us or that we perceive in experience and the brain is a phenomenon in that sense it's something that we through for instance scientific but also through other methods can experience as a phenomenon so makes a fundamental difference between such things as brains and consciousness so it is crucial not to conflate brains with consciousness or rather brains with reason but this is exactly what he's doing here and um by the way i'm not saying kant is right or wrong there are many particularly i understand the guy has an i probably british background from his accent and in anglo-american philosophy or anglo-american science as well it is quite common to reduce mental phenomena consciousness phenomena to brain phenomena physiological phenomena to explain um consciousness in terms of uh physiological or brain events and again precisely this is not what kant is doing can is not is explicitly dealing with reason as something that is not grounded or founded in physiology so to conflate these two things and to say that time and space are hard wired into our brains basically is a very profound misleading statement about kant and it's therefore not at all helpful within an introductory video about khan so this is the first thing that's problematic about these 10 seconds that we just watched but there's a second uh thing that is equally uh problematic because he speaks throughout this video also in these 10 seconds about time and space as concepts now for can't strictly speaking time and space are precisely not concepts time and space are forms forms of intuition as opposed to concepts of understanding so the basic approach of kant is that reason operates through the combination of two components number one intuition which is basically sense perception and number two understanding which is basically what we could call a kind of irrational processing a rational interpretation of the data that are given through sense perception so these two things come together so the understanding in interpreting basically the sense data use concepts they have the capacity to develop concepts and then apply concepts such as for instance causality or substance and and then sets up a whole you know table of these concepts but at the same time these concepts are applied to the analysis of let's say the data that perception or as he calls it intuition provides to us now intuition does not operate with concepts because concepts belong to the understanding intuition or sense perception operates on the basis of these two forms with which it operates and these two forms of in of intuition are time and space that's another like fundamental conceptual distinction that is basic to kant's philosophy that time and space are specifically not concepts but forms of intuition so again this is a highly misleading use of vocabulary here that again does not help to understand kent but actually obstructs an adequate understanding of count to throw around the okay transcendental but don't be scared of it a transcendental argument is when we say okay we do things like this so whatever the background conditions are that are necessary for us to do those things those conditions must be true transcendent in this case just means going beyond what we have in front of us here he again makes a mistake a fundamental mistake that i think is informed by a common practice in english-speaking philosophy namely that they use the words transcendent and transcendental synonymously even professional philosophers do this in english now you should never do that when it gets to kent because can't for can the distinction between transcendent and transcendental is crucial actually he calls this philosophy transcendental idealism for a very specific reason namely that it is no longer primarily concerned with transcendent claims but with a transcendental analysis so the distinction between transcendental and transcendent is crucial for kent but here too he speaks in the video in the beginning about transcendental but then explains the meaning of the word transcendent without the al at the end as if the explanation of transcendent would explain khan's usage of transcendental but it's the contrary is true can't intentionally uses transcendental in contradistinction of transcendent now transcendent means he explains this correctly going beyond experience something that cannot be experienced because it's beyond the scope of experience now transcendental means something very different namely basically the conditions of the possibility of having experience in the first place and so this distinction is again fundamental for kant and his sloppy use of language here basically shows that he is not aware of the distinction between transcendent and transcendental in kant's philosophy but as i said this distinction is very fundamental so that's the second mistake now a third and final short passage at the end representation of the world do human beings have synthetic a priori concept so he asks what do you think do human beings have synthetic a priori concepts thereby he seems to be implying that that's what khan says that humans have synthetic a priori concepts now again this is a very misleading way of putting it for two reasons uh number one humans do not really have anything synthetic a priori that it's the task of philosophy the primary task of philosophy for kent to make synthetic a priori judgments and that's very difficult because we don't have them we need philosophy to construct them to make them to produce them that is what philosophy consists in the generation of synthetic a priori judgment so it's not something that we already have because if we would already have it then we wouldn't need can't and we wouldn't need philosophy that's also something very crucial for khan because it concerns basically definition of what he did generation of synthetic a priori judgment so this leads to the second problem again he's using the word concepts here where he should implying that kant is talking about synthetic a priori concept but khan is not talking about synthetic a priori concept he's talking about synthetic a priori judgments judgments combine concepts there are concepts involved in judgment but the whole point if something is synthetic it cannot be just a simple concept it's judgments that are synthetic because they basically go beyond the mere analysis they're not merely analytical analytical judgments are based on the analysis of a concept but khan's whole point is to move beyond merely analytic knowledge and to move on to synthetic knowledge and synthetic knowledge is based on judgments not on concepts so there are again like two fundamental mistakes in this very short statement at the end so it's just a five minute video and we already found like three passages which include at least four uh fundamental if not falsehoods then at least very problematic statements that are prone to produce misunderstandings rather than a basic understanding of three major problems that this video shows number one that is somehow you know creating fake news about uh philosophy right the second uh more general problem which i think this video that this video represents that often not always but often in videos like this one there a lot of efforts just goes into the building of the profile of the presenter and the presenter is very much at the center of the presentation it's like whatever in a cooking show or so when you have like a celebrity cook and it's all about basically building up the celebrity status of the tv cook and here's something some something similar i think happens a lot of effort in the production goes to make this host basically or to form an attractive profile of the host but this is at the expense of actually doing even basic research on the contents of the video so there's a huge disparity of effort and it looks to me like at least in this video that either the presenter or his team did not do any serious uh research on on kant and probably never really read his works so this this parody is something that i think viewers should be aware of the efforts of products like this are not primarily on the contents but on the profiling and the the commercialization of the presenter and the third point you introduced the books by or at least one book by sam harris to me and the moral landscape and though we made another video where i'm kind of you know critically talking about it there's a lot of stuff i learned also from the book and i and particularly like one phrase that he's using there to criticize actually religion namely he speaks of an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance so and i think that's a very good observation again he uses this with respect to religion right in religion you get uh you know very enthusiastic about your beliefs so you gain a lot of confidence at the same time if you're operating in a religious way of thinking uh then this also leads to a lot of ignorance because you don't follow whatever for instance contemporary science or so right so so uh that's what that's that's why i think this this expression is is very apt uh this kind of ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance and i think a similar danger we can not always but often observe in the production of videos like this one uh namely that something is presented uh with a very strong confidence right a kind of mansplaining right as if the person would know you know everything and as if this was all somehow set in stone whereas if you study something like khan for instance academically uh you will find that kant often contradicts himself what what he says in the earlier writings might not be the same as he said in the later writings uh and then there are many different interpretations basically everyone who studies khan comes to slightly or sometimes also very drastic differences in what kant actually says there is not just one truth about can't and the more you study kent the more you actually know about kent your confidence will be reduced just as in natural sciences right you know oh this is just one way of interpreting the data and there are others who interpret the data in a different way in this video that there is this overconfidence in presenting what kant is all about and kind of paradoxically this overconfidence shows that the guy is actually not a serious academic because if he would have serious knowledge if he wouldn't be so ignorant he wouldn't be so confident in his statements about can you should be aware this is ultimately done for commercial purposes and you are being sold a product that's not really how philosophy should be done right at least i think philosophy shouldn't be commodified in that way and in this way this is a form of the commodification of philosophy and that should you make viewers suspicious of it that on its own is already a strong reason to be suspicious in general of this format of the presentation now this being said that doesn't mean that these kind of videos cannot be helpful i think they can be helpful and they are helpful and i sometimes watch them as well as a professional philosopher um so and i sometimes also use them for my classes and i don't think uh and i don't definitely do not want to say all these videos are bad and i don't even want to say all videos by philosophy tube are bad there may be much better ones but so the general advice is just to be suspicious but also not to be overly suspicious that's like basically the same like with all with respect to everything that's basically the same don't replace reading of the actual texts and studying any of these philosophers seriously with watching those videos right it can it it can be helpful and interesting it can help people you know to get access to philosophy but if you remain on this level um then there's a clear and present danger that you will not only be misinformed but that you will also miss out on on what's like really interesting about philosophy so the general recommendation second general recommendation in addition to taking this with a grain of salt and being aware that it's a commercial product that's being sold to you the second recommendation is [Music] if you develop a real interest out of this then you it's very much worth to go the step further and to actually read the text and and and learn more about it and and not remain on this level you

Channel: Carefree Wandering

Views: 231,003

Keywords: the school of life, Intro Philosophy, philosophy tube, philosophy kant, kant philosophy, kant philosophy tube, Beginner's Guide to Kant, Beginner's Guide to Kant's Metaphysics & Epistemology, kant, metaphysics, noumenal world, critique of pure reason, phenomenal world, reason, mind, empiricism, rationalism, perception, Beginner's Guide to Kant's Moral Philosophy, Immanuel Kant, Categorical Imperative, Philosophy, Morality, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Hans-Georg Moeller

Id: ocxRrIa5A0o

Length: 19min 54sec (1194 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021