Chapter 7 Chapter 4 On the first class of objects of the subject, and the form of the principle of sufficient reason governing them 3

The intellectual character of intuition, as I have shown, has been confirmed physiologically by Florence1 as follows:— "There is a great difference between the senses and the intellect. The removal of a tuberculosis can cause loss of the senses, such as loss of vision, the retina becomes dull, the iris becomes immobile. The removal of a brain lobe does not prevent Senses, sense organs, and the receptivity of the retina do not hinder the flexible rotation of the iris, but only the perception itself. In one case, it is only related to the sensory organs; in another case, it is only related to the brain; In one case it is loss of sensation, in the other it is loss of perception. The distinction between perception and sensation also leads to a conclusion of enormous significance, which will be obvious to all. Through the brain we have two There are two ways to lose the sense of vision, the first is through the excision of the tuberculosis, so that the sense and sensitivity are lost, and the second is through the resection of the brain lobe, so that the sense and reason are lost. Therefore, the feeling is absolutely different from the reason, and the thinking is absolutely different. Unlike feelings, this conclusion would overthrow existing philosophy altogether. Ideas are never feelings. We have other arguments for the fundamental inadequacy of existing philosophy." On page 77, under the heading "Separation of Sensation and Perception," Also wrote: "We have experience that clearly shows the separation of perception and sensation. When we remove the normal functioning organs of the brain (lobes or hemispheres) from animals, the animals will lose the sense of sight. However, from the eyes of animals See, nothing changes, the object continues to be displayed on the retina, the iris remains contracted, the optic nerve senses, and has impeccable sensibility, but the animal sees nothing, no more vision (or ' the ability to see'), although all the senses continue to exist, (that is, to 'see without seeing'); there is no more vision (or 'the ability to see'), because there is no perception anymore. Perception rather than sensation is The most fundamental element of intellect. Perception is a part of intellect, and by amputation of the same organism, such as the lobes or hemispheres, perception disappears with intellect, but sensation is not It persisted after removing the lobes and hemispheres."

-------- ①Flourens: "On Life and Reason", Paris Second Edition, 1852, Garnier Brothers Publishing House, p. 49. The following well-known line from the ancient philosopher Epichamus confirms that the ancients in general had recognized the intellectual character of intuition: "All things are deaf and blind, but the mind sees and hears".Plutarch quotes this line and adds: "The properties of our ears cannot produce perceptions without the presence of thought." Before this he said: "The natural scientist Stratus has proved that:' You cannot understand without thinking.'" Immediately after this quotation he says: "Therefore everyone who understands thinks, for we are born to understand by thinking." Second line of Epichamus Possibly in connection with this, Diogenes Laertius quotes the following: "The word intelligent does not only apply to us, for all living beings are endowed with reason." Pompelli likewise managed to prove in detail that all animals possess intelligence.

This being the case, it must follow from the intellectual character of intuition that all animals, even the lowest, possess intelligence—that is, causal cognition, although this cognition varies greatly in subtlety and clarity. ; but at any rate they must possess the understanding required by sensation to induce intuition, for without understanding sensation is not only useless, but a painful faculty given by nature.Anyone who has intelligence in himself will not doubt its existence among advanced animals.But that their knowledge of the laws of causality is indeed a priori, and not born from the habit of observing one thing after another, is sometimes shown so clearly that it is even undeniable.For example, a puppy will not jump off a table because it can foresee what will happen when it jumps.Not long ago, the windows in my bedroom had some very large curtains that went all the way to the floor and could be pulled apart with a piece of string.The morning after the drapes were hung, when I opened them for the first time, I was amazed to find my clever poodle standing there in great bewilderment, looking up, down, left, and right for the cause of this phenomenon , that is, to look for changes that must have taken place, according to its a priori knowledge.On the third day, it was still the same as yesterday. —But even the lowest animals have intuition—and therefore intellect—down to the aquatic polyps, which, though they have no distinct sense organs, can nevertheless swim from leaf to leaf on aquatic plants, Stick your own tentacles on it and look for more light.

It is true that human understanding is strictly distinct from reason, but, leaving this question aside, there is no difference between the lowest understanding and human understanding except in degree.Different degrees of intelligence, between the highest and the lowest, are possessed by various animals, the highest of which, like monkeys, elephants, and dogs, often surprise us with their intelligence.But, in any case, the function of the intellect must be to directly apprehend causality.As we have seen, first, the relations between ourselves and objects outside ourselves, from which objective intuitions arise; As stated in Section XX, this causality manifests itself in three forms—cause, stimulus, and motivation.All motion in the world is carried out according to these three forms of the law of causality, and only through these three forms can the intellect understand motion.If a cause of one of these three forms (we take it in the narrowest sense) happens to be the object of the intellect's investigations, the intellect produces astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry, and machines which do not distinguish between good and evil; but, In any case, the direct, intuitive perception of this causal connection is ultimately the basis for all these discoveries.Because the only form and function of the understanding is this comprehension, without resorting to Kant's cumbersome method of twelve categories (I have already proved the invalidity of Kant's method). —All perceptions are immediate and therefore intuitive perceptions of causal connections, although they require immediate transformation into abstract concepts in order to be ascertained.Computation is therefore not understanding, and calculation, as such, does not involve understanding of things.Computation deals only with abstract concepts of quantities and determines their interrelationships.We can never gain an understanding of even the simplest point of a physical process by calculation, because to understand this process, it is necessary to have the help of an intuitive understanding of the spatial relationship from which the cause is generated.Calculations are of purely practical rather than theoretical value.It can even be said that the beginning of calculation is the end of understanding; because the brain full of numbers is addicted to calculation, that is, absorbed in purely abstract mathematical concepts, and has been completely separated from the causal connection in physical processes.The result of this is to show us only how much, never what.Therefore, "experiment plus calculation", such maxims of French physicists are inappropriate (for thorough understanding) in any case. --Besides, if stimulation becomes the guide of the understanding, it will give rise to vegetable and animal psychology, therapeutics, and toxicology.Finally, if the intellect is devoted to the study of motives, the use of these motives can theoretically produce ethics, jurisprudence, history, politics, and even drama and epic works, and on the other hand can either merely tame animals or To achieve the higher purpose of making people dance with the music, as long as a special string is found, once pulled, people can dance like puppets at will.As to the function which produces this effect, whether the intellect flexibly employs the laws of gravitation to serve the ends which the intellect in due time requires, or whether it gratifies collective or individual inclinations for its own ends, This is not very important.In practical application we call intellect mischievous when it is used for trivial purposes, and trickery when it is used only to injure others.In purely theoretical applications we simply call it intellect, the higher degrees being keen, wise, discerning, insight; the lower degrees dull, stupid, silly, and so on.These distinct degrees of understanding are innate, not acquired; although, as has been said, even at the earliest stage in the use of the understanding, the stage of empirical intuition, practice and knowledge of the material to which it is applied , is also indispensable.All fools have rationality—give him premises, and he can draw conclusions; and the original, and thus intuitive, knowledge is provided by the understanding, and that is the difference.The essence of every major discovery, of every important project of universal historical significance, is the product of a fortunate moment, because of some favorable coincidence of internal and external circumstances, some complex series of causal effects, some underlying cause of phenomena. Though it has been seen thousands of times in the past, or some hidden train of thought, undeveloped before, suddenly reveals itself to our reason. ——

By the preceding explanations of the processes of sight and touch, I have shown irrefutably that empirical intuition is entirely a matter for the understanding, and that the sensations, through the senses, furnish the understanding with only material—on the whole, very crude material.So, in fact, the intellect is acting as an artist, and the feeling is only the hand that delivers the material to the intellect.However, this process is always about finding the cause from the effect, so that the cause presents itself as a spatial object through this process.In this process, it is the very fact that we presuppose the law of causality, which fully confirms that this law is undoubtedly provided by the understanding itself; for we can never find a way for it to enter the intellect from without.It is indeed the first condition of the intuition of the whole of experience; but it is also the form in which the whole of foreign experience presents itself to us; and since it itself is fundamentally presupposed by experience, how does this law of causality emerge from experience? What about from China? —It is precisely because this problem is completely impossible, and because Hume's philosophy abolishes a priori, that he denies all reality of the concept of causality.Moreover, he already mentioned in section 7 of his "Inquiry into the Human Mind" two false hypotheses which have recently been re-emphasized: the one concerning the action of the will upon the various parts of our bodies, and the other It is the resistance of external objects due to our pressure that is the origin and prototype of the concept of causality.Hume refuted these two hypotheses in his own way and according to his own train of thought.My idea is this: there is no causal connection between the action of the will and the action of the body; Observed from the aspect of self-consciousness or inner senses, it is regarded as the function of will; at the same time, on the other hand, observed from the aspect of external, brain-space intuition, it is regarded as the behavior of the body.The second assumption is false, first of all, as I have explained at length, because the mere sense of touch is not yet able to produce any speculative intuitions, let alone the concept of causality, which can never be derived from hindered muscular activity. and this obstruction often occurs without any external cause; secondly, since we must have a motive when we touch a foreign object, this already presupposes the understanding of the object, and the object The understanding of cause and effect is a prerequisite for understanding. — But the only way of proving that the law of causality is fundamentally independent of all experience, as already stated, is to show that the possibility of all experience is conditioned on the concept of causality.In Section 23 I will show that the proof Kant offers with similar intentions is false.

-------- ①Compare the third edition of the German edition, Vol. 2, p. 41. (The third edition contains a supplementary material here, while the second edition, Volume 2, p. 38 does not.—Editor's Note, Third Edition. Having said that, we might as well focus our attention on the fact that Kant either did not clearly recognize the mediation of causal law in empirical intuition—which we have known before all experience—or deliberately avoided it. Mentioning it because doing so defeats his purpose.In Pure Critical Reason, for example, the relation between causality and intuition is not dealt with in the "Primary Theory" but unexpectedly appears in the chapter "Falsehoods of Pure Reason"; moreover, it appears in "Critique of the Fourth Fallacy of Transcendental Psychology", and only in the first edition.The fact that Kant arranges this content in this way in his works shows that, in considering this relationship, he always invariably seeks to pass from appearance to thing in itself, and not in the creation of intuition itself.Therefore, he said here that the real existence of external objects is not directly given in the intuition, but added to the intuition in thinking, so it is deduced.However, in Kant's view, anyone who does this will show that he is a transcendental realist, so he will go astray.Because here, Kant's "external object" refers to the thing itself.

-------- ① Kant: First Edition, p. 367 and following pages (Miller's English translation, p. 318 and following pages). Transcendental idealists, on the contrary, rest entirely in the intuition of some empirical reality—that is, something that exists in a space outside of us—without reasoning about its reality.For, according to Kant, intuition is accomplished quite directly, without the aid of the causal chain, and thus without the aid of the understanding: he simply identifies intuition with sensation.The basis for our statement is to be found in the paragraph beginning "With regard to the reality of foreign objects, I need not rely at all on reasoning" and in the sentence beginning "Since we fully admit it".From these passages it is clear that Kant held that the intuition of objects in space precedes the whole application of the law of causality, and that the law of causality therefore does not have intuition as one of its elements and conditions. For Kant, pure sensation It is intuitive.In the transcendental sense, causality is mentioned in connection with intuition only when we ask what might exist outside of us, that is, when we seek the thing-in-itself.Moreover, Kant only admits the existence of causality in reflection, no, only the possibility of causality.That is, the clear and abstract perception through the concept; therefore, he does not suspect at all that its use precedes the whole of reflection, especially in experience, the intuition of the senses, which would otherwise be Impossible, which I have irrefutably proved in the previous analysis.Kant therefore had to shelve the origin of empirical intuition.It seemed to him that it was just a matter of feeling, which seemed to be given in an uncanny way, that is, to fit the feeling.I would very much like the thoughtful reader to refer to these passages in Kant which I have identified, which will help to convince the reader that my view of the whole process and connection is much more precise than Kant's.Kant's terribly wrong views are still to be found in the philosophical literature to this day for the simple reason that no one has ventured to attack them; mechanism.

-------- ② Kant: first edition, page 371 (Miller's English translation, page 322). ③Ibid, p. 372 (Miller's English translation p. 323). The fundamental attitude of Kantian idealism has nothing to lose, and even something to gain from this correction of mine.In my opinion, he only needs to dissolve and cancel the necessity of causality in empirical intuition as a product of empirical intuition, so it cannot be used to serve this completely transcendent question about the thing in itself. In this way, his The argument is reasonable.As soon as I refer to my previous theory of empirical intuition, we will find that its first-hand knowledge, sensation, is absolutely subjective, a process within our organism, because it arises under our skin.Locke has proved very thoroughly that the sensations of our senses, even if they be admitted to be caused by external causes, cannot have any similarity in quality with these external causes.For example, sugar has no analogy to sweet, nor does rose to red.But the fact that they require external causes is entirely founded on a law whose grounds are evidently within our brains; this necessity is therefore as subjective as the sensations themselves.Moreover, even time—the initial condition of any possible change, and therefore the change that first permits the use of causality—also has space—which alone makes possible the objectification of the cause, which then remains as object itself presents itself to us—we say that even time and space are subjective forms of the intellect, as Kant demonstrated conclusively.We thus find that all the elements of empirical intuition are within us, and that nothing contained in all these elements can give us a reliable sign of anything absolutely different from ourselves, the thing-in-itself. ——However, this is not all.We regard the concept of "matter" as a dross which remains after its body has been stripped of its shape and of all its particular essence, and it is for this reason that this dreg is the same in all bodies.The shapes and essences which we have abstracted are only the specially prescribed manner of behavior of these bodies which constitutes their difference.If, therefore, we disregard these shapes and essences, what remains is activity in general, which is pure action, cause and effect itself, objective thought—that is, the reflection of our own understanding, as its sole function, the passive externalized image; moreover, matter is purely causal, its essence being action.This is why pure matter cannot be intuited but only thought: we attribute it to reality as a basis for thinking about it.For pure cause and effect, pure action, without any definite pattern of action, cannot be an intuition, and therefore cannot enter into experience. —Thus matter has an objective relation only to pure understanding; for this is cause and effect and nothing else, just as the understanding itself is immediate knowledge of cause and effect and nothing else.This is also the reason why the law of causality does not apply to matter itself, that is to say, matter is neither born nor destroyed, and exists forever.For, on the one hand, this is due to the fact that the law of causality is an indispensable condition of the accidents (form and essence) of matter, that is, of all alternations of all emergences and disappearances of being; The pure causality of self: its power cannot be exercised upon itself, any more than the eye, which sees all things, sees itself.Therefore, "substance" and matter are the same, we can call substance as behavior in the abstract sense, and contingency, that is, a special behavior mode, as concrete behavior. ——These are the conclusions drawn by real, that is, transcendental, idealism.In my magnum opus I have shown that the thing-in-itself—that is, whatever exists outside our representations in general—cannot be obtained from representations, but must be obtained in an entirely different way, Leading us into the interior of things, it is as if by treachery to gain access to the castle and thus the thing-in-itself.

-------- ①Comparison of the second edition, page 9 of the fourth part of volume one and pages 48-49 of volume two (third edition, page 10 of volume one; page 52 of volume two. English translation volume one page 9 ~10 pp.; Vol. II, p. 218). However, if one compares the empirical intuitive analysis I have just given, which is true, profound, thorough, and confirms that the elements of intuition are subjective, with Fichte's algebraic formula "ego" = "not-ego" ; with his false sophistry proofs expressed in vague, if not absurd, language, in order to be able to deceive the reader; To compare; in short, with those gags made out of ignorance of science; this can only be sheer trickery, and it is even more outrageous to equate the two.Moreover, I am firmly opposed to having anything in common with this Fichte, as Kant expressly and openly emphasized in a circular in the Jena Literary Zeitung.Hegelians and those same idiots can go on and on about Kant-Fichte philosophy, but Kantian philosophy is Kantian philosophy and Fichtean deceit is Fichtean deceit, which is the fact , and will continue to do so in the future, although in Germany there are far more critics of the good than in other countries.