Eubulides wrote:
>
>
> > For that matter, here's Mill on epistemology:
> >
> >> Of nature, or anything whatever external to ourselves, we know . . .
> >> nothing, except the facts which present themselves to our senses, and
> >> such other facts as may, by analogy, be inferred from these...[This
> >> means that the] nature and laws of Things in themselves, or of the
> >> hidden causes of the phenomena which are the objects of experience
> >> [are] radically inaccessible to the human faculties.
>
> ==============
>
> Which is incoherent and question begging for Kantian and post-Kantian
> discourses or, if you prefer, reasons.
It would also seem to be nonsense for Aristotelian and/or Marxian reasons. As I pointed out in an earlier post, the question is not whether things exist but whether or not one assumes their existence must be demonstrated, when it has been "conclusively" "demonstrated" from Descartes to the present that they cannot be. Butler, sharing this nonsense, (a) is (or has been) involved in political struggle (of a sort Mill would be unable to recognize), (b) finding herself faced with the necessity of dealing with actual relations (as Mill never did, a focus on "fact" obscuring the reality of relations), attempts heroically to demonstrate, to demonstrate that in order to understand relations one must resort to thought ("post-structuralism") which has the denial of relations as its first principle. Had one to c hoose between Butler, and Mill, clearly Butler would be preferable. Fortunately the choice is not necessary, since we have Marx and Aristotle.
Carrol
>
> Why are lefties never threatened by post-Kantian theory? :-)
>
> Ian
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