Immanuel Kant and David Icke
It is not news that truths that might threaten established interests are marginalised. The process of weighing evidence needs to be curtailed and the official narrative protected. In times of war this is the draconian function of propaganda. The public use of reason has never had undisputed supremacy.
The following texts foreground this issue. The first is historical in the sense of being from the eighteenth century, while the second explicitly concerns the present and was posted last week. Aligning apparently unconnected arguments can produce a shift of perspective or at least an awareness of perspective.
I
In “Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics” (1766) Immanuel Kant explores the question of how to evaluate statements for which there is no conclusive proof.
Or, to put it another way, how are we to evaluate claims for which there is circumstantial proof but which lead to conclusions that are unacceptable.
It all depends on what is considered to be valid evidence and what is not. And in this determination sensory experience has more weight than something that that may be imaginable but which is, at present, beyond immediate experience.
However, Kant cautions, the scales of understanding may themselves be biased in a way that distorts the balance of evidence:
Scales, intended by civil law to be a standard of measure in trade, may be shown to be inaccurate if the wares and the weights are made to change pans. The bias of the scales of understanding is revealed by exactly the same stratagem, and in philosophical judgements, too, it would not be possible, unless one adopted this stratagem, to arrive at a unanimous result by comparing the different weighings. (p.336)
It is not merely the issue of what is admissible as evidence in the court of understanding. Looked at from a different perspective, the process of understanding can itself be revealed as biased. If understanding is to be secure it must take into account other perspectives and not merely dismiss them out of hand.
Kant’s reflections on this subject were prompted by the work of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Swedenborg was famous for his clairvoyance; his ability to see things not present to the senses. He claimed to have experience of the spirit world and life on other planets. His predictions and prophecies were an eighteenth-century media sensation.
Kant apologises for bothering his philosophical, rational readers with tales of ‘fantastical visionaries’ (p. 305) and forcing them into the company of ‘those who build castles in the sky in their various imaginary worlds’ (p.329). Indeed, even to touch on such a subject is to attract public derision:
The reader will probably ask what on earth could have induced me to engage in such a despicable business as that of spreading fairy-tales abroad, which every rational being would hesitate to listen to with patience. (p.342)
Publishing “Dreams of a Spirit-Seer” risks undermining his credibility as a philosopher and alienating readers.
Kant concedes that there are solid reasons for this reaction against unproven theories. In the past superstitions have proven impervious to reason; for example the religious cults accommodated by the Roman state. History shows us that institutionalised superstitions can gain the protection of the state and claim special rights ‘legitimised by considerations of state-interest [that] place themselves far beyond the reach of all the futile objections raised by pedantic scholars’:
The use or misuse of these rights has become a practice so venerable that it no longer needs to subject itself to the humiliation of such demanding cross-examination. (p.305)
Those who believe in rational enquiry are justifiably cautious about giving credibility to theories that can be manipulated by self-serving political forces.
However, Kant notes, this verifiable alliance between powerful interests and the stifling of criticism does not fit the current situation:
But why is it that the popular tales which find such widespread acceptance, or which are, at least so weakly challenged, circulate with such futility and impunity, insinuating themselves even into scholarly theories and that, in spite of the fact that they do not even enjoy the support of that most persuasive of proofs, the proof from advantage (argumentum ab utilt). (p.305)
It is difficult to see what advantage can be aimed at today by those challenging the official narrative. Lacking the advantage of usefulness, what purpose other than the search for truth is being pursued?
Elsewhere Kant acknowledges that so-called modern visionaries often appear mad, which also does not enhance their credibility or usefulness:
The demented [Wahnsinnige: deluded, mad] person sees or recalls objects as correctly as every healthy person, only he ordinarily explains the behavior of other human beings through an absurd delusion as referring to himself and believes that he is able read out of it who knows what suspicious intentions, which they never have in mind. Hearing him one would believe that the whole town is occupied with him. The market people who deal with each another and by chance glance at him are plotting against him, the night watchman calls out to play pranks at him, in short, he sees nothing but a universal conspiracy against him. (“Essay on the Maladies of the Head (1764)”, p. 74)
Kant’s letters record his unease regarding approaching what he terms ‘so slippery a matter’. He confesses that he normally agrees with the rule of common sense and leans towards the negative when viewing the improbable in the context of so many exposed frauds:
I, who in general do not like to be inconvenienced, do not hold it advisable, on this account, to allow myself to be scared in churchyards or in the darkness. (cited in Johnson)
A letter to Moses Mendelssohn apologises for the text of “Dreams of a Spirit-Seer” that he has asked him to read; ‘this rather untidily completed book … my desultory little essay’. Kant explains to his disapproving friend
… my own mind was conflicted on this, and regarding these stories, I can’t shake a little affection for tales of this kind, just as regarding their rational basis, I can’t rid myself of some suspicion of their correctness, disregarding the absurdities of the former and the figments and unintelligible concepts of the latter that undermine their value. (cited in Johnson)
So why did the philosopher feel compelled to jeopardise his university career and reputation by taking seriously what is often dismissed as ‘only an illusion of the imagination’ (p.327)?
For Kant the primary issue concerns the obligation to truth. He feels that as a philosopher he is obligated to scrutinise what may challenge the accepted ideas of reason and evidence. Is the sceptical philosopher, he asks, ‘completely to deny the truth of all such apparitions’ (p.305), thereby joining the dismissive camp of common sense? If so: ‘What reasons can he adduce to refute them’. Where is the definitive proof against them?
Blanket dismissal or ad hominem attacks on the authors of such stories betray the weakness of reason rather than its strength. Dismissal on the basis of improbability is not evidence. One cannot demand incontrovertible evidence from the proponents of such stories and then rest one’s case on their unlikelihood. The declaration of impossibility cannot rule out the possibility of uncovering new truths:
How important such an admission would be! And what astonishing implications would open up before one, if even only one such occurrence could be supposed to be proven! (p.305)
It seems that, on the one hand, Kant does not want to endorse common prejudice while, on the other hand, he doesn’t want to embrace irrationality. His awkwardness stems from an awareness that although common sense might be on the side of such reaction, reason is not reducible to common sense:
To believe none of the many things which are recounted with some semblance of truth, and to do so without any reason, is as much a foolish prejudice as to believe anything which is spread by popular rumour, and to do so without examination. (p.306)
Beware of the bigoted attempt to defend reason from bigotry, Kant warns.
And beware the idolisation of authorities and institutions for reason is not the monopoly of universities that set themselves above common superstition in an attempt to keep controversy (and disrepute) at arms length:
The methodical gossip of the universities is frequently nothing but an agreement to exploit the instability of the meaning of words with a view to evading questions which are difficult to answer. (p.307)
That expert arm, so useful for persuading the recalcitrant, is the arm of the state and other powerful interests. Don’t forget that philosophy itself was once considered to be a ‘fairy-story from the cloud-cuckoo-land of metaphysics’ (p.343). Knowledge is always evolving.
“Dreams of a Spirit-Seer” criticises faith in empirical evidence as the final arbiter of truth:
And in this connection, I find myself constrained to warn against precipitate judgements, which are the judgements which most easily insinuate themselves into the deepest and darkest questions. It is commonly the case, namely, that that which belongs to ordinary empirical concepts is usually regarded as if its possibility were also understood. On the other hand, it is, of course, impossible to form any concept of that which deviates from common empirical concepts and which no experience can explain, even analogically. And for that reason one tends to dismiss it at once as impossible. (p.310)
It seems that ‘securely establishing the limits of our understanding’ (p.339) involves stepping beyond the bounds of common experience. The distinction between empirical facts and speculation is not set in stone:
And, anyway, why should it be more respectable to allow oneself to be misled by credulous trust in the sophistries of reason than to allow oneself to be deceived by an incautious belief in delusory stories? (p.343)
Kant argues that reason requires humility, particularly when public censure and established interests coincide:
I formerly used to regard the human understanding in general merely from the point of view of my own understanding. Now I put myself in the position of someone else’s reason, which is independent of myself and external to me, and regard my judgements, along with their most secret causes, from the point of view of other people. The comparison of the two observations yields, it is true, pronounced parallaxes, but it is also the only method for preventing optical deception, and the only means of placing the concepts in the true positions which they occupy relatively to the cognitive faculty of human nature. (p.336)
What Kant calls ‘optical deception’ refers to viewing things from one perspective only. This is to limit understanding to what is already known when by right the cutting edge of reason transgresses the limits it demarcates.
Open and free debate point the way to truth and understanding:
Whenever I encounter something which instructs me, I appropriate it. The judgement of the opponent who refutes my arguments becomes my own judgement, once I have put it on the scales and weighed it first of all against the scale of self-love, and then, having transferred it to that scale, against my own alleged reasons, and found it to be of superior quality. (p.337)
One must test one’s assumptions if knowledge is to progress and not confuse reason with officially sanctioned truth.
II
In a recent lecture, author and public intellectual David Icke has sought to orient thinking on contemporary issues. The title of his address, “The Danger to Truth of Here and No Further”, highlights what he sees as the threat to understanding and truth that comes from accepting the conventional limits of critical enquiry.
In particular, Icke responds to the dismissal of his thesis that an alien race of humanoid shape-shifting lizards are working towards global domination and enslavement of humanity. Critics claim there is no evidence for such a theory, while Icke points to his publications on this subject that have spanned thirty years.
Icke also defends his hypothesis that the symptoms attributed to the COVID-19 virus match, and can be explained by, damage caused by 5G electro-magnetic radiation. He argues that the negative response to the lizard hypothesis reveals the danger posed to truth which he labels ‘The Here and No Further Syndrome’.
To the claim that there no evidence that a non-human reptilian race could be involved in the manipulation of human society, Icke responds that the evidence is there but it is being dismissed. There is what he calls a ‘mental response mechanism’ (6:47) at work in such dismissal that is incompatible with the quest for truth.
Not only is the maxim ‘it can’t be happening so therefore there is no evidence’ self-defeating since it pre-empts the consideration of evidence. What it reveals is a sense of trepidation. It is, says Icke, ‘the fear of losing credibility if I go down this road, so I won’t’ (10:37), that is determining the search for truth and understanding.
He cites as an example of this a commentator who has stressed the ‘“obligation to have the confirmation of the distinction between empirical facts and speculation”’ (13:03) in matters of crucial public discourse:
‘our obligation as people who participate in this conversation to ensure that a distinction is made between the empirical fact … [and] the joy of speculation … when you speak of lizard people or shape shifters you’re entering into a territory that makes it easy for you to be ridiculed.’ (Russell Brand cited at 11:10)
Icke responds that this example of Here and No Further, which takes his own work as an example of the No Further, is indicative of critical debate in the present time. A step too far represents a fearful contamination.
While it is now acceptable to lift the veil on the corporate-political establishment, pointing to the economic and political conspiracy at work poses no threat to those committed to dismantling and replacing that system:
‘Do we really think that Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum and Bill Gates are it … You’ve only got to put your toe in the rabbit hole before you pick those two up; they’re nowhere near to where this is coming from.’ (21:00)
When the hypothesis of a global political-economic conspiracy turns out to be true, the people who pioneered the theory (and were dismissed) are dismissed again when they argue for a probable cause. Having been proven right is no guarantee that you will be granted credibility.
Ultimately, the court of public opinion will observe that behind the refusal to accept the challenge of open debate lies the need to conceal. It is less about giving credibility to heretical views than about maintaining the illusion of one’s authority. Fear of exposure masquerades as benign protectiveness. The authority that is being protected is the authority of the status quo.
After all, if empirical (from empiricus) means guided by experience, as in a physician guided by observation and experiment, isn’t debate a form of empirical evidence?
The corporate media selects those who will go so far, but no further and designates them alternative voices. As for Icke himself, because he names the cause, there is ridicule and dismissal. Who is more likely to pose a threat to the system, he asks, those touted as alternative voices or those who are censored and banned? If what he’s saying is so obviously absurd, why is he vilified and censored?
To stop at the limit of what is acceptable is to ‘ring fence resistance’ rather than ‘moving on and seeking greater truth’ (28:23):
‘When you are not driven to seeking out the truth but have an attachment to how people see you, then that effects where you’ll go, what you’ll research, and what you’ll say.’ (30:35)
You become, as it were, part of an optical deception that passes off self-censorship as understanding. As a supposed critical thinker you become predictable, and therefore calculable and manipulable. ‘You will only find the truth if you pursue research that looks for the cutting-edge … where the truth lies.’ (17:45) Anything less is poking around in the symptoms without getting to the cause.
Ultimately, argues Icke, it takes humility to acknowledge that human experience is limited and our perceptual field is only a tiny part of what is in the universe. Reason does not require the crutch of official sanction.
Conclusion
Kant argued that reason in search of truth and understanding is on the side of hope and freedom. And hope suffers neither containment nor fearful cowering because
the scales of the understanding are not, after all, wholly impartial. One of the arms, which bears the inscription: Hope for the future, has a mechanical advantage; and that advantage has the effect that even weak reasons, when placed on the appropriate side of the scales, cause speculations, which are in themselves of greater weight, to rise on the other side. This is the only defect, and it is one which I cannot easily eliminate. Indeed, it is a defect which I cannot even wish to eliminate. (“Dreams of a Spirit-Seer”, p.337)
Hope for the future tilts the scales in the favour of free enquiry. Trust in human reason outweighs the risk of error.
This is what those strangling reason and promoting superstition under the guise of empirical facts cannot tolerate.
References
Images: Immanuel Kant: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Immanuel_Kant_(painted_portrait).jpg
David Icke: https://wp-media.patheos.com/blogs/sites/1122/2020/05/Icke.jpg
Icke, David 2023. “The Danger to Truth of Here and No Further. The David Icke Dot-Connector.” Banned.video. March 23. https://banned.video/watch?id=640a1a10e8a84c4db269e962
Johnson, Gregory R. 2002. Kant on Swedenborg: Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings. Edited by Gregory R. Johnson. Translated by Gregory R. Johnson and Glenn Alexander Magee. U.S.A.: Swedenborg Foundation Publishers.
Kant, Immanuel 1766 [1992]. “Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics.” In: Theoretical Philosophy, 1755-1770. Translated and edited by David Walford in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.301-359.
--. 1764 [2007] “Essay on the Maladies of the Head (1764).” In: Anthropology, History, and Education. Translated by Holly Wilson. Edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.65-77.
Further Reading
Palmquist, Stephen R. 2019. Kant and Mysticism: Critique as the Experience of Baring All of Reason’s Light. London: Lexington Books.