The Brooks

Yes, I know. I’m ripping this guy off. But hey, it’s a good idea. So what?

1. ‘Ding dong, the witch is dead.’ Stephen Harper comments on the passing of former Supreme Court justice Antonio Lamer. You can almost hear him celebrate can’t you? As Chief Justice, Lamer was responsible for the restructuring of legislative and judicial power in Canada. See here for an explanation of the infamous Re Renumeration of Judges and Secession cases.

2. OK I admit it. Private health insurance may have some problems.

3. Not a bad idea … but Wal-Mart is definitely not doing this for religious reasons. And I don’t think that should be the sole factor in determining whether one should shop there or not. Talk about simplistic thinking.

4. A stirring defense of Wal-Mart against all detractors. Solid arguments except for the section on health care.

5. Due to Brian Walsh, I’ve become interested in the work of Bob Goudzwaard. Here’s his homepage. He has an interesting new work published entitled Hope in Troubled Times: A New Vision for Confronting Global Crises.

6. Worship the god of consumerism. (HT: Crunchy Con).

7. The Law Reform Commission of Canada’s 1976 report on criminal law stated, “Criminal law must be an instrument of last resort. It must be used as little as possible.” Someone tell this to Iran. According to Iranian police officials, more than 150,000 women were arrested in Tehran just last month for “bad veils.”

8. Advent is here … and it’s not all good news.

9. WTF? It’s articles like this that make me want to go more right wing.

10. Whatever you do, don’t call your teddy bear Mohammed. Tolerance at its finest in Sudan.

Here are lecture notes on Kant snd the noumena from Dr. Davis. This hopefully will help with the discussion in the comments section of this post.

[A] There are 2 senses of the term ‘noumenon’

[A1] The negative sense – that which is not an object of sensible intuition

[A2] The positive sense – that which is the object of a non-sensible (intellectual) intuition

[B] ‘Noumenon’ must be understood in the negative sense

[B1] There is no faculty of intuition

[B2] ‘Doubtless’ there are noumena corresponding to the phenomena, but the categories don’t apply to them.

[B2i] For the categories are ‘forms of thought’ for sensible intuition.

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Ben, earlier you said:

This isn’t really all that true. Kant believed that the Noumenal is “thought by understanding alone.” He never said we can’t know it at all, just not through sensation.

I’m not sure where you got your definition from… I have Critique right here in front of me and I’m quoting the man himself.

Does this help? It seems that the noumena cannot be understood in the positive sense, which I believe your quote was referring to. I could be wrong though, but that’s how I read Dr. D’s lecture notes.

More action here in the comments.