Chapter 4 - Intelligibility

Chapter 4 was, I thought, extremely challenging. The subject of the chapter, intelligibility, was defined as follows: "Something is intelligible if someone can understand it" (56). After briefly discussing the historical and social contexts in which intelligibility has been framed and defined, the author discusses Kant. This is where I got lost.

On page 60, the author discusses some difficulties with Kant's ideas concerning intelligibility. First, Mason argues that Kant upheld the "unity of the rules of understanding" while at the same time framing understanding as subjective. The second problem proposed by Mason was Kant's "idealism." To me at least, this sounded a lot like the first critique. "To the blunt question: is intelligibility a characteristic of things (nature, 'the world') or does it depend on us?" (60). Could we spend some time in class clarifying these ideas and concepts?

On pages 64-65, the author concludes the chapter by asking whether not anything in general can be said about intelligibility in nature. With regard to Kant, the author argues that his additions may have proved unhelpful in light of the interpretation that "our understanding of nature is not a direct vision but mediated through our concepts, marshaled by our reason" (64). Spinoza's contributions are likewise potentially unhelpful due to their rigidity, although his "arcane-sounding doctrine of the infinite attributes of God or nature" are of "some interest" (65). Again, I was confused by both of these concluding thoughts and would appreciate some class time devoted to distilling them.