Extended Abstract
Philosophy in general served as the search for ontology until the Descartes period. We
see that all the explanation processes philosophy developed on ontology began to turn into
episteme. This episteme was handled in the center of ontology throughout the county and
middle ages. While the problem of the source of episteme was important in the ancient
period, the problem of the possibility of episteme in the Middle Ages caused great debates.
As a result of these debates, the tendency to treat episteme as a universal built up a
millennial Christian medieval process.
One of the most important reasons why we have read, for centuries, the unsolved
epistemological dilemma of Christian Middle Ages as the dark age, can be observed
through the 17th and 18th centuries, during which the philosophical foundations of
the modernity culture were created. The efforts to understand the worlds of reason
and senses by Locke and Leibniz, which were distinguished by sharp lines in addition
to Descartes’ search for clear and distinctive information, reached its peak point with
the tendency of secularization of the philosophical principles of Middle Age. There are
so much data from the Middle Ages that prevents us from saying the secularization
directly started with the modernization; to the extent that the activities of William of
Ockham turns this into a tool that allows us to go back to Middle Ages as the beginning
of secularization. But Locke and Leibniz, who came after Descartes and Hobbes
who can be counted as the first examples of modern period, were different from each
other based on an important similarity. This similarity was the tendency of explaining
one of the opposite approaches through another. For example Locke had the tendency
to sensorialize the reason while Leibniz chose to rationalize the senses. Both of their
approaches were analytical and based on the piece. While one of them materialized
the conceptual ideas, the other one conceptualized the materialized atoms into monad.
Locke’s sensation, reflection and understanding processes are associated with each
other as three different types of actions. The result of these associations is information
while the result of the information will become the expression or statement of the
judgment. The information that is called by Descartes clear and distinctive information
becomes the clear-distinctive, definitely synthetic and informative information
for Locke. The problem is no longer a problem of, or the opposition to the immanence
or the transcendence similar to the debates or concept of universality. Because, exactly
because of this reason, the synthetic judgments are not within something or hidden
within or in scope of something; they are not immanent but they expand and increase
our knowledge. For example if the car is yellow, not all cars are yellow; the car can be
yellow or not. Therefore we face a definite judgment instead of a universal one based
on the undeniable definiteness of the yellow color of some cars. The definiteness is now
the expression of the clear information and not of the whole; the hint of the first pattern
that makes rational deduction possible in scope of the process that extends to the
artificial intelligence can be obtained here.
All of the arguments put forward during the ancient age and middle ages constituted
a type of argumentation that directed to the entirety of the whole whether through
analogy or deduction; it assumed we can have information only when we know the
whole. Therefore the universals were the most important references to ensure information.
The questions of not being able to know the entirety of this information or whether the constituents of the entirety were not one and the same with each other and
whether some things within the whole contained other qualities, created a problematic
about the synthetic or apriori nature of the information; Kant moved forward from this
state between the Locke and Leibniz and took a look at the problem of apriori when
trying to reach the nature of the judgments that state definiteness, in other word the
synthetic judgments. Actually the whole problem is about what the information is and
to clarify the way that is followed to make information possible as the result of non-derivation
of information from the analytical judgments. The judgments performed just
by logical deductions do not provide information; they are analytical propositions. The
verb does not exceed its topic here; it does not determine its subject in terms of the new
information. The verbs that add the subject to the new information are created as the
result of the synthetic judgments. Here the notions get connected to each other; as all
of them have clear-distinct background, they have synthetic identity. The experimental
information have synthetic identity based on the clearness-distinctiveness principle
but the mathematical judgments do not owe their clearness and distinctiveness to the
experimentality; their clearness and distinctiveness lead us to express them with synthetic
identity and their lack of experimental background allows for a type of characterization
to consider them as apriori.
Exactly because of this reason, the reason is not the information itself, as something
that allows us to know. The thing that makes the information possible needs a
reason and it is the experience. Therefore the reason prototypes realized in scope of
the artificial intelligence processes are directed towards the sensorial experience as
the instrumental reason, and it won’t be very meaningless to observe Kant within the
parenthesis of Locke and Leibniz, in scope of the principles of beginning. Just as Kant
sees math, which is synthetic apriori as an example of science, as a determinative application
point; the field which is pushed outside of science as metaphysics, will turn into
the most apparent characteristic example of being science with its synthetic apriori
character. There will be only two categorical situations here according to Kant; one
of them is, although not every synthetic thing relies on experiment, it can be experienced
just because of being clear and distinctive, and this allows for each information
obtained through metaphysics possible to be experienced. Of course, he distinguishes
this from belief. Because the metaphysical products are not the products of those which
are only independent from experience, in other words from time and place. Second
direction is, the condition of contributing to the realization of thought and to develop
the current ones in terms of syllogism-design. Because whether sensual or sensorial,
the forms of sensing without noticing are ready and given. Apriori is causally within
the determination. Consequently two types of information emerge as the practical and
theoretical; one goes towards seeing and knowing, the other towards action. Therefore
it is not possible to say a categorical mental process has big differences when compared
to the artificial intelligence.