HA!!!! It’s only 51 pages. You haven’t found a definition in there anywhere? What ever happened to due diligence, huh???

Kidding.

Mouse running behind a tree....wordless image....united schematicized conceptions......simple thought.

“Mouse running behind a tree”....construction of a proposition.....united schematized conceptions.....discursive judgement....complex thought.

Gold star????

Could you think all the thoughts (or any) in the CPR without language, for example? — Janus

CPR is all language representing Kant’s thoughts, so no, I cannot think Kant’s thoughts. But I can, and have, represent(ed) Kant’s words, thus indirectly his thought, with objects of my own imagination. Like.....you know those new-fangled downspouts on fancy houses these days, that are just painted plastic chains, where rain water travels down them without falling off? The rain all over the roof is objects out there; the gutters are the sense organs, collecting and directing all the objects where they need to go, rather than just overflowing and falling all over the place; the chains are the nerves that transport the collected stuff to the only destination appropriate for that stuff. The collected stuff traveling down the chains is.....of course......phenomena.

Yes, words are tools.
—————

My point is only that complex thought is impossible without language. — Janus

Ok, maybe. What is a complex thought, such that that kind of thought is impossible without words, but carries the implication that simple thoughts are possible without words?

We accessed what Kant had taken to be an inaccessible world. — Banno

“....That there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever observed them, must certainly be admitted; but this assertion means only, that we may in the possible progress of experience discover them at some future time....”

The hypothesis is that what we see might be totally different to a conjectured, inaccessible world about which we can say nothing. — Banno

Not a hypothesis, but a logically provable axiomatic principle.

“....we are not entitled to maintain that sensibility is the only possible mode of intuition....”

If this world is inaccessible, and if we can say nothing about it, then how could it be the cause of what we do see? — Banno

The cause of what we do see must be accessible.....

“....For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears—which would be absurd....”

The cause for perception in us, re: human sensibility (cause = object/effect = representation of object), is not the kind of cause for that which is perceived by us, re: principled natural law (cause = object/effect = object).

The corrected hypothesis, therefore, should be......for us, apodeictic certainty that what we know corresponds precisely with what actually is, is impossible.

Kant has a lot to answer for. — Banno

As does anyone who isn’t perfect.
(Cue soundtrack of one hand clapping)

I am curious as to whom your "muttered insults" are directed. — Janus

Ehhhh.....nobody. Me being flippant.
————-

How could we possibly be constantly aware of the stream of thought, when we need to be aware of other things — Janus

3B neurotransmitter connections per mm3 at somewhere around the SOL....brain can handle just about anything the senses throw at it. Experience enables relative disassociation....you no longer have to think about getting the fork squarely into your mouth. Comb your hair without a mirror. Add more and more complex numbers with less and less paper and pencil. Or, I guess, these days....reference to a phone with a calculator embedded in it.

All awareness of things just is the stream of thought.
—————

None of this makes any sense to me, or accords with my own experience of what is involved in thinking. (...) I cannot see how it is possible to think anything discursive without language. — Janus

Fine, no problem. One metaphysical doctrine may be more logically sufficient than another, but it can never be proved as more the fact.

My experience is:
Since I was a kid, when reading something, I never saw the words, but pictured what the words say. Skim right over the words, like they weren’t even there. Now you might say that’s what you’re talking about, thinking by means of words (even if not noticed they are still causal), but there is congruent functionality when I tie my shoe (I never speak about “right hand this way, left hand that way, twist wrist, pinch with finger”....I just “see” the physical interaction and “seeing” without eyes is thinking by imaging).

But you might come back with....well, somebody had to tell you, with words, how to tie shoes way back when, right? But if that is true, and nobody told me anything about tying shoes....I’d never be able to do it? It would be absolutely impossible for me to ever put two strings together in some fashion that prevents my shoes from falling of my feet, if no one told me how or I never read the instruction manual?

Go to the grocery store. Got your “honey-do” pick-up list, full of words. Upon arrival at the appropriate aisle, you look at the list, perceive a word that represents the thing you want....you’ve been told....to load into the cart, look up on the shelf, find the thing that relates to the word. But word is nowhere to be found, it is not the word you put in the cart, it is the thing represented by the word. Off you go, next aisle, put a thing in the cart that wasn’t represented by a word on the list. Impulse purchase; spontaneous determination....Oooo, that looks yummy!!! How did you accomplish the exact same function, but under two different conditions? If you put two particular things in the cart, one because of a word on a piece of paper, and the other without words or paper, then the word cannot be the cause of things in the cart necessarily, which is the same as words are not necessary for the end result of a cognition....even if, as in this case, a mere desire.

So if...IF.....for those working scenarios so mundane as reading and shoe-tying and spontaneous whatevers.....mighten it not work for every damn thing? If it is indeed possible to acquire knowledge without spoken or written language, as is the case for the first time for everything, for everybody, then it is the case that language is always a secondary cognitive functionality.

Besides the obvious....nothing ever got a name that a human didn’t give to it, language is nothing more than an assemblage of names, therefore language is a product of, thereby related to, but not the cause of, human cognition.
————-

Your own experience is.....?

thoughts cannot be understood except as they are expressed in language. — Janus

You must mean one’s thoughts cannot be understood by another except as they are expressed in language.

Content just is symbolic, linguistic; what else could it be? — Janus

What else it could be is precisely what it is. Content of any particular thought is the schema/schemata of the conception/s representing it. The schemata are represented by images. Therefore the content of thought is the schema/schemata of the conception/s contained in it. A symbolic, linguistic representation nowhere yet to be found. Images as representations are rational, imbued in all humans; language as representation is cultural imbued in particular humans. Images are common across all subjects, words are not.

But surely you know all that, so.....what gives?
————-

It seems we are thinking all the time, while not being conscious of most of it — Janus

Yes, we’re thinking continuously while conscious, and the fact we’re not aware of most of it is reflection on our laziness on the one hand, and the simplistic, repetitive lives we lead on the other. So busy impressing everybody else we overlook ourselves. Got this one-of-a-kind intellectual gift, and don’t know shit about how it works.
(Wanders off, muttering insults, kicking the fake rubber tree pot and the way out.....)

Is it possible to examine thoughts by introspection? — Janus

The only way to study anything at all, is to represent it as a phenomenon if it’s a real object, or as a conception if it’s an abstract object. But the human system, predicated on relations, can cognize nothing by a single representation, insofar as a single representation doesn’t have anything to which it relates. So to study a thought, considered as an abstract object in itself, and without regard to the content of it, it must be turned into a conception. How can we conceive of something that has no content?

(“...Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind....”)

And if we think of the thought we’re studying as having the relation which made it a thought in the first place, such that it is not an empty nothing, all we’re doing is re-creating, not studying, what we’ve already thought. All that does for us is confuse the matter, insofar as that which we re-create cannot be distinguished from that which is already in consciousness, which means we might not have re-created anything, but just recalled it. In which case, we’re studying something we already know all about.

Which brings up another issue. If it is the case that thoughts are singular and successive, then each thought is of its own time. If it is impossible to jump back to the time of a thought and to jump to the future of a possible thought, then no thought can be studied insofar as its time is not the time of the thought that studies it. We can study the contents of any thought, provided such content is common to a multiplicity of thoughts......but not the singular abstract conception itself.

Much more parsimonious, and less self-contradictory, to study what it is to think, rather than study a thought. We might be alright if we limit introspection to the examination of the relation of faculties to each other, but introspection becomes hopelessly tangled if we use it to examine the faculties themselves.

Besides....best to keep it as simple as possible, but no simpler than necessary. Somebody mentioned that some time ago...can’t remember who.

Truth be told, I must admit to only being able to articulate someone else’s model. I ain’t nowhere’s near smart enough to come up with a decent, original myself. But then, I don’t need to repeat what’s already been done.

OK, so....a model.

First, some assumptions:
.....does a human being think (or whatever one choses to call that pesky voice in his head that never seems to shut the hell up).....check;
.....does a human being receive sensory data (or whatever one choses to call that oh-so-subtle imaging process in his head that only goes away when he chose not to need it).....check;
.....does a human being ask himself, even if only once in awhile, about stuff for which he has no answer, and then, if he has no answer, creates one that makes him feel good....check;
.....is there stuff in the human intelligence in general, no matter which head contains it, the denial of which is impossible....check.

Given those assumptions, enter the guy that figures out a bunch of parts, assembles them into an explanatory method sufficient to turn those assumptions into succession of logically consistent internal mental events.

And there’s your model. Which fine for the talking, but means not a damn thing to the doing. I’m mean.....you gotta use the very thing you’re trying to model. Every abstract cognitive notion suffers the same map/territory paradoxical circularity. But whatcha gonna do, when you don’t even know with apodeictic certainty what you have to work with.

Hey.....

Yeah, I read the paper, happy with it, good for some to hang his hat on, but, I’m good with what I know.

Thing is....mind is just a catch-all, a logical placeholder to prevent infinite regress, having nothing to do with speculative theoretics as a system. For instance, in searchable Guyer/Wood (1998) CPR, brain has four returns, mind 176, but reason has 1400+.

So there is no metaphysical trap, per se. Mind is just that which is conceived when we....carelessly......step one idea over the explanatory threshold.

My opinion only, of course.

cognition can't be an active state because it doesn't interact with the external states — Isaac

True, it doesn’t. But external states are absolutely necessary for the representations (empirical) cognition does act upon. Activity herein being internally systemic. All in accordance with a specific speculative theory, hence not necessarily the case. Feasible, possible, non-contradictory....sure; the way things really are........ehhhhh, maybe not.
———-

it's a wonder either of us can understand a word the other says. — Isaac

And here is a perfect example of the depth of Kantian metaphysics. Think about it for a minute: you say you are amazed you can understand a word I say, but it is probably closer to the truth that you understand perfectly well what I say. The possible obscurity resides in the judgement you make upon receiving what I say, when you compare it to what you mean by the same word or conception you already possess.

The tripartite system in action:
(Deleted for being too long and dawn out, and perhaps only of passing interest anyway)

To study the mind presupposes it. So.....if mind is the unconditioned relative to human cognitive systems, what is there that can presuppose? To posit an antecedent to an unconditioned is a contradiction. Which relates to introspection, in that the mind ends up studying itself, which must be impossible. Now we got all kindsa metaphysical roadblocks, in that we are mistaking the replication of the doing of the deed, for the deed itself being done.

It just may be Kant’s greatest philosophical gift was not to try to explain stuff that didn’t need it.

Nice.
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How would it be possible to study the mind other than via observing behavior, if introspection is ruled out? — Janus

The answer is in the paper. Simply put: we don’t.

Interesting paper. Between you and I get all kinds of nifty stuff to rock my epistemic water vessel, so sincere thanks for it.

“.....and he did not set out theories of learning....”
(From the link, under “A Note on the A Priori”

Why would he, when the theory on knowledge he did set out presupposes it? It is either tautologically true, or a useless exercise, to suggest we know things we haven’t the ability to learn. If the former, a theory of learning is unnecessary; if the latter theories of knowledge are all catestrophically irrational.
———

The active state. We move, interact with the world, harvest data, even change the world to fit our models better... and all this is part of the process of inference. Does Kant have an equivalent? — Isaac

Dunno about changing the world to fit our models; seems sorta backwards to me. Be that as it may......

The active state would be cognition. The process of inference would be the tripartite logical syllogistic functionality between understanding (major), judgement (minor(s)), and reason (conclusion). Now, as you’ve said, albeit in a different way, re: the talking is not the doing, this is how we talk about it, how we represent to ourselves a speculative methodology, but the internal operation in itself, functions under the condition of time alone, such that cognition is possible from that methodology.

Not sure that’s a very good answer, but best I can do with what I’m given, and considering my scant experience with Markov blankets.

Takes nothing away from the paper, though, don’t get me wrong.

“....A Markov blanket comprises a set of states that renders states internal to the blanket conditionally independent of external states....”
(Friston, et.al., 2020)

If that which is internal to the blanket is external to that which observes it, the proposition is a mere rework of.....

“....objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose real correlate, the thing in itself, is not known by means of these representations, nor ever can be, but respecting which, in experience, no inquiry is ever made....”

...a 1787 treatise on human reason. The conditions are representations, thus “conditionally independent” descriptions of a set of states is nothing more than “not known by means of these”. So it is that behind a Markov blanket resides a ding an sich.

Is it a far-fetched personal cognitive prejudice, or is it a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same? Dunno, who’s to say? But it’s fun to play with all the same.

I didn't mean to say nothing was going on. — Isaac

Granted. But you did say neither one nor the other of the two possible explanatory methodologies, was going on, with respect to a single given occasion, that is....what did Issac do with what Mww gave to him.
————

I think that the scientific and the philosophical domains are not so very different from one another, and so the question of which came first is not answerable by declaring 'philosophy!' or 'science!'. — Isaac

If it be agreeable that the domain of philosophy is rational thought in accordance with logical law, and the domain of science is empirical experiment in accordance with natural law, and furthermore that no human ever performed an experiment without first thinking how it should be done in order to facilitate an expected outcome.....we arrive at both a clear chronological succession and a clear methodological distinction.

The success rate, the productive usefulness of one over the other......well, that’s a different story, innit.
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All ideas are culturally embedded narratives. All of them. — Isaac

If that were true, there would never be such a thing as a paradigm shift, whether in science, ethics, metaphysics or anything else. If there ever was that which is sufficient reason to cause the collapse of an antecedent condition, then that thing could not be contained in that which collapsed. No paradigm shift as such, is possible if the idea from whence it originated was already included in an extant cultural narrative.

Even if the argument is that ideas acting as sufficient reason for a paradigm shift are already culturally embedded narratives, the instantiation of a different relation between any two of them, or between any one of them in relation to experience, is itself a different idea, hence sustains the notion of being not itself already culturally embedded.

The alleged “hidden state” was once a new idea, despite both “hidden” and “state” being already preconceived and not necessarily related to each other.

Anyway....you got lots of folks vying for your attention, so I’ll just retreat to the back row, with all the other Group W troublemakers......

I'd have to say neither. — Isaac

.....yet it appears to me that you responded with logically consistent intelligibility. I have no choice but to seriously admire that response, arising as it apparently does from one human, and directed toward another, constructed from neither consideration of brain machinations nor philosophical predications as a product of them.
———-

Attempts to supplant natural human subjectivity with mechanistic necessity.
— Mww

Again, on point, but is any philosophical text less attempting the same thing. — Isaac

Less attempting implies a relative quantity. But the mechanistic necessity of neuroscience, as opposed to the logical necessity of philosophical texts, is a relative quality. So, no, the one is not attempting a measure of the other. While it is certain that each form of necessity belongs to its own domain, holding sway only within it, it still remains to be acknowledged which came first.
—————

As an aside, your hidden states are an interesting concept. I might find a place for them.

Is there something specific about my attempts that have failed for you, or just in general? — Isaac

If I may, from the back row, hitherto being a silent witness:

In general:
Your theoretics are fine, and more than likely, close to that which is the case. But nobody cares; the average Joe doesn’t consider himself as a thinker in the terms and conditions scientifically expounded as the means for it. That leaves you and the cognitive scientists in general, to say Joe never does think the way he thinks he does, or, which is quite objectionable, he doesn’t think at all, insofar as mere brain machinations are solely responsible for such private, personal, seemings. It follows as a matter of course, that the very brain machinations the cognitive scientist expounds are never even recognized by himself. That is, he promotes, from the perspective of a particular kind of human, that which never occurs to him from the perspective of a human in general.

Those of the philosophical bent, on the other hand, don’t have such inconsistency, for they don't profit in the consideration of brain machinations qua physical necessity, in the first place, but rather, if anything, merely take whatever that necessity may be, for granted. Which justifies my asking, as super-intelligent and well-versed as you are, are you immediately considering, upon reading this, what part of your brain is doing what, or, are you immediately considering only the relation between your reading and my writing?

Something specific that fails, for me:

Attempts to supplant natural human subjectivity with mechanistic necessity. Which reduces to, albeit egotistically....even if your science is in fact the case, I shall never relinquish the metaphysical conditions for my purely rational intellect. And neither should anyone else, dammit!!!!!

So sayeth a nobody on the internet.....

As in Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. VI, or, Prior Analytics.....yes, though maintained pretty much intact through the Enlightenment, now woefully absent as such.

As if the wonder of human intelligence can be displayed on a ‘scope, traced with a red dye. Or brought forth from a couch at $300/hr.

(Sigh)

It seems to me phenomenalism is unarguably true. — Art48

It would seem to be true, but only in relation to an intrinsically dualistic human cognitive system.

But whether the basic human cognitive system is in fact intrinsically dualistic, remains questionable.

the hallmark of anything that exists is that it is determinate.... — Wayfarer

“Anything that exists” is a latent presupposition. Attributing sufficient warrant to this presupposition, “determinate” is a valid inference, insofar as something has already been subsumed under a categorical rule.

On the other hand, “anything that exists” is a general conception not derived by a particular inference, which implies there is either a different categorical rule, or none at all, under which “anything” may be subsumed.

For humans, it is impossible to cognize anything not subsumed under a categorical rule. It follows that “anything that exists” cannot be determinate under a definition, but rather, “anything that (possibly) exists” must still be determin-able under a definition.

there is an ontological distinction..... — Wayfarer

Absolutely. Which calls into question the determinate warrant for “anything that exists”.
————-

whether it is meaningful to speak of what exists in the absence of an observing mind. — Wayfarer

Put a check mark in the not-even-a-chance column for me. Although, if I’m being metaphysically honest, I’d substitute rational intelligence for mind.

Oh....I like your Pinter stuff.

Ok, fine. It was quoted verbatim, but before my feet get held even closer to the torturous fire, I must admit the original context is in regard to the schools (that raise a loud cry), whereas my context is the theoretical science community.

All good.

It would be counterproductive, I think, to get into the subtleties of Kantian metaphysics. That being said, the aforementioned contradiction resides in the proposition, “...nothing can be said about its objects except that they exist...”, insofar as that “they exist” says something about its objects.

The confusion arises by calling something an object of pure thought, when, from the perspective of the faculty responsible for it, it is just a thought. Understanding thinks conceptions, understanding thinks noumena, noumena is a conception understanding thinks, and nothing more. It is we that screw it all up by reifying it through conventional language use. Thus it is, that “an object of pure thought” has very different connotations than “that which understanding thinks”, yet we, as careless thinkers, use the same word to represent both.

Yes, Kant treats noumena differently, in that for him, they are merely not logically impossible, the existence of them being beyond the capacities of our system, or of any rational intelligence similarly predicated on intuitive representations, to cognize.
————

there's a tricky point here, which is that the noumenal 'exists independently of human sense or perception'. But that is rather different from the idea of a thing that exists independently of human sense or perception, is it not? — Wayfarer

The tricky point is existence, of which you hold a different perspective than I. I consider both noumena and ideas as non-existent, hence their existence independent of sense is moot. Noumena and ideas do have the commonality of being conceptions having their origins in understanding alone. Ideas, though, with a sufficient aggregate of empirical knowledge, may eventually have conceptions inferred as belonging under them, whereas noumena can never have that end. Kant shows that, by such as “the idea of space”, “the idea of justice”, the “idea of an ens realissimum”, but not once ever enounces an idea of noumenal object.

Strokes....folks.

All good.

As Kant said about the noumenal world (which is the same as the mind-independent world), nothing can be said about its objects except that they exist.

Is there any way at all, to reconcile the glaring contradiction in that statement?

I wanted to bring this up the other day, but thought better of it, cuz it was so obvious to me it made me think I missed something, even while in tune with the rest of the passage. But now that it’s been presented again, as if to reiterate a point, its weight has doubled.

Forgive the monkey wrench, but, you know......inquiring minds.....

the Great Burgermeister — Janus

That got a chuckle outta me, I must say. And you know me.....everything philosophical worth repeating originated in Königsberg.

.....it seems this is the crux of the issue..... — Janus

Agreed, in principle. Whatever the name of the issue, in the form of various and sundry -ism’s, and thereafter the juxtaposition of any single -ism with its dialectical negation, or, as you say....its polemic..... the crux is always the instigation of it, which is, of course, us. We are the crux, insofar as nothing, other than sheer accident, ever happens to or because of us that isn’t determined by us.

Which is precisely the exposition given by : “What the observer brings *is* the picture”.

if we say it is "something" that defies all categorization because it is "beyond" all our categories of judgement and modes of intuition then we would not be saying much, if anything. — Janus

....just like that.

Yeah...I said the links were interesting, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I agree the implications contained in them are all that meaningful.

“To see the Universe as it really is” means nothing to me. And while I accept the counterintuitive tenets of QM, decoherence never enters my consciousness of grocery lists, road rage or the abysmal foolishness of talking heads. And while it is a mathematical fact toaster ovens will create an interference pattern just as do photons, the scale of the experiment to prove it is currently quite impossible, which reduces to....so what????

So, yes, “scientific idealism” is emerging, which itself reduces to no more than to, “....raise a loud cry of danger to the public over the destruction of cobwebs, of which the public has never taken any notice, and the loss of which, therefore, it can never feel....”.

Interesting links; now I understand what you meant by emerging.

Ok. Thanks again.

plus reinventing Kant's noumena that we can never know. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As in....reinventing them so they can be known? Then they wouldn’t be Kant’s noumena, then, right? So it isn’t so much reinventing as re-defining. Which is fine; happens all the time. Historical precedent and all that.

Even so, if “scientific idealism” is a version of “evolutionary epistemology”, I’m no better off then when I started. From this armchair, both look like a subject with a qualifier, that is, idealism as a doctrine grounded by scientific conditions, and, epistemology as a doctrine grounded in human evolution. I find it more productive to ask folks what they mean by these phrases, or, ask how they wish me to understand what they mean.

Anyway....thanks.

Well there is such a thing as'scientific idealism'. We're seeing it emerge. — Wayfarer

For my sake....what is scientific idealism? Single sentence kinda thing?

Not that big’a deal; support for your.....

Plainly an idealist philosophy in my reckoning. — Wayfarer

....is all.

In addition to what you’ve been saying, Hoffman says, “space, time, causality are fictions.....useful fictions”, and the proper idealist against which at least some if not most modern idealists are judged, says, “....the construction of our fictions, which are not the less fictions on that account....”, in speaking of just those notions.

In the wiki reference, there’s a citation, #9. Did you investigate?

If not, check out the 40 minute mark, and thereafter.

Truncate our imaginations. Cool turn of a phrase.

Any misgivings at all? — Janus

Ehhhh....suffice it to say there are differences in modeling perspectives. One perspective is mere convention....we model a cup because we already know what that thing is; the other perspective is ignorance....we model “something” because we don’t know what that thing is.

The perspective is, then, experience; the difference is whether or not there is any.

Ahhhh....but the technicalities. That’s where the fun is, ne c’est pas? When does “something” become cup? Somewhere in that theoretical exposition, will reside the possible misgivings.

Cool. Nothing there to seriously jeopardize my initial agreement.

Thanks.

All I was looking for was your idea of why we can say we are modeling a cup, or from different perspective, we can say we are modeling “something”.

Now we can say that what has been modeled is the cup, or we can equally, from a different perspective, say that what is being modeled is "something" that results in seeing a cup which is a model of that "something". — Janus

I agree. Do you have an idea of what that different perspective might be?

Nope, but then, no need to floss, so.....

Would he just admit that he hadn't thought of the ways science has uncovered his noumena? — Banno

No he wouldn’t, because science hasn’t, nor will any science done by humans, ever have the means for it.

Nahhhh.....crotchety ol’ Prussian would more likely be pissed at being intellectually bushwhacked.

Tasty bait. Thanks.

I'm not a philosopher — Tom Storm

Cool. Neither am I.

is this a critique of phenomenology? — Tom Storm

No, just a restriction on the concept of phenomena itself. A limitation on their function, if you will. Which reduces to mere opinion on my part, of course.

Sorta like that, I guess. I only brought up myself, or any self of like kind, because to treat these as both subject and object, is demonstrably impossible.