Philosophy can’t be said to go wrong, but to answer the question......by Brentano, 1874,1889, turning it into a psychological doctrine describing different kinds of phenomena as intentionally directed toward consciousness, rather than being the merely empirical content of it. This expands phenomena into any form of content for consciousness, instead of representations of sensibility alone. In turn, objects of judgement, imagination, volition, and so on, including cognition and even (gasp) experience itself, then assume the guise of phenomena, at the expense of the notion of sensory “appearance” from which the term originated.

Yes. The phenomenological argument.

Not where I’m coming from, but ok.

Perhaps the most difficult exposition to fathom in transcendental metaphysics,....a speculative idealism if there ever was one.....is how I, as thinking subject, can at the same time be the object I think about.

As one of the ol’ muppet dudes on the balcony says to the other.....BRILLIANT!!!

Or.....how to take the pristine condition of human reason, and turn it against itself.

‘Tis a lonely journey, methinks.

It’s like....why even think of owning a Model T when there is an e-Ferrari. Doesn’t matter you can’t afford to buy one, couldn’t maintain it, can’t fit the family in it, and you’re afraid to take it out on bumpy roads and rainy days......

“.....Instead what answer we get depends on the question we put...”
(Physicist, 1983)

“...approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose....”
(Philosopher, 1787)

The more things change, the more they stay the same, for both genius and clown.

I'm assuming when I see and handle an apple, my perceptual apparatus provides matter (the apple) with all its qualities - colour, size and shape, smell, texture, even taste. This is all an elaborate construction work that humans seem to (largely) share. A bat would have a different range of experiences with this fruit, but it would still be of the apple, right? (....) Where have I gone wrong? — Tom Storm

I detest the taste of Lima beans, and if you like the taste....how can the exact same matter have one quality for me and a completely different quality for you?

When you see and handle the matter provided by your perceptual apparatus, and I see and handle the matter provided by my perceptual apparatus.....why should, and what determines whether or not, we agree about what’s been provided to us?

If matter with all its qualities is provided by perceptual apparatus......why should anything need to be constructed?

How did “matter”, a general term, get to “apple”, a particular term? By what rights do matter and (the apple) belong together as stated in the assertion of that which perceptual apparatus provides?

So if the construction work humans share is how matter gets to “apple”, then it must be the case the qualities of the matter are not contained in it, but are provided by the construction. Otherwise, there would be no justification for the change from the general to the particular, and the questions above obtain only insufficient answers.
————-

To say a bat has different experiences, then to ask if it would still experience “apple”, is a categorical error of relations. Given different experiences, that which is given from one kind of experience is necessarily incompatible with any other kind, which makes explicit the bat cannot experience “apple”. We know this to be apodeitically certain because it is absolutely impossible for us to echo-locate flying bugs. All that can be supposed is that the bat experiences, and that only insofar as bats are known to have integrated sensory systems, and it is at least a non-contradictory presupposition that any sensory system is sufficient ground for experiences compatible with it. And THAT....only insofar as humans have determined it to be so, in relation to themselves, in the resolution of the error.

Matter has only been “apple” since some human said so, which makes explicit the perceptual apparatus does not provide matter (the apple), but provides matter alone, the common human construction, whether brain machinations or speculative metaphysics, is that which determines that matter to be apple. Apple, then, is provided post hoc by common human constructions, or, that which we all know as.......waaaiiiitttt fooor ittttt......experience.

I submit that you’ve conjoined matter (the apple) as a given singular only because you already know what an apple is, you’ve met with that experience. But there was a time when you didn’t, you haven’t, so.....what happened?

You haven’t gone wrong. Just haven’t gone far enough.

Yeah, I feel ya, bud. But then, ol’ Freddie didn’t like anybody except maybe his sister, so one more rip on his peers doesn’t mean a whole lot.

A change went through German intelligentsia, true enough, but whether for the better or not remained questionable at the time, given from the simple fact no one understood the implications of it well enough. The “old habits die hard” kinda thing.

Note as well, that theology was dying around the French Revolution, but wasn’t as dead as it became in N’s time, close to a century later. The “theological instinct” of Germans in general, in Kant’s time, was alive, even if on it’s last legs, and it remains highly doubtful Kant intended German scholars to apprehend a revival of it within the confines of his critical metaphysics.

I found it quite odd, that N advocated the will to power as determinable by the proverbial ubermensch.....he who frees himself from the absolute restrictions of the world, “...acquired self-mastery....”, yet accuses Kant of an illegitimate method by which he might actually do it. Not to mention, self-mastery in himself over the world presupposes the very “hateful duality” he accuses Kant of bringing to the fore.

Kant thought he provided humanity with a complete and unalterable metaphysics, but humans, being all too human, will inevitably find something wrong with just about anything.

Besides....while it is the more parsimonious supposition that brain states are our thoughts, it remains incontestable that we do not think in terms of brain states. That is to say, that which we consider as our thoughts, in and of themselves, even if they are not, have no purely cognitive connection whatsoever with the lawful physical necessities which make them possible.

Good to see you mulling. Shows interest, which is usually a good thing.

As the brain-body ages and I or the ego develops, mentality, feelings and body activity belong to I or the ego. — val p miranda

......straight out of the Enlightenment transcendental idealist playbook..... — Mww

Do you have a different view? — val p miranda

Nope. Pretty much my own personal philosophy as well.

might shed light on noumena. — Tom Storm

Ehhhh....when all is said and done, noumena are best left unlit. They’re an intellectual anomaly, confusing more than enlightening. To classify something as merely not impossible doesn’t help with what we want to know.
—————

But the point about the Aristotelian-Platonist attitude is that complete knowledge is only possible for intelligible objects, because in knowing them, there is in some sense a unity with them, which is plainly impractical with the objects of sense, — Wayfarer

Well said, and I grant Kant appropriated the meaning of the ancients to suit himself, but with respect to your point here, Kant had already speculated that “complete knowledge” of anything is not even a cognition, but instead, is a feeling, an aesthetic as opposed to a discursive judgement, hence, the separation of reason into its pure theoretical and pure practical domains. Pure practical reason is entirely deductive, thus self-sustaining and necessarily true, insofar as we ourselves are the complete source of its objects......how can we NOT know exactly what we have determined by ourselves alone, which is exactly what “unity with them” indicates......as opposed to speculative reason with respect to the world, which is always contingent because our knowledge depends entirely on that which the world gives us, which can be stated as “unity of them”.

Kant....er....upgraded....a lot of the philosophies of the ancients, but noticeably left logic as it had always been. And ya know....while accused by Schopenhaur of changing the meaning of established conceptions......

“....For this reason, when it happens that there exists only a single word to express a certain conception, and this word, in its usual acceptation, is thoroughly adequate to the conception, the accurate distinction of which from related conceptions is of great importance, we ought not to employ the expression improvidently, or, for the sake of variety and elegance of style, use it as a synonym for other cognate words. It is our duty, on the contrary, carefully to preserve its peculiar signification, as otherwise it easily happens that when the attention of the reader is no longer particularly attracted to the expression, and it is lost amid the multitude of other words of very different import, the thought which it conveyed, and which it alone conveyed, is lost with it...”

.....he apparently didn’t think he did any such thing. It remains, in the text, that he called noumena mundus intelligibilis, so...just how far did he actually go in changing the meaning of the concept?

what your point is — Tom Storm

My point was I found specific references which tend to counterpoint the Schopenhaur quote. But then, I couldn’t find the quote, so context is missing, so...there is that.

Sorry, and no slight on your comprehension abilities, but it’s always best to go to the source, rather than ask somebody who has only his own understandings to go by. Even when questioned and references are included with the responses, best to check the references, so.....why not just start with them.

The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely overlooks.....

“....If, by the term noumenon, we understand a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensuous intuition, thus making abstraction of our mode of intuiting it, this is a noumenon in the negative sense of the word. But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensuous intuition, we in this case assume a peculiar mode of intuition, an intellectual intuition, to wit, which does not, however, belong to us, of the very possibility of which we have no notion—and this is a noumenon in the positive sense....

.....To be sure, understanding and reason are employed in the cognition of phenomena; but the question is, whether these can be applied when the object is not a phenomenon and in this sense we regard it as if it is cogitated as given to the understanding alone, and not to the senses. The question therefore is whether, over and above the empirical use of the understanding**, a transcendental use is possible***, which applies to the noumenon as an object. This question we have answered in the negative....”
(**....from which an intuitive cognition follows)
(***....from which an abstract cognition follows)

Nahhhh....Kant didn’t entirely overlook the difference, but rather, stated what it is. Arthur couldn’t abide with it, because he needed his notion of will to fill the unknowable void of the ding an sich, which he couldn’t do if there is a thing impossible for a human to know.
————-

But Kant, who completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms φαινομένα and νοούμενα were already in use, then took possession of the terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of things in themselves and their appearances.

“....When therefore we say, the senses represent objects as they appear, the understanding as they are, the latter statement must not be understood in a transcendental, but only in an empirical signification, that is, as they must be represented in the complete connection of phenomena, and not according to what they may be, apart from their relation to possible experience, consequently not as objects of the pure understanding. For this must ever remain unknown to us. Nay, it is also quite unknown to us whether any such transcendental or extraordinary cognition is possible under any circumstances, at least, whether it is possible by means of our categories....”

Kant never intended noumena to represent things-in-themselves, which are real external objects, but merely as objects understanding illegitimately thinks on its own accord. The only connect between them, is the fact they are both unknowable, the first because we only can know the representations of things as phenomena, the second because the categories have no application except to phenomena which objects thought by understanding alone can never be.

Arthur didn’t like that we cannot know a thing, that there is that which is impossible for human knowledge. All he did, was create a philosophy under which the incontestably knowable....the human will.... substitutes for Kant’s incontestably unknowable, the ding an sich, and PRESTO!!! That which is impossible to know disappears. (Sigh)

Still, it is all Kant’s fault, this metaphysical ambiguity, insofar as he stipulates both that the understanding is the faculty of thought, and, we can think anything we want. It follows that understanding can think anything it wants, including its own objects. But this is met with an immediate contradiction, in that the categories are necessary for the cognition of objects and cannot apply to anything not given by sensibility. Objects of understanding...noumena....are not given from sensibility, hence the categories cannot be applied to them, hence they cannot be cognizable as experiences. Whether or not there are any such things as noumena is not claimed as impossible, but nonetheless entirely irrelevant with respect to the human cognitive system as Kant proposes it.

Worth noting, and oft-overlooked, is the fact Kant authorizes the conception of noumena, but never....not once....ever gives an example of an object that represents that conception. (1).

Why, you ask.....and I know you did. Kantian duality writ large: because there is in the faculties of sensibility an unknowable, and because sensibility and logic are mutually inclusive, there must be that which is unknowable arising from the faculty of logic itself. Otherwise there resides an irreconcilable inconsistency in his speculative methodology. Hence, Schopenhaur’s attempt to eliminate both Kantian unknowables.

And now it is clear why Kant says we can think whatever we want.....provided only that we don’t contradict ourselves.
———-

To put a period on it, ending the nonsense regarding impossible empirical knowledge.....

“....The critique of the pure understanding, accordingly, does not permit us to create for ourselves a new field of objects beyond those which are presented to us as phenomena, and to stray into intelligible worlds; nay, it does not even allow us to endeavour to form so much as a conception of them (1). The specious error which leads to this—and which is a perfectly excusable one—lies in the fact that the employment of the understanding, contrary to its proper purpose and destination, is made transcendental, and objects, that is, possible intuitions, are made to regulate themselves according to conceptions, instead of the conceptions arranging themselves according to the intuitions, on which alone their own objective validity rests. Now the reason of this again is that apperception, and with it thought, antecedes all possible determinate arrangement of representations. Accordingly we think something in general and determine it on the one hand sensuously, but, on the other, distinguish the general and in abstracto represent objects from this particular mode of intuiting it. In this case there remains a mode of determining the object by mere thought, which is really but a logical form without content, which, however, seems to us to be a mode of the existence of the object in itself (noumenon), without regard to intuition which is limited to our senses....”

The second straight out of the Enlightenment transcendental idealist playbook. The first he would deny.

Footnote 18:
“....Some philosophers enjoy arguing about how best to characterize the relation between a statue and the lump of bronze of which it is made. This can be as good as playing chess. It’s absorbing, and provides great scope for ingenuity. But it has nothing to do with real metaphysics, for in real metaphysics the initial description of the case (we have a statue and the lump of bronze of which it is made) already gives us all the relevant facts. It does not itself give rise to any metaphysical issue. All that remains is juggling play, play with our existing concepts and categories and ways of talking, questions about how best to couch things given those concepts and categories and ways of talking...”

I bring this up because it reminds me of.....

we can assign to it the capacity to move, or be moved, and it is the movement of it which affects the senses. — Metaphysician Undercover

....in that the assignment of capacity to move or be moved is all the relevant facts we need to prove the reality of material objects, the actually movement of them claimed to be that which affects the senses being the juggling play with our existing concepts.

“....Matter is essentially dynamic, essentially temporal, essentially changeful. Objects (or matter) can’t be conceptualized as things whose existence can be grasped separately from their temporality. What is matter, on this mistaken view? A dust-covered china doll in a frozen pirouette on a chimney piece, a rock, an old boot, something just there, supremely motionless before our eyes, something that proposes itself as—in some fundamental sense—comprehensively given to us in this confrontation alone, wholly given to us in its basic essential quality as matter. And all this is wholly wrong....”
(Strawson, “Nietzsche on Mind and Nature”, in https://www.academia.edu/3051045/Nietzsches_Metaphysics_2015)

I never said you had no support for your thesis on the physics of materialism. Nevertheless, the topic is the metaphysics of it, which grants the physics but still asks why it should be so.

I am wanting is someone to defend or steelman a version of idealism..... — Tom Storm

Steelmanning or otherwise, without granting....understood a priori as given.....the intrinsic duality of human nature, no defense of any version of idealism will be acceptable. Or, another way to put it, the only defense of any version of idealism is predicated on an intrinsic duality of human nature.

the capacity to, or possibility of affecting your senses is not the same as actually affecting your senses. (...) it becomes extremely difficult to explain why, or how, there could be such a difference. — Metaphysician Undercover

I’m perceiving something, or, I’m not perceiving something. Something is present to my senses, or it isn’t. The negations, I perceive what isn’t there, or, I don’t perceive what is there, are absurd. How much less difficult can it be?

we can assign to it the capacity to move, or be moved, and it is the movement of it which affects the senses. — Metaphysician Undercover

So if I don’t think the tree capable of moving, it can’t, and because of that, I won’t see it?

Cum hoc ergo proper hoc, and you should know better.

The matter in it is what gives it the capacity..... — Metaphysician Undercover

....to affect my senses.

‘Nuff said.

So we uphold the law of identity because we believe in this. — Metaphysician Undercover

The law of identity, being a human construct, has Nature as its justification, so is upheld merely from lack of contradiction.

the first person would be saying “you’re selfish” and the other would reply “but everyone is selfish”. — Skalidris

The second person commits a hasty generalization fallacy, secundum quid, commonly called “converse accident”, in making a overly broad conclusion given a sample that fails to warrant it.

More syllogistic than propositional, but....close enough?

But "matter" is purely possibility in the first place — Metaphysician Undercover

That the “matter” of the thing that just broke my finger is a “hammer” is indeed mere possibility, but it remains that a material thing broke my finger. To say otherwise, is only to exhibit “....recourse to pitiful sophisms....”.

If we adhere to the formal understanding of "matter" as expounded in Aristotle's hylomorphism (which our current understanding of matter is based in), it is forms which affect your senses, not matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

You know the drill as well as I, that theories expand as a consequence of general experience. Or maybe just speculative imagination. Aristotle, though a great and honorable thinker and still serves as reference to some modern metaphysics, has himself been at least partially superseded, with or without justification being moot. So saying, while I agree hylomorphism is still the current paradigm in human cognitive systems metaphysically, the occasions or placements of them have been separated, insofar as matter is external, but form has been moved to the internal and deemed.....

“....that the content of the matter can be arranged under certain relations. But that in which our sensations are merely arranged, and by which they are susceptible of assuming a certain form, cannot be itself sensation. It is, then, the matter of all phenomena that is given to us à posteriori;; the form must lie ready à priori for them in the mind, and consequently can be regarded separately from all sensation.....”.
(Remember...I dislike the term “mind”, but that’s what the guy said, so, far be it from me to be so presumptuous as to change it)

That being the case, it is not form that affects sensibility, but matter alone. Perfect example of the meaning of all that, can be found in, e.g., circa1909/1919 Picasso paintings, which exemplify how representations of matter can be disarranged purely from the thought of it.

.....hearing, seeing, touching are active capacities, they just don't feel active, because they are unconscious or sub-conscious. — Manuel

In a way, it is confusing, insofar as it is empirically undeterminable, in that sensing is an active capacity of which we are quite conscious, but of the generation of phenomena which represents those sensations, we are not. Hence, speculative, albeit logically consistent, metaphysical theory.

Nevertheless, the human physiology, and the empirical science behind it, sustains the fact that we are not internally conscious of what happens between the sensation of a thing, and the registration of it in the brain. It can be measured, displayed on test equipment, and so on, but not be present in a first-hand, subjective consciousness.

The possibility of matter absolutely presupposes space and time,
— Mww

Matter is what maintains its spatial presence as time passes. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your position presupposes matter, mine presupposes the possibility of matter. You’re talking about matter as if its already given, I’m talking about how it possible that it is given.

For that matter which affects my senses, I don’t care about matter that is merely “extended in time”, but absolutely require matter that is extended in space, otherwise there is no affect on my senses at all, and for me in which case, I would have no means to know matter exists, a most profound absurdity.

Not to say there’s anything wrong about your physics, only that it is misplaced. Which makes this.....

But the issue is matter which has no spatial extension. — Metaphysician Undercover

.....entirely irrelevant.

we do add colours, sounds and textures to the representations — Manuel

We add conceptions to the representations in the naming of them, sure...red, loud, rough, etc., a veritable plethora, but I’m not sure we add color, sound, or texture to general intuitions. I rather think these are given to us merely by the mode of receptivity having the capacity for it. Why have ears if not to hear sound?
————

Not everybody buys it as you know. — Manuel

You’re too kind; hardly anybody buys it.

I take metaphysics to be about the world, but it turns out we can say very little about it. — Manuel

I take metaphysics to be about me, which I can say everything about, and all me’s of like kind, which I can infer some things about. The world? Ehhhh.....it’s there, always was, always will be, or not, not my concern. Or, I suppose, only of relative concern.
————

we add much more to the world than what we otherwise would normally assume...... — Manuel

You mean, like, we build stuff? Redirect Nature from her own course? Yeah, we do that alright.

......If one can appreciate the scale of this, then the very scheme which Collingwood elaborates as being "metaphysics", seems to weaken. — Manuel

How does the fact we add to the world weaken Collingwood’s metaphysical scheme? I thought his metaphysics was predicated on “thinking scientifically”, same as Kant. You must have meant something else by adding to the world.
————-

.....what would the function of intentionality be...
— Mww

A guess would be, it (....) helps anchor thoughts to representations, which would otherwise not be differentiated properly. — Manuel

Ok, I can see that. Me......I just leave that anchor to understanding, and proper differentiation to judgement. I know intentionality implies teleology, purposesiveness, so to speak, but I think that a bridge too far. I’m an admitted metaphysical reductionist, so from where I sit, the only intentionality in humans, is knowledge. Game’s end, donchaknow.

I don't think that "extension" is a well defined term..... — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it isn’t, nor does it need to be. It is a general, albeit necessary, condition of objects met with unaided human perception.

In a sense, it means to be extended in a specific way, but that way is left unspecified. — Metaphysician Undercover

To be extended does not make necessary extension in a certain way. To be extended in a certain way, or, to possess a specific bounded extension, is shape. All shapes are reducible to extension in space, which is all that is necessary for the matter of objects, as far as our sensibility, and thereby our representational faculty, is concerned.

Not sure why we would need to individuate objects when they individuate themselves and we merely recognize the differences.
— Mww

I don't think this is the case. That's something we do to objects. — Manuel

Ahhhh, mon amie....I submit we don’t do anything to objects, but only to their representations. Objects do things to us, by the affect they have on our sensibility, which gives us those representations. This is how they individuate themselves, by affecting us differently. If we did things to objects, there wouldn’t be any ding an sich.

I think the thought experiment can be done as an illustration, while not denying the very real, insurmountable problems, associated with things in themselves. — Manuel

What if it isn’t a mere illustration, but a given necessity pursuant to the kind of intelligence in play? In fact, why couldn’t the ding an sich be a Collingwood-esque absolute presupposition?

But all that aside....what would a list of these problems entail?
————-

The point of intentionality as I see it, is that it can't be eliminated from thought. — Manuel

If it can’t be eliminated from thought, and thought is a part of a system, and all parts of systems have a dedicated function....what would the function of intentionality be, such that the absence of it makes the system untenable at best, and thought impossible at worst?

intentionality is the continuation of intuition, say, it's conscious aspect? — Manuel

OK, that would seem to be a function of some kind. What is the result, or, what is its contribution to the system?
————-

Sensations do not give us reasons to invoke individuation, that's what the intellect does. — Manuel

Agreed, sensation does not invoke reason or reasons.

How do you feel about equating individuation with conceptualization?

If we lacked this capacity of our experience being directed at objects, there would be no way for individuation of objects in our conception of them. — Manuel

Not sure why we would need to individuate objects when they individuate themselves and we merely recognize the differences.

I mean....it’s logically possible all objects are exactly the same in themselves, but if they are we can’t explain why we don’t perceive them all as possessing the exact same uniform identity. Probably why Mother gave us multiple sensory devices, to prove to ourselves objects are individuated already.

It's not clear to me that say, Kant's comments about intuitions are the same or different from intentionality. They appear similar to me, but am not sure yet. — Manuel

In Kant, the generation of phenomena arising from intuition is sub-conscious, so doesn’t seem conducive to intentionality, which I agree with you as being a conscious inclination. Again.....I don’t know enough about the history of it, so I speak uninformed.

Would intentionality have an anterior name I might be more familiar with?

res extensia — Joshs

I can dig Rene’s res extensa and res cogitans as absolute presuppositions. Opposing ends of a methodological duality, natural on one, intellectual on the other.

Hmmmm. Brentano 1874 is certainly pre-1905. Sartre, 1943...oops...too late. Husserl 1900....cuttin’ it close there.

To be honest, I haven’t spent a lot of time on intentionality. Not enough to judge the idea as an absolute presupposition.

What about it makes it attractive as a presupposition, do you think?

How could we tell that space and time are a priori without something else that allows us to put them to use? — Manuel

I don’t think we could say anything at all about space and time, a priori or otherwise, without the relation of which they are part. It has been said that these conceptions are meaningless unless they can be the condition of something; if not for being the condition of something there isn’t any reason for their conception.

Thing to bear in mind, as you probably already know, is that the conception and the employment of them, is quite different. You would be correct, with respect to your analogy, if taken as intuitions, for then they are, as you say, put to use. As conceptions, on the other hand, they are not put to use, which actually corresponds to the notion of absolute presuppositions rather well, insofar, as according to Collingwood, they are not for the use of answering questions, which is precisely what they do as intuitions, re: in human cognitive system, are there that present in it, such that its non-presence makes the experience of objects impossible. Just as, physiologically, does the absence of light make the perception of color impossible.

So....yes, the potential of objects (colors) is there, but not for us without a means to represent them as phenomena (appropriate stimulus).

Perhaps matter, alongside being presupposed by space and time, allows us to discover that space and time are a priori. — Manuel

Do you see....or is it just me seeing.... a problem with logical efficacy in saying matter is presupposed by space and time, in juxtaposition to matter presupposes space and time?

It appears to me that “presupposed by” implicates space and time as ontological causalities, insofar as if there is space and time then there is necessarily matter, which is not logically justifiable.

Or is it? You tell me.....you’re the one with letters after his name, which I thoroughly respect.

That's why its principal properties are inertia and mass. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think to reduce further: the principle property of matter, is simple extension, the one thing impossible to abstract from matter, and still have matter identifiable as such. In the case of inertia or mass, to maintain a state in the first, or to obtain a state in the second, presupposes that to which they both belong, those properties being impossible to even conceive, without first conceiving the occupation of a self-determined limit.

I suppose it remains whether or not extension is technically a property, per se, but if it can be so thought, inertia and mass become secondary, and if extension is subsequently defined by a certain shape, they become tertiary. Inertia implies change and mass implies mere quantity, both of which are consequential, not antecedent to extension, so....there is that.

But then I wonder, in manifest experience, would we be able to isolate space and time absent stuff (matter, substance, etc.)? — Manuel

In manifest experience? Not a chance, metaphysically speaking, considering that experience is of stuff, and considering that for humans at least, space and time are the necessary conditions for stuff. Experience presupposes stuff, and stuff presupposes space and time, so I would venture we cannot isolate either from the other. Space and time can be isolated absent stuff, but not with respect to manifest experience.

.....without matter, I don't see how space and time, innate as they are, could be exhibited. — Manuel

Pre-1905, or certainly pre-quantum cosmology, space without matter could be easily proved: just hold out your hand, palm up, with nothing in it. Actually, I suppose you’d have to go with pre-Faraday/Maxwell/Ampère science for exhibition of empty space, but still, space empty of matter is not the same as space empty of fields.

.....reconceptualizing what possible experiences could be conceived as. — Manuel

Exactly what that guy did, ol’ whatzizname......you know, the guy who never met a hairbrush he couldn’t do without.....somewhere around 1907, wondering what it would be like, long before the possibility of experiencing it, to descend in measurably extended free fall, contained in a closed box, such that you couldn’t tell if you were falling down or accelerating up. Now known as the “local position invariance”, which of course, he never thought of calling it at the time, insofar as he never had the actual experience of it, but recognized the non-contradictory logic in the conception of its possibility nonetheless. I like to think he quietly thanked Sir Issac for the ground of the idea, taken from the latter’s mathematical expressions of exactly what he was reconceptualizing.

The only thing that would be required given the constraints of the thread would be the pre-supposition that everything that is, is made of matter. — Manuel

Agreed. Still, the thread title stipulates the metaphysics of materialism, and as you say, given the constraints, I think your space and time are the only permissible absolute presuppositions. The possibility of matter absolutely presupposes space and time, and perhaps more importantly, is consistent with both the scientific pre-1905 constraints in the OP, and RGC’s doctrine used to qualify the metaphysical conditions in the title.
———-

.....possible experience..... — Manuel

Yeah, I’ve occassioned on the phrase a time or two myself. Loaded with subtleties, I must say.

This thread is not for discussion of the validity of materialism. You guys all know that but you’re doing it anyway. — Clarky

Not I. I’m still waiting on some rendition of the metaphysics of it.

I don’t think “underlying basic assumptions”, being merely suppositions, count as metaphysics.

I’ll wait for something to actually qualify as an absolute pre-supposition, which a metaphysics of anything, would surely demand.

I am proposing the items in my list as the underlying assumptions — Clarky

That’s fine. It’s your thread, you can do with it as you please. But you referenced Collingwood, so it hardly seems fair to call something an AP that conflicts with the predicates of that reference.

Anyway....carry on.

You say you’re enumerating, meaning to list or itemize, absolute presuppositions, re: RGC, by listing propositions, but according to RGC.....

“...Prop. 5: absolute presuppositions are not propositions.

This is because they are never answers to question, whereas a proposition is that which is stated, and that which is stated is always in answer to a question...”
(Essay on Metphysics, 1,4, pg 41, 1940, in https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.187414/page/n40/mode/1up)

A proposition is that which is true or false, but “....absolute presuppositions are not verifiable...”, hence not true or false, hence are not propositions.

It is true or false that “We live in an ordered universe that can be understood by humans.”, therefore “....” is not an AP.

Did you not mean to call the propositions in that list APs?

Page the second.....

There are two major necessary characteristics imbued in the human being, such that he can be so called: morality and reason......
— Mww

What I am trying to get you to consider is the conditions which are antecedent to reason. — Metaphysician Undercover

Careful here, not to conflate reason the human condition, with reason the cognitive faculty. In the first sense, there is nothing antecedent to a necessary condition, but in the second sense....

we can start with the requirement for images, representations, or symbols. Reasoning cannot proceed without some such things. — Metaphysician Undercover

......it is true reason-ing, the action of the cognitive faculty, needs these things, but reason the distinguishing human condition is that which makes reason the faculty even possible. When I offer the two conditions for being human and you counter-offer something which seems to reference those conditions but doesn’t belong there, it is technically a categorical error. Nevertheless, you are correct if you mean these things are necessary for reason the cognitive faculty. But you didn’t stipulate it as such. So I did it for you.

Reasoning cannot proceed without some such things. — Metaphysician Undercover

Agreed.

This means that reasoning cannot be a "self-contained causality". — Metaphysician Undercover

Agreed. But again, you’re responding to my stipulation of reason the condition, which is not reasoning itself. Reason is a self-contained causality, reasoning is not.
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this is where that problem with terminology rears its ugly head. However, I think that "wanted to learn" makes more sense then saying that the creature already had some type of "understanding". But this is the question, 'what is prior to understanding and knowledge?'. — Metaphysician Undercover

This gets too close to anthropology and empirical psychology for me. I don’t care about wanting to learn, insofar as I’m perfectly capable of learning stuff even if I had no desire for it. And if I want to learn something,I must do it in the exact same way as if I didn’t care if I learned it or not. I’m interested in the how, not so much in the how come.
———-

Possibility is dealt with in one way only, in affirmation or negation, one or the other, not both simultaneously for the same thing.
— Mww

This is not true, possibility is most successfully dealt with through modal logic and probabilities. — Metaphysician Undercover

Possibilities, the possibility of things, is dealt with the modal logic and probabilities. Possibility, in and of itself, as a singular pure category, having no object belonging to it, is not dealt with at all; it is what things are dealt with, by. A thing is possible, or it is not. We understand a thing to be possible or not, only because the conception “possibility” already resides within the system a priori. Logic and probability affirm or deny the validity of the object to which the pure conception “possibility” applies.

Think about it: we can neither think nor perceive an impossible object. It follows that to think or perceive an object, the reality of that object must be possible. In addition, if this object only exists because of that object, that object must exist necessarily. Some conceptions belong to the faculty of understanding simply because it is that kind of understanding, the human kind. Hence....speculative metaphysics.
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I don't think you are grasping the necessity for an intermediary between the sensing system, and the conscious mind which is the knower. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course I do. My entire private transcendental metaphysics is predicated exclusively on it.

The intermediary (for simplicity I'll call it the brain) produces the images or representations which the conscious mind works with. — Metaphysician Undercover

I guess you could use the brain. But the brain is physical, and the conscious mind is metaphysical, so you’re making it so the t’wain shall meet. While it is true the brain carries sole responsibility for whatever goes on between the ears, as soon as you bring abstractions into the picture, you’ve removed the brain from doing anything, insofar as the brain functions in concreto according with natural law. I agree the brain creates images, but how the images are made usable by the conscious mind has never been determined, and whether or not there is any conscious mind to make use of them, the physicalist will deny outright.

These representations are not produced by the sensing system (evidenced by the reality of dreams), nor are they produced by the conscious mind. So we must assume something intermediary. — Metaphysician Undercover

I vote for consciousness. The conscious mind is a philosophical construct, therefore, to develop a sufficiently explanatory theory, any participant in that construct, must be philosophical as well. In fact, the brain does all that stuff, but we don’t know how, so we are free to hypothesize logically, in order to satisfy ourselves.
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So it's not the sensing system whose assignments are arbitrary, it's the assignments made by the intermediary, the brain, which are arbitrary. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok, I can see that. Truth be told, we’re both sailing first class on the ship of ignorance here: you can’t tell me exactly how the brain gives images to the conscious mind, and I can’t tell you how exactly intuition creates phenomena.

The pivotal point is that the type of sensing system which we, as human beings have and use, was created prior to there being knowledge about the things to be sensed. This is fundamental to the nature of knowledge, as emergent, coming into being from not being, and the question of how is this possible. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, I kinda figured that was where you were going. This makes it much clearer, and agreeable.

Page, the first:

Yes we do have a way of thoroughly understanding: (...) in direct accordance to the rules by which understanding works.....
— Mww

But we do not have a thorough knowledge of the rules by which understanding works.... — Metaphysician Undercover

True enough, hence speculative metaphysics. It doesn’t matter that the rules for how understanding works are known with certainty or not; all the rules have to do is set the ground for sufficient explanatory power. It follows that any set of rules must accord with how the understanding is thought to work. If it works this way, these rules; if it works that way, those rules, but rules nonetheless.

Consider, as well, that the claim is not that understanding works according to law, which would be to say understanding could not work any other way than as grounded by apodeitically certain principles, which, of course, is impossible to prove. Rules, on the other hand, having less power than law, are merely regulating relations, rather than legislating principles, and therefore stand in no need of proof, when all that’s needed is logical consistency.

So while I agree there is no thorough knowledge of these rules, or any other condition of human reason, I can say I know the rules for how the understanding works from the perspective of my speculative metaphysics.
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Independent existence of objects is what I disputed. — Metaphysician Undercover

Is it your position then, that objects do not have independent existence?

But the issue is, how can you distinguish between an "appearance" (I'll call it an 'image' maybe) which is a direct percept, derived through sensation, and an image which is a creation of the mind, like a dream, or a memory. — Metaphysician Undercover

I hold “appearance”, not as what a thing may look like, which you’ll call its image....maybe..., but that a thing has initially presented itself, has made its appearance, a euphemism indicating something’s made itself available to sensibility. I don’t need to distinguish anything about appearances; they, in effect are the distinction, between having and not having sensations. As such, I rather think sensations are derived from appearances, not the other way around. Nothing is actually lost by deleting the term, going straight from perception to sensation.

I ask this, because I do not know how you can separate out "the reasoning process" as you do. — Metaphysician Undercover

Reason the verb is a conscious activity, whereas perception the noun is physiological, hence passive with respect to reason. Remember the physical system in play here, too, with respect to the change in forms of energy between the reception of an object, and the electrochemical manifestations of them in the nerves between the sense organs and the brain. It shouldn’t be an issue as to whether or not there is any reasoning going on during that energy exchange.

Furthermore, such exchange is a perfect iteration of that old stumbling-block, the thing-in-itself. The ding an sich is that which exists, the sensation is the thing that exists after we get ahold of it. Our knowledge of objects is given from the sensation alone, never by the thing. So we say, the sensation represents the appearance of an object. While it is true no knowledge is at all possible without the thing-in-itself, it is not the thing-in-itself that we know. And it is here the difficulty often arises, wherein the change-over between the external object and the internal representation occurs.
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Where was I...oh, yeah, separating out the reasoning process....

I think that because of this reality of the mind creating such things, and it's not the conscious mind doing the creating, nor the sensing process, we must allow that there is creative activity of "the mind" which is neither sensing nor reasoning. — Metaphysician Undercover

Wasn’t it you that said he didn’t give much credence to the faculty of imagination? Odd, then, you should have just described exactly that very faculty. Only, such faculty needs a division, which I mentioned previously, as productive and reproductive. The sub-conscious productive variety synthesizes the matter of an object with its form, to give a phenomenon, an “object” of sensibility. You can say it is “the mind” doing all this, doesn’t hurt anything. Me, I just leave it as part, albeit a sub-conscious part, of the whole cognitive system. The conscious part, the one with which we are familiar, is the reproductive imagination, which fabricates that which will become the representation of the external object as it is actually cognized. Or, simply put....as we think it to be.

I place this creative activity as intermediate between reasoning and sensing because it can create principles (or rules if you like) for reasoning to follow, but it does not necessarily derive the things that it creates directly from the senses. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, this creative activity is between sensing and reasoning, but it doesn’t create principles. And yes, it does derive the things it creates immediately from the senses and the act of synthesizing, is to intuit, and intuiting in general, is intuition. Don’t forget....we’re still sub-conscious here, insofar as we have not as yet thought about the object given to the senses; we’re still in the process of arranging the matter of the sensed object into a logical form....the job of imagination....such that it can become a phenomenon.

I think when you speak of arbitrary, you might be hinting that it is reasonable to suppose the synthesis of matter with form by imagination could be arbitrary, if there were no regulatory methods, and you’d be correct. Because this is all sub-conscious, there couldn’t be any regulatory methods, and the aforementioned logical form, has not yet been judged to be that. Another chapter in the saga of human knowledge.
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So this is how I propose that the mind creates the objects which we believe that we are sensing...... — Metaphysician Undercover

All that’s well said, but I would change believe to think, which transposes to, the objects we think we are sensing...which is exactly what is happening, from my perspective. We don’t immediately have knowledge of the things we sense, but is that the same as saying we believe something about them? Dunno, maybe.

....they are somehow created by the subconscious mind, or maybe "brain" or "nervous system" would be more appropriate here. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, because brain and nervous system are physical realities, but the sub-conscious mind is only metaphysical, and speculative at that. No empirical proofs possible kinda thing.

I think you go by a different definition of "understand", or "understood" than I do here. (...) However, "understanding" is a product of the reasoning process. — Metaphysician Undercover

From my armchair, human cognition is a tripartite system: understanding, judgement and reason. Understanding provides the representations it thinks belong to the object by means of conceptions (the major); judgement relates the manifold of conceptions thought to make up the object to each other (the minor or minors), reason arbitrates the logic of the relation (the conclusion). Then and only then, is there cognition, the end of the reasoning process. Herein, then, understanding isn’t the result of the conscious reasoning process, but a participant in it.

I would say that "understand" implies the use of the conscious reasoning process to derive some sort of meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

Isn’t this what modern analytic philosophy posits? Nevertheless, before there is meaning, there is relation. Or, perhaps the meaning is the relation. To say a representation means something, it must relate to that something. Simplest rendition of this notion, is the dictionary. For any given word (representation), the meaning given for that word relates to only that word. In other words, before the meaning, there is the word which possess it. It follows that understanding is a faculty of relations, those being the relation of phenomena to conceptions. Herein, then, yes, understanding implies the use of the reasoning process, but to foster logically consistent relations rather than to derive meaning.

You know.....maybe we’re looking at the same thing from opposite ends. Everything I’m saying has to do with how knowledge is possible. It almost seems as though you’re operating from a perspective where knowledge is already given, and you’re going backwards to find out how it came about. Could that be the case?
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Now, we have to consider the "objects" given by the subconscious system, which is is not a part of the conscious system, not a part of the the reasoning process. These are the representations. In order for the conscious system to work with them in a reasoning process, a logical process, they must be given names. — Metaphysician Undercover

As far as the reasoning process in and of itself is concerned, why do representations need to be given names? What the reasoning process is actually doing as a reasoning process, doesn’t use names. The reasoning process assigns names post hoc for no other reason than to describe itself. The use of words in your consciousness is mere rehearsal, the method by which what is thought is then going to be objectified in some form of physical action.
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So we have two layers of representation. The images or representations, received into the conscious mind, and the names, words, which the conscious mind assigns to these representations, to represent them, in order to understand them. From this perspective then, the naming is necessarily prior to the understanding, as a prerequisite for understanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

Close enough. I offer that there are two kinds of representation, not levels, and, names are assigned to indicate how a thing has been understood because of the logical synthesis of representations. Which puts understanding before the naming, not after. When a word is a foreign language is heard by a person, he will not understand the meaning of it. Or, say, an action indicating a meaning is given to a person who doesn’t understand the act, like....putting a finger orthogonal to the lips to indicate being quiet....if a guy doesn’t know that sign, he won’t understand what is expected of him when he perceives it. Only from experience, then, does meaning antecede understanding.

If you’d said....in order to judge them.....close enough would have become exactly right. From my perspective.
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Therefore we can conclude that naming must occur without understanding, as a primary step toward understanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

This works for a two-party communication. You naming something must occur before my understanding of what you mean by that name, yes. We see that right here in this dialectic, wherein each of us uses words with their inherent meaning derived by our individual cognitive systems, and that use is not thoroughly understood by the other. “Appearance” is a good example, insofar as a word common to each of our vocabularies carries different understandings with it pursuant to what it is meant to indicate. As we can see, we each misjudged the understanding of the other in his use of a common word. The prime indicator of all that is...we each refrain from calling out the other as wrong in what is said, but rather, we say we do not agree (do not concur from similar judgement) with what was said, or we say we do not understand what was said (cannot afford a judgement at all).
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This allows that knowledge and understanding can be emergent. — Metaphysician Undercover

Half and half. Yes, knowledge is always emergent: in me because of me, or, in me because of you. Understanding is only emergent in me because of you but is intrinsic in me because of me. Understanding here indicates the specific function of a faculty in a systemic whole, not that on which the faculty operates as means to an end.

You probably mean you can get me to understand something, which seems to say understanding emerges, but it is still my understanding that does all the work, such that I may know what you mean. Which is to say, An understanding emerges. The understanding of something emerges.

Please don’t consider this as mere quibbling, when in fact, it is the very reason why decent metaphysics tomes are of so gawd-awful-many pages. Getting things just so, no over-lap, no confusion in terminology.

But the living beings cannot remove what's already there deep within the sensing system, developed when the "object" was completely unknown. So this makes the fundamentals of basic sensation very arbitrary.
— Metaphysician Undercover

You say arbitrary, I say undetermined. — Mww

You say arbitrary, I say undetermined.....
— Mww

No, I really mean arbitrary, so I think you misunderstand. Suppose we assume an object which is completely unknown. Now, we want to set up a sensing system to develop some knowledge about that object. Since we know absolutely nothing about that object, anything we set up would be completely arbitrary. We'd have to set up some sort of trial and error system without any knowledge of where to start. — Metaphysician Undercover

I understand we can’t remove what’s already there deep within the sensing system. I understand all objects are completely unknown with respect to the sensing system we have, which is that very system we cannot remove. Again.....the senses do not give knowledge; they merely set the stage for the possibility of it.

I don’t understand why the fundamentals of basic sensation are very arbitrary. I guess I’d have to ask.....what are the fundamentals of sensation, such that any sensation can be of any thing? I mean...I cannot see an odor and I cannot hear a twisted ankle. I cannot smell a color, and I cannot taste H2O. It follows that any sensation is only given from the physiology that permits it, which hardly seems arbitrary. I certainly know which sense is being impressed, while at the same time I may not know to what the sensation relates, therefore I am justified in saying the object is undetermined rather than the sensing system being arbitrary.

I agree we would use trial and error to invent a sensing system for that which we know nothing about, but I disagree we have no knowledge of where to start. First, whatever sensing system we set up must possible, which is the same as we won’t set up a system we don’t know how to design. Second, whatever sensing system we set up must be capable of sensing something that will be intelligible to us, for to set up for sensing that which we would never understand, is quite impossible. To get technical, the categories always tell us the absolute bare necessities of anything we sense, but we’ll leave that alone for now.

Nahhhh....I suggest we might very well set up an arbitrary sensing system for objects we know nothing about, but that system must be conditioned by what we already know. Case in point, we really knew nothing about celestial manifestations, and the telescope sensing system for far-away big stuff we set up to find out about, was designed specifically with respect to the sensing system we already have. Going the other direction, we knew absolutely nothing about germs until we set up a sensing system that magnifies close-in little stuff, which also respects our own sensing system.

Yes? No? Maybe?

Outbound on our first post-covid seasonal road trip. We got to where we were going, so assuming you’re still interested.....

I hold that objects are material substance with extension in space and duration in time....
— Mww

But space and time are conceptual. They are concepts created to help us understand the appearance of objects. We really have no thorough understanding of what it is which is independent of us. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes we do have a way of thoroughly understanding: we declare what each and every single thing that is existentially independent of us, how it is to be known by us, in direct accordance to the rules by which understanding works. We may fail in our thorough knowledge of what the object actually is, but we do not fail to understand the existential independence of them.

And while space and time are conceptions, they have nothing to do with the ontology of objects themselves, but only with the human method of granting their possibility.
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technically I wouldn’t say here appearances are in the mind....
— Mww

Well, what is in the conscious mind then, if it isn't the appearances? — Metaphysician Undercover

Ahhh....conscious mind is your reasoning process. Appearances are merely informative impressions, affects on physiology, hence not yet part of the reasoning process. Appearances tell us that; the reasoning process tells us of. It is not the case I know what a thing is, merely because I perceive it; that thing still has to run the entire gamut of the human reasoning system. Just because we aren’t as aware of it from repetition, as we were from its first occurrence, doesn’t mean it isn’t still the same process. How else to ensure epistemic consistency, then to repeat epistemic methodology?

When I look around with my eyes, and I have images in my mind, of objects, aren't these images "in my mind"? If not, what is it which is in my mind? Is anything "in" my mind? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, the images are in your conscious mind, but they are representations, which are not given by looking around with your eyes. All looking does, and perception in general, is give material to form the representations. Technically, images are the schema of the concepts which understanding synthesizes with the representations called phenomena, which are given antecedently from looking around. We can have images without immediate perception of an existing object (dark side of the moon), and we can have images of a merely logically possible object without any perception whatsoever of that which the image represents (a line consisting of only two points).
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I submit, one must understand what he perceives long before he can talk about it. I mean, if one doesn’t understand.....what could he say about it?
— Mww

I don't believe this is the case. We name things without understanding them. — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually, this is quite impossible. A name is assigned to a thing at a time strictly in accordance to how it is understood at that time. That is not to say such named things are understood correctly, but that has nothing to do with the naming of them.

A name being tacitly understood as a representation of a conception, presupposes the conception. It follows that a guy can represent in speech a conception by any damn word he wants, but it is always the case he has thought the word long before he spoke it.

Now, I suppose I could just throw out a word representing the thing I don’t understand, but doing that is not representing a conception, because I don’t have one, which contradicts the notion of what a name is meant to do.

In the case of extreme abstraction, e.g, quantum mechanics or such like, even if not understood in its entirety, names can still be assigned for conditions necessary for possible understanding. Even for feelings, we discover it is the reasons for the feelings that we don’t understand, while understanding perfectly well that some particular feeling is present in us, and can certainly be named.
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As a form of "causality", the self-contained causality must be prior in time, therefore its existence must be prior to any faculty which it is found to reside within, or else that faculty would be dependent on something else for its capacity to function. The "something else" then would be its cause, and it would not be a self-contained causality. — Metaphysician Undercover

There are two major necessary characteristics imbued in the human being, such that he can be so called: morality and reason. In keeping with the topic, reason the condition, is antecedent in time to all that for which it is the condition. Hence, the notion of self-contained causality is logically justified.

It is confusing, though, insofar as reason the human condition is a descriptive noun, but reason the procedural verb is a inferential method. To make matters worse, reason is also the end in a tripartite logical system, and as such, performs the function of conclusion in a syllogistic relation. And it is here that your......

The uncertainty is always within the premises, and it's the mistaken premises which lead to faulty conclusions. — Metaphysician Undercover

......shows up, in that, where reason is the conclusion, understanding is the major and judgement is the minor premises respectively. It is common knowledge our judgements are quite apt to be erroneous, hence the conclusions will be as well. Understanding, on the other hand, the faculty from which all our conceptions arise, cannot be in error, with respect to that part of a synthesis for which it alone is responsible. This requires some exposition which I won’t go into here.

free will is a sort of manifestation of the deeper self-contained causality. My position would support the latter. — Metaphysician Undercover

Mine as well. Causality for a will operating freely, is the transcendental conception of “freedom”. Freedom has nothing to do with pure reason in matters of a priori propositions regarding empirical matters. The former describes what is, the latter describes what should be. The former legislated by Nature, the latter legislated by us alone.
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Suppose we assume an object which is completely unknown. Now, we want to set up a sensing system to develop some knowledge about that object. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nahhhh....that ain’t gonna work. Any developed sensing system still needs to go through the one we have, in order to obtain knowledge. Telescopes were such a system, but we still need to look through the eyepiece, or look at the the display which obtains its information directly.

When these sensing systems came into existence, the creatures knew nothing about the objects they wanted to learn about. — Metaphysician Undercover

Before sensing systems, what sense does it make to say creatures wanted to learn?

So it's not true to say "what we have is all we’re logically permitted to discuss", because there is a variety of ways in which "possibility" is dealt with by logic. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, dealt with logically, by us. What we have.....

While it is true we would have a completely different experience base if the creative power evolved differently, but.....it didn’t, so what we have is all we’re logically permitted to discuss. — Mww

.....should have been understood as the creative power we have. The number of possibilities is not the same as the variety of ways possibility is dealt with. Possibility is dealt with in one way only, in affirmation or negation, one or the other, not both simultaneously for the same thing.

Anyway, Momma says it’s time to do what we came here for, so, more later.