How do you make sense of it in relation to this: — javra

First off, the SEP article reconstructs what Hume’s thesis is, whereas the Kant quote represents how Kant thought the thesis at least incomplete.

Second, Hume was correct in that we should expect one thing to follow from another if only because our experience has never shown us anything else, but Kant criticized him for leaving it at that, which is found in E.C.H.U. 1.5.1.36.....

“....By employing that word**, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity****. We only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known by its effects....”
**custom/habit
***constant conjunction

.....which he made worse by insisting....

“....All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent....”

But he came close, admitting in fn7 that it is always the case in philosophy to separate experience from reason, and even goes so far as to grant that reason acts a priori with respect to Nature, which is the same as with respect to experience. Kant is just saying......well, then why the hell didn’t you go ahead and do that?

“...I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition...”, says ol’ Dave, “....which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of this relation** is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other...”
(**cause and effect)

And of course, Kant ain’t having none of that, chastising Hume soundly....but nowhere near as soundly as Schopenhauer laid into Hegel....with this.....

“....Against this assertion, destructive to all pure philosophy, he would have been guarded, had he had our problem before his eyes in its universality. For he would then have perceived that, according to his own argument, there likewise could not be any pure mathematical science, which assuredly cannot exist without synthetical propositions à priori—an absurdity from which his good understanding must have saved him....”

Thing is....Hume couldn’t have had “our problem” before his eyes; Kant was the one that brought the “problem” up in the first place. Hume had no notion of synthetic propositions as Kant stipulated them, and most certainly never considered the validity of synthetic a priori propositions given from pure reason, having, as well, not given the faculty of understanding the power it must have, with respect to the categories, one of which is....TA-DAAAA.....cause/effect, at least according to transcendental metaphysics. Which, it is obvious, Hume knew nothing about, because there was not as yet any such cognitive methodology.

This is what woke Kant up: there’s got to be a way to show the relationship between cause and effect doesn’t have to come from experience, that understanding itself can show the relation as universally necessary. So he invented a way to make it so.

That’s how I make sense of it, at a minimum.

...after much fear and trepidation, am reading Kant's Critique — Manuel

,,,,and how’s that going for ya?

I'm aware there is likely more about Hume here... — Manuel

Then you must have read this by now, although it’s in Sec II not III.

“.....David Hume perceived that, to render this possible, it was necessary that the conceptions should have an à priori origin. But as he could not explain how it was possible that conceptions which are not connected with each other in the understanding must nevertheless be thought as necessarily connected in the object—and it never occurred to him that the understanding itself might, perhaps, by means of these conceptions, be the author of the experience in which its objects were presented to it—he was forced to drive these conceptions from experience, that is, from a subjective necessity arising from repeated association of experiences erroneously considered to be objective—in one word, from habit....”

Have fun!!

But not all intuitions represent physical objects, some represent internal feelings, like emotions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Page 2:
Intuitions represent the object the feeling is directed toward. I love my car, the car I can intuit because it is an object, but I do not intuit the love of it. In short, love, hate joy, disgust and feelings in general, are not phenomena, those being the objects of intuitions. We can accede to this, because sometimes we have feelings, but either cannot describe them (because the object to which they relate is unknown), or, we simply don’t know why we even have that feeling in the first place (because the object to which it relates contradicts your experience).

The key is the notion that feelings are not cognitions, but are just some condition in which the subject finds himself. You were all fine and dandy one minute, somebody stepped on your toe the next, and POW!!!....your condition.....the condition of yourself....immediately changes, directly proportional to the feeling in your toe and your reaction to it. And you never cognized a single thing in that briefest of instances. That there is something wrong with your foot is far systematically antecedent to the cognition of the cause of it.
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Any particular cognitive system, when directed inward, needs different principles of understanding, from when it is directed outwards...... — Metaphysician Undercover

Absolutely, which makes explicit the natural duality of the particular human cognitive system. On the one hand, as you sit there looking out the window, you perceive all that is presented to your senses. But if you shut off your senses, or make it so nothing is given to them, or just not pay any attention to those that get through, you can still think any object you like, those you know from experience and those you might know if you ever do experience them. But you can also sit there and think objects you will never experience, either because they exist but are nonetheless beyond your capability, or they don’t exist at all. But either way, you understand something about each and every one of them, and judge them accordingly, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to explain how they were thought.

With respect to what you said, though, I submit there are two conditions under which the system can be directed inward, one in consideration of the world but without the sense of it, when you sit there and only think about it, and the other is with nothing whatsoever to do with the world. To direct the cognitive system inward without any regard for the world at all, is to employ the faculties of the system on itself. But if that is the case, and all the objects of experience and thought related to experience are eliminated from contention....where does that which we are inwardly directed toward, come from? What do the faculties of the system employ themselves on? Even to say they operate by different principles, principles are meaningless without something to which they apply, so we still need the something.

......The two types of "objects" to be understood by these two different directions are so vastly different, that I think they require fundamentally different forms of "logic". — Metaphysician Undercover

You went from different principles to different “objects”. But that’s ok; we would have ended up at different “objects” eventually anyway. So....one kind of object is given from sense, the other kind cannot be given from sense, so must be given from within the cognitive system itself. The former will necessarily be imbued with properties in order for it be know as a certain thing, the other can have no properties, but is nonetheless known as something. Hence, “object” as opposed to object.

One of the “vast” differences, then, is that the one object is empirically determined when the cognitive system is directed outward, the other “object” is rationally determinable when the cognitive system is directed inward and examines only itself. It would seem to be the case that for determinable rational objects, principles different from those which ground the propositions containing conceptions longing to objects of experience. But granting the differences in principles is most readily accomplished by granting differences in their source, rather than the form of their logic, in that it is possible for two differing sources can operate under one logic, if both the sources and the logic are all contained in and used by, a single unified cognitive system.

There are differences in objects and principles, but they arise from differences in reason, not differences in logic. These all belong to a far different philosophy, the outer world of sense being epistemological, the inner world of feelings being moral. In the former Nature is the causality of its objects and they belong to it alone, in the latter it is we who are the causality of the objects and they belong to us alone. Just as there is no real physical basketball in our heads, there is no real physical beauty in the world. Reason in the former is pure theoretical, reason in the latter is pure practical. Judgement in the former is discursive, in the latter it is aesthetic. Imagination in the former is productive, in the latter it is re-productive. The former is conditioned by space and time, the latter is conditioned by our innate constitution. The former defines our intellect, the latter defines our character. The former concerns itself with what is, the latter concerns itself with what ought to be.

All without a necessary difference in logic as such.

There’s my take on the topic. I’d be interested in yours, assuming your take is as sufficiently explanatory as mine, the correctness of either being irrelevant. We’re in the realm of speculation here, after all. Although they both should be equally intelligible, I should think.

So.....your turn.

External intuition simply refers to the possibility of an external object...
— Mww

OK, now if we can say external intuition refers to the possibility of an external object, can we say that "internal intuition" refers to the possibility of an internal object? And if these two types of "objects" are fundamentally different, then the two types of intuitions will be fundamentally different. And if the two types of intuition are fundamentally different, then we need two types of logic. — Metaphysician Undercover

A saw cuts a board, a hammer nails the board to a wall. Can we use the saw to hammer the board? We are, necessarily and without exception, given external objects by the senses. Are we given internal objects by the senses? We are not, so if there are internal objects, they certainly cannot arise from the senses. The external objects we are given are represented as phenomena and are derived from the faculty of receptivity for impressions, which is called intuition. Internal objects not given to us but instead given by us, are represented as conceptions and are derived from the faculty of understanding.

Do you see we don’t need logic for that which is given to us? For anything merely presented to the senses, there is no cognition, there is not yet any understanding, no judgement, and the mere presence of an object to our sensing apparatus is very far from knowledge of it. Remember the scientific equivalent to this metaphysical premise: we are not aware of information transfer on our nerve cells on the one hand, and we have no consciousness of the inception of phenomena from sensations of physical objects, on the other. If the application of logic is a conscious activity by a rational agent, how can logic be applied to that of which he has no conscious awareness?

So we have one type of representation as intuition, another type of representation as conception, and if we synthesize these in a faculty sufficiently enabled to do so......do you see that this is precisely the same modus operandi as imbued in the construction of a logical syllogism? Intuition would be the major premise, just because it is first in the procedural system, a conception would be the minor premise, just because it is after any impression on sensibility, the synthesis of them by the faculty of understanding generates a conclusion, which we call a judgement.

I don’t think anyone doubts that we are imbued with these faculties, the difficulty arises from what they are and what they actually do. Regardless, it is clear logic as a systemic necessity only applies sometime in the overall process after the premises are made available on which it can be applied. While logic can be applied to a single premise, all we will get from it is a tautology, which is not what the system is seeking when presented with an external object. It that were the case, we remain with...there is an object, full stop.... but without the means to determine a knowledge of what the object may be.

Sidebar: the counter argument is, objects tell us what they are, so we know them immediately by the properties by which we are impressed. The nonsense of this should be quite apparent, even to the “most common understanding”.

Anyway, all that to say this: you are correct in saying there are two types of objects, external and internal, but incorrect in saying these are two types of intuitions. The two types of representations corresponding to the two types of objects are united into a single type, which is called cognition, on which only one type of logic is needed in order to determine the validity of it, which is called judgement. As an oversimplification, it is in this way that perception of something with wings, known as such from antecedent experience, is immediately cognized as what it may be, but as yet with insufficient judgement for what it is.

Further affirmations: the senses don’t judge, and understanding doesn’t perceive. Everything in its place, this does this job and that does that job, putting things in the wrong places, subsumed under faculties not equipped to deal with them, defeats the entire system.

Ever notice, that for something you perceive but have no experience of, after you figure it out, you’ve added nothing at all to what you perceived? If you added nothing whatsoever to the perception, but you went from ignorance to knowledge of that very same perception......where did the change occur? It could not possibly occur in any faculty having to do with the perception alone, which is precisely the realm of intuition. For instance....a tool. A specially tool. Guy shows it to you, you have no idea how to use it, or even what to use it on. Hell....even that it could be used for anything, but you merely assume, logically, it can because somebody made it for some reason. But you have no real justification for even that assumption, insofar as he could have just been puttering around the shop and threw together some junk and wanted to see how you react to it, which releases the object from even being a purposeful tool per se, exchanging it for a tool the intent for which belongs to purposeness of the guy alone.

So say it is a tool, and he shows you what it does.....you still perceive the object in exactly the same way as when you didn’t know what it was for. If the object itself didn’t change, then the intuition of it couldn’t have changed, which makes explicit the understanding of it must be the sole factor in whatever judgement you came to for its use.

Now, under the conditions you propose, you are using one type of logic for your ignorance, and a different type of logic for your knowledge. Wouldn’t it be the more parsimonious to suppose ignorance is the inability to use any logic, than to suppose ignorance uses a logic of its own kind?
————

If our goal is to understand, why leave the best part alone? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because we can’t get past the initial stages. It’s a system, after all, so we should come to accord on the simple parts before moving onto the hard parts. Simplest of all is....we sense things. Problem is, sensing things is the more simple, but it is at the same time the less prevalent. If the goal is to understand, wouldn’t be better to come to an accord on what it means to understand? To do that, best to eliminate what understanding isn’t, which is anything to do with perception, including intuitions. And apparently, you’re not ready to do that, and, perhaps more importantly, you haven’t convinced me we can’t.

Just not quite right.....
— Mww

..... the person who doesn't agree with you, as not right. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not that you disagree with me, it’s that you disagree with my interpretation of Kant, which you brought into the dialectic. Even if I’m wrong in my interpretations, if you were wrong in the same way, I’d say you were right and we’d agree more often than not. I didn’t mean to imply I was right point-blank, and you should agree with me and because you don’t you are not right. Only a fool would insist he gets Kant right, without fault of any kind.

I should have worded it better. Or left it out. My bad. Sorry.

We must dispose of the most basic principles of logic, such as identity, and non-contradiction, and we are left with zero, nothing as a starting point. — Metaphysician Undercover

But if it is the case we don’t function at all, in any way, shape or form, when we dismiss the basic principles of logic, then it is reasonable to suppose we couldn’t do that in the first place....
— Mww

I don't agree with this at all, and I've argued it in many places in this forum. We do not need to assume replacement principles to reject principles which we find unacceptable. — Metaphysician Undercover

These two comments of yours say different things, and the second doesn’t respond to mine.
————

However, the nature of logic, and it's ground in intuition...., — Metaphysician Undercover

Sorry, but the nature of logic is in judgement, not intuition.
— Mww

That's not what I said though, I said it was grounded in intuition. — Metaphysician Undercover

I understand you said the nature of logic is grounded in intuition. I’m claiming it is not.

And the grounding of logic, substantiation, what makes validity work for us, is fundamentally different from logic itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

....and you’ve done it again. First it was the ground of the nature of logic, now it is the grounding of logic itself in substantiation. Easily reconciled by admitting the nature of logic has to do with its form, substantiation of logic has to do with its content. The form is given in the construction of principles, the content is given in the construction of propositions conditioned by the principles.
—————

The problem of course being that we cannot apply logic directly to the external world, all we have is the in between, the information received, the intuitions, to apply logic to. — Metaphysician Undercover

Half right. We don’t apply logic directly to the external world, all we have is the in-between, but the in-between consists of more than mere intuitions. We still should consider the role of the cognitive system as a whole, of which intuition is but the initial stage.

So even if logic is something created by human beings for the purpose of understanding the external world, we are stymied in our attempts to apply it because all we have is intuitions about the external world to apply it to. — Metaphysician Undercover

If it is the case that we are not conscious of our intuitions, in some strictly metaphysical sense, then it follows we do not apply our logic to them. Nevertheless, we are not stymied, insofar as we do apply logic to something, so even if we do not apply logic to our intuitions, then it must be the case we do apply them to that which arises from them. Under empirical conditions, that is. Again, because we do apply logic to that which is not under empirical conditions, the ground of empirical conditions, which is intuition, does not qualify as a condition of the nature of logic, but merely the employment of it with respect to understanding the external world.

Truth be told, I don’t think it proper to say logic is something human beings create. Logical principles, yes, logical conditions, logical this or that, sure. But logic itself, I think, is just the natural modus operandi of the human being himself. We just are logical creatures, from which we can say the nature of logic just is the nature of human beings.
—————-

This is why we need to distinguish internal intuitions from external intuitions. This I think is very important. If we simply say that logic gets applied to intuitions, and if internal intuitions are fundamentally different from external intuitions, then we'd need different logic for internal than we need for external. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is true he uses those terms, but in context, I think you’ll find they have much different connotations than you’re attributing to them. The importance disappears if it is the case that all intuitions are internal, which they would be if all they do is represent physical objects, and those only given by a particular cognitive system. And if logic doesn’t apply to intuitions anyway, then we have two instances for canceling the notion we need distinctive logics. Distinctions in that to which logic applies, yes; distinctions in the logic that is applied, not so much, no.

External intuition simply refers to the possibility of an external object representable as a phenomenon, and that internally as a function of the system. There is no external intuition per se; there is just explanatory liberties. Kant presumes the reader already understands and accepts the preliminaries, and if he were to then posit some intuitions to be external to the system from which he already posited they are born, he contradicts himself and immediately destroys his entire thesis.

Kant, I believe outlined this division, space as the condition for understanding external intuitions, and time as the condition for understanding internal intuitions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Technically, Kant speaks of understanding from an external sense or from an internal sense. And in that formula, is found the fundamental differences in how space and time are to be understood, if only with respect to transcendental philosophy. But that stuff is deep and convoluted as hell, and requires a whole bunch of blind head-nodding I’m here ta tell ya, so...best maybe leave all that alone here.

Still, I’d like to say I know where you’re going with this, and if I’m right, it is here:

“...We have now arrived at the proper place for explaining the paradox which must have struck every one in our exposition of the internal sense, namely—how this sense represents us to our own consciousness, only as we appear to ourselves, not as we are in ourselves, because, to wit, we intuite ourselves only as we are inwardly affected. Now this appears to be contradictory, inasmuch as we thus stand in a passive relation to ourselves; and therefore in the systems of psychology, the internal sense is commonly held to be one with the faculty of apperception, while we***, on the contrary, carefully distinguish them....”
(*** “we” being him, of course, informing us of what “we” are actually doing)

After wading through five pages, we arrive at, in a damn footnote, of all things....

“....For this purpose intuition of self is required, and this intuition possesses a form given à priori, namely, time, which is sensuous, and belongs to our receptivity of the determinable. Now, as I do not possess another intuition of self which gives the determining in me (of the spontaneity of which I am conscious), prior to the act of determination, in the same manner as time gives the determinable, it is clear that I am unable to determine my own existence as that of a spontaneous being, but I am only able to represent to myself the spontaneity of my thought...”

...which is supposed to explain the reason why there is no intuition of anything that isn’t first perceived and to which the categories may apply, which is itself, a logical requisite. In other words, there is no intuition of the objects of the system, which includes one’s self. Nowadays, this all has been reduced to the notion that we are our thoughts, the “I think” represents the manifold of thoughts, “I am” represents consciousness of the manifold, and “I” merely represents the spontaneity of it.

Anyway....you have great thoughts and you’re not entirely wrong. Just not quite right. But then....is anybody? And by “right” I just mean we’d agree more often than not.

Subjectivism — Wayfarer

.....in all its various and sundry and altogether private iterations.

As explained in my post, intuitively, time is logically prior to space. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah....about that. I suppose you’re directing me to this....

This places the intuition of time as deeper than, and prior to, the intuition of space. It manifests as the most basic of mathematical principles, order. — Metaphysician Undercover

We do not intuit time or space; we intuit objects in time and space. To intuit is to follow from sensation, and the sensation proper of time or space is impossible, insofar as both are conceived as infinite and empty.

While I agree space and time have a mutual exclusivity with respect to functionality, I see no reason to grant one with priority over the other under empirical conditions. As a concession, on the other hand, I do grant that time has priority under none-empirical conditions, insofar as thoughts are never represented in space yet are always and only represented by successions in time.

Second, the most basic mathematical principles are subsumed under the schema of quantity, not relation, or, in your terms, order.
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But if we assume that our fundamental (base) intuitions are wrong, then we have nothing left to go on. We must dispose of the most basic principles of logic, such as identity, and non-contradiction, and we are left with zero, nothing as a starting point. — Metaphysician Undercover

True enough. But if it is the case we don’t function at all, in any way, shape or form, when we dismiss the basic principles of logic, then it is reasonable to suppose we couldn’t do that in the first place, insofar as we must use them in order to assume their dismissal. It follows that if we cannot assume to dismiss them, we are left with merely getting them as correct as we can.

Gotta be careful here, nonetheless, because to juxtaposition fundamental (base) intuitions to our basic principles of logic involves separate functions of human cognition. This is most apparent iff it is the case that intuition does not involve judgement, while basic logical principles is predicated on it exclusively.
————-

However, the nature of logic, and it's ground in intuition...., — Metaphysician Undercover

Sorry, but the nature of logic is in judgement, not intuition. Think of it this way: you know how when we perceive something, when we are affected by some imprint on the senses, we are never conscious of the information that flows along the nerves? We sense the beginning, we cognize what the beginning was, at the end, in the brain, but all that between, we know nothing about whatsoever. THAT is intuition, in the proper, albeit metaphysical, sense. And because we are never conscious of our intuitions, but we are certainly conscious of the judgements we make on our sensations from which the intuition is given, and logical determinations are the objects of judgements alone, it follows necessarily that intuition cannot stand in any relation to the nature of logic. It may be said intuition is the ground for the possibility of logical determinations, but that is not to say they determine the nature of logic.

Besides....there are those occasions when we employ logical principles even without an intuition, without an object making an impression on the senses. Case in point....the guy that invented the Slinky. Sure, springs and stuff falling are sensuous impressions, but you can’t get a Slinky as such, from those two intuitions. To connect those into an object that doesn’t yet exist requires more than the antecedent intuition of each. In just the same way, you cannot get to 12 if all you have is a 7 and a 5.

So sayeth the blue pill, and I got a whole bucketful of them little devils. Lucky for me, cuz I’ve grown accustomed.....ok, fine.....addicted.....to their intoxication.

How this intuition of time, manifesting as order, is itself grounded, whether it is grounded in experience, or something more fundamental than experience, as prior to experience, and a condition for the possibility of experience, is probably an issue of how we define the terms. — Metaphysician Undercover

The whole comment was pretty good, but it all comes down to this, for which I can find no fault. As great and wonderful as human reason is, each of us has his own and he is at the mercy of it. Hence, you take the red pill in defining terms in one way, I take the blue pill in defining terms another way, while trying to find something in common. Which hardly ever works.

You said...at least as far as our kind of intelligence...
— Mww

What other kind is there? — Wayfarer

As many other kinds as there are other kinds of brains? Other kinds of CNS’s? I’m not about to say ours is the only kind of intelligence there is, but it is certainly the only kind that’s of any use to us.
————

I'm beginning to see why there is this dogma that logical necessity and physical causation belong to different domains. It's the underlying mind-body dualism that is still at the basis of our modern outlook — Wayfarer

Different domains/mind-body dualism....ok. Nature of the human beast, methinks.

Dogma....ehhh, sorta ok. Dogma with proper criticism, fine; dogmatism, use of dogmatic systems without the built-in mechanisms for proper self-criticism, dangerous.

Depends on how you mean the term to be used, I guess. Most use it with pejorative connotations, and I don’t want to imply that’s what you’re doing.

Are you saying our modern outlook shouldn’t have a basic underlying mind/body dualism?

'Our kind of intelligence', compared to what? — Wayfarer

Hmmmm....dunno, really. I don’t think comparisons are possible. I mean, all we have to compare with, is our own, so what we we learn from it, except what ours tells us?

‘Quantum mechanics is a law of thought.’ — Wayfarer

I like it!!

I believe there is no such thing as "pure" a priori. — Metaphysician Undercover

That’s fine, no problem. In effect, you’re dismissing, or at least disputing, the fundamental ground of Kantian metaphysics, which has been done since he published it. Buried in the subtleties, though, is the “first time for everything” qualifier, which, because people know so much about the world these days and science has taken us merrily down the empirical path, we tend to overlook as cognitive prerequisites. It’s like....boiling water. Big deal. Boiled water since I was a kid. That I gotta put water in the pot first just comes with the territory. And turning on the stove. And making sure I got electricity. And making the electricity that runs the stove. And building the dam. And mining the gypsum.

How boring. The real fun starts in going the other way. Everybody thinks; no one knows how thinking happens. So...there ya go, ripe for theoretical musings.

What is the import of 'not only is the necessity...'? — Wayfarer

The importance of necessity resides in the condition Kant requires for pure a priori manifestations in his transcendental system. Necessity, along with universality, are the conditions determining whether or not some conception/judgement/cognition/knowledge is a priori or empirical.

“....Necessity and strict universality, therefore, are infallible tests for distinguishing pure from empirical knowledge, and are inseparably connected with each other....”

The synthetical part comes from the relation of conceptions in a proposition to each other, but that is beside the point of the grounds for determining what kind of proposition is under consideration.

This is all just groundwork, setting the stage, for the rest of his speculative metaphysics. Ever notice how little time he spends on stuff like this, compared to the non-empirical stuff on which he did elaborate, seemingly to no end, that the empiricists of the day utterly neglected? He writes for 98 pages on the empirical, but writes for 610 pages on the non-empirical. All set up by a mere 14 pages in the introduction, from which all the above is a part.
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Is that not that such propositions are actually both a matter of logical necessity and also of physical principle? — Wayfarer

This has to do with origins, not examples, or proofs. The matter of physical principle in play here is induction, which lessens the importance of “strict universality”, relegating it to “as far as we know”, but leaves necessity to condition the proposition as a priori as opposed to entirely empirical.

Referencing the quote, have to keep in mind “the science of natural philosophy” is merely that which the human does in accordance with certain criteria he himself constructs, in order to make sense of observations. The physical doesn’t contain principles, it abides by them, at least as far as our kind of intelligence decides it does.

Hey.....

I remember. I generally agree, taking exception only to your referring to “pure physics” in a Kantian context. As brought to light by , it is clear there is a pure part of physics with respect to the a priori principles which make the science possible, but “pure physics” as a general conception, has not the same distinction as....

“...Before all, be it observed, that proper mathematical propositions are always judgements à priori, and not empirical, because they carry along with them the conception of necessity, which cannot be given by experience. If this be demurred to, it matters not; I will then limit my assertion to pure mathematics, the very conception of which implies that it consists of knowledge altogether non-empirical and à priori....”

....in which we see how he wishes “pure” regarding the “theoretical sciences of reason” to be understood.

Minor point to be sure, but.....you know.....in the interest of the straight and narrow.....
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discovery of the rational structure of Nature which gave the a priori foundations to the modern experimental science

That says more about us than I would ever allow.

Can we agree that what might be thought to be logically necessary for our rational thinking (what is psychologically necessary) can be distinguished from what is logically necessary per se? — Janus

Logically necessary per se. In my mind, that translates to....what is logically necessary because it is logically necessary. What is logically necessary just because it is. I honestly don’t know what to do with that.

I can easily enough distinguish what is logically necessary for our rational thinking from logical necessity per se. What is logically necessary for our rational thinking is that which justifies it as such. Logical necessity is merely the rule by which the justification is given. But that’s taking unwarranted liberties with what you said. Unless what you said just makes no sense, which I wouldn’t dare say.

So, we have.....my rational thinking is “stones have physical causation”. The question then becomes, what do I think is logically necessary in order for the thought I had about stones to be a rational cognition. Initially, I might think something like the principle of induction is logically necessary, insofar as I have never thought about any thing that didn’t have physical causation. Next I might think the LNC is logically necessary, insofar as if I think a stone doesn’t have physical causation I contradict my aforethought principle of induction. Then I might think imagination is logically necessary in order to circumvent the LNC because I can imagine what I damn well please. After those, I probably wouldn’t bother with any others.

But these logical necessities I think are sequential, one rather than the other in a series of thoughts, each of which are mutually independent and logically necessary per se, so I haven’t distinguished any particular one from the general, but merely given instances of it.

Dunno if I can agree or not, but I’m leaning towards not. You know.....cuz of what I dare not say. (Grin)

But there is no strictly logical contradiction involved in thinking that a stone could have randomly popped into existence for no reason and caused by nothing — Janus

This is of course, correct given certain premises. As the saying goes, “...I can think whatever I please, provided only I do not contradict myself...”. To think that which exits without a cause is unconditioned by antecedent causes, so.....there ya go. I have not contradicted myself. That is the correct form of transcendentally thinking an unconditioned effect. But you’re stuck right there, you can’t do anything constructive with a mere form.

Another way to look at it is....it is impossible to prove all that exists has a reason for its existence. There may be that which exists that we cannot know anything about, that cannot be called out as “things”, which makes explicit we cannot know anything whatsoever regarding their causality. Thus, logically, we are not authorized to say that which has no cause is impossible.

Neither of these will work for stones, though, or any possible experience of ours. We know stones, so we are restrained by the logic of physical causality because of that knowledge. If we deny logical necessity for that which we claim to know, we jeopardize the very conception of entailment for empirical knowledge itself.

The inescapable dualism of human reason. Can’t live with it, can’t kill it.

it (cause) is not an obvious attribute of objects. — Janus

It is good to divide out cause in this way, insofar as attribute implies identity of an existence while cause implies the relation of an existence. In this regard, I would agree cause is not a primary category for what an object is to be known as, but would add...neither is existence.
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Trivial sidebar: existence has to do with representation of each object in general in a time, cause has to do with representation of objects in general in successive times.
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Not-so-trivial sidebar: given the above, cause is not the form, re: .....

form is a category of objects — Janus

.....but rather, time is. And we already know this, because time is already stated in the transcendental method as the form of all phenomena, to which every single category subsequently applies.
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Second....and final, promise..... trivial sidebar:
The schemata of the categories of understanding are conceptions or compound conceptions, whereas the schema of the categories of judgement are cognitions.
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a stone is not in itself a cause, — Janus

But can it be said with equal certainty, that a stone is not an effect? If it cannot be said, or it is said but contradicts empirical conditions, therein lay the validity for those categories with complementary, what Kant calls “dynamical”, nature. As opposed to “mathematical”, which do not have complementary conceptions belonging to them.

Edible noumenon. Guarantee that won’t sell. Hell...couldn’t even give it away. I mean....how would it be packaged? Pretty hard to shrink wrap something impossible to perceive, right?

That the noumon can't be known is questionable. — Hillary

Possibly, of course. Just not as Kant’s noumenon.

We might say that some kind of inferred causation is logically necessary — Janus

I’d go so far as to say....objects must relate to one or more categories, cause is a category, therefore inferred causation is logically necessary for human empirical cognitions.

And of course, physical causation in the world is meaningless without an intelligence to apprehend it, which makes logical necessity under such conditions of absence, moot.

.......it's hard to remain Kantian. — Hillary

If he left metaphysics as he said....

“....by this critique it has been brought onto the secure course of a science, then it can fully embrace the entire field of cognitions belonging to it and thus can complete its work and lay it down for posterity as a princi­pal framework that can never be enlarged...”

....then why couldn’t one remain Kantian in his thinking, no matter the advances in empirical science?

exactly what Kant proved, in several tens of thousands of words. — Wayfarer

.....and summed up in five: “...intuitions without concepts are blind...”.

(As I turn the page I see already said it. Gives new meaning to.....you guys need to get on the same page!!!!)
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An inference can be derived from observation alone — Janus

Not if “.....intuitions without concepts are blind....” is true.

You know the drill: “....understanding cannot intuit, intuition cannot think....”.

I think the rest of your comment supports the drill, but if it does, the first statement contradicts the support, in that an inference cannot be derived from observation alone. An inference is a logical relation......yaddayaddayadda......

what are the attributes of a Kantian, exactly? — Tom Storm

Oh, that’s easy. Exactly? The prime attribute of a Kantian is the recognition and development of, and the absolute necessity for, the dualism of his transcendental intelligence.

You seem to be describing..... — Harry Hindu

Good that it only seems.

if naturalism is true….

.....and naturalism is.....

That everything which happens in the universe is a physical play out through time.

......it does not follow that....

the laws that govern the universe are what make everything happen.

The metaphysical naturalist rejects that the universe is governed by natural law, re: governance is not causality. Laws don’t cause the happenings of physical plays; laws merely describe relations between plays, and then only to the intellect that constructs them for itself.

That every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe is a physical play. That every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe according to their relative masses, etc, etc, is a law that describes how the play works, but only to the originator of the description.

The metaphysical naturalist posits that which governs the physical play of the universe is certainly not impossible, but that such governance should translate to a law, is a strictly human construct. And if a human gave that translation its name in calling it a law, why shouldn’t it be the case that he also gave it its descriptive power?
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I wonder.....but not very much....exactly which law ultimately governs the physical play of the guy at The Center For Naturalism writing that humans are not ultimately responsible for their actions, while he sits there ultimately responsible for it being written. Betcha a million dollars he can’t tell me. Nor can he tell me about laws that contradict each other, which is precisely what laws are not supposed to do.

many people use the term "a priori" to mean something that can be known without justification. — T Clark

Again, technically, nothing can be known without some kind of justification, the possible exception being knowledge acquired by sheer accident, which merely indicates neither experience nor logic suffices.

The Greeks liked to divide knowledge into knowledge of and knowledge that. Russell called it knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. Either way, the dichotomy reduces to knowledge before submission to the cognitive system and knowledge as a result of the system. Like..... I know I just got bit, but I don’t know what bit me. That I got bit is not something the least a priori knowledge, for it is an affect of some kind on the senses, and if I don’t know what bit me, that can’t be a priori because it isn’t anything.

Regardless, if one thinks knowledge to be a relative condition of certainty, that is only possible by being justified by something.

Or so it seems.....

So Kant's pure reason is a priori reason? — Haglund

Kant describes what he means by “pure”, that being absent all elements of experience. Even if describing a priori with it, I think it safe to apply the term to reason as well. I don’t recall Kant defining pure reason as such, but usually just meaning how reason itself is to be understood from its use.

To be somewhat technical, understanding is the faculty of rules, reason is the faculty that unites the rules under principles. All principles are a priori and all rational deductions are free from empirical conditions, so.....

pure vs. impure. — T Clark

The pure/impure is Kantian terminology specifically, meant to show the distinctions in what can be considered a priori. The thing with the keys shows there is a kind of a priori in common usage but hardly recognized as such, but it is the other kind of much more importance, that being, absent any element of experience whatsoever, that is, pure, which if not from experience, must the be from reason itself. Your list of a priori conditions on pg 1 are both kinds, but without the distinction of which is which. Conventionally speaking, that is sufficient, insofar as conventionally no one cares, but both scientifically and metaphysically speaking, it is very far from it. And, of course, you did ask a metaphysical question after all, so......just thought I’d weigh in. Or.....wade in, more like it.

Anyway.....of much more importance is the analytic/synthetic distinction, a priori being given. There are no analytic statements that are not a priori, which leaves synthetic statements. The whole scheme evolved from Enlightenment academia, as to whether or not there is any such thing as a synthetic a priori condition, and if there is, what is it for, what would it do, what can we get out of it. Believe it or not, the long and the short of it is.....and you know....for what it’s worth....., the question was asked about such things, because the question was first asked.....how is mathematics possible? Which is hardly as silly as it seems, insofar as an entire paradigm shift from Renaissance intelligencia in the ways and means of human knowledge, still in force to this day, resulted from such a simple question. Einstein, it goes without saying, did the same thing, except for the natural scientist rather than the philosopher.

One of Kant’s many claims to fame is the logical proof for them, and from it, the absolute necessity for what they do. Since, of course, there have been refutations of both the proof and the use, on the one hand, and deductions of them under other premises on the other, but nevertheless, the first and the most readily understandable iterations of them, are his.
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My preference would be that we focus on the general question of what can we know without empirical knowledge — T Clark

Do you think there has been a satisfactory answer to that?

So I know the keys are on the table because I remember leaving them there. — T Clark

Technically here, what you know a priori is in the remembering of what you did, so the conventional iteration would be, I know I left them there. Here is where the element of experience makes your a priori knowledge regarding the keys, “impure”. In effect, your knowledge at this time, is the memory of putting the keys on the table, given from the original experience, but not the experience itself. It is knowledge of the same object, but at different times. This was Kant’s refutation of Hume, nutshell version.

Another way to look at it: you know the keys were on the table because you put them there, that activity is in itself an experience, giving a one-to-one correspondence between knowledge and experience. Given that procedural necessity, you can not know the keys are still on the table, because you don’t have the experience of perceiving them as being there. But the initial knowledge doesn’t just disappear, so it must be accounted for....sorta like entropy, donchaknow.....so you are entitled to say your knowledge is now of the memory of the prior experience, which you certainly wouldn’t deny. You know the memory is just as certain as the initial activity, the former is properly intuition, the latter is experience.
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What you are calling pure a priori sounds like analytic. — T Clark

All analytic propositions/judgements/principles are pure a priori, but not all pure a priori propositions/judgements/principles are analytic. The distinction resides in the relation of the concept in the predicate to the concept in the subject of such proposition/judgement/principle constructions. A further distinction is that analytic constructions are tautologies, they are true necessarily, hence require no empirical proof. Synthetic constructions, on the other hand, are not necessarily true, hence require experience for such possible proofs.

As I said....for whatever that’s worth.

It doesn't make sense to call knowledge a priori if it's dependent on knowledge based on experience — T Clark

This is correct, to a point. You put your keys on the table; there is then the experience, so you know you put the keys on the table. You know it because you did it. This is knowledge a posteriori.

You’re going to go get your keys, you know beforehand and therefore a priori the keys are on the table because you put them there, but you have yet the experience of picking them up from the table, so you don’t yet have the knowledge a posteriori that in fact they are there. This is what Kant calls “impure” a priori knowledge, insofar as there is an element of experience contained in it...you put them on the table before you went to get them from the table. This is the only form of a priori knowledge Hume grants, which he calls “constant conjunction”....a fancy word for “habit”......indicating simply that there never has been an occasion where you put keys on the table and they weren’t there when you went to get them. End of the simple story.

In Kant but missing from Hume and Enlightenment empiricists in general, on the other hand....and for whatever it’s worth....is the notion of “pure” a priori knowledge, that in which there is no element of experience whatsoever, and these are principles, most obvious in geometry and propositional logic. The beginning of a very complex story indeed, and to some hardly worth the effort and consternation, considering the result.

Pretty good philosophizing. That being said, I rather think the title might be better said as completion of Kant’s ethical approach, insofar as his moral philosophy is a complete approach in itself.

I say this because even in “The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics”, a purely subjective moral disposition is given as antecedent, which tends to make me think Kant meant the moral and the ethical to be two separate doctrines, interconnected only under certain conditions.

I see where the first sentence says “Kant’s ethics”, so maybe that’s what you had in mind anyway.

Just my opinion, of no particular consequence, so....carry on and good luck with your discusssion.

One can think of noumena any way he sees fit, as long as he makes sense of it, if only to himself. Still, if originating in a specific domain, and concerning a specific iteration, probably best to stick with it, rather than mix them up. As my ol’ buddy Dexter Holland used to say, you gotta keep ‘em separated.

“....But there is one advantage, which can be made both comprehensible and interesting to even the dullest and most reluctant student of such transcendental investigations, namely this: That the understanding occupied merely with its empirical use, which does not reflect on the sources of its own cognition, may get along very well, but cannot accomplish one thing, namely, determining for itself the boundaries of its use and knowing what may lie within and what without its whole sphere; for to this end the deep inquiries that we have undertaken are requisite. But if the un­derstanding cannot distinguish whether certain questions lie within its horizon or not, then it is never sure of its claims and its possession, but must always reckon on many embarrassing corrections when it continually oversteps the boundaries of its territory (as is unavoidable) and loses itself in delusion and deceptions.

But right at the outset here there is an ambiguity, which can occasion great misunderstanding: Since the understanding, when it calls an ob­ject in a relation mere phenomenon, simultaneously makes for itself, beyond this relation, another representation of an object in itself and hence also represents itself as being able to make concepts of such an object, and since the understanding offers nothing other than the cate­gories through which the object in this latter sense must at least be able to be thought, it is thereby misled into taking the entirely undeter­mined concept of a being of understanding, as a something in general outside of our sensibility, for a determinate concept of a being that we could cognize through the understanding in some way....”
(CPR A238/B297, in Guyer/Wood)

Noumena: that which comes from understanding while it’s twiddling its cognition-generating thumbs, waiting to do what it was actually meant to do.

I have to be aware with respect to what I learn, but I can relax with respect to what I already know. And that from exactly this......

when one's goal is to dispel illusion, digging down is much more productive than climbing higher. — Metaphysician Undercover

....insofar as if one way to dispel illusion is to regulate.....technically, to legislate..... circularity, then logical reductionism to analytic truths.....technically, laws.....serves as ground for trusting the system from which my knowledge is given. The complexities are merely speculative, of course, and themselves circular if over-reduced, re: MU’s digging down too deep, but it does work.

Which gets you your answer: if what I claim as knowledge is predicated on analytic truths, my rational circularity is abated. Conversely, if what I claim as knowledge depends on empirical conditions, for which analytic truths are impossible, such knowledge is always derived from potential circularity, hence, potentially unsupported.

The solution? That which stands in stead of analytic truths, such that potential circularity from empirical conditions can be abated with as great a certainty as analytic truths, in order that I might trust my epistemological system regarding the world in general as much as I trust my own thinking.

You know its name.

Yeah, pitifully....for my knowledge, I have no choice but to trust an intrinsically circular explanatory system, the very one that tells me to never trust circular explanatory systems.

I started out with potential and actual. (...) Which was your first one? — frank

For me, sheer interest. Nothing more or less. Simply put.....how do I know stuff. What explains how I know stuff. What is the knowing of stuff? Any fool can learn practically anything, given enough time, which I was already pretty good at, but....what happens between my ears that explains how that happens to me?

Simple, really.

Sure, one can start in the middle, as usually happens. Then what? Depends on what the objective is, I suppose.

Did it work?

HA!!!! Just like that, although any critique needs internal support consistent with it.

Even observations of how we think presupposes something, is reducible to something.

Critical.

There's logical, metaphysical, epistemic, and physical possibility. Necessity usually has to do with a priori knowledge. — frank

And what underpins all of that? And everything else? Without exception?