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?

Anybody else? — frank

Probably. Usually, some definition is subsequently undermined in order to justify that which didn’t belong to the original in the first place. All in the name of mandatory originality.

Nobody is paying attention to what "logical" necessity actually is, so we may as well drop the logic part. — frank

I think it plain redundant, so we lose nothing but dropping it. Necessity is a logical condition anyway, right?

.....we were talking about Philosophical Investigations, folk might be using the notion of rules from there. — Banno

Perhaps they are. Beside the point, still, insofar as notions of rules merely presupposes them, and the discussion remains lopsided argument from example, which is....truth be told.....all analytic philosophy in general, and OLP in particular, grants as meaningful.

Which is fine, people can talk about things any way they like, except herein (glancing up at the category title), for the inconsistency with where the discussion is taking place.

Have you been using the word 'rule' thus far in your (...) lifespan thus far by just winging it? — Isaac

Yep, but irrelevant. Most of the time I’m just as conventional as the next guy. I have to be, in order to get along with them. But in places such as this, no one should be conventional.

Ohfercrissakes......all this beating around the proverbial “rule” bush.

Without ever once stating what a rule is, its origin, or its import......

the parlour-game which passes for philosophy in today’s culture. — Banno

....yeah, sorta just like that.

I'd gently commend Quine to you, to help you along your path. — Banno

Ehhhhh.....Quine. Been there, done that, back when cars had fins and penny-loafers were exactly that, finding a near-perfect exhibition of apples (representation) and oranges (meaning), which was, I must say, of great help on my path. I nonetheless appreciate your concern for my well-being.

Grade? 1 - 10?

Philosophy via concept analysis. Always a good idea.

The thesis:

.....laws..... — frank

......rational constructs derived from the principles of universality and absolute necessity.....

.....natural laws...... — frank

......rational constructs that act as explanatory devices for occurrences of a specific kind in Nature.....

.....happening by natural laws...... — frank

......that in Nature determinable by that rational construct.....

X is (...) happening by natural laws..... — frank

.....that as an occurrence of a specific kind in Nature determined by that rational construct....

X is logically necessary if it's happening by natural laws. — frank

....X is an occurrence of a specific kind determined by the principles of universality and absolute necessity, therefore because X occurred, it is necessary that it occurred, iff such occurrence is determinable by law......

Given the above, is not mistaken.
————-

The antithesis:

That isn't true, (X is logically necessary if it is happening by natural law), because we can imagine the counterfactual: our universe with different laws. — frank

.....therefore is mistaken.
————

The theorem:
Even if we imagine different laws, they are still laws, by definition. Otherwise, something must be constructed that doesn’t adhere to universality and absolute necessity, in order to permit happenings that are not necessary merely because they happened, as natural law demands. In which case, it isn’t a law that is constructed, which leaves the truth of the original proposition is unaffected.
(Propositions regulated without universality and absolute necessity shall be deemed as rules, and depending on which predicates are assigned, deemed only convictions, and of ever lesser power, mere persuasions)

The proof:
Counterfactual indicates fact that negates established fact. You’re imagining our universe factually different. Regardless, facts are predicated on law, law is predicated on principles, but imagination is predicated on mere inclination. It is classically irrational to exchange the legislative power of principle, for the indiscriminate power of inclination, which are conditions of conviction or persuasion. It is therefore permissible to imagine anything to which one is inclined, but he has no business immediately addressing it as lawful. It follows that even if one images our universe as explainable by different laws, the universe in itself cannot be explained as being different in itself merely because our explanations relative to it, are.

In effect, there is no epistemologically legislative profit in imagining counterfactuals in opposition to established law, absent the exchange of imagination for law. Our universe as it is but explained by different laws is an empty conjecture until we actually have the different laws with which to explain it, to determine that it is possible to still understand our universe as well as or better than we do now, however different such understanding may be.

The conclusion:
That the universe may be explainable by different laws is not sufficient to falsify the truth of the proposition that X is logically necessary if it happens by natural law.
————-

Epistemic possibility has nothing to do with that. — frank

How could it not? It is our human epistemology alone, which immediately makes any epistemic relation inescapable. We create the doctrine, we subject ourselves to it, therefore it is us. Nature, on the other hand, has nothing to do with our epistemic possibilities, but is only the occasion for its exercise.

Yes. Was it supposed to be a wiki thing? That’s what came up.

I think you're talking about epistemic possibility. — frank

With respect to what we’ve been talking about, yes. I can only converse within the limits of my knowledge and this world as I understand it.

You didn’t answer the question: “you don’t consider.....”

What can be imagined' is all that's being talked about when we say Nixon might not have been elected or that the universe might have had other laws. — frank

True enough, but at the expense of what we know.
————

You don’t consider actuality/determinism and possibility opposites? Is it not true that if a thing is determined, its being other than that determination, is impossible? And if a thing is merely possible, or a thing is possibly this or possibly that, no determination as yet relates to it?

Actualism > Determinism > “could have-ism” (possiblism). One of these is not like the others.
— Mww

You're being kind of cryptic..... — frank

Wasn’t intending to be; just pointing out doctrinal and logical oppositions.
—————

I think you're suggesting that you never think about what might have been and I think you probably do, so... — frank

Sure I do, you’re correct. I just like to separate what can be imagined, from what I know.

From the wandering inexplicability file, Kant treats imagination as a full-fledged cognitive faculty, so you know I’d never deny my use of it.

Your view is along the lines of actualism, which I'm also fond of. It's hard determinism. It's an altered use of "could have" though. — frank

Actualism > Determinism > “could have-ism” (possiblism). One of these is not like the others.

If it's not meaningless, it's either true or false. — frank

Agreed. In the case of Nixon, then, it is not true that if he had lost he wouldn’t have been disgraced.

The fact of his disgrace is not determinable by his win or loss; it is possible he could have been disgraced even in losing, albeit under a different set of conditions, but disgraced nonetheless.
———-

DOH!!! I just got it. Meaninglessness due to grammar. What a dope, me.

"If Nixon had lost the election, he wouldn't have been disgraced" ?

Is that a meaningless statement? — frank

I would say, no. I mean....he wasn’t disgraced because he won, which implies a meaning contained by the statement. Rather than meaningless, I’d say....moot. He didn’t lose, so, in the immortal words of the great James Hetfield....nothing else matters.

In juxtaposition to statements about the universe, say, this statement is conditioned by “if/then”, as opposed to “is/is not”, which permits a play of imagination in the former for eventualities with respect to different occurrences, which cannot hold for the latter.

To make the statements logically consistent, for “the universe could have been different.....”, you’d have to say, “Nixon could have lost....”, but then we’re back to the universe statement, insofar as it is the case Nixon couldn’t have lost, because he didn’t.
————-

Meaningless: that proposition in which the conceptions in the predicate and the subject have no relation to each other, re: grass is measured in temperature.

Meaningless: that conception in a subject or predicate of a proposition, that is undefined, re: all speezles are goops, but not all goops are speezles.

I’m Sister Mary Elephant, and.......CLASS DISMISSED!!!!!.....
(Grin)

I think Kant was arguing that Leibniz' monads..... — Manuel

Thanks. I was sure you’d hepa brutha get his mind right.

Agreed. What I did could only have been what I did. That I could have done otherwise is completely irrelevant, with respect to what I actually did.

And he ends it.....

“....From this we can draw two conclusions: (1) All motion or rest must be merely relative; neither can be absolute. That is, matter can be thought of as moving or at rest only in relation to •matter and never in relation to •mere space without matter. It follows that absolute motion—·i.e. motion that doesn’t consist in one portion of matter changing its relation to another portion·—is simply impossible. (2) For this very reason, there can’t be, out of all the ever-wider concepts of motion or rest in relative space, one that is ·so wide as to be· valid for every appearance. ·To have such an all-purpose concept·, we have to make room in our minds for the thought of a space that isn’t nested within any larger space, i.e. an absolute space in which all relative motions are nested. In such a space everything empirical is movable,. . . .but none can be valid as absolute motion or rest. . . . So absolute space is necessary not as a concept of an actual object but as an idea that is to regulate all our thoughts about relative motion. If we want all the appearances of motion and rest to be held together by a determinate empirical concept, we must put them within the framework of the idea of absolute space...”

....in which is found the last resort, absolute space as a mere idea, not a conception, not an empirical reality. If all motion, therefore all space is relative, then absolute motion and space is impossible.

Simple as that, that something can be thought, exhibits Kant’s propensity for complementary dualisms writ large. More familiar to us as e.g., phenomena/noumena.

I was thinking about this, just before my internal shut-down kicked in.....did Leibniz actually call out monads as noumenal, or did Kant merely accuse him of it? I know the latter is true, but if Leibniz didn’t, then perhaps Kant was barking up the wrong side of the tree.

What say you, Good Sir?

The universe could have been different. — frank

The line 12” long could not have been a line 14” long.
Add 2” to a 12” line there is a 14” line, but there is no longer a 12” line.

Take this universe as it is, change something in it, it is no longer the same universe. It isn’t a universe that is different; it is a different universe that is.

That there could have been a different universe is true; that this universe could have been different is not true.

.....and thank you as well.

Never mind. I’m rather past the end of my day, so....more rambling than sensible.

Ok, fine!!! With/without equipment. For the benefit of those who wish logic and mathematics to be considered as tools.

Science cannot be done without tools, metaphysics cannot be done with tools.

I don't really know what Kant is saying. It seems like a bunch of balloons. — frank

Here’s a great big one: science needs something other than itself to prove; metaphysics contains its own proof. Science is never complete; metaphysics is self-contained, thus can be complete.

Me, I favor being both satisfied, and done, at the same time with respect to the same thing.

I’m sure you’re aware of Kant’s destruction of Leibnizian Monads. Seems he didn’t appreciate the idea of putting form before substance, and if that wasn’t bad enough, which is indeed very bad, to have matter be self-representative.

But you’re right. Leibniz did consider monads as noumena.

You mentioned wandering, so....

Hey!!! ‘Sup?

So....you cryin’ uncle? Tossin’ in the dialectical towel?

HA!!!! That’s why I changed it.