What I have found missing from your account and from the papers you've linked is any coherent and convincing account of how to make a principled ontological distinction between an inexorably unfolding neural process and any other causal process. — Janus

Well said.

An unfolding neural process would be an experience of the brain, by one who does brain experiments, which relates to Einstein, 1934, “....All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it....”,

A human intellect, in its pursuits, does not experience its own empirical causality, which relates to Kant, 1781, “....That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. (...) But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience...”

While it is the case that brain functionality is a physically causal process, and its operation can be known empirically to a second-party, re: Einstein, such causal process, in the immediate first-party use of it, is not an experience, re: Kant.

Not sure there can ever be a convincing account, when the disparity between what the brain is doing (physics) is on one hand, and what the brain has done (metaphysics), is on the other.

when people aren't informed by what the empirical observations have to reveal on the subject. — Garrett Travers

You know how that would go, even if they were informed of such reveals: they would still want to know what the observations alone can’t tell them. Which is.....how exactly does that work? I see this stimulus, then I see this display corresponding to it. What happened in between?

the science that is present needs to be assessed by philosophers. — Garrett Travers

Wonder what the scientists think about that. Is the philosopher qualified to assess the reveals of empirical science, or merely the credibility of the logic presupposed by them?

Machine ghosts being one more in a long list of conceptualizations the brain foists on the unsuspecting and unprepared human?

Not to over-nitpick a casual truth, but Ryle, 1949, is responsible for machine ghosts, not poor ol’ Rene.

Yep, nice concundrum! — Janus

It is. The human brain is a fascinating contraption, even so.

Ethics perhaps? — Merkwurdichliebe

Maybe. I was going for pure rational thought, as that which everybody does, or the manifest appearance of a purely rational thinking subject, as that which everybody seems to be, and that having ethical decision-making subsumed under it, so.....

You guys just keep (....) saying I'm wrong — Garrett Travers

I’m not. Nothing wrong with the science, which is why I’m not arguing about it.

I mean....how can “we hypothesize....” be argued?

O, the tragedy of a brain that doesn't understand itself... — Janus

Ya know....and I know you do....it was said many moons ago, that human reason is very good at contradicting itself. So if brain machinations are the be-all-end-all, and human reason is the conscious manifestation of the be-all-end-all of brain machinations, then it is the case that the brain both adheres to the absolute necessity of natural law, and at the same time, ensures the inevitability of contradicting itself. Which would seem pretty hard to explain, methinks.

And I'll bet that brain will never produce an argument here. — Garrett Travers

You won’t get an argument from me, for that which I know nothing about, on the one hand, and on the other, that your scientific be-all-end-all domain is utterly irrelevant to the guy wondering what to do about his neighbor’s dog digging up the carrot patch.

I grant the science, and acknowledge the authority of brain machinations. But I am, at the end of the day, just a regular ol’ human being, and as such, philosophy has much more impact on me, than your science, of which I have no conscious need in my intellectual performance.

You actually might be better off, if you acknowledged the fact that everybody thinks, but not a single human ever, is aware of their phosphorus ion count, activation potentials, nor the span of his synaptic clefts for the color “blue”.

So if everybody does this, but nobody does that....where should the productive emphasis reside?

You betcha. And not only that, but anywhere but right here, the-brain-referred-to-as-Mww......isn’t.

What can I say. My brain made me do it.

Odd, innit? The brain does everything, neuroscience does the work to say what the brain is doing when it does everything, then, at the same time, one of the things the brain does, is be sufficient cause for some of us to say.....it makes not the least bit of difference to me, all else being equal, what the HELL my brain is doing. Sure, I got one, but I am never, as Everydayman, conscious of the one I got.

‘Nutha thing. Funny that the human in possession of the brain he investigates, came up with the parameters under which he proves how the brain he possesses works, but the brain never ever presents itself in accordance with the very parameters attributed to its functionality. So really, we didn’t find out how the brain works, but rather, the brain told us how it works.

And then makes it so we can ignore it.

Which is indeed an unequivocal triumph. Just....not of neuroscience.

Ehhhh....dunno what to tell ya, man. It’s your thread, so I guess you’re kinda stuck with what you get.

Didn't mean to leave you hanging. — Garrett Travers

You didn’t, so no worries.

I was commenting....editorializing.....on page 7 here, as a spectator.

That page was pretty unimpressive, considering the norm.

Page 7.

The good....
Far and away the easiest page to read since I’ve been onboard;

The bad.....
Easiest to read because there was nothing to think about;

The ugly....
Nothing to think about because instead of steelman argument, there is Abbott and Costello.

So if matter is representation, or a way of representing the world, then isn't it just another belief? — John McMannis

Matter as representation is perhaps more an understanding than a belief. Materialism, a way of representing the world based on the concept of matter, on the other hand, is a doctrine, and would be a relative judgement of truth, or, a belief, but in the doctrine alone, not the concept, which is given.

If matter is all that exists, then what about the person or thing that says/thinks it's all that exists? — John McMannis

This questions a given concept, by involving a hinge proposition sufficient to ground the possibility of a separate doctrine with its own relative judgements.

So, yes, these are both interpretations, or at least the beginnings of them, the means for them as ends representing the world. But at the same time, the possibility of mutual exclusion, the possibility of self-contradiction....all sorts of mean, ugly, nasty stuff.....comes about.

The onus is on the thinker, then, to pick one, run with it, and try not to confuse himself.

Thanks for the fair point, but nevertheless, synthetic a priori judgements are the very ground of transcendental philosophy. They are the prime refutation of Hume-ian empiricism.....that which should NOT be committed to the flames for its abstract reasoning.....and tacit support for Descartes’ rational, albeit problematic, subject/object duality.

For whatever that’s worth......

this particular problem has been done and dusted for some time, in accordance with the fact that all geometry is indeed analytical. — Garrett Travers

“....Just as little is any principle of pure geometry analytical.....”
(CPR, B16)

Proper steelmanning, and even Socratic dialectics, needs to show how geometry/mathematics in Kant was not proof of the possibility of synthetic a priori judgements. That all geometry is analytical is beside the point, insofar as not all synthetic a priori cognitions are mathematical.

You are correct with respect to the advent of a non-Euclidean axiomatic system. I misspoke by asking about spherical geometry, the determinant axioms of which Kant would not have known, when I should have been more calculating, by addressing spherical trigonometry, the distinguishing logical conditions of which he would. My fault....the subject was triangles, so I just figured, you know....spherical triangles. I find it absurd to think Kant didn’t comprehend a necessary difference between the two shapes.

It is reasonable to suppose he used planar figures and predications, without actually saying so, merely for simplicity, it being tacitly understood that any triangle, including those with spherical predicates known about since Greek mathematicians wrote of them, will still have but three sides and three interior angles, two sides together will be longer than the remaining side, and none of those conceptions alone will give a triangle as a constructed figure. Hence, synthetic apriority holds no matter the axiomatic set, and it becomes clear it makes no difference whatsoever that he didn't know non-Euclidean geometry.

It is worth remembering that Kantian transcendental philosophy has to do with objects in general, and not the specific empirical examples which only follow from them. In Kant, then, synthetic a priori is a condition in itself, respecting the connection of different conceptions to each other in judgements, for which an empirical example is nothing but a possible consequent.

So.....while it is true non-Euclidean geometry falsifies some Euclidean axioms, it is not true non-Euclidean geometry falsifies Kantian synthetic a priori judgements. Or, I must say, a more complete demonstration that it does, would be appreciated.

Do you really think Kant didn’t know about spherical geometry? And didn’t take care to qualify his postulates accordingly?

Isn't this what Kant is getting at? — John McMannis

Gotta be pretty careful about “what Kant is getting at”.

If matter is all that exists, what about the fact that we conceive of the world this way? — John McMannis

We conceive of the world.....what way? Conceive of the world in a material way?

Care to elaborate on what you’re asking about conceiving the world and what Kant was getting at?

how we can know if something is unknowable in perpetuity? — Tom Storm

I think, once again, that this can only be a logical claim, which would stand insofar as if something is impossible to know, it will be unknowable for all time. Stuff like....can we know of an effect that has no cause, can we know a conception that does not immediately include its own negation....weird stuff like that, predicated merely on the kind of intellect in play.

On the other hand, and maybe even weirder, is “Rumsfeld’s Ditty”, which implies that of which we don’t know we don’t know, is already unknowable in any time. Technically, though, this reflects on the Kantian category of possibility, which states that a thing must be possible in order to be known, so if there is a thing for which we don’t know the possibility, that is exactly the thing for which there can never be any knowledge.

But still, to think any object is to presuppose its possibility, insofar as it is impossible to think an impossible object. Or, which is the same thing, to think an impossible object is a contradiction. It follows that an unknowable object is an impossible object, but we cannot think an impossible object, so how in the HELL did we ever come up with asking if we can know of something the thought of which can never happen?

Hence, the critique of pure reason. Humans do this kinda stuff all the time, but there's no answers in the doing, or, the answers are in conflict with the questions, rather than satisfying them.

“....Now the transcendental (subjective) reality at least of the pure conceptions of reason rests upon the fact that we are led to such ideas by a necessary procedure of reason. There must therefore be syllogisms which contain no empirical premisses, and by means of which we conclude from something that we do know, to something of which we do not even possess a conception, to which we, nevertheless, by an unavoidable illusion, ascribe objective reality. Such arguments are, as regards their result, rather to be termed sophisms than syllogisms, although indeed, as regards their origin, they are very well entitled to the latter name, inasmuch as they are not fictions or accidental products of reason, but are necessitated by its very nature. They are sophisms, not of men, but of pure reason herself, from which the Wisest cannot free himself. After long labour he may be able to guard against the error, but he can never be thoroughly rid of the illusion which continually mocks and misleads him....”

It’s fun to think about human thinking, but it’s soooooo much more fun, to think about how hay-wire it can go.

have you heard this simple principle before? — Joe Mello

Not in those exact words, no, but as I said....close enough. Seems to me any intelligent design argument arises from similar iterations of your personally derived metaphysical principle, and your comments subsequent to your response to me lends support.

The dismissal of this principle under the auspices of what it sounds like is not a philosophical accomplishment. — Joe Mello

If your principe sounds like it has similar internal truth value to principles that sound just like it, but are on the record chronologically prior to it, yours can be dismissed as merely repetitious, being no more or less interesting than its predecessors. And that judgement, in the form of dismissal from repetition, while mere opinion, albeit with empirical support, is nonetheless a purely philosophical accomplishment.

You’ve got three pages of responses in a scant twenty hours, so you’ve been successful in drawing attention to yourself. But the principle, so vigorously propounded herein, cannot be said to enjoy any such success at all, having been established, at least in kind, close to 400 years ago, and that only so far as I know.

That you have been introduced is certainly true; that something else has been introduced, is not. No reflection on you, of course; you apparently weren’t aware.

Carry on, with best wishes of course.

remain unclear or incomplete.... - the nature of the noumenal world for one (which by definition is unknowable but is this an acceptable position?) — Tom Storm

It is unknowable, and that position is acceptable, iff considered by Kant’s standards. To say the way Kant talks about it is misleading or wrong is fine, but to show how it is those, requires a different set of standards.

It is still the case, though, that in Kant, there is no noumenal world, from a human perspective, so to even talk about in connection with him, is technically inappropriate.

Dunno, but it seems your metaphysical principle is similar to Rousseau, 1762, or maybe Paley, 1802.

Close enough, methinks.

the problem with idealism in general is that it is an incomplete model — Tom Storm

“....For pure speculative reason has this peculiarity, that, in choosing the various objects of thought, it is able to define the limits of its own faculties, and even to give a complete enumeration of the possible modes of proposing problems to itself, and thus to sketch out the entire system of metaphysics...”

Idealism in general...perhaps. This particular idealism, according to its author, is at least a logically complete model of a human cognitive system.

“....common logic presents me with a complete and systematic catalogue of all the simple operations of reason...”

That which arises from itself must be complete, and exchanging the completeness of that, for the language used to represent it, explains why the books that tells us about it, are hundreds of pages long.

“...Hence, too, metaphysics has this singular advantage—an advantage which falls to the lot of no other science which has to do with objects—that, if once it is conducted into the sure path of science, it can then take in the whole sphere of its cognitions, and can thus complete its work, and leave it for the use of posterity, as a capital which can never receive fresh accessions. For metaphysics has to deal only with principles and with the limitations of its own employment as determined by these principles. To this perfection it is, therefore, bound, as the fundamental science, to attain...”

It isn’t a question of being a complete model, but rather, whether it is accepted as such. So it is that either the model is complete but wrong insofar as it begins from the wrong path, or it is incomplete insofar as it disregards that which doesn’t belong to it, but should.

As are sensations disregarded, as having nothing whatsoever to do with metaphysics proper, and a logical model for it, other than their mere physical presence for its initiation.

Schopenhauer’s criticism is abysmally inept as well, with respect to Kant’s neglect of his cherished principle of sufficient reason, in that the metaphysical principles of pure reason have to do with principles of universality and absolute necessity, which, when logically given, are themselves immediately sufficient for that which follows from them.

do you think any knowledge of objects with infinite properties is possible at all..... — Janus

Personally, I don’t think objects with infinite properties are even possible. Given that an object is the sum of its parts describable by properties, then an object of infinite parts is immediately impossible because the sum of them is impossible. It follows that knowledge of impossible objects is itself impossible. But then....how do we know the objects we experience don’t have properties we can’t describe? And, if we don’t know how many of those there may be, we don’t know there aren’t an infinite series of them.

......or are we confined to examining the logical implications (the a priori) — Janus

That, if anything, I think. If the infinite is a logical premise, then it seems only logical conclusions can be possible from it.

Leave it to a human, to wish to know everything, and then come up with something, all by himself, he can’t know anything about. Sometimes I think we got away from throwing rocks at each other, by sheer accident.

I think you are misreading Kant. — Michael Sol

I’m more than happy to be corrected.

Direct references from relevant texts mandatory, of course.

The Axiom of Identity is utterly proven, a priori, by the conception of all Objects. — Michael Sol

Categorical error. The axiom of Identity is derived a priori. That which is analytic, such as the axiom of identity in the form A = A, is a self-evident truth, a tautology, which informs of nothing but itself. No conception can be connected to another without a mediating condition, and since A = A incorporates only a singular conception, no synthesis with conceptions of objects is at all possible.

Synthetic principles, on the other hand, in which one conception is connected with another, can only sustain the extant truth of axioms. It is quite absurd to render a proof for that which is already apodeitically certain.

With respect to consciousness, an entirely irreducible metaphysical conception, and certainly having no necessary empirical antecedents, is an axiom of Identity insofar as consciousness can never identify with anything but itself, but it is, as well, an a priori synthetic principle derived from pure reason alone, insofar as consciousness as a priori conception, has schema subsumed under it, or, which is the same thing, has conceptions contained in it.
—————

You cannot even conceive of Matter that is not governed by Causality — Michael Sol

True enough. Now all that’s required is to prove consciousness is conceived as matter, in order for causality to govern it. Here met with an aberration, in that causality itself is an entirely metaphysical conception. Ever gone to Home Depot to perused the shelves for some quantity of causality?

Disagree as you wish, but metaphysical entities cannot be empirically proven. Only other metaphysical entities can validate metaphysical entities, and not a single one of them can ever be proved in the same manner as falling trees can be proven to wreck your house.

I don't know any of the specifics..... — Michael Sol

Yet you insist the specifics are necessary. In any case, if you don’t know the specifics, you cannot say with any authority, or prove with any certainty, what the specifics actually do. You can draw logical inferences til Doomsday, and be either right or wrong with equal opportunity.

the physical conditions (...), are all implicit in the image — Michael Sol

Exactly. And, of course, implicit in, is very far from proof of. Same for consciousness, insofar as consciousness ne’er was any kind of being except a conceived being, as opposed to a material being.

But I grant that without evolution the human species would not have advanced enough to conceive such an abstract being as consciousness. At the same time, however, such grant must be given, because that’s apparently what happened. But that does not, in itself, immediately eliminate every other means by which consciousness could have been conceived.

In a way, evolution defeats itself, in that our intellectual advancement by means of it, has also enabled us to consider the possibility that our abstract consciousness was given to us by some external something-or-other. It’s just simple logic, man. If we don’t know the specifics that cause a thing, we are at liberty to allow something else as cause for that same thing. Been that way since mud huts and fig leafs.

In Kant, transcendental realism only means space and time, while still the forms of objects, resides in them as intrinsic properties. By transferring space and time to intuition as pure representations, they are removed as properties of, by making them merely the necessary conditions for, objects of perception. Sheer genius......space and time are both incontestably infinite, and no empirical knowledge is at all possible of objects with infinite properties, so investigating the possibility of empirical knowledge necessarily begins by removing that which prevents it.

Are space an time pure intuitions? Dunno...maybe not. But if they can be, and in conjunction with the rest of the speculative system predicated on logic alone, at least it works out well enough for its intended purpose.
———-

when we think about the transcendental from our point of view it is ideal ( because it is whatever is beyond what can be accessed via the senses, and thus can only be (more or less) thought about, imagined. — Janus

Correct. In Kant, transcendental merely indicates that which is given from a priori pure reason alone, having many conceptions subsumed under it.

it still is a material phenomenon of the Subject's brain and other physiological systems. — Michael Sol

How many neurotransmitters does it take for a ‘57 DeSoto? Which particular pathway are they on? What’s the maximum permissible distance of the channel? How would one ever find out? Why would he care, if the image is given without ever knowing any of those material conditions?

Maybe it’s like the sum over histories...we don’t know how many or which way, and any attempt to find out disrupts exactly what we’re trying to discover, so it is logical that it is ever neurotransmitter going in every possible way. Which, of course, teaches us not a damn thing about how neurotransmitters give us mental objects.

Give it up: what you see is what you get.... — Michael Sol

Excellent advice.

(Sigh)

surely it must be said that things in themselves are necessary for the appearance of phenomena, no? — Janus

Actually, the ding an sich is necessary for perception, the passive impression on the sensory apparatus. Post-impression, it is the active faculties of representation that intuits the sensation, which gives phenomenon. You know the drill.....“arranges the matter of the object according to rules”.

Epistemological juxtaposition: the thing we represent to ourselves, the ding an sich is the thing we don’t. Not to be thought of from an ontological perspective at all; the ding an sich certainly exists....as whatever it is. The whatever it is we know as something.....is the thing.
————

The other point is that to "eliminate" the thing in itself is to posit an alternate necessary condition for the appearance of phenomena. — Janus

Except there is no need to posit an alternative, when the one posited is both necessary and sufficient in its own right. Technically whatever the necessary condition would be, would have to be applicable only to things as they are intuited by us, under the assumption the human cognitive system is in fact representational. So, if anything, the thing in itself would be posited as that to which the intuitions could not apply. Eliminated, if you will, from being conditioned by space and time.

As I’ve understood the theory anyway. That, and a buck/50......

Be that as it may, it is nothing but a commentary on the intellect that does philosophy, rather than the philosophy being done by it. In any case, either the intellect thinks that which is a condition for its antecedents, in which case it is already unconditioned and serves as the means, or, thinks that which is conditioned by its antecedents, in which case it becomes the unconditioned and serves as the ends. No big deal; just logic writ large.
———-



Yeah....I guess I’m too literal. When presented with a proposition worth thinking about (Berkeley and Fichte seemed to have successfully eliminated Kant's Thing-in-Itself as a material cause), I limit myself to what the propositions says, not some possible hidden conjecture it may or may not imply. Regarding the parenthetical herein, Kant’s thing in itself never was a material cause, which tends to make the claim for its successful elimination as exactly that.....incoherent.

The Berkeley quote was meant to show the basis of at least part of his epistemology to have no concern for the thing in itself in the first place, whether or not it ever was supposed to possess material causality.

Fichte, on the other hand, writing contemporaneously with Kant, at first accepted Kant’s thing in itself as Kant intended, but then suffered a serious change of mind, mostly in his revamped theory of science, 1795-6, thereby rejecting it. Whether or not he ever conceived the thing in itself as material causality, thereby setting the ground for denying it as such, I have no idea.

That’s all I’m saying.

Yes, I think that's exactly right. — Janus

It is confused, therefore hardly exactly right. In Berkeley, Kant’s thing-in-itself wasn’t eliminated; it was never considered in the first place, hence whether a material cause, is moot.

From Berkeley, speaking as Philonous contra Hylas......

“....I am of a vulgar cast, simple enough to believe my senses, and leave things as I find them. To be plain, it is my opinion that the real things are those very things I see and feel. These I know, and finding they answer all the necessities and purposes of life, have no reason to be solicitous of any other unknown beings...”

....it is clear Berkeley’s and Kant’s foundational epistemology is well-aligned, in that the source of empirical knowledge is entirely predicated on real things met with the senses. Furthermore, Berkeley’s “unknown beings” are very far from Kant’s unknowable things.

It is only upon the consideration of a representational cognitive system, which Berkeley as Philonous of “vulgar cast” doesn’t invoke, does the thing-in-itself obtain any meaning, and then, only in such case, can the thing-in-itself be eliminated as a material cause, that is, of sensation.

Just sayin’.....can’t eliminate that which was never the case.

Or did I miss something?

But the concept of noumena is not a fiction. — Astrophel

No, it isn’t.

But they can always be charged with going beyond possible experience, and that's not so easy to refute. — Manuel

I suppose not. Theory and all.

it's not clear to me that phenomenology is metaphysics of the transcendental kind. — Manuel

Yeah, I was being somewhat melodramatic. I trust your sense of clarity in this regard, insofar as my prejudices are too embedded.

Still, it shouldn’t be denied that Kantian transcendental idealism establishes sufficient ground for the validity of subsequent speculative philosophy, and if phenomenology is speculative philosophy, then.....you know.....walks like a duck, squawks like a duck.......
————

But if you say "things in themselves" are meaningless, or don't exist or are empty signifier, then you're borrowing a name which has little to do with the actual thought proposed. — Manuel

Absolutely. That and that stupid farging noumena. Christ-on-a-crutch, how people can convolute that damn thing....like Savery’s ca.1620 dodo bird painting representing something the guy never once laid eyes on.

So what else is new?

Decent article here:
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/husserls-legacy-phenomenology-metaphysics-and-transcendental-philosophy/#:~:text=Husserl%27s%20transcendental%20idealism%2C%20according%20to%20Zahavi%2C%20then%20accounts,objects%20within%20the%20world%2C%20can%20appear%20to%20us.

Parts of Husserl and Heidegger are good..... — Manuel

Sure, those guys and the rest are good, each in is own way, if only for examples of philosophical progress.

You mentioned the Prolegomena, in which the introductions states.....

“....Making plans is often the occupation of an opulent and boastful mind, which thus obtains the reputation of a creative genius, by demanding what it cannot itself supply; by censuring, what it cannot improve; and by proposing, what it knows not where to find....”

....and if making plans is overburdening an extant speculative metaphysics, than phenomenology perfectly exemplifies unconvincing and unpersuasive philosophical progress.

And to hide it behind Transcendental Idealism??? Robbery, I say. Sheer, abominable ROBBERY!!!
(Laughing maniacally)

there's something to that in some phenomenology. — Manuel

How so?

Whether Husserl goes "beyond" Kant, is a matter of taste. — Manuel

Check out the new Lexus. Part of the warning system is....push this button, bells and whistles indicate oncoming complications to opening your door. So rather than tell yourself to just look in something so plain and simple as a mirror, you now have to tell yourself to push something so plain and simple as a button, that overcomplicates the human-kind of looking in mirrors, yet tells you exactly what you would have seen had you simply looked in the mirror.

Taste resides in which simple thing one wishes to indulge. Indulgence itself, then, must be the residence of complication. If Husserl went beyond Kant, who’s to say he didn’t accomplish anything for us as human rational intellects, that didn’t merely overcomplicate the simple.