I agree thoughts and emotions are different, and I agree with your statement on thoughts. To complete, all that’s needed is an exposition for what emotion is, along the same lines as what thought is. If that can be done, the difference between them is given.

But the onus is on you, as the thread author, to set the stage with a statement similar to the one you gave on thoughts.

Thoughts can trigger emotions, but there can also be emotionless thoughts. — neomac

Good, but incomplete, in that “thought” is the subject in both parts of the proposition. In a discussion of differences, a congruent proposition is needed, in which the other part of the difference is the subject.

Within the debate between materialism and idealism it could be asked which is primary? — Jack Cummins

Sure, but within that dualism the necessary brain/mind distinction is given, from which some relative primacy follows.......so why the question in the thread title?

Under the assumption that doing philosophy is not the same as philosophizing, at the most fundamental level, as individuals, the consequence of the inescapability of biases on our philosophy, is that they become indistinguishable.

Philosophy proper is the a priori organization of cognitions, biases are cognitions, so.....

is the rational, the cognitive, derived from the non-rational, the non-cognitive? — Srap Tasmaner

Seems necessarily so. No brain, no conscious thought, right?

there is no magic thread to stitch the two together — Srap Tasmaner

Maybe there isn’t a need to stitch together that which is inseparable.....

That there are these two realms seems inarguable. — Srap Tasmaner

.....sorta just like that.

You could read the ‘language-game’ approach as suggesting that there are rather more than two realms, but they’re all just a matter of how we use language in different ways for diverse purposes in varying circumstances. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, well......we already knew all that from the manifold of both possible and impossible experiences, your “varying circumstances”, that the construction of the language a priori represents. Doesn’t matter; however many more than two realms are posited, all reduce ultimately to just the original two.

I don’t have a knock-down argument that the cognitive (rational, linguistic) is grounded in the non-cognitive (non-rational, non-linguistic). I’m not sure there can be one. — Srap Tasmaner

Hume acknowledged as intellectually empty and philosophically lazy (paraphrased) in arguing that we think merely because we have a brain, in regard to the principle of cause and effect. How a singular cause affords an infinite plurality baffles us, and is by that, quite unsatisfying while at the same time being rather undeniable. So, no, I’m not sure there can be one either, other than how can it be otherwise, which is pretty much what Hume thought 300 years ago.

“...It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate....”
(E.C.H.U. 1. 1. 3., 1748)

It’s easy to describe such a ‘mechanism’ but pointless, because there is no chance at all that you could describe an algorithm that could predict what he was going to play. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep. Hence the notion of spontaneity. Great as a mechanism, but just try demonstrating where our internal, pure, spontaneity comes from. Even choosing that conception prohibits anything to be said about it. The entirety of Kantian conceptual schemes depends on it, not because it is necessarily true, but only that it doesn’t contradict anything. And in a purely logical system, what more is needed?

Oh well. — Srap Tasmaner

(Sigh) Same as it ever was........

But what if reason evolved to provide fitness rather than truth? — frank

What sense of fitness?

But there are two other ways to ask that question: (i) what makes human knowledge possible? and, in a somewhat different vein, (ii) what makes human beings knowers? — Srap Tasmaner

Interesting.

(i) asks the same as the original, insofar as there is no good reason to ask about knowledge in other creatures when a human isn’t even certain of the conditions for his own.

(ii) is given immediately upon his knowledge of something. He who knows is a knower. Somewhat tautological in itself, but still leaves unanswered what makes knowledge possible, hence what makes knowers possible.
————

tired analogy of describing the progress of a game in terms of its rules — Srap Tasmaner

Tired indeed. What a waste of time.

there are things about playing soccer they do not know. But there are also things they do not know how to do in the other sense: they cannot do them; they lack certain skills — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, found as far back as at least Platonic “knowledge of” vs, “knowledge how”, and later in Russell’s “knowledge by acquaintance”, and a veritable myriad of similarities in between. I for one know nothing about soccer, but I could learn it well enough to play the game according to its rules. On the other hand, I simply do not have the musculature required to play soccer as a actual game, which implies competitive abilities.

And there are things about playing soccer you cannot understand if you lack those skills. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, I suppose, maybe. Like....how the HELL did he do that!!! But I think I would still maintain that I can understand how, e.g., a bicycle kick can be done without my personal ability to do one. This shows understanding antecedes experience, except for sheer accident or reflex.

The development of a skill new to you can change how you understand the game — Srap Tasmaner

That, or I’m just putting the understanding I already have to more profitable use. I think a sense of accomplishment most often is merely conformance to an expectation, which must have been understood as possible in the first place.

But I get it.
—————

If having some skill is a prerequisite for having some cognition, then by ignoring skill you would miss an entire class of cognition, and mischaracterize what’s left. — Srap Tasmaner

I would agree, if such were the case. Having some cognition because of a skill doesn’t tell you how you got the skill, if it didn’t come naturally. So we end up with, practicepracticepractice, at the end of which we cognize how wonderful we’ve become at some particular thing.

But what if some cognition is prerequisite for a skill? Musical prodigies, natural athletes excepted, the rest of us have to think before we act.

Good stuff. Maybe elaborate some more, here and there?

Thus the importance of honoring language games? — frank

I honor reason, without which there wouldn’t even be a language game.

Which just shows reason isn’t perfect.

Why would it be far fetched? — frank

Sorry. I didn’t mean to come off as pejorative. I was just paying more attention to the keyword “speculative”, then the subject “holographic universe”.

Even established precepts or methods can seem far-fetched. It’s just that the speculative carries the implication of being more-so.

holographic universe. (...) Apparently it's a serious thing, tho. — frank

Could be. Some have likened “The Allegory of the Cave” as a forerunner, and that was certainly a serious thing, at least philosophically, in that things are not always as they seem.

But I wonder.....how far-fetched does it have to get, just to argue established criteria?

The properties experienced of the object are subjectively imposed.
— Hanover

I pointed out that experienced properties of the object are not imposed by us (that is, are not subjectively imposed) — Janus

I wasn’t invited, but I’m taking a seat on the affirmative side of the bandwagon anyway. You know.......”Copernican Revolution” and all.

....knowledge...the fundamental way human beings relate to the world.... — Srap Tasmaner

How would you know if you had failed? — Srap Tasmaner

HA!! Exactly right. Toss this....ok, still know stuff. Toss this....ok, still good. Toss this...still here. Toss.....

...knowledge....one of the fundamental ways human beings relate to the world — Srap Tasmaner

Hmmmm. You’d end up tossing the tossable, and still know stuff. At last, you end up with THE fundamental way you started with.

.....knowledge.....not quite fundamental..... — Srap Tasmaner

Ahhh, after defeating the other two, what’s left? What if knowledge is merely an end in itself, having nothing whatsoever to do with the means? It becomes the case, then, that the means are the more fundamental, and if we start tossing them one at a time, we might find knowledge evaporates at the very first toss. And if that happens, we’ve arrived at the THE fundamental way of understanding the world, we’d find it isn’t knowledge itself, but that which makes knowledge possible.

Impasse. How do we know what it is that makes knowledge possible. Common rejoinder is.....education. Nobody wants to deny that they were taught everything they know. From day one they’ve been instructed in every-damn-thing, which leads to the abominable construct that culture/language is more powerful than reason.

Humans. Forever taking the easy way out.

When it comes to empirical knowledge, I would say the limits cannot be predetermined. — Janus

Oh absolutely. We can’t say what the limit of knowledge is, but we can still say what the limit of knowledgeable things is. This isn’t so much a limit on knowledge, but rather, a limit on experience.

But then, some say experience is knowledge, so there is that.....

I dunno. If that which we can know about is limited to phenomena, then parsimony suggests that serves as a limit on knowledge itself. On the other hand, the sheer quantity of possible phenomena far exceeds the time available for any one human to know of them.......

And new knowledge changes old knowledge.....

And we don’t even know what we don’t know.....

AAARRRGGGG!!!!

Apart from representational models another simple way of framing perception is saying that we see objects as they are revealed to us — Janus

This is correct, as far as framing perception. But perception is not representation, it is sensation, and that fully empirical. Some representations are of empirical perceptions, but representations themselves are rational.

there is for us the merely logical idea of what the object could be in itself. (...). Or what import could it have — Janus

It’s import, in accordance with the theory from which it arises, is to limit our empirical knowledge to only that which can be a phenomenon for us. Otherwise, nothing prevents us from claiming knowledge of everything there is, even without the possible experience of it.

In humans, knowledge is not of things but of representations of things. I think obviously.
— Mww

Is it so obvious, though? This is one way of thinking about the situation, to be sure, but is it the best way? — Janus

Best is irrelevant if it’s the only. I hear of other system methodologies, but I don’t understand them well enough to qualify their respective values. Enactivism, or some such? Dunno.

There shouldn’t be any problem with the fact that what the brain works with, is not the same as what perception works with, whatever that difference is called.

But it isn't necessarily true that there are physical objects.
— frank

Given a certain set of initial conditions it is. Different conditions, different theory, different theory, different predictions/conclusions/possibilities .....
— Mww

Yes, but I think that's another way of saying that physical objects are possible, but not necessary. — frank

Maybe, but I for one won’t be stepping off the curb in front of a sufficiently massive fast-mover to test a mere possibility.

But it isn't necessarily true that there are physical objects. — frank

Given a certain set of initial conditions it is. Different conditions, different theory, different predictions/conclusions/possibilities, right?

But there are physical objects that it is possible to know about, so there must be things as they are in themselves.
— Mww

This is a hinge proposition? — frank

As in Wittgenstein? I’m not sure, and he may not have been either. But under the assumption that a hinge proposition is a proposition immune from skeptical doubt, hence necessarily true or false, Kant would just call it an analytic tautology. I mean.....if there is a thing we know about, a thing as it is in itself is logically given, hence free from our skeptical doubt of it, at least ontologically.

to the extent we wish to depart Kant and speculate upon the noumenal, we'd be required to impose causation upon it because that's what synthetic a priori truths do - they force a particular view on the world. — Hanover

True enough, but causality is given, insofar as it resides in the categories as a concept, but speculation on the noumenal, in departing from Kant, requires a faculty of intuition not belonging to us as humans. So technically, we need to impose a faculty we don’t have, rather than a causality we do.

Actually, because noumena are conceived, they already are subsumed under causality anyway. Kant says the conception of noumena is merely understanding overstepping its proper domain by thinking an object as schema of a category to which a proper schema, as an intuition, cannot be synthesized.....because there isn’t one. Herein is the transcendental use of a category, when it is restricted to the empirical use, by the theory under which understanding operates. A spectacular and catastrophic no-no. Metaphysically speaking.

“....Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind. Hence, it is as necessary for the mind to make its conceptions sensuous (that is, to join to them the object in intuition), as to make its intuitions intelligible (that is, to bring them under conceptions). Neither of these faculties can exchange its proper function. Understanding cannot intuite, and the sensuous faculty cannot think. In no other way than from the united operation of both, can knowledge arise....”

Kant's notion of the 'thing in itself'; is it. for him, unknowable — Janus

In humans, knowledge is not of things but of representations of things. I think obviously. And furthermore, predicated solely on incident physiology. It does not follow, and it is vacuous to suppose, that from the singular nature of the human intellect, the sole and necessarily preemptive methodology by which things are known to us, that things could not be otherwise. They could not be otherwise within us, but they could be otherwise without us. We cannot empirically know they are not, therefore it is logically possible they are. Anything not known or knowable by us, in accordance with the knowledge system intrinsic to us, be it whatever it may, if it is at all, is as it is all by itself.

In Kant, then, the ding an sich is given as an ontological condition, and yes, it remains an impossible epistemological one. On the other hand, if the human knowledge system is in fact not representational, this particular speculative metaphysics is immediately falsified, and the ding an sich disappears.

Shirley you of all people understand that we must use the knowledge system we have, to tell us about the knowledge system we have. Hence, the intrinsic circularity in human reason. As soon as we recognize it, at least one attempt to circumvent the inevitable contradictions incurred because of it, is to restrict exactly what we are allowed to claim as knowledge. So, given a certain methodology for knowing things, that which is necessarily external to that system cannot be included in its purely internal functions, instead serving merely as occasions for its empirical use. There are no physical objects in the system, therefore it is not of physical objects themselves the system knows. But there are physical objects that it is possible to know about, so there must be things as they are in themselves.

Q.E.gawddamnedD!!!!!

Or not.......

I can't make any sense of the version of Kant presented here. — Srap Tasmaner

It’s modernized. Therefore it’s mistaken.

Hanover is the closest without mentioning Kant specifically.

The footprint and the flower are Hume, not Kant at all. See “constant conjunction”.

You fight a worthy battle.

I'm interested in hearing what people's views are on the notion of the enlightened individua — Tom Storm

Because the thread title capitalizes the e in Enlightenment, I infer from “what is it to be Enlightened?” to indicate adherence to the conditions given from the particular historical human development represented by that name. Thus.....

“....Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage**. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on--then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me. Those guardians who have kindly taken supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind (...) should consider the step to maturity, not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous. First, these guardians make their domestic cattle stupid and carefully prevent the docile creatures from taking a single step without the leading-strings to which they have fastened them. Then they show them the danger that would threaten them if they should try to walk by themselves. Now this danger is really not very great; after stumbling a few times they would, at last, learn to walk. However, examples of such failures intimidate and generally discourage all further attempts....”
(Kant, 1784, in Mary C. Smith, 2000;
** “immaturity” in Friedrich 1949, Humphrey 1983, Schmidt 1996)

With the freedoms today, it is hard to imagine a time when people in general not only seldom thought for themselves, they didn’t even realize they could. I find it quite ironic, that two empirical revolutions, in science with the telescope and in culture with a beheading, became launchpads for a revolution of a purely rational nature.

But....like most revolutions.....the predications for which are too soon forgot.

Who am “I”.

....which reduces to nothing more than a metaphysical object querying itself.

I can say that, express it objectively, because “I” thought it up.

Not much point in asking about that for which the answer is contained in the question.

as a way of grounding the natural sciences, you need to write “The world I find myself in”. — Srap Tasmaner

The world I find myself in is the world as it is, preemptive of my considerations of it.
— Mww

Well, this can’t be the first thing you say. — Srap Tasmaner

As a way of grounding I take to mean the basis of, or, what comes first. The start. The given. It may not need to be the first thing said; the world I find myself in is so primordial I don’t need to say it.

On the other hand, to complete the phrase to a subject/copula/predicate proposition: the world I find myself in grounds the natural sciences, reduces to world/grounds/science, so “world” is the first thing I say after all. Superfluous to be sure, but still......
————

I mean, where else would we be found
— Mww

So this is a reasonable starting point, and all Heidegger does is take exactly this and think it through, alright, so what is a world? what does it mean to be in one? — Srap Tasmaner

Ahhhh, well....that’s a different thinking through. What is a world and what does it mean to be in one presupposes the world I find myself in, and these are the very considerations I first mentioned, that I make upon the world as a consequence of being in it. So yes, this is a reasonable place to start doing the natural sciences, but iff the possibility for them is already established. Those “a priori conditions” mentioned in your B & T quote.
———-

if we are found in the world, then everything else we can know about must be found in the same world
— Mww

And then this is the next thing — although Heidegger keeps fiddling with the order in Being and Time (....) Are the things we find in the world “in” it the same way we are? How hard is it to see that the answer has to be “no”? — Srap Tasmaner

Pretty hard for lil’ ol’ me, I must say. I don’t know how the fiddling works, so maybe there is a way that things are not in the world the same way I am. I’m a thing in the world, that thing wandering around in the night sky is in the world. “In” in the same way must have bearing somehow, apparently.
———-

At the very least, there’s the simple point that the universe does not consist of a philosopher and the table he gazes at thinkingly; there’s the whole rest of the world around them and they’re each in it. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, but what explains how they all might not all be in it, all in the same way? At the risk of opening my mouth and sticking my foot in it....to say all things are not in the world all in the same way overturns the principle of parsimony. Which I suppose can be done, but I would think only with a parsimony deeper or more fundamental that the existent version.

Good stuff. Thanks for the highlights.

And that’s very much what Heidegger is up to: before you can do the sort of ontology he attributes to Kant, as a way of grounding the natural sciences, you need to write “The world I find myself in”. — Srap Tasmaner

This is exactly right. The world I find myself in is the world as it is, preemptive of my considerations of it. This is also why Kant doesn’t bother with ontology as a discipline, the simple reason being we don’t care that we find ourselves in a world.....I mean, where else would we be found.....when we really want to know what constitutes the world that we’re in. Besides, if we are found in the world, then everything else we can know about must be found in the same world. But even if we knew everything there was to know about things in the world, we still wouldn’t know the world as it is.
————

But what do we mean by ‘a priori’? What did Kant mean? — Srap Tasmaner

“.....But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion), an addition which we cannot distinguish from the original element given by sense, till long practice has made us attentive to, and skilful in separating it. It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and not to be answered at first sight, whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called a priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience. But the expression, "a priori," is not as yet definite enough adequately to indicate the whole meaning of the question above started. For, in speaking of knowledge which has its sources in experience, we are wont to say, that this or may be known a priori, because we do not derive this knowledge immediately from experience, but from a general rule, which, however, we have itself borrowed from experience. Thus, if a man undermined his house, we say, "he might know a priori that it would have fallen;" that is, he needed not to have waited for the experience that it did actually fall. But still, a priori, he could not know even this much. For, that bodies are heavy, and, consequently, that they fall when their supports are taken away, must have been known to him previously, by means of experience. By the term "knowledge a priori," therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience. Knowledge a priori is either pure or impure. Pure knowledge a priori is that with which no empirical element is mixed up. For example, the proposition, "Every change has a cause," is a proposition a priori, but impure, because change is a conception which can only be derived from experience....”

Nutshell.

Your view of feeling and cognition as separable entities
rests on your model of thinking in general in classically cognitivist representationalist terms, inspired by the workings of a computer. — Joshs

Yes, but pre-dating computers by a couple centuries. Such system may not hold as much sway as it did, but it is still around, and in its strictest sense, is impossible to refute.

We can’t say that world first exists and then we understand it. — Joshs

Hmmm. So can we say we first understand the world and then it exists? That seems patently absurd, so what can we say, respecting such if/then propositions?

Language does not exist external to its use by us in the world. — Joshs

Yep. If language doesn’t exist externally unless used by us, then it is constructed internally by us. In order to use a word, such that it exists in the world, it must first be invented. After that, it is merely recorded. Inventions are not accidents, they are purposive. Therefore words are purposive. What purpose can there be, for an internal invention, and, if internally invented there must be an internal inventor, so what is the internal inventor?

Words are not relational at all, — Joshs

Green relates to color. Grass relates to a plant. Green grass relates color to a plant.

In enactivist models, by contrast, there are no inner representations of an outer world..... — Joshs

That’s fine, as long as it covers all the bases the representational system covers, and more besides, otherwise it’s just another theory that might add to our knowledge, but isn’t sufficient falsification of its predecessor.

So you are arguing that we can extract the meaning of a word concept that is independent of all feelings that may accompany our experience of that word. — Joshs

Technically, I’m arguing from a point where words are irrelevant. To feel and to think is not to speak. To speak is to convey, or report, feeling and thinking. That said, I can dissect your comment this way:

1.).....I experience a word you say when I hear it: cyclotron;
.........Assuming no distinguishing mannerisms, no uncharacteristic inflection or intentional mispronunciation, I immediately assign no feeling to that word, and I immediately have no understanding of any feeling you may or may not have, not conjoined with the saying of the word;
.........I immediately intuit an object. I intuit a certain object if I already know what the word I heard represents, or I do not intuit a certain object, but merely a something of which I have no experience;
.........I have now extracted the meaning of the word iff I already know the object to which it relates, or, I have not extracted the meaning of the word if I don’t. All and either without the invocation of any feeling whatsoever.


2.) .....I experience a word you say when I hear it: HALLELOO-YAHHH!!!!!
..........Given a distinguishing mannerism, I immediately understand you have invoked a feeling antecedent to the saying of it, but I have no understanding of what that feeling is from the mere experience of the word;
..........I do not intuit an object for this word, insofar as there are no objects known to me that I represent to myself with that word;
..........I do not extract any meaning of the word, because it doesn’t relate to the intuition of an object, but I do understand it represents some feeling in general of yours not given in me by the word itself.

All rather moot, in that I seldom experience a single word, but if I do, that’s how it works in me.

3.)....I experience words you say when I hear it contained in a sentence: Cyclotrons are found in the root wad of aspen trees;
........I immediately intuit a plurality of objects all in relation to each other, either I know one, another, several, all or none;
........If I know all the objects, I immediately intuit a necessary contradiction, insofar as my knowledge of these objects never has conjoined them to each other; if I only know any single one of the objects I immediately intuit a possible contradiction. If I know none of the objects I intuit nothing but a manifold of objects with no cognizable relation to each other at all, even with a full experience of the sentence I heard you say;
.........I now may or may not have extracted a meaning for the words representing my intuition of a group of objects represented by the words I heard in the sentence, but only to the degree by which they conform to my knowledge of each of them AND my understanding of the possible relations between them.

If I ever invoke a feeling of any kind with respect to these examples, it is only and always a non-fallacious post hoc ergo proper hoc sequential possibility. There is no innate necessity for invoking feelings onto that which I may or may not understand or of which I may or may not have knowledge.

So.....the argument follows that because it is sometimes evident that people do assign feelings to words, even if under some specific technicality they can’t, then people usually assign feelings to words and are merely not aware they are doing it. Of course, this major premise only holds water if there is a specific technical authority that affirms it with stronger conclusions then the negation.
————-

If you are claiming that this pragmatic mattering and relevance is the province of feeling, and feeling can be separated from cognition, then you would seem to be disagreeing with Wittgenstein about the separability of mattering-use from the intrinsic meaning of word concepts — Joshs

It should be clear I do not claim the mattering and relevance of words is the province of feeling. It is the province of rationality, cognition, understanding, under the umbrella of reason.

Wittgenstein says that we only ever actually experience a word in its contextual use. — Joshs

I don’t think so. To “only ever actually experience a word” is to treat it as a mere object, by which we first perceive it, then subject the word to the cognitive process, resulting in the experience of it. Shown above are two examples of the experience of a word that doesn’t even have a contextual use. Better to say understanding of a word is in its contextual use, at least in juxtaposition to experience of it, insofar as experience of a word as mere object doesn’t necessarily tell us anything. Hence.....dictionaries.

99% of the time people understand each other simply because they use words the same way, which makes explicit they have assigned words common to them, to conceptions common to them, which presupposes understandings common to them. From then on, it is experience alone, the end game of reason itself, that tells one guy, when he hears another guy say, “I saw a boat”, that he probably, but not necessarily, means he perceived one and not that he might take a tool to it in order to cut it up. Experience tells the same guy when he hears another guy say, “I saw a log” that he either perceived a log, or, he is actually going to cut it up. In each of these cases, the experience of the word “saw” in its respective statement is exactly the same, which makes explicit use and/or context in conjunction with experience is insufficient for non-contradictory mutual understanding. It cannot be otherwise, for the context from which the word is spoken is not included in the word is it is received by the listener.

At the end of the day, is correct, in that few people care about this stuff. Language has become so prevalent in this smaller-world, technologically advanced human community, in its structure, meaning and use, that the source of it has become neglected.

Sure. I can imagine a person void of emotion but still able to reason, make rational judgements. I wouldn’t expect a hearty “Howdy, neighbor!” from him, though.

But being void of emotion has no bearing on having both emotion and reason, yet limiting each to a particular use.

Yes, he would be motivated by reason generally, but being void of emotion, he would have no use for pure practical reason. In effect, it could be said he was void of pure practical reason and that’s why he had no emotions. There was nothing to inform him of what his emotions should be. Or it could just as well be that he had no emotion so there was nothing on which practical reason could exert itself. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Further indication of the separability of reason, or more properly, rationality, and emotion, in that they are governed by different kinds of reason.

Hellava rabbit hole we got goin’ here. Ain’t it fun??? Interesting?

Suits me.

No matter how you slice it, this here is a minority game. — Manuel

What to you say about the adage that not everybody does philosophy, but everybody has one?

But there’s a serious question here: what does it mean for a philosophical point to depend on a matter of fact? One answer (...) is that you must be doing science not philosophy because philosophy is a priori. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree with the answer, with the caveat that even the a priori has no business conflicting with, or leading to conflicts with, Mother Nature Herself. It is the case that the scientific method, and most decent philosophical theories, are all grounded in observations of the world, which guides us in determining how She wishes to be known.

With respect to the question, simply put, philosophical points depend on matters of fact for their empirical proofs, but not in the least does philosophy depend on facts for its constructions. Such constructed points depend on logic grounded in rules, not facts, those coming into play in the proofs themselves, re: whether or not the constructions contradict observation.
————-

a priori. Some of us may not really want to say the last part out loud, but it’s there nonetheless. — Srap Tasmaner

I think it’s there, too, despite the attempts to prove there’s no such thing.

Philosophy has to begin not at the beginning but in the middle. — Srap Tasmaner

Absolutely. Philosophy seeks the unconditioned, the irreducible, the beginning, so it cannot start there.

We know that we will begin from something given to us, whatever that is — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, empirically, we are given objects in the world. Rationally, we are given the capacity to think....

Above all what’s given, as we begin doing philosophy, is that we will start somewhere and go on from there. — Srap Tasmaner

....just like that.

That’s my pitch for what I understand to be Heidegger’s pitch for phenomenological ontology. — Srap Tasmaner

Hmmm....is it correct to say, then, that Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology is a priori?

Good stuff, overall.

I also think that to think the something else is a kind of psychology misses the point entirely! — Srap Tasmaner

Philosopher: I’ll tell you how I think, do with it as you will.
Psychologist: I’ll tell you how you think, do with it as you should.

Stereotypical opinionated mischaracterization, perhaps, but exemplifies the point I think is missed.

To say that everything has being is a bit like saying everything is. OK. — Manuel

“...a miserable tautology...”; “....a lame appeal to logical argument....”; “.....recourse to pitiful sophisms....”.

Back in the day, intellectuals chastised each other for reaching too far, as exemplified by the quotes above, and the common folk didn’t even know about it. These days, scientists glorify themselves in reaching as far as they can, but this time, the common folk don’t care. Either way, it boils down to the common man, which is fitting in that there are a hellava lot more of us then them, so it just seems the greater theoretical speculations ought to center on us than anything else.

A cruel circumstance indeed, methinks, that the very thing which ought to be the center of investigation, is the very thing Nature has made virtually impossible for science to arrive at empirical proofs for them.

So we end up in a situation where science is stymied empirically, which leaves us asking stupid questions of each other, like.....is Mt. Mordor a thing that is? Does Popeye exist? Where does “red” come from? Answered by.....yep, you guessed it.....miserable tautology, lame appeals, and pitiful sophisms, aaannnnndddddd.....we’re right back where we started.

(Dismounts transcendental soapbox, exists stage right)

It still looks like Mww can grant whatever you want on the affective side, since goals and preferences get updated too, but he can also stick with the conceptual side and it alone being cognitive. — Srap Tasmaner

Bullseye!!!

Feelings about an object are possible without the affect on the senses of it; cognition of an object is possible without the affect on the senses of it. Experience of an object is possible without the affect of it on emotions, but is impossible without its affect on the senses.

Feelings and cognitions are irrefutably separable, not because of affects they have, but that upon which the affects are directed.

Every object I see either fulfills or fails to confirm my prior expectations in some measure. — Joshs

Every object I perceive, not just see. Prior expectation is a euphemism for intuition. Fulfills exceptions implies understanding, in which case intuition conforms to the object; fails to fulfill expectations implies either a misunderstanding, in which case the intuition does not conform to the object, or no understanding at all, in which case there wasn’t any intuition to which the object could conform.

This validation or invalidation is felt, and the feeling doesn’t follow the perception , it is simultaneous with it. — Joshs

This validation is understood, and it is not simultaneous. It takes time for information to get rom sensory apparatus to dedicated areas of the brain responsible or interpreting it. It seems simultaneous to the conscious system, merely because the transit time is not part of that human consciousness/cognitive system, just as neural connections are not.

Interacting with our world isnt simply a subject staring at objects. It is a constructive activity in which we anticipate forward into the world and objects reveal themselves
to us as responses to the way we reach out to them via our expectations. — Joshs

Yes, and from one perspective, bears the post-Enlightenment name, the “Copernicus Revolution”, given from an Enlightenment philosophy that never used the name. Although, not by extending our expectations, but enforcing our constructive activity as a system, onto those objects in the world we perceive empirically, or possibly perceive a priori.

This is as true of experiences of things we have never seen before as it is of familiar things. — Joshs

Absolutely. The system works the same with either the familiar for the unfamiliar.

But the affects are the mortar that builds the very things we take as affect-less. — Joshs

Agreed, but there is no irreducible reason why we should implicate emotion as that affect. If affect is the purely physical impression on physical sensory apparatus, there are no affect-less things, but there are things to which we pay little conscious attention. If the same system is in play for the familiar as the unfamiliar, wouldn’t the more pertinent question be....how is it that we are permitted to not pay attention to the familiar, then how it is that we are affected by them both? The value in that question, is that it eliminates the affect itself, because it is always given empirically (there are no affect-less things), in favor of a more descriptive theory on the method by which we pay attention.
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. Any word conveys a conceptual content, insofar as words are nothing but representations of concepts, to begin with.....
— Mww

Words don’t just represent content , they enact it. — Joshs

Ok fine. A word represents a conceptual content, and strings of words logically assembled also represents the relation of conceptual contents to each other. “Tree” is a word for a conceptual content relating to a manifold of objects of a certain kind; “A tree with broad leaves and funny lookin’ seeds” as a string of logically assembled representations, relates particular conceptions to each other in order, first, to conceive a particular object of that kind (an unfamiliar experience), or second, to judge a extant conception as non-contradictory (a familiar experience). The first manifests as, “Ahhh, so that’s an oak tree, huh?”. The second manifests as, “That tree is an oak, not an elm”.
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We dont simply choose what we think or say. What occurs to us to say is already shaped and conditioned by the context. — Joshs

Shaped and conditioned by experience empirically, or by logic a priori.
(To-may-toe/to-mah-toe; speculative metaphysics/ordinary language)

It is ‘affected’ by the always fresh way in which it is used. — Joshs

Which presupposes there is always a fresh way to use a word. But some words, the representation of some conceptions, have a single use, re: any number, or the representation of any mathematical operator. The categories. I grant there is a shaped context for “twelve”, but I reject the premise that we don’t simply choose “twelve”, when in fact we must, “twelve” being the only conception we could choose, that doesn’t lead to contradictions for any of its contexts.

We are always slightly surprised by what we thought we had simply ‘chosen’ to say. — Joshs

Simply chosen to say. You mean, simply chosen without a reason? Dunno how we can choose anything without a reason. If we have to have a reason for choosing, we don’t simply choose. Yeah, I suppose we would be surprised to find we didn’t simply choose after all.

I don’t object to your thesis in general. It is a well-thought modernization, predicated on scientific stuff subject to empirical verification.

Thus emotions and feelings serve to constrain and focus our attention, so that we only consider from a pre-structured set of options. — Joshs

If the human cognitive system is inherently logical, then it follows that the pre-structured set of options abide by logical predicates, our attention being necessarily constrained by them. While emotions do indeed serve a purpose, it isn’t in service to our conscious attention. Emotions serve our aesthetic judgements, having to do only with the condition of the thinking subject, whether a thing feels right/wrong or feels good/bad, whether or not it is right or good or not, but not that to which the subject attends, the thing that must be either right/wrong or good/bad.

Feelings/cognitions are nothing but another inescapable duality intrinsic to the human condition. Even if humans operate under the influence of both, that is not to say they are inseparable from each other.

there are cases where emotional impairment is reliably coupled with a catastrophic failure of practical reasoning. — Joshs

No doubt. See it in the ‘papers all the time, in one form or another. At the community level, guy beats the crap out of his wife because he thought she was being a naughty girl. At the individual level, seller raises the price of something, not because its value increased, but merely because the buyer looks rich.
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This mattering and relevance is the affective or ‘feeling’ aspect of thought. — Joshs

Yes, these have been called aesthetic judgements. But in such case, the judgement presupposes the thought, hence is not as much an aspect of it as a consequence. Otherwise, judgements with respect to conceptual relevance, are either called discursive.

Looking out the window, you see a car go by.....the car, in its passing alone, incites no emotion in you. Seen one car go by, seen ‘em all. No big deal. Only when some particular cognition about some particular car, or in some extraordinary happenstance involving that particular range of perceptions in general, does emotion arise. Can’t get all excited about a Ferrari Testorosa, without there first being one, right? Even the emotion of hoping to see one presupposes you’ve already cognized which object to hope for.

Every word you wrote above was chosen for a purpose , for its relevance in the context of the argument you are trying to advance. So each word is two things at once. It conveys a conceptual content , a ‘what’, and it conveys a relevance, a significance , the ‘how’ of the way it matters to you in the context of the larger argument. — Joshs

Two things at once, I think not. Any word conveys a conceptual content, insofar as words are nothing but representations of concepts, to begin with. It follows that my understanding of the context of the argument should determine the words I chose in response to it, such that the one maintains consistency with the other. So yes, I choose words for a purpose.....dialectical consistency given from understanding.....but the “how” of the way it matters, is already explicit in the choice. Without the consistencies, there are logical fallacies, which are exceptions to the rule and not the rule itself.

The argument herein, concerns itself with the separability of, not the integral compatibility between, feelings and thoughts.
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I’m familiar with Damasio, but he’s not dead, so I haven’t studied him. He is certainly highly credentialed, gotta credit him for that, but he’s also a psychologist, so....take points away for that. And.......“Neural Correlates in Gratitude”? Really? When was the last time you consulted your neurons? For anything?
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I think any major philosophical model implies a psychology. — Joshs

Late-modern models, perhaps. Some early-modern philosophical models disregard psychology as a discipline, and deny it altogether as a science**. It’s easy to look back and say a philosopher had psychological underpinnings even if he didn’t know it. But that’s like saying Newton might have developed Special Relativity if only he had access to faster transportation than the horse.

** “....There does not then exist any rational psychology as a doctrine furnishing any addition to our knowledge of ourselves. (...) From all this it is evident that rational psychology has its origin in a mere misunderstanding....”
(CPR B421, 422)

Anyway....couple cents for the collection plate.

thinking and feelings are shown to be inseparable aspects of the same process. — Joshs

Aspects of the same process, perhaps, dunno. Depends on what the process is. I doubt the process is reason, however. But nonetheless, they are separable, insofar as one cannot cognize a feeling, and one cannot feel pain or pleasure over a mere thought. A feeling is a condition of the self, a thought is a condition of the content of the self. Feelings may or may not have objects that define the condition of the self, thinking always has objects given to it, or constructed by it, that define the content of self.

And the kicker....feelings do not permit, allow, facilitate, or make account of, knowledge. Thinking alone is responsible for all our knowledge.
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Is it always a slightly different self that comes back to itself moment to moment? — Joshs

How does a self come back to itself? Where did it go, how did it separate, such that coming back is intelligible?

That I realize I have different content in consciousness now than before doesn’t mean I am not myself because of it. The self necessarily changes pursuant to experience, but all experiences belong to a single self. It is never a consideration which “I” thinks or feels this and which other “I” thinks or feels that. And by the same token, it is never a consideration that one “I” thinks this yet another “I” feels this.
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“ “...affect binds us to things, making them relevant and ‘lighting up' aspects of the world.... — Joshs

What affect is implied here? I grant an affect that binds us to things, but I suspect of a different nature.

The self is not autonomous for either of them. — Joshs

No, the self is not autonomous; it being susceptible to a plethora of inclinations. Still, “an autonomous causality contained by the self” does not make the self autonomous.
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I cannot be ahead of myself if I and my self are identical.
— Mww

They are not identical. The self is an action, a relation , a transition. — Joshs

That is only from a second-party speculation. The first-person subject acts without thinking himself an actor, relates without being the relation. Even if qualitatively or quantitatively transitioned to a modified self over time, the self as a whole retains its own identity.
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....getting rid of the word ‘moral’ when talking about the psychological or philosophical structures of motivation, willand desire is an improvement. I agree with Nietzsche and Heidegger that it is. Why do you think it’s necessary? — Joshs

The word “moral”, or some representation synonymous with it, is necessary in order to talk about the intrinsic duality of human nature. It cannot be an improvement, to negate that which represents an absolute necessity. To do so would require logical conclusions given by a theory in which humans are not intrinsically moral agents. And if that were the case, the fact that humans both think and feel would be refuted, or, be shown to be the same thing. The former being impossible, the latter being absurd, I should say.

intentional structure of motivated attending to as a letting oneself be affected, being-ahead-of-oneself — Joshs

Yes, I get that. “Intentional structure of motivated attending to” represents “to will”; “letting oneself be affected” presupposes an autonomous causality contained in that self that wills.

The desire for this conversation..... — Joshs

Conversation? Where or what are the conversants? Is letting oneself be affected a conversation?

This is the motive, the "for the sake of which" — Joshs

Yes, it’s been called a moral constitution.

The determining factor is not an urge or a drive, driving and urging me from behind, but something standing before me, a task I am involved in, something I am charged with. — Joshs

Yes, it’s been called a moral obligation.

this relation to something I am charged with—is possible only if I am "ahead" [vorweg] of myself.” — Joshs

Ehhhh....I cannot be ahead of myself if I and my self are identical. Nevertheless, any relation to something I am charged with, some moral obligation, is possible only if I am imbued with something that is not an obligation, otherwise there isn’t a relation. It would seem the relation, having already incorporated something I am charged with, needs to incorporate that by which I am charged, “for the sake of which” the relation itself is possible.

Your guy is alright; he’s just plowing up a field that already has a good crop on it. Progress, I suppose, but not necessarily an improvement.