Sorry.....what???

Interesting video, so thanks for that.

I feel what Kant wanted was to draw limitation on our capacity of knowing. — Corvus

We don’t really know the limits on our capacity of knowing, for to grant that we even have a limit, we may then question the irrefutably certain, and if we do that, we lose the warrant for any knowledge at all. While we know empirical knowledge is always contingent, we also possess knowledge that is universal, re: mathematics, and necessarily true, re: pure formal logic. From that, the limitations become referenced more to contradictions, and less to the innate capacity for knowing.

Having a limitation on our capacity for knowing is given from the kind of system by which we know anything. But that kind of limitation is not addressed by Kantian epistemological metaphysics. He is concerned with the limits on reason itself, and from that, limits on permissible knowledge claims.
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But to go deeper asking what is behind in the external world, we hit the walls of TII. — Corvus

In a way, I suppose. That which is external to this world is unknowable, as is the TII. But the TII is ontologically real in this world, whereas that cannot be said for that which is external to this world. Hell....there might not even be an “external to this world” to contain things, which makes the TII immediately disappear.

The TII is not external to this world, they are each and all right here in it. The only difference between the thing and the thing in itself, is us.

I was under impression..... — Corvus

I would agree with your impression, in that WE....humanity in general....have no conscious need of TII. It is only metaphysics, and that only under certain theoretical conditions, that finds it needful, and from that need, finds it necessary.

When I see the monitor in front of me, it is a monitor itself. — Corvus

That’s experience talking, reason...conscious thought..... taking the backseat. Your eyes do not have the capacity to inform of a thing, but only that there is a thing to be informed about. Eyes don’t think, plain and simple. It follows that reason quietly informs that the thing you are seeing now doesn’t conflict with what you know that thing to be. In effect, Nature doesn’t waste time repeating itself. This explains why we don’t have to learn what a thing is at each and every instance of its perception. Neurobiology aside, which is something of which WE REALLY don’t have any conscious need.

All you’re logically entitled to say, in this particular case, is....the thing in front of you is a monitor. Anything else is superfluous, or wrong. Wrong here meaning claims for which the justifications are suspect.

Science: a system of study the ends of which are determinable;
Philosophy: the organon by which systems of study are determinable.

when you say "logical", it implies a system dealing with / related to truth and falsity. — Corvus

Not so much dealing with, or related to, but determination of.

It seems hard to imagine, Thing-in-Itself can have anything to do with truth or falsity at all. — Corvus

It doesn’t, truth being nothing but a human epistemological cognition a priori, whereas the thing as it is in itself, is merely a necessary ontological condition of that thing, a posteriori.

If something is unknowable, how could it fall out from logical system — Corvus

That which is unknowable falls out of the system by which things are known, merely because it doesn’t meet the criteria mandated by the system.

Not that difficult, really: for any representation of a thing met with in experience, there is that very same thing-in-itself that isn’t. If not, then representation itself is sufficient empirical causality for things, which is catastrophically absurd.

It's C.I. Lewis I have in mind.... — Manuel

Oh. The qualia guy. Might be interesting.

which version of "transcendental philosophy" we prefer version 1.1 or version 1.12. — Manuel

HA!!! Yeah....pretty hard to think of a trash can as a thing-in-itself, n’est ce pas? I mean, we built the damn thing from the ground up, so why would we say we can’t get to it as it is, re: your “I don't think we reach the actual objects.”? ‘Course, that’s not what is meant by invoking the idea.

Let's say, we order the given. — Manuel

Yes, I think that fits. The Book says we arrange the matter of the given, but, close enough.

Good post. I’d like to read you when you’re a lot better, rather than a bit. I’m sure I’ll learn something.

What's relevant is the sensory impressions we transform, more so than the object itself. I don't think we reach the actual objects. — Manuel

Philosophically relevant, but try telling Mr. or Mrs. Suburbia that thing just put on the curb isn’t actually a trash can. Even his media-crazed Gen Z offspring isn’t likely to put out the lawnmower when coerced into the minor chore of putting the trash can on the curb. ‘Course, he’d probably put it out too late for pickup, but still......
(Awwww, c’mon, Dad. You should be glad I was late, cuz, look!! We still own a lawnmower!!)
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we simplify sense data into something intelligible, in effect taking away "noise" from our interpretation of things. — Manuel

Could be, sure. On the other hand, perhaps we start out as simple as possible with our sense data, and add to the simple. That way, “noise” isn’t even there such that it needs to be filtered out. Perhaps we cognize bottom-up rather than top-down. Doesn’t seem very efficient of Mother Nature, to strap us with a system that assumes everything then removes the useless, rather than starting from a minimum then adding only as much as necessary. We do, after all, wish to know what a thing is moreso than what it isn’t.

It sounds like you’re saying we reduce sensations, but I don’t think we actually do that. Whatever the sensation is, is what we use in determining an object, so it would seem we need the entire sensation, and I’m not even sure how our physiology, that upon which impressions are made, would simplify sensation anyway. Our eyes don’t tell us we didn’t see green when perceiving the blue sky.

Respect? Ok, fine, sure. Why not. Mercy? Not a chance!!! (Grin)

Whatever is given to creatures like us (...), must be of a nature that it can partly be apprehended by us in perception. — Manuel

Not sure what you mean by apprehended here. That something can even be perceived requires that thing to be of such a nature we can perceive it, sure, but that’s bordering on the tautological, isn’t it? But that something is of such a nature to facilitate its perception says absolutely nothing whatsoever with respect to understanding what that thing is.

We assume that "downstream" something "stands in" for what we perceive, but that's a logical postulate, not an empirically verifiable claim. — Manuel

It is not an assumption: there are no empirical objects of perception in my head. How that downstream something relates to that which it stands in for, is a logical postulate.

I'm not as fluent as I would like to be. — Manuel

Makes two of us.

I kind of can understand why Kant had to postulate Thing-in-Itself. — Corvus

I wouldn’t agree he had to postulate it; it falls out necessarily from a logical/representational cognitive system, under the assumption, of course, that the human system is that.

On the other hand, I grant you might be on to something, if Kant had premised his critical theorizing on things, in which case postulating a thing-in-itself might be merely comparative to the thing. But he didn’t begin with things; he started from Hume’s claim of “lack of philosophical rigor” for, and therefore the rejection of, a priori notions in general, and those with respect to causality in particular.

I'd say that there is the given.... — Manuel

Yep, seems right. That would fill the niche of that which doesn’t depend on us.

The given is already shaped by us.... — Manuel

I’m going to assume you mean the given is shaped by us, and not that the given is already shaped by us antecedent to its reception in us, as the transcendental realist would maintain.

Thing is, even if the given is already shaped by us, say, by imagination for some other internal use downstream, that in itself doesn’t say what the other use is, nor that such shaping is sufficient for specific so-and-so’s. Even while the grounds for them lay in imagination, the specifics cannot be so lawless. But you knew that.

treating reality as a conscious being. — Corvus

Yeah......sorta like that thread asking, “how does a fact establish itself as knowledge”.

(Sigh)

I'd say our considerations do (obviously) depend on us, but that which gives rise to the considerations does not.
— Janus

Put in that way, it is true. The issue is articulating what is that "which gives rise to these considerations". Sense data? I don't know. — Manuel

Whatever gives rise to our considerations, insofar as they belong to us, and given the inconsistency among us, must be as much ours as the considerations.

I don’t know either, but I would vote for imagination over sense data, for sensations provide merely that which is to be considered, and even that not necessarily, but say nothing at all about the methodology by which considerations themselves come about.

I don't find anything to disagree with in that.... — Janus

Nor I, this:

I would say experience is not a thing, although it involves things. To describe an experience you describe the things involved in that experience. — Janus

‘Til next time. Your turn to buy.

Some likes and dislikes may change overnight...(...) I wouldn't call such fickle likes and dislikes "aesthetic judgements"). — Janus

That you are fickle with respect to your feelings regarding cauliflower....
— Mww

......You seem to be claiming that liking or disliking the flavor.... — Janus

As is plain to see, I made no mention of, nor did I mean to implicate, the mere sensation of the taste of a thing, with an aesthetic feeling of like (pleasure) or dislike (displeasure) of (in) it. I chose cauliflower because it is more apt to resonate with the course of the dialectic. My fault, I suppose, insofar as such mundane examples of cauliflower in your case, and hairstyles in Josh’s case, didn’t get my point across. I was initially going with beheadings, or some such that invokes a very authoritative aesthetic judgement, yet without the burden of experience confusing the view.

The mode of intuition with respect to the flavor of an object, is every bit the sensation as vision, but whereas vision has the chance of synthesis with a veritable plethora of conceptions, that is, the formulation of a rational discursive judgement from which a cognition follows, such that the subject can then report exactly what he has seen, the sensuous phenomenon of empirical taste, or flavor, has no proper manifold of conceptions, no more than the physiology of that sensuous mode permits, hence no definitive reportable cognition, from which occurs that the subject reports no more than a general subjective condition, re: tastes good, I like it/tastes bad, I don’t like it, or some mediation between those extremes, but without a categorically intelligible understanding for it.
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The taste may simply be unpleasant and you might simply avoid it without any conscious thought about it at all — Janus

Exactly. Avoidance, or partaking, without any conscious thought at all, because of the above, re: you simply may not be able to report on exactly why you avoid the unpleasant dislikes and partake of the pleasant likes. Hence, the burden of experience with respect to the phenomenon of taste, as opposed to the purely subjective aesthetics of it. Now, the common rejoinder is, the like or dislike of a thing presupposes the thing, which is true, but presupposing the thing does not carry the implication of forming a cognition as to what the thing is. Re: “here, taste this/what is it/never mind, just taste it/JEEESSUSSS, that’s disgusting!!!!!!

In my view an aesthetic judgement always carries a discursive dimension, and I don't see a discursive dimension being involved in simply liking or disliking foods. — Janus

Which supports your assertion that “fickle likes and dislikes” are not aesthetic judgements. As the example immediately above shows, on the other hand, aesthetic judgements as to pleasure/displeasure may arise without any discursive judgement as to its object. That most times they do, but that sometimes they don’t, removes necessity as a condition.

That I dislike falling off a bike because it is accompanied by the distinct possibility of pain, but that I dislike pain doesn’t require that I fall off a bike. I find pain a dislike to avoid for nothing other than I am discomforted by it. Ironically enough, there are those that feel just the opposite, in finding pleasure in circumstances for which pain should be the normative prescription. Go figure, huh?

Taken to a sufficient metaphysical reduction, we find the old adage, “there’s no accounting for taste”, to be quite true. It is the case that human aesthetics is directly correlated with subjectivity, but damned if we have the slightest explanation for it.

Same as it ever was......

Then I am embarrassed for not making it clear I wasn’t talking about flavor.

What larger cultural norms shape your response to someone else’s hair style? — Joshs

Trust me....not a single one. The sole relevant criterion, in this case, is....that hair style’s affect on my inner sense. Technically, my subjective condition. Conventionally, how it makes me feel.

And the same principle applies with respect to the news, and everything else. You may be correct in general, and perhaps even with respect to my response. But it is not necessary for me to respond at all, thereby eliminating any shape it may have, and as I said, I’m only interested in the general as far as my particularity within it.

Of course they do. Aesthetic judgements switch....
— Mww

Some likes and dislikes may change overnight (...) I wouldn't call such fickle likes and dislikes "aesthetic judgements"). — Janus

They aren’t, likes and dislikes alike .......see what I did right there??......are the objects of judgements. They are that to which the judgement pertains. That an attitude regarding some like or dislike, such that altering from affirmation to negation with some relative ease, says nothing about the format under which the end result manifests. That you at one time like cauliflower, then at some later time dislike it, may indeed be a fickle assessment of cauliflower, but the judgement by which the change was even possible, cannot be said to suffer that same quality.

That you like cauliflower now, but dislike it later, are each nonetheless aesthetic judgements. That you are fickle with respect to your feelings regarding cauliflower over time, does not carry over to the fickle-ness of the judgements regarding the stuff, insofar as each judgement arises simultaneously with, and necessarily representative of, the feeing.

A clue to the difference between aesthetic and discursive judgements.

And what are the background discursive , valuative conventions ( knowledge relative to the times, as you put it) that makes such things as ‘news cycles’ and ‘technological gadgets’ comprehensible in the first place? — Joshs

This is a confusion of what I said, but can be clarified somewhat, in that it is entirely possible that aesthetic judgements are not comprehensible at all, between separate subjects each in possession of his own. Case in point.....some guy wears his hair in some weird-assed configuration, and when I see it, I say to myself....wtf’s that guy thinking!!! He and I each apprehend his hair style as a personification of his character; he judges it cool; I judge it stupid. Aesthetic judgements, each.

Confusing, in that understanding is the “background discursive valuation conventions” which grounds the knowledge of its time, but that has nothing to do with the way one feels about news cycles and the newest gadgets. There is a vast disconnect between the comprehension of what a news cycle is, and the personal impression it makes on a subject’s condition.
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You are aware that an entire movement within the arts argues that what art is in the first place is cultural critique. — Joshs

No, I’m not, but that’s ok, cuz I don’t care about entire movements or cultural critiques. I grant their reality, but assign them to social anthropology, whereas my sole personal interest is epistemological metaphysics.

whatever an artist for their own ostensive reasons decides to create of aesthetic value addresses and in some sense differentiates itself from a set of culture conventions., whether that is what they have in mind or not. — Joshs

For which there is no reasonable justification, which reduces that entire proposition to a mere personal aesthetic judgement, in this case yours because it’s your assertion. Although he may, there is no reason to suppose an artist always, creates in order to address, or distinguish from, cultural conventions, re: Chihuly glass. Now, if the artist declares he intended to differentiate from cultural conventions, the empirical confirmation resides, but then the claim he made not have had that in mind, becomes false.
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Every aesthetic or other kind of judgement that we make, no matter how trivial, gets its sense form a larger set of shared social values, and at the same time reinterprets those values. — Joshs

Some do, insofar as some material which reason uses in the formation of them, is obtained in a social environment. To say EVERY judgement so arises, makes explicit no judgement is possible WITHOUT a larger set of social values, which is quite absurd, for then it is necessarily the case I cannot make the determination of left-turn/right-turn on a split trail, in the backwoods of the Allagash wilderness, when in fact, I have perfect authority to make an purely aesthetic judgement (left turn looks pretty nice, think I’ll wander thataway for awhile), or a discursive judgement (I know the tent’s set up to the right and my knees are killin’ me).
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Of course , I didn’t have in mind trivial aesthetic judgements.... — Joshs

Good, because there aren’t any, in philosophy. They abound, in detriment to the discipline, in social anthropology and empirical psychology, the various and sundry pitiful examinations of human weaknesses, as opposed to the internal understanding of its powers.

is by no means advocating pan-psychism. — Janus

Wouldn’t matter either way; it’s beside the point.

so we are left with what would be the more plausible or coherent view in light of our experience and understanding. — Janus

And that’s the point. In light of our experience and understanding. But I understand what you’re saying.

he wants to collapse Kant's distinction between sensibility and understanding, claiming that our intuitions (in the Kantian sense of the term) are conceptually shaped through and through. — Janus

Do you think he was successful?

Yep. Different kinds of judgement. Or, judgements predicated on different kinds of conditions.
— Mww

The conditions can’t be all that different. Otherwise, scientific and artistic movements ( Renaissance , Enlightenment, Modern and postmodern) wouldn’t be interwoven in the interdependent way that they have been throughout history. — Joshs

They’re not all that different; they’re only different in two ways.

If one really were ‘agile and capable of pivot on a dime’, and the other ‘entrenched and not easily subject to change’ they would create entirely independent cycles of change , which they dont. — Joshs

Of course they do. Aesthetic judgements switch at the drop of a news cycle, or the newest gadget, or supposed slight from a passer-by; discursive judgements are bound by the knowledge relative to the times. Two different kinds of cycles of independent change.

One agile and capable of pivot on a dime, the other entrenched and not easily subject to change. — tim wood

Yep. Different kinds of judgement. Or, judgements predicated on different kinds of conditions.

Fair assessment, yes.

was just wondering about the something → (intellect) → tree thing. — jorndoe

Oh, that. Nothing more than speculative metaphysics. One man’s garden is another man’s wasteland.

all other things being equal, we have no more warrant to suppose that they don't operate the same way than that they do. — Janus

Yeah, that universal consciousness, mindful matter nonsense has been around as long as man has succeeded in persuading himself toward contradictions. Methinks self-consistent speculation doth far surpass under-powered conviction. But at the end of the day, we are left with the reality that although reason is necessary for our knowledge, it is at the same time the source of inquiry for which there is no possibility of knowledge.

Taste, indeed, at least for the initial premises in a dialectical argument. Accepting a conclusion predicated on mere taste, is just lazy, wouldn’t you agree?

we could reasonably infer that the cosmos is, always already, prior to human experience, logically structured, or "conceptually shaped" — Janus

That’s the very trap I referred to. If it is the case that the human system operates on logical structure and conceptual shaping, it then becomes the proverbial “transcendental illusion” to suppose systems not anything like ours, operate the same way. Just because some method is an absolute necessity for us doesn’t warrant that method’s infliction anywhere else.

But you’re right in a way. We can infer anything we like, as long as we have sufficient reason. Problem is, we could never have sufficient reason, with respect to the cosmos in general. Hell.....we don’t know hardly anything about it, so what warrant do we have for supposing its antecedents?

The whole dialectic I’m involved in concerns perception, so I’m not sure what you’re asking. No one ever senses “me”, and nothing sensed is ever “made”, so......help a brutha out here?

It might have been a configuration of microphysical particles or energy fields, but then even that is part of our experience. — Janus

Yes, overall, but not initially. By the time we get to the experience of molecular structure, trees, as such, are already presupposed. Experience of constituency follows from experience of the object to which the constituency belongs.

But it doesn't follow that it is nothing sans our experience. — Janus

An object of perception can never be nothing, so....

So its manifestation as a tree depends on both its percipients and on its own structure, whatever that might be. — Janus

Yes.

But how could we have logic without empirical experience? — Janus

We could, without experience, iff the human cognitive system is itself logical. We think logically for no other reason than that’s the mandate of the system with which we are equipped. Which explains why we can never use logic to explain logic, insofar as a necessary condition of a thing cannot at the same time be an explanatory device for that thing. Maybe why we don’t know how the brain presents subjectivity.

Kant acknowledged that the synthetic a priori requires the schooling of prior experience — Janus

Yes, for their proofs, their empirical validity. Not for their construction, which are merely logically non-contradictory. Logic alone cannot teach us facts of Nature.

Are you saying that it is knowledge of a tree only because of us? — Janus

Yep. Think about it. What was it before it was a tree? And that thing, why is it a “tree” and not some other named thing? That thing always was a thing, it just wasn’t a tree until some human said it was.

Besides, if it always was a tree, why do we have to learn it as such? Why didn’t we already know it as tree before having to be instructed about it?

I don't think the notion of internality is helpful here. — Janus

Working from the proposition, “present via us....”, internality is not only helpful with respect to theoretical predicates, it is absolutely necessary for epistemic operations. Via “US” makes it so.

Necessity is not sufficiency. The world and us are each necessary, but neither in itself is sufficient. This with regards to perception alone. The world is neither necessary nor sufficient for pure a priori cognitions, under the assumption there are such things.

It isn’t a tree until the intellect gets done with it, somewhere downstream in the mental process.
— Mww

Yes, and the notion of a tree is an intersubjective agreement, unlikely to be a concept we would acquire unassisted. — Tom Storm

Agreed. WE would not require an unassisted conception, but somebody did. Which reduces to, every conception was somebody’s unassisted baby.

I think it makes sense, in different senses, to say it both is and is not a tree prior to the cognitive workings. — Janus

Before cognitive workings, yes, we could say that. But if the prime human pursuit is knowledge, to say that and include the cognitive workings, we must abandon the principle of identity. There may be two senses, but only one ends in knowledge. Possible knowledge.

so yes the making present via us is not merely perception. — Janus

But if you follow this out to its logical end, that which is present via us, can only be because of us, which makes the collaboration internal, eliminating the world from it entirely. Entirely, post-perception, that is.

I see a tree, it's a representation. — Manuel

Depends on your chosen epistemological theory. Your eyes don’t tell you there’s a tree, they only tell you there’s an object. If your eyes don’t tell you anything but that there is an object, it is up to the cognitive system to render that something into that which can be known as one thing. And that rendering is called phenomenon. Platonic knowledge that (there is a thing present), not yet epistemic knowledge of (what the thing is).
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You'd say that we (see) a tree directly? — Manuel

Nope. We see.....sense..... something directly. It isn’t a tree until the intellect gets done with it, somewhere downstream in the mental process. Even get a tickle on the back of your neck, and sometime between energizing your arm to swap it, you flash on a big fat bug you’re about to splatter all over yourself? Same conditions for any and all perceptions; you perceive the sensation, but have no immediate knowledge of its cause.

A list of the uninvited?
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We can’t know the thing represented by its phenomenon directly, that’s true, but it is nonetheless directly presented to us.
— Mww

Or it could be said differently as "there is nonetheless a direct presentation (as in "a making present) via us". — Janus

Perhaps, but then comes the notion that we are necessary causality for empirical realities. And if subjectivity is true, there can be no account for why a dog isn’t sometimes a ‘57 DeSoto.

There is a making present via us, but it isn’t perception.

I agree with you that there needs to be something which grounds the phenomena we are interpreting. It's just that we can't go directly to these grounds. — Manuel

We don’t need to go directly to those grounds. They come to us, as undetermined, but determinable, somethings, by means of perception. We can’t know the thing represented by its phenomenon directly, that’s true, but it is nonetheless directly presented to us.

Nobody is wooing any gaps. — frank

Rudolph Steiner.

Oh. Wait. Nobody here is.

Never mind.

So it's a mental construct on the occasion of a stimulus. — Manuel

Yes. The representational cognitive system intrinsic to the human condition, writ large. Really difficult to theorize, or even speculate, its negation. It is still necessary to account for that “objective” thing, otherwise representations have no ground, the well-worn yet hardly acknowledged, “we are presented with the absurdity of an appearance, without that which appears...”. (Not Russell)

My contention is only that there is no need to develop a distinction between mind and matter, because the absence of that distinction, is impossible, with respect to our human system of rational agency. It follows that without the development of a distinction, any illusory predicates assignable to it, disappear, which is where this whole dialogue began.

Granting that doctrinal conclusion, mind and matter are already necessarily distinct, Russell’s neutral monism, which says mind and matter are indistinguishable, re: “Analysis of Mind”, 1921, is invalid, for it reduces ultimately to the paradoxical conclusion that whenever one is conscious he is aware of his own brain, (secondary literature, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967, Vol.7, pg 241. Sorry).

Logically, it’s quite simple: develop theories of mind, develop theories of matter, the distinctions between them fall out as a consequence.

The only way around this, such that neutral monism is viable, is to defeat the theoretical predicates sufficiently enough to falsify the representational cognitive system. As far as I am aware, Russell didn’t take that bait. But he did wrap, or rather, smother, himself in language, which is just as ill-begotten.

Anyway.....as I said. My only contention.....