I think the dichotomy rears its head when we try to reconcile a priori truth's with a posteriori truth's. Meaning the fact that a priori/mathematical truth's describe the physical universe (a posteriori/cause and effect) so effectively, remains an unsolved mystery of sorts. — 3017amen

Yes, but it doesn’t have to. A priori truths are proved by pure logic (transcendental logic from one methodology), but a posteriori truths are proved from observations. It is an a posteriori truth that an object impresses my hand by its matter; it’s an a priori truth that to be an object it must have matter. If the a priori truth doesn’t hold, we are inclined to say the a posteriori truth cannot hold either. But this is not necessarily the case, for there may be some other reason of which I have no knowledge, that causes objects to impress my hand. But it is altogether impossible for logical truths to be false, because if they are, I can’t even justify any of my thoughts at all, including the very truths I thought logical. If A does not equal A, I am well and truly screwed!!!! Not to mention, now that Voyager has traversed to actual deep space and is still working, the principle of universality, itself an a priori truth we predicated to applied mathematical logic, yet always requires empirical proofs, gains credence.

So to eliminate the dichotomy, we limit a posteriori to the material and use empirical proofs, which turn out to be contingent, we limit a priori to the rational and use logical proofs, which turn out to be necessary. And we are certainly justified in doing this, because we can think things that don’t exist in the world, and there are things in the world we have not thought.

But I agree it is a mystery why our thinking is sustained by the world, how the world is so well explained by us. On the other hand, we are explaining the world to ourselves, using our own human apparatus, so....what else should we expect? Funny thing though, used to be if we didn’t know which path a particle takes, we are authorized to say it took all possible paths simultaneously (Feynman, 1948), and if we don’t know where a particle is until it is measured, then we are authorized to say it is no where, from which follows the logical assumption the measure is the causality (Heisenberg, 1927) YIKES!!!! Reason run amok, or, the way things really are? Mystery, indeed.
(Keyword....used to be)

mathematical primitives - integers I presume - 'exist independently from anyone's understanding of them', (...) I presume the same applies to e.g. Pythagoras' theorem, the law the excluded middle, f=ma and many other such principles. — Wayfarer

While I agree Nature has its dynamic procedures independent of our understanding, it is we that legislate the principles for them, as you say....

Reason is able to discern these principles — Wayfarer

.......given some relevant observation, the sole purpose of which is to make those dynamics understandable to us, hence accessible to our knowledge. Pythagoras’ Theorem being a perfect example: it is impossible to derive the relationship between the boundaries of a triangle merely from the fact a space is enclosed by three straight lines. And Galileo had absolutely no means to derive 32ft/sec/sec, a perfectly natural mathematical primitive existing independently of our understanding, from watching an object fall out of a tower window. That’s why it’s so much fun to listen as post-Kantian analytical philosophers try to annihilate the synthetic a priori adaptation of the human cognitive system. It just can’t be done without the guy attempting it immediately contradicting himself. Substituted for, maybe; refuted......not a chance.

Not sure why integers would be considered mathematical primitives. That a symbolic representation of a completed series presupposes “quantity”, sure, but that implies quantity is itself a mathematical primitive. Maybe that’s what Frege was getting at. There’s no contradiction in the occurrence of a natural series of continuous spacetime events independent of our understanding, for its negation is quite absurd, so maybe that’s qualification for “primitive”.
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Besides humans are not really outside of, or apart from, nature. (This insight originates with non-dualism). — Wayfarer

Dunno if that originates with non-dualism, but the idea holds within some dualisms as well. Awful hard to justify being outside the very nature, re: Nature, we’re using to justify our own physical existence. Kinda funny, really. Nature gifts the ability to think, but doesn’t gift the ability to restrict thinking. In all her wonder, she left it to reason itself, to think without thinking too much, to think more than its qualifications admit. Sorta like giving a 5yo a chess set for his birthday: he stands as good a chance of learning the basics of the game as he does using the pieces to suit his imagination.
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On Augustine:

Interesting. I can see it for the most part. From where I sit though, being a pseudo, or pre-modern, the possibility of the immutability of intelligible objects is irrelevant, if I have no means to know anything about them. Wisdom, e.g., may indeed be higher than reason and be the judge of reason, but for me, it doesn’t matter if that is the case. I am restricted by my very nature to employ reason to both discover and understand anything about wisdom, including whether or not I even have any. THAT it is may be given, but I want to know WHAT it is, how it manifests, what it does for me. This goes back to my “kinda funny” above: we had to think of wisdom as being immutable, otherwise we couldn’t claim that it is, because obviously no outside source told us it is, then made the attempt to show how it must be above the means we used to think it in the first place. Rational dog chasing its metaphysical tail.
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Whereas now 'understanding' is seen merely as adaptation and is devoid of any purpose save that of survival and instrumental utility. — Wayfarer

Agreed. Understanding has become the red-headed step-child of the adoptive cognitive neuroscience. Which is fine, if you got a machine strapped to your head. But I don’t, and never will, so I need my understanding to do its damn job.....you know.....as the intelligible object it is.......in order to function in the world alongside my kind. As far as the hard problem goes, I’d say it is indeed hard, given from the excruciatingly simply reason we don’t know enough empirically about it sufficient to justify the speculative ground on which it is based.
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so thoroughly internalized the modern outlook that they've lost all sense of what is problematical about it. — Wayfarer

What do you think entails the problematical? How would you characterize it?
(Addendum: did you mean Steve Talbot’s “love it or hate it”?)

some "unexpected" discovery of wide consequences is needed for further progress. — Zelebg

“...There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement...”, spoken by Al Michelson, 1894, who went on to disprove luminiferous ether, which, ironically enough, refuted the first by doing the second.

Tidbit of useless trivia.

The reason I mentioned that passage is because there is an arguable similarity between the Kantian transcendental ego and the Vedantic 'atman'. — Wayfarer

Agreed.

Humans: in particulars the more they differ, universally the more they remain the same.
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But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies.' — Wayfarer

Nothing against iep, but that is one LOADED assertion, right there.
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But, our best epistemic theories seem to debar any knowledge of mathematical objects.' — Wayfarer

Taken straight outta British Enlightenment empiricism: a priori knowledge is useless, if not altogether impossible. The claim we know things solely from the habitual experience of cause and effect, whereas the truth of the matter is that claim is catastrophically wrong, which cleared the way for the reality of a priori knowledge, and thereby, abstract mathematical objects.

Disclaimer: I couldn’t find that 1973 paper, so it may be he wasn’t talking about that at all. In that case....my bad. I just wrote the first thing that popped into my head that seemed to relate to that snippet I quoted in this section.
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On mathematical Platonism:

Man, I dunno. I reject the opening statement in the SEP article, out of hand. Mathematical objects only really exist if we objectify them, so I don’t see how they can be independent of our language, thoughts or practices. That which the mathematical objects express certainly exist independently of us, re: spatialtemporal distinctions, quantities, distance and the like, but we cannot know anything about those things, other than the fact of them, without the abstract objects we create as the means for it. It’s pretty obvious the Earth and the moon aren’t in the same place, so.......take it from there.

numbers and so on are not actually objects at all, they’re intelligible ideas. They’re an aspect of reason. So I don't accept the idea that information constitutes the world or physical objects. — Wayfarer

Absolutely. The argument sustaining those is also the paradigm shift in epistemological philosophy.

I don’t think anyone with a half-metaphysical brain doubts the reality of abstract mathematical objects. I mean, mathematics itself doesn’t even exist in Nature; it is a science constructed by humans in response to a need to facilitate talking about quantities. That’s all it was ever meant to do, just as logic was created by humans solely in response to a need to talk about relations. It follows that anything invented by humans is necessarily predicated on whatever idea serves as ground for the very form of its respective science. Things exist in Nature, but how many things, or how things relate to each other, is not a concern of Nature.

If information constitutes the physical world, we are at a loss as to how to explain cases in which separate observers do not arrive at the exact same experience of a singular given thing. Even if the exception to the rule is very much less the case, it still serves to falsify the principle of induction, which is the necessary ground for the idea that pervasive information should result in non-contradictory, hence invariably consistent, observations.

The argument claims that it is absolutely impossible to tell the difference between whether an object consists of its properties in order for us to know them as they are, or we install the properties in objects such that we know how we are affected by them. This dichotomy is exactly the same as whether information constitutes physical objects, or we are merely informed about physical objects in accordance with how our intrinsic cognitive system treats them.

The real irony is, the one thing on which humans in general will always agree, despite differences in language or culture, is the principles governing the very sciences they all themselves construct.....math and logic. They can argue the a posteriori truth of “the sun is in the sky”, but none of them can argue the a priori truth “no figure is possible with two straight lines”.

the Functioner in every respect through the senses or the mind or the intellect is the ātman. (...) Everything assumes a meaning because of the operation of this ātman in everything. Minus that, nothing has any sense.

Do you think the atman is supposed to represent what we would call consciousness, even if it is called the Self? We use ego to represent consciousness in Western philosophy, I’m guessing that

basic Residue of Reality in every individual

might be the same thing. One way to think of the residue of reality is intuitions, which are the contents of consciousness in some epistemological methodologies.
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I believe that that number is 'real but incorporeal', hence showing that materialism is false. But the philosophical implications are very tricky. — Wayfarer

I’m down with real but incorporeal, but I’m not sure one could justify denying materialism entirely from the immaterial quality of pure a priori conceptions. Each and every number is nothing but a pure concept that categorizes a quantity, and we often need to quantize, or quantify, real objects, which are pretty much always material things. Still, we use numbers to quantize time and space, which definitely aren’t material things. All kinds of implications, no doubt.

I, for instance, as the creator of half a communication, become immediately irrelevant with respect to you, for instance, as the receiver of that half-communication. Your job is to decipher the in-coming half-communication in order to extract some meaning from it. It becomes full-fledged communication when your extracted meaning is congruent with my prescribed meaning. This is the norm, the common state of affairs, and is as boring as watching paint dry. It adds nothing whatsoever to our investigations into cognitive metaphysics, which happens to be what we’re talking about in this discussion.

In any theory, we hypothesize the conditions under which authority for the conclusions the theory predicts is justified. The normative procedure for intercommunication does none of that, for the hypotheses for a cognitive theory aren’t even given by such communication, insofar as I, as the creator and you as the receiver, are already established as extant, thus very far from hypothetical. The hypotheses can only arise with respect to the relative meanings, and therefore the derivations of them, contained in the language of the communication, which is, in itself, nothing but an objective representation of them.

Now we arrive at the fact that I as subject in the form of creator and you as subject in the form of receiver, are mutually exclusive, for we have reduced the hypotheses of a possible cognitive theory to the necessity of meaning and intention contained in the objective representation itself, each subject operating completely independently of each other. I had to assemble concepts with respect to each other to create an object of thought with a specific meaning, you had to disassemble the object of perception into its related concepts for it to become a possible meaningful thought. We communicate if the two meanings, arising in reverse order respectively, are sufficiently congruent.

So stop and think about all that. Say, create your half a communication that will eventually be perceived by me. You will speak or write something like, “I remember my first bicycle.....” from which beforehand you’ve assembled a bunch of concepts to form an article of your experience. But when you were assembling cognitively, never once did you include the “I” you used in the objective reality, the prose or speech that I will perceive, to create the object of your thought. Not once did you precede the inclusion of a concept with “I will use this concept, and this one, and this one....”. Yet all those concepts did not instantiate themselves. And because they must have intend some meaning, only certain concepts can be called into play. But “I”, the conscious thinking subject, didn’t do it. Whatever did do it, THAT serves as the identity of apperception, apperception being a predicate of human nature which grants that concepts can even be assembled, understanding being the capacity to assemble the correct concepts to fit the object. It is hidden from conscious thought, but conscious thought is impossible without it. And THAT is the foundation for the highest principle in human cognition.

Theoretically self-consistent and non-contradictory, which makes it logically possible, yet unfalsifiable, which relegates it to a mere metaphysical theory. Because consciousness stands in no chance of being empirically demonstrated, it must remain......until technology catches up......maybe.....nothing but a metaphysical project with rational constituency.

In other words, something fun to play with. Beats the crap outta dinkin’ around with mere language, I must say. Gots ta figure out thinking before figuring out talking about it, right?

I am not talking about the subject in the contents of the experience — Zelebg

Good. All we are allowed to talk about, with respect to experience, are the objects in the contents of it; experience is always of phenomena, because they are conditioned by the categories. The self, the entity that reasons, is not conditioned by the categories, hence is not phenomenon, hence not found in the contents of experience.
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subject outside of the experience which is subjected to experience that experience. — Zelebg

Yes, the theory-specific, metaphysical “I”, that under which the plurality of objects of experience are united in a single representational consciousness. What I meant when I said your proposition and wayfarer’s proposition both have contained in them as subject (as conjoined with predicate in a propositional construction): you both use the representational “I”........as we all do as a matter of course.
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This subject is the subject per se, and it is the only mystery here — Zelebg

Yes, the subject of whichever theory of mind, or general cognitive theory, chosen to dignify its validity.

I'd say the question is: what or who is the subject of experience? — Zelebg

I think the most important thing to realise is that it's an open question. — Wayfarer

There isn’t a “subject of experience”, per se, but only the representation of an inherent, dedicated, human capacity, which each your propositions have contained in it.

If one thinks himself the subject of experience, he does so only because he thinks in relation to the object being experienced. In doing that, he still has thought nothing of the one who is thinking himself the subject, which he cannot do without the use of exactly the same phenomenon to account for the phenomenon he is using. A silly employment of the homunculus argument.

The only way to install a subject at all, is to create one within the tenets of a epistemological theory, such that something which appears to be the case (thinking) is justified. If it be granted the human cognitive system is representational, then the fundamental condition for thinking must be merely representational itself.

“....Consequently, only because I can connect a variety of given representations in one consciousness, is it possible that I can represent to myself the identity of consciousness in these representations. (...) The thought, "These representations given in intuition belong all of them to me," is accordingly just the same as, "I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unite them"; and although this thought is not itself the consciousness of the synthesis of representations, it presupposes the possibility of it; that is to say, for the reason alone that I can comprehend the variety of my representations in one consciousness, do I call them my representations, for otherwise I must have as many-coloured and various a self as are the representations of which I am conscious. Synthetical unity of the manifold in intuitions, as given a priori, is therefore the foundation of the identity of apperception itself, which antecedes a priori all determinate thought. This principle is the highest in all human cognition....”

Identity of apperception is then represented by what is commonly called the thinking subject, the “I” in I think, that to which all experiences belong as objects, to a subject that cognizes them as such.

Theoretically.

Dualism gets something right. In practice, we seem to live and talk as dualists. We all agree pre-theoretically that there are dreams and chairs. — Eee

Is this to suggest dualism got something right as the exception to the rule that is usually doesn’t?

I like the idea that concepts exist in a system or a web. To make sense of one is to rely on others close by in the network. — Eee

Concepts exist in a system, yes. But the system is (mostly) used to make sense of the world, so to say relying on one member of the system to make sense of another, isn’t quite right. It would be nearer the case, that one is used in conjunction with another.....

“....Without the sensuous faculty no object would be given to us, and without the understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind....”
“....understanding cannot intuit, and the sensuous faculty cannot think...”

......in order for the system to work in making sense of the world.
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subject is one more concept/object in the (ideally or largely) impersonal and interpersonal concept scheme. — Eee

Agreed. But the vast chronology of our individual existence is spent alone in our own heads, exempt from the interpersonal concept scheme, wherein the absolute subject rules in speechless dictatorial fashion.

Interesting passage. I can see the development of subsequent philosophies from it. But still, how closely did Thomist epistemology follow Platonic? We were talking Plato, yet you used Aquinas for reference, so shall I assume the latter built on the former without much advancement?

From the link:
“...Now possible intellect is supplied with an adequate stimulus to which it responds by producing a concept.”
........possible intellect assumes the name understanding, the adequate stimulus assumes the name phenomenon.

“...Abstraction, which is the proper task of active intellect. The product of abstraction is a species of an intelligible order...”.
........active intellect assumes the name pure reason; species of intelligible order assumes, or already had assumed, from Aristotle, the name categories.

Not too hard to see that, with physical science in general and astronomy in particular, well underway by or in the Enlightenment, this version of species-common epistemology became untenable. Thus the thesis that the matter of objects of sense are given their properties by the understanding by means of concepts, rather than “....divesting the form of every character that marks and indentifies it as a particular something...”.

Ever onward, right?

The key point being that this enabled philosophers to regard ideas as properties of matter - as everything became. — Wayfarer

I‘ll be the first to say I guess I don’t get it after all. You said logical principles were higher reality objects of the mind. I said later philosophy put sense objects and objects of the mind at more or less equal reality, all as objects of the mind. Then you said this allowed philosophers, presumably in Plato’s time, to regard ideas properties of matter.

I can’t make the connection from universals, which apply to logic as I understand it and to real objects in general, re: universal forms (?) but where do whatever allowed philosophers to regard ideas as properties of matter make the scene? Even if I don’t grant logical principles as universals having a higher reality but see how it can be said to be that way, how do I get from that to properties of matter?

My favored.......and long-ingrained......epistemological framework is getting in the way.

intelligible objects, such as logical principles and geometric axioms, are real, but they're not phenomenally existent; they're objects of mind (so to speak) but no less real for that. In Platonism, they have a higher degree of reality than objects of sense — Wayfarer

That’s how I understand it as well, in Platonism. Enlightenment philosophy subsequently dropped objects of mind down a peg or two, making them equal in degree of reality with objects of sense, calling them both representations, but arising from different faculties, thus having different rules of use. That, and logical principles and geometric axioms took on the name and form of judgements, the subjects and predicates thereof being objects of mind. When it comes right down to bare bones, all objects are objects of mind, except the real, and even those are represented as objects of mind (so to speak).

If we understand 'objective' to mean unbiased or ideally intersubjective, then the problem disappears. — Eee

I won’t fight over that. Intersubjective still leaves concepts as purely subjective constructs with possibly real objects which conform to them, which we call experience.

On the one hand, no human is possible without the antecedent humanity, but on the other, a general condition of some empirical unity is in itself insufficient to explain the multiplicity of disparate conditions of its particulars.
— Mww

Could you elaborate on the second part of this? — Eee

Substitute any empirical unity. All trees are the unity of trees, but the unity of trees doesn’t explain why some are hardwoods and some are soft, some broadleaf, some needle leaf. There’s something more needed than just being trees, to facilitate trees being hardwoods.

I don’t want to go too far afield here; it’s Tim’s barndance after all, and I’m not qualified to speak Plato or Platonic ideals. While I didn’t dig an accommodating response out of you comment pursuant to my query, I didn’t find anything disagreeable either, so.......call it a draw.

Such concepts are not objective, they’re used to determine what can be considered objective. They're prior to judgements of objectivity. — Wayfarer

Agreed, without equivocation or amendment.

I agree that formal concepts are 'not private' in that they're not the creation of individual minds. In that sense, they're 'public' — Wayfarer

My rendering of concepts is not objective hence private, your rendering of formal concepts is, in a sense, public. Can you illuminate the difference between private concepts that facilitate judgement of objectivity, and formal concepts that are not creations of the individual minds?

Thanks.

The main reason for my comments, I guess, is your McDowell passage, which I find agreeable, followed by the saying of things seemingly diametrically opposed to it, which I don’t. After your furtherances I understand you better, but not the opposition to McDowell. Just trying to learn something, is what it boils down to. Same with the Feser comment.

In some sense the 'we' is prior to the 'I' as a kind of software that makes the hardware fully human. — Eee

Understood, and agreed, in principle. On the one hand, no human is possible without the antecedent humanity, but on the other, a general condition of some empirical unity is in itself insufficient to explain the multiplicity of disparate conditions of its particulars. In other words, why I’m this, or why I think this, doesn’t explain why you’re that, or why you think that, merely because we’re both human. Being human is sufficient for those, but insufficient to explain why those. And if what we want to know is why, which is almost always the case, then we see it just won’t answer anything if we ground our investigation on some fundamental ontological condition.
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I mostly feel like some kind of Kantian, exploring the limits of cognition from the inside. — Eee

As well we all should. When the lights go out at the end of the day, there’s nobody there but ourselves. “Know thy-self”, and all those other colloquial admonishments, doncha know. Which, ironically enough, leave off “as best you can”, or, “but you’re probably wrong”.

An illustration. — Wayfarer

Ok. The modern version of universal forms, ideals, sentiments, various sundry renditions of.....

“...that which exists a priori in the mind...”

......because.......

“.....the distinguishing characteristic of their nature consists in this, that they apply to their objects, without having borrowed anything from experience towards the representation of them....”.

.......meeting the criteria of my personal favorite, a transcendental object. My main concern with the inquiry (what is a formal concept) was, so long as, e.g. “triangularity”, is not given the authority of a category, it can be given any theory-specific name its creator deems fit. I say this because the formal concepts are reducible, insofar as triangles and thereby triangularity, presuppose quantity and relation, specifically.
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A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once. — Wayfarer

I hesitate in granting that any concept is objective simply because it is grasped by many subjectivities.

Even if “....to grasp a concept is simply not the same thing as having a mental image...”** is true, because the reverse is actually the case, it does not follow that grasping concepts is objective. Rather, the objects of conceptions are objective, iff one communicates his understanding of them, and they meet with congruency by other minds. Upon being asked to illustrate an object, a plurality of minds will all draw from a conceptual ideal per-existing a priori, and the drawings will all be different in particulars while similar in form. And the drawings will differentiate in direct proportion to the complexity of the concepts required for it, re: the drawings of stop signs will be closer to each other in appearance than the drawings of a house. To then say the conceptual form of these objects is objective contradicts the laying of it a priori in the mind.

Anyway...thanks for the Feser reference and the explanation.

** Feser, 2008.

OK. Thanks.

What is a formal concept?

Conceptual capacities are capacities that belong to their subject’s rationality. So another way of putting my claim is to say that our perceptual experience is permeated with rationality.
— McDowell

The important point, for me, is that concept isn't private. Concept is essentially public and social. — Eee

When you say, “that concept isn’t private”, do you mean to say by “that concept”, McDowell’s claim?

Or maybe you meant the important point is that conception isn’t private, and thereby conception is essentially public.

I submit that anything belonging to a subject’s rationality, per McDowell, is private, and to suggest that the totality of subjects in possession of rationality is the same as rationality itself being “essentially public and social” does not follow. And if rationality is not essentially public, thus is private, and rationality is grounded in “conceptual capacities”, then conceptual capacities are equally private. Which is why your “concept is essentially public and social” is false, or at least needs clarification.
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Some clarification is here:

So while we know that concepts are 'only in our heads,' they also make such judgment possible. — Eee

.....which is correct in the philosophical sense, which seems to indicate concepts are indeed private, but just serves as either a self-contradiction (“concept is essentially public”), or, my lack of understanding.

Help me out?

"My mind is absolutely unreliable". How would I proceed from there? Perhaps I can rely on someone else's mind. — Purple Pond

If your mind is absolutely unreliable, yet you ask after other minds for the reconciliation of the problem, you’ve immediately contradicted yourself, for the potential reliability of other minds cannot be given from the unreliability of your own.

Are we creating language or discovering it? — Mark Dennis

I would say we create it. Given any dinosaur, the existence of the object seems to pre-date any language from which is derived the name for it. On the other hand, the capacity for language would seem to be intrinsic to human nature, but even so, the invention of language presupposes its needful use.

I never thought of the yet-discovered world as abstract, but I see no great difficulty in it. Broadening the scope of a concept doesn’t necessarily falsify it.

Of necessarily and ordinarily existing things several question arise. (...) Are they both sub-species of existing things? Is one included in the other? Or is necessary existence a separate genus? — tim wood

I don’t know how we’d be able to tell the difference between an ordinarily existing thing and a necessarily existing thing. But then, we don’t say...that which exists, exists ordinarily. So maybe there is a difference, or, existing ordinarily doesn’t make any sense to begin with. Dunno.
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In different words, if existing, then existing necessarily. — tim wood

That’s the entire logical argument in a nutshell. It makes no difference what the things are, but only if there are any, and how it is that the logical argument is true.
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That is, is the world altogether accessible to reason? I'm obliged to think it must be. — tim wood

Science says it is. Or it used to, until it was proved there are things we are just not equipped to know. I’ll go with....of the sum of reality empirically accessible to us, it is equally accessible to our reason. I’m a YankeeVirgoBabyboomer, so not known for my optimism.
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Addendum:

I'm looking to ordinary language for guidance, and it strikes me that whatever the reality is, either it yield to language, or language to it, and with respect to reality and the real, the reality is prior. — tim wood

Reality is prior, and language yields to it, or, which is the same thing, language yields to what we think reality is. The vast majority of human thought is by means of image, as should be quite obvious, language having no occassion but for subjective introspection and objective communication.

Say hello to an infinite compendium of pure abstract concepts.

What does this do for pragmatic utility? How much pragmatic thinking grounded in rules?

This isnt Noumena its phenomena. Pure abstract is just unamed and unnoticed until someone, anyone names and notices it. Ethics as a word, was pure abstract until someone conceptualised it. — Mark Dennis

In effect, we knew all about how to treat each other, except we didn’t know it was ethics?

Am I understanding better?

If the existence that is necessary is particular to an instance of time is also saying that there are other instances when it's not, then it would seem to be contingent on the time — tim wood

Short version.....
That which exists being contingent on time implies everything which exists is contingent on time. If everything is contingent on something, we say that something is the condition for all those things contingent on it. It is accordingly we say time is the condition of all that exists. All this does is relieve us of the need of a quantity of time for the existence of things in general, while requiring a certain time for things in their relations to other things.

Long version.....
Trouble is, the condition for a thing doesn’t tell us what we want to know, which is what the thing is. If the time is the condition that makes everything possible, all we need are the conditions that make everything describable. The only way for us to describe things is by means of the concepts that we can logically apply to them, and because we are not describing time, we don’t need to think of time as a concept.

But the things we wish to know about must first be determined as describable, in order to be certain any of our concepts can ever be applicable to them, which effectively grants the possibility of knowing what they are. It would be a major evolutionary disadvantage for us to have a describing system that cannot tell itself the thing attempted to be described never was describable in the first place. Enter the categories, those pure concepts arising spontaneously from the system itself, which serve as the criteria against which all the things we wish to know about, become describable. We find, in order to be described, a thing must exist, so existence is a category; a thing must be real, so quality is a category; a thing must consist of something, so quantity is a category, and finally, a thing must be either a cause or an effect, so relation is a category. To name four of the twelve.

From here it is a short hop to understanding why we don’t need the categories for what we think, because the thought is the description and is infallible, and why time is not a category because it doesn’t set the ground for describing by means of concepts. In addition, time is divisible but the categories are not, insofar as different quantities can be attributed to time, but i.e., necessity, cannot be quantified at all, which is sufficient in itself for claiming conditions for everything and the conditions for describing everything must be irreducibly distinct from each other.
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Would you agree (with me) that this is grounded in contingency? Or at least there's some work to be done to either refine or qualify "necessary existence"? — tim wood

Absolutely. There is nothing whatsoever that isn’t contingent, because the totality of our knowledge for everything is impossible. But, like I say, the human system is inherently circular, as what I just said, proves. I contradicted myself by stating a logical truth. That everything is contingent is necessarily true is self-contradictory.

(Oooooo....transcendental illusion!!! Now there’s a rabbit hole for ya!! (Grin))

Hey....we do the best we can, right?

Is there pragmatic utility in these distinctions between purely abstract and Anchored abstract? — Mark Dennis

(Stronger) Top down.....
Pragmatic utility in the distinction? I would have to say no, because of the way they’re defined. Purely abstract, the unknown, unnamed, realistically non-affective conceptions, is never even presentable to our attention, so can’t have any practical use. It seems irrational to infuse an unknown with purpose the fulfillment of which could never be shown. It follows that if half of the content of a distinction is unavailable for any practical use, the distinction itself disappears.

Dogmatic utility, on the other hand, would stand, given the definitions. That which has no practical utility for some reason remains useless because of the rule that made some thing useless, whereas that which has practical utility, also because of its rules, remains practical. Adherence to dogmatic architecture would also prevent one from overlapping the other, thus maintaining the very distinction the definitions require.

(Weaker) Bottom up......
For whatever reason it should happen we are met with an insurmountable rational inconsistency, we can attribute our inabilities to a class or realm that wasn’t available to us anyway. Then, the practical utility in the distinction would arise as the demarcation between that for which our abilities are sufficient and that for which they are not.

Dunno if I addressed your query as you meant it to be understood, but I hope so.

maybe pros and cons to thinking this way. — Mark Dennis

If it be granted knowledge is nothing but a judgement of relative truth (I know/don’t know this because of that), then knowledge is either something we are given by a certain means, or we are not given by those same means.

Judgement itself is predicated on either intuitions of phenomena, or conceptions of thought, the former is empirical knowledge, the latter is a priori knowledge, but both remain judgements.

If unknown or unnamed concepts cannot be thought, and unknown influences on reality cannot become phenomena, it follows that in neither case can a relative truth be judged, which makes explicit no knowledge is possible. Knowledge in the form of purely abstract knowledge is thereby denied and the idea of pure abstract knowledge is meaningless.

As regards anchored abstract knowledge, that which is forthwith observed, identified and named has been exposed to the tribunal of reason, because the criteria for phenomena has been met, hence lent to judgement and the possibility of empirical knowledge. Therefore, anchored abstract knowledge is anchored, but never was abstract, thus the idea of anchored abstract knowledge is denied. This, however does nothing to deny knowledge of abstracts, if such abstracts meet their necessary criteria in intuition or conception.

If it were me, I’d just call pure abstract knowledge impossible, and anchored abstract knowledge possible.
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Anchoring a purely abstract concept requires giving it a physical point with which to identify it physically through language. — Mark Dennis

I can think everything about an abstract construction, such that simple co-existents become joined, without illustration or invocation of a single word.

Thanks for giving me something to chew on.

1) If something necessarily exists, it exists necessarily, yes? — tim wood

Yes.
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If yes, than non-contingently, yes again? — tim wood

Yes again. Necessity always makes contingency logically impossible.
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Then how can it ever not be? — tim wood

It can’t. That’s the same as saying how can it not ever be. That’s not the same as how can it always not be. Technically, “ever” is not a proper classification of time for particulars, of which there are only three: a singular instance of time, a succession of times or a permanence in all time. The first is all that is absolutely required of any necessary existence. No time, of course, is incomprehensible.
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If its negation is impossible." Is this propositional negation? Or is it an existential impossibility to be? — tim wood

I’m going with both. It is obviously a logical truism, and because of that, if the existence of a thing is necessary, say, because it is logically a cause of something else, but it it is thought to not exist anyway, or its existence is denied by some other means, a categorical error is committed, insofar as a logical truism is falsified, which is a self-contradiction.
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I cannot think of anything that necessarily exists — tim wood

There is one and only one: the thinking subject. If there isn’t one, none of this could be happening, but it is, so.........

On the other hand, if I take mountain/erosion as metaphor for change, then I must say experience doesn’t change; each is as it is in itself. Experience is singular and successive, not a unity and changing, the technical definition of consciousness.
-Mww

You are making exactly the right point - qualia is integrated information. — Zelebg

I take you to mean I’m making the right point on consciousness, and qualia are the integrated information contained in consciousness. I’m ok with that.

While I understand how qualia arose from the predicates of modern philosophy, I don’t think they accomplish anything more than the old-fashion intuition. For me, consciousness represents the quantity of that of which we are aware, but qualia represent the quality of that of which we are aware, re: the “what it is like” addendum. The former relates to the substance of our intuitions, the latter relates to the right-ness of our intuitions. To allot the quality of right-ness to consciousness relieves our conscience of its job with respect to morality and feelings in general, and relieves judgement of its job to determine right-ness with respect to empirical cognitions.

Besides, if the totality in consciousness represents the way things are, because we cognize them as so, why do we care about what they are like? Even if we cognize incorrectly and amend that with its consequence, then the qualia will be equally incorrect and amended as well, which seems to indicate they really don’t differ that much from mere representation anyway, as regards their origin.

And ya know what else? If qualia are meant to tell me what it’s like, how come they can’t tell me what bacon smells like when it’s not right in front of me, frying away on the ol’ cooktop? I can’t represent to myself the smell of frying bacon either, but doesn’t that just say the one is no better for certain things than the other?

Anyway.....thanks for the compliment. After this, if you wish to retract it, I won’t complain.

I'm not sure what you are aiming at here...isn't erosion a process of change? — Janus

Yes, of course. And just as much as that is true, so too is the........

....matrix of primordial process or undergoing which is beneath, I.e. transcendental to, conscious experience. — Janus

.......but I nevertheless caution against the use of “experience” in the context of.....

........we experience processes and forces just as the mountain experiences erosion. — Janus

....because we don’t experience those at all, even if the transcendental system itself, does. Which is what I’m guessing you meant all along.
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If primordial experience, as distinct from conscious experience, is pre-conceptual then no discursive handle can be gotten on it — Janus

Exactly. Discursive has to do with cognition by conceptions, conceptions being the sole purview of the understanding. If primordial experience is deemed pre-conceptual, it is therefore pre-understanding, hence it follows necessarily such process cannot be discursive. The primordial experience pre-conceptual is the object represented by sensation (appearance) synthesized by the imagination according to rules (schema) to the object of intuition (phenomenon), which is then presented to understanding for logical judgement. Your quoted passage perfectly exemplifies this a priori, rational activity, which is the task of reason alone to “grasp”, long before experience proper, and therefore, the cognizant subject.

ignoring all the tough questions leading up to a refutation of their own claims — creativesoul

I haven’t had any tough questions to ignore, and I’m tired of being led up to, so.....

Emerges out of, of course. That’s the opposite of prior to.

On the other hand, if I take mountain/erosion as metaphor for change, then I must say experience doesn’t change; each is as it is in itself. Experience is singular and successive, not a unity and changing, the technical definition of consciousness.

Don’t want to take you off on a tangent, but......just wonderin’.

I think human experience, primordially speaking, is prior to any such distinction — Janus

Primordial. Fundamental state or condition.

I don’t understand how one can speak about experience primordially.

And if the distinction is the subjective/objective distinction, how can experience be prior to it?

Your thoughts? — 180 Proof

First: That was hard to read.
Second: Cool. Somebody asked for my thoughts.
Finally......pretty good.

To respond:
.......All facts are contingent on the condition of the knowledge that generates them.
.......I would ask how “states of affairs” are not themselves abstractions, thus equally subject to necessary existence because their negation is impossible.

All in all.....a worth exercise.

What are logical forms taking account of?
— creativesoul

Illogical thought; irrational reasoning.
— Mww

What about logical thought, and rational reasoning? — creativesoul

What about them?

You: Why did you say that?
Me: Because (_____), so it had to be (_____).
You. Oh. Right. OK.

Now what?
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You're going to have to replace it (the subjective/objective distinction) with something...
— Mww

Nah. I reject it based upon my own knowledge of all human thought and belief. I 'replaced it' with a much better understanding of all the things which are existentially dependent upon and/or consist of both the objective and the subjective. — creativesoul

Ok, fine. Your own knowledge is sufficient for you to reject something. No problem. Nevertheless, claiming the ends (I replace it) justifies the means (better understanding) says nothing whatsoever about the means. You could fall back on sufficiency here as well, re: your better understanding is sufficient to replace, but that says nothing about whether the replacement is necessary because of the better understanding. To be necessary requires adherence to a law or a principle, the enouncement of which seems to be missing.

You’re always saying that a thing is possible, or that a thing can be done, but never how it is possible or how it is done. Without a how, it is reasonable that I maintain my own knowledge for the standing and authority of the subjective/objective distinction, rather than entertain yours in rejecting it.

Hell, you haven’t even shown how the subjective/objective distinction actually is inadequate.
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As if it's impossible to discard. Read my threads. — creativesoul

Threads. You have threads, separate from your entries in our dialogues? So you’ve already given a how, someplace else? In the chance you meant comments in our dialogues, I haven’t seen any how’s. And when I mentioned this before, you didn’t come back with the suggestion to read your threads. You’ve never suggested other threads to me for anything.

I don’t think I’m asking too much.