I think reasoning/rationality includes an attempt to put assertions in a logical arrangement with conclusions. — Coben

Absolutely.

I don't think I am always doing that when I introspect. — Coben

I have to grant that because I can’t argue otherwise. At the very least, I might say you’re not putting assertions in logical arrangement because it’s already been done, and introspection of this nature is merely a review. But if your dialectical co-respondent happened to be a cognitive reductionist.......

And if this be the case, then, regarding the OP, introspection is not a valid type of knowledge, for a review presupposes the arrangement wherein the knowledge actually resides.

Introspection involves rationality, for sure, it's rationality that doesn't necessarily involve introspection. — Judaka

Agreed, to a point. Rationality doesn’t necessarily involve introspection. I think it important to reduce the idea one step further, insofar as when a thinking subject examines his feelings, he is the less using his rationality and the more using his introspection. This is because we are allowed a much narrower field of judgement with respect to empirical experience, which are always cognitions, than we are with judgements with respect to aesthetics, which are not. In other words, it is much harder to explain the reasons we are affected by an emotion, than it is to explain the reasons we are affected by, say, a building.
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Rationality without introspection becomes something like ungrounded theorycrafting when it comes to understanding people and the systems that involve people. — Judaka

While I grant fallacious speculation, or ungrounded theorycrafting, isn’t such a good thing, I’m not sure how personal introspection relates to a theory regarding people and systems that involve people, usually considered the purview of ethics. Interpretations of the Golden Rule, on the other hand, suggests one should have foreknowledge of himself in order to know how to treat others, which presupposes introspection, but is hardly theoretical. But you’re correct, in that I got no business sitting here thinking up an ethical theory on how everybody else should act predicated solely on how I myself act.

Hopefully I didn’t misunderstand what you’re trying to say.

Careful what you wish for. I’m retired and pretty lazy to boot, so I got all kinds of time to occupy myself with this stuff.

We are always following intuitive feelings about what we are suggesting is logical. — Coben

Exactly right. Technically, that procedure is called judgement, but what judgement is, is in effect just what you say.

I think the words introspection and rationality are useful and each focus on different aspects of mind and its processes. — Coben

Different aspects, yes; different processes, not so much. Different processes implies different methodologies. If one methodology is established as rationality, in which a subject concerns himself with an object. Current thinking holds that introspection is the case wherein a self thinks about itself, which is the same as a thing being simultaneously both subject and object. The only logical way around this catastrophic violation of the Law of Identity, is to re-phrase introspection as that wherein a subject thinks about his thoughts. Which gets us right back to rationality, where the self as subject thinks about the contents of itself as objects, but not itself as an object.
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One can just notice the contents of our minds. — Coben

But is mere noticing really an introspective procedure? Surely there’s a given relational hierarchy between noticing the mind has content, which can have only one of two possible conclusions, as opposed to noticing the contents of the mind, which can have a multiplicity of conclusions. Regardless, a relational paradigm must have taken place, and all relations absolutely arise from the thought of them.
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I would say that introspection is more independent of rationality then rationality is independent of introspection. — Coben

From the directly above, I would counter with......

The theorem:
Introspection is more a mode, or kind, of rationality, rather than a separation from it.

The proof:
Noticing anything at all presupposes the antecedent of not noticing. In this view, noticing itself is neither rationality nor introspection, because as yet nothing has been noticed, noticing so far being nothing but a succession in time. As soon as noticing incorporates, say, the content of our minds, a relation over and above simply a relation in time, becomes immediate, which requires rationality in order to distinguish the act (subject = notice) from what is being acted upon (object = content).

Because I’ve already instantiated rationality in order to grant noticing the content of mind in the first place, I can either leave it at that, or I can call that rationality in what I just did, the introspection in what I am enabled to do because of it. But I cannot call it introspection first, hence independent of rationality, for I would then have no (gasp!!) concrete idea of what I’m introspecting about.

The conclusion:
Introspection examines relations; rationality gives the relations introspection examines.
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All that to say this.....

Sit and mull with eyes closed. Without trying to draw a conclusion or mount an argument or analyze. — Coben

.......is absolutely the way the average human seems to do things. Daydreaming. Flights of fancy. That is what we think introspection to be, yes. Without reasoning or self-contained argument. I submit this is not what’s happening at all. Keyword: mull. To mull is to examine relations. And we’re right back where we started.

Now.....wasn’t that fun???

All good; nothing in there I would argue against, even if there are a plethora of finer points I might quibble over. And even if I did, nothing I would say would necessarily contradict what you’re saying. Just the perils of cognitive reductionism run amok, to be sure.

Mmmm....yeah, me too. Wait. Are you old too?!?!? Bet I got you beat: my first new car was actually made in Detroit, and had fins!!!

Maybe introspection and rationality aren’t categorically distinct. Just, you know, kindasorta distinct.

Thing is, about being old and all....I already have answers to both those questions. But it seems my answers aren’t in accord with current thinking. So because I got two questions rather than an answer to my one, I haven’t learned anything.

But thanks anyway, for getting back.

for me experience is the basis or most concrete. — Coben

I can agree with that. But perhaps you would agree that only works by using experience to qualify what you know to be the case presently. If you are met with a completely new event, all experience will tell you is what the new event isn’t, but cannot tell you what it is.

And yeah......the “ding an sich” has no bearing or import with respect to the common understandings of Everydayman.

Sorry, but I’m old.....with all that implies......so I have to ask: has there come into vogue a school of Western philosophy that holds the act of introspection to be categorically distinct from the act of reason? You know, like, when we examine ourselves, which I have always supposed introspection to mean, we’re not really engaging our rationality in order to do it?

I’d be very interested in how that would work, if someone wishes to help me out.

I believe that you did not understand correctly my statements. — elucid

Oh, I correctly understood what you said alright, but apparently not what you meant by what you said.

You asked for comment, so......I commented.

So instead of defining change, you’re going with the impossibility that a thing can be other than it is, and by that, denying change.

These are tautological, analytic, truths, because the negation of them is a contradiction.

Other than that, they contain no information. Giving conditions for circles, e.g., says nothing about the circle. Therefore they are generally useless propositions.

And, as stated, they have nothing to do with change.

Oh. Sorry. You said the most concrete thing is our experience-ING, and the only aspect of experiencing that can be concrete, is the effect of objects on brain activity.

The ambiguities of language, perhaps? Your “right now I am experiencing the letters...” would be my “right now, my experience of letters...”. I consider experience as an end, rather than experiencing as a process. Probably because I consider reason itself as the process, with all its components, culminating in experience.

But that’s not the only way to approach the subject, I suppose.

Ahhh...I see what you mean. Yes, the concreteness of brain activity gives us the basis of understanding, agreed. But I maintain that the basis for, is not the same as the experience of.

Isn’t it experience itself that is an abstraction? Whether the external object affects the brain and the corresponding state of the brain at that time represents the object, or, the external object affects the mind and the corresponding state of the mind at that time represents the object......the representation is nonetheless an abstraction of the object.

Science just wants the physical brain state that represents the object to be entirely sufficient to identify it. Which is fine, it can certainly do that, but that in itself doesn’t necessarily relate to how the human thinks about the object. The human brain acts according to brain states, but the human reason of which consciousness in an integral constituent, doesn’t think in accordance with the way the brain acts.
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Addendum:
I edited eliminative materialism out, because it is absurd, and as soon as I wrote it, I realized it didn’t belong here. Sorry for throwing a curveball at you.

Which sorta demonstrates the whole point: the methodology of physical science is not impeded in its investigation of physical objects, but it is certainly impeded in its investigation of abstract objects.

Like looking in a cupboard: this is where a “2” will be found, but when the door is opened, there’s nothing there. This tells, e.g., where in the brain the thought of “2” manifests, but nothing like a “2” as it is thought, can be shown on a screen.

I understand the various technical details of neurocognitive investigations, insofar as one might say a certain ion potential across a certain synaptic gap is a direct correlation to the thought of “2”, or some such. But that pathway is not what I see in my head.

No, philosophy doesn’t invent the fact of experience, even if it makes assorted attempts to identify the quality of it.

I guess, simply put, I reject that science can test for an abstraction of pure reason. I mean.....where would it look for it, exactly, within the proverbial 8lbs of wetware, and what would it look for, exactly? If it doesn’t know these things, how would it ever possibly know it found it?

When science tests for anything, it can only find the effects of natural law. Because consciousness must be a derivative of the brain, and the brain must operate under natural law, science should be equipped to test for consciousness.

Consciousness is a metaphysical invention of philosophy. Even if philosophy itself, and therefore it’s inventions, must be derivatives of the brain, science is still require to test in accordance with natural law, of which a mere invention of thought can never show.

Science can show the brain mechanics from which the thought of consciousness is derived, but can never show consciousness as it has been thought, in the same way that science can show that it is the sun I’m thinking about, but absolutely cannot show my consciousness of the object “sun” of my experience.

Pretty simple really. Just because science can figure out where to look to see me being conscious of an object in particular does not tell it where to look to see my consciousness of objects in general.

Another interpretation, if I may:

It is not the job of sensation to identify objects of perception, but to inform that an object is present.
“...The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so far as we are affected by the said object, is sensation...”
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There is certainly a primitive positing of the existence of objects.....
(“....For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears—which would be absurd....”)

.....but it is not that particular positing that is the ground of the possibility of all experience.
(“.....that space and time, as the necessary conditions of all our external experience....”)
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In Kant, the existence of objects of perception is given, there are no ontological predicates being questioned. As such, we have no need to understand the existence of objects, but only that we rightly determine what the matter of them may be, the form already resident a priori in intuition. In this way, the circularity of positing that which the theory is trying to establish, is negated.

Also in Kant, it is not sensation of which we need to be skeptical.....
(“...It is, therefore, quite correct to say that the senses do not err, not because they always judge correctly, but because they do not judge at all....”)

.....but instead, it is judgement itself.
(“... It is not at present our business to treat of empirical illusory appearance (...) and in which the judgement is misled by the influence of imagination....)

Ok...butting out now.

Anthropomorphism......science being pretentious because a human told it to.

Science is predicated on the scientific method, the major premise of which is predicated on observation.

Observation of the human brain is by attachment of machines, from which displays represent brain functionality directly proportional to experimental expectation.

A human does not think in terms of brain states, but a machine absolutely has no alternative but to represent human thought in terms of brain states. It follows that the human inventing a machine to objectify human thought uses a methodology that cannot be replicated in the machine he is inventing. The very best the machine can do is show one-on-one correspondence between human thought and its relational brain state, but can never have the identity of the thought it is representing. A brain state can identify a thought but can never have the identity of a thought.

Philosophy does not have that limitation, for the methodology of philosophy is exactly the same as the methodology for thought itself, in which thought and philosophy are identical. Which is not to say philosophy doesn’t have its own limitation, insofar as philosophy is not equipped for examination of the brain’s physical brain states from which it arises.

It remains as fact, as far as humans are concerned, that no machines are ever invented, nor is any science ever done, that does not first pass before the tribunal of human reason. From this, it is clear that human thought, and everything that arises from it, is the prime directive, and science is at the mercy of it, belongs to it, and for all intents and purposes, has nothing to say about it, but only objectifies its mechanisms.

The nullification of this particular dualism is a pipe-dream for wishful thinkers, without the foresight to understand that if or when future science shows the fundamental natural laws of their thought, they have in effect taken the first steps in the sacrifice of their humanity, in all its wonder and fallibility.

But I’ll be long gone by then, so.......ehhhhh......sucks to be you when that time comes.

Yeah, I have the 1905 “On The Electrodynamics......” paper, which I prefer for showing the refutation of Newtonian absolute time. Nevertheless, I don’t see the connection to an argument disproving “free will”.

Dunno....you can use cement in a cake recipe, but ain’t nobody gonna get a bite out of it.

I wouldn’t think so, but you never know.....maybe he’s got something cooking on the front burner here.

On the other hand, choice certainly does require the future, for choice can never be either antecedent nor simultaneous to its object.

Is this going to relate in the “Arguments For Free Will” category?

Knock yourself out.

Good post. Even if it had nothing to do with somewhat exonerating me, it would still be a good post.

I gave an example.

Another person said it made sense to him. YEA!! Count ‘em....TWO!!!

I make no apologies for my writing style, a cross between Andy Rooney and Stephen King I always say, and I will never dumb down my entries here.

Moving on......

I can’t lie.....my ego says thank you too. You know how they are.....nosey, noisy little buggers.

Thank you. Twice. Cuz now I don’t have to do it myself.

I wish he'd tried to clarify what he meant. — Coben

Why would I, when no one asked me for it. And usually no one asks, for one of two reasons: no one cares enough, or, it’s so much easier to make fun of the writer, then to query for an understanding of the written.

A pox on those high-falutin’ nurogis....neolog.....nuclur.....brain-pokers, I say!!!!

Now I can respond properly. First, in context with your other comments, re: the process of elimination:

So, then, as for free will, I'm figuring that its proponents want to have consciousness to be the cause of what one does, in real time, rather than any subconscious neural brain firings and figurings being already finished by the time their results get into consciousness as a product. (...) Consciousness will have to do it all, as it being the will, and we'll still have to get this conscious will not to be fixed, but to be 'free', providing we can define 'free'. — PoeticUniverse

I don’t hold with consciousness to be the cause of what one does, but I do agree that conscious subjectivity is not known to us as neural brain firings. THEY are the proverbial ghost in the machine.
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So, there's not anything left, which means that 'free will' as a stand-alone something cannot be (...), and also that it cannot even be meant, such as the case we have with other words with no context, almost like 'Nothing' or 'Infinite', and although the latter have definitions, the definitions serve to undo the ability of the stand-alone words in themselves to be something extant. So, we have will, its constancy reflecting us and also benefiting us—toward having a future via its predictions. — PoeticUniverse

My sentiments pretty much. I would have used determinations rather than predictions, but that’s ok.

Correct me if I misunderstood your position.

But isn't it also the case that the concept of freedom is necessary to arrive at an understanding of the world, or parts of it, since without freedom providing starting points, causal chains run into an infinite regress / first cause problem? — Echarmion

Freedom as a starting point to alleviate infinite regress with respect to understanding the world.......not so much, methinks. The world, conceptually, makes explicit a posteriori conditions necessarily legislated by the principle of cause and effect, yet merely contingently understood within the confines of the principle of induction. This in turn makes explicit the inevitability of infinite regress and the unconditioned. Experience is required for understanding the world, and experience is at the mercy of the impossibility of its completion.

That being said does not necessarily remove freedom from being a starting point for something other than the world. The problem arises from the fact that freedom as a starting point for something other than the world can never be proven with the relative certainty implicit in a posteriori conditions, for the simple reason that conformity to principle and law implicit in empirical conditions, from which relative certainty is even possible, cannot apply to conditions that are not empirical. The very best the human rational system can do with freedom as a starting point, is construct with it a paradigm that holds with no inherent contradiction, either within the construction itself or to the empirical conditions already deemed sufficiently proven without it. It is, I agree, as you say,

a constituent part of our internal, "actor" perspective. It's necessary for us to make choices. — Echarmion

The kicker:

All causality is meant to denote, is the means for a series of phenomena to be given in time. But the series, nor the time, are themselves causality. Therefore causality resides outside of and antecedent to, that which it describes, or implements, which implies if there is a form of causality for a series of phenomena in time, other than the form found in Nature, for another different class of objects, then it must be given equal validity.

“.....The transcendental idea of freedom (...) presents us with the conception of spontaneity of action, as the proper ground for imputing freedom to the cause of a certain class of objects. It is, however, the true stumbling-stone to philosophy, which meets with unconquerable difficulties in the way of its admitting this kind of unconditioned causality. That element in the question of the freedom of the will, which has for so long a time placed speculative reason in such perplexity, is properly only transcendental, and concerns the question, whether there must be held to exist a faculty of spontaneous origination of a series of successive things or states. How such a faculty is possible is not a necessary inquiry; for we are obliged to content ourselves with the a priori knowledge that such a causality must be presupposed, although we are quite incapable of comprehending how the being of one thing is possible through the being of another, but must for this information look entirely to experience. (...) But we ought in this case not to allow ourselves to fall into a common misunderstanding, and to suppose that, because a successive series in the world can only have a comparatively first beginning—another state or condition of things always preceding—an absolutely first beginning of a series (...) is impossible....”

Freedom as a starting point? Absolutely. But only if one thinks such a thing is both explanatorily sufficient, and theoretically necessary, and only as it relates to a thing as transcendental is itself.
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As an aside, while I respect your derivation of freedom for a starting point for understanding the world, as it is proved in the third thesis/antithesis antinomy, I rather prefer the thesis in its application to the will. We are not permitted, nor are we capable of, arriving at the unconditioned in Nature, but it is absolutely necessary to arrive at the unconditioned in the formulation of a sustainable moral philosophy.

Ahhh, ok. Dialectic courtesy says https://thephilosophyforum.com/profile/3486/echarmion has the right of way, with me just agreeing with a part of what was said.

Did you intend this for me? I ask because I have no interest in free, but rather in freedom. And my posting history here makes clear I reject “free will” as such.

I will say I am a fan of your “subconscious neural brain firings and figurings”, but I don’t see them as relevant to the subjective paradigm.

If by chance this was intended for me, I should forewarn you that I’m not going to be able to offer much support for your initial premises. But if you still want to elaborate on them, I’ll pay attention at least.

The very structure of that world - imposed on it by our minds - precludes freedom. — Echarmion

Well said. Freedom is not to be found in the list of a priori conceptions, that from which as you say, the very structure of the world is imposed by the mind. But causality is on the list, alongside possibility, necessity, existence, and so on.

And while I agree it does not follow from that, that freedom is not real, I hesitate to agree that freedom is still an equally valid way to structure reality, for in which case it would seem to be in direct conflict with that which does so structure, and from which it is itself excluded. Nevertheless, because from some P it does not follow that freedom is not real, says nothing about how freedom is real, beyond the mere existence of the conception of it.

It would seem, therefore, that if freedom is

a different, but equally valid, way to structure reality. — Echarmion

...it would need to be determined what freedom is, in what manner or fashion it is real, in order to establish the equal validity for what it does.

I’m not sure that can be done.

(Shrug)

Human rational agency naturally possesses both the capacity for morality, and its negation, equally, because of the intrinsically complementary nature of humanity in general. It follows that a human moral agent has the capacity to disregard his own moral constitution without contradicting the tenets and principles of any theory that merely describes and promulgates what his moral capacity ought to be. In other words, behavior is opposition to law reflects the immorality of the agent which in turn reflects on the agent’s disrespect for the law, but doesn’t contradict the theory that shows how he should have acted if he had acted morally. Moral theory cannot prevent immorality, so it cannot be said to be contradicted by it.

Word salad to follow........

That was your argument, that moral laws determine one's volition through the means of "moral constitution". I was merely pointing out the inconsistency in what you were saying, your self-contradiction. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perhaps you’re having issue with how it can be that the installation of law is so easily supervened by actions contrary to what the imperative of law implies. Not so difficult to understand, when considered that all moral theory up to volitions is under the auspices of pure practical reason. The pure practical determinations of the will are the “ought” or the “shall” of moral response to empirical circumstance. As soon as the mental volition transitions to a representation of a physical act, reason itself transitions from pure practical to common practical, which immediately calls into effect the faculty of judgement. As with the empirical domain of human mental activity wherein understanding unites conception with intuition, so too in the case of personal domain of mental activity wherein the will unites a law with a volition, judgement is the arbiter as the consciousness of that activity, empirically the representation of which is given as cognition and becomes knowledge, and subjectively the representation of which is given as motivation and becomes action.
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How can moral law be said to determine one's volitions if people can behave in opposition to moral laws? — Metaphysician Undercover

Which is, I suppose, the seat of antagonism between the idea of law and the appearance of self-contradiction in the disregard for them in behavior. Such arises because behaviors are the ends of the faculty of judgement, while volitions are the ends of the faculty of will. Behavior is physical, the will is strictly a priori. One cannot possibly have complete and unconditional power over the other, the former being physically real, the latter being merely thought. It is not contradictory for the moral law to be disregarded in favor of a more pleasant behavioral inclination, but it is certainly immoral.

For each individual moral agent, moral constitution represents the compendium of moral laws given from innate (genetic) personality or very early-on experience, the ground of which is partially knowledge, partially feelings, hence must be thought as unconditioned, in order to thwart the absurdity of infinite regress.

The arrangement of the laws with respect to each other according to their respective value or power is the moral disposition.

Will is the faculty which represents the moral disposition and determines volitions with respect to them.

Volition is not the behavioral act, but merely the a priori object that represents the correlation between the law and the morally sufficient act. It is clear that the “guilty conscience”, “dishonor”, and the like, so recklessly dismissed at the same time perfectly exemplifies the case where judgement overrules volition, and the behavioral act does not conform to the law, which manifests in the agent’s unworthiness for deeming himself a moral agent, for he is thence simply immoral.

One would do well to abstract pragmatic observable empirical determinism, in which this necessarily follows from that physically, hence a posteriori, from dogmatic transcendental subjective determinism, hence a priori, in which this yet every bit just as necessarily follows from that morally. The practical application of the former is the means by which we fashion an understanding of the world in order to get something from it, the practical application of the latter is the means by which we fashion an understanding of ourselves with respect to others like us, in order to give something to it.

There is no such thing as a free will and never was. There is a will obligated by personality, and there is a certain freedom such that the will is enabled to choose which laws suit the best moral interests of that personality in the fulfillment of its obligations.

And for dessert we have........

......a perfectly reasonable system for relieving religion from its imprisonment of self-determinant human moral agency. Figurative alms and post-modernist accolades to Prof. Kant.

Oh. Sorry.

Hope nobody turns blue.

I stated my argument as plainly as I know how.

“Are our minds souls?”

Not if “soul” is the transcendental object necessary for the source and expression of feelings, but “mind” is the transcendental object necessary for the source and expression of cognitions.

Otherwise....sure, why not?