Empirical methods don't judge arguments. — Echarmion

Slippery slope aside, I think I’ll agree. Empirical methods may demonstrate the validity of arguments having empirical grounds, as in hypothesis validated by means of experiment, but particular empirical arguments themselves can only arise from judgements made on relations given from experience or possible experience, and those relations are nothing more than synthetic a priori propositions. I would add, however, empirical arguments can be judged by analytic propositions a priori, relational as well, but having only general empirical content.

No empirical method is capable of judging arguments reason presents to itself, re: morality, the super-sensible, or the logically impossible.

Radioactive is a condition, not a property. If a nucleus has certain properties it will be radioactive and it won’t be if it doesn’t. Being radioactive is contingent, the properties are necessary to identify the object, from which the possibility of being radioactive follows.

you are imagining a scenario without humans, but when you are then trying to look at that which remains, you are looking at it from a human view — Echarmion

Finally. Tacit understanding it is absolutely impossible to do otherwise, and only the rationally inept will attempt it.

I now return me to my regularly scheduled life.

Yes, those. Sorry.

“....transformative familiarity....” I like it!!!

Kant intended his practical philosophy to govern morality, for the most part. Easier to comprehend than CPR, but nonetheless contentious for a book half the size.

In passing, I also hold disagreements with respect to the elucidations of noumena stated above.

at least by means of rational thought, and I don't think Kant understood faith to be a form of knowing). — Janus

He sorta did, kindasorta, in as much as one may arrive at a “false” knowledge, which he also calls “unjustified true belief”, the rational procedure for which he calls the transcendental illusion. He thinks this accomplished by the subject permitting his reason to “exceed the bounds of its proper use” and while it is perfectly legitimate to think the supersensible because reason always seeks the unconditioned, such thinking is not thereby given warrant to assign possibility to its reality, re: the oft-argued yet immeasurably important conclusion: “existence is not a predicate”.

Some interpretations (Guyer 1999) reads “....I must abolish knowledge to make room for belief...”, where Kemp-Smith (1929) reads, “...I must abolish knowledge to make room for faith...”. While not actually considered knowledge per se, whether a priori or empirical, Kant recognizes the “common understanding” as desiring some solid ground for his metaphysical necessities, which he will think as something known to him as being true.

Even thought it is true Kant destroyed the arguments of the day for the existence of supersensible entities, he did not argue for proof of their impossibility, but merely showed the legitimacy of a logical negation. As such, he acknowledged faith, but consolidated the rational derivations of it and restricted its applicability to outside the empirical domain.

“....We have noted that a church dispenses with the most important mark of truth, namely, a rightful claim to universality, when it bases itself upon a revealed faith. For such a faith, being historical (even though it be far more widely disseminated and more completely secured for remotest posterity through the agency of scripture) can never be universally communicated so as to produce conviction. Yet, because of the natural need and desire of all men for something sensibly tenable, and for a confirmation of some sort from experience of the highest concepts and grounds of reason (a need which really must be taken into account when the universal dissemination of a faith is contemplated), some historical ecclesiastical faith or other, usually to be found at hand, must be utilized....”
(Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone”, 1792)

For what it’s worth.......

“....Nay, rather I must earnestly warn against such accounts, especially the more recent ones; and indeed in the years just past I have met with expositions of the Kantian philosophy in the writings of the Hegelians which actually reach the incredible. How should the minds that in the freshness of youth have been strained and ruined by the nonsense of Hegelism, be still capable of following Kant's profound investigations? They are early accustomed to take the hollowest jingle of words for philosophical thoughts, the most miserable sophisms for acuteness, and silly conceits for dialectic, and their minds are disorganised through the admission of mad combinations of words to which the mind torments and exhausts itself in vain to attach some thought....”
(Schopenhauer, WWR-1, 1819)

Re: your “Reference is language use. Meaning is prior to language.”

What do you think of Fodor (1975) where the thesis is that mental acts are actual language structures?

I’m of the mind that mental acts are images, and meaning is prior to language, insofar as meaning is merely a judgement on conceptual referents presented to it by reason.

On the other hand, if Fodor is right, meaning won’t be prior to language, at least of the mental variety. Then we’d have to determine if the mental variety is different than the overall objective variety, such that meaning could still be prior to one but simultaneous with or a consequence of the other.

Reductionism 101:
All you gotta grasp is, any attempt to think up conditions without thinking beings, is doomed to failure. It is impossible to think of situations without thinkers because of the absolute necessity of the incidence of the one thinking it up. And the one thinking it up carries the burden of all his consciousness with him. Because he cannot understand the complete absence of meaning nor the complete possibility of eventualities in the world he inhabits, he is not going to properly conceive any world without inhabitants at all. He can’t, because he’s part of in the world he’s thinking as empty of thinkers.

So of course he’s going to insist there’s meaning between the initial producer of it, and the eventual recipient of it. He’s right there during all that in between, because he’s thinking it!!!! So he IS the recipient, just not the one he imagines to be the eventual one. He cannot detach himself from conscious activity in the empty world he thought up, insofar as he pictures, say, Sagan’s brainchild floating aimlessly through space, complete with all it’s contained information, and he absolutely cannot detach himself from his own reason which tells him of its meaning.
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Is that a predictive ad-hom by Kant? — ZhouBoTong

Dunno. You tell me.
“....Dogmatism is thus the dogmatic procedure of pure reason without previous criticism of its own powers, and in opposing this procedure, we must not be supposed to lend any countenance to that loquacious shallowness which arrogates to itself the name of popularity, nor yet to scepticism, which makes short work with the whole science of metaphysics. (...).... and must, therefore, be treated, not popularly, but scholastically....”

“....raise a loud cry of danger to the public over the destruction of cobwebs, of which the public has never taken any notice, and the loss of which, therefore, it can never feel....”

“....A philosophical system cannot come forward armed at all points like a mathematical treatise, and hence it may be quite possible to take objection to particular passages, while the organic structure of the system, considered as a unity, has no danger to apprehend. But few possess the ability, and still fewer the inclination, to take a comprehensive view of a new system. By confining the view to particular passages, taking these out of their connection and comparing them with one another, it is easy to pick out apparent contradictions, especially in a work written with any freedom of style. These contradictions place the work in an unfavourable light in the eyes of those who rely on the judgement of others, but are easily reconciled by those who have mastered the idea of the whole....”

“Easily reconciled” is rather subjective, to be sure. People have been judged as “experts” on the theory, but only relative to each other, and never relative to Kant himself. While it may be reasonable to master the idea of the whole, it is a ‘nuther story to master the whole itself. Which is odd, seeing as how every human ever used or uses reason his whole life, and none of us understand what it really is.
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Doesn't idealism (...) reduce to "it's all in your head" or at least "it wouldn't exist without your head"? — ZhouBoTong

No, not these days, anyway.

You don't think that if we all use the same terms but mean different things, that'll increase the risk getting our wires crossed? — S

Probably. Generally however, that’s not the case. Billions of people communicate successfully most of the time.

I'm doing both, as ever. — S

Ahhhh. So “you’re sooooo stupid!!!”is a successful refutation in your world?

What could possibly suggest I’m confused? Because I don’t agree with you? Because I don’t stick to your usage? Because the authority I’m using is confusing to you?

You can’t even know for sure I don’t completely agree with every thing you say, but took the antagonist approach just for the fun of it.

disagreeing with me over my realism — S

Oh but I don’t, in principle. Only difference is yours is necessary but insufficient, whereas mine is both because a form of idealism is attached as its complement.

your epistemology should be the laughing stock of philosophy. — S

But it isn’t. Lots have done what you are doing, mocking it without refuting it.

Go figure.

Along with Einstein, Newton, Galileo, Hawking, just to name a few.

Good company.

the idealist is one of an enlightened few and has seen through the smokescreen of naive realism and has grasped the Truth! — Theorem

LOL. There’s hope for you yet!!!! Forsake the LOOOSSERRR side and join the chosen. I’ll show the nudgenudgewinkwink secret handshake.

Drop that capitol T truth, though. Haven’t got that far.

Of course I’m a realist. How foolish to suppose there aren’t real things in the real world. Besides, I couldn’t explain my very own self if I denied objective reality. And if I acknowledge objective reality as not only reasonable, but absolutely necessary, I cannot then deny that same objective reality, and by association its contents, as present when I am not.

I call anyone an idealist if they are rational thinkers. Whether or not those anyone’s agree is nothing to me; it’s just what the name implies.

Do not confuse the appearing of physical manifestation of reflected light, with the conceptual appearing of the effect of reflected light. The eyes mediate the former into the latter and science agrees with the transformation of one kind of energy into another.

I have no experience of oranges in cupboards. My immediate cognition would be empty for lack of understanding. If you tell me there is an orange behind the cupboard door, I’ll say....ok, take you’re word for it. But no such knowledge of fact is available to me. Still, because I know “orange” and I know “cupboard”, I know a priori the possibility of oranges in cupboards is not self contradictory and is at the same time quite possible. Just like those stupid f’ing rocks.
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people mean two different things when they talk about the orange and the experience of it. — S

No, actually, they do not. The orange *talked about* IS the orange of experience, and similarly the orange merely thought is the orange of possible experience. The former is certain, the latter is not. The orange you ate is certainly a orange, the orange in the cupboard is possibly an orange.
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No matter the assignment of naitivity to this particular theoretical epistemology, it is complete. Any question asked of it is answered by it, according to its author. Whether it is appreciated or not is entirely irrelevant; it has yet to be successfully falsified or replaced. And even if science proves the physical mechanisms of the brain sufficient to account for subjective predicates, humans will still think as if it never did, and will continue to act as their own subjects.

It can be viewed that way, insofar as your order, or sequence, is correct. Nevertheless, when questions are asked about how it all happens, it becomes obscure because of the terminology specific to the theory. In other words, if the logical sequence leads to a certain conclusion, the wording of the conclusion cannot be used beforehand. This means we don’t experience phenomena or representation because phenomena occur in a series of steps before representation and representation occurs just fewer steps before we can call it an experience. Between is understanding, judgement, cognition, knowledge, then finally, experience.

Thing is, nobody questions reason in common everyday living. When you sense a touch, you immediately experience what reason has only allowed as phenomenon whether you know what touched you or not. By the same token, you do know what touch entails because you have been touched before, so you have extant a priori experience of being touched, hence intuitions of things that can touch, even if you do not immediately know what touched you this time. This is of course, more commonly referred to as just plain ol’ memory.

Another problem with this kind of idealism is that much liberty is given to the enunciation of “faculty”. In one place Kant will call representation a faculty but in another he’ll lead one to think of it as an object of some other faculty. Intuitions are representations but reside in consciousness, which really cannot be a faculty of representation because there are notions and ideas also resident in consciousness which cannot have representation, re: infinity, space, time, and other supersensible conceptions, including those cursed noumena.

Kant also acknowledges the theory is quite incomprehensible to those who do not wish to understand it. But if it is understood, it should be found sensible, intelligible, indeed logically possible, but nonetheless no ways near apodectically certain. It is, after all, just a theory.

Understood.

In CPR 1787 of course, he deleted that whole synopsis given in CPR 1781 you referenced as being incoherent. In B, noumena are give a whole lot less import, and stand as Janus contributed, as merely a logical complement to phenomena and of the form of mere “intellectual existence”. They are not intuited hence are unknowable, which led to the confusion of calling them “things-in-themselves”.

He had to do this, because if noumena are said to have a overt cognitive function we are then required to incorporate two separate and distinct representational functionalities, which the human mind does not have.

Basically, in the cognitive chain, appearances come first, as an un-named object called a phenomenon, occurring immediately upon perception. Empirical intuitions, which are concepts already resident a priori but derived from extant experience, relate to appearances via imagination by which phenomena are then represented, and if understanding judges the positive fitness of such relation we have cognition hence knowledge, if negative fitness we don’t, but we still have the experience of sensing something we don’t understand. It’s major importance arises from perception of objects or physical conditions yet unknown to us, or the understanding of merely possible objects.

In short, it’s a theoretical exposition of how we learn.

He did argue that insofar as sensible intuitions are appearances they must correspond to something else which they are appearances of. This he calls noumena. — Theorem

This is patently false, on two accounts. Intuitions are representations, not appearances, and, appearances correspond to real physical objects presented to sense before any treatment by reason. And they are NOT noumena.

But, in all fairness because you said “This he calls noumena”, if you could refer me to the text where I can read that, I shall be forced to reconsider.

Even paradigm-shifting thinkers aren’t right all the time.

I understand your critique of the Critique, and such has been argued similarly from Schopenhauer to Palmquist, Fitche to Russell, on the vagaries and ambiguities of pure a priori knowledge, the self-contradictions and inherent inconsistencies. Still, to call the Kantian theoretical representation “more opaque” is merely a failure to fully understand the depth of the procedure necessary for doing exactly the opposite, for the admonishment against filling ignorance with illusion in the name of assumption.

We don’t need causality to “know what they are like”; we only use the pure categories to show the fitness of their logical constitution as understanding thinks them, “them” being external objects. In addition, causality alone is not a category, but lies always in connection with dependence, which gives cause and effect. While some have claimed Kant used causality itself as a pure intuition, different in scope and employment than the categories, along with space and time, Kant himself does not.

Anyway....a time and a place, as the saying goes.

It doesn’t.

Under both currently understood physical law, and the logical law of identity, c + c = c is unintelligible.

If you don’t already have it, see http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/

shake your head and ignore it. — Theorem

Ignoring it then leaves one with rationality in general and humanity in particular irreducible to a non-contradictory fundamental condition, because the only other possible methodology, empirical science, cannot provide one. Yet. So far.

all physical objects also happen to be objects of experience! — Theorem

All physical objects also happen to be objects of experience OR POSSIBLE experience. This prevents the absurdity of “esse est percipi”. It could also be re-written as, all KNOWN physical objects also happen to be objects of experience. Not even science can deny that.

Reason acts when the object is internal; reasons reacts when the object is external. In the former reason gives itself its object, in the latter perception, or more accurately, sensibility, gives reason its object. We have to be able to account for our ability to think about real things when there is no real things present to think about. Otherwise we would never be able to remember anything. Metaphysically speaking, to be sure.

Science of course, has all that handled, with neurobiology and cognitive neuroscience, and Penrose, et al, wants to add in quantum potentials and what-not. Which is fine; won’t change the common man one wit.

Ok. I can go along with utility as an assessment of properties.

The minor eye-brow raising I might exhibit would be over any kind of properties of mind, but that’s beside the point.

are we saying that x, some object, like a hammer, literally has properties that are identical to what we're calling utility? — Terrapin Station

Exactly. Otherwise, we’re left with a wet noodle with the same utility as a hammer with respect to striking nails. While both can be used for it, the ends will be quite different because of their respective properties.

Analyze away. I just won’t be able to read or reply for awhile.

But the counter point will be.....no sense can be made out of something exists but has no utility. Which may be true, but that doesn’t make it a property. Properties are necessary; utility is contingent on properties.

I can’t see where utility is any more a property than meaning is a pattern.

If a thousand people witness something; the individual witness accounts are still subjective, aren't they. — wax

Yes. Accounts are subjective; the something is objective because of the implication given by “witness”.

Subjective: that upon which reason acts.
Objective: that upon which reason reacts.

There's the orange, and then there's how it appears. — S

The modern idealist will say this is backwards. That which is named is always first an undefined appearance susceptible to naming.

an orange just is the experience. — Michael

This is how that same modern idealist thinks. An orange, as any real physical object, just *is* the experience *because* it has already been named, or which is the same thing, cognized as meeting the criteria for “orange”. Experience is just another word for empirical knowledge.

I loves me some cheese, boy howdy.

Not so sure about that headgear though. I haven’t sat in a barber chair since cars had fins, so.....not sure about the fit.

Perused the thread; agreed without exception. 2 + 2 will equal 4 anywhere in the Universe, as soon as we get there to prove it. Or maybe as soon as we get there and find some intelligence ready to prove it to us. Or maybe just us getting there proves it. Either way, there’s going to be a mind, and by association, reason itself, tagging along for the ride.

Tegmark (2007) thinks the Universe is a mathematical entity in and of itself. But that’s way above my capacity.

Brief opening proposition here, or send me where I can see for myself?

In the words of the immortal Gilda Radnor.....never mind. Found it.

It better be. Mathematical expressions were initially deemed logically infallible, hence universally true. But we’d never been anywhere off-planet. Now, with spacecraft still operating billions of miles away sorta sustains the reckoning for universality.

I’ll never know, but I have to think mathematical logic is both necessary and universal. I also think it will be just as necessary and universal for any other relational intelligence similar to ours. Different symbols probably, but same operational predicates.

Cool.

I remember seeing that expression, but I didn’t stick around. Thread name?

Hmmm. The thesis would begin with.....meaning is a product of reason and is no way a property of that which reason examines.

The proof would take 7-8 pages, so we’ll forego that, with blessings (and chuckles) from the attendees, I’m sure.

I’d be even happier, ecstatic no less, if you’d chalk yourself up in the “meaning absolutely requires reason” column.

I’m a YankeeVirgoBabyboomer, and we operate better in a gang, doncha know.

You’re thinking it a dichotomy but in reality they are inseparable so it really shouldn’t be thought that way. Ok, I can dig it.

Ok. Then how does the idealist/materialist dichotomy fit in? I just brought up subject/object dualism because it seems to relate one-to-one with idealist/materialist, plus you mentioned an assumed observer. What difference do you see between the two ways of describing the same bilateral doctrine?

Are you agreeing, via shared belief, that the idealist/materialist dichotomy is false, but the subject/object dualism is not?

I read for context but didn’t find anything to answer my own question.

D’accord.

Metaphysical or ontological existence of meaning........reason. Everybody knows that.