Find a book that describes a lot of philosophical -ism’s; pick the one closest to your beliefs. From the choice of -ism’s, look for the -ist that either created the -ism or the one responsible for making that -ism last as long as it did. You’ll probably find there isn’t a single -ism that fully sustains your beliefs, or maybe if you find an -ism that fits you’ll find there are a dozen -ist’s that have something to say about it. And rest assured it is highly unlikely you have an -ism of your own that doesn’t already have its -ist.

Your personal philosophy is directly proportional to your age. You start out looking for other peoples’ truths you can use (how cool your drinking buddy is) then end up with your own somewhere down the line (how stupid your drinking buddy was).

Good luck.

It suffices to think that, having once grasped it a posteriori, in an experienced example, we can see, that it applies in all future cases "a priori." — Dfpolis

Which is PRECISELY the error Kant points out regarding Hume’s characterization of the principle cause and effect. Sure we can “think” it applies in all future cases, but that is merely given from the habit of never having seen its falsification in the past. Hume, being an rabid empiricist, had no call to suppose a principle being grounded in pure reason, as are all principles whatsoever, absolutely **must** have it’s proof also given from pure reason. Kant’s argument wasn’t that there IS a proof per se, but rather no empirical predicates at all can be attributed to a possible formulation of it. Which of course, makes Hume’s convention of repeatable occurrences fall by the epistemological wayside. From this, it is clear that while it is certainly true no thesis can be reject that has not first been considered, Kant’s argument was that the thesis of which Hume was aware (a priori judgements do exist), having been considered, was summarily rejected (slave of the passions and all that happy crappy) because it wasn’t considered **as it ought to have been**. In other words, he didn’t consider it the right way.

I shall not insult your intelligence by informing you the human cognitive system is already in possession of a myriad of pure a priori principles of the kind Hume failed to address, first and foremost of which is, quite inarguably, mathematics. And as a final contribution, I submit there is no logical reason to suppose cause and effect should lend itself to being differentiated between kinds, with all due respect to Aristotle.

A couple minor points, if I may:
Isn’t a proposition where the subject and predicate describe the same event and contain the same information a mere tautology?

It’s not that the relationships are contingent; it’s that instances that sustain a principle governing them are. If cause and effect is an intelligible relationship prior to our knowledge of it’s instances, doesn’t it’s very intelligibility mandate such relationship be necessarily a priori?

Inquiring minds.......

One opposes a different opinion through dialogue. — Wallows

True. That is dialectic conversation. Reasoned argument between opposing positions, or as you say, philosophy progresses in a dialectical manner. Nonetheless, a guy can.....and I’m of the mind that everybody does......have his own personal philosophy he only discusses with himself, or from which he views the world in general, in which case it is not a dialectic conversation. You don’t have to do philosophy in public.

Do you think philosophy progresses in a dialectical manner? — Wallows

Dialectical, as in the Socratic dialogues, insofar as reasoned arguments tend towards a truth? Yes, as long as philosophy is discussed among rational folks. Philosophy isn’t dialectical at all, if a single rational folk is just trying to figure stuff out for himself.

Kant seems to have felt that (....) Hume's analysis must be flawed. — Dfpolis

Flawed, yes; bullheaded, no. Egotistical.....ehhhhhh, maybe. (Grin)
“....This sceptical philosopher did not distinguish these two kinds of judgements, as he ought to have done, but regarded this augmentation of conceptions, and, if we may so express ourselves, the spontaneous generation of understanding and reason, independently of the impregnation of experience, as altogether impossible. The so-called a priori principles of these faculties he consequently held to be invalid and imaginary, and regarded them as nothing but subjective habits of thought originating in experience, and therefore purely empirical and contingent rules, to which we attribute a spurious necessity and universality. In support of this strange assertion, he referred us to the generally acknowledged principle of the relation between cause and effect. No faculty of the mind can conduct us from the conception of a thing to the existence of something else; and hence he believed he could infer that, without experience, we possess no source from which we can augment a conception, and no ground sufficient to justify us in framing a judgement that is to extend our cognition a priori....”

How is the builder building identically being the building built any different than the ball hitting identically being the hit ball? The house built and the ball hit both have an intrinsic necessity for their respective causes, herein being no more than the predicates of natural law. Even so, all empirical relationships concerning cause and effect are contingent with respect to human knowledge, which implies if any absolute necessity, that is to say, the falsification of which is impossible, must arise from a priori conditions.

I’m still interested in your thoughts, but I don’t want to be the reason the thread goes too far off topic. Well.....any more than I am already.

When does one ever reach an understanding of any particular philosopher — Wallows

First.....thanks for the compliment; ‘preciate it. As for when, ehhhhh, damned if I know. Whenever it feels right, I guess. The further back in time one goes in his choice of philosophers to understand, the less information he has to work with and the more the language used in the writing differs from the language used in the understanding. But first and foremost, the major difficulty arises directly from the degree of paradigm shift incorporated in the writing, because even if one thinks he understands what is being said, he must then relinquish his own predispositions in order to agree to any truth that may be found in it. Otherwise......what’s the point, right??

Please rethink this. Kant was bullheaded in his opposition to Hume's thesis that there is no intrinsic necessity to time ordered causality. As a result he sent philosophy off on a tangent from which it is yet to fully recover. — Dfpolis

Been following your dialogue from the beginning, finding nothing worth bitchin’ about, instead finding your novel approach interesting. But I have to ask......what is your idea of Hume’s thesis that Kant was bullheaded about, with respect to “time-ordered causality”?

I’d guess A.) you’re talking about the effect on our knowledge of a thing being antecedent to the causality of the thing’s impression given to us by sense, or, B.) you’re talking about the simultaneity of the external impression on sense and the internal knowledge of the object so impressing.

I shall add myself to the “sorry if I’m bothersome” group and say thanks as well.

I think Wick's account is still valid — Wallows

I can live with that. I don’t know from which translation (if any) Wick is working, but I’m betting it’s much newer than my 1909 Haldane/Kemp literary antique. Still, both the Masters in question, re: K and S, insist on the ineffectiveness of second party interpretations of novel epistemological enterprise, carrying the implication that if one needs to refer to an interpretation, either he is too lazy or otherwise ill-equipped to comprehend the original. This rears its subliminal head when Wicks himself references Hofstadter for the Möbius strip thing. Which to me, is merely a basic philosophical infraction squared.

FYI, and as the Great And Wonderful Janis Joplin said......of no particular social import.....
Schopenhauer, Preface WWR, 1844: “...And, in general, how is it possible that philosophy, degraded to the position of a means of making one's bread, can fail to degenerate into sophistry? Just because this is infallibly the case, and the rule, “I sing the song of him whose bread I eat,” has always held good, the making of money by philosophy was regarded by the ancients as the characteristic of the sophists. But we have still to add this, that since throughout this world nothing is to be expected, can be demanded, or is to be had for gold but mediocrity, we must be contented with it here also....”

Kant, Preface CPR 1787: “.......it would be more consistent with a wise regard for the interests of science, as well as for those of society, to favour a criticism of this kind (....) than to support the ridiculous despotism of the schools, which 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....”

Odd, though, that both of these guys acknowledged his respective philosophy was most likely beyond the general understanding of the crowd to which was explicitly directed, yet decried the method for teaching it to them.

Ever onward, eh?

So, how does anyone interpret this Mobius strip constructed and explained by Schopenhauer of the mutual relationship between mind and matter — Wallows

Schopenhauer didn’t construct a Möbius strip, didn’t equate his philosophy to one, didn’t consider it an explanation with respect to the subject/object dichotomy. All Wick did was make Schopenhauer’s version of Kantian Transcendental Idealism unrecognizable.

For a much better synopsis of “mind in my head; head in my mind” characterization, closer I think to the author’s intent, see the introduction to the Cambridge Library’s translation here, particularly pg 20-22: http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/71846/frontmatter/9780521871846_frontmatter.pdf

Being one of “anyone”, there ya go.......

What’s the difference between time being discovered always existing as the when of or between events, or, time never existing at all until reason invented it as a means to quantize the occassions of events relative to itself?

For humans operating under the assumption that material reality is a soundly grounded doctrine, these propositions are equally true: things happen whether or not such things are witnessed, and the effects of things that happen have no meaning whatsoever until witnessed. In the former, time as a part of the material reality is irrelevant, and in the latter, time is an absolutely necessary condition under which any meaning can be assigned by the witness.

Ever notice? That of the multiplicity of mathematical expressions for the understanding of the material world that have time as a factor, there are no like-kind mathematical expressions for time itself as a stand-alone dynamic, that is to say, other than being a function of traditional arithmetic equivalences.
(Caveat: the physicist in me is no where near as well-read as the philosopher)

For what it’s worth.......

we need a computer to know how to draw analogies - associate data. This probably would look like human ''understanding''. — TheMadFool

While this may be necessary, is it at the same time sufficient? I have no issue with C.I./A.I drawing from memory as its means of analogy, much the same as humans draw from what we may call memory in order to compare sense data with experience. But I think these conscious operations are constrained to an empirical environment alone, and as such, cannot fully represent human understanding.

Under what conditions do you think it possible a C.I./A.I will ever have the capacity to reflect internally on its own awareness? It’d be funny, wouldn’t it, if that sort of intelligence had no analogy from which to draw with respect to self-reflection, thus found no need for it? (A compuer’s ability to investigate whether or not a correct analogy had been drawn is not the same thing) Or, if such intelligence formulated its own self-generated feedback loop in order to investigate it’s self......is that really the same thing as a human’s proclivity towards introspection having no particular objective for it whatsoever?

Also, if it be granted that emotions, or what we call feelings, are not cognitions and that the drawing of analogies is always a form of synthetic cognition and that all C.I./A.I. “understanding” is predicated on analogy.....how can such an intelligent ever have the full representation of understanding belonging to humans, if it cannot be assigned an innate value system?

You, in both cases, — Baden

While I quite agree this appears to be the case, we inevitably arrive, after all the philosophical reductions, flying headlong into the face of the Aristotelian Law of Identity, to the one and only permissible occurrence of subject and object being the same thing at the same time.

The weaving of tangled webs run amok, methinks.

I’m not all that up on computers.....maybe they’ve progressed far beyond my knowledge of them, dunno, don’t care. Still, I wonder......if I were to tell one, in no uncertain terms, “oh fercrissakes...stick a sock in it!!!!!!!!!”........what would it actually do?

Because I have very different views of what human understanding is, it’s place and function in the human cognitive process, I have to say, no, we’re not going to make a machine that understands like we humans do. Which says nothing about the possibility that a machine we make that has enough computing power may very well make itself into something that understands like we humans do. Then what of the three robotic laws?

What about the not-so-old adage that computer/artificial intelligences should have to have a form of wetware before it can be considered similar to intelligences based on pure biologics?

If the voice in your head is you, then who is the one listening to it? — Wallows

Couldn’t I be “voicing” to myself? Cartesian theater with the exclusivity of a single paid admission.

When there is conflict between what we desire and some moral belief we feel, we can often find a creative way to rationalize the moral belief away, to get what we desire. — Rank Amateur

I guess you could say that. Seems to me that kind of rationale belongs more to empirical psychology than moral philosophy: “.....on what the feeling of pleasure or pain rests, and how from it desires and inclinations arise, and from these again maxims by the co-operation of reason: for all this belongs to an empirical psychology....”. The difference being the cooperation of reason from experience as opposed to the determination by reason a priori.

I’m pleased to see you mention “what we feel is right”. At the end of the day, despite what’s found in moldy tomes and dogeared textbooks, Everydayman is still only going to act in accord with his strongest feeling.

I hold to the traditional absolute morality argument that we humans make poor judgments left to our own prejudices on what is or is not moral. — Rank Amateur

Ok, fine. Pleased ta meetcha, I’m a card-carrying deontologist, myself. Kind of a moral absolutist, I suppose.

Care to elaborate on your version of how it is we humans make poor judgements? Not examples, mind you; I’ve got more than a few years experience in that, thank you very much.

Is telling the killer the lie, or opening the door and shooting him in the knee equally moral actions because they share an equal motivation. — Rank Amateur

By equal motivation I understand you to mean the actions deemed necessary to satisfy the requirements of the person seeking your protection. In such case, regardless of the degree of protection afforded, the ends are understood by the person answering the door as being satisfied, therefore his moral obligation is honored.

The whole “murderer at the door” scenario was constructed in 1797 by a Frenchman named Benjamin Constant. In response Kant wrote “On The Supposition of the Right to Lie From Philanthropy” in which it is explicitly stated “....To be truthful (honest) in all declarations is therefore a sacred command of reason prescribing unconditionally, one not to be restricted by any conveniences...”.

The problem is, of course, that lying in the face of criminal justice, which is what Constant is referring to from his rather obscure reading of Kant’s “Groundwork for the Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals” is by no means the same as lying under the auspices of a freely determinable will that Kant was actually talking about in the Groundwork, which by it’s very nature permits the rational agent in possession of it, to lie as the means to an apodectically moral end he himself has obtained. Herein being, of course, the preservation, or even the possible preservation, of a life.

Now, to be “universalized”, from the Kantian point of view, pertains only to the possibility of a subjective principle applying equally to all subjects under any condition. The exact wording is, “act only on those maxims I canst at the same time will to be a universal law”. Even if the maxim is forever be truthful, one has not the power to will it into being universal law, because he cannot in any way oblige any other mind to be as truthful.

Truth be told, the thesis taken directly from Constant does nothing whatsoever to show the intruder is in fact a murderer, which becomes a philosophical quagmire of “what if’s”. I mean, obviously, the guy in the back room is still alive or the guy at the door wouldn’t be after him. Now we see that if the guy opening the door let the intruder in and the guy in back room ends up dead directly because of it, the guy who didn’t lie has a serious problem with his morality.

“.....First, I don't know why it would appear to you that I'd be saying that objective morality would be predicated on anything about mental machinations....”

That’s not how it appeared to me, that you said objective morality would be predicated on anything about mental machinations. It appeared to me you said objective morality must be predicated on both mental and non-mental machinations, to whit: on the one hand the machinations we know about (the use of reason) and the machinations we don’t know about (the use of “....fields or whatever...”).

“Second, I’m not sure “the possibility for” adds anything to the sentence semantically”.

You brought up the possibility for objective reality by expounding the conditions under which it would be evident.

“Third: “.......what ability....?”

In general, it doesn’t matter what ability. The proposition “X is predicated on the ability of y” presupposes y has some ability from which X would follow. In this particular case, X (the possibility of objective morality), the abilities are predicated on (y) the properties of fields or whatever.

Fourth: “....."embedded with a moral stance," seems ontologically to suggest that you're thinking of moral stances as being something independent of both the mental and non-mental states in question...”

I have nothing whatsoever to say about non-mental states with respect to a moral stance as you said with “...the world apart from minds must somehow have moral stances embedded in it...”. Nevertheless, in the state of affairs with which I do have an opinion, that being the condition of rational agents with a determinable will, a moral stance is given necessarily and can not be independent of the mental state from which it arises.

How do I edit a comment after it’s posted? Hey.......I gotta ask somebody, right?

“....In any case, if Kant believes that you should ascertain whether an act is moral or not not by its consequences but by the motive or the intention of the actor (since two people may do the same act but with different intentions), then shouldn't he not judge the act of lying itself but the intention of the liar....”

This is correct. Kantian moral philosophy stipulates that a moral act is predicated solely on the premise that a person must always act according to determinations he himself deems fit. In the case at hand, lying to the murderer at the door is completely excused by the determination that any loss of human life, is his moral duty to, if not to prevent, then at least to obstruct. Which leads inexorably to the concept of an autonomous free will.

“..... for objective morality to exist in my view:.....”

In your view, apparently, the possibility for objective morality is predicated on the ability of both mental and non-mental machinations, such that both are embedded with a moral stance. Given that for mental existents, or as we know them, moral agents of a rational nature, the primary requirement, the absolutely necessary condition, for the determination of any moral stance is reason, and given that non-mental existents by definition have no such absolutely necessary condition.......how would any rational agent recognize a non-mental agent’s stance as moral? Granting that it is not required that a stance taken by one kind of entity conform to the congruent stance of another kind, it remains that the difference in the ground of each respective stance negates the possibility of equal consideration of their value. A non-mental existent may be morally inclined, but mental existents will have no means to understand it as such, hence will never know of it, which makes “objective morality” of this fashion moot.

Such is not the case if objective is meant to be that which is not subjective. If the qualifier is merely a “moral stance” in general, without regard to what volitions that stance actually exhibits, a rational agent with a determinable will is immediately presupposed, in order that there be a moral stance at all. Hence it is clear that from the perspective of each and every separate and distinct agent observing an action predicated on a determinable will, warrants the claim for objective moral stances, or, which is the same thing, objective morality.

The argument that by objective morality it is meant that any and all moral stances absolutely require precisely equitable volitions for a particular event, is absurd, at least under the common conditions of regular human life. Still, it is conceivable that relatively small groups of rational agents in a common culture may invoke equitable volitions in response to an administrative code affecting them all, but we might just call that ethics, not morality.

Yes? No? Maybe?

Ahhhh...ok. Thanks.

From this, I would answer your original question in parts. First, they are very different, so better/worse and right/wrong are irrelevant.

Second, the politician’s duty is to respond to the empirical predicates more properly called ethics, whereas adherence to the categorical imperative is a duty of a subjective rationality and is more properly called morality. A politician is a very specific kind of subjective rationality insofar as his duty as politician is bound to the laws of his culture, but a subjective rationality in general, without regard to his culture, is bound only by his own moral law.

Third, and following necessarily from the second, a categorical imperative has much more legislative power as grounds for an individual moral law than constitutional authority has for merely a cultural administrative law. Disobedience of civil law makes one’s actions illegal; disobedience of a C.I. makes one’s actions immoral.

Anyway......my opinion only, of course.

I looked for, and honestly, with the inclination towards actually finding, a disclosure of Kant’s three forms of the categorical imperative. I found different forms of imperatives, I found different formulations for arriving at kinds of imperatives, but nothing on categorical imperatives being of more than one form.

I have an idea as to the resolution of the condemned Aristotelian politician and the Kantian moral agent, but first I should need some help with what is meant by the three forms.

Thanks.

“what, for you, are your anchors in your thinking-about-thinking“

For me, explore various theoretical/speculative philosophies concerning knowledge, find one that fits into my personal set of cognitive prejudices, analyze it to a fare-thee-well, and if it still fits......treat it as my own.

I must say, though, that when I write something along a philosophical bent, come back to it some time later and don’t hate it, I have entertained myself.

An observation:

On noumena:
The ubiquitous “thing-in-itself” refers simply to the possibility that the knowledge of a thing does not make explicit that the thing could not be known otherwise. Humans as rational agents have no right to declare a thing to be none other than it is known to them, without regard to the cognitive systems of other kinds of rational agents. Granting the thing in itself merely acknowledges that the thing may possess qualities unavailable to us because our kind of cognitive system has no capacity to understand what they may be, and indeed, it is not even necessary that it be so. The point being, here “thing-in-itself” is meant to be a real, hence sensible, empirical object.

Kant’s theory of knowledge is built on layers, a sequence of.....if this than that by law and necessity......until perception is united with knowledge, without contradiction, such that the external world makes sense to us. Along the way, as a link in the chain, understanding is asked to relate some real object given from sense data to its corresponding representation found in intuition. Given that the faculty of intuition is merely the collection of the entirety of representations given to us by the sense data of experience, and in this respect the terms “intelligible object” and “representation found in intuition” are interchangeable, and given that the faculty of judgement as the sole arbitor of the correctness of the choice of “object” understanding intuits in its business of relating to a particular perception is not yet invoked, such object stands alone simply as an “object-in-itself” without regulatory appeal.


It is well known that Kant employs the term thing in itself when discussing noumena (i.e., B312) but it behooves one to understand he does not mean it as a real object as is the empirical “thing-in-itself” which theoretically never lends itself to our knowledge. Therefore, I submit that in the OP, while Kant does so differentiate phenomena from noumena, the world as “thing-in-itself” (noumena) as stated, is a gross misunderstanding grounded merely in the logical conclusion that neither kind of thing is knowable, the former real “thing” unknowable because of itself, the latter intelligible “thing” unknowable because of ourselves.

“do empiricism and logic have equal grounds in determining reality?“

Yes. Empiricism informs us there is something to make determinations about, logic informs us about the correctness of them.

Does everything, every thing, have its start?

It must, if it is to be called a thing. How could there be that which is called a thing if it did not have an instantiation belonging to it necessarily. Without regard to the pure form of the thing a priori (the thinking of it) or the experience of it a posteriori (the perceiving of it), the methodology for its attention to mind invokes its own singular dedicated temporal occassion. Neuroscience aside, of course.

While it is reasonable to suppose that which has not yet come to the attention of the mind in form or experience is at least possible and at most probable, the mind has neither legitimate rights nor means to cognize apodictically with respect to it.

I wasn’t asked, but nonetheless: if by “perfection” of a thing it is meant the ascension to the “perfect” idea of that thing, than the formal criterion for “perfection” would be that for which a change in the thing is not impossible.