Your quote hits the sweet spot in me. Which is sort of a euphemism for spending a long time in the dark between the ears.

But you and I both may have missed the mark, insofar as the OP asks how to start philosophy, not so much how to actually do it. In which case everyone else is more correct then we are, for to start philosophy presupposes someone else has already done it, and left a record to be subsequently treated as a mere experience, like any other.

Nahhhh….if philosophy is to be done, shut the hell up and go dark, I say. Otherwise, all that’s being done is recounting history, and any ol’ fool can do that.

As you say, it’s not impossible that someone will claim they are his.

I hesitate to call my reveries of thought philosophy. — Moliere

I might go the other way, and surmise that all my reveries of thought have philosophical implications.

…..some demon making us think 2+2 is 4…. — Manuel

Yeah, those damn demons. If one of ‘em wants to make me only think it’s me counting my own fingers, not much I can do about it.

I am arguing for the de-valuing of moral facts — Bob Ross

….with which I am in total accord.

Do you believe, then, that obligations do not begin with a desire? — Bob Ross

I agree with the proposition that moral obligations do not begin with desires.

Why not take up that fundamental obligation and deploy the objective implications thereof? In other words, the fundamental obligation is a hypothetical imperative of which one has already committed themselves to and, thusly, why not simply obligate oneself to whatever is implied from that commitment? — Bob Ross

All good, nevertheless my only objection is here: fundamental obligation is categorical, represented as a command of reason, re: shall, whereas hypotheticals are mere ought’s.

If one acts in accordance with the c.i. his morality is sustained, even if he feels abhorrent because of the action taken pursuant to it. If he acts via a hypothetical, he may only possibly be moral, but it remains equally possible that he is immoral, for here he may have allowed his practical inclinations, re: desires, to override his own principles.

Why not take up…..? Mostly because it’s all-too-often very much easier not to.

Demonstration can be an extremely high standard to meet in philosophy. — Manuel

According to You-Know-Who, only mathematics affords demonstration, as opposed those propositions that are “immediately certain”, which, I guess, just means those propositions that don’t require demonstration.

I'll echo Banno in saying philosophy is social — Moliere

Philosophizing is social.

is doing the approach to philosophy; when such introspection arrives at a conclusion, philosophy is being done.

Haven’t you ever noticed how much you can get done when nobody’s bothering you? “In the zone” ring any bells?

I'm not sure that I could climb to those heights. — Moliere

No heights. Depths. My thought for defining element was the intuitive use of pure reason.

Step down: subsuming a possibility under a principle;
Step down: the possibility of mathematics;
Step down: the construction of conceptions a priori to validate the object of the possibility;
Step down: the construction of objects a priori representing the constructed conceptions;
Step down: intuit the phenomena representing the constructed conceptions;
Step down: create the objects the phenomena represent, which is the intuitive use of pure reason.

Divisions of time, same thing. Quantities of space, yep…same thing.

Something only the human mind can do, hence a defining element of it, as far as we know. Added bonus, because you asked a couple days ago….it’s how we know 7 + 5 =12.

Anyway…just to put this to bed.

It's that intuition which "sensible intuition" is being defined against, rather than animal knowledge — Moliere

Yes, I get that, but the ask is….what is a defining element of the mind.

I guess I don’t get how something every human mind can do, or there is something for which every human mind has the capacity, is a defining element. Just seems more apropos to claim for a defining element as not found anywhere else, rather than found everywhere else.

Anyway….idle thought, while remaining in a non-collapsible box.

The defining element of our mind is its possession of a sensible intuition….. — Moliere

I was wonderin’…..like…..why should we attribute to our minds a defining element given from our senses, when it is certain other animals have senses? If we grant other animals have senses, we cannot immediately deny they have sensible intuitions of some kind. It would appear some form of sensible intuition is merely one element for any animal with sensory apparatus, hence not so defining an element for just our human mind.

So….what is a defining element of a human mind, implying that which belongs to no other animal, insofar as none of them offer any indication they possess it.

Without a comprehensive catalogue of what and how many elements there are in a human mind, it defies possibility for picking out a defining element. And if possibility is defied, what chance does certainty have? As well, being human, how to alleviate the privileging associated with examining our own minds, carrying the inclination to vainglorious elemental composition.

So not only is it being asked what element is definitive, but what are the choices for it, and given the choice, how is it the case it belongs solely to humans.

Care to bid on another defining element?

I mention the problem of other minds…. — Banno

And I commented to the contrary, with consistent generality, the highlighted relevance not on rules. Your originating mention, as stated, is, ipso facto, false.

it should be set before us clearly. — Banno

Ehhhh….only you says it wasn’t. At this point, it’s a tie, I think it was both clear and relevant and you apparently do not. Or at least question whether it is. For the sake of a mere tie, I see no reason to change anything.

Actually, Frank called one of the quotes an insight, which implies it was both clear and relevant to him, so it’s two to one.

I'm not seeing the relevance of your quotes. — Banno

Can you trust me that there is one, otherwise I wouldn’t have posted them?

Jamal and Mww have taught me much….. — Moliere

Thanks.

All I know of Quine is the Two Dogmas essay. Do you have some short article where he states, or some second order literature that recounts, the argument?

Not those idealists of a certain kind:

“….. For although education may furnish, and, as it were, engraft upon a limited understanding rules borrowed from other minds, yet the power of employing these rules correctly must belong to the pupil himself; and no rule which we can prescribe to him with this purpose is, in the absence or deficiency of this gift of nature, secure from misuse….”
(CPR)

“…. We may further remark here that some minds only find full satisfaction in what is known through perception. (…) Other minds, on the contrary, seek merely the abstract concepts which are needful for applying and communicating knowledge….”
(WWR)

Yeah, my take as well.

Thanks.

“…. All that in any way belongs or can belong to the world is inevitably thus conditioned through the subject, and exists only for the subject. The world is idea….”

Even if it could be said “conditioned through the subject”, does it follow that all “…exists only for the subject…”?

I don’t see how that which belongs to this, can exist only for that.

What say you?

I think the very fact that we must posit an unknowable "in itself" defines our condition and is far from irrelevant. — Janus

Oh absolutely. Simple complementarity principle: if we insist there is that which is knowable, that which is unknowable in itself is given immediately.

Do you mean getting clearer via critical thought….. — Janus

I meant the curtailment the extravagances of thought without stifling it. The subject imagining freely, but understanding he can only go so far with it.

don't think being affected pre-cognitively can be like anything — Janus

Cool. Just what I was hoping to hear.

that there are processes that are, or "something" that is, that we cannot be aware of creating this shared world of things we inhabit. — Janus

There very well may be those processes. I just figure if we not only aren’t, but couldn’t possibly be, aware of them, it makes no difference to us whether there are or not. How would we ever be able to tell? Correct me if I’m off-base, but isn’t that what the doctrine of phenomenology posits? Those processes creating this shared world we may be able to know about?

I hear ya.

My getting us clearer as subjects, is probably more closely related to metaphysics, which in turn is closer to your mention of critical thought.

What do you mean by….what would it be like to be……affected pre-cognitively?

Kant thought Hume a really good philosopher. — Moliere

Acute. Celebrated. Ablest, most ingenious, of skeptical philosophers. A few of one’s accolades for the other.

If only he’d taken that one last step……

Ahhh. All’s well that ends in reason alone.

Still….bone of contention, due to my lack of sufficient study perhaps….seems odd Kant would declare it rational to behave in accordance with the old ways, but declare sapere aude in keeping with the new-fangled Enlightenment philosophy in which behavior would definitely not be in such accordance.

I think the big conceptual difference between Kant and Hegel is their respective use of the concept "time". Hegel challenges the law of the excluded middle on the basis of time, where Kant accepts it because he believes Aristotle started a science of logic, and he's picking up that torch to further the project of a science of logic. Hegel builds a logic which "contains" or at least allows contradiction at certain points of time in the name of sublation, due to his reading of the history of philosophy — Moliere

Good. Thank you. A response not loaded with useless metaphors, just straight answers to direct questions. ‘Preciate it.

On “Religion Within the Limits….”, I must confess to not including it in my favored field of study. Religion, donchaknow. (shudder).

But I do have it already under the title “…Limits of Reason Alone”, Greene, 1934, which might explain why I didn’t recognize “bare reason”: re: the limit of religion in Bennet 2017, among others. Despite all that, I’ll look for a dedicated reference to it, see what all the fuss is about.

Carry on.

Kant embraces human autonomy, but then argues that it's rational to continue believing in the old (….) ways -- at least within the bounds of bare reason. — Moliere

What is bare reason?

….the place of reason for Kant is not a universal reason in Hegel's sense. It's universal in that it holds for all experience, but it's not universal in the sense that it holds for all reality. — Moliere

Place of reason. Is that supposed to indicate a condition wherein the faculty of reason is suited to be employed? So Kant's place of reason means it is suitable for employment universally with respect to all experience, but not suitable for employment universally with respect to all reality?

So what grounds a universal reason in Hegel’s sense, such that its place is both with respect to all experience and with all reality? And if all reality is a possible experience, and in Kant there is a place for reason with respect to possible experience, isn’t that synonymous with Hegel’s sense of a universal reason?
————-

“….. in the expectation that there may perhaps be conceptions which relate à priori to objects.…we form to ourselves…the idea of a science of pure understanding and rational cognition, by means of which we may cogitate objects entirely à priori. A science of this kind….must be called transcendental logic, because it has….to do with the laws of understanding and reason…..only in an à priori relation to objects.

I disbelieve there is a transcendental logic. — Moliere

Which is not to disbelieve in the pure thought that there may be conceptions which relate a priori to objects, but only disbelieve in the relating the conceptions to the objects, or, which is the same thing, disbelieve in cognizing objects entirely a priori given their antecedent conceptions.

Without a Kantian transcendental logic, how do space and time, purely transcendental conceptions, relate entirely a priori to objects? Apparently, Hegel has a way, himself a transcendental philosopher, so I’m led to think. Or at least a German idealist in some strict sense.

Hegel: the categories define what it is to be an object in general, such that it can be given, separating the immanent from the transcendent;
Kant: the categories define** the conditions for knowing what an object in general is, its being already given, separating experience from illusion.
(**not really, but for the sake of consistency…..)

So….it’s fine to disbelieve in Kantian transcendental logic, which presupposes a fair understanding of what it is, but how is Hegel’s logic any less transcendental?

Rhetorical. Again…..I just had nothing better to do.

Given my understanding of the conceptions the words “unworldly nonsense” represent, it is safe to say I’ve never spent one second of time on it.

If it is indeed the case there is all too often, which necessarily includes just once, a quantity/quality inverse ration on forums, or any trans-communicative medium, how is it self-flattering arrogance to state that case?

The criteria for arrogance cannot be contained in the necessity that all judgements are subjective.
————-

The Democracy of Objects is interesting, and offers clues on your writing style.

……all too often with the inverse quantity/quality ratio.

Philosophy gets us clearer on empirical reality perhaps…. — Janus

If one holds with the position that it is we who decide what reality is, or, perhaps, how the reality that is, is to be known as such, that says more about the decision-maker than what is decided upon.

Philosophy gets us clearer as subjects, yes, regardless of that to which we as subjects direct ourselves.
————-

“…. But whoever thinks he can learn Kant's philosophy from the exposition of others makes a terrible mistake. 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. No Critique of Reason can avail them, no philosophy, they need a medicina mentis, first as a sort of purgative, un petit cours de senscommunologie, and then one must further see whether, in their case, there can even be any talk of philosophy….”
(WWR, Preface, xxvii, 1844)

I take it -- and I'm hoping you do too --that the point of the philosophical enterprise is getting clearer on reality. — plaque flag

‘Tis vain hope, I must say, although you are nonetheless welcome to take that point.

In the text, Descartes stipulates that the I exists….as a thinking thing. The common iteration of that stipulation only states “I am”, which does not necessarily indicate an existence. And even if reducing the I that exists to the I that is, merely because it is the very same as the I that thinks, re: I am that which thinks, still doesn’t say much about what that I is. Cognitive representation, and its coalescence into a system, had yet to become a speculative doctrine predicated on logic alone.

Brandom’s Kant is committed to the view that the unity of apperception is achieved through a process in which an agent unifies her judgments…..

“…. The first pure cognition of understanding, then, upon which is founded all its other exercise, and which is at the same time perfectly independent of all conditions of mere sensuous intuition, is the principle of the original synthetical unity of apperception….”

In the first it is said the unity of apperception is an achievement by means of a process, in the second it is said the unity of apperception is that by which processes are achieved. While each of these are or may be the case in their respective philosophies, they are not compatible with each other.

“…. if I investigate more closely the relation of given cognitions in every judgement (…) I find that judgement is nothing but the mode of bringing given cognitions under the objective unity of apperception.….”

This just shows distinctions in the domains of such unity. In the objective the cognitions are presupposed insofar as there is consciousness that their representations are already united, in the synthetic the unity is only the consciousness that those representations can be united.

Brandom’s Kant may well infuse responsibility and whatnot into a purely transcendental systemic methodology, but Kant himself does not. There is a natural sense of responsibility and commitment in the general human condition, but they do not reside in principles contained a priori in understanding. It is absurd to suppose one is responsible or committed to that which is necessarily mandated for him exclusively by his intellectual constitution, however speculative it may be.

Nahhhh…..the unity of apperception isn’t an achievement, even in the loosest sense. Pretty hard to achieve a fundamental principle. On the other hand, if the unity of apperception is an achievement, than it isn’t a view to which Kant is committed.

Just offering a hidden dualism. No big deal. All the other ones been beat to death, so,…..

I am me because there are others who are not me. — plaque flag

I am me because it is impossible I am not, regardless of others.

I think it's clear that truth is….. “When a thing, in reality, meets all the prerequisites to be a dog, then it is a dog". — Judaka

As do I, and that kind of clarity for truth obtains for any thing whatsoever, by reducing to the simple proposition that truth, generally, is the accordance of a cognition with its object.

I got nothing else to do, so……



Is the illegality found in the categorical error of at once denying and affirming the same thing?

Or is the illegality a logical fallacy exhibited in some propter hoc iteration?

Or is methodological solipsism merely the occassion of denying while affirming common sense realism?

Assuming at least one of those is a sufficiently reasonable interpretation, how do you figure Kant does any of those three things?

And even if none of those are sufficient interpretations, what is it about taking for granted, which reduces to presuppositions, that makes such taking illegal, which reduces to logical law?
————

It seems as though you’re just saying Kant contradicts himself, regarding the notion of causal common sense realism, or perhaps just in his employment of the conception itself.

What is the usual way that common sense realism grasps the causal relation between objects and sensory apparatus? If Kant takes the way the relation is grasped by common sense realism for granted, but takes it for granted illegally, then it must be the case he is not in fact grasping the causal relation in the way of common sense realism at all, but has instead inflicted onto it that which doesn’t belong to it.

If he takes for granted common sense realism’s grasp of the relation between objects and sensory apparatus is the case, which is its affirmation, how can he at the same time deny it?
————

All objection disappears with the exclusion of “simultaneously”, insofar as he does grant the object/sensory apparatus causal relation common sense realism professes to endorse, but does not grant that relation as a “legally” sufficient condition for what subsequently occurs because of it.
———-

He did inherit from others the so-called methodological solipsism…..how could he not, being immersed in academia….but he moreso expanded it, by inventing a new one, to which, of course, it is doubtful he would have given that doctrinal or theoretic name or acceded to its implication.

Feedback. It's very beautiful and difficult and 'foolish.' — plaque flag

Feedback. The charitable expression of circularity, which is indeed foolish, yet at the same time, inescapable. Using reason to investigate reason. Like….no problem there, right?

Humans. The only species known to confuse themselves and simultaneously insist they’re not.

(Sigh)

I take critical philosophy to be interested in articulating the limits of speculation — plaque flag

Cool. I’d go as far as to take it a step further, and call it the limits of reason. But then, I suppose speculation presupposes reason, so….close enough.

….the brain and its functions are also representations…. — Bob Ross

Odd innit? In the attempt for empirical knowledge, the irreducible origin of it is impossible to know.

Humans don’t think/cognize/comprehend in its rational method, in the same terms as the source of their knowledge requires in its physical method.

THAT’S the hidden dualism, I should think.

Positivism and phenomenology are 'basically' Kantian, seems to me. Perhaps all [ critical ] philosophy is. — plaque flag

Usually philosophy is critical of something, but Kantian philosophy on the other hand, is critical of philosophy itself. Or maybe the general metaphysical discipline specifically.

Positivism, that is plain ol’ basic positivism, re: Compte, 1844, if it actually does deny knowledge not derived from experience, cannot be Kantian.

Phenomenology…..ehhhhh, I dunno. Not sure whether, or even how, the Brentano/Husserl doctrine relates to Kantian phenomenalism. I think the doctrine of intentionality towards an object attributes more to human intelligence than it deserves, beside the fact the origin and methodological placement of Kantian phenomena is not a conscious state of the subject, whereas in Brentano/Husserl it is insofar as it is much more related to experience itself.

Disclaimer: I have but cursory familiarity with those P philosophies. Maybe just enough to get me into trouble if I say too much.