Because that's the whole issue at stake here, whether or not moral propositions are in some way dependent on the mind or not for their truth. People typically think and act as though moral propositions are indicative of real properties and not just mental states. — darthbarracuda

Is that the issue? I thought the issue was whether there are 'moral facts' or not? Nothing about the mind was mentioned.

Are mental states not 'real properties?' What relevance does any of this have?

Just like I can believe the legal system is wholly dependent on minds but nevertheless not be a criminal. — darthbarracuda

But surely you think certain things are actually illegal? And that there are legal facts?

No, I think moral claims aim at truth but always fail to attain it, because there is no truth to moral claims, because there are no objective, real moral truthmakers. — darthbarracuda

So, if there is no truth to moral claims, it must be that there's no truth to 'torturing children is wrong.' And so you must be committed to thinking it isn't true that torturing children is wrong. Or what am I missing?

I fail to see why. In order to agree that something is true, we need to know what truth is, which you said apparently comes after determining what is and is not true. This isn't coherent. — darthbarracuda

Is torturing children wrong? By your own lights, it seems you can't ascertain the answer to this question until you have a philosophical theory of truth. But this would make you either an idiot or a psychopath.

I don't think there is any legitimate ground for the proposition that torturing children is wrong that isn't dependent on the mind, particularly the unconscious. — darthbarracuda

What does it matter whether it's 'dependent on the mind' or not?

But it is useful to continue acting as it morality does exist, not only so others don't see me as a psychopath — darthbarracuda

If you don't think torturing kids is wrong, but you pretend to think that so others don't suspect you of thinking torturing kids isn't wrong, aren't you a psychopath?

but also because I nevertheless have moral compulsions that motivate me to act in a certain way. I feel the universe should "be" a certain way, even if I know there isn't ultimately any mind-independent reason for the must-be. — darthbarracuda

You mean, you think moral claims are true?

I'd be curious to know what you think makes moral propositions true. Without God (or even with him...), there's nothing, from what I can tell, preventing us from asking "so what?" — darthbarracuda

What makes anything true? Before asking that question, we need to agree on the simple fact that they are true. But a deflationary account seems promising.

So you don't think torturing children is wrong, but it's convenient to act like it's wrong?

Or, you do 'legitimately believe it,' but only when you're not doing philosophy? Do your beliefs change when you start doing philosophy?

So it is truth apt, but not ultimately truth apt?

What is the difference between being truth apt and ultimately truth apt?

I ask because the default position seems to be that there is no difference, since there is only one truth predicate with which we tend to be competent – 'true.'

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It's not that torturing children is actually okay or righteous, but that there is no actual real moral truth to the matter. — darthbarracuda

But what can this mean other than to say that it's not actually or really wrong to torture children? But that's wrong, so your position must be wrong. And what would it mean to say that it's wrong to torture children, but not really or actually wrong to torture them? That just sounds like a contradiction.

Why is it that we can fundamentally disagree about how to behave if there is an objective moral code we're all supposedly aware of? — Marchesk

So is the idea "if there is an objective X, we can't disagree about X?"

But that's nonsense, right?

There's legitimately something that makes them true or false; the presence or absence of moral properties in the world. — darthbarracuda

1) "It's wrong to torture children." This is a moral claim, and it's also true. So there are true moral claims.

2) "It's wrong to torture children" is true because it's wrong to torture children. What makes it true is the fact that it's wrong to torture children. Since this is expressed by a moral claim, it's presumably a moral fact.

3) So, there is a moral fact. QED.

why would there be ways in which we should act - in the realist sense. — shmik

But look, this is a ridiculous question. Surely you do think there are ways you should act?

Moral realism IMO is the default position. Moral claims can be made using natural language, and they're just as truth-evaluable as any other sort of claim.

So it's incumbent on the anti-realist to tell us why this truth-evaluability is either somehow mistaken, or we're all massively incompetent with the sentences proffering such claims, or the 'truth' they express derives from things other than what they seem to derive from, etc. I'm not saying these things aren't possible, but as a starting point anti-realism is the one that has work to do.

It would be different if moral claims were in some obvious way different form non-moral ones, but they're not.

Yes, you're roughly bracketing what a linguist would call the 'constituent structure' of the sentence: you get bracketings like this in intro linguistics classes to demonstrate structural ambiguities. Labeled bracketing is a standard notation in linguistics, as a way of representing syntactic structure generally, but it becomes very complicated as the pieces of machinery in the theory increase.

The reason bracketing structure tends to coincide with disambiguation is that it's generally assumed interpretation is compositional, meaning the semantic content of a linguistic structure is systematically (generally functionally) composed from the meanings of its constituent parts. Different constituency structures lead to different systematic combinations, and so different meanings for the structures as a whole.

For example, in 1) 'on a hill' and 'with a telescope' would be called nominal adjuncts to 'man,' and so semantically would be treated as modifiers of 'man.' But in 2), while 'on a hill' still modifies 'man,' 'with a telescope' is a verbal adjunct, and so modifies 'saw.' In the first case, 'with a telescope' intersects the set of men with the set of things in possession of telescopes; in the second, it intersects the set of man-seeing events with events making use of a telescope as instrument.

Your metaphysics is probably a retroactive expression of your behavior/outlook.

The APA is basically a religious organization, let's be honest. No philosophy takes place outside of that sort of framework. Your typical middle class AP philosopher in an American department has all his critical faculties fly out the window when it comes to supporting highly controversial but contemporarily popular political positions and the metaphysical import that they have, on no grounds whatsoever.

All I am asking of you is to read what people have actually written before you go off. I'm fine if you disagree with me, or even think I'm an idiot. What I cannot stand is the accusation that I have simply said things without providing reasons when that is what this whole thread has been about. If you care enough to respond to someone, care enough to read what they actually say.

You've given no reasons for anything you've said in this thread, beyond bald assertions, starting with: — Wayfarer

You haven't read the thread, because if you did, you'd realize this was false. As well as how absurd it was to point out the existence of the Refutation when I led off by explicitly mentioning it.

You've shown no insight into why Kant is even discussed, when challenged, you resort to derision then go off in a huff. — Wayfarer

Read. the. thread. I'm not here to hold your hand for you.

Before you respond, read. the. thread.

It's not 'laughable' that philosophers before Kant didn't deeply analyse the processes of reason. — Wayfarer

Yes, it is.

My retort wasn't hyperbole; it was a response to yours. I mean, look at this:

it was Kant who methodically and critically assessed the question. — Wayfarer

Kant was just one man. The whole discipline preceded him, and none of the questions he addressed were new. This is absurd.

You're giving the distinct impression of not knowing what you're talking about. — Wayfarer

I'm really not going to stand for this, man. Peddle elsewhere.

True, but that we cannot even possibly understand how it could be otherwise is an indication that we have no reason to think it could be otherwise. — Agustino

And so no proof of necessity has been given. Note that the Humean Pyrrhonist can say the same thing.

Why did he call it synthetic unity of apperception then? I remember as being that which makes the self and the world possible. — Agustino

I haven't read that section of the Critique in years. But the two are, as I recall, deeply related. The unity of the world is related to the unity of the self. That's all in tune with the general solipsistic tendencies of the time.

The God thing is irrelevant. Kant was simply mistaken that his epistemological position, and his position regarding the empirical reality versus transcendental ideality of the world, differed from Berkeley's.

Because unlike them, he deeply analysed the processes of reason, knowedge, and thinking itself. — Wayfarer

It's laughable to claim that philosophers before Kant didn't 'deeply analyze the processes of reason...' etc. 'Unlike them?' I'm sorry, this is just totally ludicrous. This is the kind of ahistorical nonsense I'm talking about.

What are the conditions by which I know the world, or what is good, or what is beautiful? — Wayfarer

Again, epistemology is ancient.

He differentiated his view from Berkeley in a lengthy argument in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, the 'Refutation of Idealism'. — Wayfarer

Yeah, I'm aware of the refutation. But it's not a refutation of Berkeley, even if Kant thought he was.

I think his analysis of experience shows that experience - as we find ourselves experiencing - necessarily will follow those necessities - we cannot even imagine it being otherwise. But of course, it could be possible. — Agustino

As we find ourselves experiencing – but this 'finding ourselves' – the faculties we happen to have, for no discernible reason, are still potentially contingent, and Kant admits we can't even sensibly answer questions about what things would be like otherwise. This doesn't mean that he's showed such a necessity, only that he is committed to claiming we can't answer (or possibly even understand) certain questions.

Note that it's always necessary that given something is the way it actually is, it actually is that way.

an unexperienced synthesis of self and world that occurs prior to experience and indeed makes experience itself possible — Agustino

Are you wording this from the text itself? My memory of the unity of apperception has to do with the fact that it's only intelligible to have a thought insofar as one can at least in principle intuit that it is 'mine.' This is roughly the move made in the cogito as Descartes qualifies it.

I had in mind his response to Hobbes (I think it was) when he claimed that the cogito wasn't a syllogism as such, but a sort of bootstrapping intuition on which allowed one to conclude that any thought that was had must be 'my' thought (which is the unity of apperception).

the world could possibly not be intelligible — Agustino

I think a classical rationalist would deny this.

But Kant showed that they can't be wrong about causality, and showed why the world is necessarily intelligible - because it is structured, a priori to experience, by space, time and causality. This is a significant achievement, because it makes the question "is the world intelligible" redundant. — Agustino

In fact Kant didn't show that – he postulated it, but there's nothing to show that the way our faculties happen to be are necessary – it's only that given that we have faculties that enforce necessities within them, such necessities obtain – well, within them.

With regard to whether our faculties could be different, or if it's necessary that they function in such a way, his claim was that to know this, or to even raise it as a question that we can answer, is impossible. So there is a deeper contingency to Kant's system, even if you take his positing of such faculties as justified.

Objects of perception are given in space. Space is a precondition of perception, and therefore cannot itself be perceived. You cannot hold space, touch space, etc. — Agustino

That is a (highly specific) philosophical position, not an ordinary uncontroversial fact.

Yeah maybe if you're looking in a mirror. — Agustino

Yes. Yes, that's what I meant.

I am unaware that they held them, if you have evidence of this please cite it. — Agustino

There are literally too many examples to cite. But you can start with the Stoics – I'm no expert on this, but they believed that the necessity of causation was a necessary precondition for the rational intelligibility of the world (and therefore for its existence, since reality is inherently intelligible). Kant makes the same move: it is necessary for causation to be to literally hold the world together. He is slightly different in saying that this is more or less the same as holding experience together.

Insight has to do with how one solves a problem provided by his context. It can be impressive if the way the problem is solved is spectacular, as in Kant's case with regards to causality. — Agustino

"By means of a faculty?"

No they didn't think everything was empirical, quite obviously. But neither did they think that causality was a precondition of any experience at all... that's Kant's original insight. — Agustino

OK, I see. I think maybe this is debatable, but the rationalist position has always been that causality is a prior necessary to hold the world together, as its precondition. Kant is doing the same thing, he just thinks the (empirical) world is in your head, something Berkeley already thought. So if you like he's resuscitating the rationalist position contra Hume to make it compatible with Berkeley. That is an innovation of a sort, but not quite the one that's attributed to him.

Conditions of perception are not themselves perceived - the eye does not see itself. Therefore, you can say that objects of perception are ideal - which is what Berkeley does - but to make the claim that space, time etc. are ideal requires making them a priori. — Agustino

This strikes me as a verbal dispute. By 'not beyond perception' I did not intend to limit myself to 'objects of perception.' Though there seems to be no good reason to me to believe space isn't an object of perception.

And of course, the eye does see itself.

Who held them before Kant? — Agustino

Pretty much every rationalist philosopher prior to Malebranche and Leibniz and so on.

Well of course most of a thinker's ideas aren't original, even if he is a great thinker, like Kant or Schopenhauer - however, some of them are original insights. It would be strange to say that there are no original insights, and everything has already been thought before. — Agustino

It's not that I think everything has been thought before, it's just that in its milieu no purportedly original insights look very impressive. Their impressiveness is a function of ignorance of the surrounding historical context.

Sure he was reacting against Hume's skepticism of causality, I'm already well aware of that. — Agustino

But consider: how could Hume have been making a stride for Kant to react against, if prior to Kant, everyone had already thought causation was empirical (Hume's position)? Kant was trying to salvage an older position that Hume was attacking. If Hume had not been attacking it, no one would have thought Hume was making any point at all. Yet he could not have been attacking it, if there were nothing to attack.

In fact, to understand Kant, you must understand that it was the attempt to empiricize especially causality that he was reacting against. Again, situate it in history.

But Kant didn't invent the aprioricity of time, space and causality. These are old rationalist notions.

My point is we tend to be ahistorical in discussing individual thinkers, because as single people we just don't read very much, so we don't understand that individual thinkers are not as original as they seem to be when read in isolation.

The point was just that something being ideal, even in the sense Kant uses the term, is not for it to be a priori. — The Great Whatever

Yes obviously. Nowhere did I claim that. For something perceived to be ideal doesn't require it to be a priori — Agustino

In what sense are space and time ideal if they are not a priori? It seems to me that it is necessary to a priorize them à la Kant to prove them to be ideal... — Agustino

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So I'd say that for something non-perceptual to be ideal does require it in some sense to be a priori - hence why space and time are called transcendentally ideal. — Agustino

It's misleading to call space and time 'non-perceptual' in Kant's sense, because although they aren't objects of perception, they are conditions of perception, and so in this sense are not independent of perception (are not transcendentally real), which is precisely what Kant's point is.

I'm not sure I committed myself to claiming you perceive space, but the contention is purely verbal: to perceive objects in their spatial relations is to perceive space in some trivial sense, which is all that's needed (and probably all that can be made intelligible).

The point was just that something being ideal, in the sense Kant uses the term, is not for it to be a priori. Or is this the distinction you don't understand? Ideality in Kant is opposed to reality, not to a posteriority.

Ideal, meaning not independent of their perception. What is perceptual doesn't need to be a priori.

Locke – Lockean substance is the thing-in-itself, reduction of traditional metaphysical categories to epistemological categories of man, project of dissection of the human mind to discover the conditions of the possibility of knowledge

Descartes – synthetic unity of apperception

Berkeley – ideality of space and time (Kant renounces Berkeley explicitly but ends up adopting his position almost exactly – he does apriorize them, but this is a rhetorical move to salvage metaphysics, not one that's argued for)

Hume – 'destruction of metaphysics,' analytic-synthetic distinction

The Critique of Pure Reason is often said to be the key philosophical text of the modern age, and I firmly believe that to be true. — Wayfarer

I think it's a reactionary text that systematizes the thoughts of more innovative thinkers, and in doing so reduces them to make room for more traditionalist Christian moralizing and speculation.

None of these accusations can be leveled at Descartes. He was a madman!

Because Kant turned the focus squarely onto the 'conditions of knowledge', what it requires to say that we know something, what the conditions are for us to know anything whatever. I think hardly any scientific materialists understand the Critique - because if they did, I don't see how they could remain materialists. — Wayfarer

Epistemology is an ancient discipline, and had always been concerned with these questions. It's a sort of historical revisionism to suggest otherwise, as it is to suggest Kant was a 'destroyer of metaphysics,' etc. None of these things are true.

It's kind of funny, I read an intro to the Critique once that made fun of some of its early reviewers who 'failed to grasp' how revolutionary it was and so on. But I tend to think, no, those early reviewers saw it for what it was, and of course once something becomes influential it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and its own influence spirals out of control, until all kinds of attributions of innovation are ahistorically attached to it in retrospect, because people read the Critique and don't read much of anything else.

Modernism is also a lie, btw!

Agreed! His presence in the curriculum is mostly to serve as a figure that's been transcended. But most of the people who take him to be passe are a lot dumber than him!

Funny argument. It's almost certainly fallacious due to a deep misunderstanding about the nature of probability, but I could easily see this as a theological position in some Borgesian treatise.

Which they took as a "personal insult". — Question

>:O

No, I think the skins are thicker here.

There's a difference between indispensability and quality. Kant is indispensable to the tradition, because you can't read a lot of philosophy without reading him. The same is true of Descartes, but Descartes seems to have been a genius of some sort, which I wouldn't say of Kant, who wasn't bold enough, and was too bookkeepery, for genius. Though Descartes' originality is also generally inflated, and most of his ideas, including the notion of the first person as epistemologically grounding, are in some way ancient. That's not his fault, though – there's nothing new under the sun.

Well, I thought 'overrated' meant large margin between praise/attention paid to versus worth. You can pick Kant because of the sheer amount of attention and praise paid to him. Obviously there are lots of worse philosophers.

So for instance, you could knock someone like Derrida, but he's less overrated than Kant because there is a large contingent of people who do not take Derrida seriously, whereas the same isn't true for Kant.

What kind of required logic courses were you taking for a philosophy BA that were as hard as calculus?

Alright, but I think even if you're math-phobic having to do a little logic shouldn't be a dealbreaker. Is it pointless? I dunno, I wouldn't want to go anywhere near AP without a lot more than what's required for a BA. *shrug*

There's a fantasy series on this theme, and the main character is named after the disciple – The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. It's pretty good.

Most philosophy departments also require their majors to take an upper level symbolic logic course. If you're not good at advanced logic, or if the professor is terrible, then expect to find this class highly frustrating and nerve-wracking. — Thorongil

Man, these poor philosophy majors would never survive in a math department, let's be real...first-order logic is not going to kill you.

Sorry, I wish I had more advice. I'm trying to get into academia, but I managed to get into a Ph.D. program with a stipend, so I don't have to worry about funding for now. So I don't know what I would do if it was a big financial risk to take on instead. And certainly not if my goals were spiritual rather than practical.

Here's what I think I do know, though:

1) Philosophy will not give you spiritual awakening or relief, or solve your problems. Philosophy is not that good, or interesting. If you are hoping to become enlightened, what you are hoping for will not happen. You are not even guaranteed, from studying philosophy, to gain any insight into anything, worldly or otherwise.

2) Philosophy will not open any financial avenues if you don't plan on going to law or med school.

3) Philosophy will not give you pride.

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The bottom line is, philosophy does not have anything substantial to offer, intellectually or in terms of coping with the world. It would be a bad idea to give up a life you enjoy for it.

The noumenon is just Lockean substance (Locke even calls it the I-know-not-which).