Science is, for many if not most scientists, a spiritual practice, a way of transcending their self by achieving an understanding of the world. The rituals of bottle washing and statistical analysis are part of a far bigger picture, they have a place within a great enterprise that has as it's goal the comprehension of reality itself. How is that not much the same as your circles in circles? — Banno

The "rituals of bottle washing"? And the liturgy of the lecture hall and the Eucharist examination? Heh, heh....I don't think so. If so, then everything is religion. Washing my dog. Ah, the soapy....baptism?

Did you know that the Krishna - avatar of Vishnu, the supreme god of the Hindu Trimurti - is less well known for his miracles than his cunning? Kinda blurs the boundary between supernatural powers and just plain and simple intelligence. — Agent Smith

Implying that the religious situation is no more than a realization of one's lack of cunning? But then, the term "supernatural" just gives religion a bad name, which it usually deserves. But the reality of religion lies outside of the cunning and the supernatural. It is something else.

But so much of religion is the opposite; the certainty of faith runs whole against what you set out here. Faith is "standing before the world with the presumption of knowing." — Banno

That is not Kierkegaardian faith, of course. But as the usual kind, Chomsky was asked about religion and his response was a good one. If you're just desperate and life is just wretched wherever you turn, I am not going to be giving you an argument about the foolishness of public religions.

But as a philosophical question of religion is not bound to incidentals. It wants to know what is it in the world that makes the world a "religious place" and I mean "religious" as a structural feature. We don't want a thing to be defined by its entanglements. Faith as a presumption of knowing, rather than as I have characterized it, would be a matter of objectifying metaphysics, taking strong impossible claims as if they were as true as geology. I have little patience for this kind of thing.

As a structural feature of our existence, I refer to the structure of knowledge relations, all of which are open. It is, I mean it should be, quite a thing to really understand this.

I take that to be self evident. Though I'm not particularly analytic. I'd say I'm 17th, 18th century phil + Chomsky and Tallis.

And a bit of Galen Strawson. But pure analytic phil, depending on the figures, doesn't satisfy me. — Manuel

Then there is only one way to go. Alas, it is not easy and most think it is prohibitively obscure, and they are right, frankly. But anything is better than Chomsky, Strawson, Quine, Ryle, Dennett and so on. Not that they don't have anything interesting to say, but to be taken as the principle insights for understanding philosophy is just missing the grand point of it all. I mean, if you like rigorous, well defined puzzle solving, then fine, but they will take no further than this.

I am talking about continental philosophy. Begins, if there is such a thing, with Kant.

The early stage of the theoretical process that include the applied principles and epistemology SHOULD be the same. So both methodologies should start from current epistemology, use the same naturalistic principles and through logic they should arrive to functional and meaningful frameworks. — Nickolasgaspar

With this, you will get a philosophy of science, but nothing more. True, all things start with inquiry, but then, philosophy asks very different questions. Einstein talked about time and space, e.g., but not as foundational conditions for consciousness. As to epistemology, science cannot touch this: one cannot observe empirically an act believing or knowing. The best one can do is analyze features of knowledge relationships, you know, S knows P, is justified in this, and P is true; but the rub is in this justification, for P can't be affirmed as true unless there is a line of justification that leads from P to S. Impossible to "observe" this line because P is entangled IN S's relationship to it.
Science simply has nothing to say about this, nor about ethics or aesthetics or reality or being and existence, and so on. What distinguishes philosophy is that the questions it addresses are structurally open, that is, even if you did have an answer, that answer would be contingent. But then, this is true for all knowledge claims whatsoever. All roads lead to philosophy.

I don’t see the difference.

Science seeks to understand nature, seeking naturalistic explanations. That’s natural philosophy. Yes, we’ve since given it another label — but ontologically it’s no different. — Xtrix

Philosophical ontology certainly is a question that seeks an explanation, but it does not do this through what one would call natural means. It is an apriori inquiry, about presuppositions of what natural sciences have to say.

Eh. I myself don’t take the conventional distinctions between religion, philosophy, and science very seriously— any more than I take historical epochs like the “middle ages” and “renaissance” seriously. They’re useful in everyday discussion, but when looking at it a little closer they aren’t at all as clear or as neat as one would like to think.

What’s called religion in many ways deals with the same questions as philosophy…and science. I think the knee jerk reaction to this is historical — the Catholic Church persecuting early astronomers, or creationists trying to get ID taught in schools, etc. There’s a fear that our sense of truth is undermined if science and “religion” aren’t separated — that one deals with facts and the other with faith, etc. I used to think the same, and in many instances still do— but with the acknowledgement that it’s not always so simple. — Xtrix

I do appreciate your belief in a kind of unified epistemology. You are right, there is an equal footing for all knowledge claims that ignores the divisional distinctions. This is called philosophy. Philosophy wants to understand, not this or that category, but all categories. Genetics and astronomy have very different thematic interests, but what they have in common is they both issue from the same kind of epistemic relations, which are observational; so what is it to observe? Philosophy asks not just basic questions, but the MOST basic question possible, and this demands a pulling away from observational claims to observation itself.
Religion is essentially a metaphysics of ethics and aesthetics. Take away the stories and the bad metaphysics, and this is what it comes down to.

That's fine. Where does one go? Depends on each person, I personally like descriptive generalization that make sense to me, that can help elucidate what I experience, obviously inadequately, but it's an approximation.

Others will deny that the self is a problem at all.

Some think science offers all answers.

Some become mystics. — Manuel

I think you have a point there about people and their diverging points of view. But then, what an individual experiences is not just a matter of choice and personality. We are what we read, and if all I read was analytic philosophy, all I would know is what Quine and his ilk have to say. My subjective inclinations are steered by the literature, and if you bring up the mysteries of philosophy, analytic philosophy is not going to be very welcoming since it has a positivist devotion to clarity. My issue with this kind of thing is simple: The world is anything but clear on these threshold matters of philosophy and to pretend it is is to look away from the world and retreat back into the comfort of the familiar. I don't think philosophy should be comfortable. The world is weird beyond measure when basic questions are taken up.

I think the topics I listed are a mystery and are studied (or discussed and elaborated) and we still debate them, with no resolution on the horizon.

Religion is very complex and I would probably say that it's even impoverished by the Western entanglement with Christianity, which, compared to other religions, is pretty boring. At least to me.

But existence can be looked at through many lenses, not limited to religion. — Manuel

What is the self, how can matter think, what is mind, what's the good, is there only one thing in the universe, do we have free will, etc. — Manuel

Religion looked at as complex and impoverished IS worse than boring; it is dangerous and trivializing, popular religions and their texts. But once the tedious "theology" and politics is removed, what is left is what you called a "study of mysteries." Not so much a "study" by science, and philosophy, in this neck of the woods anyway, is no more than speculative science, and mystery is simply unwelcome.

What is the self? you ask. A good question. Science has nothing to offer here and popular religions are too filled with bad metaphysics. Where does one go? Existence? Same.

Screw it, I'll go radical: In general the tradition of philosophy is to be the Mother of the sciences, but current philosophy is, by and large, the study of mysteries.

We still are debating a huge swath of traditional questions in which we have not managed to advance one iota. What is the self, how can matter think, what is mind, what's the good, is there only one thing in the universe, do we have free will, etc.

Sometimes we get lucky and manage to bring some of the classic philosophical questions into the arena of empirical research, and then we get a science. — Manuel

Except that much of familiar philosophy doesn't "study" mysteries; it ignores them. Religion presents a metaphysics that is, in most of its content, nonsense, and it loses its authority because of this. Then, in rejecting religion and its nonsense, we end up rejecting the entirety of foundational talk about what it is to be a person in the world. This is understandable since the "authentic" issues of religion are unclear in their meaning, and we do like things clear.

But to take this need for clarity to the threshold of inquiry, that is, existential mystery, is just perverse. This mystery is what we, well, "really are", given that what a thing really is, is defined by its final definition, after thought and questions have cleared the way. We are, at the deepest level of inquiry, completely mysterious to ourselves.

True— not now, anyway. But remember, science comes out of natural philosophy, and is not without its ontological foundations. Once we acknowledge that, clear demarcations begin to get blurred. — Xtrix

Depends on what you read. Go back to a time when the world was not cluttered with new categories, and one could observe without the presumption of knowing. Science did not so much "come out of natural philosophy" as it took what was "natural" and categorized it. What is left is religion: the narrative driven unobservable world that defies categorical thinking. It is the "openness" of our existence in all knowledge claims. The essence of religion, minus the narratives and the popular institutions, is just this openness; and the openness of ethics is front and center.

This depends on whether we want to define them as entirely different. I look at it as a spectrum. The difference between natural philosophy and science isn’t always clear.

Science rests — like everything else — on an ontology (namely, naturalism/materialism). Ontology is usually considered philosophy. The idea of “nature,” causality, time, and being all have philosophical underpinnings in science. — Xtrix

Ah yes, the ontology of knitting. I've heard of it. I have also heard the paradigmatic shift in the art of knitting and the deconstruction of knitting in a very revealing gender analysis. The term 'ontology' has been made into a catchphrase for any and all scholarly work. A little silly, but useful I suppose if you're giving things a close look.
But philosophy is not an empirical approach. It takes empirical approaches and theorizes about their presuppositions, and in this is apriori, like what Kant did with reason looking at judgment and thought and asking what has to be there in order for judgment to be possible.
Philosophy is the "science" of presuppositions.

Given the word philosophy is in the very title of this forum, it seems like a fairly straightforward question, "What is philosophy?"

The term itself, as we know, means "love of wisdom" from the Greek. But that doesn't help much until we know what "wisdom" means.

Interested in hearing various interpretations. — Xtrix

Only one definition survives: Philosophy is the examination of the the world at the level of the most basic questions. Science is, of course, NOT philosophy. It is pre-philosophical.

There is good here, now. That much we know. 'Good' is a malleable word. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Good is a contingent word: it depends on what it means given the context. But religious good is absolute. For this, one has to look at metaethics: You know, the GOOD! And this is not merely a fanciful idea.

Right there you've done an exposé of religious scams. All the religions of the world piggyback on fun things to do. The Trojan horse, my friend. Here's a gift for you! Wait a minute, what's the (malicious) payload? — Agent Smith

And when the you lie there annihilated by your own foolishness at the horse's feet, THEN the religious event has its grounding. It could have been Trojans, the plague, the Nazis, and on and on. One never settles for the incidentals if the question is a philosophical one.

Why does life need to have an end or purpose beyond life? How is that purpose known? How do you know it is a purpose that is discovered or given to us rather that one we make? — Fooloso4

But ten, this asks further, what is made and what is given? The line is hard to draw, granted, but certainly NOT all is made (notwithstanding Rorty). Our forward looking world's teleology is not absent of things truly given in the metaphysical sense, and not all metaphysics is nonsense.

It is rather that you want to look only at what religion looks like, not what it is at its core. Religion can be contextualized in many ways, but its power to rule a society's thoughts and feelings lies with its foundational claims and the indeterminacy found there. Human being lives within a deficit, not in politics nor in social cohesion or any other way you would observe it as taken up and entangled in our affair; but un all things. If you look for a material conditions, keep in mind that, as with philosophy, religion essentially is not about some vast corporate administrations that wield power and influence. Such are the things (basically, Kierkegaard's complaint) that corrupt it, and if THIS is what you think religion really is, then you are missing the mark of your OP. You have to move to another order of thinking.

Ask, the same question about God: what are the material conditions (and by this it is actualities that confront us prior to abstract thinking) that gave rise to this? Was Freud right? Yes, but Freud was a meta-psychologist. Not a philosopher.

That's half an answer. What is the other half? What is it that you have left, after you take the history, metaphysics, authority and all away? — Banno

You have reality. Religion is built into the real in the indeterminacy of our world. Indeterminacy here another name for metaphysics, but in this case, it is, if you will, warranted metaphysics, or, metaphysics that is "discovered" not invented, and by this I mean something really very simple and undebatable: All propositions have their truth value revealed to be indeterminate because there is nothing in the revealed world that steps forward to make a definitive claim, which is why philosophy has its insufferable persistence. Just ask any question you please, and follow through with inquiry and you end up where, as Hillary Putnam put it, where ideas run out.

So, the human condition is indeterminate on all fronts where knowledge stakes a claim. Our existence is entirely indeterminate in all of its affairs, and this deserves repeating, because it is rarely given its due, to, well, stand before all things and realize our familiar systems of explaining the world are without ground. It is standing before the world without the presumption of knowing; THIS is, I argue, the essence of religion. And there is nowhere this is experienced so deeply as in ethics.

Does the term "religion" refer to nothing? — Banno

Hard to believe this is so mystifying. Religion is clearly reducible to the "material" conditions that gave rise to it, that is, to what is IN the world that inspired or provoked all the story telling. One has to ask this question first. Otherwise, it would be like explaining a shoe with no understanding of the foot and what it does. Shoes would be disembodied narratives without this. And this is why religion is opaque: it is presented as disembodied narratives.
The question is, then, what is there, in the world, that is the foundation of religion, and minus the historical accounts, minus the specious metaphysics, minus the comfort of authority, and minus everything that is merely incidental. It is a reduction that is sought.

We begin with the self, the "I" that is conscious, the "I" that has thoughts. The "I" has thoughts about things external to the thoughts themselves, things that change with time, and these things are called phenomena. All the "I" knows for certain are phenomena - the colour red, a sharp pain, an acrid smell, a sour taste, a crackling noise. The "I" has thoughts about these individual phenomena, but more than that, the "I" combines these individual phenomena in various ways. The "I's" thoughts are about phenomena and various combinations of phenomena. — RussellA

Okay

The nature of relations is critical. My belief is that relations do ontologically exist in the mind (the Binding Problem). We call these combinations of phenomena "noumena". We think about particular combinations of phenomena and sometimes we give them a name. The combination of phenomena, the colour red, an acrid smell, a crackling noise we can name "fire", and this "fire" is a noumena. We can say that combinations of phenomena exist in a logical reality, in that noumena exist in a logical reality. A logical reality that exists in the mind. — RussellA

But this is confused; I mean, you cannot say, "We call these combinations of phenomena "noumena." What you say here about noumena really has to be more closely looked at. What do you mean "this fire is a noumenon"? When we say "fire" it is EXACTLY what noumena is not, for Kant is very explicit about this. If you disagree with Kant then say so. I know I do.

Noumena are combinations of phenomena. But a combination is a relation. As relations only ontological exist in the mind, noumena only ontologically exist in the mind. We can think about the noumena occupying a space, but such a space is only a logical space, nothing more than that. When thinking about space, as we are thinking about the relation between phenomena, we are thinking about a logical space. — RussellA

Logical space? Wittgenstein? You know, there is in Heidegger's B and T a kind of space that is utterly distinct: What is "close" is what is brought to mind. My glasses may be physically close, but as I ignore them to think about Chinese bar tenders in Beijing, the latter are much closer. Proximity by extended space is only ONE way to think about this, and only when it comes to mind, is this relevant. But in terms of your actual affairs, Kant's space is certainly NOT primordial.

But when you say things like noumena being combinations of phenomena, you have to explain yourself. Clearly you've stepped out of Kant, which is fine with me, but then you use his language and it sounds all wrong. What, in this idea, is a phenomenon? You will talk about combinations, but Kant's idea of a combination is the synthetic function of a concept. Without this there is no thought at all, and what lies before you is unspeakable, or, if you follow someone like Dennett (and Husserl and Heidegger and Derrida; all of them), what is there before you IS in its being there at all, conceptual. You cannot separate these. They are the essence of being an object.

One has to first admit this. Then one can go on to what Kierkegaard says about the collision between concepts and actualities: IN and through this conceptual apparatus, is disclosed the world's eternity. Both IN and OUT of time, for to think at all is to be in time, yet time is quantifying the world: the world is immediately grasped, in our daily living, in a kind of spatialized way. Not a continuity, but divided. Remove the divisions (a debatable concept) and eternity stands before you, subsuming all, of you will: the eternal present. Wittgenstein talked like this, a big fan of Kierkegaard, as was Heidegger.

Our finitude is created by time, the events that divide things. Dewey called this "consummatory". His Art as Experience is a very good read. He was a pragmatist, and he and Rorty made me a qualified pragmatist. Heidegger's Being and Time has pragmatism as a principle feature. It is through thinkers like this that one continues on with Kant, even as much as they depart from him. They are all, in one way or another, phenomenologists.

You sound like someone who who could think in this vein.

(FH Bradley's Regress argument). — RussellA

Phenomenology does not separate the relation from the "related". To do so leads one to affirming a thing apart from the relation, and that isolates the object beyond apprehension. THIS is Kant's noumena. Entirely metaphysical, in the bad sense of this word. This kind of thing is what gave rise to analytic philosophy's positivistic

The REAL question is, what is there in the world and its analysis as a world. The "beyondness" is there. This about separation is, however, very important: In the bond of relations we have the power to critique, second guess, put distance between us and the institutions that would claim us, so we don't simply go along, allowing our lives to be lived, if you will, in the third person. But this interposition of consciousness into the cycle of events that move forward so automatically, is MOST interesting. It is not simply a matter of declaring oneself independent, as with a political opposition, say; it is a partial termination of the institutions that flow through you, that define the meaning of our lives in culture and language. Here, we are thrust into something else entirely, not just an adjustment of thinking.

It comes to point, for many, that the foundational philosophical problem we face requires something revelatory for its resolution.

Vladimir Putin exists. Where p = Vladimir Putin, (∃x)(x=p)(∃x)(x=p)

Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist. Where s = Sherlock Holmes, (∀x)¬(x=s)(∀x)¬(x=s) = ¬(∃x)(x=s)¬(∃x)(x=s)

As I thought, in predicate logic, predication is only possible for existent things. You can't talk about particular nonexistent objects while you can about them as a class: — Agent Smith

I suppose the matter comes down to soundness and validity. We can talk about anything at all if we like, and if the logical form of what we say is in tact, no contradictions, then we can say the talk has logical validity, of course. But if the talk is just scrabbled eggs in the observed world, then it lack soundness. So if you say, "there is a man named Sherlock Holmes, and he does not exist, you are running a contradiction, saying he is and is not at once. But note the language: There IS a man named SH. What do we mean by this? This is ambiguous in the symbolic representation if by "is" what is meant is "exists". Once you disambiguate, and qualify "is" as fictional, speculative, imaginative or the like, then the logic doesn't produce an absurdity.
So, I can talk about particular nonexistent objects, as is done in the novels. But the context of what is "real" and not, itself is fictional; the standard is simply different.

A maximally great being exists. As you can see, Anselm is usimg existence as a predicate i.e. (∀x)(Mx→Ex)(∀x)(Mx→Ex) where Mx = x is a maximally great being and Ex = x exists. We can see where Anselm goofs up. All maximally great beings are existent things (IF x is maximally great being THEN x exists). The class of maximally great beings can be an empty set, but then the consequent claims there's a member in that set. — Agent Smith

On the other hand, whether or not this can be an empty set is still entirely at issue. The claim is the set cannot be empty since it is analytically true that the greatest possible being exists. Taken as logical construction only, the matter rests on the definitions: does existence have to be included in the GPB because what a GPB IS, is existence. It would not be the GPB if it did not exist, just as a body would not be a body without extension. This goes to essence or definition, which goes to the term "greatest". There is that notorious response by Gaunilo's greatest possible island. But greatness is a contingent term and is built out of the terms that apply: a great couch is not a great telescope. So then, what kind of greatness are we talking about when we are talking about God (capital 'G')? The standard omni this and omni that are just arbitrary. Being absolutely knowledgeable is just a vacuous extension of the way we talk about ourselves, e.g. And omnipotence begs the question: what good is this? Only one thing can fit this bill, and this is goodness: what is GOODNESS? Goodness is not arbitrary or question begging in the description of God.

Conclusion: It has to be understood that logic will only produce more logic. Existence is, well, existential, and this makes the appeal to the world. God's existence is reducible to the existence of what must exist, and it is not some guy sitting on a cloud. What must exist is goodness. The GPB of the world concept comes to this. A highly disputable proposition.

Notice how (∃)(Cx∧¬Ex)(∃)(Cx∧¬Ex) is self-contradictory (there exists a dog that does not exist). — Agent Smith

It would depend on how you take the existential quantifier, for 'existence' is ambiguous, but is treated as unambiguous in the symbolism. See how the entire equation is is problematized by this ambiguity. Existence can only be a predicate if it is possible for something not to exist; such is the case for all predicates: their opposites have to make sense. "The snow is white" makes sense only if it is possible for snow to be other than white. "Snow has a color" is not a predication, it is analytic, for it is impossible for snow not to have a color--apodictic that all things have a color; can't imagine a thing and no color in the same object. If you treat existence like color, then the predication is really a tautology, and "all dogs exist" is merely tautologically true. But if existence can be defined as synthetic (in Kant's terms) and some things do not exist (unicorns?) then "X exists" is a predication. But it depends.

Best I can do.

Kant said that a priori knowledge is "knowledge that is absolutely independent of all experience". I propose that such priori knowledge is innate within the brain, a product of over 4 billion years of evolution and is part of the physical "hardware" of the brain.

I am curious as to your belief as to the source of this a priori knowledge, this pure intuition of time and space intrinsic in our minds? — RussellA

Apriori knowledge at its source, is transcendental. Hence, transcendental idealism. We can observe it in its USE. But "purely transcendental use of categories therefore is in reality of no use at all, and has no definite or even, with regard to its form only, definable object."

Kant included causation within the category of pure understanding, an a priori pure intuition, where an effect requires a cause. Given causation as an a priori pure intuition, it follows that the observer must know without doubt that there has been a cause to the phenomenon, and this cause may be called a "noumenon". — RussellA

Not this. As an intuition, causality only applies to phenomenona. What causality IS in some noumenal sense, is unknown. One cannot speak as though noumena "causes" phenomena. It could be, he speculates, a preestablished harmony, or some other (as I recall. Haven't read CPR in a while). If you find he talks like this, it is because 'cause' is the only term he can think of that might describe the relationship?? But clearly, he does not mean we have in causality an understanding of anything noumenal. Such knowledge is impossible.

IE, I am not aware of any justification by Kant as to why a priori pure intuitions should of necessity correspond with the reality of the external world. This is the same problem found in Indirect Realism, in discovering the reality of the external world through internal representations. — RussellA

But one does not "discover" this reality if by reality you are talking about noumena. It is undiscoverable. Noumena is just an empty but necessary concept. You can read why he talks about it in the Transcendental Analytic.

There must be a distinction between the whole and its parts. When we observe something, we are observing a whole made up from a relationship between parts. As relations don't ontologically exist in the external world, as illustrated by FH Bradley, and relations do ontologically exist in the mind, as illustrated by the Binding problem, we can say that the parts of the object do exist in the external world, but the whole object, as a relation between its parts, can only exist in the mind as a concept. — RussellA

Yes, but the whole is the problem. A whole is only conceivable in relation to a part, just as up is only conceivable relative to down. Meanings are generated in opposition. Noumena are not "the whole". They are not a "they", which is just a manner of speaking. Impossible to imagine, since to think at all is to divide, relate, play against, etc.

I look at noumena very differently for Kant or you. I hold that the noumenal necessarily subsumes the phenomenon such that what I behold AS a phenomenon, like my cat on the couch, is, tail to ears, noumenal. There is no finitude, and the divisions are what they are, and they too are noumenal. Nothing at all can escape the what we see as eternal, noumenal, infinite. Take a single index of identity: time: how "old" is this hand? Given that ex nihilo nihil fit. Space and time, when pressed for basic meanings, are apodictically eternal. Take a given phenomenon, and it can be demonstrated that what you observe is reducible to eternity, that is, all the terms used in the totality of lexical possibilities, yield a foundational indeterminacy.

The parts we observe are assembled in the mind into concepts - a table is a table top plus table legs, a house is a roof plus walls plus windows, etc. But many mereological permutations are possible of the parts we observe within the external world - a table top plus table legs, my pen and the Eiffel Tower, etc. We sensibly choose and name those particular combinations that are beneficial to our evolutionary well-being and survival. — RussellA

I don't doubt that language is good for survival and reproduction.

It follows that if we think of noumena as objects in the external world consisting of a relationship between a set of parts, then it is true that noumena don't ontologically exist in the world, as relations don't ontologically exist in the external world, but only in the mind of the observer as a concept. — RussellA

I don't think of noumena as objects at all. I think of noumena as the indeterminacy inherent in all that is. And I think, to understand what this means takes a withdrawal from the thought itself.

IE, in my terms, it follows that our understanding of noumena as defined as objects in the external world must be transcendental in that objects in the external world don't ontologically exist. — RussellA

"Don't ontologically exist" is an odd phrase.

I wonder how amenable you would be to the following. A bit wordy I'm afraid:

I am far less interested in objects than I am in the self. After all, I am, in the recesses of my "interiority" a noumenal being. This transcendental ego is my self, and this has its analysis found in the examination of the generational ground of experience, right there, where the thought rises up and becomes manifest. You see, where a scientific approach would try to reconcile the brain and its observable features like the analysis of its biochemistry, the structure is neuronal systems, and the whole rest of this empirical field of study, phenomenological approach takes Kant more seriously: All that can be known is phenomena, and the brain is a phenomenon, a densely processed phenomenon . It is not as if there is no connection between the brain and experience; this is not denied or refuted. It is rather that THIS too, this connection, is a phenomenon, making the true generative source of experience still noumenal. We want very much to say brains produce consciousness, but this connection remains entirely alien to our grasp: We simply cannot infer from our phenomenological grasp of brain chemistry and so on, that this grasp IS the way things ARE "in themselves". That remains with metaphysics.

On the other hand, there we are observing the world and it is intuitively powerful, this presence of things and our engagement. It is not possible that I am not experiencing "reality" for what is real can only be a measure of the way reality is presented. I mean, this IS where we get the term 'reality' in the first place. We do not get reality out of an abstract analysis, or from a concept like material substance. It issues from the eating and the breathing and the full sense of existing in the world.

I ask myself this: how is it possible that I can experience the world as a world and not just the locality within a cranium? By any measure one can imagine, I should not be able to experience the (noumenal) world. One has to be very careful with this, because it is most tempting to see the apparatus in place, the lens of the eye, the light reflected and absorbed by the object, the tactile feel corresponding and it all fitting so neatly together, etc., and conclude: I am surely receiving the (noumenal) world indirectly. But one can never get around, in an empirical way, that the thick membrane of brain tissue simply has no epistemic access to the "outside". The lens of the eye quickly turns into clunky brain matter. Even the lens is, on analysis, this.

Only one impossible answer: we do in fact experience the (noumenal) world; and our experience is not localized to this grey physical mass. Consciousness is, after all, noumena. Nothing escapes this. Certainly not phenomena.

Sure, politics is just ethics recast. Ethics concerns our relation with others, as does politics. It is a misguided emphasis on individualism that misguides folk to libertarianism. Libertarianism is one symptom among many, indicative of the problem of individualism as ethics.

What is it you want? — Banno

Just wondering, really. Cooperation and individuality. Not an easy equation.

I understand this and agree. But perhaps one can also be dogmatic about not being dogmatic and end up sinking in a quicksand of mutually opposed world-views. — Tom Storm

I guess you are referring to one who is a kind of rebel without a cause, someone who will not compromise at all. I think this can be understood in two ways: One is the irrational nonconformist, the anarchist, and I see no hope for people like this. The burden of living is living with others, and this has a very insistent sense of obligation in it, ethics. The other sees with clarity that these obligations we have are entangled with history and hardened thinking and challenges these to the purpose of better understanding. Here, I find one rule: do no harm (Mill's famous rule). Everything that follows from this is at issue, but this I take as foundational.

I don't understand this sentence. — Tom Storm

I mean, irony is the stuff prose and poetry are made of. It is the essence of entertainment itself, and irony is in its essence opposition, the strain that is created in resistance. Meaning itself, it can be argued, as a play of language in which one thing is not another and in this tension, the singularity is born, is ironic.

This may seem far flung. But Kierkegaard wrote his doctoral thesis along these lines (a have read only parts myself. It is about Socrates and his incessant questioning of everything. The question pierces complacency, stirs the world up. Ironic tension permeates social discourse) and Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity talks like this. This latter is excellent.

Indeed. And it is the tension inherent in pluralism. It's very easy to have the semblance of order, stability and certainty if we are living in a theocracy. — Tom Storm

I quite agree.

My interest is in ethics, as prior to politics. Or better, as what politics ought be. — Banno

Ethics prior to politics? But all politics is, if you will, an ethics prior to itself as it's good standing rests with essential defensible moral grounding. I generally criticize libertarian thinking on the grounds that it encourages a division of wealth that isn't morally defensible.

No ethics, no politics. What, therefore, ethics do you have in mind?

Say some more. — Tom Storm

I speak of the dogmatic approach to living and thinking. Unquestioned rules and ideas. to me the question, that is, the resistance that is posed by the possibility of an opposition, this needs to be free. It most assuredly does cause trouble, but living in this "tension" of irony in which all things stand challenged and nothing sits too firmly, this is the essence of a free society.

No, I am talking about individualism, the social theory "favouring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control". — Banno

You're talking about classical liberalism. Libertarians think like this, while also looking to ease restrictions on social values as well. Anyway, if this is what you object to, then more power to you. There is, on the other hand, the notorious "they", the ones who keep an Orwellian eye out for odd behavior, make sure we all toe the line, the omnipresent guards of the panopticon, that implicit standard of what is right and what is taboo that we all internalize.

I want to say I despise this kind of thing, but obviously, this needs to be qualified. This is the stuff arguments are made of.

Not speaking for Banno, but for me culture (for all its problems) is built out of cooperation and the overarching goal is to include as many stakeholders as possible. You can see that the significant problems of human existence - resource allocation, climate change, war, can only be successfully dealt with and remedied through cooperative ventures. If not, we are lost. — Tom Storm

In political terms, in global political, I most strongly agree. But in terms of the way we stand at the receiving end of a body of determinative thinking, no.

Most of politics since Thatcher and Reagan. Trumpism. Neoliberal economics. The failure to invest in social capital, such as education and health, let alone roads and pipelines. Shit, celebrity itself, the worship of individuals to the detriment of quality. Rap music. Need I go on? — Banno

Oh. So you're talking about some kind of libertarianism. That is not individualism AT ALL. That is economic fascism.

But it's interesting to see that

But I do think that individualism is harmful, indeed, emphasis on individualism is one of the nasty things lurking in the background of much of the demise of what we might loosely call western culture. Failing to acknowledge our mutual interdependence has led to the peneary of our common wealth.

We are in this collectively. That involves giving up some part of your autonomy. Get with it, or go live in your grass hut. — Banno

Individualism killed western culture? Quite a thing to say. What part of western culture are you talking about? Given that culture is literally built out of dissent.

That's probably true. But I tend to work to minimize the inclination by not reinforcing hierarchies unless I can't avoid it. :wink: — Tom Storm

Yeah. That's the spirit. One has to know when one is simply going along with the climate of thinking. But philosophy attempts to take this kind of independence to its extreme end, which is why it is not well received, because no one wants to think that hard about what is there, at hand, and familiar. Philosophy is a radical extension of what it means to question an authority. Foucault: Am I being ventriloquized by history? Ever word I speak, after all, is learned, but have I assimilated language, or has language assimilated me? Assimilation here means in authority.

Only if that's how you construct your worldview - in terms of power relations. Personally I see reliance as an issue of mutual trust and positive regard. But it may depend upon the context. The notion of 'rely' and 'others' needs further clarification. — Tom Storm

It is a fuzzy term, I think, in the extreme. The concept of an authority is not simply a fiction, I would argue. Any social concept you can think of has some hierarchical feature built into it, even if not explicitly so.

Maybe you meant to word your concept differently? "Authority" means they have command over you. But if a person you rely on does not live up to your expectations, they don't have command over you. You're forced at that point to rely on someone else, or yourself. Someone with authority can punish in a way separate from your reliance, like putting you in prison or harming you in other ways. — Philosophim

If only life were that easy. Authorities get very entangled in human affairs, politics--in government, at the office, at school, and so on. Such a mess.

This is false, for the simple fact that authorities rely on those without authority. Short of physical force, no one actually has power over others. A president is only a president because enough people agree that they are a president. It is an illusion, or rather a social construct. Societies are constructed on a series of ideas and agreements, nothing more. — praxis

You sound like a defender of anarchism (not anarchy, which is very different). These people say there is no authority above the individual. I may yield to your authority only if I choose to do so, and set the standards for compliance, given the obvious need for a deference to representative and delegated offices in a complex government.
They are keen about things like direct democracy rather than having a bunch of elected officials making decisions for us. Lately, I lean toward Plato's philosopher kings democratically elected. And for this we need a very educated society. One day.......

I agree with you that Kant in Critique of Pure Reason argued that we can only understand the truth of the noumena in the world by applying a priori pure intuition to the phenomena we receive from these noumena.

Kant wrote: "Space and time are its pure forms, sensation in general its matter. We can cognize only the former a priori, i.e., prior to all actual perception, and they are therefore called pure intuition; the latter, however, is that in our cognition that is responsible for it being called a posteriori cognition, i.e., empirical intuition." (B60)

He also wrote: I call all representations pure (in the transcendental sense) in which nothing is to be encountered that belongs to sensation. Accordingly the pure form of sensible intuitions in general is to be encountered in the mind a priori, wherein all of the manifold of appearances is intuited in certain relations. This pure form of sensibility itself is also called pure intuition. (B35)

However, Kant does not explain the source of these a priori pure intuitions. He does not explain how we are able have these a priori pure intuitions. — RussellA

Those pure intuitions are transcendental and cannot be explained. It would be like explaining how the absence of space and time is possible.

And when you say, "truth of the noumena in the world by applying a priori pure intuition to the phenomena we receive from these noumena" Kant would not go along. Noumena are not received at all. It is entirely outside of "receiving". Noumena are posited because representations have to be of something.

Having said this, though, I think, not Kant, but me, that in order for noumena to make any sense at all, there must be something IN the comprehensive analysis of phenomena that reveals this. It is not like some heuristic that is posited because helps further another line of thinking. It is an existential claim about something other than sensory intuition that is intimated, an "intuition" of Being itself, if you will, that comes, not from outside as if empirical theory could generate it out of something empirically discovered, but within the world of ones "interiority" (Kant's TUA.....is YOU in the most intimate sense of the term). This is why I talk about mysticism. If you are going to take seriously some impossible interface with noumena, it is not going to happen through a discursive reasoning process of what is "out there" because what is out there will always be conditioned evidence and noumena are not conditioned. Talk about a brain? There are no brains that can be conceived that are not routed through the phenomenal construction: A brain is a phenomenon! As are my couch and plate tectonics and evolution and on and on. So a noumenal encounter would have to be revelatory, not discursive.

Direct Realism is the common sense view within the philosophy of mind which states that objects are as they appear to be. All objects are made of matter and that our perceptions are entirely correct, in which case noumena correspond with phenomena.

Indirect Realism is the view that there is an external world that exists independently of the mind, but we can only perceive that world indirectly through sense data. Sense data can only represent the mind-independent world, meaning that we can only ever know a representation of the external world, in which case phenomena can never allow us to know noumena directly.

I personally believe in Indirect Realism. I understand Kant's position as also being similar to that of the Indirect Realist, even though he did not use this terminology — RussellA

But that is not Kant. We do not become aware of noumena indirectly. We do not become aware of this at all. This is the trouble with analytic philosophy and the attempt to tall about Kant and transcendental idealism.It does not have any thematic development for this. And I will say this with emphasis: If you are looking for some way to make sense out of Kant's idealism, and to build on this, elaborate on what Kant laid out there, then talk about direct and indirect realism is not a viable alternative as it insists that empirical observation, somewhere in the discoveries through microscopes and telescopes, is going to be relevant. This ignores Wittgenstein as well as Kant. Rather, one has to follow Kant as Kant was indeed "followed": through Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Neitzsche, then Husserl, Heidegger, and so on, then Saussure, Levi Strauss, Derrida; look, it's not that I am such a master of all this, but I have read a lot of it and this is the really the only way to develop with Kant. One simply has to start taking phenomenology seriously; Kant started it.

Where do our a priori pure intuitions come from? Some would say from a metaphysical god, others would say that there is a physical explanation.

It follows from my belief in Physicalism, where everything in the world is physical, a world of matter and forces, and my belief that we are not born as "blank slates", in that all our behaviour is learned, that we are in fact born with innate a priori pure intuitions. These innate a priori pure intuitions are part of the structure of the brain, part of the hardware of the brain, part of the physical arrangement of neurons within the brain.

It seems clear that the brain has the physical structure it has as a consequence of an evolutionary process lasting over 4 billion years. A process where organisms change and evolve over time, along the lines of the natural selection as set out in Darwin's On The Origin of Species.

IE, our a priori pure intuitions are a direct consequence of a physical evolutionary process. — RussellA

Yes, I see you believe this. Physicalism? It is just a term used by those who want science to rule our thinking on philosophical matters. It is a scientist's term (as well as an everyday term) that attempts to reduce questions about the world to ones science addresses. The term itself is entirely without meaning. It is like Kant talking about noumena, utterly transcendental:

The purely transcendental use of categories therefore is in reality of no use at all, and has no definite or
even, with regard to its form only, definable object. Hence
it follows that a pure category is not fit for any [-p. 248]
synthetical a priori principle, and that the principles of
the pure understanding admit of empirical only, never of
transcendental application, nay, that no synthetical principles a pm'ori are possible beyond the field of possible
experience.

Kant gave you the idea of the structure of thought, you think this structure can be talked about in the context of empirical thinking, and you are right about this. But if you think this boat is going to sail straight into some kind of consummation of Kantian idealism, you are entirely wrong.

Best read Husserl.

Kant assumed that our a priori pure intuitions are true to the reality of the world. However, would this be the case if as a result of a physical evolutionary process? — RussellA

SInce evolution is an empirical concept, then you are apples and oranges in this. Kant's phenomenology is logically prior to a concept like evolution. It is about the grounding of experience that is presupposed to any and all empirical theory. A term like "physical": This is a concept, no? A subsumption of particulars under a general; and synthetic act of a structured psyche. This is why hermeneutics is so important, for it sees this and therefore puts interpretation first, and it is not physicality that takes priority, but meaning, and this goes to language and logic.

Not true, it seems to me. For Kant, knowledge needs both empirical observation and rationalism. Kant is not saying that we don't observe the world, but he is saying that what we think we observe is determined by the innate nature of our brain. Innate are the pure intuitions of time and space, a prioiri knowledge that we know independent of experience. He wrote in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics 1783 - "And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something." Kant postulated that the mind intuits sensory experience, which it then processes in the faculty of the understanding to produce an ordered predictable world.

IE, Kant believed intuition of objects in the external world is the primary source for our understanding. — RussellA

Just no, to any association to the brain and "what we observe". The brain is an empirical concept, it is preanalytical, and empirically we certainly do observe it. But he is not saying "what we think we observe is determined by the innate nature of our brain." You may be saying this, and like I said, this is not unreasonable, but it is a break away from Kant.
I haven't read that Kant uses the term "mind" (geist) but his transcendental unity of apperception does not align with modern thinking about minds and their objects, thoughts, feelings. Maybe you have something where he talks like this, though. But sensory intuitions are not postulated, but are directly witnessed in his CPR. Noumena are postulated.
And where I said all empirical theory is suspended, following Kant, I was talking in the context of his critical analysis. He does, of course, and this is taken up very seriously later on, say that empirical theory is really the only wheel that rolls. But his CPR is an apriori thesis, not an empirical one. One arrives at the proposition that only what is said empirically and analytically can make sense via his apriori arguments.

My reading of transcendental is not that of the supernatural, but rather that that there are many aspects of the world that we cannot explain using current scientific knowledge, such as the mind-body problem. This is not to say that such problems cannot be explained by future empirical science. — RussellA

It depends, are you saying your reading is Kant's? Because Kant is essentially saying no to this "future empirical science," unless you can show how to epistemically bridge phenomena and noumena, I mean, show how noumena can be at all known. The only way one can conceive to this is to leave Kant entirely in the attempt to make what is noumenally postulated, manifestly apparent. THAT would be mysticism.

Heidegger opens that door a crack (see his brief reference to Buddhism in the Spielburg interview, der spiegel interview; see also his What IS Metaphysics. He is no mystic, but then, there is the post Heideggerians like Michel Henry and Jean Luc Marion who follow through.

Kant's Transcendental Idealism

Determinism
My belief is that every thought or feeling we have is expressed within the physical structure of the brain. I accept that others may believe that we may have thoughts and feelings beyond that which is determined by the physical structure of the brain, such as a god, but I personally don't.

Transcendental Idealism
The brain can get information about the external world through the senses - sight, sound, touch, hearing, smell. Kant is making the point in his theory of transcendental idealism that we know things about the external world such as causation, time and space that we could not have discovered by observing phenomena through our senses, as illustrated by Hume. He calls this knowledge a priori knowledge.

A priori knowledge
As our knowledge about causation, time and space is not discoverable through our senses alone, and yet as all knowledge is expressed within the physical structure of the brain, then this knowledge must be a pre-existing part of the brain. A priori knowledge is part of the built-in hardware of the brain, where empirical a posteriori observation is part of the software. We know a priori the nature of causation, time and space as much as we know the colour red when observing the wavelength 700nm.

Evolution
A priori knowledge cannot be explained from an empiricist viewpoint, where the human mind is a "blank slate" at birth and develops its thoughts only through experience. A priori knowledge can be explained as the product of an evolutionary process that began on Earth over 4.5 billion years ago, a continuous process of synergy within the world from unicellular organisms to human brains of up to 100 billion neurons. Darwin was the first person to develop the theory of evolution by natural selection. As Kant died before Darwin was born, Kant was not able to benefit from Darwin's insights.

Knowledge
We know causation, time and space in two distinct ways, as a priori knowledge built into the physical structure of our brain by evolution, and as a posteriori knowledge discovered through empirical observation.

IE, we experience the empirical world (the software) through a "meta-empirical" world (the hardware). Our a posteriori knowledge (the software) is transcended by our a priori knowledge (the hardware). — RussellA

Yes, I see you have an empirical theory about apriority, but you don't seem to be acknowledging something entirely elementary: Apiority is a structural feature of empirical existence itself. It is not accessible for examination. Of course, you can talk as you do above, and this is fine, but you would be talking about how apriorityshows itself, not apriority.

As our knowledge about causation, time and space is not discoverable through our senses alone, and yet as all knowledge is expressed within the physical structure of the brain, then this knowledge must be a pre-existing part of the brain. A priori knowledge is part of the built-in hardware of the brain, where empirical a posteriori observation is part of the software. We know a priori the nature of causation, time and space as much as we know the colour red when observing the wavelength 700nm. — RussellA

Just as long as you know this is not how Kant would or could talk at all. "The brain" is an empirical concept. Apriority is not brain hardware if you are speaking in Kantian terms. Apriority is transcendental. a presupposition to all empirical thinking, and its "purity" means it cannot be cast in terms of any other explanatory context.
I am saying a line has to be recognized between transcendental idealism and empirically based ideas, that is, science.

We know causation, time and space in two distinct ways, as a priori knowledge built into the physical structure of our brain by evolution, and as a posteriori knowledge discovered through empirical observation. — RussellA

I do see the temptation to think like this, and I don't think talk about the brain and apriority is wrong, really, if you want to talk like that. Many do. But that is not where Kant leads. Kant leads to talk like this: We must rise above

the dogmatism of the natural attitude, or, where inquiry is not satisfied with that, instead of soaring up over the world "speculatively," we, in a truly "Copernican revolution," have broken through the confinement of the natural attitude, as the horizon of all our human possibilities for acting and theorizing,
and have thrust forward into the dimension of origin for all being

This is from Fink's Sixth Meditation and the "natural attitude" is the naïve world of empirical science. All empirical theory is suspended, following Kant (Note the Copernican Revolution is a direct reference to Kant). These philosophers want to examine the world given the assumption that empirical theory itself rests on something more fundamental. I think you can see this, based on your comments, but when you talk about brains and evolution, you have clearly departed from Kant and his legacy. What next, is it that apriority is reducible neuronal networks? Physical nerve systems of axonal connectivity? Not that this is wrong, but you will have a hard time maintaining concepts like apriority in the context of brain talk.

I don't read science only. Theology is a firmer base of knowledge and offers a firmer ground for understanding phenomena or their nature.

Phenomenoa lay at the base of knowledge. Our brain, by means of its virtual infinite formal capacity, structures the phenomena and the structures behind it, while it gets informed by these structures at the same time. — EugeneW

Sorry for the all the writing. I have to watch that.

There is no brain talk in phenomenology. The brain is there among the rest of the world's phenomena, but it is a phenomenon, and does no explanatory work for discovering what is going on at the level of basic questions, for before a brain is a brain in a scientist's world, it is a construct of language and logic in time and space. I ask the scientist, brain? And in order to give an answer, one must be always, already in a world that makes sense of this. What kind of world is this? THIS is the foundational question. Science and religion are both constructs of language, and so language holds the key to understanding, not what these are, but what is possible for them to be, not unlike knowing what a telescope is does not tell you what something that is seen, but tells you this with an understanding what a telescope does first. It is the intervening process between the known and the knower, you could say (always wanted to read Alfred Whitehead. I will one day) that holds the answer to questions like, what is the world? What is real? Questions concerning religion reduce to what there is that actually stands before us that would make religion meaningful? One looks at time, its structure, the way anticipation is a powerful foundational feature of being in the world. There we are in this forward looking situation in each moment, each thought, prospect for the future, this "anxiety" that is a structural part of experience itself, an anxiety we never really experience until we withdraw from the mundane course of affairs and ask weird existential questions. Kierkegaard (to address the religious side) calls this positing spirit. Heidegger calls this metaphysics (this wonder of standing apart and encountering the world as this vast indeterminacy), and on and on.

Evolution explains Kant's a priori

We are observers of the external world, yet we are also part of the world. We have an existence upon which we build an essence. This existence did not arise yesterday, or the day we were born, but has been underway for billions of years. We have evolved in synergy with the world. Humans are born with certain innate abilities, in that the brain is not a blank slate, as described by both post-Darwinian "evolutionary aesthetics" and "evolutionary ethics". In the 3.7 billion years of life on earth, complex life forms have evolved to have certain innate intuitions necessary for continued survival. It is not the case that we have certain intuitions and they happen to correspond with the world, rather, our intuitions were created by the world and therefore of necessity correspond with the world. Through the process of evolution the mind gradually models the world around it. If the model had not been correct, then the mind and body would not have survived. Therefore, the sensible intuitions innate within the mind have been created by the world in which the brain has survived.

IE, it is not the case that the mind has an intuition of the world that it exists within, rather, the intuitions of the mind necessarily correspond with the world it exists within, otherwise it would not have been able to successfully survive and evolve. — RussellA

I mostly have to disagree with the basic idea here, even though evolution I find no issue with any more than any other science. The problem I have is, in the bringing of Kant together with an empirical theory, your are in oil and water territory. Evolution is an empirical theory, which, had Kant been exposed to it, would likely have agreed, as long as you are not talking about philosophy. But his transcendental idealism is what is presupposed by empirical theories. He is thinking at a level "beneath" this: the underpinning of all science is the foundation of intuitions and their concepts.
Interesting thing to say, that " it is not the case that the mind has an intuition of the world that it exists within." This, to me, IS the problem. On the one hand there is no way out of Kant's world of phenomena. I mean, impossible (in modern physicalist terms: why oh why am I not observing, literally, neuronal networks, roughly speaking, and ONLY neuronal networks? Where IS the way out? Can't be shown, and after 200 years of philosophers and others examining this, I have to say, Period!). On the other hand, my apprehension of the world as a world very clearly shows that I am not merely confined to this "empirically reality" and this is very hard to pin, that is, how I literally "know" my cat is "out there" in the impossible, meta-empirical way.

The causal relation I have with the world does not translate into an epistemic relation. Causality is not an epistemic term, in any model I can conceive, it demonstrates no ability to transmit, carry, bring forth, intimate, convey etc. any object to establish a true knowledge claim. What is it to know something is the case? The very first order of business is to identify what the "something" is and this cannot be done, and all the philosophers since Kant know this, even the ones that want to put miles between what they do and what Kant did. Read Wittgenstein's Tractatus and you find Kant is everywhere implicitly informing this.

To me, this is the second most important philosophical problem there is. The first is with ethics.

It is true that Kant (1724 to 1804) did not propose an evolutionary mechanism for a priori pure intuitions, as he was not able to benefit from Darwin's (1809 to 1882) theory of evolution, Kant's principle of "synthetic a priori judgements" remains valid.

IE, We are born with certain innate abilities that have taken billions of years to evolve, and based on these innate abilities we can observe the external world, but we can only observe in the world what our innate abilities allow us to observe. Our understanding of the world is from observed phenomenon which are given meaning by a pre-existing and innate understanding of them. The physics of the world is understood through an innate knowledge that transcends experience, ie, a metaphysics. — RussellA

Yes, I see. But you have stepped over the line: To speak at all! is to be bound to the conditions of the structures of cognition and sensibility. There are no "billions of years" and had he known about Darwin he would not have received the "benefit" as a philosophically relevant theory. Evolution is an empirical idea. The matter he was looking at is what empirical thinking is in a more basic analysis. Even talk about "apriority" itself is first a concept, and all concepts are principles of synthesis, gathering particulars under a universal. The "purity" of the concepts that are in the structure of the logic that allows one to speak at all, this is transcendental, and one may not speak of this at all. There is NOTHING that can be said that explains apriority. "Preexisting " innateness? Are these temporal terms? There is no time into which one may "fit" a metaphysical concept.

FH Bradley's regression argument illustrates the that relations have no ontological existence in the external world. The Binding Problem, that we experience a subjective whole rather than a set of disparate parts, illustrates that relations do have an ontological existence in the mind. As Kant argued that we make sense of the world by imposing our a priori knowledge onto our a posteriori observations in the external world, similarly we can also make sense of the world by imposing a reasoned relational logic onto a relation-free external world.

IE, both these show the inherent limits to our understanding of the world, in that we will only ever be able to understand those aspects of the world for which we have an a priori ability to understand. This means that there are things about the world that will forever be beyond our imagination, as a horse's understanding of the allegories in The Old Man and the Sea will forever be beyond the horse's imagination. — RussellA

Strange business. I don't know if you follow this kind of thinking, but this is, it can be argued, what Derrida is saying. Structuralists like Saussure and those who follow, hold that meanings are found in the structures of the language that produces them. There is no "author" of a text, for the text is indeterminate, contingent on the receiving intellect. THEN it is determined, as I read it. Derrida says, this structure itself is indeterminate. Of course, it has the determinacy that allows us to speak of it, agree, share ideas, but none of these are free of the context that makes them possible, and this context itself is this kind of diffuse relational manifestation of differences among contextual elements. The basic idea is, I hazard to say, that there is no stand alone meaning, at all! Even structured meaning in my head has no center outside itself to affirm it.
Some see this as a true epiphany: the way to apophatic affirmation of the "presence" of the world.

Yeah I think anything continental covers that analytic can or does but not vice versa. — Shwah

I think they just gave up in the analytical US. So controlled, but so tedious, mostly.