Ok, but are we just as certain they did?
————- — Mww

Yes! How else it came to be?

No. Understanding conceives; the senses perceive. — Mww

Then the base for god is even firmer. We can conceive by perception.

And yet pure reason is the only possible source of both affirmative and negative determinations with respect to gods, as far as humans are concerned. Whether they exist or not, reason is how we can talk about what they may or may not be. It is, after all, only reason that says reason is a fairytale. — Mww

Reason is no fairytale. Pure reason (das reinen Vernünft) is.

Does the theory of evolution distinguish between innate knowledge and mere instinct? — Mww

As regards instinct, babies have an innate instinct to move away from heat.

However, I am sure that babies also have certain innate knowledge.

Babies don't know how to talk and walk, but they have the innate knowledge of how to learn how to talk and walk. It would be wrong to say that babies have the innate instinct of how to learn how to talk and walk.

Similarly, babies have an innate knowledge of time and space. It would be wrong to say that babies have an innate instinct of time and space.

IE, babies are born with both innate instinct and knowledge.

We can conceive by perception. — EugeneW

Probably better not to confuse the abilities of one faculty with the abilities of another. Pretty soon we’ll have steering wheels that dig holes in the ground. Or.....apples doing calculus.
————

Reason is no fairytale. Pure reason (das reinen Vernünft) is. — EugeneW

It matters not. It is still only reason that says pure reason is a fairytale. And only reason can say how pure reason actually is a fairytale of sorts, when it operates beyond its limits. Like convincing ourselves of the reality of a thing, then making that thing impossible to experience in the same way other things are experienced.

However, I am sure that babies also have certain innate knowledge. — RussellA

Already in the womb the brain is put in shape to confront the world. For example, in the retina, processes run around like concentric circles whose radii grow or decrease. An effect one can sometimes observe in the dark or with closed eyes. The outside world impresses itself on the brain already in mothers safe haven. By construction or direct means, like the feeling of balance. All sensory equipment is used already then.

Probably better not to confuse the abilities of one faculty with the abilities of another. Pretty soon we’ll have steering wheels that dig holes in the ground. Or.....apples doing calculus. — Mww

Apples doing calculus is unreasonable. Like a parrot understanding his words. Conception using perception is reasonable.

It matters not. It is still only reason that says pure reason is a fairytale. And only reason can say how pure reason actually is a fairytale of sorts, when it operates beyond its limits. Like convincing ourselves of the reality of a thing, then making that thing impossible to experience in the same way other things are experienced. — Mww

There is a big difference between reason and pure reason. Pure reason is abstract and devoid of subject matter. It's a fictional vacuous fairytale.

I am sure that babies also have certain innate knowledge. — RussellA

I’ll grant innate abilities, which is just a euphemism for instinct.

the innate knowledge of how to learn how to talk — RussellA

Knowledge of how to learn? Again....merely an innate ability, a typical condition of sufficient intelligences.

babies have an innate knowledge of time and space. — RussellA

I’ve three sons. I gave a watch to one, once. He put it in his mouth. Best he could do, is think it something to eat, or at the very least, something to make his jaws feel better. I wouldn’t make any claims about what babies know about time and space, even after having been one. I don’t think it matters what they know about them, if they can’t understand th use of them with respect to empirical knowledge.

One can define any conception to make it fit his own theory.

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.

Conception using perception is reasonable. — EugeneW

Yes, but that’s not the only way of conceiving. Conceptions arise from understanding conditioned by sensibility, but they also can arise from understanding without sensibility for their condition. Which allows us to think gods, but prevents us from proving the existence of them, iff they do not admit to the criteria of sensibility, from which all our experiences are given.

There is a big difference between reason and pure reason. — EugeneW

The only differences in reason, is the domain of its use. Reason concerns itself with knowledge represented by phenomena in synthesis with conceptions, pure reason with thought represented by the synthesis of conceptions alone. Reason may or may not be a priori; pure reason is always and only a priori.

Pure reason is abstract and devoid of subject matter. It's a fictional vacuous fairytale. — EugeneW

Pure reason has its own subject matter. Obviously, insofar as that which is derived from pure reason can be represented in language, which would be impossible without a subject. Necessity is a syllogistic subject matter of pure reason. As in, “Necessity is that for which the negation is impossible”. Causality. Existence. Reality. Any conception for which no object can be intuited as belonging to it. Like....you know.....gods and stuff.

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.

Conceptions arise from understanding conditioned by sensibility, but they also can arise from understanding without sensibility for their condition. Which allows us to think gods, but prevents us from proving the existence of them, iff they do not admit to the criteria of sensibility, from which all our experiences are given. — Mww

Nice one! I had to read that a few timed and am not sure I even understand now! One can understand the gods without any appeal to the senses. For knowing the nature of the gods or their motives you can invoke the senses perceiving the cosmos and all the life that's in it. The senses can be used to even prove the existence of the gods. If you call the dream sensory proof then it can serve as proof.

The only differences in reason, is the domain of its use. Reason concerns itself with knowledge represented by phenomena in synthesis with conceptions, pure reason with thought represented by the synthesis of conceptions alone. Reason may or may not be a priori; pure reason is always and only a priori. — Mww

Again, I had to read that slow and loud to grasp! The neighbors must think there is something wrong with me! There are different forms of reason. Not one form with different domains. That's only the case with the formal pure reason you talk about, floating in an abstract global fairyvacuum subjecting all local forms of concrete forms of reason. Pure reason (logic being its most pristine, sublime, yes almost divine form) is a killer.

The only differences in reason, is the domain of its use. Reason concerns itself with knowledge represented by phenomena in synthesis with conceptions, pure reason with thought represented by the synthesis of conceptions alone. Reason may or may not be a priori; pure reason is always and only a priori. — Mww

Yes. Pure reason is an a priori. An a priori fairy tale.

Pure reason has its own subject matter — Mww

And what might that be?

Necessity is that for which the negation is impossible”. — Mww

The gods, that is.

Causality. Existence. Reality. Any conception for which no object can be intuited as belonging to it. Like....you know.....gods and stuff. — Mww

Every object can be intuited as belonging to it. Like scientific knowledge and the assumed objects the knowledge is about. Or the gods.

I’ll grant innate abilities, which is just a euphemism for instinct. — Mww

So far we have three words: instinct, ability and knowledge. Instinct is an innate fixed pattern of behaviour. Ability is the possession of the skill to do something. Knowledge is the intellectual understanding about something.

Your son showed great intelligence in successfully combining instinct, ability and knowledge. He instinctively knew it was necessary to eat. He was able to move the watch from one position to another. He knew that food comes in watch-sized objects.

IE, instinct, ability and knowledge are all distinct aspects of human intelligence.

Every object can be intuited as belonging to it. — EugeneW

No. I’m talking about objects of intuition belonging to conceptions of gods, but you’re talking about objects intuited as belonging to gods as existing, albeit supersensible, objects in themselves. We don’t intuit objects as belonging to objects, but rather, we intuit properties belonging to objects from the sensations by which they are presented to us. Gods are not presented to us as are real objects, they leave no impressions on our sensations, so we don’t intuit anything with respect to them as phenomenon.

Now it is permissible to think objects as belonging to gods, by which our sensations may be impressed by that object, but that is not the same as an impression made by a god itself. From which we say dumb stuff like....only a god could make an object so wonderful.
———-

Necessity is that for which the negation is impossible”.
— Mww

The gods, that is. — EugeneW

The negation of the necessity of gods is easy. If the effects in the empirical world are sufficiently explained by natural law, then explanations for effects in the natural world have no antecedent necessary explanation by gods. Therefore the negation of the necessity of gods is not impossible.

If the certainty of natural law is really not sufficient to explain natural causes and effect, is a god then merely possible, but still not necessary. Only when no other explanation at all, of any kind whatsoever, whether comprehensible by us or not, for the natural occurrences of cause and effect, may gods be necessary. But then, if gods make causes and effects comprehensible to us, such that we know they are responsible for them, then we are no better off than having the comprehension of natural laws we already had.

How would we tell the difference? Technically, we cannot, as demonstrated by critiquing pure reason to order to exploit it only within its proper limits.

Instinct is an innate fixed pattern of behaviour. — RussellA

instinct, ability and knowledge are all distinct aspects of human intelligence. — RussellA

If instinct is fixed, but ability and knowledge are contingent, thus not fixed, I wouldn’t lump them all under intelligence.

All distinct aspects of the human condition, perhaps?

. Gods are not presented to us as are real objects, they leave no impressions on our sensations, so we don’t intuit anything with respect to them as phenomenon — Mww

That's questionable. What if you have seen them in dreams?

The negation of the necessity of gods is easy. If the effects in the empirical world are sufficiently explained by natural law, then explanations for effects in the natural world have no antecedent necessary explanation by gods — Mww

Negating them or their necessity won't make them less real.

If the certainty of natural law is really not sufficient to explain natural causes and effect, is a god then merely possible, but still not necessary. Only when no other explanation at all, of any kind whatsoever, whether comprehensible by us or not, for the natural occurrences of cause and effect, may gods be necessary. — Mww

Natural laws are not sufficient to explain the existence of the universe, even if eternal (which I think is the case as the universe is a copy of heaven, to a large extent). Nor can the presence of matter explain itself. So if both matter and the laws it conforms to are known to the fundament, they can't explain themselves.

What if you have seen them in dreams? — EugeneW

There are no sensations in dreams. I’ve dreamt of frying bacon, but never when so engaged, have I experienced the smell it frying.

Just as I like to keep my conscious faculties separated, in order to tell which one to call on for the thing it alone can do, so too I like to keep the conscious activities separated from the sub-conscious activities.

At the very least we need to be able to reason in order to survive. — RussellA

Other creatures have no need of reason to survive. In my view it’s a highly questionable assumption to assert that the faculty of reason can be accounted for solely in terms of biological evolution. I recommend a careful reading of the essay pinned to my homepage, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, Thomas Nagel.

Where is the truth in a Derain. — RussellA

I have no idea what Derain means.

There are no sensations in dreams. I’ve dreamt of frying bacon, but never when so engaged, have I experienced the smell it frying. — Mww

Very true. Smell, pain, and taste are absent in dreams. I never smelt anything at least. I'm not sure if the gods need smell or taste to communicate to us. You could say (I realize now!) that that's even the reason we don't smell in dreams. The gods don't need it to communicate.

Just as I like to keep my conscious faculties separated, in order to tell which one to call on for the thing it alone can do, so too I like to keep the conscious activities separated from the sub-conscious activities. — Mww

Not sure what you want to say with this. Maybe dreaming is meant for divine communication.

If the certainty of natural law is really not sufficient to explain natural causes and effect.....
— Mww

Natural laws are not sufficient to explain the existence of the universe, — EugeneW

Not yet, but that’s beside the point of whether or not they are certain enough to explain the natural causes and effects in the universe.

Maybe dreaming is meant for divine communication. — EugeneW

Could be, but why only in dreams? And why would gods communicate with us in dreams, then not make it so we can remember what the dreams were about? Seems like a rather pointless enterprise. I guess I should say, if a god communicates with me via my dreamstates, he damn sure outta enable me to remember it.

Natural laws are not sufficient to explain the existence of the universe,
— EugeneW

Not yet, — Mww

Never in principle. All causal processes are explainable, from an infinite time in the past to an infinite time in the future. The infinite series of big bangs is good proof for the intentions of the gods to create the eternal universe.

Could be, but why only in dreams? And why would gods communicate with us in dreams, then not make it so we can remember what the dreams were about? Seems like a rather pointless enterprise. I guess I should say, if a god communicates with me via my dreamstates, he damn sure outta enable me to remember it. — Mww

Good question! I think the physical outside world is too "massive" for the message to send and come through. Making a voice appear in public costs more energy than letting a voice or image appear in the mind.

No. What "bends" is spacetime, which does not have the Euclidean metric in R^4. The Euclidean metric is how we normally measure spacial dimensions. — jgill

No. What bends is space. — EugeneW

I owe my friend an apology. Space does warp in the presence of great mass. "Bending" or "curving" on the other hand requires definitions, like the three interior angles of a triangle not adding to 180 degrees exactly. Not sure if that has ever been verified near the surface of the Earth.

If you shoot thin Bonnor beams through the universe (and you would see them, though thats questionable,) the curvature of space becomes visible. Do you find curved space hard to imagine?

Do you find curved space hard to imagine? — EugeneW

According to Feynman Einstein defined mean curvature of space in the following way:

If there is a region of space with matter in it and we take a sphere small enough that the density ρ of matter inside it is effectively constant, then the radius excess for the sphere is proportional to the mass inside the sphere.

In other words, you measure the surface area, A, and measure the radius,r, then compute
$r'=r-\sqrt{\frac{A}{2\pi }}$
The "radius excess" is the mean curvature of space in that region. The actual formula is a tad more involved.

Yes. I find it difficult to imagine emptiness being curved. To "see" the curvature you need some sort of physical object like a line or a sphere or a triangle. Way beyond my pay grade. :cool:

Way beyond my pay grade. :cool: — jgill

Do they pay you that little?

Yes. I find it difficult to imagine emptiness being curved — jgill

It's not pure emptiness, as you know...

Do they pay you that little? — EugeneW

They haven't paid me anything the last twenty two years. :sad:

It's not pure emptiness, as you know... — EugeneW

Yes, the aether of fields interacting, etc. I find that hard to visualize as well.

They haven't paid me anything the last twenty two years. — jgill

Then I understand it's difficult to grasp. Or should it be easy then? :chin:

the aether of fields interacting — jgill

The aether of the fields. Almost poetic.

There is NOTHING that can be said that explains apriority — Constance

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).

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.