purpose of 'existence — Jack Cummins

How do you know existence has "purpose"? What is that "purpose"?

a person's construction of 'reality

If "a person" is real, then s/he belongs to "reality", therefore s/he cannot "construct reality".

'beyond' the physical

By "beyond" you mean like math or poetry?

The existence of noumena has not been asserted or denied anywhere in the work. To call it a realm is to ignore:

The concept of a noumenon is therefore merely a boundary concept, in order to limit the pretension of sensibility, and therefore only of negative use. But it is nevertheless not invented arbitrarily, but is rather connected with the limitation of sensibility, yet without being able to posit anything positive outside of the domain of the latter.
— ibid. A255/B311

I am not aware of any place in the Critique where Kant argued differently from this. — Paine

I have already told you I believe CPR is inconsistent. So I'm not surprised Kant makes contradictory claims. The best we can do is give his intended & inconsistent reading.

Going back to a very old objection. For Kant, the transcendental object is the CAUSE of all appearances & clearly not an appearance. The obvious problem here is there is no sense in attributing a causal or grounding role to that which you don't even know if it exists or not. The agnosticism must apply to its causal & grounding role as well.

You may retort that the transcendental object is more like a rule or procedure but this makes no sense. It does not belong to any category of Kant, nor do the categories have anything to do with it, except maybe for causation (in contradiction)

But the understanding thinks it only as transcendental object. This object is the cause of appearance (hence is not itself appearance) and can be thought neither as magnitude nor as reality nor as substance, etc. (because these concepts always require sensible forms wherein they determine an object). Hence concerning this object we are completely ignorant as to whether it is to be found in us--or, for that matter, outside us; and whether it would be annulled simultaneously with sensibility, or would still remain if we removed sensibility. If we want to call this object noumenon, because the presentation of it is not sensible, then we are free to do so. — CPR, A288,B344,Pluhar

Another clear contradiction here to those with eyes is elsewhere Kant claims ALL presentations are appearances & here he has a presentation which isn't an appearance :lol:

So yes. CPR is irredeemable. It's full of contradictions. Kant to me is simply a dumber version of Sextus Empiricus, who was smart enough to use noumena & phenomena as dispensable distinctions, ready to be thrown out in the manner of Wittgenstein's (who was also a Pyrrhonist) ladder once the job has been accomplished.

Going back to a very old objection. For Kant, the transcendental object is the CAUSE of all appearances & clearly not an appearance. — Sirius

All of the text I quoted clearly rules out the transcendental object being an appearance.

Where, in the text, do you see the transcendental object being a cause in itself? It seems more like a concept that gives us permission to propose causes even though we know very little.

So yes. CPR is irredeemable. It's full of contradictions. Kant to me is simply a dumber version of Sextus Empiricus, who was smart enough to use noumena & phenomena as dispensable distinctions, ready to be thrown out in the manner of Wittgenstein's (who was also a Pyrrhonist) ladder once the job has been accomplished. — Sirius

Do you have any idea what "noumena" is? I've been reading this Kant quotes in my thread, and I'm having issues making sense of them...

Where, in the text, do you see the transcendental object being a cause in itself? It seems more like a concept that gives us permission to propose causes even though we know very little. — Paine

Assuming you haven't ignored the quote of Kant I presented, the noumenon (transcendental object here) is the cause of appearance, phenomenon.

I don't know what you mean by "cause in itself". Do you mean uncaused ? Well, it is uncaused in the sense that all phenomena has a cause which can't be attributed to noumena

"Seems more like a concept" - it can seem anything to you but you can't attribute it to Kant for that reason.

Remember the Kantian slogan "Thoughts without content are empty" - the content of thought is provided by sensible intuition, which is totally lacking in the case of transcendental objects

An empty thought is no thought (concept) at all...

Assuming you haven't ignored the quote of Kant I presented, the noumenon (transcendental object here) is the cause of appearance, phenomenon. — Sirius

Then all my efforts to distinguish the two in the text have been for naught.

B344-5 in Guyer/Wood, is understanding warning sensibility not to exceed its purpose, which it would be doing if it treated the object understanding thinks of its own accord, a noumenon or a transcendental object, as the cause of what sensibility takes as an appearance. The warning because such object, the one merely thought, can never be an appearance.

Reference ibid Bxxvii.

Do you have any idea what "noumena" is? I've been reading this Kant quotes in my thread, and I'm having issues making sense of them... — ProtagoranSocratist

To be fair, there's no clear answer to this. But there are 3 main interpretations, all of which have problems

1. Noumena is the class of transcendental objects that act as a cause or ground of all phenomena, appearances or presentations. This causing or grounding is ontological. I prefer this.

2. Noumena is a rule or procedure which allows us to have a nexus of intuition & concept (understanding) come together under affections of senses. In this sense it's not much different from the schema of imagination.

3. Noumena is the boundary or limit of appearances. Like the frame of a picture which isn't the picture but enables you to see the picture. (The obvious problem here is if appearances have a limit, we will have to know the limit on the other side as well, irl, we do see the frame too & what's beyond it lol)

Then all my efforts to distinguish the two in the text have been for naught — Paine

You don't need to be harsh on yourself. Your efforts were not wasted. The interpretation you were offering is still a plausible one. But there's not much we can do to make a definite or demonstrative case here, given the internal contradictions of CPR.

Only the few Godlike philosophers, such as Aristotle, can escape plain contradictions (when read properly)

In case you’re interested, here’s a link to an article by Lorenz—“Kant's Doctrine Of The A Priori In The Light Of Contemporary Biology.” — T Clark

Do you have access to a clean copy of the article. From the Internet Archive, the “full text” comes out as:

This f^^ ^
is due to hereditary dl f chir -
acteristic of the ^f^ in U* 0~
disposes ^;J ncepti onof the'apri-
must realize th ^^ destr ^tion of the
orf as an organ means
concept: something natural
tionary adaptation to the laws otu«
external world has evolved a posteriori in a
certain sense, even if in a way entirely differ-
ent from that of abstraction or deduction from
previous experience.

I agree when the paper writes “In view of the indubitable fact of evolution”. The question is, did Kant mean by “a priori” what today is meant by “a prioiri”?

Unless I’ve misunderstood you, this is not how I understand what Kant was saying. — T Clark

What does Kant mean by “a priori”?

Reason must have content, As Kant said "thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”. Reason must be about something. Pure reason, which is reason without content, is impossible. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is a critique of pure reason, not an acceptance of the existence of pure reason.

For Kant in the CPR, all knowledge must be synthetic a priori, meaning that there can be neither purely synthetic knowledge nor purely a priori knowledge.

5+7=12 is an example of synthetic a priori mathematical knowledge, and the syllogism that all humans are mortal, Socrates is human, therefore Socrates is mortal is an example of synthetic a priori logical knowledge.

For Kant, the conscious reasoning about content is not innate in humans at birth. Children have to mature a certain number of years before being able to consciously reason about content.

If all knowledge must be synthetic a priori, which derives from reasoning about content, and there can be neither purely a priori knowledge nor purely synthetic knowledge, then reasoning can neither be temporally before nor after content. Reasoning must be contemporaneous with its content. Synthetic refers to the content and a priori refers to the reasoning, but as reasoning is contemporaneous with its content, the term “a priori” must also be considered in an atemporal sense. Atemporal in the same sense of Aristotle’s material cause (edited) rather than Hume’s temporal causation.

Kant’s synthetic a priori uses a transcendental argument, whether a Transcendental Deduction or a Transcendental Idealism.

In the Empiricism of Hume, some concepts, such as one billiard ball hitting another causes a movement, are derived using reason temporally after particular observations. Within Empiricism, these concepts are therefore contingent and accidental to particular observations, and are the basis of modern science.

In the Rationalism of Descartes, some concepts are innate, and temporally precede particular observations. Within Rationalism, these concepts, such as “there is a God”, are therefore necessary and universal.

Kant’s principle of synthetic a priori knowledge uses a transcendental argument that is neither Empiricism nor Rationalism. Within Kant's synthetic a priori, some concepts, such as the Categories, are necessary and universal because they create the very experiences that they derive from.

For Kant, in the CPR, the term “a priori” means neither innate nor inherent, in the sense of temporally preceding something else. It is meant in a transcendental atemporal sense, in that some concepts, such as the Categories, are a priori to the very experiences that they are derived from.

Do you have access to a clean copy of the article. From the Internet Archive, the “full text” comes out as: — RussellA

If you go to the linked page and scroll down, you’ll find options to provide the document in various formats. Push on PDF with text then download to your files. What you get is a fairly bad scan of the article, but it’s searchable and you can copy text out of it.

The question is, did Kant mean by “a priori” what today is meant by “a prioiri”? — RussellA

Well, Lorenz certainly thought so and he was a pretty smart guy. He was also much more familiar with Kant’s philosophy than I am. I suggest you read the article.

Although I am very far from a Kant scholar, I’ll go back and take a look and see if I can answer your question myself later today.

Push on PDF with text then download to your files. — T Clark

:up:

So far, i've seen all these definitions by Kant which do not have clear at all definitions:

-noumena

-the transcendental object

-the thing in itself

If CPR has 3 terms in it that are not at all clear, and the discussion is based around these terms, then how is it possible to understand his argument? Everytime I try to confront Kant's writing in this thread, it seems I just get further and further away from understanding it...

all things are things within themselves. Is he maybe saying that nothing is independent, and that all things are connected to multiple things?

Reason must have content, As Kant said "thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”. Reason must be about something. Pure — RussellA

I’m taking a shot at this, but as I noted, Kant's work is not something I have deep insight into.

I come to this question through the back door–through my interest in psychology and cognitive science. It is my understanding--and there is evidence to support it--that human nervous systems, sense organs, and minds are structured in such a way that we exhibit the mental processes we observe and experience. Example–studies by Karen Wynn show that children only a few months old exhibit behaviors that show a capacity for simple moral and mathematical thinking. Another example–Stephen Pinker and others have described innate language acquisition. It's not that they have innate knowledge, what you call content, it's that they have the capacity to gather and process that content–to think in structured and organized ways. To be fair, these claims are not without controversy.

The thing that jumped out to me when I read about the critique of pure reason was that Kant identified space and time as being known a priori. These strike me as exactly the kind of structured principles I described above. Time and space are not what you call "content," they are principles that allow us to organize and process content provided by our senses. Is this the same thing you meant when you wrote what I've quoted below? I don't know.

As I wrote before: “Kant did not propose that we have knowledge prior to our sensibilities, which we then apply to our sensibilities. Kant proposed in Transcendental Idealism that a priori knowledge is that knowledge derived from our sensibilities that is necessary to make sense of these very same sensibilities.” — RussellA

Kant proposed in Transcendental Idealism that a priori knowledge is that knowledge derived from our sensibilities that is necessary to make sense of these very same sensibilities.” — RussellA

I disagree with this. Maybe we could read through the Transcendental Aesthetic together and come to agreement. Who's up for that?

I disagree with this. Maybe we could read through the Transcendental Aesthetic together and come to agreement. Who's up for that? — frank

You may be right, my wording may not have been the best.

The concept of the transcendental is important to the CPR, and is important to Kant’s principle of synthetic a priori. The Transcendental Aesthetic is 21 pages long, from A19/B33 to B73, so would be a major project.

To my understanding, for Kant, only the synthetic a priori can give knowledge. The synthetic by itself (the intuition of sensibilities, observations, appearances, experiences) cannot give knowledge. The a priori by itself (pure intuitions of space and time, pure concepts of understanding ( the Categories), pure logic, pure reason, pure judgement) cannot give knowledge. Knowledge may only be gained when the synthetic is spontaneous with the a priori.

For example, we make an observation which we make sense of using the Categories. But in Kant’s transcendental sense, these Categories did not exist temporally prior to the observations, but spontaneously came into existence at the same time as making the observations necessarily in order to make sense of the observations. Without the Categories we could not make sense of our observations, and without our observations we could not have any categories making sense of our observations.

In a transcendental argument, a strong premise about a situation leads to a reasonable conclusion. This reasonable conclusion then becomes a valid justification for the strong premise.

Perhaps the following wording would be better:

Therefore , transcendental Idealism is the idea that a strong premise (the a priori, such as the Categories) about a situation (the synthetic, such as our sensibilities) leads to a reasonable conclusion ( knowledge). This reasonable conclusion (knowledge) then becomes a valid justification for the strong premise (the a priori, such as the Categories).

If you’ve any serious interest, I highly recommend at least the translator’s intro, CPR, Guyer/Wood, Cambridge Press, 1998…

https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/25851/files/2017/09/kant-first-critique-cambridge-1m89prv.pdf

….a ~100-odd page altogether outstanding synopsis, including originally unpublished footnotes, and other cool stuff. While it may be true there’s some subjectivity involved with the language translation differences, that’s going to be the case no matter who’s translating German to English.

While the intro alone is worth spending some time with, the text itself remains the typical Kantian grammatical morass of paragraph-sized sentences, and the like. Genius at work, donchaknow.

I think we're on the same page. A reason to reject the empiricist view that I learn about space and time from experience is that I can't imagine such a process. It isn't possible that I looked at a chair and observed that it has spatial and temporal extension. I can't imagine a chair that doesn't possess those properties. The concepts are fused.

On the other hand, time and space have no meaning in a void. There has to be at least two objects moving relative to one another to have space and time. So again, the experience of observing an object and knowledge of space and time happen simultaneously.

Cool. Bookmarked.

Stephen Pinker and others have described innate language acquisition. It's not that they have innate knowledge, what you call content, it's that they have the capacity to gather and process that content–to think in structured and organized ways. — T Clark

I agree. Another example. I cannot see the colour red when I close my eyes, but have the ability to see the colour red when there is something red present in my field of vision.

The thing that jumped out to me when I read about the critique of pure reason was that Kant identified space and time as being known a priori. These strike me as exactly the kind of structured principles I described above. Time and space are not what you call "content," they are principles that allow us to organize and process content provided by our senses. — T Clark

I agree that we are born not so much with innate knowledge but with innate ability.

Carrying this idea forward, we could say that we are not born with an innate knowledge of space and time, but have an innate ability to recognise space and time in our sensibilities. In today’s terms, we could say that my innate ability to recognise space and time is a priori, where a priori is being used in a temporal sense.

However, as I understand it, this is not how Kant uses the term a priori. Kant is not using the term a priori in a temporal sense. It is being used to describe the relationship between two events that are simultaneous, contemporaneous. The concept of a cause that is contemporaneous with its effect is called "simultaneous causation”. Stephen Mumford argues that causation is always simultaneous. Aristotle’s material cause is in a sense about simultaneity. For Kant, our pure intuitions of space and time don’t originate temporally before our particular sensibilities (observations, experiences) but originate transcendentally from the very same sensibilities that they are needed to make sense of.

For Stephen Pinker, we are born with certain innate abilities that allow us to make sense of the experiences we have today, and in this sense a priori. For Kant, the abilities we have that allow us to make sense of the experiences we have today derive in a transcendental sense from the very experiences themselves, and in this sense a priori.

Because our a priori pure intuitions of space and time have transcendentally derived from our synthetic experience of space and time, these pure intuitions are necessarily necessary and universal. This is different to Hume’s observation of regularities in our synthetic experiences which are necessarily contingent and particular.

Kant believes there is something external that is causing our observations, from which we transcendentally derive our pure intuitions of space and time, but this external something, like the thing in itself, must forever remain unknown. This external something may in fact be exactly the same as our concept of space and time, but then again, it may not. We will never know.

However, as a personal opinion, there must be a real relation between our pure intuitions of space and time and the something external and unknowable, which may or may not be the same as our pure intuitions. Because our pure intuitions have been transcendentally derived from appearances, these pure intuitions must be necessary and universal as Kant proposes, even if only metaphorically necessary and universal.

A reason to reject the empiricist view that I learn about space and time from experience….(…). I can't imagine a chair that doesn't possess those properties. — frank

The problem is two-fold. First, CPR goes to great lengths to show that thinking is wrong, and second, doesn’t go to hardly any length at all to show why it matters that much to be that wrong.

That an object possesses the properties of space and time just is the empiricist view Kant himself found reason to reject.

Why is it, do you think, that the thing you learn about empirically through the senses, and the thing representing it that you merely remember, are close enough to each other that, as a rule, the rememberance doesn’t confuse you? Better yet, why is it you don’t have to learn what a thing is, each and every time you perceive it?

The point being, even if speculative theoretical metaphysics can’t answer those questions, it is in fact reason itself that presents them, and the critique of reason is only that cautionary tale for how NOT to bother with some of that which reason asks. Or, as The Man says, to “guard against” those “transcendental illusory” cognitions.

“…. For if one regards space and time as properties that, as far as their possibility is concerned, must be encountered in things in themselves, and reflects on the absurdities in which one then becomes entangled, because two infinite things that are neither substances nor anything really inhering in substances must nevertheless be something existing, indeed the necessary condition of the existence of all things, which also remain even if all existing things are removed; then one cannot well-blame the
good Berkeley if he demotes bodies to mere illusion; indeed even our own existence, which would be made dependent in such a way on the self-subsisting reality of a non-entity such as time, would be transformed along with this into mere illusion; an absurdity of which no one has yet allowed himself to be guilty….” (B71)

I think you misunderstood my post.

Oh. Sorry.

There‘s a two-year-old CPR thread on here, in “Categories - Reading Groups”, with 600+ posts.

There, again, reference is made to an intuition we do not possess but can imagine as possible. There is an interesting discussion much later in the book where the "object in general" is a valid question even though we cannot answer it:

In transcendental philosophy, however, there are no questions other than the cosmological ones in regard to which one can rightfully demand a sufficient answer concerning the constitution of the object itself; the philosopher is not allowed to evade them by pleading their impenetrable obscurity, and these questions can have to do only with cosmological ideas. For the object must be given empirically, and the question concerns only its conformity with an idea. If the object is transcendental and thus in itself unknown, e.g., whether the something whose appearance (in ourselves) is thinking (the soul) is in itself a simple being, whether there is a cause of all things taken together that is absolutely necessary, etc., then we should seek an object for our idea, which we can concede to be unknown to us, but not on that account impossible.*

The footnote:

* To the question, "What kind of constitution does a transcendental object have?" one cannot indeed give an answer saying what it is, but one can answer that the question itself is nothing, because no object for the question is given. Hence all questions of the transcendental doctrine of the soul are answerable and actually answered; for they have to do with the transcendental subject of all inner appearances, which is not itself an appearance and hence is not given as an object, and regarding which none of the categories (at which the question is really being aimed) encounter conditions of their application. Thus here is a case where the common saying holds, that no answer is an answer, namely that a question about the constitution of this something, which cannot be thought through any determinate predicate because it is posited entirely outside the sphere of objects that can be given to us, is entirely nugatory and empty. — ibid. A479/ B 507

I concur with your findings. That is the translation I have been quoting and linking from.

I agree that we are born not so much with innate knowledge but with innate ability.

Carrying this idea forward, we could say that we are not born with an innate knowledge of space and time, but have an innate ability to recognise space and time in our sensibilities. In today’s terms, we could say that my innate ability to recognise space and time is a priori, where a priori is being used in a temporal sense. — RussellA

:100: :up:

we could say that my innate ability to recognise space and time is a priori, where a priori is being used in a temporal sense.

However, as I understand it, this is not how Kant uses the term a priori. — RussellA

We have reached the end of what I’m willing to say about what Kant described. You certainly know more about that than I do. I haven’t read the Lorenz article in several years, so I think I’ll go back and reread it.

….reference is made to an intuition we do not possess but can imagine as possible. — Paine

Yes, the intellectual intuition. Understanding is that faculty for which no other kind than the discursive could even be imagined, and no other at all could we possess and remain of human intelligence.

Yep. Still, for those objects in general, which I think Kant wants understood as “objects of reason” derived from cosmological ideas, the questions regarding their constitution, which just is what they are, are better left unasked. Reason is always at liberty to present a question, but it not necessarily obliged to pursue it.

Caveat: the higher pagination is tough on me. Layer upon layer, hard to assimilate into a system, as he wants us to do.

It’s a grammatical seduction—the grammar forces a subject ("things") and then smuggles in an inner "within themselves." To project the "I" away from "it" the body. More or less the anti-realism of Christ.

 a feeling of being at home in a world in which no sort of reality survives, a merely “inner” world, a “true” world, an “eternal” world.... “The Kingdom of God is within you”.... — Nietzsche, AC § 30