So even if a person jettisons the death and authenticity stuff, the unveiling description of all the structure of the mundane that we usually ignore as too close to us is a game changer. — mask

I've never placed too much importance on Heidegger's views on death. Authenticity is interesting. But you're right -- his phenomenological analysis of "average everydayness" has always beens striking to me. His Introduction to Metaphysics should be read by anyone serious about Heidegger, and would be my recommendation to you if you haven't already.

his phenomenological analysis of "average everydayness" has always beens striking to me. His Introduction to Metaphysics should be read by anyone serious about Heidegger, and would be my recommendation to you if you haven't already. — Xtrix

Great recommendation! I have read it, but I agree that it's great. And we seem to agree that the analysis of average everydayness has value independently of what one makes of the death theme & authenticity theme. I think we can also phrase this as the phenomenon of the world. So forgetfullness of being is forgetfulness of the worldliness of world, of the network of significance that we mostly glide on and through without noticing it. This would be forgetfulness or ignorance of 'tool being' or equipment as ready to hand but not 'present.'

can’t find this passage. To tell the truth, I don’t even recognize it, my keyword searches don’t lead me to it, and because I’m too lazy to peruse all my literature even after thumbing through some of it, would you please refer me to its source? — Mww

Sure. PFM, section 13, remark 2: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/52821/52821-h/52821-h.htm

Correct. Given that all humans incorporate the same rational system, all reality in general should be consistent among them. A basketball is such for me as it is such for you. Even if I have no experience of them, if you tell me about one, I should understand what you’re talking about and form a representation of it a priori for myself. This is for the most part because of the categories, which permits conception of an object in general without all the the necessary intuitions given from perception. — Mww

Thank you. This matches what I grasped from my own reading. This idea of the same rational system is what Solomon called the 'transcendental pretense.' I think we do have the same rational system, more or less, but believing this seems to depend on experience, on being socialized. To me the deep subject looks plural rather than singular, even though consciousness is founded in the individual brain.
Solomon also talks of methodological solipsism, which is basically starting from Descartes' individual doubting mind. To me this is like trying to understand the internet by studying only laptops. Our brains have evolved to be networked and are only understood in the highest functioning as such a network. (That's my rough position at the moment.)

I’m not sure what geometry is having to be saved from, unless you meant illusory appearance. — Mww

Some kind of corrosive Humean relativism?

The science of relativity is grounded in Galileo’s mind alone, isn’t it? Einstein may or may not have thought SR and GR on his own, even if there never was a Galileo, but he didn’t. — Mww

Deep question. If the 'I' is a modification of the 'we' --if intersubjectivity is primary and not secondary-- what then? The hardware is individual, but the software is networked.

If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?

Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant. — Wittgenstein

If the language that the individual thinks in and with is forged socially, then Heidegger has a point with his being-in-the-world and being-with-others as a deeper layer than the epistemological theory of the individual mind processing sensation with an innate set of concepts.

This is extremely hard to explain without saying ‘read Kant’. He is careful with he words - too careful perhaps - and asks a lot of his reader.

The most simplistic way to view all this is, as I previously said, by regarding a priori as the canvas and a posteriori as the paint - either alone produce no picture and it is only through the former (a priori) that we make this deduction. — I like sushi

Read (more) Kant is of course good advice. I love his introductions, but I haven't studied all of the details. Kant is not always a pleasure to read. And then debates about Kant are like lots of classical metaphysical debates, which are haunted by a kind of futility perhaps.

Recently I found a philosopher who articulated my vague misgivings about Kant.

Whereas Locke’s ‘things themselves’ are objects of scientific investigations (especially by the corpuscular hypothesis), Kant’s ‘things in themselves’ are thoroughly unknowable. But despite their unknowability, Kant affirms the existence of things in themselves, and this has been viewed for a long time as one of the serious problems in Kant’s philosophy. According to Kant, things in space (and their properties) are nothing but representations ‘in us’, and appearances qua representations necessarily demand the existence of things in themselves (though these are unknowable). From an historical point of view, however, if Descartes’ and Locke’s theories of ideas do not precede it, such a view must be unintelligible. If I may limit my consideration to Locke and Kant, perhaps we can say that Kant’s ‘things in themselves’ are the product of a degeneration of Lockean ‘things themselves’. In other words, Kant’s concept of ‘things in themselves’ would not make sense without the model of Locke’s naturalistic theory of ideas,[4] and as a result of its degeneration, the framework of his transcendental idealism seems to have a distorted logic.
...
As already mentioned, Locke’s ‘things themselves’ are single corpuscles or aggregates of corpuscles that possess only primary qualities (and powers based on them). They affect our sense organs qua aggregates of corpuscles, and accordingly a sort of motion is communicated to the brain. As a result, sensible ideas are produced in the mind. By contrast, in Kant’s case, ‘things in themselves’ are not known to us, and since space is a form of our sensibility, the idea that things in themselves are in space does not make sense. But though he has such a view, Kant repeatedly emphasizes that sensible representations are given to us by ‘things in themselves’ affecting our minds or senses.

Why does Kant assert the existence of the unknown ‘things in themselves’? — Tomida

https://sites.google.com/site/diogenesphil/lk

One answer is that we 'obviously' share a single world. Humans are born, humans die. The world remains. This vaguely suggests a substratum that is independent of any particular-mortal human mind.

Another problem I have with my imperfect understanding of Kant is:

Kant’s things in themselves, which correspond to Locke’s things themselves, affect our senses and in this sense they certainly bear a quasi-causal character. However, the concept of cause that Kant regards as one of the pure concepts of understanding is applicable only to appearances qua representations.

...
Hegelians and Kantians often say that Kant synthesizes empiricism and rationalism. Indeed, on the one hand, he acknowledges the affection by things in themselves and regards the objects of our experience as mental; on the other hand, he acknowledges various a priori items in the mind and regards their rational consequences as important. However, his synthesis is performed by tacitly accepting the naturalistic logic of ideas that Locke shares with Descartes, and at the same time distorting it. In this sense, Kant’s antinaturalistic, transcendental idealism rests on a tacit naturalistic basis. — Tomida

I appreciate your familiarity with the subject matter, and your arguments.

Things in themselves are not perceived, only thought. — David Mo

That things in themselves are only thought is correct, but everything a human perceives is also thought. On the other hand, to say a thing in itself is ONLY thought implies its existence is not necessary. If its existence is not necessary, it can have no necessary use. Isn’t its regulation of our knowledge a necessary use, insofar as at least instance of an unknownable, is informed by it?

But I take your intent with the proposition. The solution is to allow the determinations of the nature of the “-in-itself” to be different than the determination of the nature of the “thing” connected necessarily with it. See SS9-1.
—————

Your mistake was here. — David Mo

I won’t say I haven’t made one, except that if I did, it would have nothing to do with the ideality of space or transcendental appearances. I haven’t thought of things or things in themselves in that way. Nor have I involved subjective conditions as properties.

I do grant anything to which my empirical intuitions cannot apply a transcendental existence, which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with me in considering things met in perception alone. The transcendentalism only disappears iff something progresses into the faculty that represents it as an appearance, which perception is never tasked to do.

I understand what you’re trying to say, by saying the thing-in-itself is not perceived. Things perceived do not vacate their space simply because they are impressed upon us, the thing remains even while we are thinking about it. Nevertheless, the thing thought about merely represents the thing that remains in its space, and THAT is the thing-in-itself.

Cool. Thanks. I admit to not thumbing far enough, or thumbing right over it. I lost my place in answering your question. Are you ok with the responses you got, or is there anything you’re still unsatisfied with?

Kant’s things in themselves, which correspond to Locke’s things themselves, affect our senses and in this sense they certainly bear a quasi-causal character. — Tomida

YEA!!! (Does the Happy Dance, a-la Snoopy.....feet just a-blur)

Cool. Thanks. I admit to not thumbing far enough, or thumbing right over it. I lost my place in answering your question. Are you ok with the responses you got, or is there anything you’re still unsatisfied with? — Mww

I thought they were good responses. I guess I'd like to hear what you have to say about the transcendental pretense (the assumption that we all have the same rational system.) Or in general what you think Kant had to take for granted in order to write CPR. Given that Kant is obviously a great philosopher, what did he not see? Do you have any criticisms of Kant?

I think we do have the same rational system, more or less, but believing this seems to depend on experience — mask

The system is complete in itself; the content of the system is predicated on experience, yes. And it really doesn’t matter what name a theory subsumes the system under, as long as they all agree we as humans all have the same faculties.

If the language that the individual thinks in is forged socially, then Heidegger has a point with his being-in-the-world and being-with-others as a deeper layer than the epistemological theory of the individual mind processing sensation with an innate set of concepts. — mask

That may all well be, but it bears keeping in mind that peope don’t think qua think, in language; people think, meaning the private subjective rational activity, in images. Language only arises in discussions of thought, which is to say, the meaning of those images.

The system is complete in itself; the content of the system is predicated on experience, yes. And it really doesn’t matter what name a theory subsumes the system under, as long as they all agree we as humans all have the same faculties. — Mww

There's a line in Bennington's Derrida:

[T]he empirical is the transcendental of the transcendental (of the empirical). — Bennington page 278

For context, I'm with Kant 100% that we get reality 'filtered.' I'm just not sure that his particular system is stable or eternally correct. What Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derrida have to say about language makes the situation more complicated, IMV.

That may all well be, but it bears keeping in mind that peope don’t think qua think, in language; people think, meaning the private subjective rational activity, in images. — Mww

I find it plausible that people think with words and images but not that thinking is essentially imagistic. How does Kant exist for us? And even if you thought what you posted in pure image somehow, it's only a beetle-in-the-box that I can never see. I can't compare my internal images to yours to grasp whether or not I comprehend you. I can only trade words with you. This 'sociality of reason' seems crucial to me, and I aim it against Descartes too. 'I' don't doubt. The 'we' doubts in me as me, with this 'we' serving as a metaphor for our possession of language as the condition of the possibility for doubting the external world.

What I think Heidegger gets right independent of all the death stuff is a grasp of world as fundamental.

According to Heidegger, Descartes presents the world to us “with its skin off” (Being and Time 20: 132), i.e., as a collection of present-at-hand entities to be encountered by subjects. The consequence of this prioritizing of the present-at-hand is that the subject needs to claw itself into a world of equipmental meaning by adding what Heidegger calls ‘value-predicates’ (context-dependent meanings) to the present-at-hand. In stark contrast, Heidegger's own view is that Dasein is in primary epistemic contact not with context-independent present-at-hand primitives (e.g., raw sense data, such as a ‘pure’ experience of a patch of red), to which context-dependent meaning would need to be added via value-predicates, but rather with equipment, the kind of entity whose mode of Being is readiness-to-hand and which therefore comes already laden with context-dependent significance. — link

The world is not a set of objects but the 'stage' or 'background' on which or against which all things exist. IMV we learn the distinction of self and non-self. The individual mindspace is a product of social language use, though obviously it's not simply a fiction.

There is another part that is outdated: mathematics is universal. — David Mo

I submit Kant means by universal, anywhere there is a human employing those principles in the same conditions under which they were imposed a priori. No matter where we go in the Universe, they must apply, and now that Voyager 2 has exited the solar system, the universality of mathematics seems to be confirmed. It still exists just as we built it.

A sheet of paper will be a plane anywhere a human is in the same plane. Mathematics as human know them will not hold in a black hole, but then.....neither will a human. 1 +1 = 2 no matter what planet we occupy. There may be different mathematics in the Universe, dependent on the rationality that forges them, but those rationalities wouldn’t be the same as ours.

but those rationalities wouldn’t be the same as ours. — Mww

Here's the crux: our rationality. Being-with-others, a universal-transcendental subject. Not just me. At the base of the I as its most truthful-accurate version is an ideal we. I must manage my bias (my unreason) in order to see from and with the ideal we (our reason).

The world is not a set of objects but the 'stage' or 'background' on which or against which all things exist. — mask

Yes, seems that way to me as well. A jar of jellybeans is not the jar.

A worth endeavor perhaps, but the nature of human subjectivity seems to prohibit, or at least seriously impair, its possibility.

A worth endeavor perhaps, but the nature of human subjectivity seems to prohibit, or at least seriously impair, its possibility. — Mww

I agree. And yet to say so is to have established some kind of universal trans-subjective truth about the nature of human subjectivity. Somehow I reason privately and come to conclusions about the limitations of the private reasoning of others. The CPR presents itself as the true metaphysics, the only kind now possible. A grandiose assertion! Which isn't to say he isn't right in some important sense...

What he adds to this:

The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense — Hobbes

is perhaps lots of detail about how our concepts manage and organize this pressing of our sense organs.

This version of Leviathan has a great introduction:

http://files.libertyfund.org/files/869/0161_Bk.pdf

What it seems important as principle in Kant is the regulative use of the reason. That is to say: physics principles are a priori because they come from a priori conditions of our knowledge, not being things in themselves. This links with Kuhnian concept of paradigm and with quantum paradoxes of measurement, relativity, etc. We live a world mediated by the categories of our way of thinking. — David Mo

Here is the way I make sense of this. The key for me is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive-nomological_model

Because we come equipped with mathematical intuitions and the notion of causality, we can hypothesize that maybe nature is subject to a law of gravity, for instance, mathematically expressed. We dream up patterns that may or may not fit the data. From this perspective, the mind is clearly active, even if it is passive with respect to sensation.

To me Democritus had to work like this, though without the math that become dominant with Galileo. 'Perhaps nature is really made of microscopic pieces.' Guided by this work of creativity, he could interpret uncontroversial facts in the light of their possible conformity to this hidden structure. As others have noted, observation is theory-laden. How much of Kant is compressed in that idea? If we take the theory-laden-ness of observation to be something that evolves historically, then we get various post-Kantian thinkers. Yes, reality is mediated by the social lens of an impersonal conceptual scheme, but also this scheme changes --or most of it is subject to change.

And that's all I care about. — Xtrix

What you care or do not care about is irrelevant and beneath discussion. Far more relevant is the fact that Kant not get turned into a full blown idealist where the limit to thought is nothing but a posit of thought itself - as the noumenon is, and the thing-in-itself is not.

Repeat: your interpretation is wrong, but I don't care. It's not beneath discussion -- I started this discussion. Feel free to start another one. Or respond to someone else. It's irrelevant to me.

Linguistic convention says there are basketballs out there; transcendental idealism says there are objects out there only called basketballs because the human represents the object to himself as such. — Mww

Just to inject a few words about linguistic convention... ;-)

Linguistic convention allows us to talk about basketballs and humans (grammatically interchangeable as subjects or objects depending on what one wants to say). But linguistic convention doesn't say that basketballs are "out there" - that kind of "in here/out there" distinction is itself made using language and depends on one's philosophical commitments.

As I see it, Descartes was confused by mind idioms that lead to him positing his mind/body distinction. Locke, Hume and Kant then subsequently carried that line of thinking to its logical conclusions. The issue with subject/object dualism is that it affects (or infects, depending on one's perspective) the way people look at everything such that it is difficult to conceive of any alternative.

That's not an argument for or against it (here at least). But just to point out how it can subtly frame the way we look at the world.

To give a stock example, the Earth orbited the Sun long before humans came on the scene to construct a theory of heliocentrism. It seems that we can talk about that in ordinary language (introducing scientific or mathematical language where relevant). What does Kant's system, or subject/object dualism generally, contribute here?
— Andrew M

transcendental realism...regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.

CPR, A369 — Wayfarer

Thanks for replying. I'm reading your comments below as an application of Kant's system.

What you're not seeing is the way the mind - not just your mind, or my mind - constructs the entire stage within which perspective and judgements of the age of the Universe exist.

"The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'."
(Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271) — Wayfarer

As we've discussed before, observer in its physics sense does not imply mind or consciousness, it instead refers to a measurement apparatus or reference frame. As Heisenberg put it, "Of course the introduction of the observer must not be misunderstood to imply that some kind of subjective features are to be brought into the description of nature."

So what the above passage says is that, taken as a whole, the universe is predicted to be static and unchanging (per the Wheeler-DeWitt equation). In order to predict a dynamic and changing universe, one must split it into subsystems where time and change emerge as a relational or relative measure between those subsystems. That's the case even if the subsystems are simply a lifeless planet + the rest of the universe.

Alternatively, let's see what your reading commits you to here. Before sentient life emerged on Earth there were no conscious observers. Therefore the universe must have been static prior to sentient emergence. Therefore it only appears as if the Earth were orbiting the Sun at an earlier time. But that consequence is one reason why virtually no-one holds the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation in quantum mechanics. As John Bell put it:

It would seem that the theory is exclusively concerned with ‘results of measurements’ and has nothing to say about anything else. When the ‘system’ in question is the whole world where is the ‘measurer’ to be found? Inside, rather than outside, presumably. What exactly qualifies some subsystems to play this role? Was the world wave function waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some more highly qualified measurer — with a Ph.D.? If the theory is to apply to anything but idealized laboratory operations, are we not obliged to admit that more or less ‘measurement-like’ processes are going on more or less all the time more or less everywhere? Is there ever then a moment when there is no jumping and the Schrödinger equation applies? — John S. Bell - Quantum mechanics for cosmologists

Alternatively, let's see what your reading commits you to here. Before sentient life emerged on Earth there were no conscious observers. — Andrew M

fdrake and I have discussed this also. It's obviously the case that there were no rational observers before h. sapiens (leaving aside gods and aliens). But here, you're assuming the stance of imagining a domain without observers in it - the vast empty universe with the early earth and primitive life-forms. Your conscious mind is still providing the stage, as it were, or the canvas on which all of these are seen in the mind's eye. I mean, 'before' is a human judgement, or at least a judgement made from a particular point in history, according to a particular scale.

Absent any scale, perspective or observer, then how can there be any duration, on the one hand, or distance between objects, on the other? What is 'the universe' from the viewpoint of a mineral? Absurd question, of course, because a mineral has no viewpoint. Nothing exists 'for it' (which incidentally is why 'objects' are not 'beings'). You and I as conscious observers know all manner of things about such an object - where it is, what it's made of. But again, that is because the mind furnishes the conceptual framework within which judgements of the nature of things are made.

Modern science wants to imagines a world without 'the subject' in it, as if from no viewpoint at all. It started with the rejection of scholasticism and Aristotelianism (and with good reason.) 'Let's start with what is really there, without the encumbrances of metaphysical speculation and other such nonsense'. Kant was part of that, wasn't he? He wrote one of the seminal documents of the Enlightenment, 'What is Enlightenment?' But Kant also realised that 'what is really there' is not so straightforward after all, as he was part of the philosophical tradition of asking 'how do we know?' So Kant respected naturalism, but he also sought something beyond its purview (i.e. 'declaring a limit to science so as to make room for faith'.)

There's a passage in Magee's book on Schopenhauer which I often quote in this context, which deals with exactly the question you've raised:

'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was ... first, the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood [i.e. we have to learn to look at our naturalistic spectacles rather than just through them, which takes a kind of cognitive shift.]

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.

Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107

Now this explains how Kant can be both an empirical realist AND at the same time, a transcendental idealist. Many people - I suspect you also! - will think that Kant (and I) are saying that 'the world exists only in the mind of the observer'. He's not saying that - but he's also questioning the (generally implicit) view that most of us have, that the world exists completely independently of our perception of it (as per scientific realism). However, he's pointing out that there is an implicitly subjective element in every statement, every perception, even objective statements (which are to all intents, true to all observers, but only because of the kinds of observers that we are).

But we don't see that subjective element, not because it doesn't exist, but because it is the condition of anything we know (which is the particular meaning of 'transcendental' in Kant and also Husserl - necessary for experience, but not given in it). But because naturalism has 'bracketed out' the subjective, then it has overlooked this fact. I think the 'observer problem' is one consequence of this - kind of a wake-up call, if you like. That, to me, is the point of Andrei Linde's statement (and incidentally he has a Closer to Truth interview which explains it at much greater length, in his charming Russian accent and with a rather quirky sense of humour.)

Incidentally both 'measurement apparatus' and 'reference frame' also imply an observer, but don't try and think of that 'from the outside', as it were; the 'observer' is not part of the picture, but the picture is always in the mind of an observer.

As I see it, Descartes was confused by mind idioms that lead to him positing his mind/body distinction. — Andrew M

I don't agree. In stripping away everything we can doubt, he was denying the Church a place at the foundations of our thinking, and understood in the way I think he intended, his conclusion is correct. Though you can question the existence of the junk you see around you, you can't question the existence of experience, which implies one who experiences.

If you subsequently realize that the experiencer and the object of experience (subject and object) are inextricably bound together logically, IOW, subject and object fall out of an analysis of experience or they're the product of reflection on experience, that doesn't undermine the value of the concepts.

Descartes was a valuable chamber in the nautilus.

But why not Locke? — mask

I don't know much about Locke, except his (relative) liberalism. I get the impression that he's much simpler than Kant. If you want present the case for Locke, I would like to read it.

Where is mathematics then? It seems to me that as a matter of experience mathematics is relatively uncontroversial. We all agree that there are an infinity of primes. It seems we infer a shared hard-wired mathematical faculty from this consensus. — mask

The idea of the universality of mathematics had to be abandoned with non-Euclidean alternative mathematics. At first they were considered as mathematical "eccentricities", but they had to be taken seriously when the theory of relativity took them up. The situation today is as follows: pure mathematics works on diverse paths and theoretical physics takes the way it is interested in. Sometimes it is the demands of physicists that open up new mathematical paths. The idea of a single, infallible mathematical path is popular but not correct.

Otherwise, Kant was right about knowledge a priori. Just it is not so much a priori than he thought.

Thank you for the links.

Kant’s things in themselves, which correspond to Locke’s things themselves,

Kant’s antinaturalistic, transcendental idealism rests on a tacit naturalistic basis. — Tomida

Of course, Kant is a man of his time, and the debate of his time was between empiricists and rationalists. But to equate his starting point with Locke seems risky to me. In empiricism the concept of object is formed empirically (whether it is mathematical or not). In Kant it predates sensations. Without a previous concept of cause the game with the data of the senses would be chaotic.

If I remember correctly, Locke introduces some rationalism in his empiricism when he considers the mathematical world of things universally factual by giving them a material body: atoms. This is another matter, but it is also contrary to the Kantian starting point.

Well, I'd rather not take too many chances with Locke who I know only from textbooks.

If you want present the case for Locke, I would like to read it. — David Mo

I'll drop a few quotes.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10615/10615-h/10615-h.htm#link2HCH0004

I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on; and as those are increased and retained, so it comes, by exercise, to improve its faculty of thinking in the several parts of it; as well as, afterwards, by compounding those ideas, and reflecting on its own operations, it increases its stock, as well as facility in remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking. — Locke

Later in the work he tackles language.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10616/10616.txt

Secondly, That though the proper and immediate signification of words
are ideas in the mind of the speaker, yet, because by familiar use from
our cradles, we come to learn certain articulate sounds very perfectly,
and have them readily on our tongues, and always at hand in our
memories, but yet are not always careful to examine or settle their
significations perfectly; it often happens that men, even when they
would apply themselves to an attentive consideration, do set their
thoughts more on words than things. Nay, because words are many of them
learned before the ideas are known for which they stand: therefore some,
not only children but men, speak several words no otherwise than parrots
do, only because they have learned them, and have been accustomed to
those sounds. But so far as words are of use and signification, so far
is there a constant connexion between the sound and the idea, and a
designation that the one stands for the other; without which application
of them, they are nothing but so much insignificant noise.

Words, by long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men
certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose
a natural connexion between them. But that they signify only men's
peculiar ideas, and that BY A PERFECT ARBITRARY IMPOSITION, is evident,
in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same
language) the same ideas we take them to be signs of: and every man has
so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases,
that no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their
minds that he has, when they use the same words that he does. And
therefore the great Augustus himself, in the possession of that power
which ruled the world, acknowledged he could not make a new Latin word:
which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint what
idea any sound should be a sign of, in the mouths and common language of
his subjects. It is true, common use, by a tacit consent, appropriates
certain sounds to certain ideas in all languages, which so far limits
the signification of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the
same idea, he does not speak properly — Locke

I like his awareness that language is a social convention. To me one of the big 20th century insights was just how 'exterior' and social meaning and thinking are. Sometimes you'll see troubled solipsists appearing on forums either arguing their position or asking to be argued out of it. What in the tradition made such absurdity possible? Descartes and/or watching The Matrix too many times. But my point is that the language of solipsism is directed outward from the get-go and was learned through interaction in the first place. What I like about The Concept of Time and Philosophical Investigations is (among other things) the quashing of an entrenched assumption of private language in the single soul.

But more Locke:

The next thing to be considered is,--How general words come to be made.
For, since all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by
general terms; or where find we those general natures they are supposed
to stand for? Words become general by being made the signs of
general ideas: and ideas become general, by separating from them the
circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine
them to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction
they are made capable of representing more individuals than one; each of
which having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call
it) of that sort. — Locke

We get abstract ideas from experience, by erasing unimportant differences.

To return to general words: it is plain, by what has been said, that
GENERAL and UNIVERSAL belong not to the real existence of things; but
are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it for
its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas. Words are
general, as has been said, when used for signs of general ideas, and so
are applicable indifferently to many particular things; and ideas are
general when they are set up as the representatives of many particular
things: but universality belongs not to things themselves, which are all
of them particular in their existence, even those words and ideas which
in their signification are general. When therefore we quit particulars,
the generals that rest are only creatures of our own making; their
general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put into, by the
understanding, of signifying or representing many particulars. For the
signification they have is nothing but a relation that, by the mind of
man, is added to them. — Locke

General ideas are 'creatures of our own making,' which is a strong anti-metaphysical point.

I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that Nature,
in the production of things, makes several of them alike: there is
nothing more obvious, especially in the races of animals, and all things
propagated by seed. But yet I think we may say, THE SORTING OF THEM
UNDER NAMES IS THE WORKMANSHIP OF THE UNDERSTANDING, TAKING OCCASION,
FROM THE SIMILITUDE IT OBSERVES AMONGST THEM, TO MAKE ABSTRACT GENERAL
IDEAS, and set them up in the mind, with names annexed to them, as
patterns or forms, (for, in that sense, the word FORM has a very proper
signification,) to which as particular things existing are found to
agree, so they come to be of that species, have that denomination, or
are put into that CLASSIS. For when we say this is a man, that a horse;
this justice, that cruelty; this a watch, that a jack; what do we else
but rank things under different specific names, as agreeing to those
abstract ideas, of which we have made those names the signs? And what
are the essences of those species set out and marked by names, but those
abstract ideas in the mind; which are, as it were, the bonds between
particular things that exist, and the names they are to be ranked under?
And when general names have any connexion with particular beings, these
abstract ideas are the medium that unites them: so that the essences of
species, as distinguished and denominated by us, neither are nor can
be anything but those precise abstract ideas we have in our minds. And
therefore the supposed real essences of substances, if different from
our abstract ideas, cannot be the essences of the species WE rank
things into. — Locke

It's we who sort the world into this kind of thing and that kind of thing. This is against the notion of those 'supposed real essences.'

Those are just some samples. I just mentioned Locke because I overlooked him for a long time. When I finally read him in an anthology of empiricists, I was impressed.

The idea of the universality of mathematics had to be abandoned with non-Euclidean alternative mathematics. — David Mo

I know that it was a revolution. These days math is all symbols, so it's no longer a problem (roughly speaking.)

Otherwise, Kant was right about knowledge a priori. Just it is not so much a priori than he thought. — David Mo

Yeah, I pretty much agree with you. Kant took certain distinctions as absolute that have since been brought down a notch. But he could hardly do everything at once, I guess. Maybe another reason I like Locke is because he writes in English and has a less grandiose personality.

Of course, Kant is a man of his time, and the debate of his time was between empiricists and rationalists. But to equate his starting point with Locke seems risky to me. In empiricism the concept of object is formed empirically (whether it is mathematical or not). In Kant it predates sensations. Without a previous concept of cause the game with the data of the senses would be chaotic. — David Mo

I think I know what you mean. As I understand him, Kant went into serious detail about our cognitive hardware. Locke does think about the operations of the mind, but he didn't cook up such a rigid system.

If I remember correctly, Locke introduces some rationalism in his empiricism when he considers the mathematical world of things universally factual by giving them a material body: atoms. This is another matter, but it is also contrary to the Kantian starting point. — David Mo

I understand what you mean here too. Locke had a plausible theory of the the stuff that caused sensation, as did Hobbes. Kant did a wilder thing and made it an X. But how can the X cause sensation? If causation is just a structure within experience?

That things in themselves are only thought is correct, but everything a human perceives is also thought. On the other hand, to say a thing in itself is ONLY thought implies its existence is not necessary. — Mww

Kant: The senses provide subjective and contingent knowledge. We perceive something from a unique perspective and we don't know why it has to be that way. Necessity and universality come from reasoning. Reasoning tells us that what we see is a unity, the thing. Reasoning tells us why it has to be this way and not otherwise, its necessity.

In a certain sense, child psychology has proved Kant right: children do not construct the concept of cause or substance by adding sensations, but by giving them an order. This concept of order comes from maturation, not from the accumulation of sensations.

One last comment. Already Democritus and later Epicurus thought that atoms affected the human body so as to generate consciousness. True, they didn't doubt the existence of space and time. But the rest of experience was a kind of dream thrown up by the human sense organs and body in general in response to its interactions with atoms. When the body dies, that person's dream of the world ceases.

If one has this view, then obviously the objects of experience have to conform to the sense organs. What I non-expertly take as new in Kant is the focus on all of the linguistic-conceptual processing that goes into experience. After Kant, one can question whether the shared dream corresponds in any way to what is really going on. Yet Kant doesn't go into the 'sharedness' of this dream much, AFIK. How does one person trapped in his mindbox create the true metaphysics of all human mindboxes? Kant knew the structure and possibilities of my experience long before I was born. What assumptions go into that? Human reason is one and universal, a veritable Enlightenment brand 'Holy Ghost.'

The leading theme of [the story of Continental philosophy after 1750] is the rise and fall of an extraordinary concept of the self. The self in question is no ordinary self, no individual personality, nor even one of the many heroic or mock-heroic personalities of the early nineteenth century. The self that becomes the star performer in modern European philosophy is the transcendental self, or transcendental ego, whose nature and ambitions were unprecedentedly arrogant, presumptuously cosmic, and consequently mysterious. The transcendental self was the self ---timeless, universal, and in each one of us around the globe and throughout history. Distinguished from our individual idiosyncracies, this was the self we shared. In modest and ordinary terms it was called 'human nature.' In must less modest, extraordinary terminology, the transcendental self was nothing less than God, the Absolute Self, the World Soul. — Solomon

This next quote is from a dead link. Not sure who the author is, maybe also Solomon.

The exalted sense of the importance of the self arose from the subtle shift Kant introduced into Descartes's proposal. In the Kantian system, the Cartesian self became not just the focus of philosophical attention but the entire subject matter of philosophy. Rather than viewing the self as one of several entities in the world, Kant envisioned the thinking self in a sense "creating" the world - that is, the world of its own knowledge. The focus of philosophical reflection ever since has been this world-creating self.
The universalizing of the self readily followed. Underlying Kant's philosophy was the presumption that in all essential matters every person everywhere is the same. When Kant's self reflected on itself, it came to know not only itself, but all selves, as well as the structure of any and every possible self.
The transcendental pretense evident in Kant's philosophy helped produce "the white philosopher's burden." Kant's presumption that all selves resemble each other led some philosophers to conclude that they should be able to construct a universal human nature. Even thinkers (like Kant) who never left their hometowns should be able to make authoritative pronouncements on human nature and morality. — unknown

I'm not even against this 'transcendental pretense.' But it's worth point out, I think. And of course Locke and just about every philosopher needs it.