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.) — mask
Or in general what you think Kant had to take for granted in order to write CPR. — mask
....what did he not see? — mask
Do you have any criticisms of Kant? — mask
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. — Andrew M
In a certain sense, child psychology has proved Kant right: children do not construct the concept of cause or substance by adding sensations — David Mo
children do not construct the concept of cause or substance by adding sensations, but by giving them an order. — David Mo
We perceive something from a unique perspective and we don't know why it has to be that way. — David Mo
Reasoning tells us why it has to be this way and not otherwise, its necessity. — David Mo
Heidegger was entirely right to inject time into any analysis of things, even though he tethered that injection to (a certain conception of) death in a way I find problematic. — StreetlightX
This would be forgetfulness or ignorance of 'tool being' or equipment as ready to hand but not 'present.' — mask
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 — mask
Yes, but only from our unique perspective. We cannot project our sense of necessity if it arises from our own reason. If that were the case, we’d be effectively telling the Universe how it must be, rather than us merely trying to understand how it is. — Mww
Modern science wants to imagines a world without 'the subject' in it, as if from no viewpoint at all. — Wayfarer
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.
[i.e. we have to learn to look at our naturalistic spectacles rather than just through them, which takes a kind of cognitive shift.]
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). — Wayfarer
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. — frank
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. — frank
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.
— Andrew M
Yes, I suppose. We talk usually in the form, “We think....”, “You know...”, “I am....”, and so on, which makes explicit a subject/object dualism in general intersubjective communications. But I wouldn’t call that an issue as much as I’d call it linguistic convention. Nature of the beast, so to speak, and definitely makes it difficult to conceive an alternative. — Mww
The viewpoint of modern science today is that the Earth orbited the Sun a billion years ago. But there was no viewpoint a billion years ago. — Andrew M
the point at issue is what we see through our natural spectacles. — Andrew M
Per Kant, there's a real world but it's completely unknowable. What we can investigate is the empirical world that is the product of various stages of conditioning by the mind. — Andrew M
Man is more than just a thing among things. — David Mo
Which is to say, the Earth's orbiting of the Sun in the early universe doesn't presuppose an experiencer and an object of experience. — Andrew M
Actually I was referring to Descartes' substance dualism there, not cogito ergo sum. As Gilbert Ryle has argued, Cartesian dualism is a category mistake. — Andrew M
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 — mask
he had read the best verses of his life in mediocre poets. I'm in. Why not you? — David Mo
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. — mask
which is why we're referred to as beings. — Wayfarer
Kant's idea, which I assume, is that the a priori is something like a template that we apply to the world. — David Mo
An open question is whether we should assume some structural order in the world. — David Mo
It permeates the philosophy of language (Quine's "Word and Object"), cognitive sciences, etc. — Xtrix
Per Kant, there's a real world but it's completely unknowable. — Andrew M
Kant tries to think logical and mathematical thought operations themselves and not just apply them to the world as a natural and true way to access things. — waarala
As the passage I quoted acknowledged, the reality of the early universe is no more being rejected than that of the 'pen with which these words are written'; but that it remains the reality of appearances. — Wayfarer
Empirically speaking, I agree with you. But philosophically, it remains possible that we're all denizens of the Matrix, or projections of a grand simulation. So the purported 'facts of natural science' do not constitute the slam-dunk argument that you seem to believe they do. They're certain, given that .... . — Wayfarer
Kant never said that 'the world is completely unknowable'. Kant said that we know the world as appearance; it's not simply non-existent or unreal or a phantasm. I don't know if he would have used the expression that the world is a 'product of the mind' (and in this respect, that passage from Magee that I quoted might be misleading); it's that we know the world as it appears to beings with minds of the kind we have. On that basis, we project what we understand as 'the real world'. This is the activity of the most complex organ known to science, namely, the human brain. — Wayfarer
Which is to say, the Earth's orbiting of the Sun in the early universe doesn't presuppose an experiencer and an object of experience.
— Andrew M
I dont think Descartes suggested that it does, did he? — frank
I dont really see what work substance dualism does beyond saying that mind is irreducible.
Irreducibility is compatible with science. It's been argued that it's more compatible than the alternative. — frank
Kant's idea, which I assume, is that the a priori is something like a template that we apply to the world.
— David Mo
Common interpretation, that. A template impressed on the world to which it must conform. I would rather think a priori reason is the mold into which the world is poured. The only difference, which is more semantic than necessary perhaps, is that template implies projection of the mind onto the world, and mold implies receptivity of the world into the mind. Just depends on one’s choice in understanding of the relationship between mind and world. — Mww
What would the world look like if we didn’t? I’m not sure what you mean by a structure. Is it that we assume, e.g., atomic structure, because experiments support it? — Mww
On the ordinary use, it is the human being that thinks (and is the referent of "I"), not their mind. — Andrew M
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