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

My understanding of the alleged transcendental pretense is that fundamental subjectivity is a license for arrogance, or, that because there is a common rational system amongst humans, a common great and wonderful behavior should be constructed from it. And because Kant is the prime champion for the power of the person as subject, he is accused as the culprit for the rise of such pretense.

What a load!!!! Kant’s time was the Enlightenment, the cultural, political and religious upheaval of which contributed much more to Everydayman’s new-found dominance than the Kantian (1784) sapere aude ever did.
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Or in general what you think Kant had to take for granted in order to write CPR. — mask

Superficially: reality of the external world combined with the power of natural science to explain it; the inevitability of metaphysics combined with the failure of natural science to explain it.
Fundamentally: it is possible to discover, and rein reason to within, a proper boundary.
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....what did he not see? — mask

The intrinsic circularity of human reason itself, re: the evolution of a theory on reason, using reason to evolve it. It is hard to say he didn’t see it, but rather merely ignored it, seeing as how there is no choice in the matter.
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Do you have any criticisms of Kant? — mask

Nahhhhh. After 250 years, there’s not much left to be critical of, that hasn’t been beat to death by others. Besides, any criticisms a non-academic would have really is quite toothless.

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.

Ooooo but my oh my how they try: universal consciousness, utilitarianism, being one with my fellow man.....(sigh)

If there is a real issue, I would attribute it to science, which is trying its damnedest to eliminate the subjective nature of the intellect.

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

Yes, and raises a very subtle point of Kantian metaphysics: it isn’t what we know, but how we know it. OK, so as the theory goes, there exist a priori principles in the mind, and an example is a geometric figure, Well, after a certain age, it is highly unlikely a person doesn’t already have a great experience with geometric figures, which makes it very hard to claim a priori principles. Ok, fine. Divide a priori into pure and impure, in order to save the one because of an apparent contradiction with the other, and reflect back to a time of very first experience. Problem is, no one can remember what was going on in their heads at some very first experience, that isn’t conditioned by something they already know. Which makes the Hume-ian argument against a priori knowledge so powerful.

But if we consider a child, who has absolutely minimal experience with everything to begin with, hence isn’t affected by memory, it becomes easier to see the necessary rational groundwork for reason in general and a priori reason in particular. Because a child does learn, and learns without conditioning experience, some kind of a priori principles or pure conditions must exist in the human system. But if a child, and therefore anyone, has some form of pure a priori conditions, they couldn’t be constructed, for there would be nothing to construct them from, that aren’t themselves the same kind of thing, or from experience, which he doesn’t yet have.

This is why Kant specifically, and many others somewhat less but still inclusively, claim for the faculty of understanding the ability to think, for it would appear, however magically it must seem, that these necessary conditions, like, as you say, cause, substance, existence, possibility, necessity, etc., must arise from the intellect itself.

Of course, no one has been able to explain how understanding can think pure a priori and thereby necessary conditions....the categories.....but if it does, then all else falls into place neat as the proverbial pin. The second major objection: metaphysical theories cannot be falsified.

children do not construct the concept of cause or substance by adding sensations, but by giving them an order. — David Mo

Children do not construct those concepts by adding sensation....agreed, absolutely

But if it is meant that the child does construct those concepts by giving them an order....I don’t know how that would work.
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We perceive something from a unique perspective and we don't know why it has to be that way. — David Mo

Dunno why not, we own that unique perspective, so we know why it has to be that way. Couldn’t be any other way.

If you mean we don’t know why the something we perceive, given our unique perspective, has to be the way we perceive it, then that is exactly right. Our unique perspective is not an authority on the way of something, but only how we think of it.

Reasoning tells us why it has to be this way and not otherwise, its necessity. — David Mo

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. Besides, whatever necessities the Universe holds in itself, can only be given to us depending on how we ask about them. Except for sheer accident, of course.

“...Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose...”

The Universe says, “I’ll tell you puny, know-nothing humans whatever you want to know. All you gotta do is figure out how to ask me the proper questions”

That was a great introduction. Although I couldn’t find when it was written; apparently, Pogson-Smith wasn’t famous enough for a wiki page of his own.

I am always fascinated by historical contexts, the influences of the time of the writing, as opposed to looking back from its future. I mean....who cares about the Papal Bull of 1570, but its effect on Hobbes was quite apparent. Descartes was talked about a lot differently then than now, as well.

Interesting.

Funny how even behaviourism doesn't resist the "idea" idea.

That is, if it ever did (as so often charged) espouse an initial blankness of slate.

A slate or screen or stage in the head, and pictures or words in the head. And then, or already, intermediate images, impressions, echoes, traces, affections, representations, at all points in a continuous channel of re-processing, imagined as stretching from "object" all the way in to... er, yes, how does it end? Where and what is the "subject"? Plenty of controversy there. But virtually none for the image-or-text-processing analogy that implies video and text symbols arising within the organism.

And we can't blame modern technology. The analogy probably (I speculate) always pervaded cultures that produced physical symbols.

But of course animals (and neural networks) don't commit events to memory by processing and storing physical traces (like an electronic camera), but rather by training themselves to respond to stimulation (internal and external) with appropriate activity. Most of which, in humans uniquely, involves manipulation of, or preparation to manipulate, actual, external, symbols.

...What we mistakenly theorise as the presence of actual, internal ones.

So, cheers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscellinus, the only clear (and probably spurious) example of bucking image-ism that I can find, before Goodman and Quine.

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

Being-towards-death plays a role in human life and temporality, yes, but I don't see how it's very problematic. In fact the above is rather vague.

This would be forgetfulness or ignorance of 'tool being' or equipment as ready to hand but not 'present.' — mask

Particularly the not-noticing of equipment use, yes. Our "ready-to-hand" activities simply don't involve a subject and an object at all, and yet this is how we spend the majority of our time. From Plato on, then, the history of philosophy has been a history of "presence." This is what's especially fascinating in Heidegger, in my view. His analysis of the Greek language and the presocratics is superb. It's funny that a lot of his work is untranslated still.

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

Rather, Kant asserts a compromise between the world and the self. The self provides the order of our knowledge and the world the substance. He was right about that. Man is more than just a thing among things. He is the thing that gives meaning to the world. A thing for himself, too.
As you rightly point out, Kant still thinks in terms of human nature. An absolute equality. By the way, the foundation of democracy. But in doing so, he neglects the individual-social, innate-cultural dialectics. A priori knowledge imposes itself on individuals, but is transformed by an a cultural a priori. It is not the same in the Sumerian cities as in the Second French Empire.

Besides, any criticisms a non-academic would have really is quite toothless. — Mww

Jorge-Luis Borges, the most ignored-by-Swedish Academy -this is a price in itself- of Argentinean writers, said that he had read the best verses of his life in mediocre poets. I'm in. Why not you?

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

Kant's idea, which I assume, is that the a priori is something like a template that we apply to the world. We only know what fits our template. That is, the order that constitutes the phenomena . And we ignore what falls out of it. But without the empirical stuff no design could appear under our template.

An open question is whether we should assume some structural order in the world. This has been asserted to some Kantian empiricists and brings Kantism closer to a kind of weak realism. In this case, we would trap some structures of the thing itself, and only lose those that escape our template a priori.

Truly Kantian or not, it's suggestive.

Modern science wants to imagines a world without 'the subject' in it, as if from no viewpoint at all. — Wayfarer

Not so. 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.

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.

Which is just to say that we view the world in a particular way (in our capacity as human beings). Not that we literally create the world that existed prior to our existence.

[i.e. we have to learn to look at our naturalistic spectacles rather than just through them, which takes a kind of cognitive shift.]

Yes it does. But the point at issue is what we see through our natural spectacles. The natural world (from a human viewpoint), or a Platonic shadow world?

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

Here's my stab at it. 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.

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

Actually I was referring to Descartes' substance dualism there, not cogito ergo sum. As Gilbert Ryle has argued, Cartesian dualism is a category mistake.

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

That's fine when talking about human experience. The trouble arises when universalizing the distinction beyond human experience.

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.

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

Yes, I agree those are linguistic conventions. But they don't assume dualism. On the ordinary use, it is the human being that thinks (and is the referent of "I"), not their mind.

Whereas it is phrases like "the external world" or "out there" that assume subject/object dualism. They are philosophical usages, not ordinary conventions. Which is fine, that's what we're discussing, but I think it's important to be mindful of that. (That was a conventional use of "mindful", by the way...)

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

I did acknowledge this fact in my response, if you read it carefully. I since thought of another way of putting it - there is no measurement without perspective, and there is no perspective without mind. And when you say 'a billion years', you're talking of measurement.

The scientific realism that you assume and take for granted is still dependent on measure and so on mind. 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.

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 .... .

the point at issue is what we see through our natural spectacles. — Andrew M

That is the point at issue for naturalism, but not for philosophy. Philosophy questions the very things which we all assume and take for granted. That's why it's called 'critical'.

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

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.

Man is more than just a thing among things. — David Mo

which is why we're referred to as beings.

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?

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 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.

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

This quotation serves as a good opportunity to try to contrast Kant against Locke (which implies how differently they view the subject/object relation)

Locke is here just describing how all actually happens in mind. This is just self reflective empirical psychology. There is no principal philosophical problems involved here. What is lacking here is for example Kant's idea of synthesis. For Kant there is philosophical consciousness (or pure ego, selfhood) "behind" all these psychological operations. Kant is much more rational and theoretical in a philosophical sense. For Locke rationality* and theory are constructions on the basis of the empirical material without any philosophical mediation. This leads to a situation where rationality becomes (formal)logical and mathematical rationality. Thinking becomes pure logical and mathematical thinking (thinking as technique that one learns and masters). And this kind of thinking is seen as the natural functioning of the psyche. Scientific explanations and theories are the ultimate ground for Locke. Philosophy seems to be for him (neuro)psychological reflection on mental operations and general reflection on the genesis and usage of the human language. 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. * For Locke everything remains contingent, there is no (synthetic a priori) necessity. Or that there are only "natural necessities" forming mental operations.

In context, I am the non-academic, therefore it is I whose criticism is quite toothless.

That is not to say I don’t read, and appreciate the intelligibility of, non-academics; philosophy forums are full of ‘em, after all.
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he had read the best verses of his life in mediocre poets. I'm in. Why not you? — David Mo

Pure cognitive prejudice: he who has not the remaining time or eyesight left for luck, should limit himself to interest.

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

See, here I disagree. Derrida is on par with Zizek in my view -- a completely incoherent waste of time. Please point me to what you're referring to regarding Derrida's contribution to language.

which is why we're referred to as beings. — Wayfarer

_____
being (n.)
c. 1300, "existence," in its most comprehensive sense, "condition, state, circumstances; presence, fact of existing," early 14c., existence," from be + -ing. Sense of "that which physically exists, a person or thing" (as in human being) is from late 14c.
_____

"Being" applies to anything that exists, not just to conscious things.

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.
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An open question is whether we should assume some structural order in the world. — David Mo

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?

Btw

It permeates the philosophy of language (Quine's "Word and Object"), cognitive sciences, etc. — Xtrix

Or rather... Chisholm's "Person and Object"?

Ockham to Quine's Roscellinus. On my analysis.

Per Kant, there's a real world but it's completely unknowable. — Andrew M

If taken from the principle of induction, this would be correct, but might should read....unknowable completely.

The world-in-itself is completely unknowable, taken as the totality of all possible thing-in-themselves, is the logically consistent proposition, wherein completely unknowable means not knowable at all. In that sense, the knowability depends solely on the human cognitive system, without any regard to empirical principles.

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

Well done!!! Pure reason writ large, yes?

Just as logic is predicated on the synthesis of major/minor/conclusion, so too is the theory of human knowledge, in this case transcendental idealism, predicated the synthesis of intuition/conception/judgement.

And, just as mathematics is predicated on law, which invokes the principles of universality and necessity, so too is reason, “....in obedience to the laws of its own nature...” speculated in such manner as to produce those laws.

Makes sense he would construct a logically, lawfully consistent theory based on the two domains in human experience that operate exclusively on those principles.

What was meant was that Kant exemplifies the philosopher who tries to think the scientificity. That doesn't mean that science is transformed into an excessive speculation.

Oh. Ok....never mind.

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

On naturalism, there is no "reality of appearances". We're not trapped in Plato's cave.

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

Yes, they remain possible. Naturalism doesn't confer certainty.

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

So at issue is the dualism between "the unknown thing in itself" and "knowledge of appearances".

The natural claim is that we can know things as they are (from our perspective as human beings).

That captures what you're saying above without the dualism.

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

Probably not. But Descartes set the stage for thinkers that came after him. See, for example, the passage from Magee's book on Schopenhauer that includes, "the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding". That is, the empirical world depends on its dual subject.

(Though note Wayfarer suggests that that passage might be misleading.)

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

Ryle's argument is that mind refers to (or reduces to) a human being's intelligent activity. That Bob has a keen mind means that he's a smart guy; that he's lost his mind means that he's done something stupid, or that he's insane. It's not a substantial thing like a body. That's the Cartesian error.

Put differently, mind is an abstraction over a concrete particular, in this case a human being.

That way of thinking about the world goes back to Aristotle (e.g., the soul is the form of the body). Aristotle's form/matter distinction was abstract, unlike Descartes' substance dualism.

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

I like the template and mold ways of thinking of it. However I'd like to suggest that the a priori - the template or mold - is itself fluid.

Consider the geocentrists whose a priori view was that Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun moved across the sky. The heliocentrists replaced that with their own a priori view that it was the Earth that moved around the Sun. Same phenomenology, different template.

Apply that idea to space and time. Kant's a priori view was Euclidean. But Einstein replaced that with spacetime relativity. Same phenomenology, different template.

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

According to the image of a template it can be assumed either that the world is chaotic in itself and only the template provides shapes or that the template matches some shapes that are independent of it.
Suppose you apply a Daredevil template to a sheet with many superhero images and other informed stains. You only see the Daredevil image and think that only he is on the sheet.

Or there are only informed spots on the sheet and the template selects the ones that fall under the Daredevil template.

It's hard to decide. I'm inclined to the first idea on the basis that actual facts are not as simple as Daredevil and it would be something of a miracle if a complex reality could coincide with a priori without constant irruptions of chaos. I recognize that it is not a definitive reason.

On the ordinary use, it is the human being that thinks (and is the referent of "I"), not their mind. — Andrew M

Correct.
Minds cannot think because they do not exist per se.
Use of the word "mind" is a convenient façon de parler (Bennett & Hacker, 2003). What it refers to is an integrated set of organism events which produce automatic and controlled acts (corporeal actions).

It is starting to look very much like people are trying their hardest not to make sense, yet appear to make sense by spitting out streams of words and pretending they have full control of them.

Too many holes to poke at, too much ambiguity, and what is likely to follow is going to be either bordering on the mystical or hidden neatly away in postmodernist jargon.

The ‘mind’ exists just as solidly as a ‘cat’ exists. The point is they are both referential - convenient and frugal - communications of shared experience. We know they are shared because we wouldn’t be able to ‘refer’ to them otherwise. The hard physicalistic position of ‘mind’ isn’t there but brain is, is a pointless stance.

Nor is the approach of Derrida much use here as he’d only mock the situation and ask ‘does existence exist?’ or some other flatulence.

There is a mind, a chair, a table, a book and a cat, and the ‘isness’ of Heideggerian wordplay is only slightly less useful than Derrida’s. The ‘is’ and the ‘being’ are references of references of a referential referent ... round and round we go in a non-explanatory circle *YAWN*

Any attempt to narrow the phenomenological disposition of ‘being human’ necessarily cuts away the ‘essence’ by referring to some ‘it’ as ‘essence’. They’re there to make it known we known know as we DO NOT know what we don’t know if we can refer to it.

The mock rage I am expressing right now does make some ‘intention’ felt.

We don’t know what time is, what gravity is, nor what a bloody chair is.

Practically the thing I am currently aware of is my huge disappointment with what I‘ve read here. People tell me I expect too much, but really I only hope for something ... I’m still waiting to discover something. I just read fat upon fat upon fat, where’s the meat?

In room full of hedonists and egos what is there to learn? The most insightful moment of my life came without worded thought - the foolish part of me has been pretending since that time that I can express such an experience.

I resign. Funnily enough that is the answer of answers, the rest is just makeup on what was never viewed as an already perfect face of existing. Your hollow fruits have starved me!

Be at it dogs! May you all burn in silent screams with rictus grins defiant at your own pains and suffering. Scum floats to the top so don’t fear rising - better that than skulk in the depths with shadow puppets as a corrosive comfort of ‘meaning’.