The only perfectly consistent expression of 'is' is found in mathematics and logic. Otherwise it's just a useful approximation. — Wayfarer

As I read your 'approximation,' it implies something like an essence that is being approximated. 'Even though we don't know exactly what we are talking about, that something is determinate nevertheless.' But why should the sound/mark 'is' have some fixed, exact meaning? In general we use words together and not alone, and in non-theoretical situation.

Dewey's approach seems solid -- and reminds me of Heidegger, who was mentioned earlier.

Opposing narrow-minded positions that would accord full ontological status only to certain, typically the most stable or reliable, aspects of experience, Dewey argues for a position that recognizes the real significance of the multifarious richness of human experience.

Dewey offered a fuller statement of his metaphysics in 1925, with the publication of one of his most significant philosophical works, Experience and Nature. In the introductory chapter, Dewey stresses a familiar theme from his earlier writings: that previous metaphysicians, guided by unavowed biases for those aspects of experience that are relatively stable and secure, have illicitly reified these biases into narrow ontological presumptions, such as the temporal identity of substance, or the ultimate reality of forms or essences. Dewey finds this procedure so pervasive in the history of thought that he calls it simply the philosophic fallacy, and signals his intention to eschew the disastrous consequences of this approach by offering a descriptive account of all of the various generic features of human experience, whatever their character.

Dewey begins with the observation that the world as we experience it both individually and collectively is an admixture of the precarious, the transitory and contingent aspect of things, and the stable, the patterned regularity of natural processes that allows for prediction and human intervention. Honest metaphysical description must take into account both of these elements of experience. Dewey endeavors to do this by an event ontology. The world, rather than being comprised of things or, in more traditional terms, substances, is comprised of happenings or occurrences that admit of both episodic uniqueness and general, structured order. Intrinsically events have an ineffable qualitative character by which they are immediately enjoyed or suffered, thus providing the basis for experienced value and aesthetic appreciation. Extrinsically events are connected to one another by patterns of change and development; any given event arises out of determinant prior conditions and leads to probable consequences. The patterns of these temporal processes is the proper subject matter of human knowledge--we know the world in terms of causal laws and mathematical relationships--but the instrumental value of understanding and controlling them should not blind us to the immediate, qualitative aspect of events; indeed, the value of scientific understanding is most significantly realized in the facility it affords for controlling the circumstances under which immediate enjoyments may be realized. — IEP

https://www.iep.utm.edu/dewey/

Since Dewey wrote in English, he should have his own say.

The office of physical science is to discover those properties and relations of things in virtue of which they are capable of being used as instrumentalities; physical science makes claim to disclose not the inner nature of things but only those connections of things with one another that determine outcomes and hence can be used as means. The intrinsic nature of events is revealed in experience as the immediately felt qualities of things. The intimate coordination and even fusion of these qualities with the regularities that form the objects of knowledge, in the proper sense of the word "knowledge," characterizes intelligently directed experience, as distinct from mere casual and uncritical experience.

This conception of the instrumental nature of the objects of scientific knowing forms the pivot upon which further discussion turns. That character of everyday experience which has been most systematically ignored by philosophy is the extent to which it is saturated with the results of social intercourse and communication. Because this factor has been denied, meanings have either been denied all objective validity, or have been treated as miraculous extra-natural intrusions. If, however, language, for example, is recognized as the instrument of social cooperation and mutual participation, continuity is established between natural events (animal sound, cries, etc.) and the origin and development of meanings. Mind is seen to be a function of social interactions, and to be a genuine character of natural events when these attain the stage of widest and most complex interaction with one another. Ability to respond to meanings and to employ them, instead of reacting merely to physical contacts, makes the difference between man and other animals; it is the agency for elevating man into the realm of what is usually called the ideal and spiritual. In other words, the social participation affected by communication, through language and other tools, is the naturalistic link which does away with the often alleged necessity of dividing the objects of experience into two worlds, one physical and one ideal. — Dewey

Later in Experience and Nature, we get:

The distinctively intellectual attitude which marks scientific inquiry was generated in efforts at controlling persons and things so that consequences, issues, outcomes would be more stable and assured. The first step away from oppression by immediate things and events was taken when man employed tools and appliances, for manipulating things so as to render them contributory to desired objects. In responding to things not in their immediate qualities but for the sake of ulterior results, immediate qualities are dimmed, while those features which are signs, indices of something else, are distinguished. A thing is more significantly what it makes possible than what it immediately is. The very conception of cognitive meaning, intellectual significance, is that things in their immediacy are subordinated to what they portend and give evidence of. An intellectual sign denotes that a thing is not taken immediately but is referred to some thing that may come in consequence of it. Intellectual meanings may themselves be appropriated, enjoyed and appreciated; but the character of intellectual meaning is instrumental.
...
In principle the step is taken whenever objects are so reduced from their status of complete objects as to be treated as signs or indications of other objects. Enter upon this road and the time is sure to come when the appropriate object-of-knowledge is stripped of all that is immediate and qualitative, of all that is final, self-sufficient. Then it becomes an anatomized epitome of just and only those traits which are of indicative or instrumental import. — Dewey

https://archive.org/stream/experienceandnat029343mbp/experienceandnat029343mbp_djvu.txt

As I read him, we (or certain philosophers) have tended to take these constantly present 'handles' or 'signs' as the 'real' being of the object.

Instrumentalism is one alternative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism

The empirical basis of the distinction between the apparent and the non-apparent thus lies in the need for inference. When we take the outstandingly evident as evidence, its status is subordinate to that of unperceived things. For the nonce, it is a way of establishing some- thing more fundamental than it is itself with respect to the object of inquiry. If we conceive of the world of immediately apparent things as an emergence of peaks of mountains which are submerged except as to their peaks or endings, and as a world of initial climbings whose subsequent career emerges above the surface only here and there and by fits and starts; and if we give attention to the fact that any ability of control whatever depends upon ability to unite these disparate appearances into a serial history, and then give due attention to the fact that connection into a consecutive history can be effected only by means of a scheme of constant relationships (a condition met by the mathematical-logical-mechanical objects of physics), we shall have no difficulty in seeing why it is that the immediate things from which we start lend themselves to interpretation as signs or appearances of the objects of physics; while we also recognize that it is only with respect to the function of instituting connection that the objects of physics can be said to be more "real." In the total situation in which they function, they are means to weaving together otherwise disconnected beginnings and endings into a consecutive history. Underlying "reality" and surface "appearance" in this connection have a meaning fixed by the function of inquiry, not an intrinsic metaphysical meaning. — Dewey

The notion that every shape corresponds to a different form is not necessarily what platonism entails. Form doesn't mean shape. For example, the 'form' of a wing (or 'flight') might be realised as a bat wing, aeroplane wing, and bird wing. — Wayfarer

Aristotle criticizes Plato because his concept or idea/form implies an infinite regression. If the idea is what the various individuals have in common there is a bat form and a flight form, and a black form, and an animal form, and a big ear form, etc.. And, what is worse, a form of what the idea of animal and the idea of life have in common, and a form of what they have in common the idea of what they have in common... The infinite chain can only be broken if an empirical resource is introduced: abstraction -as you did. But this is Aristotelian, not platonic.

Intuitions. — Mww

In Kantian terminology I'm using now, intuitions are not templates (a priori), they are the content of our ideas. Space and time are the templates of sensible intuition. The metaphysical error is to use space and time templates without sensible material.

You are probably using "intuition" in other sense.

Dewey's criticism of Kant is based on the fact that he does not take into account the pragmatic aspect of knowledge. I think it's relevant. It seems that he considered his theory as a new Copernican turn. He forgot about someone who had already claimed the priority of praxis over theoretical knowledge: Marx. Of course, Dewey was not going to quote Marx even if he knew him. You don't do that in the United States.

If we take the basic idea of pragmatism that objective reality is limited to that which we manipulate, how is resistance to our manipulation understood? It seems that praxis has to take into account reality's potential of adversity. I think pragmatism lacks some dialectics. It conceives of science as an ongoing success, rather than a contradiction between success and failure. That is the objective reality that escapes pragmatic optimism. And this is the subject's emergence.

But this is Aristotelian, not platonic. — David Mo

Agree. I don’t have much to go on but a hunch right now but am intending to devote some serious reading to Plato’s theory of forms.

My basic intuition has always been that there are real ideas - real, not because there in someone’s mind, as we are naturally inclined to believe nowadays, but real in the domain of pure intelligibility. I think Plato intuited that but it’s a very difficult thing to grasp. Read these three points on Augustine on intelligible objects. (I have quoted this passage ad nauseam on this forum, but I’m still bewitched by it. )

But why should the sound/mark 'is' have some fixed, exact meaning? In general we use words together and not alone, and in non-theoretical situation. — jjAmEs

Hey Dewey was a pragmatist, wasn’t he? So the least he can do is be adaptable.

I get the standard criticism of Platonic dualism - that it eschews the real world of color and movement for lifeless, bloodless abstraction, and I think there is some merit in that criticism, But I can’t help but feel there’s some hidden wellspring of vitality which is missed by those criticisms. (Just exploring ideas here.)

If we take the basic idea of pragmatism that objective reality is limited to that which we manipulate, how is resistance to our manipulation understood? — David Mo

By the many worlds theory!

intuitions are not templates (a priori), they are the content of our ideas. Space and time are the templates of sensible intuition. — David Mo

Philosophy advances by the appropriation of terms, no doubt. Appropriation of terms into subsequent domains still should be legitimatized.

Intuition...content of ideas.
Space and time.....templates of sensible intuitions
Ergo....space and time are the templates of sensible content of ideas.

Could be, but....what is the sensible content of an idea? “Invisibility” is an idea, but hardly has sensible content. An object certainly has sensible content, but should such object then be merely an idea?
——————-

The metaphysical error is to use space and time templates without sensible material. — David Mo

Certainly an empirical error, I’ll give you that. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a metaphysical error to use time without sensible material, though, even while space would suit the case. All human thought is successive, a condition of time without material content. In fact, any first principle of relation necessarily implies time as an a priori template, re: cause and effect. Or, A cannot simultaneously be not-A.

Actually, it might be a metaphysical error to use the templates of space and time WITH sensible material, because metaphysically, space and time don’t have any sensible material conceived as belonging to them.

Don’t mind me.....just thinking out loud.

My basic intuition has always been that there are real ideas - real, not because there in someone’s mind, as we are naturally inclined to believe nowadays, but real in the domain of pure intelligibility. I think Plato intuited that but it’s a very difficult thing to grasp. — Wayfarer

But I can’t help but feel there’s some hidden wellspring of vitality which is missed by those criticisms. — Wayfarer

Perhaps the timelessness or eternity of such a realm is what seduces. How are knowledge and time connected? In general, philosophers especially have sought imperishable knowledge. They have gazed at and described structures which are constantly present for those with eyes to see. Their descriptions are poetic acts that have given others these eyes to see. Even this way of looking at philosophical knowledge is itself caught up in that mission --in the articulation of the timeless essence of philosophy as the articulation of timeless essences.

In that sense philosophy is something like theory as religion.

The view which isolates knowledge, contemplation, liking, interest, value, or whatever from action is itself a survival of the notion that there are beings which can exist and be known apart from active connection with other things.

When man finds he is not a little god in his active powers and accomplishments, he retains his former conceit by hugging to his bosom the notion that nevertheless in some realm, be it knowledge or esthetic contemplation, he is still outside of and detached from the ongoing sweep of interacting and changing events; and being there alone and irresponsible save to himself, is as a god. — Dewey

Philosophy offers us the pleasure of stepping out of time with all its risks and rottenness.

He forgot about someone who had already claimed the priority of praxis over theoretical knowledge: Marx. — David Mo

Marx is a good mention. Dewey even briefly touches on priority of theoretical knowledge and its relationship to class. The elite man is (or was) a man of theoretical leisure, a leisure made possible by slaves, inherited wealth, etc.

If we take the basic idea of pragmatism that objective reality is limited to that which we manipulate, how is resistance to our manipulation understood? It seems that praxis has to take into account reality's potential of adversity. I think pragmatism lacks some dialectics. It conceives of science as an ongoing success, rather than a contradiction between success and failure. That is the objective reality that escapes pragmatic optimism. And this is the subject's emergence. — David Mo

I like your themes. I do think pragmatism is (at its best) more sophisticated than your description of it, though---which is not to say that it's a last word or doesn't have problems.

the (contingently) prior background
— Andrew M

...is categorically opposed to the Kantian a priori meaning, for any contingently prior background is merely another way to say “experience”.

“....By the term "knowledge a priori," therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience...”

Thus,.......consider the geocentrists whose a priori view was that Earth was the center of the universe, might better be said.....whose prior view. — Mww

Cool. So my suggestion is that this should similarly apply to absolute space/time and relativistic spacetime.

That is, through experience, Einstein's Relativity has replaced Newtonian Physics (which approximates the predictions of Relativity in special cases).

An implication of the Kantian view is that two events that are simultaneous for one observer are simultaneous for all observers.
— Andrew M

Two events for a guy and guy standing right beside him, will be simultaneous to both, yes. The difference between the observations will be immeasurable. — Mww

OK, but for a third guy walking past, those two events won't be simultaneous.

Doesn't that contradict the Kantian view?

On sticks in water....

“.....It is not at present our business to treat of empirical illusory appearance (for example, optical illusion), which occurs in the empirical application of otherwise correct rules of the understanding, and in which the judgement is misled by the influence of imagination...” — Mww

Yes. So it seems to me that Kant's notion of appearance is artificial. What problem does it solve that we haven't already solved with the natural distinction above.

If we see a straight stick partly submerged in water, we notice that it appears bent. This gives rise to the natural distinction between what something is (e.g., a straight stick) and how it appears under different conditions (e.g., the stick appears bent when partly submerged in water and it's possible to mistakenly think that the stick is bent).
— Andrew M

Even Bishop Berkeley had an answer for that! — Wayfarer

Given the above distinction, what conceptual problem remains?

It really isn't so simple. Again, in physics, the question has been suggested by the conundrums sorrounding 'wave-particle' duality, for example.

I think the key point is that if you accept naturalism simply as a methodological assumption, then there's no problem to solve (which is I think what you are suggesting.) — Wayfarer

There are still plenty of problems to solve even with that assumption (including philosophical) but at least they are then, in principle, solvable.

I think Kant's argument comes into play when metaphysical conclusions are drawn on the basis of methodological axioms - in other words, when arguments are made about first philosophy on the basis of scientific naturalism. — Wayfarer

On naturalism, the methodological assumption of naturalism is reflected back on itself (i.e., as the study of the study of nature). So why would that be a problem and how would Kant's argument be relevant here?

You cherry-picked that point from all of the surrounding text which completely changes the intended meaning (as you generally do). — Wayfarer

Firstly the statement I quoted and criticized was pretty straightforward:

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). — Wayfarer

You are saying that Kant questions the idea that the world exists independently of our perception of it. Now, of course we all acknowledge that the world as experienced does not exist independently of us, but we are able to draw conceptual distinctions between the world as it is perceived and as it is "in itself", and the latter, by definition, exists independently of human (or any other form of) perception.

Kant says we cannot prove the world exists in itself independently of our perceptions of it, but we are certainly able to think that it does (although obviously not how it does); so Kant is not questioning the independent existence of the world in itself at all, but the independence of the world as experienced. In other words he is rejecting naive realism, but not scientific realism, which if it is at all reflective, acknowledges that we are only examining and conjecturing about the world as it appears to us (obviously, since the acts of examination and conjecture cannot deal with anything but what appears).

If you think anything else you wrote in the post I responded to by allegedly "cherrypicking" has any bearing on the correctness of my criticism of the part I selected, then feel free to clarify.

I think Kant's argument comes into play when metaphysical conclusions are drawn on the basis of methodological axioms - in other words, when arguments are made about first philosophy on the basis of scientific naturalism.
— Wayfarer

On naturalism, the methodological assumption of naturalism is reflected back on itself (i.e., as the study of the study of nature). So why would that be a problem and how would Kant's argument be relevant here? — Andrew M

'First philosophy' or metaphysics is concerned with the ultimate nature of reality. In a theistic metaphysics, then God is understood as being the source or ground of being. A naturalistic philosophy doesn't countenance such an idea as God is (by definition) super-natural, 'above' or transcendent to nature. So the attitude generally is, whatever hypothesis you want to consider, it can't include something which is by definition above and beyond the naturalist framework- which is what I'm calling 'metaphysical naturalism'. You see in many atheist arguments (including many posted here) that science proves or at least suggests that the world has a naturalistic explanation or can be thoroughly understood in naturalistic terms and that there is nothing outside or above or transcendent to nature in terms of which understanding ought to be sought.

This is where Kant is relevant - recall that he said that a central goal of his critical philosophy is to 'discover the limit to knowledge so as to make room for faith'.

I'm arguing that is that it is possible to pursue a naturalist account while still understanding that it has limits in principle - that the naturalist account is not all there is (which is what I understand Kant to be saying.) That is what I mean by distinguishing methodological from metaphysical naturalism - the former sets aside or brackets out metaphysics in pursuit of the naturalist account. But it doesn't necessarily say anything about what if anything might be beyond that. It's close in meaning to Huxley's agnosticism.

In other words [Kant] is rejecting naive realism, but not scientific realism, which if it is at all reflective, acknowledges that we are only examining and conjecturing about the world as it appears to us (obviously, since the acts of examination and conjecture cannot deal with anything but what appears). — Janus

I think many scientific realists would either not be sympathetic to Kant, or wouldn't understand his critical philosophy. Some would but it would not be uniform by any means. (What was the wisecrack Richard Feynman made? That philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds?)

Consider the point in this thread where I brought this up - it was the quotation by Andrei Linde about the 'role of the observer' in understanding the nature of time. Linde is a physicist and cosmologist, responsible for a lot of the current theory around big bang cosmology:

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. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma

So, I'm arguing that this point is basically Kantian - that it acknowledges that time doesn't exist independently of the observing mind; where there is measurement, there is mind, and that also goes for the naturalist understanding of the early Universe. And this conforms with what I understand Kant to be saying:

The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing – matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are called external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us.

(A370)

which he contrasts with 'transcendental realism':

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)

I know I'm not a Kant scholar but this particular point is central to what he described as his 'copernican revolution in philosophy', that 'things conform to thoughts, not thoughts to things'. I'm not making any point beyond that.

I know I'm not a Kant scholar but this particular point is central to what he described as his 'copernican revolution in philosophy', that 'things conform to thoughts, not thoughts to things'. I'm not making any point beyond that. — Wayfarer

Of course things as experienced must "conform to thoughts", but Kant would not say that things in themselves must conform to thoughts; in facts he is saying quite the obverse.

And note in the passage quoted:

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)

He is just saying that transcendental realists are naive realists insofar as they conflate things in themselves with appearances, which is entirely in accordance with what I have been saying.

Could be, but....what is the sensible content of an idea? “Invisibility” is an idea, but hardly has sensible content. — Mww

So, is invisibility a metaphysical idea? Or is it the result of applying a logical (non-x) category to things in general? I would say that "nothingness" is a metaphysical idea when you turn a logical relationship (negation) into a substance: "the" nothingness. Perhaps the same can be done with "the" Invisibility. Parmenides started with that - it is said.

Actually, it might be a metaphysical error to use the templates of space and time WITH sensible material, because metaphysically, space and time don’t have any sensible material conceived as belonging to them. — Mww

We speak of things that happen IN time but it would be more exact to say that we measured things with time. Time without events and observers would vanished.
Relativity prevents us to consider that time is absolute? Is it not so?

Kant says we cannot prove the world exists in itself independently of our perceptions of it, but we are certainly able to think that it does (although obviously not how it does); so Kant is not questioning the independent existence of the world in itself at all, but the independence of the world as experienced. In other words he is rejecting naive realism, but not scientific realism, which if it is at all reflective, acknowledges that we are only examining and conjecturing about the world as it appears to us (obviously, since the acts of examination and conjecture cannot deal with anything but what appears). — Janus

Scientific realism is not a single doctrine. There are several scientific realisms ranging from dogmatic realism to cautious realism. I would say that the most widespread version today is: Scientific theories are an approximate description of reality. What "approximate" means is not easy to say.
In my opinion - after Kuhn - approximate can be interpreted as a refinement in predictions and measurements within a given paradigm. This implies that we must identify objectivity with prediction and intersubjectivity, which is not evident in itself in all cases.

:up:

Could be, but....what is the sensible content of an idea? “Invisibility” is an idea, but hardly has sensible content. — Mww


So, is invisibility a metaphysical idea? Or is it the result of applying a logical (non-x) category to things in general? I would say that "nothingness" is a metaphysical idea when you turn a logical relationship (negation) into a substance: "the" nothingness. Perhaps the same can be done with "the" Invisibility. Parmenides started with that - it is said. — David Mo

Would Kant think that invisibility is the concept of visibility with zero intensity? The succession of the sensations of visibility is (has attained, or is still) zero i.e. without fulfillment or empty. Or something like that. Then this concept would be used "correctly" i.e. in the context of empirical experience. The category of quality would be in that way operative, category, that helps to "determine" the degree of reality. (Actually the category of quantity is involved here too.)

Intuitions. — Mww


In Kantian terminology I'm using now, intuitions are not templates (a priori), they are the content of our ideas. Space and time are the templates of sensible intuition. The metaphysical error is to use space and time templates without sensible material.

You are probably using "intuition" in other sense. — David Mo

Few remarks (I am not a native speaker of English or German, however, I read Kant in German):

The translation of intuition (Anschauung) can be very deceptive. It seems that Kant uses intuition (as a German word) only referring to intellectual intuition. This kind of intuition doesn't refer to any (pure or sensible) Anschauung (intuition) at all . On the other hand, there is Anschauung as sensible intuition i.e empirical intuition preceding the perception (Wahrnehmung) of object. Then, there is Anschauung as a "visual" illustrative aid in geometrical-mathematical construction (pure intuition; math. figures or forms are pure or ideal). Finally, there is imaginative or reproductive Anschauung (Einbildung) where empirical appearances are reconstructed in mind when one doesn't have a direct perception of the object.

The translation of intuition (Anschauung) can be very deceptive. It seems that Kant uses intuition (as a German word) only referring to intellectual intuition. — waarala

From B34 onwards I have found more than fifty occurrences of the term "sensible intuition" in the English version of Cambridge University Press, 1998. Which German term are they translating?

From B34 onwards I have found more than fifty occurrences of the term "sensible intuition" in the English version of Cambridge University Press, 1998. Which German term are they translating? — David Mo

They probably translate the verb anschauen (or Anschauung as noun), that is, "intuiting" in the context of "real" sensual-empirical cognition here and now. Sensible intuition is receptivity, something "passive" where material is given. Possibly the "deduction" section in Critique should be consulted where Kant deals with the imagination (Einbildung) etc. (I try here to clarify these terms for myself too. My knowledge of Kant is rusty and lacking in many ways.) (Husserl has a lot to say about these phenomena, by the way.)

In general, philosophers especially have sought imperishable knowledge. — jjAmEs

That is what we call truth.

Philosophy offers us the pleasure of stepping out of time with all its risks and rottenness. — jjAmEs

This I disagree with. As philosophers we might seek that eternal truth, but when all we find is the deficiencies of human knowledge we are deprived of that pleasure. Philosophy doesn't offer us that pleasure, it dispels the illusion that we might obtain it.

Thus,.......consider the geocentrists whose a priori view was that Earth was the center of the universe, might better be said.....whose prior view.
— Mww

Cool. So my suggestion is that this should similarly apply to absolute space/time and relativistic spacetime. — Andrew M

Yes, I see what you mean. Newtonian absolute space/time was the view prior to relativistic spacetime.

That is, through experience, Einstein's Relativity has replaced Newtonian Physics. Doesn't that contradict the Kantian view? — Andrew M

I’m not understanding what in Einstein would contradict Kant. Where did Einstein prove Kant wrong, in as much as they each operated from two distinct technological and scientific domains? Kant had no significant velocities other than a horse, and there were no trains, which together negate even the very notion of time differential reference frames, so there wouldn’t appear to be any reason for Kant to notice measurable discrepancies in rest/motion velocities.
—————-

So it seems to me that Kant's notion of appearance is artificial. What problem does it solve that we haven't already solved with the natural distinction above. — Andrew M

What problem is there, that the natural distinction above solves? Appearance in Kantian terminology can’t be artificial in any sense, because it is a representation of sensation. If there is a sensation, there will be an appearance, period. And it is necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between sensation and appearance, otherwise there is no ground for the subsequent cognitive procedures, which falsifies the entire system. Appearance in Kant is like making the scene, as in “...that which appears...”, not what a thing looks like, because the advent of appearance in the system is long before cognition, which means there is nothing known whatsoever about the appearance except that one has occurred, been presented, to the system. Thus, it shouldn’t be said that that which is unknown at a certain time is thereby artificial.

I’m open to clarification on either of these, if you wish to provide it.

We speak of things that happen IN time but it would be more exact to say that we measured things with time. Time without events and observers would vanished. — David Mo

Yes, things happen in time is a general statement, or a general condition of all measurable things. Still, when we say we are measuring things with time, we are merely denoting the amount of time IN which a thing happens.
—————-

So, is invisibility a metaphysical idea? — David Mo

Depends on the metaphysical theory in play. According to Kant it is, because invisibility has no object of its own, so would be a concept of reason, hence, transcendental, which is itself in the metaphysical paradigm. Things may indeed be invisible and still present a sensation to the process of cognition, hence are subject to the categories, but the concept of invisibility, in and of itself, is not so subject. It is the thing by which we are affected, not the invisibility of it.

As philosophers we might seek that eternal truth, but when all we find is the deficiencies of human knowledge we are deprived of that pleasure. Philosophy doesn't offer us that pleasure, it dispels the illusion that we might obtain it. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perhaps, but does it not offer us nevertheless the pleasure of being wised up about our situation? If it didn't put us in a superior position, why would we spread it, cultivate it, pride ourselves on its study?

And how can we trust that our knowledge is deficient if knowledge of such deficiency is a part of that knowledge? It's hard to avoid positive claims and still do philosophy. Even 'skeptics' find themselves asserting timeless truths about human cognition.

Scientific realism is not a single doctrine. There are several scientific realisms ranging from dogmatic realism to cautious realism. I would say that the most widespread version today is: Scientific theories are an approximate description of reality. What "approximate" means is not easy to say.
In my opinion - after Kuhn - approximate can be interpreted as a refinement in predictions and measurements within a given paradigm. This implies that we must identify objectivity with prediction and intersubjectivity, which is not evident in itself in all cases. — David Mo

It's true there are several versions of scientific realism, but I doubt that many scientists would deny that they are dealing with the world as perceived by humans.

The idea that scientific theories are approximate descriptions of reality is completely in accordance with the Kantian idea that we know things in themselves not as things in themselves but only as appearances. Kant does not claim that we entirely "construct" our reality, only that the form of our reality as appearance is mediated by the human perceptual system and brain.

Here's a nice quote regarding the relationship between something like Kantianism and science. It's a long, illuminating footnote from the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism#cite_note-Torretti-Duhem-3

Roberto Torretti, The Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 242–43: "Like Whewell and Mach, Duhem was a practicing scientist who devoted an important part of his adult life to the history and philosophy of physics. ... His philosophy is contained in La théorie physique: son objet, sa structure [The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory] (1906), which may well be, to this day, the best overall book on the subject. Its main theses, although quite novel when first put forward, have in the meantime become commonplace, so I shall review them summarily without detailed argument, just to associate them with his name. But first I ought to say that neither in the first nor in the second (1914) edition of his book did Duhem take into account—or even so much as mention—the deep changes that were then taking place in physics. Still, the subsequent success and current entrenchment of Duhem's ideas are due above all to their remarkable agreement with—and the light they throw on—the practice of mathematical physics in the twentieth century. In the first part of La théorie physique, Duhem contrasts two opinions concerning the aim of physical theory. For some authors, it ought to furnish 'the explanation of a set of experimentally established laws', while for others it is 'an abstract system whose aim is to summarize and logically classify a set of experimental laws, without pretending to explain these laws' (Duhem 1914, p. 3). Duhem resolutely sides with the latter. His rejection of the former rests on his understanding of 'explanation' ('explication' in French), which he expresses as follows: 'To explain, explicare, is to divest reality from the appearances which enfold it like veils, in order to see the reality face to face' (pp 3–4). Authors in the first group expect from physics the true vision of things-in-themselves that religious myth and philosophical speculation have hitherto been unable to supply. Their explanation makes no sense unless (i) there is, 'beneath the sense appearances revealed to us by our perceptions, [...] a reality different from these appearances' and (ii) we know 'the nature of the elements which constitute' that reality (p 7). Thus, physical theory cannot explain—in the stated sense—the laws established by experiment unless it depends on metaphysics and thus remains subject to the interminable disputes of metaphysicians. Worse still, the teachings of no metaphysical school are sufficiently detailed and precise to account for all of the elements of physical theory (p 18). Duhem instead assigns to physical theories a more modest but autonomous and readily attainable aim: 'A physical theory is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, derived from a small number of principles, whose purpose is to represent a set of experimental laws as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible (Duhem 1914, p. 24)". — link

'A physical theory is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, derived from a small number of principles, whose purpose is to represent a set of experimental laws as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible (Duhem 1914, p. 24)" — link

:up:

Duhem was a pretty major intellectual. I never encountered him at University but have since read about him.

I'm glad someone else liked that quote. 'As simply, completely, and exactly as possible' means also perhaps as economically or efficiently as possible.

I found another quote that may add to this thread, with the theme of holism.

The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections - the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field. Having re-evaluated one statement we must re-evaluate some others, whether they be statements logically connected with the first or whether they be the statements of logical connections themselves. But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to reevaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.

If this view is right, it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement - especially if it be a statement at all remote from the experiential periphery of the field. Furthermore it becomes folly to seek a boundary between synthetic statements, which hold contingently on experience, and analytic statements which hold come what may. Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. Even a statement very close to the periphery can be held true in the face of recalcitrant experience by pleading hallucination or by amending certain statements of the kind called logical laws. Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision. Revision even of the logical law of the excluded middle has been proposed as a means of simplifying quantum mechanics; and what difference is there in principle between such a shift and the shift whereby Kepler superseded Ptolemy, or Einstein Newton, or Darwin Aristotle? — Quine

https://coursys.sfu.ca/2015fa-phil-880-g1/pages/quine1/view

To me this is one of those things that's obvious when pointed out. We meet the world not piecemeal but with the entirely of our culture.