But causation exists, — 3017amen

Quick and simple question: you do understand, yes?, that causation doesn't exist, but is rather a pretty good practical account - story - of how a lot of things seem to work. This reflected in how complicated a word "cause" is, and as well in the general abandonment by most of science, except as a useful fiction, of cause as a useful explanatory concept, replaced now for almost an hundred years and more by the concept of fields.

A tool, then, but not the thing worked on.

Quick and simple question: you do understand, yes?, that causation doesn't exist — tim wood

Causation exists as a metaphysical reality from your stream of consciousness. Otherwise you would have to explain why/how you wonder about causation to begin with. Think of it as self-awareness, and what that means.

from your stream of consciousness. — 3017amen

My stream of consciousness? And yours and everyone else's? That is a lot of different causations. Or perhaps you'd like to just see what they have in common? And that would be a abstraction.

My point, and imo the salient point, is that cause-and-effect is an invention of reason - and a pretty good one - but that it's existence is as an idea. Which is to say that nature is prior to it, has no need of it, nor need comply with it, notwithstanding whether it seem to or not.

Cause-and-effect, then, used substantively as foundation for anything else, that else substantively no stronger than its foundation, has in terms of cause and effect no substantive strength at all.

My stream of consciousness? And yours and everyone else's? — tim wood

Yep, in layman's terms, it's called everyone's sense of wonderment. It comes from self-awareness.

My point, and imo the salient point, is that cause-and-effect is an invention of reason - and a pretty good one - but that it's existence is as an idea. — tim wood

And where does reason come from?

Cause-and-effect, then, used substantively as foundation for anything else, that else substantively no stronger than its foundation, has in terms of cause and effect no substantive strength at all.
17m — tim wood

Does that mean intellect and wonderment don't exist?

Does that mean intellect and wonderment don't exist? — 3017amen

Did anyone say that? As ideas, sure they exist. As more than ideas, then what are they? And any answer to that is going to be definitional and problematic because bespoke, and thus not one-size-fits-all.

Did anyone say that? As ideas, sure they exist. As more than ideas, then what are they? — tim wood

They (intellect/wonder) are kind of like mathematics. They exist. It's another form of reality.

And any answer to that is going to be definitional and problematic because bespoke, and thus not one-size-fits-all. — tim wood

Indeed. Just like the explanation of consciousness itself; problematic.

In human terms, pragmatically, what would one's quality of life look like if one didn't wonder?

It's another form of reality. — 3017amen

Just not to be confused with the real, which I suspect you're zealous to do.

wonder — 3017amen

"Wonder," your word used perhaps a hundred times. Time for you to say what you hold wonder to be.

Unless, therefore, we are to move constantly in a circle, the word appearance must be recognized as already indicating a relation to something, the immediate representation of which is, indeed, sensible, but which, even apart from the constitution of our sensibility (upon which the form of our intuition is grounded), must be something in itself, that is, an object independent of sensibility. There thus
results the concept of a noumenon.It is not of anything, but signifies only the thought of something in general, in which I abstract from everything that belongs to the form of sensible intuition." Kant

Phenomena IS noumena.

Kant was a phenomenologist?

Just not to be confused with the real, which I suspect you're zealous to do. — tim wood

What is real about consciousness?

Wonder," your word used perhaps a hundred times. Time for you to say what you hold wonder to be.
21m — tim wood

Causational.

Time for you to say what you hold wonder to be.
21m
— tim wood

Causational. — 3017amen

Not what you hold it to do, but what you hold it to be.

Not what you hold it to do, but what you hold it to be. — tim wood

I would exercise caution against use of the false dichotomy. Dialectically, it's both/and. In this case, a synthesis between the two. Not too dissimilar to the synthetic a priori.

Two requests, evasion and no answer. Done.

Just not to be confused with the real, which I suspect you're zealous to do.
— tim wood

What is real about consciousness?

Ironically enough, times two:


And any answer to that is going to be definitional and problematic because bespoke, and thus not one-size-fits-all.
— tim wood

Indeed. Just like the explanation of consciousness itself; problematic.

In human terms, pragmatically, what would one's quality of life look like if one didn't wonder?

Can you say positively and concretely where and what the noumenon, -a, is/are? — tim wood

No, but from the text, I gather noumena would be representations of things in the world, arrived at by rationalities with means other than the intuitive system used by humans. I might be able to say how they are a logical possibility, or even a sheer happenstance of the understanding, but I can’t say anything about the reality of them. If I could, they’d be phenomena, hence not noumena after all.
—————

being prior to perception, remains inaccessible to perception. — tim wood

That which is prior to perception remains inaccessible to empirical knowledge, yes.

Perception doesn’t access anything, it is just us being affected by something physical, external to our senses. Perception isn’t part of the cognitive process, it is merely the occasion for the use of it.

If you mean by inaccessible to perception that something can’t be perceived at all, that’s fine, but being inaccessible doesn’t have anything to do with being prior to, because prior to perception presupposes the possibility of the very perception being claimed as inaccessible. A thing can’t be totally inaccessible, which would be the same logical deduction as being impossible, and be presupposed at the same time.

Real physical objects in space and time are the cause of sensations in us, as effects, perception being the means by which one becomes the other. That’s why it is said perception is passive.....it doesn’t do anything except pass forward the data.

Not to say any of that is gospel, mind you.

Kant was a phenomenologist? — Gregory

Yes. It's been quoted by other philosophers that he was considered one of the first from his particular era...

Now, on that way of thinking, that water is H₂O is an empirical discovery, and hence a posteriori. And yet necessarily true. — Banno

Yes, but it would seem to be necessarily true only by virtue of the fact that if we found something that was indistinguishable from water in every other way than that it turned out not to be chemically constituted the same, we would not count it as water. This means the so-called necessity is one of definition, and in that sense, analytic.

Consider the other possibility that Kripke does not (as far as I am aware) entertain: what if we discovered something that was phenomenally nothing like water (or ice or steam), but was found to be chemically constituted the same? Would we count that as water?

Should we define water chemically or phenomenally, in other words; and would either choice not be merely a matter of a preference in common that becomes established as convention? Or would we say that something must be the same, both chemically and phenomenally, to be defined as water?

Kant was a phenomenologist? — Gregory
Yes. It's been quoted by other philosophers that he was considered one of the first from his particular era... — 3017amen

Sort of, maybe? Wasn't Kant recruited by both camps?

Isn't the heart of the issue is that while some noumenal world is indisputable, noumenal objects fade in and out of existence depending on the reader? Are those objects fully out there, somewhat out there, or only in the public eye?

or only in the public eye? — magritte

I'm thinking it was more private...

Sorry, I should not have addressed you. Now we have to look at haystack.

My point was purely philosophical:
The scientific noumenal world of the noted theoretical physicist Kant is to be distinguished from noumenal objects or things-in-themselves.

Kantian noumenal objects are not real in an Aristotelian sense of being discrete. Noumenal objects are indeterminate sources of complex personal sense-perception possibly leading to logical judgment.

As is typical for him, Kant plants himself in the middle as the arbitrator, drawing on the strengths of the extreme points of view. There is something out there, but it is not real until judgment says so.

@Mww

Kantian noumenal objects are not real in an Aristotelian sense of being discrete. Noumenal objects are indeterminate sources of complex personal sense-perception possibly leading to logical judgment. — magritte

But as a source, an implied something and not just a spontaneous mirage, yes? By this I mean that I rationally presuppose that something is responsible for the brick in my awareness. It - this particular brick - could be a mirage, but presumably I have ways to test that - and even mirages have their causes.

This is not a claim to know the unknowable, but rather that what I've got is grounded in something somehow someway.

I take, then, noumena to be a name of a quality of a something that, in relevant context, inheres as real and not unreal. (In putting it this way I'm hoping to leapfrog over word difficulties that I'm thinking at the moment are essentially irrelevant.)

Why am I the addressee?

Possible interested party, in that some of my post is a result of a reply of yours.

Oh. Ok.

Thank you. Being a newbie I did not want to bust into your conversation.

Being a newbie I did not want to bust into your conversation. — magritte

If we stood at quiet attention and didn't butt in, then nothing.... To my way of thinking, it's never anyone's conversation.

It seems antimony or contradictions exists in us and our world, according to Kant. So Kant came up with this realization hundreds of years before the Godel, Escher, Bach book! TIme might be loopy, reality certainly is. The problem with Kant is that you psychologically feel like your field of vision encompasses all reality. To cure this by pointing out that being is distorted if the behind thou is forgotten in the face of the ahead is to say and point out a truth about Time

Sorry for another off-topic, but could someone clarify the following questions?

1. Is it true that, for Kant, the assertion of the existence of things-in-themselves is made according to a purely analytic judgment?
2. Do, for Kant, appearances and things-in-themselves constitute two separate kinds/levels of existence? In other words, is it true that an object must exist as appearance along with things-in-themselves, or, rather, an object-as-appearance can exist only as the thing-in-itself?

Thanks.

One can dispense with the idea of the world as representation by accepting that the experiencing mind is part of the reality it experiences, and must necessarily do so accurately - to allow for the survival of organism, evolving in relation to causality.