OK, I am not denying that we must think there is change outside of our experience, but it seems to remain the case that all the change we are aware of, or able to think about, remains within the sphere of our (possible, at least) experience. And to the extent that such change is only actual to us insofar as we directly experience it or experience thinking about, it remains within our actual experience also.

We may think there is even change outside of our possible experience, but by definition any such change would be completely unknowable to us; and it is arguable that the idea of something completely unknowable to us is not even coherent.

That is what I come up with when I ask, "Really?". (Presuming of course that you were referring to this sentence: "All change (at least what we can be aware of) occurs within our experience, doesn't it?").

If you were referring to this sentence:

This is where it always seem to end up with you. — John

then the answer is "Affirmative".

We may think there is even change outside of our possible experience, but by definition any such change would be completely unknowable to us; and it is arguable that the idea of something completely unknowable to us is not even coherent. — John

Wouldn't' there be all sorts of things going on beyond our light cone that are completely unknowable to us? But astronomers are confident the universe is quite a bit larger than what we can see.

We don't even need to go that far. There are things going on in planets in the Andromeda galaxy that we will never know about.

Yes, but they are not unknowable in principle. It is not logically impossible (i.e. involves no contradiction) that we could somehow get there, and what we would know if we did get there could only be known within the limitations of our faculties.

This is deserving of it's own thread.

I guess it could make for some interesting discussion. I haven't enough available time to commit to participating in a thread to the degree that the one who created it should. If you wanted to start one, though, I would certainly participate.

@The Great Whatever It's been a while since I read the critiques, but my two cents is that Kant was right enough, but that the domain of experience about which he was right is far narrower than he would have liked to admit. I think he's broadly right about, like, looking at simple objects interacting from a distance. Again, it's been a while, but I remember it being kind of just like an epistemology tailored for newtonian physics, and correspondingly simple. CPR, at least. I don't remember the Critique of Judgment all that well anymore.

I don't think it much matters what Kant's specific opinions are: the point is just that the 'we can't get outside our X' claim doesn't, so far as I can see, even have any initial plausibility. Yet, for me, at one point it did.

And yet you haven't explained at all why it once did, and now doesn't.

I'm sometimes tempted to see philosophy as a kind of restricted form of metaphor/myth building, or imaginative play, that kind of forgets what it's doing. Not in the fine-grained step-by-step reasoning, but when it comes to Big Pictures and their argumentative linchpins. So the plausibility is emotional, rather than rational, but somehow mixed up with the rational nevertheless?

That's my point, though. It doesn't seem like argumentation helps. It's not a convincing principle, yet psychologically people find it so. If you tried to state why you believed it, you wouldn't come up with any good reasons because there are none.

I guess I do hold out hope that these things are a matter of giving good or bad answers to genuine questions that reason can help work out. So it's not that the imaginative play has bad taste in what it imagines, so much as I think that Kant et al. are literally reasoning badly, in the most ordinary way.

If we are talking about the reach of our viewpoint, what exactly are we talking about?

Kant treats it like we are asking about how knowledge is possible, but I think the question is pretty clearly about knowledge which is actual. Only in the context of the actual does "knowledge outside viewpoint" work, where it refers to stuff which may be known by is not actually present to a viewpoint. The limit of are viewpoint can only be actual because we are talking about a state of ourselves. We are making about where we end, not what we might know. Actual knowledge (and a viewpoint) is never a possibility.

The way Kant argues is sort of boxing at shadows of this own creation. Instead of calling out the nonsense of viewpointless knowledge in the first instance, he treats it like a coherent possibility to debunk. Kant's move against "viewpointless knowledge" was to overturn notion of the hidden "unknowable" realm which could affect ourselves. His split phenomena and noumenon is used to show this. If something we to affect our experience, it must be empirical, must be of our viewpoint and knowable to us. There no empirical force of another realm that's beyond the possibility of knowledge.

Only Kant actually sort of believes what he's attacking. His argument begins not with viewpoint, where the contraction is obvious (how could something be known without someone who knows?), but with the absence of viewpoint. Instead of talking about people who exist or do not exist with knowledge, his inquiry goes straight to where there are no viewpoints at all, to abstractions of possibility and logic, which he then treats like the rules which define how knowledge works.

The outcome is a philosophy which can't talk about knowledge as it exists. Knowledge is understood as a question of what abstracted rules make possible, rather than a feature of a living and existing viewpoint. It means the conception of things outside a viewpoint is lost. Anytime someone tries to talk about actual knowledge, and that there is more than a present viewpoint, the Kantian's will object it doesn't make sense and we must really be talking about the possibility of knowledge. Kant is ignorant of the existence (or actuality) of viewpoints and what that means.

If we are talking about the reach of our viewpoint, what exactly are we talking about? — TheWillowOfDarkness

The "reach of a viewpoint" is what it is possible to conceive from within the viewpoint. That is analogous to any actual situation where what it is possible to see from your viewpoint consists precisely in everything you are able to see.

The way Kant argues is sort of boxing at shadows of this own creation. Instead of calling out the nonsense of viewpointless knowledge in the first instance, he treats it like a coherent possibility to debunk. — TheWillowOfDarkness

It seems to me it is in thinking that Kant is concerned with pointlessly debunking the idea of "viewpointless" knowledge that you are misunderstanding what he is about. If he is "shadowboxing" with anything, it is what he refers to as the "transcendental illusion", which is the idea that there is an actuality that exists "out there" like an all-encompassing 'image' that mirrors every possible viewpoint, that somehow "looks like" the world we see. Of course we must think there is a viewpointless actuality, but we cannot really imagine what it is like, because all imagining is from some viewpoint. Kant points out that noumenal actuality cannot be "like anything", because it is viewpointless, and everything we know is viewpointful.

In fact your admission that the idea of viewpointless knowledge is "nonsense" agrees completely with the point that we cannot "get outside" conceptual schemas altogether. I think there is some equivocating going on in this thread between that obviously correct idea and the false idea that we cannot (in principle at least) "get outside" any particular conceptual schema.

I think it is laughable how you blithely talk of what Kant is "ignorant" of. I doubt you have ever read his works much, and if you have, you certainly don't seem to have understood the genuine difficulty of the issues he is attempting to deal with..

↪John That's my point, though. It doesn't seem like argumentation helps. It's not a convincing principle, yet psychologically people find it so. If you tried to state why you believed it, you wouldn't come up with any good reasons because there are none. — The Great Whatever

You haven't explicated any authentic account of, or argument for, the ideas that you want to facilely denigrate. You rail against "intellectual dishonesty" and yet you don't want to, in good faith and charitability, identify your opponent's actual arguments and tackle them on their own terms. You should be able to give an account of Kant's actual key arguments, which should clearly reveal if and where you have misunderstood them, and if it turns out you have not misunderstood them then you should be able to mount a convincing counter-argument.

Otherwise you are just pointlessly mouthing off in accusing Kant of being "stupid".

The "reach of a viewpoint" is what it is possible to conceive from within the viewpoint. That is analogous to any actual situation where what it is possible to see from your viewpoint consists precisely in everything you are able to see. — John

But that's the problem with his approach. To the reach of a viewpoint, possibility is irrelevant. My viewpoint is what I do conceive, not what I might.

In terms of possibility, the argument is false. At any given point, a person might know anything. There is no instance of knowledge which is necessary to people or beyond their capacity. If I, for example, know my birthday and do not know your birthday, it is not the only possible outcome with respect to my present viewpoint. I could have know the reverse. I might have known both. I might of known neither. I just didn't.

The limits of my viewpoint don't define what I might know, not even in reference to itself. It's not the limit or what I'm able to know or see, but rather the limit of what I do know and see.

Of course we must think there is a viewpointless actuality, but we cannot really imagine what it is like, because all imagining is from some viewpoint. Kant points out that noumenal actuality cannot be "like anything", because it is viewpointless, and everything we know is viewpointful. — John

No, we don't. Not at all. We can begin by being exact and honest: a viewpointless actuality is impossible. Any actuality is a state of existence, a finite moment, a state with beginning and end. Any instance of actuality must be a viewpoint (including all instances of knowledge), whether it be of the empirical or noumenal.

To know means to be a viewpoint.

Noumenal knowledge is, therefore, impossible. Not just to us (as Kant claims), but anyone. Since any instance of knowledge amounts to a viewpoint, there cannot be knowledge which is beyond them, be they of ants, humans, gods or anything else.

Noumenal actuality is rendered incoherent because there cannot be knowledge (of any kind) without a viewpoint-- there is literally nothing to know, and so, in failing to know the noumenal and being unable to know it, a viewpoint isn't missing knowledge (or the capacity for knowledge) at all.

But that's the problem with his approach. To the reach of a viewpoint, possibility is irrelevant. My viewpoint is what I do conceive, not what I might. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Here I disagree again. Your (current) viewpoint is what you (currently) conceive, and the reach of your viewpoint is what can be conceived within it.

The limits of my viewpoint don't define what I might know, not even in reference to itself. — TheWillowOfDarkness

The limits of your viewpoint tell you what you can know (from within that particular viewpoint) but do not tell you what, in particular, you will know . It defines the kind of knowledge you can possess, not what actual knowledge of the appropriate kind you will possess.

No, we don't. Not at all. We can begin by being exact and honest: a viewpointless actuality is impossible. Any actuality is a state of existence, a finite moment, a state with beginning and end. Any instance of actuality must be a viewpoint (including all instances of knowledge), whether it be of the empirical or noumenal. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So, you want to claim that there can be no actuality where there is no view; no actuality, in other words, which is not currently being witnessed?

I can understand why you say an actuality must be an existence, and why it must be " a finite moment" or "a state with a beginning and end". I think you are equivocating actuality with an actuality. An actuality will begin and end, for sure. but actuality never ends. When I say 'viewpointless actuality', I am not speaking about an actuality, but about actuality itself.

So, in answer to my own question above; it might be said that there can be no particular actuality which is not currently being witnessed. But this amounts to saying that there is no tree there when no one is witnessing it. And this is where it becomes tricky, because realists want to say there is a tree there; but you obviously don't count yourself as a realist. I, on the other hand, say that in one sense (the empirical) there is a tree there, even when it is not being witnessed; but I would also that say this is actually a purely formal sense. In the other sense (the noumenal) there is no unwitnessed tree there, but there is actuality (not an actuality, mind) which will reliably appear as a tree should a witness appear.

Noumenal knowledge is, therefore, impossible. Not just to us (as Kant claims), but anyone. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Of course noumenal knowledge is impossible, and I believe Kant would say that it is impossible for any finite percipient. He would say that this is something we can know a priori simply because of what it means to be a finite percipient.

The notion of an empirical actuality includes the idea that it must be knowable from viewpoints. The notion of noumenal actuality includes the idea that it is unknowable from any viewpoint. Kant is actually saying something quite similar to Spinoza, because the latter understands that God (infinite substance=noumenal actuality) is knowable only in the modes that express his attributes. Beyond that there is literally nothing to know.

One question that gets under my skin is whether or not the universe is infinite.

In part because I want to know if the universe is, thermodynamically speaking, a zero-sum-game; but also because I wonder how much other sentient life is out there.

These questions aren't strictly philosophical, but since empirically finding answers to them is likely pretty far off, exploring the possibilities and their ramifications can only be done in thought and speculation.

Of late, one question which keeps recurring to me is this:

Assuming that the universe is filled with life, and that the technology required for long distance travel is sufficiently possible, and that distant civilizations could detect and travel to one-another, what is it about Earth and human civilization that would make us worth contacting?

Nothing... At least not yet...

Right now we're like a herd of wildebeests who move chaotically according to our irrational instincts and the changing slope of the terrain our movement tramples and destroys (beware cliffs). We cannot even manage to not fuck up a self-regulating planetary bio-sphere given our first taste of real technological power.

Technologically speaking, what could we offer to an alien race capable of inter-stellar travel? Maybe they don't know how to split atoms (unlikely I reckon) but why would they even need to if they could close the star gap without it? Nuclear technology is great for blowing shit up and irradiating it, and middle of the road when it comes to generating energy through mechanical turbines and radioactive steam, so it's worthless either way. Gravity is beyond us and our best method of getting into space is an economic disaster. Our computers are interesting, but data management is also not going to be an issue for anything capable of dealing with the complexities of inter-stellar travel. So what can we offer?

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced humans are currently about as interesting as a fly-ridden wildebeest. In the same way that the present day is many magnitudes more interesting than what was happening 1000 years ago, I regret having no access to the shit might be going on 1000 years from now. The more I wonder about the interesting possibilities of what is to come, the more I resent having no access to it, which gets under my skin.

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced humans are currently about as interesting as a fly-ridden wildebeest. — VagabondSpectre

Relax. It is quite empowering using what agitates you right back and against it: clearly you are conscious of the damage people are doing to the world, why not do something about it? Seriously, do it.

I am constantly probing at how to live a better and more virtuous life, the one question I never stop asking myself and that never fails to get under my skin is "What makes a virtuous life and what qualities/principles are characteristic to it?" From the very moment of my introduction into philosophy i have not been able to rid myself of this question (I have found not a definite answer but a general idea as to how I myself can live a virtuous/good life but it is something i am constantly pulling apart and adding to). I truly believe that the aim of philosophy is to answer that question. As to their being an answer to the question I think yes however I believe there are certain qualities that one MUST have to be considered virtuous (such as honesty, responsibility, temperance, etc.) and other qualities that are relative to the person and situation (after all what we each deem "good" is relative to us, our situation and our goals). For example I consider myself to be living a virtuous life when I abstain from certain desires and use every second of the day to my betterment and advantage.

Relax. It is quite empowering using what agitates you right back and against it: clearly you are conscious of the damage people are doing to the world, why not do something about it? Seriously, do it. — TimeLine

Do something about it !?

Like what, cryogenically freeze myself for millennia until the triviality of modern civilization has melted away? Only problem there is that humans 1k+ years from now would have no reason to wake me up in the same way that advanced aliens have no reason to presently contact us...

"Hey Bill! We got another popsicle douche on the docket. This one's old; whaddya think?"

"What year is it from?".

"2017...".

"Oh... The director says no more reanimating anyone from that early in the 21st, apparently they've already got enough mentally retarded ideologues to act in the new historical satire they're producing.".

"Oh...".

----------------------------

What bothers me isn't that the world is facing trivial problems, it's that what comes afterward is sure to be much more interesting and current climates are a source of delay. My contribution is to spread awareness of problems and possible solutions as I see them, and that's appropriate for my station, but no amount of hard work or dedication will get me to the other side of them. The only way there is through time.

That's just not true though. I gave reasons in my very responses to you.

Kant does not, so far as I can tell, have arguments for the position that we can't get outside of our faculties. To be sure that's something he says many times. That might be because of my unfamiliarity with, or lack of understanding of, the text. But I've read CPR, so if I'm too stupid even to find that there are arguments, I don't know what reading again would help me to do.

Kant's style is generally one of outlining and repetition – he's more like a world-builder than an arguer. He does provide a few arguments, such as the refutation of idealism, and some truncated syllogisms about why representations of things cannot be things in themselves. But the broad picture seems to be one of making a big frame, repeating it, and letting the reader acclimate themselves,.

I can understand why you say an actuality must be an existence, and why it must be " a finite moment" or "a state with a beginning and end". I think you are equivocating actuality with an actuality. An actuality will begin and end, for sure. but actuality never ends. When I say 'viewpointless actuality', I am not speaking about an actuality, but about actuality itself. — John

Can't you see how this is the problem? Actuality is not actual. It never exists. Being infinite, it is a logical expression rather than a state of the world.

I'm not equivocating an actuality with actuality. My point is Kant does so at the base of his philosophy. Instead of talking about viewpoints and knowledge in terms of themselves, he takes an abstracted view , the "veiwpointlessness" of logic and actuality and treats them like an actual state-- producing this notion of the actual infinite viewpoint finite beings cannot access.

The notion of an empirical actuality includes the idea that it must be knowable from viewpoints. The notion of noumenal actuality includes the idea that it is unknowable from any viewpoint. Kant is actually saying something quite similar to Spinoza, because the latter understands that God (infinite substance=noumenal actuality) is knowable only in the modes that express his attributes. Beyond that there is literally nothing to know. — John

It is not only the actual, finite or empirical which must be known form a viewpoint. By the definition of knowledge (someone who knows something), the infinite must be known from a viewpoint too. This is the difference here between Kant and Spinoza.

Spinoza understands that God, actuality or Substance, is not actual. He knows it is infinite. It's not some "undefined mystery" at all. The question of "what does is mean to be infinite?" is recognised as incoherent because the infinite cannot be any "thing" at all-- it's simply not an actual state to be known. It never "bes" anything at all. The "mystery" Kant claims cannot be defined.

And this is where it becomes tricky, because realists want to say there is a tree there; but you obviously don't count yourself as a realist. I, on the other hand, say that in one sense (the empirical) there is a tree there, even when it is not being witnessed; but I would also that say this is actually a purely formal sense. In the other sense (the noumenal) there is no unwitnessed tree there, but there is actuality (not an actuality, mind) which will reliably appear as a tree should a witness appear. — John

On the contrary, I do count myself as a realist. Perhaps more strongly than just about anyone else. The problem with opposition to realism, and Kant's philosophy, is it doesn't recognise the logical status of the actual. Forms (i.e. logical expression of actual states) are not only present to my mind. They are an expression of the-thing-itself. For any actual, it's significance in logic is its own.

Our viewpoint is not need to logically define the form of any object. By the-thing-itself, any actual state is it's own viewpoint. Not in the crass sense of someone's mind or experience (which is actually a different viewpoint altogether), but by the logic of the-thing-itself.

A state being actual no longer depends on a different viewpoint. Idealism and correlationism are not taken out by empirical proof, but by the logic of the thing-itself. Since any state is defined in-itself, is a finite viewpoint, it does not rely on any other for definition.

To the existence of any state, witnesses become irrelevant. In any case, it only takes the state itself. For the idealist or correlationist to say, "But it can't be without us (a different viewpoint), there to define its presence" is just blatantly false. They are confusing our viewpoint (in the sense of a finite state) with any other viewpoint. Selfhood means no state needs any other to be defined. Any state expresses its form without reference to any other viewpoint.

Thus, existing stars, planets tree, rocks, mountains, atoms, electrons, etc. without anyone experiencing the form.

In the other sense (the noumenal) there is no unwitnessed tree there, but there is actuality (not an actuality, mind) which will reliably appear as a tree should a witness appear. — John

If the actuality is "appearing as," it is a finite state. It is literally to argue the noumenal takes on an empire form (a tree) when witnessed. That's a contradiction. The noumenal can make no such appearance.

It seems to me it is in thinking that Kant is concerned with pointlessly debunking the idea of "viewpointless" knowledge that you are misunderstanding what he is about. If he is "shadowboxing" with anything, it is what he refers to as the "transcendental illusion", which is the idea that there is an actuality that exists "out there" like an all-encompassing 'image' that mirrors every possible viewpoint, that somehow "looks like" the world we see. Of course we must think there is a viewpointless actuality, but we cannot really imagine what it is like, because all imagining is from some viewpoint. Kant points out that noumenal actuality cannot be "like anything", because it is viewpointless, and everything we know is viewpointful. — John

So Kant was saying that the God's eye view, or Nagel's view from nowhere can't be had by us, because we have to conceive of the world someway, and that someway cannot mirror the world as it is, because the world is not from any sort of conception or view.

Thus, the noumena.

By the definition of knowledge (someone who knows something), the infinite must be known from a viewpoint too. This is the difference here between Kant and Spinoza. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This is simply wrong. Of course the infinite must be known, insofar as it can be known, from a viewpoint. I already said there is no viewpointless knowledge, and Kant says just the same; so your objections are based on misunderstanding.

If the actuality is "appearing as," it is a finite state. It is literally to argue the noumenal takes on an empire form (a tree) when witnessed. That's a contradiction. The noumenal can make no such appearance. — TheWillowOfDarkness

What you are saying amounts, in Spinozistic terms, to saying that there can be no substance, but only modes. If you think that your are not a realist but a phenomenalist.

I'm not going to waste my time arguing against your empty assertions.

You're missing the point.

The problem is Kant suggesting there is something about the infinite which cannot be known. There is no "insofar" to speak of. The infinite is perfectly knowable in viewpoint.

His "mystery" is based on assigning the infinite something, actuality, it doesn't have.

What you are saying amounts, in Spinozistic terms, to saying that there can be no substance, but only modes.

I'm not going to waste my time arguing against your empty assertions. — John

No... it means Substance is not a mode. When a mode appears, it is not an appearance of Substance. If it were, it would mean Substance had sudden come into being, had been subject to change, rendering it finite.

I always found the idea that God's view is from nowhere problematic. God's view, if God has a view at all, would be from everywhere, not from nowhere. So Gods' view is from nowhere in particular, but not from nowhere, per se.

Likewise with the world; the world, understood as a whole, is from every point of view and conception, not from no point of view or conception.

If the infinite is perfectly knowable then it is all on its own, since nothing else is. If you think the infinite is perfectly knowable, then tell me exactly what you know about it, and how you know your knowledge of it is "perfect".

So Gods' view is from nowhere in particular, but not from nowhere, per se. — John

Right, I think Nagel's argument was that "nowhere" meant a view abstracted from human perception of colors, sounds, smells, etc.

Um... it's the infinite.

We know the knowledge is perfect because, if it were anything else, it would be a contradiction.

To suggest the infinite might be more or something other would mean defining it by finite terms. We would have to claim there was content to the noumenal, such there was someway it appeared other than "the infinite."

But would it also be abstracted from space. time, mass, shape, number, relation and so on? If it were to be abstracted from all categories of judgement whatsoever, it is hard to see how it could be counted as a view at all. If there is a God, and if He has a view, then it would seem that it must consist in the sum total of the views of all His creatures. This is the case also because his creatures must be modes of Himself, if it to be thought that they are not separate from Him, but have their existence "in Him".

If God is wholly transcendent (as opposed to being both immanent and transcendent) meaning wholly separate form His creation, and not 'inhabiting' it at all, then He could not know anything about it