We never can properly say how objects in the world are tied together....
— Mww

Physics does that, though. — Wayfarer

Hmmm.....I see I’ve unintentionally inflicted an ambiguity. Yes, we can properly say, in accordance with the proper test methods and practices we invent, contingent on the temporal currency of our knowledge. Which accounts for our mistakes in our relatively proper sayings.

But, still, if we are not allowed knowledge of things in the world as they are in themselves, how can we be allowed to know how the things in the world are properly tied together? Which is the term “properly” being used irreducibly, in its strictest sense.

n Kant, “directional flow of energy” aside, this affect/desire is separable, as affects on the subject, and desires of the subject, differences in principles, origins and manifestations being rather obvious, I should think. The judgements here are aesthetic, concepts relate to each other, the imagination is “...productive...”, practical reason being the logical arbiter. — Mww

Practical reason does seem to be the ‘logical’ arbiter, but only to the extent that humans act logically - we can, but we rarely do, particularly when available attention or effort is limited.

But it seems like you’re quantifying ‘affects’ (effects?) or ‘desires’ as different properties attributable to the subject, where I’ve used ‘affect/desire’ in reference to a directional aspect of experience, as potential energy - attention/effort in a relation. It isn’t so much separable as reducible - alignment with Nature as described in the TTC is a step beyond Kant’s idea of ‘harmony’, recognising affect/desire for what it is: the flow of energy through an empty schema of logical and qualitative relations, of which the reader/observer is a part. Affect has a purposeful absence from the TTC - how we interpret the text, directing the flow of energy (attention/effort) through the schema, is precisely what is missing from that schema in relation to reality: ourselves.

Kant’s schema on the other hand, cannot account for the human limitations of affected, relative logic. It categorises affect as either ‘effects’ or ‘desires’, and reduces the harmony of being at one with Nature to an observed interplay between consolidated subject and object. Such are the ‘logical’ constraints of language, which positions the reader/observer always outside any description of reality (even when the subject is ‘I’). There is no room in Kant’s schema for the affected, relative reader/observer.

‘Directional flow of energy’ aside, indeed.

Kant doesn't see that noumena is just a term for what is in the phenomenological "presence". Experience itself is thoroughly noumenal. There is an insight here that is elusive, slippery. One way to say it is this: we live an breathe metaphysics. We think of metaphysics as being impossibly remote (like Kant does in the transcendental dialectic) but this is all wrong, simply put. — Astrophel

What a tantalising response. Can you say more about experience itself being noumenal?

Such are the ‘logical’ constraints of language, which positions the reader/observer always outside any description of reality — Possibility

This is true, but Kantian metaphysics has nothing to do with the logical restraints of language, per se. It is not concerned with the reader/observer, but of the thinker. The logical restraints of reason, now, which has no need of language, is itself sufficient causality for the thinking subject to be the immediate describer of reality, or, in fact, anything at all, hence cannot be outside such descriptions.

The TTC, as it’s called, is all well and good, but I think of a different paradigm. I don’t really know anything about it, so I shouldn’t even think that far.

What a tantalising response. Can you say more about experience itself being noumenal? — Tom Storm

That would be mysticism, no? Meister Eckhart wrote, help me God to be rid of God. Something in the former obstructed by the latter. What would that be?

But in the "contradiction" between finitude and infinity, one looks for the ground where the finite simply ends, and off everything goes to infinity. Given the finite, the limited, the well structured and familiar, I see no "place" where this can stand apart from infinity. Infinity does not have its termination anywhere, but rather "runs through" all that is. If infinity is taken as a mere extension of the familiar, as in a sequence of negative time moments that has no end or a spatial extension of "further ons" with no end (both Kant denies in any way describes noumena, of course) then all we have is a concept of infinity that is, if you will, finitized, made finite. Pointless to even bother taking seriously if this is the best one can do, and Kant thought this the case. Clearly not what Eckhart had in mind with God. With him there is something entirely Other. And this Other is not the vacuous noumena of Kant.

I think the thinking on this leads to a focus on the nature of finitude. What is it that makes a thing separate from its eternity?

Such are the ‘logical’ constraints of language, which positions the reader/observer always outside any description of reality
— Possibility

This is true, but Kantian metaphysics has nothing to do with the logical restraints of language, per se. It is not concerned with the reader/observer, but of the thinker. The logical restraints of reason, now, which has no need of language, is itself sufficient causality for the thinking subject to be the immediate describer of reality, or, in fact, anything at all, hence cannot be outside such descriptions. — Mww

And yet the thinker, even as the immediate describer of reality, is to an extent other than their description. Inclusive reality consists of schema + description + describer. Kant’s describer, the thinking subject, is at times logical, affected and relative. I think the key to his philosophy (in light of the TTC) is to recognise that when we describe a logical reality, we do so from an affected position, using a relative schema. To the extent that we claim a logical position ourselves as describer, our resulting description is also relative, affected. So long as we approach reality with this understanding, then Kant’s philosophy can guide us to think, intend or feel with clarity. But that’s not how most people read Kant.

But in the "contradiction" between finitude and infinity, one looks for the ground where the finite simply ends, and off everything goes to infinity. Given the finite, the limited, the well structured and familiar, I see no "place" where this can stand apart from infinity. Infinity does not have its termination anywhere, but rather "runs through" all that is. If infinity is taken as a mere extension of the familiar, as in a sequence of negative time moments that has no end or a spatial extension of "further ons" with no end (both Kant denies in any way describes noumena, of course) then all we have is a concept of infinity that is, if you will, finitized, made finite. Pointless to even bother taking seriously if this is the best one can do, and Kant thought this the case. Clearly not what Eckhart had in mind with God. With him there is something entirely Other. And this Other is not the vacuous noumena of Kant. — Astrophel

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Mysticism I am familiar with but I have no idea what the rest of what you say means but will read it again later and see if I can unravel it. I am not a philosopher and the idea of infinity has never captured my attention.

yet the thinker, even as the immediate describer of reality, is to an extent other than their description. — Possibility

Which is to say, consciousness is other than its content. I think this an unnecessary reduction. A describer that does not describe is a contradiction, and a description that does not arise from a describer, is impossible. Parsimony, and good philosophy, suggests the thinker and his thoughts are, if not identical, than at least indistinguishable.
————-

....when we describe a logical reality.... — Possibility

How would a logical reality even be recognized as such, if the system that views it isn’t itself logical? It would appear then, we do not describe a logical reality, but rather, we describe a reality logically. This method permits reality to be whatever it is, and grounds all descriptions on a relation between it, and the cognitive system that thinks about it.
————-

the key to his (Kant’s) philosophy (in light of the TTC) is to recognise that when we describe a logical reality, we do so from an affected position, using a relative schema. — Possibility

A key to the empirical part of his philosophy, yes, and even if we describe reality logically, we do so from an affected position, yes. But I’m not sure what is meant by relative schema, in light of the TTC. And I for sure don’t wish to get into the whole Kantian schematism transcendental morass.
————-

To the extent that we claim a logical position ourselves as describer, our resulting description is also relative, affected. — Possibility

Which I take to be tacit admission we in fact do cognize logically. I’m guessing you mean to say our descriptions are nevertheless relative to the logic, which seems rather tautological, doesn’t it? Overlooking that, I don’t see where “affected” comes into play. Not sure how a resulting description can be affected, other than to say a result is affected by its antecedents. But that’s just a lame appeal to logical conditions, as it doesn’t tell us anything the syllogism......reality/affected position/resulting description......didn’t already inform.

But, as I said, I’m not familiar with what appears to be your philosophy-of-choice, so you’ll have to cut me some interpretive slack.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Mysticism I am familiar with but I have no idea what the rest of what you say means but will read it again later and see if I can unravel it. I am not a philosopher and the idea of infinity has never captured my attention. — Tom Storm

An addendum: There is today a strain of philosophy that think's Husserl opened up an extraordinary kind of thinking that is not simply theoretical, but revelatory (speaking of noumenal presence within imminence). From Husserl's Cartesian Meditations, where he gives some light to his "phenomenological reduction" (epoche) :

But perhaps, with the Cartesian discovery of the transcendental ego, a new idea of the grounding of knowledge also becomes disclosed: The idea of it as a transcendental grounding. And indeed, instead of attempting to use ego cogito as an apodictically evident premise for arguments supposedly implying a transcendent subjectivity, we shall direct our attention to the fact that phenornenological epoch lays open (to me, the meditating philosopher) an infinite realm of being of a new kind, as the sphere of a new kind of experience: transcendental experience.

There seems to be significant difference and disagreement amongst the positions held by phenomenologists - Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty. I understand Merleau-Ponty rejects Husserl's transcendental reduction and intentionality. I wonder how anyone can tell which reading is faithful and who has the preferred approach? If you say that as a mere reader you can discern each position as intended and from this determine which approach is more helpful, then I must assume your mind is as penetrating and original as the author's.

I am trying to understand an essential difference between Kant's version of idealism and versions of idealism which came before him. — Tom Storm

I don't know if any of what follows has already been covered but Kant's idealism is "transcendental". By transcendental he means the conditions for the possibility of experience. Transcendental idealism is not a claim about the world but about us.

Can Kant’s noumenal world to be understood to potentially have any kind of physical form (waves, for instance) which we cannot apprehend directly? Or is the use of the word ‘physical’ here entirely superfluous? — Tom Storm

Things as they are in themselves are not accessible to us, only things as they are for us. Although they are not accessible to us they are an essential part of experience. In short, they do have physical form.

Is there any simple way of describing how this is might be understood to actually work? — Tom Storm

The manifold of sensations are processed according the structure of the mind, what he calls the "categories of the understanding".

Could dying then be taken as an example of receiving direct feedback from the noumenal world? — Tom Storm

I think he would regard this as a metaphysical question and perhaps he might address it as an antinomy. Reasoning on one side for consciousness continuing in death and on the other that death is the end of consciousness. If death is the end of consciousness then there would be no awareness or feedback. If consciousness survives death then it is either a continuation of our consciousness, in which case no noumental apprehension, or, it is a transformation of consciousness that allow direct apprehension. But this possibility cannot be determined by reason.

Nice work. Thanks.

But this possibility cannot be determined by reason. — Fooloso4

Indeed and not just this question. :wink:

The manifold of sensations are processed according the structure of the mind, what he calls the "categories of the understanding". — Fooloso4

So this is my understanding too. I am curious about what structures of the mind can mean when understood more deeply.

Things as they are in themselves are not accessible to us, only things as they are for us. Although they are not accessible to us they are an essential part of experience. In short, they do have physical form. — Fooloso4

Can we say from this that Kant's idealism is a form of naturalism?

There seems to be significant difference and disagreement amongst the positions held by phenomenologists - Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty. I understand Merleau-Ponty rejects Husserl's transcendental reduction and intentionality. I wonder how anyone can tell which reading is faithful and who has the preferred approach? If you say that as a mere reader you can discern each position as intended and from this determine which approach is more helpful, then I must assume your mind is as penetrating and original as the author's. — Tom Storm

Yes, there is disagreement. I am no pro, but I have read these and I will say this: Husserl can be very detailed, but also very direct. But when he is direct, it still takes some getting use to, and this is something of an understatement. What I mean is that in order to understand his epoche, you have to see it as a method, a very different way to actually "observe" the world, for it is not a matter of taking up things with their purposes and their familiar meanings "ready to hand" if you will; and it is certainly not the kind of thinking an empirical scientist does. Not at all, and this is hard for most people to understand. It is not a theory in the usual sense. It has an altogether different subject matter, and that is perception itself. Before a scientist sits down at her microscope, she has before here, prior to any application of all that science's paradigms provide, the perceptual field itself, which is complicated, because it is not just Kant's sensual intuitions. It is inherently eidetic as well (as Kant said long ago" intuitions without concepts are blind and concepts without intuitions are empty). Objects in the world are not objects at all until you understand that they are "predicatively structured". this means that the perceptual field that lays before you has an eidetic intuitive presence as well, and this is to be taken as an intuitive presence.

Husserl thought that when one achieves this phenomenological reduction, suspending all that is assumed and functional in normal affairs, and having before one only a "residuum" of the apperceptive foundation, one actually apprehends the transcendental ground of all experience. Let him tell it:

For the sake of further clarification, however, it should be added that we must distinguish "straightforwardly" executed grasping perceiving, remembering, predicating, valuing,
purposing, etc., from the reflections by means of which alone, as grasping acts belonging to a new level, the straightforward acts become accessible to us. Perceiving straightforwardly, we grasp,
for example, the house and not the perceiving. Only in reflection do we " direct" ourselves to the
perceiving itself and to its perceptual directedness to the house.

Heidegger would call what Husserl is talking about "presence at hand": When you pull away from the familiar use of things and just look at them and describe them. I read John Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics and he says Heidegger thought Husserl believed in "walking on water" and this is a very big point: Husserl thought one could withdraw from the world's familiarity and behold the actual structures of the presence of the world (what Derrida will later call the metaphysics of presence). A very strong position to take. One might say close to a God's eye view, no? But there is something, frankly, truly spooky about this. I read in a letter from Husserl to I think it was Rudolf Otto, he wrote how his students were becoming Christian converts in their studies of phenomenology.

Anthony Steinbach wrote "Phenomenology and Mysticism" where he tries to defend radical spiritual interpretation of the epoche. These days, there is in the French post Husserlians like Michel Henry (The Four Principles of Phenomenology), Jean Luc Nancy Marion and others; prior to these there was ewmanuel Levinas, Husserl's student, I believe.

Anyway, you can tell where my tendencies lie--with Husserl. Heidegger was for me a profound reading. Nothing to equal, really, reading Being and Time. Changed the way I think about everything at the basic level. But Husserl made him possible and I do lean toward his radical what I call "revelatory" view on this. this pulling away from everydayness into a no man's land creates an unbridgeable chasm between the world and something Other.

I am curious about what structures of the mind can mean when understood more deeply. — Tom Storm

I'm not sure what you are getting at. Since you say "understood more deeply" I assume you are not inquiring about what the categories are. Is it Kant's claim that they are the universal a priori condition for experience that needs to be examined? Or perhaps whether this is a claim about the mind as it is in itself, that is, noumentally.

Can we say from this that Kant's idealism is a form of naturalism? — Tom Storm

Properly qualified, I think we can. It makes no claims about or relies on anything supernatural. But some will object that it does not tell us how things really are, only how things appear to us.

Can we say from this that Kant's idealism is a form of naturalism? — Tom Storm

Well, Kant did say this:

The question was not whether the concept of cause was right, useful, and even indispensable for our knowledge of nature, for this Hume had never doubted; but whether that concept could be thought by reason a priori, and consequentially whether it possessed an inner truth, independent of all experience, implying a perhaps more extended use not restricted merely to objects of experience. This was Hume's problem. It was solely a question concerning the origin, not concerning the indispensable need of using the concept. Were the former decided, the conditions of the use and the sphere of its valid application would have been determined as a matter of course. — Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, pg 259

In due course, Kant lays out his 'determination' and says:

"Accordingly, we shall here be concerned with experience only and the universal conditions of its possibility, which are given a priori. Thence we shall define nature as the whole object of all possible experience." (299)

Therefore, objective truth is a special kind of experience:

For instance, when I say the air is elastic, this judgement is as yet a judgement of perception only; I do nothing but refer two of my sensations to each other. But if I would have it called a judgement of experience, I require this connection to stand under a condition which makes it universally valid. I desire therefore that I and everybody else should always connect necessarily the same perceptions under the same circumstances. — ibid. 299

So it is by this repeatability that we can have an objective reality and it eat it too. It is transcendental in the suggestion that we couldn't possibly be putting on such a fine show by ourselves.

Can we say from this that Kant's idealism is a form of naturalism? — Tom Storm

In Kant’s day, naturalism was indicative of the sciences, from which he says....

“....Whether the treatment of that portion of our knowledge which lies within the province of pure reason advances with that undeviating certainty which characterizes the progress of science, we shall be at no loss to determine....”

....which implies the impending transcendental philosophy, in order to gain the respect of the sciences, must adhere to the same theoretical conditions. But it cannot be said Kant’s idealism is by that claim alone, a form of naturalism. Furthermore.....

“....Mathematics and physics are the two theoretical sciences which have to determine their objects a priori. The former is purely a priori, the latter is partially so, but is also dependent on other sources of cognition....”

.....from which it should be clear, that while Kant’s idealism adheres to the same general principles for its exposition as the natural sciences, re: cause and effect, space and time, etc., it is very far from being a form of it. In fact, it is proved that the sciences themselves are predicated on the conceptions advanced by the metaphysics of pure reason, which reduces to.....no science is ever done without first being thought.

All that from the very beginning, and from the ending, is the conclusion that metaphysics proper is not and cannot be, a science in a domain of naturalism.

which reduces to.....no science is ever done without first being thought. — Mww

That is the essence of it. Thought is presupposed in everything "natural". This plays out extensively in phenomenology. But the real issue with this is with its rationalism, for 'thought' itself is also a particle of language that has the synthetic function of gathering particulars under a general. It is by abstraction from what is given that we arrive at our conceptualized world and all that is in it. But the whole from which reason and its categories is derived is a generative mystery (see, if you have interest, Eugene Fink's Sixth Meditation where Fink takes Kant to a deeper level of analysis; see his "enworlding"), however, we have to (as Kant does, of course) extrapolate from what is before us to what has to be the case in order for this "representation" to be what it is, and reason is just one part of this, a formal part, empty. Far, far more interesting and important is the non rational nature what is in the world. The extraordinary affectivity is where we find the substance of our existence.

Kant took the formal logical nature of our judgments and played them out all the way to their impossible "beginnings" (logical beginnings, that is, impossible because beyond our judcgments are not able to apprehend, nor even conceive the possibility of their own genesis)-- but what happens when we do this with the other dimension of meaning?: The aesthetic, affective, the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to, the passions and their depths, and so on?

Thence we shall define nature as the whole object of all possible experience. — Paine

Objectivity is universal subjectivity.

Far, far more interesting and important is the non rational nature what is in the world. The extraordinary affectivity is where we find the substance of our existence. — Astrophel

Why should that be? Why care what the non-ration nature of the world includes, if it must still be met with our particular, human, method of understanding it? Even if we can say we find the substance, or, that there is substance found, by its affectivity on us, it remains a condition of human nature to determine both what it is, and how it relates to other substances.

That non-rational nature is indispensable is given, but it isn’t all there is.

I'm not sure what you are getting at. Since you say "understood more deeply" I assume you are not inquiring about what the categories are. — Fooloso4

Thanks, yes, poor language use on my part, sorry. I should have written: What has Kant said about the structure of the mind that allows it to make sense of the noumenal world and 'construct' our phenomenal world? I was thinking more about its cognitive architecture, but perhaps this is too big a question. I have just skim read the SEP account of Kant's view of mind and it's very detailed and dense.

I know this is probably a silly question, but I can't help but wonder why Kant thought the world was divided in this way, between appearances and reality.

A quick answer. I have other things to do that my family things are more important. The pizza won't make itself.

Two things: First, he recognized that both those who argued for realism and those who argued for idealism had a point. He combines them in a synthesis. Second, he believed that reason had limits.

How would a logical reality even be recognized as such, if the system that views it isn’t itself logical? It would appear then, we do not describe a logical reality, but rather, we describe a reality logically. — Mww

We know our descriptions are logically constructed, but we don't know whether what we describe, prior to our descriptions of it, is logically constructed.

So the question is, when considering the genesis of logic, on the assumption that we are not separable from the world in which we have our own genesis, is it more plausible that we arbitrarily impose logical structure on something that totally lacks it, or that the logical structure of our descriptions reflects a logical order in the precognitive nature of things?

The above is assuming that our orientation is naturalistic. If we wish to evoke some kind of super-naturalism, or transcendent realm, than that is a whole different kettle of unknowable fish.

Of course, if we don't want to answer that question, and wish to rest content with not deciding either way, what does it matter, what could it matter?

(BTW, when I speak of naturalism I don't mean it in the sense of the naturalism that is rejected by phenomenology; which is the idea that everything about human experience can be explained in the "third person" reductive or mechanistic terms of cause and effect).

Why should that be? Why care what the non-ration nature of the world includes, if it must still be met with our particular, human, method of understanding it? Even if we can say we find the substance, or, that there is substance found, by its affectivity on us, it remains a condition of human nature to determine both what it is, and how it relates to other substances.

That non-rational nature is indispensable is given, but it isn’t all there is. — Mww

Reason is empty. Necessary for dividing the world up into things and their properties, but without intuitions, empty, as Kant said. Add sensory intuitions and it is still empty. Interesting to imagine a world without value. No gratifications, but a landscape of variegations. One could still make logical propositions, true and false, and conversations could be paragraphs and pages long. But no caring, no interest, no experience of something being "good" or "bad". I imagine AI could be like this. Beneath the skin, I think cognitive scientists are closet Kantians, looking for a way to produce rational "functions" and thereby duplicating human intelligence.

But human intelligence isn't like this at all. Dewey had it right: our experiences are all "consummatory", that is, inherently aesthetic as well as pragmatic/rational.

Anyway, if one is looking for the essence of being human, it is not reason that drives our affairs. It is meaning-in-affectivity (which you mention above). Reason makes us more than "blooming and buzzing' infants, true. But affectivity is what is at stake, and the real question is Wittgenstein's: is there any value in the value of the world? It is a metaethical problem. Is what is good, Good?

Which is to say, consciousness is other than its content. I think this an unnecessary reduction. A describer that does not describe is a contradiction, and a description that does not arise from a describer, is impossible. Parsimony, and good philosophy, suggests the thinker and his thoughts are, if not identical, than at least indistinguishable. — Mww

A thinker is not identical to his thoughts, and any thinker who is unable to recognise this lacks a degree of self-awareness in my book. But either this is ‘an unnecessary reduction’, or it lacks parsimony - it can’t be both, can it?

A description does not arise wholly from a describer, but consists of the relation between describer and schema. To clarify, I’m not suggesting that describer, description or even schema exist without the other two. Reality is triadic - that’s my point. Any description of reality is in necessary relation to both describer and schema - neither of which are wholly included in that description, or its only source, for that matter.

Kant’s description is purely logical only beyond the fourth moment - beyond judgement, imagination and reason - when describer is pure affect and schema is pure relation. This is where the genius, the artist, resides. FWIW, the TTC proposes a purely logical schema in a relational description, most accurate when the describer is pure affect. This is the where the sage resides.

Taoism isn’t so much a ‘preferred philosophy’ for me as enlightening in relation to Kant. Kant’s CofJ explores the limitations of a purely logical description, where his first critique explored the limitations of a purely logical describer, and his second explored the limitations of a purely logical schema. What he didn’t appear to realise was that it was never a matter of the subject in a dyadic relation to object. Each critique highlighted an error in how we process knowledge, rendering affect/desire and qualitative relation indistinguishable, to some extent, in the name of parsimony.

We know our descriptions are logically constructed, but we don't know whether what we describe, prior to our descriptions of it, is logically constructed. — Janus

No, we don’t, but there comes from the possibility, that damnable, cursed transcendental illusion, in that we know we construct logically predicated on our intelligence, then it follows that if reality is logically constructed, reality is its own form of intelligence. And then we are forced into that aforementioned kettle of unknowable fish we want to stay a country mile away from.

But wait!!! That reality may be constructed logically does not necessarily imply reality is its own intelligence, when it could just as possibly be that reality is constructed logically by an intelligence that so constructs in its own right. Now we’re up to two country miles.

And an additional mile for each and every instance of infinite regress which follows.....errr.....logically.

Of course, (....) what does it matter, what could it matter? — Janus

Bingo.

Reason is empty. Necessary for dividing the world up into things and their properties, but without intuitions, empty, as Kant said. — Astrophel

Hmmm. I won’t attempt to argue your assertion; you are quite welcome to it, and may even be able to justify it. But the qualified assertion is wrong. Kant says concepts without intuitions are empty. Actually, void, but, not quibble-worthy.

Add sensory intuitions and it is still empty. — Astrophel

Momentarily granting the assertion, reason being empty with or without intuitions merely makes explicit the alleged emptiness of reason is unaffected by intuitions, which is correct, insofar as reason is unaffected by intuitions whether or not it is empty.

What do you mean by empty, and what do you think reason is, such that it could be empty?
————

Dewey had it right: our experiences are all "consummatory", that is, inherently aesthetic as well as pragmatic/rational. — Astrophel

Kant also accounts for that duality. So if Dewey got it right, but Kant got it right first.....

A thinker is not identical to his thoughts.... — Possibility

In which case, “I think” is an anomaly? A genuine falsehood? If it is not “I” that thinks, or, if it is not thinking that the conception “I” represents, then how is it possible to arrive at conclusions which demand such an unimpeachable origin? If “a thinker is not his thoughts” is a conclusion derived from your own thoughts, in keeping with the truth of the assertion, you are then left with the necessary implication that you are not a thinker. I wonder.....what degree of self-awareness am I missing, such that I do not recognize that this seemingly inescapable subterfuge, is of my own making?
—————

a description that does not arise from a describer, is impossible....
— Mww

A description does not arise wholly from a describer, but consists of the relation between describer and schema. — Possibility

The content is the synthesis of related schema, but it is the describer that synthesizes. Because it is absurd to suggest schema relate themselves, a rational consciousness in the form of a describer....for lack of a better word.....is absolutely necessary, otherwise the synthesis, the relation of schema to each other, thereby the description itself, never happens. A description is, after all, and for all intents and purposes, merely an empirical cognition.
————-

I’m not suggesting that describer, description or even schema exist without the other two. Reality is triadic - that’s my point. — Possibility

While the first is true enough, the second implies the general tripartite human cognitive system is part and parcel of reality. I think this an altogether too loose rendition of the established definitions, myself. I think the empirically real holds with a different qualification than the logically real. If logically valid is substituted for the logically real, the dichotomy becomes false and immediately disappears, and reality indicates merely the naturally real. From which it follows necessarily, that the tripartite human cognitive system, being a metaphysical paradigm, is never found in natural reality. Which leaves the question, how is reality triadic, unanswered.
————-

describer is pure affect and schema is pure relation. — Possibility

To be honest, I can see where this comes from. At the same time, however, it is reminiscent of the dreaded Cartesian theater, an abomination to pure speculative metaphysics. I mean....how would it be proved, that describer, and by extension, the subject itself, is affect? And affect on what? Pure in what way?
————

What he (Kant) didn’t appear to realise was that it was never a matter of the subject in a dyadic relation to object. — Possibility

Of course he did, and yes, it certainly is. The realization that the subject views objects a priori as possible objects he can think, and also views objects a posteriori as given objects he can perceive, is the very ground of transcendental philosophy, regardless of whose name it is used under.

Anyway....ever onward.

Hmmm. I won’t attempt to argue your assertion; you are quite welcome to it, and may even be able to justify it. But the qualified assertion is wrong. Kant says concepts without intuitions are empty. Actually, void, but, not quibble-worthy. — Mww

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. That is a quote. This is really the basis of the transcendental dialectic.

Momentarily granting the assertion, reason being empty with or without intuitions merely makes explicit the alleged emptiness of reason is unaffected by intuitions, which is correct, insofar as reason is unaffected by intuitions whether or not it is empty.

What do you mean by empty, and what do you think reason is, such that it could be empty?
———— — Mww

This would be a challenge to the idea that all you need is sensory intuitions and concepts and therefore you have meaning. Sensory intuitions as such have no value. My camera that monitors the front door could produce qualitatively then same thing: the knowledge of a machine, and we would all be very complex organic machines. This is if there were no value introduced into the knowledge experience. Without value, no caring, interest, meaning.

So, an agency of epistemic cognition that can synthesize intuitions into principles is an entirely empty affair. That agency has to be a valuating, valorizing agency to be human. Our world's most salient feature is that things matter. An analog might be that of a vehicle, full all the essential parts and functions, but altogether without the possibility of actual transportation.

Kant also accounts for that duality. So if Dewey got it right, but Kant got it right first..... — Mww

Frankly neither of them understood the aesthetic. Wittgenstein did. Note that he was not simply a gifted intellectual. He was a true aesthete had all of the passionate complications that go with this. Three brothers committed suicide. He himself considered this. A wealthy family of great musical prodigality.

I like Dewey though, because he insists that we cannot analytically divide our world into the rational and other parts that are not rational. It is all one, and analysis is an abstraction with no independent ontology. But with him, the aesthetic is reduced to a pragmatic experience.

Kant says concepts without intuitions are empty. Actually, void, but, not quibble-worthy.
— Mww

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. That is a quote. This is really the basis of the transcendental dialectic. — Astrophel

OK...couple things here of relative importance. First, and least important, insofar as yours is equally a direct quote, this to support my “concepts without intuitions” remark:

“....extension of conceptions beyond the range of our intuition is of no advantage; for they are then mere empty conceptions...” (B149, S23 in Guyer /Wood and Kemp Smith, S19 in Meiklejohn)

Second, your quote is found in the intro to Transcendental Logic, A51/B75 the claim that it is the basis of the Transcendental Dialectic, is doubly confounding. You see my reference to empty concepts is found clear up at B149, which is at the Transcendental Deduction but still in the Analytic. Dialectic doesn’t even begin until A293/B350. There’s a veritable bucketful of information between those three points.

Third, and most important, this part arose because you said reason is empty. Not knowing how such a claim could stand, I moved empty to concepts, because that is something Kant actually said. I can’t find a reference for reason being empty, and without a citation, I have nothing by which to judge your assertion, mostly because I don’t think Kant said anything of the sort. If he did, it would probably be in the Dialectic, I’ll give ya that much.

What do you mean by empty, and what do you think reason is, such that it could be empty?
— Mww

This would be a challenge to the idea that all you need is sensory intuitions and concepts and therefore you have meaning. — Astrophel

Ok, so if you’re saying reason is empty of meaning, I’d go along with that. Judgement gives meaning, at least to objects, in subsuming cognitions under a rule. Reason then, merely concludes the cognition and the rule conform to each other, from which is given knowledge. Understanding is the lawyer, judgement is the jury, reason is on the bench overseeing the whole process.

This business of operating from different philosophies is hard work.

No, we don’t, but there comes from the possibility, that damnable, cursed transcendental illusion, in that we know we construct logically predicated on our intelligence, then it follows that if reality is logically constructed, reality is its own form of intelligence. — Mww

That reality may be constructed logically does not necessarily imply reality is its own intelligence, when it could just as possibly be that reality is constructed logically by an intelligence that so constructs in its own right. — Mww

I don't think it would necessarily follow from the real being logically constructed that it therefore must be either intelligent itself or constructed by an intelligence. So, I don't count those as the two lone possibilities; the real might simply be logically constructed.

Of course as we both agree, we don't and cannot conceivably know, and it doesn't really matter anyway, so...

I can’t find a reference for reason being empty, and without a citation, I have nothing by which to judge your assertion, mostly because I don’t think Kant said anything of the sort. — Mww

If 'reason' is considered synonymous with 'logic', then reason would be empty, in the sense that it has no inherent content, but is merely a set of rules governing form; consistency being the main criteria.To say that nature might be, completely independently of us, logically structured would be, at minimum, only to say that it is consistent throughout and doesn't break it's own rules. Law-like behavior, in other words.