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) — Mww
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. — Mww
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 certainly be in the Dialectic, I’ll give ya that much. — Mww
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.
This business of operating from different philosophies is hard work. — Mww
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? — Mww
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. — Mww
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. — Mww
....we do not describe.... — Mww
We know our descriptions.... — Janus
....we know we construct.... — 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 — Janus
If “a thinker is not his thoughts” is a conclusion derived from your own thoughts.....
— Mww
It isn’t derived from thoughts, but from practical self-awareness - when we can recognise thoughts as they emerge then we understand the ‘I’ that thinks is not identical to the ‘I’ that is aware of thought - but it isn’t true to assert that they are distinct conceptions, only that they are not identical. — Possibility
I am conscious of my lack of academic rigour in this discussion — Possibility
The reason you can't talk in good faith about the metaphysics of god, the soul and freedom is because these lack the sensory intuitions that is essential for making sense. — Astrophel
I am looking at what gives meaning to our world, and it isn't reason. — Astrophel
What does this is affectivity. Caring, despising, adoring, taking pleasure in, and so on. — Astrophel
Crap. My bad. I went from describing to constructing, without due diligence. Let’s just go back to the point where we agreed, and let it go at that, or, continue on but talk about one thing at a time. — Mww
Reason isn’t the set of rules, rules being the purview of the understanding, the only purely logical faculty in this particular speculative metaphysical system. — Mww
He is quite "manichean" on this: the world we can know is boundaried and closed to possibilities beyond the definitions allowed by the simple understanding that sensual intuitions are blind without concepts and concepts are empty without — Astrophel
We can, after all, talk about the metaphysics of justice sensibly. After that, we can be directed to its intuitive examples. — Mww
That’s fine; it isn’t reason’s job to give meaning. — Mww
That’s fine, too. Not sure what a theory constructed to demonstrate it would look like, but then....I don’t have to. Affectivity may very well be the ground for modernizing extant theories, which in general happens all the time, but I’d be very surprised to see a metaphysical paradigm shift because of it. — Mww
But I want to explore just what is an 'object of intellect'? Here I want to suggest a somewhat novel definition and would like you to criticise it. I am of the view that numbers, logical principles, and natural laws (to name a few) are examples, in that they are real, but are only perceptible to a rational intellect. In other words, you and I, as sentient rational beings, are able to grasp concepts such as the concept of prime or the Pythagorean theorem, whereas a dog or a monkey cannot. And that is what I understand 'intelligible objects' to be. (See Augustine on Intelligible Objects, which has influenced my thinking considerably on this question.) — Wayfarer
You see, this is derived from the Platonist conception of noumenon, in which the 'objects of intellect' are pure concepts. But the mistake that is often made is to believe that this says that such objects exist in an ethereal, other-worldly realm - which in my view is an error both profound and ancient. It is even a mistake that I think the Aristotelian objection to Platonic forms falls into. But nevertheless, I find the hylomorphic conception of objects as matter combined with form to be generally congruent with this understanding.
The upshot is, or one of them, that sentient rational beings such as ourselves parse experience in light of these intellgible objects. Generally we do that quite unconsciously (which is another meaning of 'transcendental' in Kant) - like, the mind calls upon these internalised forms in order to interpret what anything means. So in this understanding, the sensory element of perception perceives the material form of particulars, but the intellect grasps the form/essence/idea. Which is actually very close to classical hylomorphism (but not so much to phenomenology which is where your interests seem to lie.) — Wayfarer
Quite devastating, really. — Astrophel
That’s fine; it isn’t reason’s job to give meaning.
— Mww
Then Kant is not the place to look for it. — Astrophel
The term meaning can go two ways. One is the dictionary definition, the other is the aesthetic or valuative. the former is what Kant has in mind. The latter is what I have in mind. — Astrophel
Transcendental idealism is not a claim about the world but about us. — Fooloso4
The question would then be whether we are part of the world.
If so, a claim about us would be one also about the world.
If no, what does it mean if we are thought separately from the world. — spirit-salamander
It must be a difference within a unity. — spirit-salamander
The question would then be whether we are part of the world.
If so, a claim about us would be one also about the world. — spirit-salamander
But he goes beyond Kant. — spirit-salamander
What is the "value" of reason? — Astrophel
Reason is entirely without content — Astrophel
Self-Consciousness and Objectivity undermines a foundational dogma of contemporary philosophy: that knowledge, in order to be objective, must be knowledge of something that is as it is, independent of being known to be so. Sebastian Rödl revives the thought—as ancient as philosophy but largely forgotten today—that knowledge, precisely on account of being objective, is self-knowledge: knowledge knowing itself. Thus he intervenes in a discussion that runs through the work of Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, Adrian Moore, and others, who seek to comprehend the claim to objectivity we raise in making judgments. While these authors think that the quest for objectivity demands that we transcend the first person, Rödl argues that it is through the first-person thought contained in every judgment that our judgments possess the objectivity that defines knowledge.
If by "us" what is implied is "the transcendental mind" (or "ego" as per Husserl) instead of 'the phenomenal mind', then that aspect of "us" is not "part of the phenomenal world". Kant, it seems to me, begins with Platonic assumptions (supersensible forms) which he transforms into "categories of reason", etc.The question would then be whether we are part of the world.
If so, a claim sbout us would be one also about the world. — spirit-salamander
This is what I am getting at. How much of what you say sheds light on the "Basic Questions for any Kantians"? — Fooloso4
Possibly not all that much but it is interesting to read about Prauss. — Tom Storm
Anyway, Prauss isn't advocating / critiquing Kantianism, so I don't see the relevance of his opinion. — 180 Proof
That just implies Kant talks of nothing but reason, and doesn’t talk about where meaning might be given. As big a deal as philosophy was in his day, it boggles to think he didn’t address it in some fashion. If it can be said meaning is synonymous with, or reducible to, value, there’s a veritable plethora of Kantian references for these. And of course, meaning in its common sense of mere relation, is covered extensively in his epistemology. — Mww
.makes explicit you consider meaning is in fact reducible to value, which is fine by me. Then it becomes a question of whether value itself is reducible, to what, and in what sense. And more importantly, with respect to this thread anyway, is whether the sense of meaning reduced to the sense of value is found in Kant, and the form in which it is found. But from your point of view, the significance would reside in the possibility that the sense of value found in Kant is also found in existentialism — Mww
But what has to be shown is how reason is by its nature worthy of being determinative in this way: Reason is entirely without content. In Kant's terms, it is "empty". It has no meaning whatever until empirical contents are there to be synthesized with it. That we are able to grasp the Pythagorean theorem shows reason to be useful! But usefulness to what end? Meaning is derived not from reason, but from the world and its value. If I were to think of what God is, it would certainly NOT be a hyperrational entity, for reason qua reason has no value at all. — Astrophel
So when I say value is far more important (for it is a word that signifies importance itself) in describing a human being I don't mean say nothing else matters. Just that, if you will, this business of mattering, matters more than what else can be said. I think any undertaking one can take on, the value question is always begged: why bother at all to proceed? The question that haunts metaphysics is, why thrown into a world with this powerful dimension of affectivity? A rational inquiry into reason is certainly interesting and useful, but would be nothing at all if no one cared. — Astrophel
The so-called "Copernican Revolution" turns out to have been shown to be a singularly brilliant, epoch-making 'solution in search of a problem' which, I think, in very recent contemporary terms in the wake of the Kantian critiques of Kantianism mentioned above, has been put to bed for good by 'speculative realists' (i.e. post-correlationists, e.g. Q. Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, G. Harman et al). Heresy! :scream:Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, Salomon Maimon
re: "thing-in-itself" is given in consciousness (as consciousness is itself given to itself) and therefore is only subjective – "causality" only orders perception (à la Humean "habits & customs of thought") and so "causality" cannot be validly postulated as objective, or separate from consciousness ...
Aenesidemus, Gottlob Ernst Schulze
re: philosophy cannot establish the existence or nonexistence of the "thing-in-itself" (e.g. causality, the soul) – argues that Kant failed to disprove, or refute, Hume's "problem of induction" ...
WWR, vol 1, Appendix, Arthur Schopenhauer
re: Kant's inconsistent formulation of "noumena" to which "categories of reason" such as "causality" and "quantification" are applied when Kant argues that the "categories" apply only to "phenomena" – thus, Schop argues, there is only the singular "noumenon" which is universal and ceaselessly dynamic and perceived directly within and through the interior of bodies as "willing" (à la Spinoza's conatus) – whereby the metaphysical reality of the world is subjectively (i.e. subconscioisly) apprehended, etc ...
The Philosophy of Redemption, Appendix, Philipp Mainländer
re: reconceives Schopenhauer's subjective "will" (ideal) as an objective "force" (real) and translates "will to be" into "will to nonbeing" – again, contra Kant, direct objective apprehension of the world ...
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