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

Well, this is all academic.

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

This synthesis of concepts and intuitions is basic to the Critique. Read the Dialectic and you find the speaks the same language. 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.

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

Well, concepts are empty without intuitions. Reason the synthetic function of concepts. Reason qua reason is empty. Hume said this earlier.

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

I am looking at what gives meaning to our world, and it isn't reason. Reason deals with principles and the form of judgment. Since when did the fact that a judgment is in the affirmative or a negation or a universal or a conditional have any meaning? These are empty, as modus ponens is empty, of content. Substance, call it sensory intuitions (the givenness of representations. Substance is really a vacuous term) does not deliver experience from vacuity. What does this is affectivity. Caring, despising, adoring, taking pleasure in, and so on.

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.

First of all, I am conscious of my lack of academic rigour in this discussion, so I appreciate your charitable responses, Mww, as well as the direct quotes you provide throughout. They’ve been really helpful.

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

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.

Understanding consists of more than what can be asserted, let alone proven.

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

Your understanding of describer, schema and description here is limited to mind, with describer elevated to an encompassing rational consciousness. What I’m suggesting here is that this triadic relation extend to include human reason instead of appointing it outside arbiter - an additional Copernican Turn, as it were. The resulting description, more than merely an empirical cognition, would be a five-dimensional ‘geometric figure’ of potentiality, ‘drawn’ as a relation between consciousness and potential schema (within six-dimensional ‘meaning’).

I’m not suggesting schema relate themselves, but that the idea of schema need not be limited by logic. Nor the ideas of describer or description, for that matter. Once we recognise the limitations of human knowledge/potential set out by Kant, we can strive to better understand the reality beyond it - as Copernicus (and then Newton) did with human observation/measurement in relation to time.

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

It probably is too loose. I’m suggesting that the general tripartite human cognitive system is a model for a similarly triadic system of reality that is inclusive of human cognition, rather than limited by it. I agree that the empirically real (4D) is qualitatively different to the logically real (5D), but the correlation is not all that difficult to navigate as a geometrical schema. You cannot accurately describe the human cognitive system from an assumed rational consciousness within it, just as you cannot accurately describe the solar system from an assumed stationary location within it.

I think that the inaccuracy of Kant’s system comes from assuming a central, immovable position to ‘rational’ human consciousness. I would argue that if we go back and follow a similar process to Kant’s Copernican Turn in light of Darwin’s (temporal) de-centralisation of human experience, it can allow for an alternative reading of Kant. I would suggest that logic is one of three conditions for human understanding (wisdom), alongside natural affect and qualitative relativity. Surely ‘good’ philosophy strives towards this level of wisdom, and is not limited to only what can be logically asserted or proven?

....we do not describe.... — Mww

We know our descriptions.... — Janus

....we know we construct.... — Mww

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.
———-

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

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.

Logic in and of itself, being the form of thought, is empty of determined content, but still contains the rules for determining experience itself, which is the overall endgame of the cognitive system as a whole, that is, an explanation for the acquisition of knowledge from a transcendental point of view.

Reason isn’t synonymous with logic, but stands as the terminus of an established, albeit philosophical, logical system:

“....reason (is) the whole higher faculty of cognition, the rational being placed in contradistinction to the empirical....”

“....In every syllogism I first cogitate a rule (the major) by means of the understanding. In the next place I subsume a cognition under the condition of the rule (and this is the minor) by means of judgement. And finally I determine my cognition by means of the predicate of the rule (this is the conclusio), consequently, I determine it a priori by means of reason....”

.....in other words, for any object of experience, this is a description of how the process is represented when we talk about it. Gotta think it without all the silly words; we think, we feel, we know, we guess.....all those are innate in us, so how they arise as conditionals, and how they condition each of us as individuals, can be demonstrated in a theory. Simple as that.

A posteriori:
First, the aesthetic representation:
Perception of an object;
Synthesis of sensation with intuition, giving a phenomenon;

Second, the analytic of the aesthetic representation:
Synthesis of a phenomenon with a category (the rule), giving one or more conceptions (the conditions of the rule), represented by “I think”;
Subsume the given synthesis under the various schema of the conceptions, giving a cognition, represented by “I’m thinking (of, or, that);
Judge the cognition by the relation of its content, represented by “the of, or, that I’m thinking, is....” ;
Determine a priori whether or not the object perceived and the object cognized conform to each other according to the rules, represented by “the of, or, that I cognize, I know as.....”.
Which reduces the whole process to....that which I first perceived has become an experience.

So it is clear...reason is never empty. If it is, experience is impossible, an absurd contradiction. Nevertheless, just because reason can never be empty with respect to this philosophy, does not eliminate reason from being empty with respect to some other philosophy. And that other philosophy would necessarily define reason as befits it, which immediately makes that reason different from this one. Hence, the question about what reason is, such that it could be empty, for which there was no satisfactory answer.
————-

Needless to say, metaphysics is not susceptible to empirical proof. None of the above, being 250 years old, may be even close to the case, in fact. Yeah.....and??????

A question for non-Kantians.

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

What would a thought emerge from, and with what do we recognize it as such?

Can I ever think, and be unaware that I think? If not, then when I think I am necessarily, and simultaneously, aware of it. Even granting that as practical self-awareness, it remains that it is only the singular “I” that thinks and is at the same time the very same “I” that is aware of thoughts.

But you are correct in one regard, insofar as the passive consciousness of thought in general is not the same as actively thinking about things, in such case awareness moves to the objects thought, and not the thinker of them. So in regard to this difference, let it be that conscious self-awareness is a different conception than the “I” that thinks objects and is aware of objects thought. A conception which fits the former is represented by “ego”.....technically transcendental ego.....and the latter conception is represented by “I”.

Now it is possible to relegate “I think” to a particular cognitive faculty, that is, understanding, while the ego that is self-aware of thought in general remains merely a representation of a conception of pure reason itself, simply labeled “consciousness”. Doing so answers the question from where do thoughts emerge, and they are recognized as such merely from that emergence. An added bonus, because thought is a manifold of occurrences, bundling them all together in one representation eliminates multiple iterations of “I”, each one thinking its own particular object. This way, the “I” that thinks a thing is the same “I” that thinks all things.
————

I am conscious of my lack of academic rigour in this discussion — Possibility

And I admit that everything I write that is not a quote, is nothing but opinion. I ain’t no scholar myself.

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

Actually, in good faith is the only way these things can be talked about. We just can’t know anything empirically about them, because they are never accompanied by sensory intuitions, hence can never be phenomena. Intuitions are not necessary for making sense in a purely logical domain. You know.....“abolish knowledge to make room for belief...”.

“.....Of far more importance than all that has been above said, is the consideration that certain of our cognitions rise completely above the sphere of all possible experience, and by means of conceptions, to which there exists in the whole extent of experience no corresponding object, seem to extend the range of our judgements beyond its bounds. And just in this transcendental sphere, where experience affords us neither instruction nor guidance, lie the investigations of reason, which, on account of their importance, we consider far preferable to, and as having a far more elevated aim than, all that the understanding can achieve within the sphere of sensuous phenomena....”

We can, after all, talk about the metaphysics of justice sensibly. After that, we can be directed to its intuitive examples.
————

I am looking at what gives meaning to our world, and it isn't reason. — Astrophel

That’s fine; it isn’t reason’s job to give meaning.

What does this is affectivity. Caring, despising, adoring, taking pleasure in, and so on. — Astrophel

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.

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

At the moment I've lost track of what we were agreeing, and what we were disagreeing, about
anyway. Maybe it'll resurface later...

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

You're right; I wasn't thinking deeply enough. Reason (considered as the activity of reasoning) is not restricted to the merely logical, it may be analogical, imaginative, associative, metaphorical, poetic or even irrational.

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

I really like this post of yours and want to follow up on an idea I'm exploring. I noticed in the Wiki entry on noumenon that the original derivation is 'an object of nous'. In the original sense that means something very different from the way that Kant uses the term - which is why Schopenhauer complains that Kant treated the word as if it had never been defined previously. The quoted passage from Schop. upthread seems to nail the issue.

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.)

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.)

I'm reading a very interesting book Kant's Theory of Normativity, which goes into Kant's appropriation of hylomorphism in depth, maybe I'll find some answers there. But as it stands, I'm considering the (rather shocking) notion that Kant doesn't really understand the classical sense of the term 'noumenal' as I've tried to outline it ('shocking' because of the temerity of someone like myself suggesting that Immanuel Kant could be wrong about something of this magnitude.)

We can, after all, talk about the metaphysics of justice sensibly. After that, we can be directed to its intuitive examples. — Mww

Metaphysics of justice? I don't know what this is about. Kant doesn't go in this direction at all. He is not a metaphysician. Your quote refers to the transcendental dialectic where he covers God, freedom and the soul without compunction. Quite devastating, really.

That’s fine; it isn’t reason’s job to give meaning. — Mww

Then Kant is not the place to look for it. Not that I don't enjoy reading him, and he is very important, and opened lots of doors for more than century of dominance. But rationalism of any kind will have to deal with Kierkegaard, Nietzsche et al.

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

That would be Existentialism.

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

I really don't think like this at all. If I were to say what it is I disagree about it, it would get rather involved. I read philosophers like Husserl, Heidegger, and onward. I like the French Husserlians like Michel Henry and Jean luc Marion., as well as Emanuel Levinas. Others, too.

But regarding Augustine's thinking: One objection is that reason simpliciter, that is, considering it apart from all else, is an abstraction, lifted out of palpable experience for analysis, but the analysis does not make itself an independent ontology from the palpable whole out of which is was abstracted. We conceive of what is rational by identifying the structures of judgment and thought, BUT: these structures are themselves the product of the processes that cannot be identified. As Wittgenstein said, logic shows itself only, but not in a way that allows for an analytic of its own nature. Logic, and this is straight from Kant, is at the most basic analysis, transcendental.

Another objection lies in the revealed nature of the way things appear: What is the "value" of reason? When Augustine argues that reason is what sets us apart from fence posts and dogs and cats, and from God, it is the "rational mind" he sets forth as what makes the determination. 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.

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

Since you asked, my thinking has a progression:
Level one, reason is an abstraction derived from the pragmatic operations of the mind. Walk into a room, and a proper analysis of all you see lies in the way you would deal with them in a practical way. You "know" a blackboard for what you can do with it, same goes for lights, stairs and furniture and everything. The existnece of a blackboard, the "isness" of it is this pragmatic relationship. Language is essentially pragmatic, useful, and yes, we are better at it than cats and dogs who do not think symbolically. But two things: First, agency. What am I if not significantly a logocentric agent whose very self is a language structure? Second, language seems essential to carry one to higher expressions of existence. What THIS is about takes the argument to its next level.

The entire issue turns to what the self is and what it experiences. A phenomenological analysis of value, the self and language.

Quite devastating, really. — Astrophel

Intriguing declaration, that. Care to enlighten?
———

That’s fine; it isn’t reason’s job to give meaning.
— Mww

Then Kant is not the place to look for it. — Astrophel

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.

But this.....

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

....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.

Those questions, I think, in accordance with proper dialectic decorum, would mandate their own separate discussion.

Transcendental idealism is not a claim about the world but about us. — Fooloso4

:100:

Transcendental idealism is not a claim about the world but about us. — Fooloso4

@180 Proof

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.

The transcendental idealist Gerold Prauss would say that transcendental idealism makes claims about both the world and us.

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

What do you do with that chasm that manifestly separates me from this coffee cup? Cup there, me here. But then we have to deal with the entanglement of "me" and the cup, and "me" deserves double inverted commas because it does not show up on our perceptual radar. But clearly the difference is there.
Moving towards an apophatic approach. The questions is, what Makes the difference. Keeping in mind that the perceptual act comesbefore any supervening physicalist reduction.

It must be a difference within a unity.

It must be a difference within a unity. — spirit-salamander

Yes, but what is the difference in the unity? The only way to discover this is by observation and description. One has to step into Husserl's epoche. This is radical departure from the usual discursivity. One takes the world as it is laid out as an intuitive landscape. If interested, take a look at his Cartesian Meditations.

Gerold Prauss has an interesting approach in this respect:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GermanIdealism/comments/ke93ks/gerold_prauss/

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

It is a claim that as part of the world we do not have access to other things in the world as they are in themselves. It is always as they are for us.

There is a transcendental-idealistic approach, by the already mentioned Gerold Prauss, who has similarities with Fichte, and who refrains from the traditional thing-in-itself, and there are only things apprehended in themselves as objective things.

Here is a small introduction to it:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/654753

Thanks for the link. I took a quick look. Do you consider him a "Kantian"?

He is considered at least one of the most important Kant experts. But he goes beyond Kant. So he is not a Kantian in the traditional sense, but a transcendental idealist.

He recently received the Kant Prize in Oslo from the German Kant Society.

I consider Prauss to be the most important idealist at present. He combines Kant's pioneering insight into the fundamental spontaneity of subjectivity and Aristotle's forms or formal causation.
He always views consciousness as intentionality. In principle, Prauss starts from only two concepts: Point and Extension. From these two concepts, an impressive pantheistic-idealistic worldview is rigorously developed.
A point that extends itself first to temporality (A = extension within the point) then to spatiality (B = extension outside the point); a temporal point (A), therefore, that finally extends itself to three-dimensional space (B).

This, in short, is Prauss transcendental geometry, which structures all consciousness.

But he goes beyond Kant. — spirit-salamander

This is what I am getting at. How much of what you say sheds light on the "Basic Questions for any Kantians"?

What is the "value" of reason? — Astrophel

What would human civilization and culture amount to without it? What is it that enables discovery of novel facts?

Reason is entirely without content — Astrophel

This, I don't understand. What of pure mathematics? Isn't it an entire discipline solely dependent on reason?

One philosopher I've noticed, but have not yet been confident to tackle, is Sebastian Rodl. Of his most recent book, the abstract reads:

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.

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

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.

Well, I don't see how insofar as "us" is "transcendental" and only inferred from phenomena like "noumena" (re: non-phenomenal "world"). Kant explicitly argues that noumena (i.e. pure reasons) are inaccessible to experience. Anyway, Prauss isn't advocating / critiquing Kantianism, so I don't see the relevance of his opinion.

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. I have a superficial interest in idealism in general - in appreciating its attractions and logic.

Possibly not all that much but it is interesting to read about Prauss. — Tom Storm

I did not mean to imply that he is not worth reading. But if one wants a better understanding of Kant, the old complaint applies: too much to read and too little time. As I indicted, I quickly glanced at the article and cannot say whether it is a good source for understanding the basic questions for Kantian or not.

Anyway, Prauss isn't advocating / critiquing Kantianism, so I don't see the relevance of his opinion. — 180 Proof

Not true. He criticizes Kant in the sense of making his ideas argumentatively tenable.

Prauss is presented in a book calledKantian Subjects Critical. Philosophy and Late Modernity by KARL AMERIKS

An important essay by him is also included in a collected volume on Kant's legacy: Gerold Prauss - The Problem of Time in Kant. In: Kant's Legacy: Essays in Honor of Lewis White Beck. Edited by Predrag Cicovacki

Prauss's main works contain a constant engagement with Kant's transcendental aesthetics, logic, and also ethics.

Karl Ameriks also says: "I will also indicate how those aspects are related to Prauss's work on Kant, and thus how they contribute to an epistemology that manages to be both genuinely Kantian and of contemporary significance" (Karl Ameriks - Current German epistemology: The significance of gerold prauss)

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

Look at his ethics. The good will, duty, the categorical imperative, no, Kant is a rationalist for a good reason: he doesn't understand the value foundation of being human.

.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

Not reducible to value. I think it is very important to understand that when analyze experience as experience, we are not going to generate anything that is what experience is. Analysis is an abstracting from the given preanalytic actuality, dividing it into parts and ways experience presents itself. the actuality of experience is transcendental. these functions we witness in judgment we call logic, co0ncepts, principles, and so on, but this is just taking up something AS a particle of language. The actuality itself is not this. There is no actuality called logic; rather, logic is a term "made" from observations of judgment and thought.

So value, reason, pragmatics, all terms that are abstractions of an original whole whcih is not reducible to anything. 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.

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

This is to some extent my own instinctive sense of reason. I find it interesting how many believers with a philosophical bent still attempt to use reason to demonstrate that a belief in God is rational and necessary. But then what? Even if reason demonstrates that God is necessary, could it not be that a responsible human says 'fuck off' to the deity?

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

This also resonates with me. Some might argue that reason is at war with affectivity and that the latter must be tamed by rationality as it too readily leads to conflict and reactive behaviours with ourselves and others. Affectivity is surely the prime mover behind the best and worst in human behaviour as it tends to activate a transcendence of personal and cultural limitations and allows us to make 'impossible' choices for good or ill.

Well, I stand corrected (in part at least). Nonetheless, for my filthy lucre, s-salamander, I'll stick with the following critical works on Kantianism:

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 ...

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: