It is making the broad scope of experience "clear" and the MOST salient feature of this, is affectivity, and certainly not the very useful movement on a dial in a statistical gathering of information. — Astrophel
The problem is that I read this sentence and feel utterly unconvinced by claims that affectivity = truth. Do I trust this judgement? What’s the next step? — apokrisis
the categorical thought takes up the experience AS a propositional abstraction. It is an abstraction from an unquantifiable source, which is the experience itself, — Astrophel
Kant's Transcendental Unity of Apperception is itself an impossible concept constructed out of the very concepts it is alleged to bring forth. Part of Wittgenstein's complaint in the Tractatus is about this kind of thing, which is why he was such a fan of Kierkegaard. — Astrophel
But to treat a proposition as a utility, as I am now writing this, philosophically, is a reduction of the world to a utility. And this is Heidegger's big complaint in his Question Concerning Technology. — Astrophel
Is all doing thinking?…… — Astrophel
…..Implicitly, yes; I would say a cow standing in a meadow "thinks" when it sees taller more tempting grass. — Astrophel
….reason, left ungrounded in worldly confirmation, moves to inventing metaphysical nonsense. — Astrophel
….when reason conceives of what it is to be a "rational truth" according to its own model, it creates an abstraction out of reason. — Astrophel
Truth as a philosophical idea requires actual occasions of truth to be revealed for what they are PRIOR to analysis, not after. — Astrophel
Science hypostatizes this quantifying dimension of reason, and gives us a picture of truth as factual truth, and facts are quantifiable and abide by the law of excluded middle, and do not bear the fluidity of actuality we see in desire, love, pleasure, hate, despair, boredom and the rest. This is THE existential complaint. — Astrophel
Yes, I have heard about that a few times. But this "No, no" implies that my definition was wrong and that only yours is true. Which is wrong. One can say, at best, that the your definition is acceptable too. But even so, the words "justified" and "true" are incompatible with "I think". The expression "I think that" can be replaced by "I believe that", which indicate as simple belief, not "justified" or "true".No, no; knowing is justified true belief — Astrophel
"True" and "possible" are incompatible. If it is true that you have sent me this message, because I read it, it cannot be also possible, at the same time, that you did so. It would be possible only if I had not received or read it yet.if P is true, P is possible — Astrophel
Wow, that's quite an analysis! I'm sorry if I can't follow here. I lack the necessary background.One has to conceive of the cogito as ... — Astrophel
But you have just answered that just a while ago: "its existence s discovered the same way other things' existence is discovered: through observation."What does one observe as one observes a thought? — Astrophel
Yes, I've said as much myself, but that doesn't change the fact that the truth or falsity of the abstractive thought exemplified in propositional assertions is not the same as the idea of truth that Alethia represents; so I'm not sure whether you are agreeing or disagreeing with what I've said, or of what point you want to make. — Janus
You haven't explained why you think Kant's Unity of Apperception is an impossible concept, what exactly Wittgenstein's complaint is and how it relates to Kant's idea, or what relevance Kierkegaard's philosophy has in this connection. You give me nothing to respond to unless you offer more than this kind of vague gesturing. — Janus
Propositions are not necessarily "utilities", although they of course can be. The idea that the world is a "standing reserve", there to be exploited in whatever way we see fit, has no necessary connection with the fact that humans practice propositional thinking. In fact, the mutually contradictory ideas that it either does, or does not, have such a necessary connection are themselves examples of propositional thinking. Philosophy is impossible without propositional thinking, and that is why I say that it cannot capture the non-dual, non-discursive, affective nature of experience. Poetry is better suited for that task. — Janus
If implicitly yes, as do I, but…..a cow??? And a cow “thinking”. Is that different than a cow thinking? Maybe “thinking” is a euphemism for instinct. Dunno, but I seriously doubt a majority of lesser animals, if not all of them, have any conception of relative heights as a function of temptation. He goes to taller grass because he doesn’t have to bend his neck so far, not because its tempting.
I agree with you, in that I know what it is to know. One thing I know, is that I don’t know what goes on in a cow’s head, and therefore wouldn’t ever suggest anything about it. — Mww
Absolutely. But that isn’t so much a Kantian fallacy as the prime example of the human disposition to think beyond its logical authority. As true these days as it’s ever been. — Mww
Yeah, the intrinsic circularity of reason herself. Nothing to be done about the way Nature made us. — Mww
I don’t think occasions of truth are antecedent to the philosophical idea of truth. How would we know a thing is true if we didn’t already know what form any truth must have? Are not universals prior to particulars? How could particulars be analyzed without the universal to which it necessarily relates?
If all truths are contained in propositions, and the simplest possible proposition that cannot possibly be false is the gauge by which all other occasions of truth would be judged, it follows that the idea is before the occasion.
I’ll grant that occasions of truth must be revealed for what they are prior to analysis of possible truths. — Mww
Were you a scientist or mathematician you might realize the desires, loves, pleasures, etc. arising from the practice of the profession. To the contrary these experiences give meaning to one's life.
But then all of this discussion falls by the wayside of actual physical experience. Go climbing. — jgill
Yes, I have heard about that a few times. But this "No, no" implies that my definition was wrong and that only yours is true. Which is wrong. One can say, at best, that the your definition is acceptable too. But even so, the words "justified" and "true" are incompatible with "I think". The expression "I think that" can be replaced by "I believe that", which indicate as simple belief, not "justified" or "true". — Alkis Piskas
"True" and "possible" are incompatible. If it is true that you have sent me this message, because I read it, it cannot be also possible, at the same time, that you did so. It would be possible only if I had not received or read it yet. — Alkis Piskas
Consider a thought as an image or a series of images. These are "objects" in your mind. You can perceive and observe them as you percieve and observe anything else outside your mind, in your surroundings. The only difference is that it is you who have created these "objects", which are images, whereas objects in your surroundings have been created by some other source than you.
I think that the following experiment will explain everything in the relation of knowledge and thinking and other things I have talked about. If this won't make sense to you, nothing else I could say would.
Just watch an object in front of you, e.g. your monitor, for a couple of seconds. Then close your eyes and think of what you just watched. You will create an image of the real object. This is what we call a thought. And the process of the creation of that image is what we call "thinking". This image is a representation of the real object and it may be very close to or very different from it, depending on your ability to recall. But there will be always a difference --however small-- between what you have actually observed (knowledge) and what you thought about it.
And this is the difference between knowing and thinking about something — Alkis Piskas
But it goes further still: to speak at all, to have a thought and draw a conclusion or affirm a conditional or negation is inherently affective. the point I make here is that it is these analytical conditions, which are typical in everyday living, tend to reify the categorical analyses, reducing the world to its own abstract image. The actuality, intuitive givenness of things, if you will, of putting the eyes to the computer screen, . . . — Astrophel
It is impossible because it is conceived by the very unities it presents to us. To talk about what the TUA is, we would need a third pov, one that is objective and removed from the conditions assume what needs to be shown. This, of course, comes from Wittgenstein (but I can't remember where, exactly). Logic cannot explain is own nature because this presupposes logic to do so. Like talking about the eye that "sees" the eye. A brain that conceives a brain.
The TUA is, after all, "transcendental" and noumenal. Kierkegaard I brought up because he was adamantly opposed to any kind of "rational realism". Wittgenstein's quasi-mystical position on the world and value can be found here. — Astrophel
certainly logic is not about nothing, nor is affectivity; but concepts like these that quantify and divide experience, because they are categories, do not represent the original uncategorized primordial whole. — Astrophel
But this is just to the point I am making. But you need to make a further step into inquiry: when you analyze a star's light and bring forth a conclusion there is beneath this, or presupposed by it, a structured consciousness that does the bringing forth of the basic conditions for "receiving" anything at all.
What makes science singularly disqualified for philosophy is that it doesn't look at the world at this level of inquiry. Nor does it thematically take up the caring and value that you raise here. As a scientist you do indeed have more or less strong interest, occasionally exhilaration. But it goes further still: to speak at all, to have a thought and draw a conclusion or affirm a conditional or negation is inherently affective. the point I make here is that it is these analytical conditions, which are typical in everyday living, tend to reify the categorical analyses, reducing the world to its own abstract image. The actuality, intuitive givenness of things, if you will, of putting the eyes to the computer screen, implicitly drawing conclusions, rejecting others, then, consummating an inquiry! At this level the experience is a singularity. — Astrophel
What is it to know? If there is no way to account for this, then we are lost. I mean, if language is only self referential, and one cannot grasp even in the imagination what, at the most basis level, of knowledge claims could even possibly be, then knowledge isexistentially without meaning. What do I mean by existentially? Reference is to existence, and existence refers to the palpable "sense" of being here, and this refers to not simply raw physical feels and impositions, but, thoughts, and affectivity (a broadly conceived affectivity that comprises our ethics and aesthetics). Do thoughts exist? Of course. Existence is not to be reduced to "metaphysical physics". Does affectivity exist? A foolish question, really: nothing could be more palpable.
I think language gets lost in language, and it is the familiarity of language that removes for our sight an original existence, not original in an historical sense, as if once long ago, but original as in something primordial and "under the skin" of what we call experience.
Easy to access, in a way, because while language creates an analytic divided world, it also puts it back to gether again; in other words, language is also redemptive when the direction of inquiry goes to basic questions: those words you're thinking now, from whence to they come? I am thinking of Beckett's book Molloy. the idea is how to get around the extraordinary claim that it is language that speaks! Not "me". Molloy/Molone is dying, but it is not the death of the body, but of language, and words that linger to the end, grasping for existence, knowing soon words will not sustain the monologue that is the self. — Astrophel
My understanding of Kant's idea is just that we understand new ideas by relating them to a unified body of pre-existing ideas about ourselves and the world. The "I think" is the idea of a transcendental ego or unity. Kant did not follow Descartes in thinking this ego as a substantive entity; rather our selves are models that seem unified to us in terms of a coherent story of the self/ world relation. All of this is transcendental insofar as it is not empirically derivable from observations of the world, but rather constitutes the very condition that enables observation and understanding of the world.
So, it is not a case of knowing the noumenal, but via reflection on our experience, of thinking the necessary conditions for the possibility of that experience. We know that if we did not have a coherent, unified sense of ourselves in relation to a world that we experience, we would not be able to experience and understand the world the way that we know we do. I might not be understanding Kant rightly, since I am not a Kant scholar, but that is my take on it... — Janus
This sounds reasonable, about Kant. But I would only add that the nature of what is noumenal cannot be grasped in our finitude. "Reflection on our own experience" can still give one no more than a representation. It sounds reasonable to make this move, but all of this presupposes the very thing that needs to be shown.
Kant knew this, and I'm sure you can easily find where he says this in the deduction and elsewhere. Transcendental means metaphysical, and what is "pure" reason is just this. Kant didn't do metaphysics (or did he? He certainly doesn't intend to, but his representational thinking sets up an epistemology and an ontology that is inherently metaphysical.) — Astrophel
But I'm pretty sure that Kant said you CAN'T know truth through pure reason alone. — Darkneos
It just seems impossible to us that possible experience could fail to be either spatial or temporal or both. I suppose we could deny that this is synthetic a priori and say instead that it is analytic, in the sense that only spatial or temporally given phenomena count as experiences. — Janus
Perhaps a silly question - but if, as Kant and subsequent others suggest, space and time are built into our cognitive apparatus and not the universe , does this not suggest that the laws of physics are a reflection of how we process reality, not reality as it is in itself (the ineffable noumena). And does it follow from this that hypothetical sophisticated aliens who do not utilize human cognition might have developed an entirely different and efficacious alternative to our physics? A physics which appears to map onto their world the way ours appears to map onto ours? And there's the possibility that even this account of reality, however it might appear, is still just an appearance... — Tom Storm
That said I'm struggling to find the point to any of this. If it's suggesting that what we take as knowledge isn't reflective of reality, I'd hate to say that doesn't seem to be the case. The world outside our heads might be different than that which we experience every day, but unless you can provide evidence for such a thing it's useless speculation. — Darkneos
So far in my life everything I know seems to work out just fine and it's how we can interact and to some degree master the world as it is. Evolution may have evolved us for certain aspects of survival but I have no reason to doubt the world is what I see each day unless there is some dimensional break. — Darkneos
Though to be honest I've failing to see the point of your question or what you're aiming to achieve here since you're kinda all over the place. I'm guessing you're hounding for something that in reality doesn't exist, some foundational ground to make for knowledge. Hate to say it but there is no such thing. We take a few things as given, our axioms, and just hope for the best. — Darkneos
I will add that intuition isn't a special form of knowledge but still another form of cognition (something you seem to have a bone to pick with) as it is based on prior knowledge, culture, and personal experience. It's sort of like "thinking really fast". Even feelings are rooted in some form of cognition though not one you are aware of. Brains are weird.
PS: I do wonder if there is a way to write your stuff in a way that's easy to understand. — Darkneos
So, rather than saying that things in themselves do not exist in space and time, he could have said that they do not exist in cognitive space and time — Janus
We can imagine augmentation of the senses we are familiar with, but I don't think we can imagine entirely different senses. — Janus
The very idea of things in themselves suggests difference and duration, which seems to depend on the ideas of space and time. — Janus
According to general relativity that isn't the case. The laws of physics do explain how we process reality (partly, rest is neuroscience). — Darkneos
IF anything science demonstrates that our intuition isn't a good measure of reality. — Darkneos
If knowledge is without meaning then how are you writing this and expecting others to communicate? How do you even know there are others to communicate with?
I think it's as I said before, you're kinda searching for something similar to Descartes except he had to invent god to get out of his funk. But life doesn't work like that, nothing can be definitively known beyond all doubt, it just doesn't exist. Still total certainty was always a myth anyway and we never needed it before. — Darkneos
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