Maybe I'll check out Jung's analysis though, sounds quite worthwhile. — javra

If you like Jung already, you'll probably enjoy it. His ambivalence is fascinating. Mercy of a Rude Stream also gives an outside perspective on how shocking Ulysses was to its contemporaries. I suspect that most people forget or were never quite aware of how far Joyce went in that book. The 'Satanism' in Emerson is also seemingly forgotten. Fame obscures their continuing power, just as there's an 'idle talk' declawed sentimental version of that old corruptor of youth, who went walking along with his demon, asking embarrassing questions.

If you like Jung already, you'll probably enjoy it. — plaque flag

Cool. As to my liking for Jung, yea, so so. Some of his concepts are interesting to me - and, maybe even pragmatic in certain contexts for some - but, notwithstanding, not analytical enough for my general tastes. Notions such as that of synchronicity and the universal unconscious come to mind. Well, this when considered from a panpsychistic perspective; or, at least, something close enough to it. As I said, interesting but in no way definitive.

Sense organs in situ are not objects in the world, unless you’re studying them as an optometrist, for example. They are fundamentally elements of experience - they’re referred to in Buddhism as ‘sense-gates’. — Wayfarer

Eyes, olfactory bulbs, the machinery of the ear -- in situ ( 'in the original position') are not objects of the world ? I don't have to be an optometrist to shake the water out of my ears when I go swimming, to worry that so-and-so overheard me gossiping.

Objects of experience, eh ? We do see the eyes of others, yes, by using our own eyes.

I'm truly surprised that you can't see the dependence of concepts like experience on our ordinary existence in the lifeworld with other people. You haven't addressed (maybe haven't grasped) the objection yet, that the sense organs are treated as both illusions and the source of illusions.

Eyes, olfactory bulbs, the machinery of the ear -- in situ ( 'in the original position') are not objects of the world ? — plaque flag

No, they're not. Your eyes are organs of sight, but your eyes are not what you look at, unless you have some cause to do so. Yes, you can see the eyes of others, and in some metaphorical sense see 'with the eyes of others' (like 'standing in another's shoes'), but they're not objects, unless you're wanting to examine the eye or other sense organs objectively.

the sense organs are treated as both illusions and the source of illusions — plaque flag

What is that an objection to? Who is treating the sense organs as illusions?

Cool. As to my liking for Jung, yea, so so. Some of his concepts are interesting to me - and, maybe even pragmatic in certain contexts for some - but, notwithstanding, not analytical enough for my general tastes. Notions such as that of synchronicity and the universal unconscious come to mind. Well, this when considered from a panpsychistic perspective; or, at least, something close enough to it. As I said, interesting but in no way definitive. — javra

Yeah, he gets too far out for me also at times. But I really valued his concept of the shadow. Probably the best idea I got from him was : Whatever is unconscious is projected.

I connect this with the ferryman in Hesse's Siddhartha and 'nothing human is alien to me.' It also gels with the better part of Nietzsche. Resentment tends to be connected to self-righteousness which tends express an ignorance of the evil in one's own self. Roughly, the fucked up world is just a mirror of the contradictions in my own depths ---which can, fortunately, be relatively harmonized --perhaps by (among other things) integrating the shadow, which boils down to expanding the self-image toward the infinite, giving up on phony purity poses, etc.

No, they're not. Your eyes are organs of sight, but your eyes are not what you look at, unless you have some cause to do so. Yes, you can see the eyes of others, and in some metaphorical sense see 'with the eyes of others' (like 'standing in another's shoes'), but they're not objects, unless you're wanting to examine the eye or other sense organs objectively. — Wayfarer

I'm not averse to discussing some of the complexities of sensation, but your denial that eyes are objects in the world is indulgent -- contrary to ordinary English. 'Wanting to examine them objectivity' is way too fancy here. Kant himself invokes the sense organs. That's the context.

An object is (first definition) something perceptible by one or more of the senses, especially by vision or touch; a material thing. I see others' eyes directly, my own in a mirror. I'm not being metaphorical.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=objects&atb=v379-1&ia=definition

I suspect you want to skip to some profound point about metaphysical subjectivity. Maybe we'll get there, but not if you absurdly deny the existence of eyes.

:grin: I like that: converging with one's Jungian shadow in manners that benefits one's own intentions - preferably both short- and long-term.

I connect this with the ferryman in Hesse's Siddhartha and 'nothing human is alien to me.' — plaque flag

I find this is a good ideal to live by. But, of course, it's never perfectly actualized by any self. I've often enough thought that an important aspect of this otherwise quite elusive, maybe even mystical, term "wisdom" consists in being able to simultaneously entertain different perspective such that one's thoughts and actions satisfies all these otherwise disparate perspectives with the same breath, so to speak. But yea, a detective, for one example, likely wouldn't be worth squat without this ability or relating and understanding other - including that other with which one is in an antagonistic relation to.

Need to take off for now. But really good chatting with you!

Yes, I know. But ’s argument is just as valid in its own right. The major difference being, the one, yours, relates to and supports transcendental philosophy, the other, not so much.

What is that an objection to? Who is treating the sense organs as illusions? — Wayfarer

Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings, all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses. Consequently I grant by all means that there are bodies without us, that is, things which, though quite unknown to us as to what they are in themselves, we yet know by the representations which their influence on our sensibility procures us, and which we call bodies, a term signifying merely the appearance of the thing which is unknown to us, but not therefore less actual. Can this be termed idealism? It is the very contrary.

Now Kant is pretty clearly using our ordinary experience of sense organs and presumably contemplating the way some kind of 'raw' experience of Reality is automatically and unconsciously 'cooked' for us by our cognitive system, sense organs and our conceptuality (I'd say hardware and software). For Kant, what we see (even the framework of space and time) is largely our own creation. We can never see around it (the instrument, the transforming lens) and recover 'raw' (true) Reality. Hegel famously drags the limits of this metaphor into the light.

The problem here is that Kant, following Hume and others in the tradition of MS, took the ordinary experience of the body with sense organs for granted -- while his own theory says that the very framework of space and time, and of course also the ordinary experience of sense organs (eyes on your mother's face), is mere appearance. So he's built his system on the very thing he calls mere appearance. He saws off the branch he is sitting on.

"wisdom" consists in being able to simultaneously entertain different perspective such that one's thoughts and actions satisfies all these otherwise disparate perspectives with the same breath, — javra

:up:

This reminds me of Keats writing about Shakespeare -- and the way that Joyce and Harold Bloom in their own ways treat him as a 'spiritual' figure.

Kant himself invokes the sense organs. — plaque flag

Of course eyes are objects, but it is not as objects that they are significant. The significant factor is sense perception and its interpretation. Plainly we are subject to illusions, for instance optical illusions. More subtly, we are subject to delusion - misinterpreting what the senses tell us - and even more subtle errors, such as errors of judgement.

Of course eyes are objects, but it is not as objects that they are significant. The significant factor is sense perception and its interpretation. Plainly we are subject to illusions, for instance optical illusions. More subtly, we are subject to delusion - misinterpreting what the senses tell us - and even more subtle errors, such as errors of judgement. — Wayfarer

Sure, and illusions and delusions depend upon an actual world, something taken as real. Presumably "we are subject to illusions, for instance optical illusions" is offered as a truth about the world we both live in. As I said before, reasonable and in fact crucial considerations of fallibility are push to absurd extremes, stretched until they snap into nonsense.

I think the problem is related.

We are social beings, primarily accountable to one another, offering reasons for our actions and beliefs. We have a strong and grounded concept of individual bias and delusion. It makes very good sense (plays a vital role in our lives) to model the bias of others in our tribe. I 'translate' the report of Larry who always lays it on thick or of Sally who always minimizes. I try to look through their reports to see what's really going on (what I'll believe anyway.)

But things get wacky and confused when we pretend we can see around the human nervous system altogether. I don't think it makes sense for us to see around our 'species bias.' This concept of species bias is problematic, possibly a version of the round square, since we'd have to be on both sides of a line at once. It's way too easy for humans to write checks they can't cash, which Kant himself emphasized ! That's the spirit of his work, right ?

The knowledge is prior to the experience of those events, not to experience in general. — plaque flag

:up:

I remember various appreciators of Kant stressing his realization of how actively the mind projects hypotheses. Isn't the updated version basically the denial of the blank slate ? Without the absurd denial of the reality of brain, thankfully. — plaque flag

There would not seem to be many proponents of the blank slate these days. The salient question seems to be whether it is merely capacities or tendencies which are innate (like Chomsky's idea of a genetic capacity in humans to learn language) or whether there is also innate knowledge (along the lines of anamnesis, I guess).

But yea, a detective, for one example, likely wouldn't be worth squat without this ability or relating and understanding other - including that other with which one is in an antagonistic relation to. — javra

:up:

Right.

Related point and pet theory : Any position that is defined in terms of an opponent has about the same amount of complexity as that opponent. We betray ourselves or honor ourselves in the enemy we choose (sounds like Nietzsche, no?) Sherlock, once his character has been sketched, is given an anti-Sherlock to contend with, as a climax. The 'infinite' position is its own shadow (Hamlet or something.)

But really good chatting with you! — javra

You too! Till next time...

There would not seem to be many proponents of the blank slate these days. The salient question seems to be whether it is merely capacities or tendencies which are innate (like Chomsky's idea of a genetic capacity in humans to learn language) or whether there is also innate knowledge (along the lines of anamnesis, I guess). — Janus

Right, and really that makes sense. Just the fact that our eyes are in the front is no small thing. Even if I build a general purpose neural network, I have to choose the number and width of layers. It's almost absurd to think that the mind is without structure. I suppose the empiricists were primarily trying to wipe out some cobwebs and got carried away.

There is a priori knowledge derived from extant experience, but in Kant, the stipulation is made that when he talks of a priori knowledge, he means absent any and all experience. — Mww

Far be it from me to think I am an expert Kant interpreter—I just interpret in terms of what makes sense to me. So, I cannot see how Kant could justify thinking there could be any knowledge at all prior to. or absent any previous, experience.

You said there was a priori knowledge which is pure and that which is impure—can you give an example of pure a priori knowledge and explain how it could be gained in the absence of any prior experience?

I'm beginning to think I may have interpreted Kant in ways which make sense to me, and I'm hoping not to have to discover that he advocated for ideas which are bound to seem absurd.

illusions and delusions depend upon an actual world.... — plaque flag

...the nature of which is the point at issue.

...the nature of which is the point at issue. — Wayfarer

The 'nature of which' implying a fact of the matter. The very idea of a 'nature' invokes a fact about a world that includes and transcends both of us.

It seems to me that you are stubbornly picking a bad 'hill to die on.'

One needs to commit to very little indeed, seems to me, to avoid outright contradiction. But denying that there is a truth of the matter is a palpable absurdity. The truth is you see there is no truth. Or maybe there really isn't such a thing as the truth of the matter. Sounds profound and openminded but it's silly upon examination.

A measured appreciation of what the subject contributes is maybe the essence of philosophy. But claiming there is only subject is as empty as claiming there is left without right.

The truth is you see there is no truth. Or maybe there really isn't such a thing as the truth of the matter. Sounds profound and openminded but it's silly upon examination. — plaque flag

Of course I accept that there is a truth, but I conceive of it in Buddhist terms - to apprehend it requires going beyond the ego oriented worldview that we are naturally disposed to. Hence the convergence I mentioned between Kant, Schopenhauer and Buddhism (subject of an appendix in Magee's book on Schopenhauer).

Are you familiar with Kant's expression of his 'Copernican revolution in philosophy'? (Here's a crib.)

an example of pure a priori knowledge and explain how it could be gained in the absence of any prior experience? — Janus

Mathematics. And because not only are its conceptions created by us, but so too are the objects subsumed under the conceptions. Not the rote instruction in mathematics you got since you learned to keep the pointy end of the pencil down, but rather, the principles legislating mathematical operations, which to know you must think.

I may have interpreted Kant in ways which make sense to me….. — Janus

What else could you do? Same as everyone, right?

So, are you saying that mathematics presents us with pure a priori understanding inasmuch as we can discover novel mathematical truths without any empirical input? Another of way of thinking about this would be to understand mathematics as being analytic, and all mathematical truths as being true by definition. That reminds me of the concept of validity in logic: that any argument is valid if its conclusion follows from the premises, and even if the premises are unsound.

Another way would be to say that the practice of going through the rule-based procedures of calculation is itself a form of empirical input.

Would you agree that thinking space and time as the "pure forms of intuition" and discovering the categories of judgement do both entail reflection on experience?

What else could you do? Same as everyone, right? — Mww

True that!

I've read several of Beiser's excellent books on German philosophy, which sketch the intellectual scene of Kant in great detail. Also read with great pleasure A Thing of This World, which traces Kant's revolution through a great historical sequence of modifications. Kant => Hegel => Heidegger is one important path.

Personally I'd choose Popper as a great 'updated' Kant who does justice to the 'active knower.' While we depend upon our embodiment in the world to do so, we largely construct our knowledge of the world. Creativity plays an absolute central role. To me that's the essence of the Kantian Copernican revolution.

we largely construct our knowledge of the world. — plaque flag

That was what I thought you were taking issue with.

That was what I thought you were taking issue with. — Wayfarer

Consider that we are in the world, so we don't construct the world ex nihilo. But the world is for or through our human sense organs, brain, and culture, so talking about a world without an embodied cultural subject is also a mere abstraction (a useful fiction.)

To me it's (metaphorically speaking) topologically weird, something like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle

talking about a world without an embodied cultural subject is also a mere abstraction (a useful fiction.) — plaque flag

You're getting closer to what I understand the issue to be. What I think the issue to be is the apparently commonsense notion that the world exists just as it is, without any observer.

Remember that the passage from Schop that you reacted against was an argument against materialism. He is arguing against the mind-independent reality of the objects of perception. That mind-independence of objects is sine qua non for scientific realism (SEP: 'Metaphysically, realism is committed to the mind-independent existence of the world investigated by the sciences.') The common-sense view is that the world exists, just so, even if nobody is around to observe it. After all, it is common knowledge that h. sapiens has only been around for the metaphorical wink of an eye whilst the Universe is 13-odd bilion years old. But what the realist doesn't appreciate it is that for the word 'to exist' to be meaningful, the subject of the proposition 'it exists' has to be distinguished or singled out - that is part of the meaning of 'exist' ('ex' - outside of, apart from, -ist', to be or to stand.) So the idea of the world with no h. sapiens in it, whilst an empirically valid observation, overlooks the role of the subject in any meaningful notion of 'what exists'. It interprets an heuristic - an interpretive stance regarding mind-independence - as a metaphysical truth, which it is not. The truth is that the mind actually 'brings the world into being' in some fundamental sense - not that things literally go into and pass out of existence depending on the observer.

So it's actually not legitimate to suppose that the world exists in the absence of any observer - there's always an implicit perspective in that supposition, and without that perspective, there is not even an abstraction. This has become apparent even in science (and I've quoted the following umpteen times):

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

There's a great youtube video of Linde discussing 'the role of consciousness' with Robert Lawrence Kuhn on Closer to Truth. He's a serious figure in modern cosmollogy, although I'm sure many scientists look askance at this idea of his, as he himself acknowledges in this rather amusing interview.

The truth is that the mind actually 'brings the world into being' in some fundamental sense - not that things literally go into and pass out of existence depending on the observer. — Wayfarer

As I see it, you are trying to do justice to the entanglement of subject and substance. I think it's better to talk of equiprimordiality. Self, language, community, and world are all co-given -- aspects of a single 'fused' lifeworld. The 'proof' of this is almost analytic : denials of it are performative contradictions.

I suggest that the embodiment of mind should be stressed to do justice to the world.

So (in summary) the human nervous system living human body is one 'object' in the world among other objects, but it's an extremely special object, one that is always with us, a condition for the possibility and experience. You might say that it's neither 'mind' nor 'matter.' Probably flesh is a great word here for the subject, because it stresses entanglement with world and the visceral-sensual aspect of being an individual.

You might like:

The properties of things that we take to be “real” and “objective” also tacitly assume a reference to the body’s norms and its adoption of levels. An object’s “true” qualities depend on the body’s privileging of orientations that yield maximum clarity and richness. This is possible because the body serves as a template for the style or logic of the world, the concordant system of relations that links the qualities of an object, the configuration of the perceptual field, and background levels such as lighting or movement. In this symbiosis or call-and-response between the body and the world, things have sense as the correlates of my body, and reality therefore always involves a reference to perception. Yet, to be real, things cannot be reducible to correlates of the body or perception; they retain a depth and resistance that provides their existential index. While each thing has its individual style, the world is the ultimate horizon or background style against which any particular thing can appear.
...
The perspectival limitations of perception, both spatially and temporally, are the obverse of this world’s depth and inexhaustibility. Through an examination of hallucination and illusions, Merleau-Ponty argues that skepticism about the existence of the world makes a category mistake. While we can doubt any particular perception, illusions can appear only against the background of the world and our primordial faith in it. While we never coincide with the world or grasp it with absolute certainty, we are also never entirely cut off from it; perception essentially aims toward truth, but any truth that it reveals is contingent and revisable.

Rejecting analogical explanations for the experience of other people, Merleau-Ponty proposes that the rediscovery of the body as a “third genre of being between the pure subject and the object” makes possible encounters with embodied others (PP: 407/366). We perceive others directly as pre-personal and embodied living beings engaged with a world that we share in common. This encounter at the level of anonymous and pre-personal lives does not, however, present us with another person in the full sense, since our situations are never entirely congruent. The perception of others involves an alterity, a resistance, and a plenitude that are never reducible to what is presented, which is the truth of solipsism. Our common corporeality nevertheless opens us onto a shared social world, a permanent dimension of our being in the mode of the anonymous and general “someone”. The perception of others is therefore a privileged example of the paradox of transcendence running through our encounter with the world as perceived:

Whether it is a question of my body, the natural world, the past, birth or death, the question is always to know how I can be open to phenomena that transcend me and that, nevertheless, only exist to the extent that I take them up and live them. (PP: 422/381)

This “fundamental contradiction” defines our encounters with every form of transcendence and requires new conceptions of consciousness, time, and freedom.
...
Merleau-Ponty argues that we cannot separate the certainty of our thoughts from that of our perceptions, since to truly perceive is to have confidence in the veracity of one’s perceptions. Furthermore, we are not transparent to ourselves, since our “inner states” are available to us only in a situated and ambiguous way. The genuine cogito, Merleau-Ponty argues, is a cogito “in action”: we do not deduce “I am” from “I think”, but rather the certainty of “I think” rests on the “I am” of existential engagement. More basic than explicit self-consciousness and presupposed by it is an ambiguous mode of self-experience that Merleau-Ponty terms the silent or “tacit” cogito—our pre-reflective and inarticulate grasp on the world and ourselves that becomes explicit and determinate only when it finds expression for itself. The illusions of pure self-possession and transparency—like all apparently “eternal” truths—are the results of acquired or sedimented language and concepts.

Rejecting classic approaches to time that treat it either as an objective property of things, as a psychological content, or as the product of transcendental consciousness, Merleau-Ponty returns to the “field of presence” as our foundational experience of time. This field is a network of intentional relations, of “protentions” and “retentions”, in a single movement of dehiscence or self-differentiation, such that “each present reaffirms the presence of the entire past that it drives away, and anticipates the presence of the entire future or the ‘to-come’” (PP: 483/444). Time in this sense is “ultimate subjectivity”, understood not as an eternal consciousness, but rather as the very act of temporalization. As with the tacit cogito, the auto-affection of time as ultimate subjectivity is not a static self-identity but involves a dynamic opening toward alterity. In this conception of time as field of presence, which “reveals the subject and the object as two abstract moments of a unique structure, namely, presence” (PP: 494/454–55), Merleau-Ponty sees the resolution to all problems of transcendence as well as the foundation for human freedom. Against the Sartrean position that freedom is either total or null, Merleau-Ponty holds that freedom emerges only against the background of our “universal engagement in a world”, which involves us in meanings and values that are not of our choosing. We must recognize, first, an “authochthonous sense of the world that is constituted in the exchange between the world and our embodied existence” (PP: 504/466), and, second, that the acquired habits and the sedimented choices of our lives have their own inertia. This situation does not eliminate freedom but is precisely the field in which it can be achieved.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/merleau-ponty/#NatuPercStruBeha

As I see it, you are trying to do justice to the entanglement of subject and substance. I think it's better to talk of equiprimordiality. Self, language, community, and world are all co-given -- aspects of a single 'fused' lifeworld. The 'proof' of this is almost analytic : denials of it are performative contradictions. — plaque flag

Quick question: I can see merit in this and have a modest interest in phenomenology, but could it not be argued that this account is just words used as a kind of magic spell? A conjuring move to make the Cartesian conundrum appear to vanish. We can choose to describe our reality any which way we want and hold these accounts as foundational axioms - dualism, monistic idealism - or your equiprimordial, phenomenological construct above.

But how do we demonstrate the veracity of such models and of what use are they? Are they a variety of poetry, or are they something deeper which can be tied in some way to reality?

the genuine cogito, Merleau-Ponty argues, is a cogito “in action”: we do not deduce “I am” from “I think”, but rather the certainty of “I think” rests on the “I am” of existential engagement. More basic than explicit self-consciousness and presupposed by it is an ambiguous mode of self-experience that Merleau-Ponty terms the silent or “tacit” cogito—our pre-reflective and inarticulate grasp on the world and ourselves that becomes explicit and determinate only when it finds expression for itself. — plaque flag

On this I am simply unable to tell what fits. I find both 'I think' and 'I am' problematic. Even Merleau-Ponty's account seems to require a kind of faith.

As I see it, you are trying to do justice to the entanglement of subject and substance. — plaque flag

I was hoping it was pretty well in line with the OP. Even including Linde.