I agree that when sleeping and dreaming, appearances have not been directly caused by things external to the mind.

I wouldn't agree with this though. A person in a vacuum disintegrates, there is no mind without interaction with the environment. Our dreams are caused by the external world. If we are stressed out, we might have stress dreams about our problems. If we are cold in our room we feel cold in our dreams, etc.

This gets at my main problem with Kant. His system seems inclined towards positing an implicit sort of mind-world dualism that I think is inappropriate.

The question is that when awake, is it also the case that appearances have not been caused by things external to the mind. An Idealist would say yes, a Realist would say no.

This seems to be an terminology issue. What you are describing here is subjective idealism. Objective idealism allows that the external world exists and causes our subjective experiences, they just deny that that world is suis generis, of a different substance or type. For them, substance dualism and type dualism go to far, predicate dualism perhaps not far enough.

For example, Kastrupt's analytical idealism is not subjective idealism: https://iai.tv/articles/reality-is-not-what-it-seems-auid-2312#:~:text=An%20analytic%20idealist%20infers%20that,merely%20of%20our%20perceptual%20states.

If it is possible for there to be an external world without things in themselves, what would make up this world ?

See the link above for a fairly straightforward example of how this works. I don't like Kastrupt's system for a number of reasons but it is much easier to summarize and explain than those of Hegel, Bradley, etc.

I think a Direct Realist would say that things in themselves are directly accessible, whereas an Indirect Realist would say that they are only indirectly accessible.

Right, but these are just perspectives on how we come to know the world. The existence of a noumenal realm is an ontological claim over and above this. One can just as well deny that there is being as being but also deny that an individual's subjective experience is equivalent to what exists. The world might best be described as the sum of all subjective experiences, across all times, as they unfold.

And without that observing self, which is never amongst the objects being observed, nothing whatsoever exists. — Quixodian

Berkeley's bold assertion, "esse est percipi", did not make sense, without some qualification. For example, as someone noted above : "the universe appears to have existed for 10 million years before the emergence of any perceiving creature". If so, in what sense can we say that anything --- say a 20 million year old rock on an uninhabited planet in a distant galaxy --- exists? Who or what is the percipient?

Is physical Existence*1 a necessary essence or a contingent attribution*1? If the latter, then Berkeley's observing God-in-the-quad*2 is a logically necessary inference, to explain the beingness of anything & everything in our world model. Hence, for anything contingent to exist in space-time Reality, something self-existent, perhaps in timeless Ideality, is obligatory. That mysterious absolute being is what insightful humans call "God". But how can we know that the named concept*3 exists, if we can't perceive anything existing without the limiting conditions of physics?

Physicists have inferred the existence of sub-sub-atomic particles called "quarks". They even envision families of invisible intangible Quarks, and assign necessary properties to those imaginary objects, that are not perceptible even by cutting-edge technology. We only know they exist fundamentally, because they must be there, to logically support all other aspects of our physical world-model. But, do they exist as percepts, or as concepts, or as metaphysical objects? In what sense does a Noumenon exist? Is conceptual existence real being? :smile:


*1. To Exist : have objective reality or being.
Note --- To Perceive is to attribute subjective being. Hence, objective existence must be inferred, not observed.


*2. Berkeley Limericks :

There once was a man who said "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."

Dear Sir,
Your astonishment's odd.
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
Yours faithfully, God

If objects depend on our seeing
So that trees, unobserved, would cease tree-ing,
Then my question is: Who
Is the one who sees you
And assures your persistence in being?

Dear Sir,
You reason most oddly.
To be's to be seen for the bod'ly.
But for spirits like me,
To be is to see.
Sincerely,
The one who is godly.

http://faculty.otterbein.edu/AMills/EarlyModern/brklim.htm

*3. The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.
https://researchers.usask.ca/gordon-sarty/documents/tao.html

If we want to attribute only what is strictly necessary to such an idea as the negative noumenon, then it is simpler to assume the existence of a single "thing" — Manuel

Ok, I get that. Without a minimal content, any conception is empty hence meaningless. The idea, or in Kant-speak, the notion, of the thing-in-itself, is a simple concept, the strict necessity of which would be only its negative relation to things that are met with intuition. Such is a function of logic.

But there are still a multiplicity of examples that conform to the notion, and don’t contradiction the rule that the experience of them as objects is impossible. A single example may well suffice for the idea, but it won’t hold for the affects of things on our sensibility.

Just for the record, there is the argument that the strict necessity for an idea, is the comprehension of the relation of the conceptions contained in its definition. I would agree, under this condition, that to say things-in-themselves, the plurality of the idea, adds to the conception that which is superfluous. Does this get us on the same page?

I believe it does. All I'm claiming, is that I believe the idea of the "thing-in-itself" is more coherent, for the type of limiting notion Kant was introducing.

It could be that "behind" or "supporting" the representations, there are a plurality of things. That's an additional thought, that is, it adds an extra notion to the idea of "thing-in-itself", which as stated, is singular.

Granted, saying this "solves" almost nothing, there is still stuff left to iron out, that is what kind of grounding relation exists, how does multiplicity arise, are we postulating the simplest possible thing, etc.?

I believe Kant would say that we can't answer these questions, as we would be entering the idea of "positive noumena", and fair enough.

My intuition (in the non-technical sense) is that this idea can be worked on at the margins anyway.

All I'm claiming, is that I believe the idea of the "thing-in-itself" is more coherent, for the type of limiting notion Kant was introducing. — Manuel

Ok, I’ll buy it. Let’s finalize: what limiting notion does the thing-in-itself represent?

I take it to be the notion that beyond this postulate (negative noumenon, thing(s)-in-themselves), we cannot know the nature of reality.

We can study representations, not noumena.

Edit:

In fact, Kant goes so far as to argue against Leibniz' monads, precisely because Leibniz was introducing these as positive noumena (not that Leibniz used these terms), the fundamental and complete nature of reality.

And Kant argues, correctly, in my view, that we don't have access to this type of knowledge.

Cool. Noumena limits a priori what can be thought with respect to the nature of reality, the ding an sich limits a posteriori what can be experienced of it.

Once a dualist always a dualist, right?

Yep! Can count on you to put it in that sophisticated formulation.

Once a dualist always a dualist, right? — Mww

Hah.

Well man, what can I say? We eliminate as much as we reasonably can. Whatever remains, call it what you will, is what we have to work with.

We eliminate as much as we reasonably can — Manuel

Ooooo….a metaphysical reductionist. Ain’t you just fulla all kindsza surprises.

Gonna have to amend my Christmas card list. You know…after I start one.

I'm not a fan of reductionism.

I'm a rationalistic idealist, like Descartes or Cudworth or Chomsky - along those lines, though not metaphysically dualist.

We probably agree on like 90%+.

Now that I have been informed that I am getting a Christmas card, I have to do one for you...

Sigh.

Fair enough. :cool:

I'm not a fan of reductionism. — Manuel

Well then. Here we go again. A proponent of reasonable elimination, but not of reductionism.

Sorta like eating soup with a fork, innit?

Agreed on +/- 90%; the rest here is just filler. Not important.

Haven't tried it?!?

I am shocked frankly. It's so much more efficient... :halo:

Not being familiar with Cudworth, I went to SEP, and it starts off by saying his philosophy “defies classification”. Is he the root of your rational idealist tendencies, cuz he’s the earliest? Minor contributor?

It's a very long story, but worth sharing:

He's the guy Chomsky always references instead of Kant, because he says he finds his ideas to be "richer" (the ideas, not the theoretical side), which people rarely ask about and nobody reads. Me being astonished with Kant and Schopenhauer, simply had to find out why he says this and if it was true that someone said what Kant did before him.

I believe I may be one of the 5 or so that did bother to read him, maybe less.

His main work is a mostly unreadable theological-laden trilogy, which, with some effort, sections and pages of pure gold can be found. Luckily, after he died, he left an unpublished manuscript called A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, which is mostly about epistemology, and is amongst the richest books in innatist epistemology in the history of philosophy.

Far more than Descartes or Leibniz, in my opinion.

The name "rationalistic idealism" is given by historian Arthur Lovejoy referring to Cudworth and Henry More, in his Kant and the English Platonists, I believe. I think you've read that. I can't really think of a better label.

Defies categorization? In some respects, sure. But he certainly in the rationalist camp.

Science tells us the Universe began about 13.8 billion years ago, and life began on Earth about 3.8 billion years ago. — RussellA

Current science, always subject to revision - there have been murmurings about it possibly being twice as old, suggested by JWST data. That is in the scope of empirical facts.

But that is not the point. Review again: '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.' Absent an observer, how can there be measurement? 'A year' is defined by man, as the period of time of the Earth's orbit around the sun. When you confidently state that Konisberg exists, roses, water drops, camels, and the whole inventory of the encyclopedia exist - of course all of these things exist. That too is a matter of empirical fact. But existence itself implies and requires a perspective. Things don't exist from no point of view, they exist within a context, and the mind provides that context. But we don't notice that, because we're looking from it, not at it. As mentioned in another thread yesterday on a similar point '(Philosopher Edmund) Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place.'

Berkeley's bold assertion, "esse est percipi", did not make sense, without some qualification. — Gnomon

In Berkeley's case, the only qualification required is that God sustains the Universe in existence, although personally I have no need of that hypothesis. Pleased you reprinted the well-known Berkeley Limerick, no thread on Berkeley would be complete without it.

Cool. So is innatist epistemology an offshoot of, or derived from, the rational idealist doctrine, or implicitly contained in it? Or is it the other way around?

I'd say contained within rational idealist doctrine. It's not as if it's an established school like Rationalists and Empiricists, but I think Lovejoy's label is accurate.

Things don't exist from no point of view, they exist within a context, and the mind provides that context. — Quixodian

Things don't exist from any particular point of view; they are perceived from points of view. They don't even exist for us from any particular point of view. How could we possibly know whether they exist absent us? Well, the fossil record tells us they did, and if the Universe is older than the human race then it follows that it existed prioir to us and our points of view.

So the quoted statement from you above is just a bold, groundless claim or stipulation on your part.

the fossil record tells us they did — Janus

'(Philosopher Edmund) Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place.' — Quixodian

The passage above is not a quote from Husserl, but from you or someone else who claims to know what Husserl believed. In any case who cares what Husserl believed; is he an infallible authority now? In my view, philosophy is about thinking for yourself.

How could we possibly know whether they exist absent us? Well, the fossil record tells us they did, and if the Universe is older than the human race then it follows that it existed prioir to us and our points of view. — Janus

I introduce quotations from other sources to illustrate that the point being made is not idiosyncratic or peculiar to myself. And here's another, which I refer to from time to time, that addresses the above argument.

Everyone knows that the earth, anda fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was (that) the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107

Bolds added.

I think that is a misunderstanding of Kant. I don't understand Kant to say that time and space are only the perfect forms of intuition, but that we cannot impute time and space, in the way that we understand them in relation to our perception beyond that context.

If we say that the organisms and animals that have been preserved as fossils, lived at different times, millions of years apart, and at the same time say that they did not exist at those different times, and in fact did not exist at all, then we are simply contradicting ourselves.

So, we cannot say what the "in-itself existence of those organisms and animals was, any more than we can say what the in itself existence of the world we experience today is: all we can say is that if we had been there at those various times in the past we would have seen the organisms and animals of those times.

I don't understand Kant to say that time and space are only the perfect forms of intuition, but that we cannot impute time and space, in the way that we understand them in relation to our perception beyond that context. — Janus

It's pretty clear what he says, and has already been quoted in this thread:

I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. — CPR, A369

Transcendental realism, according to this passage, is the view that objects in space and time exist independently of our experience of them, while transcendental idealism denies this.

***

If we say that the organisms and animals that have been preserved as fossils ... in fact did not exist at all, then we are simply contradicting ourselves. — Janus

Which is why he makes this point:

the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration — Bryan Magee

So I acknowledge that it *seems* absurd, right? But it's not a claim that fossils, or the past, or anything else, literally cease to exist if unperceived. The 'conditions of the experience of perception' are the same whether concerning an ancient fossil, or the computer you're viewing this on. Hence the question I asked earlier in this thread, where to draw the line?

Magee's text goes on:

Since all imaginable characteristics of objects depend on the modes in which they are apprehended by perceiving subjects, then without at least tacitly assumed presuppositions relating to the former (subject) no sense can be given to terms purporting to denote the latter (object). In short, it is impossible to talk about material objects at all, and therefore even so much as to assert their existence, without the use of words the conditions of whose intelligibility derive from the experience of perceiving subjects. Again, then, and for a reason that goes deeper than those which had been given the last time this point was made, transcendental realism cannot be stated*. It is 'the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself'. But 'just as there can be no object without a subject, so there can be no subject without an object, in other words, no knower without something different from this that is known.... For consciousness consists in knowing, but knowing requires a knower and a known. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy

*Kant calls transcendental realism the “common prejudice” (A740/B768) and describes it as a “common but fallacious presupposition” (A536/B564). Transcendental realism is the commonsense pre-theoretic view that objects in space and time are “things in themselves”, which Kant, of course, denies (SEP).

I sense your objections are based on what Kant is calling 'transcendental realism - the natural, common sense point of view. I really do get it, I'm sympathetic.

In Berkeley's case, the only qualification required is that God sustains the Universe in existence, although personally I have no need of that hypothesis. — Quixodian

If you have no need for the God hypothesis, how do you explain the contingent existence of the space-time world, that appears to have a singular point of beginning into being? The cosmic clock seems to be ticking down to the ultimate Entropy of non-existence. Do you assume that the physical universe --- which we temporal humans perceive into conceptual being --- is actually self existent : requiring no external percipient (creator) to begin & sustain its beingness?

Apparently, Materialists assume that the world, or Multiverse, "just is", without any need for an external cause or perceiver. But, Charles Pinter, in his chapter on Reality, refers to it as the "mind-made firmament". Apparently, the mind is constrained by the organization of the brain to perceive the world in terms of Substance & Form. Yet, he goes on to say that "we are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that every material object has substance and form . . . . Once again, we are misled by common sense".

From that perspective, Materialism is simply common sense. Likewise, I would infer that the Flat Earth notion is common sense. We see, with our normally reliable eyes, that the Earth stretches out horizontally in all directions. And its topological curvature is not apparent from a viewpoint near the surface. Hence, it's a disk, not a sphere.

On the other hand, Pinter seems to view Idealism as un-common intelligence. Our mind-made concepts allow us to see the logical structure underlying the superficial substance of objects, and to imagine an objective perspective different from that of our own earth-bound eyes. Even so, Pinter says "the material universe outside the purview of any observer has no such thing as form"*1. Then he notes, "we imagine the universe as if we were looking at it, and find it is very hard to picture a reality in which we are totally absent".

That may be why Berkeley had to imagine an as-if scenario, with a super-human observer who could see the Cosmos from the outside, in its totality ; perhaps as a sphere seen from a 4D perspective, from all sides simultaneously. Physically, it might look like a shining star radiating energy in all directions; or an invisible black hole sucking-up all available energy; or just a featureless gray sphere. Yet, the super-objective Observer is not just perceiving the world, but also conceiving it into existence ; complete, down to the last quark.

Did I mis-understand the implication of your assertion, that "I have no need of that hypothesis". Other than the traditional creation event, or self-existent Reality, the only alternative theory I can imagine is that each of us imaginative Idealists is a world creator --- forming a unique world as a "mind-made firmament"*3. Yet, like sociable deities, we like to share our art-works with other gods. Not directly mind-to-mind though, but over the internet. :smile:

PS___Perhaps, once begun on its trajectory through time, what "sustains" the world is simply Momentum. But what abstains the world is Entropy. So, we have no need for the religious word "sustains". :joke:


*1. Form : "an object's form is an aspect of the object as an undivided whole, viewed from outside the object" -----Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order

*2. To Conceive : form or devise (a plan or idea) in the mind. ___Oxford

*3. How We Create Our Reality :
It’s not pseudo-science: you’re already doing it.
I create reality by taking an idea in my mind and bringing it into existence.
https://medium.com/an-idea/how-we-create-our-reality-7fc29fc899c

how do you explain the contingent existence of the space-time world, that appears to have a singular point of beginning into being? — Gnomon

I'm afraid that explaining the existence of the world is quite beyond my capacity. But do consider the Buddhist approach, which doesn't begin with the origin of everything, but with the origin of suffering (dukkha). What is it that drives us to continue to suffer? That's also a very deep question! But you can see how situating the question in those terms changes the terms of reference, so to speak.

Culturally, the West is in a situation where science apparently has displaced biblical religion as an account of the origin of the Universe. But then, the Biblical tradition had been an enormous stimulus to finding out the 'why' of existence, especially in combination with the Greek philosophical heritage. That framework provided the whole context for the emergence of science in the first place (for which see e.g. God's Philosophers, James Hannam). Without going into the whole vast question of the role of religion in the history of ideas, suffice to notice that Christian monotheism is one of the fundamental sources of today's culture.

But Buddhism operates outside that frame of reference as it originated and developed quite separately from it (although not without some influences. There is a myth of origin in Buddhism, but it is obscure and rarely referenced.) Regardless it is just as opposed to philosophical materialism as is Christianity, albeit on different grounds. In fact there is very deep and profound school in Buddhism called Yogācāra (or Vijñānavāda) which has many resemblances to the philosophy of Bishop Berkeley (although also significant differences). For a reasonably short, if dense, introduction, see What Is, and Isn't, Yogācāra, Dan Lusthaus. There's also a book I often mention on this forum, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, T R V Murti, published 1955. It is nowadays criticized for its Euro-centrism and over-emphasis on Western philosophy but it draws many detailed parallels between Mahāyāna philosophy and Western philosophical idealism (including extensive commentary of the phenomenal/noumenal.)

You'll know that I am a big admirer of Charles Pinter's book, I've often sung its praises here. Seems to me it hasn't attracted the attention it deserves, because the author is not known in philosophy or cognitive science, which is a pity, because it's a great book.

I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. — CPR, A369

I take this to be referring to the space and time we intuit, the subjective intuition of space and time. I think he's saying that we cannot rightly extrapolate that beyond the context of our perceptual intuition and understanding.

You should not forget that there are different schools of thought within Kant scholarship, and just what his transcendental idealism entails is not a given.

One way of looking at time is simply as change, and it seems impossible to reconcile the current scientific stories about the evolution of the cosmos and of life with a claim that absent us there would be no change. We cannot begin to imagine how a changeless cosmos lacking any difference or diversity could give rise to an experienced world of unimaginable complexity and diversity.

What motivation could there be for asserting such an incoherent idea?

Transcendental realism, according to this passage, is the view that objects in space and time exist independently of our experience of them, while transcendental idealism denies this. — Quixodian

One interpretation of transcendental idealism may deny this. As I said my reading is that things in themselves do not exist in our perceptual space and time, which is an assertion that seems to be virtually self-evident or true simply by stipulation. Beyond that we cannot make any assertion about the in itself.

The following, including the passage you quoted is from the SEP article on Kant's transcendental idealism

In the first edition (A) of the Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781, Kant argues for a surprising set of claims about space, time, and objects:

Space and time are merely the forms of our sensible intuition of objects. They are not beings that exist independently of our intuition (things in themselves), nor are they properties of, nor relations among, such beings. (A26, A33)
The objects we intuit in space and time are appearances, not objects that exist independently of our intuition (things in themselves). This is also true of the mental states we intuit in introspection; in “inner sense” (introspective awareness of my inner states) I intuit only how I appear to myself, not how I am “in myself”. (A37–8, A42)
We can only cognize objects that we can, in principle, intuit. Consequently, we can only cognize objects in space and time, appearances. We cannot cognize things in themselves. (A239)
Nonetheless, we can think about things in themselves using the categories (A254).
Things in themselves affect us, activating our sensible faculty (A190, A387).[1]
In the “Fourth Paralogism” Kant defines “transcendental idealism”:

I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances [Erscheinungen] the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not as things in themselves [nicht als Dinge an sich selbst ansehen], and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves [als Dinge an sich selbst]. (A369; the Critique is quoted from the Guyer & Wood translation (1998))

Ever since 1781, the meaning and significance of Kant’s “transcendental idealism” has been a subject of controversy. Kant’s doctrines raise numerous interpretive questions, which cluster around three sets of issues:

(a)
The nature of appearances. Are they (as Kant sometimes suggests) identical to representations, i.e., states of our minds? If so, does Kant follow Berkeley in equating bodies (objects in space) with ideas (representations)? If not, what are they, and what relation do they have to our representations of them?
(b)
The nature of things in themselves. What can we say positively about them? What does it mean that they are not in space and time? How is this claim compatible with the doctrine that we cannot know anything about them? How is the claim that they affect us compatible with that doctrine? Is Kant committed to the existence of things in themselves, or is the concept of a “thing in itself” merely the concept of a way objects might be (for all we know)?
(c)
The relation of things in themselves to appearances. Is the appearance/thing in itself distinction an ontological one between two different kinds of objects? If not, is it a distinction between two aspects of one and the same kind of object? Or perhaps an adverbial distinction between two different ways of considering the same objects?

So, to me your claim that what Kant meant is "pretty clear" seems ill-informed. I think it would pay you to read the entire article in order to get a better, more nuanced grasp of the subtleties and inconsistencies involved in Kant's views, which have led to the controversial nature of Kantian scholarship.

Ever since 1781, the meaning and significance of Kant’s “transcendental idealism” has been a subject of controversy. — Janus

I say it's controversial because it challenges realism, which is the ingrained tendency of the natural outlook. Plenty of people dispute the interpretation of that passage in Kant, but it supports the argument I made on that basis, and there are others who support that. Like with any of these questions, it's beyond adjutication.

The other passage quoted in support was that about the cosmologist Andrei Linde a couple of days back. It is about the role of the observer in the perception of time. It's really worth the listen to his Closer to Truth interview about the subject (although I guess now that I posted something about it, you will only watch it to work out what's wrong with it :-) )

I say it's controversial because it challenges realism, which is the ingrained tendency of the natural outlook. Plenty of people dispute the interpretation of that passage in Kant. — Quixodian

To me that seems to be a tendentious and poorly informed psychological explanation for a controversy which is understandable in a difficult area of philosophy that is about trying to determine the limits of our knowledge and understanding.

You seem to me more in the business of looking for support for how you want things to be than you are coming to these questions with an open mind.

You seem to me more in the business of looking for support for how you want things to be than you are coming to these questions with an open mind. — Janus

Quite the contrary, I post materials and ideas from many different sources in support of idealist points of view, and for more than ten years, your only response has been to shoot them down. I give considerable time to addressing your criticisms, often to the response that I've 'changed the subject' or 'not addressed the question'. Maybe we should call it quits, Janus, I'm quite happy to do that.