The defining element of our mind is its possession of a sensible intuition….. — Moliere

I was wonderin’…..like…..why should we attribute to our minds a defining element given from our senses, when it is certain other animals have senses? If we grant other animals have senses, we cannot immediately deny they have sensible intuitions of some kind. It would appear some form of sensible intuition is merely one element for any animal with sensory apparatus, hence not so defining an element for just our human mind.

So….what is a defining element of a human mind, implying that which belongs to no other animal, insofar as none of them offer any indication they possess it.

Without a comprehensive catalogue of what and how many elements there are in a human mind, it defies possibility for picking out a defining element. And if possibility is defied, what chance does certainty have? As well, being human, how to alleviate the privileging associated with examining our own minds, carrying the inclination to vainglorious elemental composition.

So not only is it being asked what element is definitive, but what are the choices for it, and given the choice, how is it the case it belongs solely to humans.

Care to bid on another defining element?

I was wonderin’…..like…..why should we attribute to our minds a defining element given from our senses, when it is certain other animals have senses?

If we grant other animals have senses, we cannot immediately deny they have sensible intuitions of some kind. It would appear some form of sensible intuition is merely one element for any animal with sensory apparatus, hence not so defining an element for just our human mind. — Mww

I was drawing a distinction between senses and sensible intuition there, and noting how "sensible intuition" is defined with respect to "intellectual intuition", which I think can be most easily read as the mind of God whose very thinking creates reality: the human mind is free to create concepts but our intuition is sensible in that we have to make our concepts fit the objects if we want the concepts to be true. God, on the other hand, thinks reality into being. It's that intuition which "sensible intuition" is being defined against, rather than animal knowledge

Now maybe we could say animals have a sensible intuition, but lack the creative aspect of reason which humans have -- the old quote about concepts and intuitions needing one another to make sense.

So….what is a defining element of a human mind, implying that which belongs to no other animal, insofar as none of them offer any indication they possess it.

Without a comprehensive catalogue of what and how many elements there are in a human mind, it defies possibility for picking out a defining element. And if possibility is defied, what chance does certainty have? As well, being human, how to alleviate the privileging associated with examining our own minds, carrying the inclination to vainglorious elemental composition.

So not only is it being asked what element is definitive, but what are the choices for it, and given the choice, how is it the case it belongs solely to humans.

Care to bid on another defining element?

The other side, still explicating Kant here, is the conceptual -- the categorical. (In the background I always wonder about the imagination -- it's funny in Kant in that it's hard to place it in relation to the other mind-things.) But the categories form one part of the mind, where the sensible intuition forms the other part, and the schematism is what binds them together into a proper cognition.

I usually think of Kant's philosophy as a kind of flow from the Transcendental Ego ("I think...") to cognition, and from the Transcendental Object (...A is X) to cognition, and cognition is where our experience of "the manifold" and knowledge comes from. There are two functions of the mind which operate in parallel to produce cognition, which is how we come to know about the empirical world. We can only come to know about the transcendental conditions, though, from the deduction of the categories, and an absence of a better explanation for our possession of a priori synthetic knowledge.

I'm at least a realist. And I like direct realism in the phenomenological sense, but I wonder what's so direct about it if all I mean is that indirect realism is false? — Moliere

Rejecting indirect realism is a big move with the little unworldly world of metaphysics. Do we start doing philosophy trapped and isolated in a bubble, referring to private 'representations' ? Or do we start together in a single world, referring to objects in that world, the bridge over the river?

With Heidegger... — Moliere

If it helps, Heidegger is no infallible oracle for me. I only endorse certain parts of his work. The key for me is phenomenology's uncovering of the lifeworld and it's refusal to be seduced --- it's unhip willingness to question -- a counter-empiricism that pretends to be empirical in its reduction of the fullness of the world to what is convenient for its mere technical intentions. To me it's a truly scientific ontology that challenges scientistic ontologies. It's the true empiricism -- not the stuff full of posits like sensedata taken for granted.

Heidegger introduces the term that Macquarrie and Robinson translate as ‘involvement’ to express the roles that equipmental entities play—the ways in which they are involved—in Dasein's everyday patterns of activity. Crucially, for Heidegger, an involvement is not a stand-alone structure, but rather a link in a network of intelligibility that he calls a totality of involvements. Take the stock Heideggerian example: the hammer is involved in an act of hammering; that hammering is involved in making something fast; and that making something fast is involved in protecting the human agent against bad weather. Such totalities of involvements are the contexts of everyday equipmental practice. As such, they define equipmental entities, so the hammer is intelligible as what it is only with respect to the shelter and, indeed, all the other items of equipment to which it meaningfully relates in Dasein's everyday practices. This relational ontology generates what Brandom (1983, 391–3) calls Heidegger's ‘strong systematicity condition’, as given voice in Heidegger's striking claim that “[t]aken strictly, there ‘is’ no such thing as an equipment” (Being and Time, 15: 97). And this radical holism spreads, because once one begins to trace a path through a network of involvements, one will inevitably traverse vast regions of involvement-space. Thus links will be traced not only from hammers to hammering to making fast to protection against the weather, but also from hammers to pulling out nails to dismantling wardrobes to moving house. This behaviour will refer back to many other behaviours (packing, van-driving) and thus to many other items of equipment (large boxes, removal vans), and so on. The result is a large-scale holistic network of interconnected relational significance. Such networks constitute worlds, in one of Heidegger's key senses of the term—an ontical sense that he describes as having a pre-ontological signification (Being and Time 14: 93).

We need only pay more attention to see the world as such a 'blanket.' Neutrinos and marriages and nostalgia and premises are all part of this same single involvement network. Entities are radically semantically and practically interdependent.

I'm not so sure there is a most rational rationality — Moliere

But who ever claimed there was ? I've stressed that it's a fundamentally infinite project. As an ideal, it's always on the horizon. We will never live the 'perfect circle' of its arrival except in the sense of our being 'haunted' by it. We will never stop clarifying concepts like justice, freedom, and rationality.

As I see it, it makes more sense to challenge the details of my explication of rationality then try to argue for the apriori impossibility of such an articulation.

I hear you on the multiple logics issue, and this is bit like the private language issue. I'd say that every human being has a sort of private language and private logic, but going too far in this direction (trying to argue for it) is paradoxical. If we are lost in choose-your-own-logic and choose-your-own-meanings, there is no point in even discussing or claiming precisely such lostness.

'Communication/rationality is impossible' but let's talk about this anyway is a performative contradiction.

'Communication/rationality' is completed/perfected so shut up and listen is a performative contradiction.

'Communication/rationality is never perfect or final,' so let's continue to try at least to make it better is reasonable.

It's that intuition which "sensible intuition" is being defined against, rather than animal knowledge — Moliere

Yes, I get that, but the ask is….what is a defining element of the mind.

I guess I don’t get how something every human mind can do, or there is something for which every human mind has the capacity, is a defining element. Just seems more apropos to claim for a defining element as not found anywhere else, rather than found everywhere else.

Anyway….idle thought, while remaining in a non-collapsible box.

Which in a way gets along with the spirit of Kant: We have knowledge of the empirical world, but that knowledge doesn't touch upon the metaphysical totality which grounds it. Or, in knowledge's multiplicity, they're all self-grounding projects which we are free to take up or leave, but which we're not really sure how to relate that to ontological claims. Or, at the very least, I'm not sure how to relate knowledge, scientific or historical, to ontological claims. — Moliere

If one accepts that the world, so far as we know, is given perspectively, then the being of the world is always for (ignoring other animals) an entire human personality. This world is always already meaningfully structured (for instance, the network of involvements above).

I myself, as an ontologist, even as an informal ontologist who 'hates philosophy' doesn't know the word 'ontology,' have to clarify the totality of the meaningstructure of the world as it is given to me. How does science fit within the grand scheme of things ? How do real numbers exist not only as tokens in a specialist games for me as a total personality ? Are electrons more real than marriage or even than my own thought of electrons ? Is there an afterlife ? Is there a truly truly true truth somewhere?

All this squishy stuff is just established empirically by refusing to take a useful fiction (view from anywhere/nowhere) as an ultimate ontology because it helps with making smartphones -- though we'd be silly to ignore what it gets right.

that knowledge doesn't touch upon the metaphysical totality which grounds it. — Moliere

If you are talking as Husserl might about the ignorance of science about its own rootedness in the lifeworld, then I agree. But the mention of Kant hints of something that I'd suspect of being more necessarily and therefore uselessly indeterminate in its disconnection from the inferential-semantic nexus. There's our blanket of involvements and sense, and within this blanket we can construct phrases like 'round square' on 'reality from no perspective' and 'this statement is false.' Embracing Kant as possibility rather than substance (in his best intention), I challenge the confusion in such phrases. We all too easily make phrases that only confuse us. We write checks that can never be cashed, except as a kind of mystical-emotional currency. It is of course difficult to perfect a criterion for excluding such stuff, so we just need the apriori freedom to challenge claims. 'What do you think you can even mean by that ? '

Rejecting indirect realism is a big move with the little unworldly world of metaphysics. — plaque flag

Heh, it seems so small to me. It's like removing saran wrap that you put around your face: what on earth was that saran wrap for?

Do we start doing philosophy trapped and isolated in a bubble, referring to private 'representations' ? Or do we start together in a single world, referring to objects in that world, the bridge over the river?

The former, so I believe, is a falsehood. But it's important to highlight some differences in interpreting and translating Kant -- for some interpretations he's a representationalist, and for some he's a presentationalist. In both, however, there's certainly only one empirical world. So even for Kant, with the distinction between phenomena/noumena, we start together in a single world (and end up together in a single mind).

Basically I'd note that the Transcendental Ego isn't something which every individual possesses, but is rather a structure of The Mind At Large, or in a less grandiose picture it's a necessary feature for cognition to take place however the Mind At Large is (or isn't). But basically the interconnected themes of Hegel is already somewhat in place with Kant -- Kant is no solipsist or skeptic -- the difference has more to do with their respective arguments on reason and logic.

Which is all to highlight how we can reasonably have more than one rationality.

If it helps, Heidegger is no infallible oracle for me. I only endorse certain parts of his work. The key for me is phenomenology's uncovering of the lifeworld and it's refusal to be seduced --- it's unhip willingness to question -- a counter-empiricism that pretends to be empirical in its reduction of the fullness of the world to what is convenient for its mere technical intentions. To me it's a truly scientific ontology that challenges scientistic ontologies. It's the true empiricism -- not the stuff full of posits like sensedata taken for granted. — plaque flag

For me what I keep going back to in Heidi is the present-at-hand/ready-to-hand distinction -- first as a clear example of what the phenomenological argument even is and how its performed correctly, and second as a lovely little needle that pops a lot of idle speculative wonderings with a single distinction.

Plus his philosophy is fundamental to understanding Levinas and Derrida. So he's "in the cannon", like old Hegel too: necessary readings.

I didn't think you were treating any philosopher as infallible. I think it's just the word "foundations" that I'm being a stickler on because I tend to think there's more than one rationality, and I also like to think of thought as more of an ecology rather than as a building: the architectonics will build their buildings, but not all philosophies even aim at building buildings; some are more like gardens. Further "foundations" are associated with "certainty" in my mind due to Descartes, and I tend to think that the desire for certainty is far too played up in philosophy. We like certainty, sure, but a lot of what's interesting isn't certain so there's only so far one can go while requiring certitude.

"I'm not so sure there is a most rational rationality" -- me
But who ever claimed there was ? — plaque flag

I think I'm mostly just reacting to "foundations" -- "articulation", like below, seems to work for me. Same with "enablers".

As I see it, it makes more sense to challenge the details of my explication of rationality then try to argue for the apriori impossibility of such an articulation. — plaque flag

A clearer way to say what I'm saying is that the cardinality of the set of rationalities is greater than one. It must be possible to articulate a rationality in order to believe this, else I wouldn't be able to count the members of the set, and reading the books from the canon wouldn't make a good basis for my inference that there's more than one! It's in comparing and contrasting philosophers that I base the inference, given that philosophers are the ones who articulate the rational and, even among the genius and best among them, they disagree on even really basic things like the correct application of logic or on fundamental distinctions or their priority and emphasis.

And I think that disagreement and difference is part of what makes philosophy stay alive, and that philosophy staying alive is a good thing, so I even believe this to be a good thing.

It's just been done successfully more than one time.

If one accepts that the world, so far as we know, is given perspectively, then the being of the world is always for (ignoring other animals) an entire human personality. This world is always already meaningfully structured (for instance, the network of involvements above).

I myself, as an ontologist, even as an informal ontologist who 'hates philosophy' doesn't know the word 'ontology,' have to clarify the totality of the meaningstructure of the world as it is given to me. How does science fit within the grand scheme of things ? How do real numbers exist not only as tokens in a specialist games for me as a total personality ? Are electrons more real than marriage or even than my own thought of electrons ? Is there an afterlife ? Is there a truly truly true truth somewhere?

All this squishy stuff is just established empirically by refusing to take a useful fiction (view from anywhere/nowhere) as an ultimate ontology because it helps with making smartphones -- though we'd be silly to ignore what it gets right. — plaque flag

Is the world given at all? :D :naughty:

I agree with refusing to take a useful fiction as an ultimate ontology. The microwaves might utilize less joules of electricity per joule of heat absorbed by our food, but something about that just doesn't seem to say very much about reality. Lowering the cost of producing toasters doesn't tell me much about Being, though it certainly took some scientific workings to help that along.

I'm not sure I'd qualify as an ontologist. If anything a lot of my doubts have to do with uncertainty on how to properly even make an ontological case to someone. It seems to me that ontology is always begging the question, which is why "the given" is tempting: there's a part of the world that's not conceptual, that's not derived from a logical structure. What else to call the there-is than "given"?

But it's there that I see room for the growth of a multitude of philosophies, different gardens on different plots. Some of them are relatively stable like rock gardens, and others overgrown and virulently taking over a part of the forest of thought, no longer contained by a single gardener or anyone at all -- the metaphor of Philosophy as gardening. And where you jump off from is like the seeds you plant at the beginning. Surely you can lay out the structure of how you planted to seeds, but the philosophy will grow and take a life of its own after that.

Yes, I get that, but the ask is….what is a defining element of the mind.

I guess I don’t get how something every human mind can do, or there is something for which every human mind has the capacity, is a defining element. Just seems more apropos to claim for a defining element as not found anywhere else, rather than found everywhere else.

Anyway….idle thought, while remaining in a non-collapsible box. — Mww

Heh. I'm not sure that I could climb to those heights. I have an interpretation of Kant, but I'm not sure if it's better to focus on what all human minds can do or what the domain of the set even is. Kant is fascinating because he gives a lot of straightforward** answers to questions that are hard to even define enough to be able to have a set of things to compare!

**Ya'know, relatively speaking to the subject matter.

Heh, it seems so small to me. It's like removing saran wrap that you put around your face: what on earth was that saran wrap for? — Moliere

:up:
Hence 'the worldly foolishness of philosophy' and the 'sophistry' of non-understood gear for a primate who needs bread more than a intensified (luxurious, esoterically elaborated) coherence of identity. We don't need the difficult strong poet either, and really such a strong poet was never for everyone. We need the engineer who need not know or even care what his terms mean beyond marketable functionality. Pragmatism is a tempting vulgar flight from serious inquiry, and I say this as someone who learned much from Rorty and once found this flight more sophisticated than I currently do.

We might also talk of the accidental elitism of higher math with obvious application (advanced set theory) and the 'technical' 'niceties' of ontology embraced as a serious discipline. Maybe it's better to wail on the saxophone or do astrology charts, but I like this game, where the choice of a founding metaphor is indeed significant. 'Existentially' (to me) it's all hebel/hevel (vapor, mist, vanity). But it's a good way for dust that woke up to spend its little moment, seems to me.

t seems to me that ontology is always begging the question, which is why "the given" is tempting: there's a part of the world that's not conceptual, that's not derived from a logical structure. — Moliere

Note that I agree with this ontological claim. Only a few wacky philosophers forget that concept is merely one 'aspect' of the world. But I don't see any begging of the question.

I can only surmise that you insist on understanding ontology and rationality as I intend them as something weird or intricate or hidden ? For me phenomenology goes down and into the mundane. A person's ontology is just their big picture understanding of life/world/existence and understanding itself. Holism is the essence here. People study all kinds of things, specializing in this or that. But there's a mode of thinking which tries to synthesize a general understanding of reality, probably always with an emphasis on the role provided for this person to whom the world is given.

Is the world given at all? — Moliere

I see from the emojis that you are joking. But as a serious question, I'd call it incoherent. It's self-defeating madness to call the obvious and given unreal in the name of a reality which is (by definition) nowhere to be found. Kant is both a cure for nonsense and its inspiration, depending on which side of the coin one looks.

but I like this game, where the choice of a founding metaphor is indeed significant. 'Existentially' (to me) it's all hebel/hevel (vapor, mist, vanity). But it's a good way for dust that woke up to spend its little moment, seems to me. — plaque flag

Oh, me too. I certainly don't caution against the game. I am a lover of philosophy, if not a full on philosopher. And in a way sometimes philosophy becomes more than a game. It's serious play, but the masters of the art manage to make philosophy into something more. Those moments of "something more", when the game starts to grasp some kind of wisdom are the best parts of philosophy, and I believe we and others will continue to be able to accomplish that.

More and more I think I'm just fixating on "foundations" as a word for its connotations more than denotations, given everything you've said to qualify the word.

The former, so I believe, is a falsehood. But it's important to highlight some differences in interpreting and translating Kant -- for some interpretations he's a representationalist, and for some he's a presentationalist. In both, however, there's certainly only one empirical world. So even for Kant, with the distinction between phenomena/noumena, we start together in a single world (and end up together in a single mind). — Moliere

To me it's fairly obvious that Kant must have expected to be interpreted in a 'sane' way. So my own suggestion that the species is the real transcendental ego is an attempt to clean Kant up. But others got there before me, so I'm just catching up with the conversation.

So my issue is whether you can defend these claims with the texts. I don't blame you if you aren't in the mood to dig thru the texts. No problem. But I did quote clear passages and explain problems with them, and so far not a single Kantian on this forum has actually addressed them. The sense organs are used as real to argue that they (and everything else) is mere appearance ---radically unlike the real they merely represent, radically undermining methodological skepticism.

I really hope I don't sound grouchy. I just get into the spirit of the game.

I really hope I don't sound grouchy. I just get into the spirit of the game. — plaque flag

Heh, not at all. You're among friends here who like to be grouchy! :D

More and more I think I'm just fixating on "foundations" as a word for its connotations more than denotations, given everything you've said to qualify the word. — Moliere

:up:

To me it's a bunch of metaphors, some of which have hardened into literality. Bottom, up, first, last, before, after. Embodied metaphoricity (Lakoff).

So my issue is whether you can defend these claims with the texts. I don't blame you if you aren't in the mood to dig thru the texts. No problem. But I did quote clear passages and explain problems with them, and so far not a single Kantian on this forum has actually addressed them. The sense organs are used as real to argue that they (and everything else) is mere appearance ---radically unlike the real they merely represent, radically undermining methodological skepticism — plaque flag

This is the opening paragraph of the Transcendental Aesthetic in the CPR as translated by Pluhar

"In whatever way and by whatever means a cognition may refer to objects, still intuition is that by which a cognition refers to objects directly, and at which all thought aims as a means. Intuition, however, takes place only insofar as the object is given to us; but that, in turn, is possible only -- for us human beings, at any rate -- by the mind's being affected in a certain manner. The capacity (a receptivity) to acquire presentations as a result of the way in which we are affected by objects is called sensibility. Hence by means of sensibility objects are given to us, and it alone supplies us with intuitions. Through understanding, on the other hand, objects are thought, and from it arise concepts. But all thought must, by means of certain characteristics, refer ultimately to intuitions, whether it does so straightforwardly (directe) or circuitously (indrecte); and hence it must, in [human beings], refer ultimately to sensibility, because no object can be given to us in any other manner than through sensibility "


That is -- it's not the sense organs, which are a subject matter for empirical psychology, but sensibility, which is a part of our mind described at a very abstract philosophical level which founds knowledge on cognition.

"Presentations" is Pluhar's translation of Vorstellungen, which is what Norman Kemp Smith, and others, translate as the more familiar "Representations"

One thing to note is that Kant believes we have a direct cognition of objects due to our sensibility, just from this paragraph. So the notion that he's an empirical realist isn't just a kind of defense -- he's a Transcendental Idealist, which means the empirical world is fully real.

That is -- it's not the sense organs, which are a subject matter for empirical psychology, but sensibility, which is a part of our mind described at a very abstract philosophical level which founds knowledge on cognition. — Moliere

Oh I understand that. My point is that my ability to understand that (and Kant's) is parasitic on my everyday knowledge of sense organs in relation to objects --hence 'sensibility.' Semantic smuggling. It's sci-fi. Like the human idea of God, a daddy without a body. The whole notion of a single unified mind (a monologue in the bubble of experience) is likewise parasitic on our normative discursive participation in a community that trains us to be responsible as a 'free' body (or really the virtuality that haunts it) for that body's sayings and doings. One is one around here.

Heh, not at all. You're among friends here who like to be grouchy! :D — Moliere

Great to hear !

So the notion that he's an empirical realist isn't just a kind of defense -- he's a Transcendental Idealist, which means the empirical world is fully real. — Moliere

But that contradicts what I've already quoted. I do think that his living intention is closer to what you say. It had to be. But he wrote some wild sci-stuff that, were he not the great famous philosopher, who lots of brilliant related stuff, would be mocked as post-DMT babble.

Note that he inherited the trope. This is Hume.

We may observe, that 'tis universally allow'd by philosophers, and is besides pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas, and that external objects become known to us only by those perceptions they occasion.

wow I can't believe you'd trample upon my lord and savior ;D

If you believe there's a heirarchy to texts, however, then the CPR will "trump" the prolegomena. That's why I quoted it in opposition to your prolegomena quote.

If you believe there's a heirarchy to texts, however, then the CPR will "trump" the prolegomena. That's why I quoted it in opposition to your prolegomena quote. — Moliere

I don't think there is a 'final' or 'authorative' perspective on Kant. He himself is a like a 'transcendent' spatial object, seen differently by all of us. No 'pure' or trans-perpsectival access.

I accept no authority whatsoever except good ol' rationality itself, an ideal on the horizon. So it's not a scriptural issue but more about whether we are in a bubble. Much bigger than Kant is the bubble issue itself.

Yeah that's fair. I've let go of the desire to say what he really meant, but obviously it can kick up now and again.

So the reference can sit alongside, at least. I'm no Kant scholar, I'm just a nerd who likes the guy.

Yeah that's fair. I've let go of the desire to say what he really meant, but obviously it can kick up now and again. — Moliere

I think it's great to steelman a beloved thinker. That's roughly equivalent to sharing what one thinks are good beliefs for possible adoption.

I'm really much more interested in the bubble issue itself, as I said above. Kant is just a symbol for that. But so is Hume. Methodological solipsism was always trying to say something profound. So I haven't abandoned what's good in it. I just believe in progress.

This is the advantage of abstract position terminology like direct realism. None of our sentimental attachments (which we all have) get involved in the same way.

I'm not sure that I could climb to those heights. — Moliere

No heights. Depths. My thought for defining element was the intuitive use of pure reason.

Step down: subsuming a possibility under a principle;
Step down: the possibility of mathematics;
Step down: the construction of conceptions a priori to validate the object of the possibility;
Step down: the construction of objects a priori representing the constructed conceptions;
Step down: intuit the phenomena representing the constructed conceptions;
Step down: create the objects the phenomena represent, which is the intuitive use of pure reason.

Divisions of time, same thing. Quantities of space, yep…same thing.

Something only the human mind can do, hence a defining element of it, as far as we know. Added bonus, because you asked a couple days ago….it’s how we know 7 + 5 =12.

Anyway…just to put this to bed.

I think it's great to steelman a beloved thinker. That's roughly equivalent to sharing what one thinks are good beliefs for possible adoption. — plaque flag

What's weird is that I don't agree with him, I just think his philosophy is amazing . :D So in defending him it's really more like "Look, you're not disagreeing with him *in the right way*" which is just the most asinine position to hold, but there it is.

I'm really much more interested in the bubble issue itself, as I said above. Kant is just a symbol for that. But so is Hume. Methodological solipsism was always trying to say something profound. So I haven't abandoned what's good in it. I just believe in progress. — plaque flag

Heh, so this is the downside of the historicist approach -- if they're just a symbol then me bringing up this or that thing about them won't speak to the issue, it'll just bring things back to hermeneutics, which is what I try to avoid -- but it's an old habit.