….they are all the contents of thought. — Corvus

Correct. Logic being the rules by which the relations of contents obtains.

Of course logic is the form of a thinking system, but it needs the contents. — Corvus

The thinking system needs content; logic, not being a thinking system, does not.

Without the content, how could you have demonstrated the logic? — Corvus

I don’t demonstrate the logic; I demonstrate my understanding of the content of my thoughts, according to the a priori rules logic provides.

If you empty your thoughts, then there will be no logic. — Corvus

We’re not talking about the emptiness of thought; we’re talking about the emptiness of logic. It is impossible to have emptiness of thought, insofar as to think of nothing is a contradiction, but it is a metaphysical condition of logic that it be empty of determinable content.

All logic must have the contents to operate. — Corvus

Actually, logic doesn’t operate. It merely regulates how human discursive understanding operates, and content actually belongs to that faculty in the form of its representations, which are conceptions.

Without it (re: content), it is a pseudo logic or a shell with nothing in it. — Corvus

No determinable object, but for that, not nothing. Logic is really only that by which our judgement is orderly, and adheres to the means for correcting itself.

Gotta keep in mind….thought is not by means of logic, even if thought is intrinsically logical. All thought is by means of synthesis of representations, logic is merely that which underpins the correctness of the representations understanding adjoins to each other, such underpinning more commonly called just….you know….rules.
(If you’re cognizing a circle, one of the rules of understanding is there won’t be angles cognized along with it)

Which gets us to your world of reason. There is a metaphysical precept, for what it’s worth, that understanding is the faculty of rules, but reason is the faculty of laws. Thus it is the world of reason is that by which cognitions are legislated according to, not rules, but principles. The reason for this distinction is obvious, iff one readily admits to the possibility of misunderstanding, but finds error in his reason inadmissible.
(Upon the cognition of a circle, one of the laws of reason concerning geometric figures in general, having nothing to do with the constructing of the cognition of a circle itself, is it must have enclosed a space)

RE: Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
※→. et al,

"String Theory" is an example of "Metaphysics." It is beyond the capacity to be explained through the "Scientific Method." It is beyond the laws of physics as we know it today.

There are many different approaches to addressing the scope and nature of "Metaphysics."

Another aspect angle to "Metaphysics" is the question of "Consciousness" (awareness is a silent dialogue raised by a questing imagination).

THEN: "Metaphysics" also covers the concept of receiving information from an intelligence (an entity) from an etheric realm. The most common such communication is that claimed by the Abrahamic Religious and the inspiration from of a spiritual nature (can intelligence from a higher plain of existence). Those that believe prayer is a connection to a deity (The Supreme Being, The First Cause, and The Creator), of the there is an After Life, are in the realm of Metaphysics (Near Death Experiences, or Supernatural Occurrences).

All this and much more falls in the realm of Metaphysicis.

Something that a huge number of people in the general population has heard of is: When a Spiritual Leader turns water or whine into the Blood of of a Deity (Savior or Messiah), that is scientifically called transubstaniation (AKA: transmutation). This is a form of "Alchemy;" or the magic from which the legends like Merlin are made. This is "metaphysics."


Most Respectfully,
R

Logic is really only that by which our judgement is orderly, and adhere to the means for correcting itself. — Mww

I will come back the other points later, but for this, how would logic be able to correct itself, when it does not have any content in it? How would logic be able to correct the contentless content?

….how would logic be able to correct itself….. — Corvus

Judgement corrects itself.

I think there is an element of both. I don't think it is completely a posteriori, for if it were, we wouldn't be able to associate anything as being something we can sit on. This has to connect to some mental model that is innate in us.

Similarly, I don't think it can be entirely a-priori. We need experience with objects to stimulate such ideas. If we never encountered anything we could sit on, say we only experience a spiky world, perhaps the idea of sitting wouldn't arise. — Manuel

Do you think this generalizes to encompass all thought? There's this dynamic tension between our ideas on the one hand, and the information we come across on the other? I guess I'm just using "information" to mean unorganized data (if there is such a thing.) Maybe ideas and the content of experience are so fused that we can't really dissect it and lay the pieces on the table and have something that's anything like the real thing?

Or you could say that we try to dissect it because that's also part of the nature of knowledge.

I'm not sure. Perhaps mathematics is different, we don't encounter numbers in experience.

Most other things, I think so. The commonsense idea is this picture in which have the outline of a man on one side of the paper, and then on the other side, you have a flower. Then you have an arrow pointing from the flower to the head of the man.

I think it's kind of the other way around, we have these faculties or parts in the mind/brain which must be activated in order to connect with the experience of any object. So it is an interplay, but most of it, comes from the side of the mind/brain, and senses are triggers of activation for the mind.

But that's how I see it, which may be somewhat peculiar.

But that's how I see it, which may be somewhat peculiar. — Manuel

I totally agree, though.

Judgement corrects itself. — Mww

Judgement also needs content, no?

Judgement is always about something. With no contents, judgement is impossible,
You take up logic to arrive at some truth. But there is no content in the logic.
There is nothing to put forward for the premises, and nothing for the conclusion, and there is no truth to perceive.

What is the logic about in that instance? What can judgment do anything about it?

Saying logic is contentless is like saying a car is engineless. A car is box with 4 wheels, but engineless. Because that is what a car looks like externally and cosmetically.

I am saying, no way man, a car needs the engine. Without the engine, car will not start, or drive. Just an analogy. :)

Let’s give it a rest, shall we?

:cool: :ok:

I'm not sure. Perhaps mathematics is different, we don't encounter numbers in experience. — Manuel

We do, however, encounter number. Numerals are the names we give to the different numbers (of things) we encounter. Over there I see nine apples and somewhere else I see nine oranges; the objects are different, but the number of items is the same and we can recognize this and abstract that sameness to derive the idea of an entity we call 'nine'. But there is no entity 'nine' separate from its instantiations any more than there is an entity 'tree' separate from its instantiations.

Ah well, then you are a man of good judgment. :cool:



Ah, therein lies the issue. Is it the case that we encounter them in this empirical manner? It's not clear to me.

Here is another problem, closely related, when you see an apple or a cow or any other ordinary object, does the idea of "one" naturally follow from that object?

I don't think it does. It could serve to instantiate the idea we have, but I don't see a causal connection between the object and any number, these are different things, as I see it.

For instance, look at Plato's Meno, Socrates tells the slave to reason about a square. The slave is able to conclude quite a substantial number of facts from something he does not find in experience, squares.

I think numbers are like that, yes, we have instantiations, but these serve only to illustrate the common thing we are trying to express: "two oranges are similar to two horses", etc. each example being an instantiation of something which goes beyond concrete particulars.

As semiotics asserts information is neither energy nor matter. But it is not something independently of energy or matter either. So, we can say that we are caused to perceive objects on account of their material, energetic effects upon us, but when it comes to perceiving similarity, difference and number, this is not the case.

If you see a person or object in front of you, and then you see several persons or objects in front of you, there is a pattern to the difference and a different pattern for each number of objects. So, I think it is reasonable to say that number is perceived, and the pattern of small number allows us to see how many objects are there at a glance: perhaps up to ten or twelve (although this will likely vary with different individuals).

So, I agree with you that the idea of "one" or "many" is not cause by seeing one thing or many, but rather by the perceived contrast between them, which I think comes down to pattern recognition. It is pattern recognition, differences and similarities, that conveys perceptual information to us.

As to the slave recognizing squares, I think the etymology word geometry shows that it is likely that people saw actual rectangles, squares and circles as laid out in fencing of land and architecture, and that the idea of perfect geometric forms is abstracted from that experience.

I agree with you that there is a sense in which number and geometry "goes beyond" concrete particulars, but only insofar as it is abstracted from our perceptual experience of concrete particulars. In other words, I don't think there is any coherent sense in which number and geometry could be said to be completely transcendent of the phenomenal world.

I guess I am just not following why one would believe that truth-aptness is tied to suggestive evidence from reality as opposed to be merely, in principle, true or false. It seems odd to me. For example, imagine that I have never experienced a TV before, now imagine somehow explained, in principle, how a TV works and made the statement "a TV is in the other room". Even though I haven't experienced a TV and I don't actually know if it is possible for the, in principle, blueprint to work, I nevertheless say that statement is truth-apt simply because it could be evaluated as true or false.

Hello Janus,

How can metaphysical statements or standpoints be truth-apt if their truth is undecidable? The only way I could parse that would be to say that they might be true even though we have no imaginable way of determining their truth.

They are not actually undecidable just because no person is currently capable of deciding it. For example, imagine we are incapable of reaching a certain part of space (right now) and someone says there is a teapot there, just floating around. Is that statement non-cognitive simply because we can’t evalutate it right now as either true or false? Of course not! It is truth-apt because it has the capacity to be either true or false, irregardless of whether we can evaluate it right now or not.

Hello Mww,

Even if I grant all three points are assumed as true, what makes them transcendent claims?

One cannot transcendentally nor empirically prove that there are real (in the sense of non-fabricated) objects which excite their senses or sensations which are “fed” to their faculty of judgment and understanding. It is entirely possible that one is fabricating all the intuitions they have or their senses are picking up fabricated information from an external source (but, in the case of the latter, one would know there is an transcendent world, it just wouldn’t be comprised of real objects).

In the case of proving that the ‘I’ exists, it may be possible to transcendentally prove it if it is required in order to experience in the first place; but I am hesitant whether that is truly possible or not. I could say that there must be something producing the experience which I have, for otherwise it would be nothing “underneath” experience and that is impossible, and that something must be unified; and that unified thing is the ‘I’. So perhaps this one isn’t a transcendent claim afterall.

In the case of there being a distinction between my experience and the world itself, this may also, upon further thought, be proven (potentially) transcendentally. As I could say that if there must be something producing experience and it is the ‘I’, then it must be experiencing by input of raw data (i.e., senses); and thusly there is a distinction between the sensations and the things-in-themselves.

So maybe only the first is transcendent?

Hello Manuel,

Sorry Bob, I missed this somehow.

Absolutely no worries!

No. This case, and other cases of manifest reality are mind dependent. Being able to sit on is a mental construction as are the things we designate as "sittable".

Interesting. To me, either I can sit on something, in the strict sense of being actually capable (and not whether I would prefer to call it ‘sittable’ or not), or I cannot; and, thusly, it is outside of my control, strictly speaking, whether something has the property of ‘being sittable’. I agree, though, that we could restrict that property to be loaded with sociological and psychological limitations, but that would exclude or overinclude things which shouldn’t have been.

So, I agree with you that the idea of "one" or "many" is not cause by seeing one thing or many, but rather by the perceived contrast between them, which I think comes down to pattern recognition. It is pattern recognition, differences and similarities, that conveys perceptual information to us. — Janus

That's plausible, though I would stress or emphasize that whatever pattern we perceive is internal, so the objects or us contrasting objects and things stimulates us to see a pattern.

As to the slave recognizing squares, I think the etymology word geometry shows that it is likely that people saw actual rectangles, squares and circles as laid out in fencing of land and architecture, and that the idea of perfect geometric forms is abstracted from that experience. — Janus

This may be putting too much emphasis on a small point, nevertheless I'd argue that what we see are quite often very distorted examples of triangles or circles in experience, but that we interpret them as being perfect. We notice that our interpretation is mistaken when we go and check the triangle looking thing and see that a line is curved or not connecting, etc.

It's somewhat akin to seeing a pattern on a wall or the floor, and seeing what looks like a face, when it's just certain points arranged in a certain manner.

I agree with you that there is a sense in which number and geometry "goes beyond" concrete particulars, but only insofar as it is abstracted from our perceptual experience of concrete particulars. In other words, I don't think there is any coherent sense in which number and geometry could be said to be completely transcendent of the phenomenal world. — Janus

This is the issue of Platonism in mathematics, a topic I can barely cover. Maybe you are correct. I do find it somewhat puzzling that we have an idea of a perfect triangle or perfect square, when we know we won't find it in experience.

But that may be a cognitive particularity of our species.

That's plausible, though I would stress or emphasize that whatever pattern we perceive is internal, so the objects or us contrasting objects and things stimulates us to see a pattern. — Manuel

I tend to think the language of 'internal versus external' may not be helpful here. I would say both the objects and us (comparing and) contrasting objects pruduces the seeing of patterns.

This may be putting too much emphasis on a small point, nevertheless I'd argue that what we see are quite often very distorted examples of triangles or circles in experience, but that we interpret them as being perfect. We notice that our interpretation is mistaken when we go and check the triangle looking thing and see that a line is curved or not connecting, etc. — Manuel

I agree; the room looks perfectly square, the floor perfectly level and the wall perfectly plumb and so on, until we only find out the imperfections when we apply tape measure and spirit level (and even tape measure and spirit level are not accurate beyond certain tolerances.

It's somewhat akin to seeing a pattern on a wall or the floor, and seeing what looks like a face, when it's just certain points arranged in a certain manner. — Manuel

We do tend to see faces and bodily forms in natural patterns (especially when hallucinogens are involved) but I think the potential for interpreting such patterns in various ways is there in the objects as real configurations.

This is the issue of Platonism in mathematics, a topic I can barely cover. Maybe you are correct. I do find it somewhat puzzling that we have an idea of a perfect triangle or perfect square, when we know we won't find it in experience. — Manuel

As you say earlier classic geometric forms are rarely found in nature apart from the spherical dewdrops, the circular appearance of the moon, and the sun, hexagonal honeycombs, and so on. Some igneous rock forms are also quite geometric. And of course, then you have the advent of human land parceling and building. These natural and humanly produced phenomena, as you said, may appear perfect for all intents and purpose but on closer measuring and analysis reveal themselves to be imperfect. Once we have the concept of the imperfect its dialectical counterpart, the imperfect, naturally follows I would say.

Hypotheses (your tv example) are propositional; however, conceptual suppositions, or interpretations, are not propositional, Bob, insofar as matters of fact cannot make such concepts '(i.e. metaphors) true or not true'.

What do you mean by a conceptual supposition or interpretation? Facts can make a concept true or not true--e.g., the concept of a cat.

I tend to think the language of 'internal versus external' may not be helpful here. I would say both the objects and us (comparing and) contrasting objects pruduces the seeing of patterns. — Janus

It is, admittedly, a very difficult topic, as evidenced by the fact that when you read the classic Descartes through Kant, it's never entirely clear how they are making the distinction, there are some hints, but it's not easy to parse out.

Sure, the emphasis I am making is one of objects being, strictly speaking, a mental construction on the occasion of sense. Both are necessary in practice.

We do tend to see faces and bodily forms in natural patterns (especially when hallucinogens are involved) but I think the potential for interpreting such patterns in various ways is there in the objects as real configurations. — Janus

Well, I would agree to an extent if we are forming a science, I think in this case we can say that the patterns are "real", meaning, an aspect of the world.

But faces on a wooden wall or interpreting perfect geometry when such things don't exist, seem to me to be the way we view the world, being the creatures that we are.

But it's debatable.

As you say earlier classic geometric forms are rarely found in nature apart from the spherical dewdrops, the circular appearance of the moon, and the sun, hexagonal honeycombs, and so on. Some igneous rock forms are also quite geometric. And of course, then you have the advent of human land parceling and building. These natural and humanly produced phenomena, as you said, may appear perfect for all intents and purpose but on closer measuring and analysis reveal themselves to be imperfect. Once we have the concept of the imperfect its dialectical counterpart, the imperfect, naturally follows I would say. — Janus

Which to me raises the question, then why the heck do we have the idea of perfection in objects at all? It's quite curious.

What do you mean by a conceptual supposition or interpretation? — Bob Ross

Again: philosophical statements.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/847527

Sure, the emphasis I am making is one of objects being, strictly speaking, a mental construction on the occasion of sense. Both are necessary in practice. — Manuel

I agree in the sense that we never perceive the whole of any object; so the idea of a whole object or entity, its identity, is "constructed" from various views or touches of things as well as the fact that we all perceive the same things.

Which to me raises the question, then why the heck do we have the idea of perfection in objects at all? It's quite curious. — Manuel

As I said, it seems to me that the realization of imperfection or imperfect accuracy automatically entails the idea of perfect accuracy.

But faces on a wooden wall or interpreting perfect geometry when such things don't exist, seem to me to be the way we view the world, being the creatures that we are. — Manuel

Yes, I agree we contribute a conceptual element in order to see anything as something familiar. But I also think this must be constrained by the things we perceive as well as by our own natures. I think the same goes for animals too inasmuch as they are able to re-cognize familiar things. If this is right then it follows that there is more to "seeing as" than just acquisition of cultural conventions or symbolic language capability.

I agree in the sense that we never perceive the whole of any object; so the idea of a whole object or entity, its identity, is "constructed" from various views or touches of things as well as the fact that we all perceive the same things. — Janus

Sure - this is ok with me.

As I said, it seems to me that the realization of imperfection or imperfect accuracy automatically entails the idea of perfect accuracy. — Janus

Ok, but why? Why not merely take in the object without having an idea of perfection? I can see the use of this in geometry - it allows for exact formulations and proofs and the like.

But what about everything else? I agree that having imperfection seems to entail having the idea of perfection, but outside of isolated cases, I don't see why this apparent fact of our constitution is this way.

Yes, I agree we contribute a conceptual element in order to see anything as something familiar. But I also think this must be constrained by the things we perceive as well as by our own natures. I think the same goes for animals too inasmuch as they are able to re-cognize familiar things. If this is right then it follows that there is more to "seeing as" than just acquisition of cultural conventions or symbolic language capability. — Janus

Yes, our own natures limit the range of things we can see, and this is necessary, for if had no limit in what we can perceive, we couldn't give it a scope which would result in no "picture" at all.

The problem here, out of many which can be pointed to, is to so much what we add to things, but more so what the objects give to us. It's very obscure. Although no longer tenable, Locke's distinction of primary secondary qualities is a useful heuristic.

But outside of solidity (concreteness), I have trouble isolating what else belongs to objects alone. I think they have "powers", as Locke says, to induce reactions in us. But there's a lot to work out in terms of details.

Ok. Thanks for that.

I rather position transcendent in opposition to immanent rather than transcendental, that’s all.

Hello 180 proof,

Again: philosophical statements.

For me, since I am not grasping exactly what the terms you are using are denoting, this just becomes a circular loop: conceptual supposition ↔ philosophical statement. What do either of these mean in your view? Can you be more specific please?

I rather position transcendent in opposition to immanent rather than transcendental, that’s all.

What do you mean by "immanent", and how it is contrasted to "transcendental"?

What do you mean by "immanent", and how it is contrasted to "transcendental"? — Bob Ross

Immanent isn’t contrasted to transcendental.

What I mean by immanent is that which concerns understanding in its considerations of possible experience. Transcendent, on the other hand, concerns understanding in its considerations of that which is beyond all possible experience. And transcendental does not concern understanding at all, but has pure reason for its origin.

Transcendental, in its broadest sense, merely stands for the possibility and application of a priori cognitions and the necessary, dedicated, conditions for them.

I think my posts throughout our discussion have been clear enough, Bob. Again, I find the OP is incoherent for the reasons given. You're not persuaded – that's okay. I've made my point, we disagree.