CPR doesn’t treat of empirical ontology; it is a purely epistemological thesis, from a metaphysical perspective. — Mww

NO. Ontology and epistemology are two sides to the same existence. Causality, e.g., IS IN the existence of this desk in the logic of sensory intuitions being blind by themselves. What you acknowledge to BE a lamp is a synthesis.

What…..not a fan of freedom as sufficient cause? — Mww

You would have to explain your thinking here.

91 pages on sensibility, just under 400 pages on logic, all integral to the human condition. Fine if you wish to deny we are agents of logic, but I’m happily convinced human agency is necessarily predicated on it. — Mww

And what do you think Kant is saying about human agency?

Nope. Extrapolation from what is the case for us, to how the case is to be known by us. We understand the world; we explain the understanding. Language for the second, not for the first. — Mww

Extrapolation is the move from what IS the case to what must be the case to account for this. What is the case is is judgment. What must be the case given the way judgment is structured is pure reason, loosely put. This is basic. Logic is apriori, and Kant's arguments are apriori. But all things are first evidenced in the "world" and and here is where judgments appear. No manifestation in phenomena, then no ground for apriori argument.

Nope. What he means by “first” here, is merely that occassion given to a theoretical systemic procedure. There happens to be a particular theoretical system which presupposes a priori conditions, turning sensation into representation according to pure intuitions and productive imagination. — Mww

I wrote this: ""So when Kant says something like, "What must first be given with a view to the a priori knowledge of all objects is the manifold of pure intuition," this sentential construction is itself bound to the categories."

Obviously this is true since all sentential constructions are so bound. "First" here refers to what is logically first, or presupposed, as when reading this sentence there is a logical structure presupposed in the understanding of its meaning. Logical presupposedness is what the Critique is all about, this digging deep into what must be the case IN the presuppositional underpinning of everyday speaking.

When I write and think, about my notice of the world. While it may that the categories are always involved when I write, it being a phenomenal exercise, it is not the case for when I think, for it is possible that I think in pure a priori terms, that is, non-empirical, for which the categories are not involved. The logic of my a priori judgements still requires affirmation, at least to be productive, but there is no occassion to seize upon intuition. — Mww

How does the thought you may have about logic, or better, when, say, when you are actually doing symbolic logic, escape the very rigor that is at work in your thinking? How can any thought at all be outside of logicality?

I need not go beyond relations in time, to discover what is necessary for something to be possible, as I already mentioned. For something to be possible at all its representation must be determinable in any time. Necessity: determinable in all time; existence: determinable in a time. — Mww

There is no issue here. The reference is to what is logically possible. Simply that. It is logically not possible for an object to be two different colors at once or for an object to be at two different velocities at once.

Agreed, which justifies the claim there is no language in pure thought. — Mww

No language in pure thought? But what is Kant "talking" about? "Pure thought" is simply a language construct that Kant uses to talk "about" things that cannot be talked about. Clearly, one has to "talk" to conceive of pure thought at all, so the issue arises: Can one meaningfully talk about something that stands outside of talk? and it is Kant's own transcendental Dialectic that weighs down on this. In the end, he is just as bad as Descartes.

Correct, from which follows the rules for speaking are very far from the rules for transcendental deduction. — Mww

I don't see any sense in this at all. The rules are rigorous everywhere. They do not vary. I say, If you go out today, you should bring an umbrella, this has the logically essential structure of a conditional proposition. In everyday talk, of course, it is entangled in many affairs, but the logic is unwavering, and can be reduced to its basic structure in symbolic and then, predicate logic. It is IN tthe rules for speaking that logic is discovered in the first place.

Wait…..so all you’re talking about is justifying the origin of the categories, while I’m talking about justifying the use of them? What is necessary for the possibility of things makes little sense to me, but what is the ground for the possibility of transcendental deduction of the categories, is a whole ‘nuther ball of wax.

Dunno where your quote comes from, but in A88/B120 in Kemp Smith is shown that is precisely how the deduction is NOT served.

“…. they make affirmations concerning objects not by means of the predicates of intuition and sensibility, but of pure thought à priori….”.

Your a priori conditions upon which the possibility of experience rests”, are precisely those very intuitions my quote denotes as “not by means of”. — Mww

The categories have no use. They are theoretical postulates. No one can ever "see" such a thing, nor use it. The evidential basis for any discussion about it lies in exclusively in language and its logical features (which is, well, the absolute WORST kind of question begging, as these features which are being talked about are IN the structure of talking itself, and are assumed to be what they "are". Of course, he understood this; see the quote below. But in declaring an end to metaphysics, one has to draw a line, and he drew one, and this is impossible! He does this grudgingly! This is why Wittgenstein had to refer to it as nonsense, even as he talked about it, saying essentially, in the Tractatus, "what I am saying is nonsense."

Here is a quote from A 96, a good one:

Pure a priori concepts, if such exist, cannot indeed contain anything empirical; yet, none the less, they can serve solely as a priori conditions of a possible experience. Upon this ground alone can their objective reality rest. If, therefore, we seek to discover how pure concepts of understanding are possible, we must enquire what are the a priori conditions upon which the possibility of experience A 96
rests, and which remain as its underlying grounds when everything empirical is abstracted from appearances.

See, this is the way He says it, not me. "If such exist" is very important, for it is experience and its qpriori structure that warrants the Critique. The pure concepts are an abstraction, a mere postulation, noumenal and remote.

"Not be means of" is a quibble based on misunderstanding only.

Nope. This is the nature of a transcendental argument, which is a priori. But not all a priori arguments are transcendental, re: those of understanding in its categorical judgements. Transcendental arguments originate in, and are the exclusive purview of, pure reason alone. — Mww

Extrapolation is the logical move from what is taken as an assumption to what this presupposes. This is what "Upon this ground alone can their objective reality rest," in the above is saying. "This ground alone" refers to experience and the logical structure exhibited in judgment. A transcendental argument is nothing but extrapolation--one begins with what is there, and one infers from t his to what must be the case. All extrapolation is essentially logical, an inference from what is known to what is not known.

But this is the tricky part, isn't it: A deductive argument that is not like modus ponens, where the conclusion is discovered in the premises. Rather, here, in this transcendental argument, the conclusion is impossible to conceive! And so the conclusion is clearly NOT exhaustively possessed in the premises, or even possessed at all in them. So can it be properly called a deduction at all? Well, it can if you call it a transcendental deduction, but then, the issue turns to the premises and the warrant. SINCE the conclusion is indeterminate, the logic of the Critique is one from the known to an indeterminacy, not a determinacy, and so while it is an apriori argument, the conclusion is extrapolated from the premises, not deduced from this.

A good question, though: Is Kant's great Deduction, really a deduction at all? Of course, later, it will be put argued that deductions never were deductions in this pure sense because conclusions are never purely deduced as all premises themselves rest on the indeterminacies of language meaning. All bachelors are unmarried cannot be conceived as analytic because the ideas themselves are filled with different senses (Quine. See that argument in The Two Dogmas).

I said Dennett really DOES understand the world. I meant to say, that he does NOT. That this is what happens when all eyes are on how well one constructs an argument.

That’s in fact all understanding is about. It is the analysis of all that contained in the primitive representation “I think”.

“…. And thus the synthetical unity of apperception is the highest point with which we must connect every operation of the understanding, even the whole of logic, and after it our transcendental philosophy; indeed, this faculty is the understanding itself.…”

Thus it is that the function of understanding is distinct from that to which it directs itself when it thinks, or, when the subject exercises his innate capacity for thinking. To understand, on the other hand, presupposes the completion of that analysis, the affirmation or negation of constructed judgements relative to empirical conditions, not yet verified by experience.

All without a single solitary word, either expressed, or merely thought. — Mww

You had written:
So that which is not understood never appears? Guy’s walking down the street, hears a loud bang from around the corner. An appearance to his ears, manifesting as a sensation of sound is immediately given, without him immediately understanding the cause of it.

The issue was whether or not the understanding attends spontaneous events like hearing a loud bang. I said it did, for hearing at all, for us, is a structured affair, that is, when we "experience" anything at all, there is the implicit understanding thta this fits into a familiar course of events, and is not alien or threatening. The TUA is a temporal architectonics, so the recollections of prior loud bang experiences and the like are foundationally apriori, even if judgment is not explicitly brought to bear on what is occurring. This was the point. You were saying the loud bang was received without understanding, while I was saying the understanding is always already attendant, if implicitly.

And I reject that criticism, in that the thinking in CPR resolves the illusion of conceiving the world in any way except as the form of all that is relatable to it, hence hardly meaningless. We perceive things in a world; we don’t perceive worlds. From which follows world is conceivable only as the form of that in which all things are contained, but is not itself contained by it. — Mww

That is actually an interesting thing to say. What do you mean by "We perceive things in a world; we don't perceive worlds"?

He ignores it in CPR because the analysis of who or what we are is properly the concern of his moral philosophy, which is not transcendental. — Mww

It is a moral philosophy that doesn't understand the nature of ethics. Kant is metaethically out to lunch by conceiving a "good will" to be aligned with reason alone. It is, frankly, devoid of meaningful talk about the foundation of moral obligation.

The name given to it presupposes the grasp of the conception to which the name relates. It’s occurence in thought, its conceivability, is explicitly the very purity by which the language describing it, is even possible. Language doesn’t grasp, it merely represents what’s already been grasped.

The purity of language is in thought; the purity of thought is in logic; the purity of logic is in pure reason; the purity of pure reason is the irreducible human condition. — Mww

But there is no purity in thought; purity is never witnessed. It is transcendental, and can only be inferred, and inferences require meanings on both sides of the inference to make sense. One cannot say that X represents Y if Y is absent altogether. Thus, all representation does is place a division between what is "present" and what is not. But it is nonsense to do this, for a division requires both sides to be intelligible.

Calling it "pure reason" is nonsense unless one can identify what this purity is outside of language.
And this not to say the term transcendental is nonsense. Understanding why this is is a great insight into what it is to be a human (to be a "dasein"). Kant had it right in that metaphysics had to go, but wrong to argue for a rationalistic transcendentalism. Reason "cares" nothing for anything, and to ground our practical matters on this can only come from a the mind of of an anal retentive logician like Kant (who, ironically, is labeled a mere fantasist by another anal retentive logician, Bertrand Russell. Go figure).

Science, as a philosophical ontology/epistemology goes absolutely nowhere, quite literally. And science doesn't even begin, again, literally, to talk about the most salient feature of your existence, ethics/aesthetics. — Astrophel

Science and aesthetics cannot be separated as they are two aspects of the same human imagination. Science depends on the beauty of the equation and aesthetic form cannot be created by the artists without reasoned and measured method.

Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Science can include the Natural Sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology, which study the physical world. There are the Social sciences, such as economics, psychology, and sociology, which study individuals and societies. The Applied sciences, such as engineering and medicine, are pragmatic and practical. Finally, the Formal sciences of logic, mathematics, governed by axioms and rules and uses deductive reasoning rather than empirical evidence.

Analytic philosophy is a broad 20th C movement within Western philosophy. It promotes clarity of prose, rigour in argument, and is founded on logic and mathematics. It is characterized by an interest in language, semantics and meaning, also known as the Linguistic Turn. Central figures were Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The Logical Positivists included Rudolf Carnap, and Ordinary Language Philosophers included WVO Quine. With the decline of Logical Positivism, there was a revival in metaphysics, typified by Saul Kripke.

Analytic philosophy is closely aligned with the scientific method. Analytic philosophy uses clarity of prose, rigour in argument, logic and mathematics, Science systematically organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses. Several Analytic philosophers had a scientific, mathematical and logical background, including Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein. Analytic philosophy and science have an interest not only in facts about the world but also about the individual within society. In science are the social sciences of economics, psychology and sociology and in Analytic philosophy are the Ordinary language philosophers, such as Quine.

Aesthetics is included within the philosophy of art, an investigation into the nature of beauty and taste. Aesthetics examines the value of, and makes critical judgments about artistic taste and preferences. It asks how artists imagine, create, and perform works of art, as well as how people use, enjoy, and criticize art. Aesthetics tries to find answers to what exactly is art and what makes good art. The philosophy of art asks what happens in our minds when we view visual art, listen to music or read poetry. As Aristotle said, mimesis is a natural instinct of humanity that separates humans from animals.

Continental philosophy is derived from the Kantian tradition, although is more a family resemblance across disparate philosophical views. Whereas the Analytic is technical, the Continental is literary. Continental philosophy has four main attributes. It generally rejects the view that the natural sciences are the only or most accurate way of understanding natural phenomena. It takes into account Kant's conditions of possible experience, which in large part depends on context, language, culture, history. It accepts that if human experience is contingent, then this opens up the possibility of personal change in the Marxist tradition of personal, moral, political. Continental philosophy can be foundational a priori, can investigates both the cultural and practical and can also be of the opinion that no philosophy can succeed, a position taken by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the later Heidegger.

Continental philosophy can be associated with the aesthetic more than the factual, being a subjective state of mind in the individual rather than the objective fact in the world. Continental philosophy rejects the view that science is the best way to understand the world. Aesthetics is about what happens in the emotional mind of the observer when they see paintings, listen to music or read poetry. Continental philosophy in the belief that human experience is contingent allows the possibility of change , persona, moral and political. In aesthetics, the individual is not a passive recipient of beauty, but actively criticizes the art they experience, can imagine different possibilities and can create their own new experiences and invent new performatives. Continental philosophy accepts that even philosophy may not succeed in its own goals, seen in Nietzsche's perspectivism, the existentialism of Kierkegaard and Heidegger's questioning of the meaning of being. In aesthetics, there is no final goal, but the journey is the experience. The experience is both pleasurable in itself and sufficient in itself .

Science needs aesthetics and aesthetics needs science. The tension between art and science may be traced back to the Greeks, to the ancient conflict of Apollo and Dionysus, between order, reason, and logic and chaos, emotion, and ecstasy. There is the sublime in both the aesthetic and the scientific, in both its theory and practice. The aesthetics of science is the study of beauty and matters of taste within the scientific endeavour. Aesthetic features like simplicity, elegance and symmetry are sources of wonder and awe for many scientists, thus motivating scientific pursuit. Both use representation and the role of values. Both combine the subjective with the objective, imagination with creativity, the inspirational and the pragmatic. In e = mc 2 is an aesthetic beauty.

Science and aesthetics need each other. Science lacking aesthetic form blocks human understanding and the aesthetic experience without a solid methodical foundation will lack import.

(Using Wikipedia Science, Analytic Philosophy, Aesthetics, Continental Philosophy.)

Science needs aesthetics and aesthetics needs science. The tension between art and science may be traced back to the Greeks, to the ancient conflict of Apollo and Dionysus, between order, reason, and logic and chaos, emotion, and ecstasy. There is the sublime in both the aesthetic and the scientific, in both its theory and practice. The aesthetics of science is the study of beauty and matters of taste within the scientific endeavour. Aesthetic features like simplicity, elegance and symmetry are sources of wonder and awe for many scientists, thus motivating scientific pursuit. Both use representation and the role of values. Both combine the subjective with the objective, imagination with creativity, the inspirational and the pragmatic. In e = mc 2 is an aesthetic beauty. — RussellA

Quite a thing to say, and I wonder if Nietzsche would agree, being so close to his Birth of Tragedy. But keep in mind that science has no interest in the aesthetic features of science any more than knitting qua knitting has interest in the joy of knitting. Sure, scientists are fascinated, engaged, in awe, and the rest, but as a body of inquiry and the things it deals with, it does not and cannot touch the aesthetic or the ethical, and this is because what these essentially are cannot be empirically determined.

Arguing that science is essentially aesthetic is a defensible position, I believe. Rorty thinks like this and Dewey thinks like this, and the sense of it lies in the pragmatic reduction of all of our affairs to experience and its structure, a reduction that takes analysis beneath everyday categories to the
"essential" existential features, and here we find cognition, affectivity, anticipation, regret, resolution, and on and on possessed in the singularity of a conscious act. But, of course, these are philosophers, not scientists, who think like this.

But where you talk about continental philosophy, this I understand to be where your interests lie, no? You see in this thread I am arguing with Mww about Kant. Right, of course, to say phenomenology begins with Kant (but then, Kant begins with Aristotle, and Hume, and so on), but I am arguing that Kant is kind of like Hobbes, who wrote the Leviathan as a treatise on legitimate sovereignty: Nobody thinks like Hobbes now (well, Trump, maybe??), but he opened a door wide in the response to what he said, and in that, he is great because he started talk about contract theory. Kant was a rationalist, but reason, Hume said, cares nothing for human existence, for reason does "care" at all.

The nature of ethics/aesthetics is the most important philosophical issue there is. As Von Hildebrandt put it, it is the nature "importance" itself that is first philosophy. To understand ethics, one has to to phenomenology.

I'll stop here, but any thoughts you may have here or elsewhere are welcome.

First was…..

Kant's is an extrapolation from what is the case, to what has to be the case to explain this. — Astrophel

Nope. Extrapolation from what is the case for us, to how the case is to be known by us. — Mww

….second was….

Extrapolation is the move from what IS the case to what must be the case to account for this. — Astrophel

Except Kant’s is a speculative metaphysic, in which the transcendental philosophy constructed to account for it, may not properly account for what is the case. Thus, your notion of extrapolation can only refer to the move from what is the case, not to what must be the case to account for it, but only to a possible accounting. Regardless of how exact and internally consistent his system may be, it may not be what’s actually happening between our ears. He’s very specific in saying, if this way is sufficient then it is so only if it is done right. Hence, if pure reason is the way, then to critique it leads to doing it right.

What must be the case is determinable by the physical sciences alone, and he makes it quite clear that metaphysics is not a proper science, nor can it be, from which it follows that metaphysics alone cannot necessarily be the case that accounts for what is.

Knowing metaphysics is not necessarily right in accounting for what is, all that’s left to us is to make it less wrong.
————-

What is the case is is judgment. — Astrophel

Technically, what is irrevocably the case, is Nature. What must be the case to account for Nature, is guesswork originated by our intellect, and that conditioned by time and circumstance. Thus, what must be the case, is in fact quite contingent, the more parsimonious way to account for our intellectual errors.

If the perspective is limited to the human himself, Nature being given, what is irrevocably the case is nothing more than sensation, insofar as that is the point at which the internal mechanisms of human intellect….of whatever form that may be….become first apparent.

If you’re referring to aesthetic judgement as what is the case, as opposed to discursive judgement of the understanding, then we’re talking of two different conditions. But in relation to what is, aesthetic judgement respects only how we feel about it, rather than how we account for it.

What must be the case given the way judgment is structured is pure reason, loosely put. — Astrophel

Gettin’ pretty far into the weeds here, so “loosely put” is quite apropos. Those judgements structured by pure reason are principles, therefore called apodeitic or necessary, which serve as rules for the function of understanding in its empirical employment. The structure of judgements in general, called either problematic or assertorical, merely represents the unity between the conceptions in the subject to the predicate of any cognition, a function belonging to understanding alone. Whether or not this conception belongs to that conception, hence the truth or falsity of the cognition relative to those empirical conditions from which they arise, re: phenomena, THAT is the purview of reason.

When I think, and my thoughts succeed each other without conflict, my judgements are rational and/or logical. If I think, and then I have to think again or think otherwise, in which case there is a conflict in my judgements, it is reason’s judging that informs of the conflict, either regarding my understanding with itself, or my understanding with experience. Not what such conflict is, how it has manifested itself, but that there is one. Hence the transcendental nature of those judgements structured by pure reason as principles, that by which those discursive judgements is informed of its errors.

But all things are first evidenced in the "world" and and here is where judgments appear — Astrophel

If it is the case all things are first evidenced by their effect on the senses, where does judgement appear? Do we really need to judge whether or not our senses have been affected? That they are or that they are not, to be considered as judgements as such? If such is the criteria for the structure of judgements in general, on order for them to appear, what is to be done with the relation between a phenomenon and the conceptions by which it is cognized? And if such is the case, what does pure reason have to do with it?

It is the case, however, that judgement does appear by the cognition that the “world” is that in which all possible things are first evidenced, but that merely treats “world” as a general condition for things for which evidence is possible. In other words, “world” is the predicate of a principle given a priori in transcendental logic. There remains the need for the intuition of that space in which a thing is first evidenced, and a time by which that thing relates to a perception of it, in neither of which does a judgement manifest itself.
(Sidebar: here, “world”, in Kant, is “reality”) For whatever that’s worth…..

No manifestation in phenomena, then no ground for apriori argument. — Astrophel

No manifestation of discursive judgement in phenomena, but there is imagination, every bit as facilitating as judgement, for a priori argument. As I mentioned above, aesthetic judgement is manifest in the subject as his underlying condition, or, which is the same thing, how he feels about what he perceives. But that relates more to what he feels ought to be, rather than what is.
—————-

Nope. What he means by “first” here, is merely that occassion given to a theoretical systemic procedure.
— Mww

I wrote this: ""So when Kant says something like, "What must first be given with a view to the a priori knowledge of all objects is the manifold of pure intuition," this sentential construction is itself bound to the categories."

Obviously this is true since all sentential constructions are so bound. "First" here refers to what is logically first, or presupposed, as when reading this sentence there is a logical structure presupposed in the understanding of its meaning. Logical presupposedness is what the Critique is all about, this digging deep into what must be the case IN the presuppositional underpinning of everyday speaking. — Astrophel

This part of the conversation originated in….

….when one asks basic questions about the world…. — Astrophel

…and my “Nope” referred to my contention Kant wouldn’t have constructed that sentence. But I guess that wasn’t the point, in that whatever the sentence being constructed by anybody, it must first accord with some logical or presupposed condition by which the subject doing the sentential constructing understands himself.

Now, I’m summarily rejecting that idea, because I contend he who constructs a sentence already understands himself, the constructed sentence merely an expression of that understanding. I’d further stipulate that he wouldn’t construct a sentence at all if he didn’t understand himself, or, if he did stab at in in hopes of expressing himself accurately, he wouldn’t have a clue whether or not he actually did.

So when I, e.g., tell you about the time I fell out of a tree, there would certainly be a logical structure presupposed in the construction of the sentence by which I relay my experience, but if we both look a little closer, we find that all I’ve done is replicate the very logical structure and presuppositions which gave me the experience to tell you about. And here, the categories would fill the bill as logical structural predicates and necessary presuppositions.

But if I tell you about, e.g., the merely qualitative effect imposed on me by the observation of Starlink…..breathtaking, by the way, jaw-dropping in its unexpectedness. I mean…WTF was THAT??? I had to look it up. Didn’t know there was such a thing. Too far removed from my acid days, so I wasn’t afraid I’d lost it. Anyway….point being, categories required for the observation, but not for the qualitative effect of it on me.

So, while I might agree logical presupposedness is what the Critique is all about, I’d maintain it is the logical presupposedness of thought and reason, and thought, in its turn, is the presupposedness of language.

And ya know what….logical structure presupposed in understanding a sentence’s meaning, might be restricted to the form of logic, yet the sentence itself by which it is expressed, necessarily concerns the content of that logic. I mean…you can’t really presuppose content, can you? It being as varied and indiscriminate as circumstance permits.

….which justifies the claim there is no language in pure thought.
— Mww

No language in pure thought? But what is Kant "talking" about? — Astrophel

Are we mistaking the description of a system, for its operation?

Kant is “talking” about his own idea of what’s happening when the human animal uses his intellect.

What’s the problem with talking about pure thought using language, and exercising pure thought without it? Please don’t tell me you talk to yourself, prescribe in words or logic symbols the individual actions required to tie your shoes. Odd that you can tie your shoes faster than you can prescribe each act required in order to tie your shoes, innit?

When you’re reading something particularly engaging….ever notice the words merely represent a certain assemblage of conceptions you already have, and the author is only trying to make you mentally image what’s he’s already done for himself. And it’s only in the case where you don’t have for yourself this certain assemblage, that you have to stop and read again, or look up to the sky and….you know, think….about what the author wants you to imagine.

I have no problem whatsoever asserting that’s the way my system works, and I’m almost as certain that’s the way your system works, too. That language must take precedence, is “….beneath the dignity of philosophy….”**, yet at the same time perfectly authorized to ground “…..philosophizing in an orderly manner….”***
(**1787; ***1644)

Clearly, one has to "talk" to conceive of pure thought at all, — Astrophel

Nope. One has to think to conceive of pure thought, which may then be talked about. One doesn’t talk about that of which he has no conception.

Can one meaningfully talk about something that stands outside of talk?…. — Astrophel

You’re asking about justifying a contradiction? Of course one cannot talk about what stands outside of talk. You must realize we invent the objects used to represent our thinking, the words. For whatever is used for thinking, a word can be invented to represent it. Whatever is thought about, a word can be invented to represent it.

There are no words possible to represent, we cannot meaningfully talk about, only that which cannot be thought, on the one hand, and, we never invent a word then think a conception belonging to it, on the other.

….and it is Kant's own transcendental Dialectic that weighs down on this. In the end, he is just as bad as Descartes. — Astrophel

Given the subject matter of the Dialectic, I gather that somehow you’re saying Manny’s exposè demonstrating the illegitimacy ol’ Renè’s cogito principle, is just as bad as the principle itself.

Interesting, but I’d have to think awful hard nonetheless about how sophistical arguments and paralogisms are just as bad as that which guards against them.
————-

It is IN tthe rules for speaking that logic is discovered in the first place. — Astrophel

Ya know….Kant used mathematics to prove the very possibility of synthetic a priori cognitions. Once their possibility is proved, he then goes about finding them in cognitions other than mathematical. So if it is proven there are rules for understanding, it is perfectly reasonable to suppose there are rules for speaking. On the other hand, while it is perfectly reasonable that to misuse the rules of understanding results in incorrect thinking, it is absurd to suppose the misuse of the rules for speaking results in incorrect speech, or language in general.

And if I don’t agree logic is discovered, then it follows that the discovery of logic in the rules for speech is beyond the agreement pale.
————-

The categories have no use. They are theoretical postulates. — Astrophel

Maybe they are, but why can’t a postulate have a use in keeping with the theory to which it belongs. Sorta like Newton’s g: no such thing but a necessary component in the law of universal gravitation.

No one can ever "see" such a thing, nor use it. — Astrophel

It isn’t a thing to see, and one doesn’t use it like a tool or a device of some kind. It is….they are…..merely explanatory devices used by the intellect, in accordance with a particular theory. Avoided or dismissed by a different theory of course, but no less a component of the theory to which they belong.

The evidential basis for any discussion about it lies in exclusively in language…. — Astrophel

Yes, but the evidential basis for their use lies exclusively in some speculative idea of a system. One who thinks a metaphysical system comes to be on account of the speaking of it, still has to explain where the speaking came from. Not only that, but how to explain, in one example of a veritable plethora thereof, how Joyce and Gell-Mann related the same word for entirely different chains of thought.

…..if such exist, cannot indeed contain anything empirical; yet, none the less, they can serve solely as a priori conditions of a possible experience. Upon this ground alone can their objective reality rest…. — Astrophel

A proper understanding of the theory in its entirety leads to the recognition that “exist” is not meant in its categorical sense. One is supposed to connect the conceptions in conjunction with the context of their appearance, rather than strict accordance with some classification which forces a contradiction.

It is nonsense like that, for which the supposed remedies were to be found in “language games” and “intentionality”. Which reduces to….paraphrasing his words…..don’t bother with the rationality of theoretical speculations, but instead, waste effort on faulting its presentation.
————-

The issue was whether or not the understanding attends spontaneous events like hearing a loud bang. I said it did, for hearing at all, for us, is a structured affair, that is, when we "experience" anything at all, there is the implicit understanding thta this fits into a familiar course of events, and is not alien or threatening. — Astrophel

It doesn’t. Cognitive faculties attend mediately to first-order events, immediately to second-order events that are representations thereof; sensibility attends immediately.

Hearing is indeed a structured affair, a physiologically structured affair predicated on physical attributes.

For any experience, yes, there is an implicit course of events, pursuant to the method by which experience is even possible. What those events are, and the course they take, depends on the theory in which they are the constituents.

And yes, threats may themselves be experiences. And technically, any experience having no antecedent consciousness relating to it, is alien. Foreign. Previously unaware.

Kant had it right in that metaphysics had to go…. — Astrophel

He was quite explicit in declaring that there will always be some form of metaphysics in any human who “…rises to the height of speculation….”.

Metaphysics had to go iff it was intended as, or attempted to be made into, a science. So don’t; no problem.

Except Kant’s is a speculative metaphysic, in which the transcendental philosophy constructed to account for it, may not properly account for what is the case. Thus, your notion of extrapolation can only refer to the move from what is the case, not to what must be the case to account for it, but only to a possible accounting. Regardless of how exact and internally consistent his system may be, it may not be what’s actually happening between our ears. He’s very specific in saying, if this way is sufficient then it is so only if it is done right. Hence, if pure reason is the way, then to critique it leads to doing it right. — Mww

What is the case is the synthetic apriority in language relations with the world. Clearly the move from this is not going to be something determinate, and I did say this earlier when I was talking about the conditions of a proper logical deduction. What must be the case is always going to be the unknown X, but the point is that it must be something, and if one must give a reason why there must be something, one does the Critique. Extrapolations do not lead to certainies, only indeterminacies, and this is why I think this term right, because Kant's argument does not give us determinacy, for this is impossible.

Then what kind of deduction is this? Kant tells us it is a quid juris matter, and this is curious, isn't it? This is a legal term, not a matter of fact (quid facti), but one of right, and so he tells us such cases are never perfectly conceived. I think what he is up to is that in dealing with facts of the world, states of affairs, deduction moves to conclusions in the regular way, and an "empirical deduction" is loosely conceived (as Sherlock Holmes "deduces") and not in terms of the deductive argument contra inductive argument distinction; but in dealing with legal determinations, one is not given merely facts. He says this (A 85), speaking of the way the law faces its uncertainties:

But there are also usurpatory concepts, such as fortune, fate, which, though allowed to circulate by almost universal indulgence, are yet from time to time challenged by the question: quid juris. This demand for a deduction involves us in considerable perplexity, no clear legal title, sufficient to justify their* employment, being obtainable either from experience or from reason.

That is a big confession, for legal outcomes are never certain when "fortune and fate" are duly considered; because fortune and fate take the argument into a sea of uncertainty impossible to calculate. Justice is not quid facti, nor is the transcendental deduction. This is the best he can do, analogize the transcendental deduction to dejure legal thinking, and the question of whether the logical move is one of extrapolation then goes to whether such quid juris inquiry is extrapolatory.

Not sure about that. I'll have to think about it.

What must be the case is determinable by the physical sciences alone, and he makes it quite clear that metaphysics is not a proper science, nor can it be, from which it follows that metaphysics alone cannot necessarily be the case that accounts for what is.

Knowing metaphysics is not necessarily right in accounting for what is, all that’s left to us is to make it less wrong. — Mww

I would argue against the way you put things. Not that science can ever determine what must be the case, but that science deals through premises that are a posteriori, but the logical structure of the judgments in play are apriori in their form. But then, yes, if things fall with repeatable results to the ground, and not otherwise, then a scientific principle can be conceived, and IN this principle there is acknowledged the category of universality (as opposed to an existential quantifier). The logic, not the science, gives this the "what must be the case" in the apodicticity of the universality of the judgment "All things fall toward and not away".

Less wrong? But how can one be more or less wrong about something transcendental? One is confined entirely to what is given and this is certainly limiting, for what is, after all, the evidence? It is apodicticity in judgment and experience, the so called apiority in synthetic judgments.

Rather, consider that what is transcendent is discovered IN what is immanent, and here the language that is deployed attempts to step where it has no place.

So it is the language that sets up Kant's thinking, and this is the language of finitude. The term transcendental is borrowed entirely from mundane thinking, or is it? This, to me, is the fascinating question. Take the "evidence" for the deduction, the structural logical properties of language. One can at best say that this is in the simple giveness of the world, but then, and this is the important part of this, everything is simply given. Kant's move is a metaphysical move, yet the metaphysics that inspires it issues not from some impossible to conceive transcendental foundation for reason, but rather from the transcendence that permeates, if you will, the entire horizon of the world's givenness. To see where Kant ends and the full analysis begins, see Heidegger, then the post Heideggerians, then the post post Heideggerians.

If one takes the idea of transcendental idealism seriously, one will have to eventually drop the rationalistic reduction, and acknowledge that philosophy must perform a reduction on the entirely of our existence. Husserl begins this, Heidegger continues this with, if you will, the first radical exposition of the human soul (dasein. Soul is my choice of words, but this is just because Kant and early Heidegger's attempt to finitize what we and the world are--notwithstanding the transcendental deduction abstract attempt to go beyond this---are a failure). Radical because we have left the Kantian abstract reduction and stepped into the reality before our waking eyes. You do not stand before a foundational logical anomaly (Kant); you ARE a foundational "anomaly" (though, this opens up other matters, like the what makes something an anomaly).

Technically, what is irrevocably the case, is Nature. What must be the case to account for Nature, is guesswork originated by our intellect, and that conditioned by time and circumstance. Thus, what must be the case, is in fact quite contingent, the more parsimonious way to account for our intellectual errors.

If the perspective is limited to the human himself, Nature being given, what is irrevocably the case is nothing more than sensation, insofar as that is the point at which the internal mechanisms of human intellect….of whatever form that may be….become first apparent.

If you’re referring to aesthetic judgement as what is the case, as opposed to discursive judgement of the understanding, then we’re talking of two different conditions. But in relation to what is, aesthetic judgement respects only how we feel about it, rather than how we account for it. — Mww

But Kant's analysis of nature is merely an analysis of logic. Calling the world "sensible intuition" is just dismissive. And the logicality of language is an abstraction; an abstraction from the totality of engagement. The full transcendental dimension of our being-in-the-world is untouched. To say "only how we feel about it" is simply to ignore it. Consider that this feeling is the very basis of, as Von Hildebrandt put it, importance. Wittgenstein refused to talk about value, feeling, aesthetics, not because, as the postivists held, there was nothing there, but because it was too important to allow philosophy to undermine and trivialize it. Wittgenstein was right AND wrong.

Gettin’ pretty far into the weeds here, so “loosely put” is quite apropos. Those judgements structured by pure reason are principles, therefore called apodeitic or necessary, which serve as rules for the function of understanding in its empirical employment. The structure of judgements in general, called either problematic or assertorical, merely represents the unity between the conceptions in the subject to the predicate of any cognition, a function belonging to understanding alone. Whether or not this conception belongs to that conception, hence the truth or falsity of the cognition relative to those empirical conditions from which they arise, re: phenomena, THAT is the purview of reason.

When I think, and my thoughts succeed each other without conflict, my judgements are rational and/or logical. If I think, and then I have to think again or think otherwise, in which case there is a conflict in my judgements, it is reason’s judging that informs of the conflict, either regarding my understanding with itself, or my understanding with experience. Not what such conflict is, how it has manifested itself, but that there is one. Hence the transcendental nature of those judgements structured by pure reason as principles, that by which those discursive judgements is informed of its errors. — Mww

I have no issues with this, I don't think. I mean, sure, this is the kind of thing Kant is saying. It is just that the weeds are off and away from this. Kant's is a well trimmed lawn with pink flamingoes facsimiles and Snow White dwarf facsimiles here and there.

If it is the case all things are first evidenced by their effect on the senses, where does judgement appear? Do we really need to judge whether or not our senses have been affected? That they are or that they are not, to be considered as judgements as such? If such is the criteria for the structure of judgements in general, on order for them to appear, what is to be done with the relation between a phenomenon and the conceptions by which it is cognized? And if such is the case, what does pure reason have to do with it?

It is the case, however, that judgement does appear by the cognition that the “world” is that in which all possible things are first evidenced, but that merely treats “world” as a general condition for things for which evidence is possible. In other words, “world” is the predicate of a principle given a priori in transcendental logic. There remains the need for the intuition of that space in which a thing is first evidenced, and a time by which that thing relates to a perception of it, in neither of which does a judgement manifest itself.
(Sidebar: here, “world”, in Kant, is “reality”) For whatever that’s worth….. — Mww

Go with, the world is that in which all things are evidenced, and leave it at that. The predicate you have in mind would be, For every possible X, if X IS, then X is in and of a world. Something like that. Of course, the burden the is upon the verb 'to be' and this is where works like "Being and Time" come in. That copula 'is' is what needs to be examined.

No manifestation of discursive judgement in phenomena, but there is imagination, every bit as facilitating as judgement, for a priori argument. As I mentioned above, aesthetic judgement is manifest in the subject as his underlying condition, or, which is the same thing, how he feels about what he perceives. But that relates more to what he feels ought to be, rather than what is. — Mww

Then the feeling about what she ought to be has status as a phenomenon. Depends on who you read, but I see nothing to stop imagination to have equal ontological standing to this lamp on the table. Both are interpretatively grounded and both appear before me. Of course, these are classified "ontically" (in the usual ways) differently, but so is everything.

The question about affectivity, the "pathos" of our existence, is one that, like Kant's pure reason, begs for a transcendental accounting. But where Kant seeks the ground for an abstraction, inquiry into this "existence" begins with something palpable and inherently important. For example, a spear to the kidney. Now, do an transcendental deduction on THAT. No, I mean literally, do a Kantian styled deduction, keeping certain things keenly in mind: The pain, like the formal dimensions of experience, is a given, and as such has its transcendental ground outside of the interpretative possibilities of the finite totality of what is known. But what is transcendental here is not the impossible abstraction of pure reason, but the existential reality of the "pure" affectivity. What is meant by "pure" affectivity (the word taken here to encompass the ethical/aesthetic dimension of our world).

LIke Kant, we reduce experience by freeing it of all incidentals, the quid facti states of affairs, so that the essential nature can be revealed. This is an inquiry into the bonum and the malum, and is the most salient feature of our existence being carried to its foundation. The deduction is, of course, to a purity that is, granted, abstracted from ordinary matters, but what is left after the reduction is very different from conceptual form as such. We have touched upon, as Michel Henry puts it, life.

And ya know what….logical structure presupposed in understanding a sentence’s meaning, might be restricted to the form of logic, yet the sentence itself by which it is expressed, necessarily concerns the content of that logic. I mean…you can’t really presuppose content, can you? It being as varied and indiscriminate as circumstance permits. — Mww

I wrote some things below, but my final comment seems the best, so I brought it up to the beginning. One of my favorite questions:

One last thought: Does General Motors exist? Another odd question, for surely it does and has thousands of employees, and so on. But at one time it did not exist. How is it that something that did not exist come into existence? Simple, GM is a complex pragmatic institution that is foundationally a language entity (perhaps therefore a social entity. Says Rorty, who thinks science is a social entity). I think of how it was in language that GM was conceived. carried out, broadened, incorporated, and all the rest. And I think of all the businesses, and schools, and government functions, and then the essential institution of our cuture, the marriages and funerals, the way we organize our time, our zones of possession, and, well, just everything. And then, the critical insight: Isn't a tree simply an "institution" as well? Prior to language, what "is" it?

The point is that language has brought upon us a dimension of existence in which meanings synthesize, not just logical abstractions, to generate reality, being. I see a stone, and what makes it a stone is not some prior qualities inherent in the stone, for talk about qualities at all IS a language event.

I've decided to erase all the rest, so it's gone. This little paragraph above makes the point rather well: Our world is a world of institutions, that is, of instituted knowledge claims, such that what is known is derived from the language/culture matrix in which we are immersed. Rorty said the world is made, not discovered, and this has always stuck with me, because when it comes to saying what the world is, what Being and its beings IS, I find nothing but language. But this doesn't diminish what is discovered at all. What, after all, is language? This, too, is a transcendental question: language interrogating language (as we are doing now) regarding the nature of language. Identity is bound up in language, for the question of who I am itself is born out of language.

And when there is that loud bang behind me, I am always already, ready to assimilate it into a body of institutions already there. Why that sounds like a someting fell off a truck, or like thunder or an explosion, and so on.

But keep in mind that science has no interest in the aesthetic features of science any more than knitting qua knitting has interest in the joy of knitting. — Astrophel

There are similarities between the topics of science and aesthetics which are more than coincidental. One the one hand, aesthetics is about the relationship between the objective particular aesthetic object in the world and the subjective universal aesthetic object in the mind. On the other hand, science is about the relationship between the objective particular event in the world and the subjective universal law about that particular event in the mind. For both aesthetics and science, the particular in the world and the universal in the mind are connected by what Kant called transcendental apperception.

The aesthetic can be looked at in two ways. Firstly, the term was initially used by Alexander Baumgarten. It was borrowed from the Greek word for sensory perception, to denote concrete knowledge that we gain through our senses. Secondly, as a synonym for "taste", in being able to distinguish between those objects worthy of contemplation and those objects not worthy. When we observe an object about which we have a subjective aesthetic feeling, either we have an aesthetic feeling because the object is an aesthetic object, or the object is not an aesthetic object but we are able to perceive an aesthetic in the shapes and colours we experience as sensory phenomena. Post-Kant, the aesthetic is considered as the synthesis of both these, sensory experience and intellectual judgment.

You raise the question as to whether science has an interest in the aesthetic features of science, and as to whether that science is in its essence, aesthetic. Science starts with particular observations, and its goal is to discover from these particular observations universal laws. Such universal laws enable science to predict future phenomenal states. There are two ways of doing this. Either by looking at each particular observation one at a time and through reason and logic combine them into a whole, or by immediately perceiving a gestalt, an immediate unity of parts as an aesthetic. In Kant's words, a unity of apperception. Kant's transcendental apperception is the uniting and building of coherent consciousness out of different elementary inner experiences. Such experiences differ in both time and topic, but all belong to the individual's self-consciousness. Science discovers universal laws from particular observations, both by logical reasoning about the parts making up a whole and by aesthetic intuition about a whole made up of parts .

You also raise the question about Kant's rationalism, his logical reasoning. Though, as Hume said, reason cares nothing for human existence. In fact, reason does not "care" at all. Kant combined Rationalism with Empiricism though Transcendental Idealism. Rationalism is the belief that particular sense experiences are necessary in order for us to discover concepts and knowledge. However, they are not sufficient. One needs in addition the ability to logically reason about these particular sense experiences. Empiricism is the belief, as with Rationalism, that particular sense experiences are necessary in order for us to discover concepts and knowledge. However, for the Empiricists, these experiences can be sufficient. Sometimes, however, logical reasoning may be of assistance in clarifying certain sense experiences. The staring point for both the Rationalist and Empiricist are the phenomena of particular observations. It is through these phenomena that there is the possibility of discovering universal truths. There are two aspects to the aesthetic. First, there is the aesthetic object within sensory experience as an objective entity, and second there is the aesthetic object within the mind as subjective feeling. Science also has two similar aspects. First the particular object experienced as phenomena and second the universal object experienced as a concept. Science is the discovery of the universal from the particular. Science starts with the aesthetic objective object within sense experience and discovers the aesthetic subjective object within a concept.

One belief about the aesthetic object is that the aesthetic object needs no practical use to be aesthetic. Taking their cue from Kant, many philosophers have defended the idea of an aesthetic attitude as one divorced from practical concerns. This is a kind of “distancing,” or "standing back" from ordinary involvement. Kant described the recipients of aesthetic experience not as distanced but as disinterested. In other words, the recipient does not treat the object of enjoyment either as a vehicle for curiosity or as a means to an end. They contemplate the object as it is in itself and “apart from all interest.” An object such as a hammer, which has a practical use, is not aesthetic because it has a practical use, but rather an object, such as a Derain painting, which has no practical use, can still be aesthetic. Arthur Schopenhauer argued that people could regard anything aesthetically so long as they regarded it as independent of their will. That is, irrespective of any use to which they might put it.

Yet there is a paradox here. On the one hand we observe particular shapes and colours within our phenomenal sensory experience which we intuitively find aesthetic. This does not need a reasoned judgment. On the other hand, we instinctively reason that it is not the case that we subjectively perceive an object as aesthetic, but rather that there will be universal agreement amongst everyone perceiving the same object that the object is objectively aesthetic. The aesthetic object is an object of sensory experience. The aesthetic object is not merely as an object of sensory pleasure but also as the repository of significance and value. This synthesis is summarised in Hegel's "the sensuous embodiment of the Idea". There is the sensory: concrete, individual, particular and determinate, and there is the intellectual: abstract, universal, general and indeterminate. This synthesis however gives rise to a paradox, as described by Kant in his antimony of taste.

The human expresses their subjective pleasure in an object as if beauty was an objective property of the object. The human is making a universal general objective judgement about their immediate particular subjective feelings. Feelings about an object are particular and individual, so why do we want universal agreement about the nature of the object. There is a contradiction in making a universal judgment based on particular intuitions. The phrase "aesthetic judgment" is a contradiction in terms, yet we make aesthetic judgements all the time For example, I can accept someone as an expert in nuclear physics, of which I have no experience, yet I cannot accept someone as an expert as to the merits of a Derain painting unless I have had personal experience. There are universal rules in science but no universal rules in beauty. Yet we make aesthetic judgments, such that Derain is a great artist. We can make reasoned justifications for our aesthetic judgements, such as about Derain. We can do this because reasoned justifications can never be purely intellectual but must also be partly based on feeling.

Science and aesthetics are both about the relationship between the world and the mind, the concrete particular and the general universal.

References
Britannica - The Aesthetic Experience
SEP - Rationalism vs Empiricism

Are we mistaking the description of a system, for its operation?

Kant is “talking” about his own idea of what’s happening when the human animal uses his intellect.

What’s the problem with talking about pure thought using language, and exercising pure thought without it? Please don’t tell me you talk to yourself, prescribe in words or logic symbols the individual actions required to tie your shoes. Odd that you can tie your shoes faster than you can prescribe each act required in order to tie your shoes, innit?

When you’re reading something particularly engaging….ever notice the words merely represent a certain assemblage of conceptions you already have, and the author is only trying to make you mentally image what’s he’s already done for himself. And it’s only in the case where you don’t have for yourself this certain assemblage, that you have to stop and read again, or look up to the sky and….you know, think….about what the author wants you to imagine.

I have no problem whatsoever asserting that’s the way my system works, and I’m almost as certain that’s the way your system works, too. That language must take precedence, is “….beneath the dignity of philosophy….”**, yet at the same time perfectly authorized to ground “…..philosophizing in an orderly manner….”***
(**1787; ***1644) — Mww

Kant's does talk about pure reason, and it does make sense to do so, I claim. But then, as Wittgenstein said later, it really is nonsense as well, because in order to speak of pure reason, one has to stand apart from it and observe it from another perspective, for not to do this would be assuming what needs to be shown, and this is just question begging: language/logic cannot even imagine its own nature. All it can do is work within what this nature provides. Logic is shown, but cannot show itself, for this source is transcendental, that is, in order for it to understand itself, there would need to be a third perspective that stands outside of whta logic shows and outside of what logic IS, but this third perspective itself would then raise the same question, namely, that regarding the source of its authority, and this would require yet another perspective; and this is an infinite regression. It's a bit like trying to bring to light some absolute notion of velocity: one would have to be "absolutely" still to have this perspective, but how does one determine whether or not one is moving AT ALL? One would have to stand "outside" of movement altogether to talk about how fast something is moving absolutely. But one can't do this for this absolute perspective would always be questionable regarding whether of not IT is moving. One would have to stand outside movement ITSELF.

So reason asking about the nature of reason really is nonsense. And yet, it makes sense as well, because, and this is a difficult issue, I know, because IN language, language's own foundational indeterminacy is observed, and this is not merely in the logic of words, but is experienced in the uncanniness of our existence. The real question of metaphysics only arises when we acknowledge the givenness of the world as "pure" givenness, that is, the purity of givenness lies with "being as such" the openness of our existence. Kant looks at the world as closed, in both content and logic. If all is well and good, he writes under the heading Transcendental Illusion, "No natural force can of itself deviate from its own laws. Thus neither the understanding by itself (uninfluenced by another cause), nor the senses by themselves, would fall into error." What he fails to see is that logic is NOT closed like this, because language, where we find logic, is contingent, and language is contingent because it is historical. In other words, apodicticity is first discovered as a particle of language. Just ask, what is logic? You will find more language. Ask what any of this is, and you will find more language. Language never really "touches" anything beyond language, and yet, as Dewey et al held, it "works"!

BUT, does this mean the world as it "really is" is just a nonsense term? Like talking about absolute velocity? Tricky. Because as we all know, the world is right there in front of me, and this cannot be doubted, or something there, in its presence, cannot be doubted; impossible to "say" because it is not language. This is where continental philosophy begins, sort of, but I put the inevitable metaethical condition into play: put your finger over a lighted match. Can one doubt this? Now THAT is apodicticity! There is no historicity and its contingency of language here that gives rise to doubt, nor is this an abstraction. It is the opposite of an abstraction, the clearest most vivid thing one can imagine.

So just to sum up: Kant was seeking a bottom line, and he thought he found it in the purity of logic. But he missed the mark by a mile. We know logic only in the medium of the language that conceives it, and this is discursive, derivative. True apodicticity is found existentially in the only absolute there is, which is outside language. Now, you may see a contradiction here because I argued earlier that language/thought/logic attends everything implicitly in overt experience. This is an issue worthy of discussion.

I have thoroughly explored this subject before. I came to the conclusion that a human cannot do much of anything without taking his sensory experience, reason, and values for granted.

I discuss this in greater depth in this post under the "Venn Diagram" section https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15689/page/p1

The aesthetic can be looked at in two ways. Firstly, the term was initially used by Alexander Baumgarten. It was borrowed from the Greek word for sensory perception, to denote concrete knowledge that we gain through our senses. Secondly, as a synonym for "taste", in being able to distinguish between those objects worthy of contemplation and those objects not worthy. When we observe an object about which we have a subjective aesthetic feeling, either we have an aesthetic feeling because the object is an aesthetic object, or the object is not an aesthetic object but we are able to perceive an aesthetic in the shapes and colours we experience as sensory phenomena. Post-Kant, the aesthetic is considered as the synthesis of both these, sensory experience and intellectual judgment. — RussellA

These beg the basic question: what is the aesthetic experience "as such"? The Greek sense has no bearing here; and to refer to "taste" simply shows how misaligned philosophy was with the world. Ask, what is the world? with only true descriptive intent, putting aside the zeal for objectifying and categorizing, and one finds something that altogether defies philosophical objectification, and this is where the significance, is discovered. What is sought, as with Kant, is something that is a stand alone, or, as Kierkegaard put is, "stands as its own presupposition". He thought this could only lie in transcendence, but he really didn't understand that if transcendence is what must account for what is witnessed in logic, then the same goes for all of experience, or all of being-in-the-world.

Consider aesthetics as modality of value, and value to refer to a dimension of our existence that deals with the "good" and so the question goes to the nature of the this very mysterious term, mysterious when considered phenomenologically, and not in some framework of contingency that explains matters is "other terms" and in doing this endlessly begs the question regarding these terms, and then the terms used to account for these, and on. This touches on Derrida, doesn't it? And it is not going to find relief in the traditional thinking.

You raise the question as to whether science has an interest in the aesthetic features of science, and as to whether that science is in its essence, aesthetic. Science starts with particular observations, and its goal is to discover from these particular observations universal laws. Such universal laws enable science to predict future phenomenal states. There are two ways of doing this. Either by looking at each particular observation one at a time and through reason and logic combine them into a whole, or by immediately perceiving a gestalt, an immediate unity of parts as an aesthetic. In Kant's words, a unity of apperception. Kant's transcendental apperception is the uniting and building of coherent consciousness out of different elementary inner experiences. Such experiences differ in both time and topic, but all belong to the individual's self-consciousness. Science discovers universal laws from particular observations, both by logical reasoning about the parts making up a whole and by aesthetic intuition about a whole made up of parts . — RussellA

Note that you are right say I raised the question as to whether science has interest in aesthetics, but not that wondered if science is in its essence, aesthetic. On the matter I did express interest in, forget about Kant, whose thoughts about aesthetics are complicated, needlessly, if you ask me, and ask why science cannot speak about aesthetics or ethics. It is because these are not discovered empirically. The essence of aesthetics is value, and this is not detectable in a telescope, a microscope, nor in quantitative discussions about these. It is like Michel Henry said regarding science's reductive attempts: tear apart the observable things of a human body, and you will not find a "self" anywhere; you will not find fear, desire, love, hate, anticipation, delight, and so on. None of this shows up, and none of this essential ground for aesthetic and ethical affairs.

Thus science has no interest because it cannot have an interest. There is nothing to "observe". But then, the essence of aesthetics is, again, value, that is--no value, no aesthetics. So as Kant said, we go around talking as if our judgments about art are objective, but the ground for this lacks universality, and being a good rationalist, this undoes its objectivity. But not really. The question goes to apodicticity: what is the basis for universality and necessity? Rationality's apodicticity lies not in intersubjective agreement, but in its intrinsic properties, e.g., it is the structure itself of something like modus ponens that mkes for its apriority, and this has nothing to do with what others think, so we put aside this disagreement that qualifies something as mere "taste" and we ask simply if the aesthetic "presence" is qualitatively apodictic, that is, does it possess necessity?

For this we move to a deduction, that is, we reduce the aesthetic/ethics event to its essence (as Kant did with reason) and in this we discover the "pure" affective dimension of our existence (as Kant discovered pure reason). Note how in actual experience, there is no such thing as this purity, for experience is always already entangled. But this is an analytic exercise, and the purity in question is an abstraction from the totality of experience; but having said this, it by no means means that what is isolated for discovery isn't really there. Just the opposite. The whole point is to show that it IS.

What does one discover in this sketch of a transcendental deduction to "pure" aesthetics? One finds the good and the bad, the bonum and the malum, if you like, for the Latin terms pulls thought away from mundanity. What Moore once called non natural properties, something analytic philosophers cringe at.

Of course, an actual deduction like this would take a great deal of "quid juris" work, as Kant put it, but I think it works.

You also raise the question about Kant's rationalism, his logical reasoning. Though, as Hume said, reason cares nothing for human existence. In fact, reason does not "care" at all. Kant combined Rationalism with Empiricism though Transcendental Idealism. Rationalism is the belief that particular sense experiences are necessary in order for us to discover concepts and knowledge. However, they are not sufficient. One needs in addition the ability to logically reason about these particular sense experiences. Empiricism is the belief, as with Rationalism, that particular sense experiences are necessary in order for us to discover concepts and knowledge. However, for the Empiricists, these experiences can be sufficient. Sometimes, however, logical reasoning may be of assistance in clarifying certain sense experiences. The staring point for both the Rationalist and Empiricist are the phenomena of particular observations. It is through these phenomena that there is the possibility of discovering universal truths. There are two aspects to the aesthetic. First, there is the aesthetic object within sensory experience as an objective entity, and second there is the aesthetic object within the mind as subjective feeling. Science also has two similar aspects. First the particular object experienced as phenomena and second the universal object experienced as a concept. Science is the discovery of the universal from the particular. Science starts with the aesthetic objective object within sense experience and discovers the aesthetic subjective object within a concept. — RussellA

This is exposition. Fine.

One belief about the aesthetic object is that the aesthetic object needs no practical use to be aesthetic. Taking their cue from Kant, many philosophers have defended the idea of an aesthetic attitude as one divorced from practical concerns. This is a kind of “distancing,” or "standing back" from ordinary involvement. Kant described the recipients of aesthetic experience not as distanced but as disinterested. In other words, the recipient does not treat the object of enjoyment either as a vehicle for curiosity or as a means to an end. They contemplate the object as it is in itself and “apart from all interest.” An object such as a hammer, which has a practical use, is not aesthetic because it has a practical use, but rather an object, such as a Derain painting, which has no practical use, can still be aesthetic. Arthur Schopenhauer argued that people could regard anything aesthetically so long as they regarded it as independent of their will. That is, irrespective of any use to which they might put it. — RussellA

I've always though this a most curious use of the term "disinterested". Yes, I know what he means, but really? I mean there nothing more engaging of one's "interest" than art, music and the affectivity of these. I mean, the very definition of what it is to be aesthetic is to BE interested. At any rate, sure, one is not bound to an end, for the experience is an end unto itself, possesses its own validation, stands as its own presupposition. Take this further: the aesthetic experience as such is not contingent on anything else for being what it is. Kant should see that this is the very goal of the Critique, to discover that which is what it is apart from relational derivation.

Yet there is a paradox here. On the one hand we observe particular shapes and colours within our phenomenal sensory experience which we intuitively find aesthetic. This does not need a reasoned judgment. On the other hand, we instinctively reason that it is not the case that we subjectively perceive an object as aesthetic, but rather that there will be universal agreement amongst everyone perceiving the same object that the object is objectively aesthetic. The aesthetic object is an object of sensory experience. The aesthetic object is not merely as an object of sensory pleasure but also as the repository of significance and value. This synthesis is summarised in Hegel's "the sensuous embodiment of the Idea". There is the sensory: concrete, individual, particular and determinate, and there is the intellectual: abstract, universal, general and indeterminate. This synthesis however gives rise to a paradox, as described by Kant in his antimony of taste. — RussellA

Hegel is another rationalist, and my approach is to do with reason what Kant did with sensible intuition: essentially dismiss it in the reductive attempt to uncover the nature of the aesthetic, the "pure" aesthetic. I acknowledge reason and language, but this stands outside of the "deduction".

The human expresses their subjective pleasure in an object as if beauty was an objective property of the object. The human is making a universal general objective judgement about their immediate particular subjective feelings. Feelings about an object are particular and individual, so why do we want universal agreement about the nature of the object. There is a contradiction in making a universal judgment based on particular intuitions. The phrase "aesthetic judgment" is a contradiction in terms, yet we make aesthetic judgements all the time For example, I can accept someone as an expert in nuclear physics, of which I have no experience, yet I cannot accept someone as an expert as to the merits of a Derain painting unless I have had personal experience. There are universal rules in science but no universal rules in beauty. Yet we make aesthetic judgments, such that Derain is a great artist. We can make reasoned justifications for our aesthetic judgements, such as about Derain. We can do this because reasoned justifications can never be purely intellectual but must also be partly based on feeling. — RussellA

Now, this is something you believe to be true, right? You really think that "aesthetic judgment" is a contradiction in terms.

A few things: A minor point about the physicist and art expert, which is I thing even if you haven't seen a Derain, you would still hold the art expert's opinion high.

Regarding universality and aesthetic judgment, I argue that Saying X is good may disagree with someone else's opinion about X, BUTthis is because we are not talking about the same X, or, I am talking about X! and the other is talking about X2. X1 is good to me, and it would be good to the other as well IF the other were to experience X1, but she is not, een though X goes by the same name, her X2 is not my X1, because if it were, she would appreciate it just as I do; she would by necessity! Why? Because X1 IS the complex of appreciative factors that fingure into my experience, and they are vast, the vast constituents of all that makes the experience of X1 what it is. The other, were she exactly in my shoes, so to speak, would adore X1 as I do because nothing would change in the equation of X1.

And this is just what Kant has in mind with universality and necessity and agreement which is not a choice but apodictically coercive in formal dimensions of reason. Note that when I say I agree with you as you affirm the logicality and validity of a syllogism, I do not have direct access to your rational grasp of the syllogism. I simply assume we are witnessing the same thing (you know, Quine indirectly takes this kind of thing to task in his indeterminacy thesis) because we speak the coercivity of it with absolute agreement. Well, the same would be the case if with the aesthetic IF I had access to your X1 instead of my own X2. Ask: assuming you experience X1 and I experience X2, are YOU apodictically coerced in your conviction that the qualities you apprehend in X1 are good? Assuming the X1 is not ambiguous, of course you are. Just as when I feel wonderful, I am apodictically coerced into acknowledging this. Kant is transfixed by apriority, but he should be equally transfixed by everything else, simply because everything else is apodictically coercive in this value dimension of our existence.

Just ask: there you are in terrible suffering. How certain are you about this, and how does this compare to the universality and necessity of apriority? Is the latter really more so? I think not.

There are sixteen points I would like to respond to, but like a jigsaw puzzle I am tackling them one at a time. However, shortly I will be away for a week or more, so unfortunately will have to leave this interesting thread.

1) you would still hold the art expert's opinion high
2) Quine indirectly takes this kind of thing to task in his indeterminacy thesis
3) I argue that Saying X is good may disagree with someone else's opinion about X, BUT this is because we are not talking about the same X — Astrophel

I would perhaps listen to an art expert's opinion that Derain painted Le séchage des voiles in 1905, but I would take any art expert's opinion that this painting is a great work of art with a pinch of salt, even though in fact I do believe that this painting is a great work of art.

In the world, objects have properties. It is said that some properties are objective facts, such that Derain's painting was painted in 1905, and some properties are subjective judgements, such that Derain's painting is good.

Some properties, such as good, are clearly subjective judgements, but other properties, such that this object is a painting, which appear objective facts, are also subjective judgements.

As you say, Quine points out the indeterminacy of translation.

Person A born in 1950 and brought up in South Africa and person B born in 2005 and brought up in Nevada will have different understandings about the same concept. For example, person A's concept of a forest, a savanna woodland, will be different to person B's concept of a forest, sparse juniper pine.

As you also say, in fact, person A's understanding of every concept will be different to person B's understanding of the same concept.

No concept can be an objective fact in the world, but rather every concept must be a subjective judgement. Not only is saying that Derain's Le séchage des violes is good is a subjective judgment, but even saying that Derain's Le séchage des violes is a painting is a subjective judgment.

In fact, not only would I take an art expert's opinion that the Derain object is good with a pinch of salt, but philosophically, I should also take the art expert's opinion that the Derain object is a painting also with a pinch of salt.
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I've always though this a most curious use of the term "disinterested" — Astrophel

There some things in the world in which we are interested that have a physical affect on us, such as the wind, and there some things in the world in which we are interested that have a mental affect on us, such as an aesthetic.

It would be useful within the philosophy of art to be able to distinguish these two different kinds of interest.

As the term "transcendental idealism" is a definition rather than a description, in the philosophy of art, we can think of "disinterest" also as a definition rather than a description. In other words, we have an interest in things that physically affect us and a disinterest in things that mentally affect us.
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(as Kant discovered pure reason) — Astrophel

This needs to be be checked. Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason critiques pure reason, and it is my understanding that he concluded that pure reason is not possible.

What is the case is the synthetic apriority in language relations with the world. — Astrophel

Perhaps, depending on context, but I’m claiming the irreducible case, hence regardless of context, is Nature. Language relations with the world presupposes the world, and world being the representation of Nature in general, gives the irreducible.

Which gets us to….by quid juris is it, that synthetic apriority in language relations with the world, is the case? Which in turn requires the answer to, the case….for what?

Then what kind of deduction is this? — Astrophel

The kind of deduction is transcendental, insofar as it is free of any empirical conditions. It’s right to be a deduction of this kind, is to serve as explanation for possession of the conceptions required in a complete system by which the possibility of human experience is determinable.

”….But there are also usurpatory concepts, such as fortune, fate, which, though allowed to circulate by almost universal indulgence….” (B117)

That is a big confession. — Astrophel

Ehhhhh….methinks ‘tis not so much a confession as a sad commentary on the sorry state of speculative metaphysics. Funny, too, in that the historical record exhibits that Kant allowed himself precious few indulgences of any kind, so there wouldn’t be anything of the sort to which a confession of his would refer.

I’d also like to revisit your quote in which he says, “…(…) if such exist….”. At the time, as you well know, synthetic a priori cognitions hadn’t been entered into the philosophical vocabulary. He had to prove the validity of the concept, and he said “if they exist” because no one had yet thought about them as existing. And they don’t “exist” in the strict categorical sense, but I already spoke to that.
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So reason asking about the nature of reason really is nonsense. — Astrophel

The circularity of human reason has been long established and thoroughly understood. It is, in fact, the ultimate transcendental illusion not to acquiesce to its inevitability. It is the case, then, the nonsense resides in the continued engagement with the illusion, re:, that pure reason affords absolute certainties, in spite of being given the means to avoid doing so.

And such is the reason metaphysics cannot be a proper science on the one hand, and the transcendental philosophy is above all a purely speculative system on the other.
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Ask what any of this is, and you will find more language. Language never really "touches" anything beyond language, and yet, as Dewey et al held, it "works"! — Astrophel

Yeah, it works because the human has this incessant need to express his opinions on every damn thing.

See https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111332
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BUT, does this mean the world as it "really is" is just a nonsense term? — Astrophel

Yep, pure nonsense. But to ask or tell of the world as it really is, is something we do all the time. Sorry, had to; couldn’t help myself. Scare quotes….conspicuously absent in those philosophical texts I’d invite on a second date.
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put your finger over a lighted match. Can one doubt this? Now THAT is apodicticity! There is no historicity and its contingency of language here that gives rise to doubt, nor is this an abstraction. It is the opposite of an abstraction, the clearest most vivid thing one can imagine. — Astrophel

Doubt what? I doubt I’d do it. I don’t doubt it’d hurt, but the apodeicticity (speaking of quid juris, by what right is there some concept to which this word belongs????) here presupposes experience.

There is no historicity (oooo….there’s another) of language here, because there’s nothing to be said about the pain….and foolishness…of putting one’s finger over a lighted match.
(Why not contingenicity???)

So if the clearest most vivid thing one can image is that which he cannot doubt….wasn’t Descartes right after all?

True apodicticity is found existentially in the only absolute there is, which is outside language. — Astrophel

Sorta where I’ve been coming from since the beginning. True absolute certainty is found outside language because there never could be anything absolutely certain about it.

What the source is presupposes there is such a thing as absolute certainty, which, according to Kant’s definition is the unconditioned, and that is proved existentially unattainable, and THAT is the purpose of the critique of pure reason.
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Please forgive my frivolity. If one can’t have fun with this stuff he shouldn’t be doing it.

Nope. One has to think to conceive of pure thought, which may then be talked about. One doesn’t talk about that of which he has no conception. — Mww

Talk and think here are the same, as are hand signals, telepathy, facial expressions, brailing, etc., as long as these carry meanings that are structured apriori. Note that when you think you are speaking to yourself.

You’re asking about justifying a contradiction? Of course one cannot talk about what stands outside of talk. You must realize we invent the objects used to represent our thinking, the words. For whatever is used for thinking, a word can be invented to represent it. Whatever is thought about, a word can be invented to represent it.

There are no words possible to represent, we cannot meaningfully talk about, only that which cannot be thought, on the one hand, and, we never invent a word then think a conception belonging to it, on the other. — Mww

Not about contradiction, but outside of contradiction, affirmation, universal quantifiers, references to particle physics, going out for lunch, and so on. "A word can be invented to represent it": To say "what ever is used for thinking" is a bit shaky, because what is "used" for thinking is thinking, or any of the above I mentioned. But "beneath" this is impossible to talk about. Take contradiction: the difference that constitutes a contradictory proposition is a difference in language, exemplified by alphabetical letters. B is what it is in relation to what it is not, A, and all the rest. Each letter defines the definitional boundaries of the others. Thus, contradiction is a closed systemic affair. This is the way meaning has its identity, IN the matrix of language's differences, or as it has been put, in contexts. "Nothing lies outside the con"text"" is infamous, but the idea is that nothing can "exist" apart from the context in which it is conceived. This all began with Kant. This cat on my lap can only be a cat IN the structured logic that identifies it. What it is "beyond" this is impossible to "say". Pure nonsense to even write these words, 'beyond' and 'say'. This is why they go under erasure as they are put forth.

Given the subject matter of the Dialectic, I gather that somehow you’re saying Manny’s exposè demonstrating the illegitimacy ol’ Renè’s cogito principle, is just as bad as the principle itself.

Interesting, but I’d have to think awful hard nonetheless about how sophistical arguments and paralogisms are just as bad as that which guards against them. — Mww

I mean to say that Descartes' cogito is an attempt to identify what cannot be doubted and thus serves as an anchor for constructing a justification for positing a world of things. It establishes a ground for all things that is axiomatic and apodictic. This is, essentially, what Kant was doing. This philosophical move to apodicticity began with Descartes, and is still alive in the neo Husserlian thnking.

Ya know….Kant used mathematics to prove the very possibility of synthetic a priori cognitions. Once their possibility is proved, he then goes about finding them in cognitions other than mathematical. So if it is proven there are rules for understanding, it is perfectly reasonable to suppose there are rules for speaking. On the other hand, while it is perfectly reasonable that to misuse the rules of understanding results in incorrect thinking, it is absurd to suppose the misuse of the rules for speaking results in incorrect speech, or language in general.

And if I don’t agree logic is discovered, then it follows that the discovery of logic in the rules for speech is beyond the agreement pale. — Mww

As long as one doesn't make this reasonable thinking into a transcendental affirmation. It certainly works in familiar matters in the world. You witness something, some gaseous presence on the planet Jupiter, understand that this can only be there if certain conditions apply, etc. but to determine those conditions one has to theorize, let's say, because they are not in the empirical evidence itself, but this theorizing must issue from a matrix of understanding that itself has a proper evidential ground. Transcendental thinking says this evidential ground is absent, but we are going to use language that gets its meanings from things that do have this ground.

But you can't do that. Or can you? I claim, and you know this is THE issue of all issues in philosophy (given that I read continental philosophy, and very little of the analytical tradition) there IS a ground for transcendental thinking. It is our being0in-the-world in which it is found, but remains marginalized because science has such sway in this culture. This will pass.

Maybe they are, but why can’t a postulate have a use in keeping with the theory to which it belongs. Sorta like Newton’s g: no such thing but a necessary component in the law of universal gravitation. — Mww

You mean there is something about Kant's transcendental thinking that cannot be dismissed! Most definitely! Kant is essential, for me. Deeply profound, but he is nevertheless relegated to the history of philosophy outside of continental thinking. Though this may be changing, because anaalytic thinking has worn out its welcome, I mean, there are important things, but its dismissal of metaphysics is impossible to defend.

I argue that metaphysics cannot be removed from immanence, what is there before our waking eyes. I think I mentioned that to me, Kant's shortcoming was that he didn;t see that IF one is going to make a transcendental move, it is because he faces something that is present in the world first, and this something is simply given, for him, in the structure of logic discovered in language, everyday language, there, always already there, in Hi, how are you? Look, the rock is going to fall!, and everything else. But this givenness is in ALL things, in the totality of givenness. The world IS givenness, and thus, transcendental thinking is not to be treated abstractly, but existentially, and this changes everything. Value, what Wittgenstein refused to talk about (think about, brail about, whatever), is the essence of aesthetics and ethics. This is transcendental, and morality now finds its true ground for a "good will" and it's not in the deontological ground given by rationality.

Ethics' essence is found in affectivity, the kind of thing Kant strictly and explicitly dismisses.

Yes, but the evidential basis for their use lies exclusively in some speculative idea of a system. One who thinks a metaphysical system comes to be on account of the speaking of it, still has to explain where the speaking came from. Not only that, but how to explain, in one example of a veritable plethora thereof, how Joyce and Gell-Mann related the same word for entirely different chains of thought. — Mww

I understand this in terms of contextuality and language games. But then, one inevitably encounters actuality. This is why Witt in the Tractatus said the world and ethics and aesthetics were transcendental and nonsense. He was dismissive of such talk, but then, he never read Heidegger. When is metaphysics NOT metaphysics? When it is dicovered in the analytic of the Real.

I would perhaps listen to an art expert's opinion that Derain painted Le séchage des voiles in 1905, but I would take any art expert's opinion that this painting is a great work of art with a pinch of salt, even though in fact I do believe that this painting is a great work of art.

In the world, objects have properties. It is said that some properties are objective facts, such that Derain's painting was painted in 1905, and some properties are subjective judgements, such that Derain's painting is good.

Some properties, such as good, are clearly subjective judgements, but other properties, such that this object is a painting, which appear objective facts, are also subjective judgements.

As you say, Quine points out the indeterminacy of translation.

Person A born in 1950 and brought up in South Africa and person B born in 2005 and brought up in Nevada will have different understandings about the same concept. For example, person A's concept of a forest, a savanna woodland, will be different to person B's concept of a forest, sparse juniper pine.

As you also say, in fact, person A's understanding of every concept will be different to person B's understanding of the same concept.

No concept can be an objective fact in the world, but rather every concept must be a subjective judgement. Not only is saying that Derain's Le séchage des violes is good is a subjective judgment, but even saying that Derain's Le séchage des violes is a painting is a subjective judgment.

In fact, not only would I take an art expert's opinion that the Derain object is good with a pinch of salt, but philosophically, I should also take the art expert's opinion that the Derain object is a painting also with a pinch of salt. — RussellA

When you say calling something good is clearly subjective, this needs a bit of analysis. If by good one refers to a context of good qualities and bad ones, and these qualities are factually given, as when you buy a couch and you are looking for a good one, so comfort, size, fabric and the rest come into play, and these may refer to other objective features, as comfort, for you, means very soft and cushiony, and size refers to the objective dimensions of the new setting, and this explanatory context. it turns out, has a great deal of specificity, but when it comes to the manifest qualities that align with comfort, these can be stated rather plainly. So the "good" of the couch is a mostly public matter, and objective;y conceived when the overt features of the couch are in question. But these features have their telos, if you will. in something that cannot be made public, and this is your sense of comfort itself whether it is comfort about the sitting or about the match to its possible new environment, and the like. Comfort or the good feel of something, this brings in another dimension of expereicne. Not something good FOR, but something just plain Good. the good of pleasure as such, the bad of suffering as such. All contingent goods, goods that are FOR something else, eventually end up at this determinacy, when, plainly put, you just say, I like it! This "liking" is just what it is, and the matter goes no further.

The attempt to say this is not objective but rather subjective rests with an error made confusing contingent qualities with intrinsic goodness they bring about. Comfort to me may be a "matter of taste" but comfort as such is not. It is only that it occurs in one person's world and not in another's, but its occurence is as objective as it gets. Consider that if you are in agony, it is not a matte of opinion or taste, is it?

So I argue that the good, as well as the bad (categories of experience merely) are not subjective in the essence of the judgment that is about art.

And so, if you are aesthetically enraptured (Clive Bell's term) by Derain, I would say true, it is a matter of taste, for, let's say, I am not. But this is not to say the rapture doesn't exist, and IS rapture, and is inherently good as far as this goes. It simply means those contingencies of appreciation are not mine.

This is not, I argue, unlike what Kant does: get past the contingencies of language's entanglements, the incidental features of the judgments we make, and look into essential structures of those judgments, experiences, and you will find something transcendental. The GOOD is transcendental.

As I will be away shortly, I may not have time to fully respond to your previous post, though I will try.

1) So the "good" of the couch is a mostly public matter, and objectively conceived when the overt features of the couch are in question.
2) Not something good FOR, but something just plain Good.
3) All contingent goods, goods that are FOR something else, eventually end up at this determinacy, when, plainly put, you just say, I like it! This "liking" is just what it is, and the matter goes no further. — Astrophel

Person A says that this couch is good for sitting on. Person B also says that this couch is good for sitting on. Person C says that this couch is not good for sitting on.

Whether the couch is good for sitting on or not is contingent on who sits on it.

The question is, who in practice decides whether the essence of the couch is good or bad, regardless of being sat upon?
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So I argue that the good, as well as the bad (categories of experience merely) are not subjective in the essence of the judgment that is about art. — Astrophel

Person A says that this Derain has an aesthetic. Person B also says that this Derain has an aesthetic. Person C says that this Derain doesn't have an aesthetic.

Whether this Derain has an aesthetic or not is contingent on who is looking at it.

The question is, who in practice decides whether this Derain has the essence of being aesthetic, regardless of who is looking at it?
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This is not, I argue, unlike what Kant does: get past the contingencies of language's entanglements, the incidental features of the judgments we make, and look into essential structures of those judgments, experiences, and you will find something transcendental. The GOOD is transcendental. — Astrophel

In Kant's Transcendental Idealism, we are able to cognize appearances in our sensibilities as phenomena, but we can never cognize things as they are in themselves, things-in-themselves.

The ability to cognize things-in-themselves would be transcendent.

We can cognize the appearance of something, something as it appears to us, but we cannot cognize the essence of something, something as it is in itself

We can cognize that the couch is good, as it appears to us, in being comfortable to sit on, but we can never cognize that the couch is good, as it is in itself, its essence.

1) what is the aesthetic experience "as such"?.................What is sought, as with Kant, is something that is a stand alone, or, as Kierkegaard put is, "stands as its own presupposition".
2) the question goes to the nature of the this very mysterious term, mysterious when considered phenomenologically, and not in some framework of contingency that explains matters is "other terms" — Astrophel

We can experience an aesthetic, and we can experience the colour red. Both stand alone in the mind, in that an aesthetic experience is distinct from the experience of the colour red. Both can only result from phenomenological appearances in our sensibilities. Both the aesthetic experience and the experience of the colour red are contingent on the particular person and particular phenomena.

We experience something, such as a painting, music, dance or literature, which we may find aesthetic. These experiences will be spatially or temporally extended. We may or may not discover an aesthetic in the whole relationship between these extended parts. For example, we may experience an aesthetic in the phenomenological spatial relationship between the shapes and colours of a Derain painting.

But why do we have an aesthetic experience when we perceive a whole that has certain relationships between certain parts? Is this really mysterious?

We hear the sound of a fingernail scarping across a blackboard and physically shiver with visceral dislike, and more than likely even cringe at the thought. We see a Derain and may have an aesthetic experience.

Experiencing an aesthetic is a natural consequence of a physical human interacting with a physical world, as falling to the ground is a natural consequence of a physical apple interacting with a physical world.

An aesthetic experience may be mysterious, but no more mysterious than any of our experiences. No more mysterious than feeling pain when stung by a wasp, seeing the colour red when looking at a wavelength of 700nm, tasting something sweet when eating an apple or smelling something acrid because of a bonfire.

An aesthetic experience is no more mysterious that experiencing the colour red, both not unexpected natural consequences of a physical body existing within a physical world.

Note that when you think you are speaking to yourself. — Astrophel

I was hoping, by my mention of shoe-tying and book-reading, you might note that my position has always been that humans generally think in images.

If one speaks to himself, how does he know what to say?
If to think is to speak to oneself, why not just say one thinks to himself?

What seems like the proverbial voice in your head is merely extant experience doing its thing, taking up the time when the cognitive part of the system recognizes it’s only repeating itself.
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But "beneath" this is impossible to talk about. — Astrophel

“This”, here, is thinking, and your idea that what’s beneath thinking is impossible to talk about. I would extend that to your question, “what is logic”. Other than bare definition, what’s beneath logic, is impossible to talk about.
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The world IS givenness, and thus, transcendental thinking is not to be treated abstractly, but existentially, and this changes everything. — Astrophel

I’m not sure what you mean by transcendental thinking. All transcendental is a priori and belongs to reason but thinking both a posteriori and a priori belongs to understanding. In the former is the complete determination of all things in general; in the latter is the determination of one thing at a time. It is by the transcendental substratum for the determination of all things, are given the rules for the possibility of determining particular things. The completely determined in general is an idea; the completely determined in particular is the ding an sich, neither of which is a possible experience.

If we were in the weeds before, we’re damn near being choked out by them now.
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Ethics' essence is found in affectivity, the kind of thing Kant strictly and explicitly dismisses. — Astrophel

I don’t know what affectivity is. What does it mean for ethics to have an essence?

Perhaps, depending on context, but I’m claiming the irreducible case, hence regardless of context, is Nature. Language relations with the world presupposes the world, and world being the representation of Nature in general, gives the irreducible.

Which gets us to….by quid juris is it, that synthetic apriority in language relations with the world, is the case? Which in turn requires the answer to, the case….for what? — Mww

It depends on how you are thinking about what "the world" is. If you are referring to the naturalist view science takes, then I would disagree, for science and its naturalism presupposes Kant's world. A geneticist calls it a DNA molecule, while Kant calls it sensory intuitions synthetically taken up by concepts. Both are right, let's say, but Kant;s is more basic, an analysis of the presuppositions science rests on. For Kant, nature is representation, and this means it is not reality, but only empirical reality.

Nature is certainly not irreducible because when we conceive of what nature is, we find Kant and phenomenology "beneath" what the naturalists can say.

The case for what? Well, it is the case that this stone cannot move itself. It must be moved by something else, and this holds true by necessity, so how can I know this apodicticity that is IN the stone when the stone stands outside of the logic produced in my mental affairs? It MUST be that the stone is not simply out there in a world that is independent of my mental affairs. Rather, there must be a relation that binds the two. Kant proves this in a transcendental deduction, but because it is only about this logical apriority, he misses the need for a transcendental deduction of the totality of experience. I said this earlier, and it is my take on the matter.

You might find Eugene Fink's first lines of his Cartesian Meditations interesting. He writes:

Instead of inquiring into the being of the world, as does traditional "philosophy" dom inated by the dogmatism of the natural attitude, or, where inquiry is not satisfied with that, instead of soaring up over the world "speculatively," we, in a truly "Copernican revolution," have broken through the confinement of the natural attitude, as the horizon of all our human possibilities for acting and theorizing,
and have thrust forward into the dimension of origin for all being, into the constitutive source of the world, into the sphere of transcendental subjectivity.

Entirely up to you, but Husserl writes his Cartesian Meditations and gives Fink the final chapter, and you might find the whole thing worthy of reading. Husserl/Fink is a neo Kantian (hence, the reference to the Copernican Revolution) but his "revolution" is more radical.

Ehhhhh….methinks ‘tis not so much a confession as a sad commentary on the sorry state of speculative metaphysics. Funny, too, in that the historical record exhibits that Kant allowed himself precious few indulgences of any kind, so there wouldn’t be anything of the sort to which a confession of his would refer. — Mww

But his Deduction is analogized to a quid juris legal affair, which has "no clear legal title, sufficient to justify their* employment, being obtainable either from experience or from reason." The absence of a clear title means a kind of shot in the dark, for there is no hope of a determinate conclusion. A bit like a cosmologist taking a stab at what there was prior to the big bang, only much worse,

I’d also like to revisit your quote in which he says, “…(…) if such exist….”. At the time, as you well know, synthetic a priori cognitions hadn’t been entered into the philosophical vocabulary. He had to prove the validity of the concept, and he said “if they exist” because no one had yet thought about them as existing. And they don’t “exist” in the strict categorical sense, but I already spoke to that. — Mww

But really, all one can every say about these pure forms is that they cannot be spoken of. The term 'exist' itself is concept; what isn't? and thus it gives us a principle of subsumption for particulars. and thus conceived in the very disclosure possibilities that it itself presupposes. Kant knew this. No one can talk about noumena existing. The entire Critique is, as Derrida put it, under erasure, or as Wittgenstein put it, nonsense.

But I don't think it's nonsense at all because I don't think transcendence belongs to logical extravagance alone, nor is it rationalistic overreach. Kant simply forgot, typical of mathameticians and logicians, thta we exit.

I was hoping, by my mention of shoe-tying and book-reading, you might note that my position has always been that humans generally think in images.

If one speaks to himself, how does he know what to say?
If to think is to speak to oneself, why not just say one thinks to himself?

What seems like the proverbial voice in your head is merely extant experience doing its thing, taking up the time when the cognitive part of the system recognizes it’s only repeating itself. — Mww

You can say this, that when you are not thinking of a pot and you see and know what it is you are not actualizing the empirical concept 'pot' but ignoring it, at least until, someone says, hand me that pot! and you explicitly hear the word. But consider that the whole culture you live and breathe in has its genesis in language. This was the point about General Motors. Consider what Genera Motors IS. It's not like a cat or a canary or this book such that you can make philosophical issues of body and mind, material and mental, physical and spiritual, and so on. There is none of that "dualism" here, so when we say, think, whatever, what GM IS, we don't have, in the reductive analysis, any ontological difference of this kind. Then what can one say about GM ontologically? If you're Kant, you say it is a diffuse and structured body of conceptuality pragmatically conceived. 'GM' as a concept has no sensory intuitions in its ontology, but when philosophy does its rationalist reduction, it lands where there are, on people, computers, board rooms, chairs and the rest. GM as such doesn't really exist at all outside this contrived context; OTOH, hard to imagine something like this not "existing"---it's in the news, millions are talking about it, employs thousands, has global connectedness, etc.

Here is where I leave Kant, or, I left him much earlier but now do so explcitly. It might be interesting to see how he could talk about this, but I don't have time for radical ontological rationalism in trying to understand this world. The point I am making is that GM's presence in our everyday lives is a pragmatic language construction, and this is no different from empirical concepts themselves: Everything we "are" and everything we encounter is pragmatically conceived. This is the structure of time itself.

Is it that once there was no word for anything? Or that language was there at the very beginning, and as our distant ancestors evolved, so did language? I am reading Barnett Newman's The Sublime Is Now, and he writes

The human in language is literature,
not communication. Man's first cry
was a song. Man's first address to a
neighbor was a cry of power and
solemn weakness, not a request for
a drink of water. Even the animal
makes a futile attempt at poetry.
Ornithologists explain the cock's crow
as an ecstatic outburst of his power.

I picked this up in a discussion about Heidegger, who understands language to be much deeper in the constitution of our existence. Language erupts, if you will, out of the primordiality of an overwhelming world, and evolves into religion and philosophy as it seeks to understand and speak this primordiality.

“This”, here, is thinking, and your idea that what’s beneath thinking is impossible to talk about. I would extend that to your question, “what is logic”. Other than bare definition, what’s beneath logic, is impossible to talk about. — Mww

Wittgenstein would say yes, at least in the Tractatus (which he says, paradoxically, is nonsense!). I "see" logic in judgments like, It won't rain unless there are clouds, and in universal statements like, All Catholics believe Jesus is God's son, but the genesis of this structure cannot be witnessed. As Witt said, to do so would be to draw a line between the logic as shown and the explanatory or meta language used to say what it is. BUt this metalanguage would then need the same meta analysis, and so on. This is the paradox of language and metaphysics. Where did all this talk about God come from? From something that was already there, in the language, like constructions of God's omnipotence, omniscience and the rest: just ampilfications of the familiar.

This is why the positivists loved Wittgenstein. He destroyed metaphysics in a simple stroke of well reasoned thought. But they never read Heidegger. Husserl announced that phenomenology is the REAL positivism. I think he is right.

I’m not sure what you mean by transcendental thinking. All transcendental is a priori and belongs to reason but thinking both a posteriori and a priori belongs to understanding. In the former is the complete determination of all things in general; in the latter is the determination of one thing at a time. It is by the transcendental substratum for the determination of all things, are given the rules for the possibility of determining particular things. The completely determined in general is an idea; the completely determined in particular is the ding an sich, neither of which is a possible experience.

If we were in the weeds before, we’re damn near being choked out by them now. — Mww

The idea is this: Kant looks at experience and "observes" Aristotle's logical structures. So he identifies logical structures and ask about their genesis---but why is the palpable world not given the same due? Logic is just "there" and we call it apriori because of the necessity of it. But the full totality of our existence is no different in the original evidential provocation. To see this, one turns to Descartes and Hussel's Cartesian approach: Descartes wanted certainty to ground the world in what it is, and he found this in the cogito. To make hundreds of pages short: the cogito cannot be what it is without its object, and so the certainty of the object is necessarily is just as necessary as the cogito because consciousness is always about something. If the cogito is necessarily what it is, then the world the cogito acknowledges is as well. To put is in Kant's language, sensory intuitions are just as necessary as the logic that is "filled" by them. Of course, calling it sensory intuitions is just dismissive.

What IS this feeling of misery of delight? What IS this curiosity, questioning, body of eyes, nose and skin, perceptual engagement of care, intent, desire; in short, what does it mean to BE here, for a person's whole existence to BE? This question has far more gravitas then pure reason can ever begin to have, and it is simply there, as logic is, seeking, if you will, its transcendental ground.

See Max Scheler or Von Hildebrandt, the German phenomenologists: It is value, importance itself that is the final analytic of our existence. Pure form literally has no value. Kant was important because he put all eyes on subjectivity, but then he blew subjectivity out of existence. You might find Michel Henry's critique of Kant amusing. The length is I think worthy (my underlines):


How can one not be struck by this extraordinary
conceptual situation: it is precisely with Kant, who
relates the Being of all beings to the Subject, that the
Subject becomes the object of a radical dispute which
denies it all possible Being. Or to put it anothey way: it
is at the very moment when philosophy sees itself clearly
as a philosophy of the subject that the foundation on
which it explicitly and thematically bases itself, and
which it systematically endeavours to elaborate, escapes
it and, slipping from its grasp, tips over into the void of
inanity.
One cannot forget in effect how the rich developments of the
Analytic end up, like a torrent which
suddenly dries up, lost in the desert of the Dialectic.
Now this peculiar turning of the positive into the
negative happens when the Being of the subject itself
comes into question, when it is a matter of knowing if
such a subject exists and, if so, what it might be. The
Critique of the Paralogism of Rational Psychology in
fact radically critiques the Being of this subject in such a
way that anything one might advance about this Being
includes a paralogism, so that if, in spite of everything, it
must be spoken about, one can say only that it is an
"intellectual representation".
Which means that '~ think" (since we are dealing here
with the cogito) is equal to "I represent to myself that I
think". Which means that the Being of the subject is to
be classed as the object of a representation, an object
which on the one hand presupposes this subject, and on
the other never contains by itself, insofar as it is
represented, the reality

‘The hand that cannot grasp itself’

The hand that cannot grasp itself’ — Wayfarer

A hand cannot grasp itself, but nevertheless, is proof of an external world, as Moore wrote in Proof of an External World

In addition, as Descartes might have said, "I think about my hand, therefore I am".

In fact, it seems that my hand not only proves my existence but also that of the external world.

A hand cannot grasp itself, but nevertheless, is proof of an external world, as Moore wrote in Proof of an External World — RussellA

Not the point at issue, if you read the post I responded to.

The individual has property rights on his mind and thoughts. The production of thoughts is the aftermath of a theory of property rights. The individual is the unique owner of property rights on his mind. I don't believe that the senses can be doubted. The individual is, also in the presence of poisoning or consumption of drugs, in a position to perceive his own mind as owned by him. It is the starting point of whatever theory of cognition.

Not the point at issue, if you read the post I responded to. — Wayfarer

The point at issue is Michel Henry's problem with Kant's Transcendental idealism which Henry characterises as "I represent to myself that I think"

This is a combination of Descartes "I think, therefore I am" and Kant's Transcendental Idealism.

To think means thinking about something. Therefore, Descartes might have said "I think about my hand, therefore I am".

Within Kant's Transcendental Idealism, when the subject encounters a hand, the subject recognizes the hand as an object of experience, not as it is in itself, but as it appears within the limitations that the Categories have imposed on it.

Therefore, Kant might have said "I think about my hand as an object of experience, not as it is in itself, but as it appears within the limitations that the Categories have imposed on it"

Kant might have more simply said "I think about a representation"

It is certainly not the case as Henry suggests that Kant is saying "I represent to myself that I think".

A hand cannot grasp itself, but nevertheless, is proof of an external world, as Moore wrote in Proof of an External World

In addition, as Descartes might have said, "I think about my hand, therefore I am".

In fact, it seems that my hand not only proves my existence but also that of the external world. — RussellA

But you move too quickly. Not the external world, but externality itself is a dimension of perceptual event and the perceptual event is a dimension of externality. They are one! as witnessed IN the milieu of the subject.

Therefore, Kant might have said "I think about my hand as an object of experience, not as it is in itself, but as it appears within the limitations that the Categories have imposed on it"

Kant might have more simply said "I think about a representation"

It is certainly not the case as Henry suggests that Kant is saying "I represent to myself that I think". — RussellA

I think this is right. The "myself" as a transcendental Unity of Apperception is entirely "absent". What Henry IS going to say is that Kant's is a thorough reduction to representation, and therefore all is lost, knowledge of the world and of oneself. This is going to inspire the positivists, as well as the idealists, ironically.

Henry holds that when phenomenology is taken to its only possible telos, and the reduction reveals to one the bare presence of existence. Husserl is right, and one's consciousness and the object cannot be separated (though objects come and go, and vary in nature). They are a singularity! And therefore the search for apriority sought by Kant is now materialized in the actuality . And this is, I believe, momentous. For now philosophy is free to discuss this unity. A cup IS the unity of what was once called into question in a division between mind and body, thought and thing, and so forth. The cup Is the affectivity, the anticipation, the rational structure, all of the "secondary qualities", and so on, as well as beyond perceptual grasp, that is, transcendence; or better, transcendence itself is IN the unity; the unity is itself transcendence. Note that when one says the cup exists, the ground for this existence cannot come from the cup as a thing that transcends consciousness (science), for this makes existence completely alien to understanding. The ground must lie in the existence of one's own agency that is always already in the immediacy of the apprehending of the cup.

Descartes was right in the essential method: it is a kind of apophatic method of removing all that stands outside certainty to see what remains, and one can, Kant shows in explicit detail, doubt everything, even thought itself, and this will take some very interesting twists and turns in post modern thinking, but where Descartes' reduction finds the cogito, Henry, following Husserl, sees that this is plainly absurd, for one cannot even imagine thought unbound, in its nature, to the world. There is no such thing as a disembodied thought, and it is not, "I think, therefore I am," but, "I am in a world, therefore I am." This is the beginning for apodictic affirmation of the world, and it puts all thoughts of dualism to rest, because such things only follow AFTER the foundational affirmation. Being-in-the-world is first, primordial.