Comments

  • Currently Reading

    The work as whole deals with looking for an answer to whether justice is merely whatever the powerful say it is. The City of Words is a mirror to the one we live in. In many dialogues, Plato pulls the beards of self-righteous elites. They killed him for that.


    I take your point about anger but there would have been no further dialogue if Glaucon wanted more than the parlor stunt Socrates started with.
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    From this quote, it's clear the ground of our representations, all of phenomena, can't be an object of phenomena. It must be an object in the realm of noumena & it must exist in order for empirical realism to be true.Sirius

    That remark overlooks the role of the transcendental object in Kant's argument. Here it is how it is presented in A:

    Further, we are now also able to determine our concepts of an object in general more correctly. All representations, as representations, have their object, and can themselves be objects of other representations in turn. Appearances are the only objects that can be given to us immediately, and that in them which is immediately related to the object is called intuition. However, these appearances are not things in themselves, but themselves only representations, which in turn have their object, which therefore cannot be further intuited by us, and that may therefore be called the non-empirical, i.e., transcendental object = X.
    The pure concept of this transcendental object (which in all of our cognitions is really always one and the same = X) is that which in all of our empirical concepts in general can provide relation to an object, i.e., objective reality. Now this concept cannot contain any determinate intuition at all, and therefore concerns nothing but that unity which must be encountered in a manifold of cognition insofar as it stands in relation to an object. This relation, however, is nothing other than the necessary unity of consciousness, thus also of the synthesis of the manifold through a common function of the mind for combining it in one representation.
    Critique of Pure Reason, A109

    The same formulation is used in B, now with the role of categories having been established:

    All our representations are in fact related to some object through the understanding, and, since appearances are nothing but representations, the understanding thus relates them to a something, as the object of sensible intuition: but this something a is to that extent only the transcendental object. This signifies, however a something = X, of which we know nothing at all nor can know anything in general (in accordance with the current constitution of our understanding), but is rather something that can serve only as a correlate of the unity of apperception for the unity of the manifold in sensible intuition, by means of which the understanding unifies that in the concept of an object. This transcendental object cannot even be separated from the sensible data, for then nothing would remain through which it would be thought. It is therefore no object of cognition in itself, but only the representation of appearances under the concept of an object in general, which is determinable through the manifold of those appearances, Just for this reason, then, the categories do not represent any special object given to the understanding alone, but rather serve only to determine the transcendental object (the concept of something in general) through that which is given in sensibility, in order thereby to cognize appearances empirically under concepts of objects.ibid. A250/B305

    Further in the same section, Kant makes a distinction that is missing your account:

    The object to which I relate appearance in general is the transcendental object, i.e., the entirely undetermined thought of something in general. This cannot be called the noumenon, for I do not know anything about what it is in itself, and have no concept of it except merely that of the object of a sensible intuition in general, which is therefore the same for all appearances. I cannot think it through any categories; for these hold of empirical intuition, in order to bring it under a concept of the object in general. To be sure, a pure use of the category is possible/ i.e., without contradiction, but it has no objective validity, since it pertains to no intuition that would thereby acquire unity of the object for the category is a mere function of thinking, through which no object is given to me, but rather only that through which what may be given in intuition is thought.ibid. A253/B308
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me

    Maybe you two should have this argument in a Nietzsche specific conversation.
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me

    That paper is narrowly focused on a particular set of issues. The Metaphysics draws sharp differences between the ease with which we can observe kinds as a grouping in a system of classification and what might be an understanding how those species came into being. The many discussions concerning the "actual" in relation to the "potential;" are problems that cut across all enquiries of the nature of beings. The methods of analysis in the biological works are attempts to apply the ideas of causality developed in the Metaphysics to figure how particular beings come into being.

    If you search the site, you will see the issue has consumed much digital ink.
  • The Aestheticization of Evil

    Good points. One of the aspects of "a formerly good person" that is presented in the drama is how a "line of credit" of respectability runs out eventually and ensnares those who were supposed to be the beneficiaries of the crimes.
  • Disproving solipsism

    Please do not be sorry. Being very specific about agreement and disagreement helps me look for what I am trying to find. I was not speaking ironically.

    I figure we do have different views of language. I think there is a benefit in looking for an author's intent before questioning it.
  • A new home for TPF

    Pardon my penchant for analogy.

    If you work in a restaurant, you try to separate stored goods from actual food production. And the idea is central to other means of production. So, I applied a pedestrian truism to a current situation. Not expecting a Pulitzer prize for that observation.
  • Disproving solipsism

    Yes.

    I like the way you carefully qualified the agreement.
  • A new home for TPF

    Now that you are doing it, it seems no brainer to separate the storage room from the grille.
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me

    I like that answer because it opens up ancient through to modern iterations without putting a finger on the scale regarding them.
  • Disproving solipsism

    Causal agency is the language of practical reason.

    I guess I am trying to see a flip side to that where Kant says we have an experience of ourselves through intuition but that does not make us a knowable object. We don't "act" through our thinking alone that would make that possible. Kant often uses a thought experiment imagining an "intellectual intuition" we do not have. Maybe there is a kind of solipsism in that 'missing limb' approach.
  • Disproving solipsism
    What do you think Descartes’ solipsism problem was?Mww

    In Meditations, Descartes wonders if all his experiences in the world are merely dreams and illusion. He asks if the people he sees are machines pretending to be human. He does not have the experience of making everything up, so he wonders if there is an evil demon producing the show. The recognition that a producer is needed divides the solipsism into a least two beings. Descartes opts for a good God over an evil demon which leads to a cosmological proof of said being.

    The above is what Kant considers "assuming merely on the basis of faith" in his Preface of the B edition. The cogito ergo sum would seem to undermine this view with the introduction of a rational agency. I read both A and B versions of the paralogisms as a dismantling of the "ergo" part of the sentence. A slice of that pie:

    From all this one sees that rational psychology has its origin in a mere misunderstanding. The unity of consciousness, which grounds the categories, is here taken for an intuition of the subject as an object, and the category of substance is applied to it. But this unity is only the unity of thinking, through which no object is given; and thus the category of substance, which always presupposes a given intuition, cannot be applied to it, and hence this subject cannot be cognized at all.ibid. B420
    (The long footnote at the end of this passage gives a detailed breakdown of his reasoning)

    By these criteria, solipsism is an empty statement. The judgement of what exists is a process I am engaged within but did not design. It is here that Berkeley also loses the ground to declare what is imaginary or not. Humans are in the cognition through experience business. We are not allowed into the engineering room. That is why Kant has all of our experience as active agents relate strictly to the theater of Practical Reason.
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    Well, it would be quite misguided to think that one gains insight into what the word 'thehousenextdoor' means by reading the original work that gave the world the word, for then one would believe it is exclusively about what a particular house is made of, plus about its appearance.Clarendon

    Are you suggesting that reading the actual book would be misguided?
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me

    That is a good translation. Apostle is also good.
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me

    Or read the book itself. If one wants to swim, jump into the pool.
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me

    I was not arguing against that idea. It is a received opinion. I figure we cannot know for sure. What the writing talks about is the best indication of its meaning.
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    For Aristotle, "Physics" is an investigation about "Phusis" or Nature.

    How ever it came to be called "Metaphysics", that book is concerned with "being as being" and whether there could be such an investigation.
  • Disproving solipsism

    I agree that Kant's argument does not directly approach the thesis of solipsism. Kant introduced the goal of his Refutation as:

    The only thing I can really call a supplement, and that only in the way of proof, is what I have said at B 273 in the form of a new refutation of psychological idealism, and a strict proof (the only possible one, I believe) of the objective reality of outer intuition. No matter how innocent idealism may be held to be as regards the essential ends of metaphysics (though in fact it is not so innocent), it always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us (from which we after all get the whole matter for our cognitions, even for our inner sense) should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof.C Pure R, Preface B XXXIX

    It is toward this end Kant figures he has overturned Berkeley and Descartes with one theorem even though they say completely different things:

    The proof that is demanded must therefore establish that we have experience and not merely imagination of outer things, which cannot be accomplished unless one can prove that even our inner experience, undoubted by Descartes, is possible only under the presupposition of outer experience.ibid. B275

    Descartes solved his solipsism problem through a means that Kant rejects. Both Berkeley and Descartes are taking for granted a view of the self that Kant does not.

    Now Kant does say a lot of things about the "self" that involves faith. The Critique of Judgement tries to make sense of that.
  • Disproving solipsism

    For Kant, in his time, the statement that awareness of self required the existence of "exterior" things was his argument against solipsism.
  • Disproving solipsism

    I can deal with that challenge tomorrow. I will quote from the text I have been referring to and link it to other sections of the other Critiques.
  • Disproving solipsism

    Then what will be the difference between our points of view?

    Will you no longer challenge what I have said in the past as you just did?

    I would rather work with that gap than agree to disagree. It is more interesting.
  • Disproving solipsism

    I am not going to say more until we deal with your charges about my agenda.
  • Disproving solipsism
    You, on the other hand, take a bit of text and use it as the basis for what ends up being self reflection. You want every philosopher to be something like a materialist, and you take one word and draw out a materialist outlook.frank

    That is not the case. I have argued extensively against Gerson's interpretation of materialism as a general idea in Plato and subsequent literature. Are you remembering my objections to Cornford's view of the forms as an argument for materialism? Nothing could be further from the case. I see that I have only been a cypher in your mind.

    I don't want Kant to say this or that. Or if I do, it needs to be a way to read what was written. I don't see the world the way he does in many ways. But he deserves to be fairly represented.
  • Disproving solipsism
    I have a much broader outlook.frank
  • Disproving solipsism

    Pretty contemptuous last word.

    I will leave you with it.
  • Disproving solipsism

    I am trying to avoid being cryptic by referencing specific portions of the actual text. I was sincere in my general thumbnail that you asked for. But that generality is cryptic as all general descriptions tend to be. That is why I was so reluctant to offer it.

    I am doing the best that I can as I understand effort.
  • Disproving solipsism

    The quote you provided from SEP comes from a particular contrast between Kant and Hume. The argument about what the "I" is in the context of representations is an important issue throughout the book.

    The matter of intuition goes to a more "existential" cause of the difference of self and object when Kant says:

    The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own
    existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me.
    Critique of Pure Reason, B275
  • Disproving solipsism

    Since the intuitions are separated from the processes of reason a priori, differences of experience are neither what Descartes nor Berkeley described, as outlined in Kant's Refutation of Idealism.

    That approach is different from observing there are "differences" of experience that provide a context for a subject as presented in Descartes and Berkeley. It is on the same grounds that Kant resisted Hume describing causality as only a story that is told.
  • Disproving solipsism
    He's just saying that consciousness of my own existence requires something to compare and contrast with me. The use of dialectics runs through the CPR. This is a case of that.frank
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    Even if I had a very intimate discussions on many topics or shared some daily life experience with someone, I would not claim I know their deep true inside feelings, thoughts and wills.Corvus

    It sounds like what you are calling "solipsism" is what other people refer to as single individuals.
  • Disproving solipsism
    Per Kant, we don't learn about space and time a posteriori.frank

    That is more of an argument toward accepting an "ontological" limit than saying:

    He's just saying that consciousness of my own existence requires something to compare and contrast with me. The use of dialectics runs through the CPR. This is a case of that.frank

    The Refutation of Idealism section previously linked to argues against the "any difference will do" idea.
  • Disproving solipsism

    This is why I resisted giving a summary.

    Perhaps you could provide references that support your interpretation. On the surface, your description does not account for the emphasis upon the intuitions of space and time.
  • Disproving solipsism

    We do not have access to an "I" as a given before our experience in the world. So, when we approach the matter as if that is not a critical feature of experience, we take on airs and imagine proximity to the divine.

    But that is not all that Kant was trying to say. My summary may be correct and not very useful heard in isolation. Or it could be incorrect which also would require more work reading the text.
  • Disproving solipsism

    I was having fun, too. Maybe it was too culturally limited to my ruralism.
  • Disproving solipsism

    The Introduction written by Guyer and Wood in the linked edition is the clearest summary (and limits to summary) that I have found. Kant developed his view over many years.

    For this discussion of solipsism, I suggest reading the Refutation of Idealism from B275 to B288 in the linked text. It reflects much of the previous part of the book while also trying to sharpen his use of terms.

    I will do my best to answer any questions from that common ground.
  • Disproving solipsism

    Well, Kant put the "not knowing" the other way around. Here is the Theorem from the Refutation of Idealism:

    The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own
    existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me.
    Critique of Pure Reason, B275

    Same ignorance, different day.
  • A new home for TPF

    I am glad that the current pagination will be turned into a single document for the archives. The "Find in page" browser function will make searches one-stop shopping.

    I fixed my email so it is current and then noticed that I had turned off notifications sometime in the past. Just mentioning in case others find themselves out of the loop before the transition.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?

    Fair enough, I should have minded my own business.

    Now this is not a solipsism like some have been misled on the point.Corvus

    There are different varieties of solipsism? How can they be compared to each other? That would seem to cancel the isolation you are reporting.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    From what I've seen the main argument in the last two pages has been that Banno thinks if there are things we don't currently know, then Antirealism can't hold.AmadeusD

    It is difficult to follow your argument since you base it upon an interpretation of what an interlocuter has said rather than engage in the debate proffered.
  • A new home for TPF
    I'm not all that concerned about it, I guess, otherwise I would have been doing that all along.Janus

    I have used some stuff elsewhere but mostly considered writing here as a one-shot deal. Remembering the past for me has been about recalling discussions in OPs. Anything i said was in the context of other statements. There is a Groundhog Day movie quality to much of that.



    Interesting points on how to search the site. Since the old site will be preserved, I wonder if the "advanced search" functions that work now will work there. There are words that get to the beginning of the site, long before I showed up.