One of the reasons I think books are important is very much because I'm an autodidact. It's how I introduce discipline into my thinking -- instead of just indulging my every whim the books challenge my thoughts and help me to grow in my thinking.

But then there could be other ways of introducing discipline -- say as @unenlightened pointed out in our bringing our muddled thoughts together we challenge one another. (EDIT: Also, @Srap Tasmaner by introducing learning and curiosity not just about the world, but about how one thinks about the world)

Philosophy is certainly about more than books! But that discipline of thought, so I think, is also a part of it.

This is definitely more pro-social than my outline of reading texts until you get bored :D (what?! people get bored by this stuff?!)

I probably don't. I just like to read it.

But I want to note that "hard" is not "impossible" -- there are some people who manage to unite their spiritual reveries with reason and write some amazing philosophy. But it's definitely hard to do.

Haven’t you ever noticed how much you can get done when nobody’s bothering you? “In the zone” ring any bells? — Mww

Oh certainly. But I hesitate to call my reveries of thought philosophy. A lot of the times, when I subject it to scrutiny, it's not really worth sharing. Which isn't to say it's not valuable! It's just more of a spiritual thing than a philosophical thing. Like when I go for a walk to think about a question: I need that time to think by myself, but then I'll want to bring my thoughts before a body of persons who like to think about the same question and see what they say. But even if the product of that walk is worthless I'll still have enjoyed the walk and the reveries of thought.

That's fair what you say about the dryness and dullness of a full on primary text. And I've read my fair share of commentaries to help me along too so that ought be worked into a method, regardless. I certainly am good with methods, too. And limitations: I often think of philosophy as a kind of art. And just as there is value in learning how to paint, even if you're not going to be Picasso, so there is value in learning how to philosophize, or at least get a sense of it.

echoes your profs suggestion, and I see its merits. A lot of times a person will become bogged down by an original text and it won't excite the mind to do the work, and that love of the work is a part of it I think.

Sure. There's a part of it done alone. But we're here talking, right? Isn't that part of it too?

Is sociality really inherent to philosophy if it can be done alone? Maybe we are using “inherent” differently? — DingoJones

I think so, given that language is already a social technology, and that's what we usually do philosophy with. Speaking alone is like Robinson Crusoe -- he learned how to do the things on the Island from the place he came from where he learned those things.

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

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

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

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

Fair. My historicism showing again.

I'll echo @Banno in saying philosophy is social -- but I'll also provide relief in saying there's something to be said for not seeking. It's just hard to qualify it as philosophy.

:D Oh fine. I'll leave that advice for my more poetic desires.

then how about this:

1. Read a philosophy text and attempt to understand it.
2. Read a different philosophy text, even by the same author, and attempt to understand it.
3. Compare and contrast the two texts. If able write some things down to attempt to solidify your thoughts. Share it with anyone interested! Share it with someone whose at least read the texts too and start a dialogue.
4. Repeat, if desired, or add a rule. (Purposefully ambiguous)

True!

Where to put it in the sequence?

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Care to bid on another defining element?

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

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

In case it's unclear (and to further the conversation on fun stuff ) I'm a nondualist direct realist — plaque flag

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

The phenomenological argument is a hard one to pull off persuasively, and depending upon the phenomenologist we may not even be doing metaphysics but rather attempting to articulate the question of metaphysics as a kind of propaedeutic to the task of metaphysics. With Heidegger I like to point out that the original plan for Being and Time was this huge multi-book plan, but he wasn't able to get to a full articulation of the question of the meaning of being. He articulates the meaning of Dasein by equating Dasein with time, but never back to the original question. I say it's because he gets lost in his own hermeneutic circle, and then the romantic aspects of his philosophy got along all too well with the fascists for his and his philosophy's and his mentor's own good.

The point is that autonomy really is almost apriori. Will you ask me to justify my claim that justification, in a context of freedom, is necessary or foundational ? Is this not merely enacting an ICC ? Is the state of peaceful tolerant conversation another way to put it ? Are we afraid to begin to explicate dogmatism (defining the ICC is the same as defining its negative) ? Will we dogmatically forbid such articulation ? — plaque flag

I'm not forbidding articulation as much as pointing out that it's likely that we're not articulating an ultimate or singular foundation, even within an ICC. More like there are a multitude of communities which are bound together in various different ways. There's a sedimentation or a point of return, but it changes as we move to different communities. One of the distinctions for which I'd say this is clear is between academic scientists and academic historians. These two communities are already bound by rational norms and even in a kind of production of knowledge within the same institution, but the forms of the argument, what counts as evidence for what, what are the worthwhile questions to ask and how we answer them -- these differ between historical and scientific inference. And then if you throw philosophy into the mix we have yet another rationality within the same rational institution.

So we can legitimately ask -- which rationality? We can choose in a given conversation or at a given time, but there's a choice to be made. In which case we can rationally challenge rationality on the basis of choosing one of these rationalities -- do we accept the historical tale of human beings, or do we accept the scientific tale that we're creatures driven by evolutionary pressures? We can choose both and make a reconciliation, but there are certainly communities that don't try to choose both, that prefer, say, science over history as the more rational rationality.

It's that sort of thing that I'm dubious about. I'm not so sure there is a most rational rationality. We can, by appeal to the rational, make the case -- but there's something question begging about appeal to the rational to provide a foundation to the rational.

Sure. To me what you are missing is your agreement with me. Which is to say that you yourself are offering a founding assumption. 'We should apiori rule out foundationalism. — plaque flag

A posteriori -- only after reading and comparing. I certainly think we should read and compare philosophers in order to train our ability to think philosophically. Is it correct to say that reading philosophy books is foundational to philosophy, though? Maybe. And maybe I'm just reacting to "foundations" with its various associations.

But then there was Socrates, who was clearly a philosopher, and he didn't bother with all this.

The metaphor of foundation is, in this context, a metaphor for that which enables. — plaque flag

"That which enables" gets along with my notion of a multitude of rationalities. I think I can go with that: there are enablers to rationality, and what differentiates a rationality from another is the difference in enablers, or what I've been calling a jumping off point.

Having no method at all is a fantasy that, in my view, evaporates with a grasp of our being as thrown projection. — plaque flag

It's important to remember the context of Feyerabend's statement that anything goes in science -- in the face of asking for a total philosophy for all of science that is normative and able to discriminate between science proper and non-science from a single criterion we can note, through comparison of historical periods of science, that there's no single criterion between science proper and non-science.

But creating language-games with fellow researchers (methods)? Sure we need that! It's just not up to the task of the ontologist's concerns, I think. Which in a way gets along with the spirit of Kant: We have knowledge of the empirical world, but that knowledge doesn't touch upon the metaphysical totality which grounds it. Or, in knowledge's multiplicity, they're all self-grounding projects which we are free to take up or leave, but which we're not really sure how to relate that to ontological claims. Or, at the very least, I'm not sure how to relate knowledge, scientific or historical, to ontological claims.

I've been reading along and have appreciated the back and forth. No concrete thoughts on my end, but I wanted to give a good hurrah for your shared reflections.

Just to be clear, I don't at all question your knowledge of Kant. I'm just pointing out what I find problematic in his work. I hope you experience the challenge as an opportunity for fun. — plaque flag

Yeh :)

And cool. I just realized I was about to say things that were different from what you said of the man, so I wanted to note I'm not entirely ignorant in so saying. I could certainly be wrong! But I wanted to note that I was coming from a place of having-read.

My gripe against a tendency in Kant and a certain tendency in Husserl is what I see as their unwitting semantic cheating. — plaque flag

This is something I wonder about a lot: what is the relationship between language and Kant? And I don't think there's much there. In a way I'm tempted to update Kant by saying "Language is the categories", but I also doubt Kant and I know that this would make things yet even harder to point out so I don't.

What is sensible intuition supposed to be if not the 'input' of the sense organs ? — plaque flag

At the very least I think you'd have to say it's what all our sense-organs do with respect to a sensible-intuition. You've mentioned some of the ways we interact with the world that differ like color blindness. The sensible-intuition would still hold for people who have individual organ-sense differences. Which, given that color-blind people can use "red" and "green", has a certain appeal.

So the worldly experience of sense organs, along with the worldly social experience of normative-discursive subjectivity, making a unified stream of experience meaningful in the first place, are smuggled in to a theory that thinks it can construct the world from inside out. — plaque flag

It's important to remember that Kant begins in knowledge -- at least on paper. He has some cases of knowledge, namely math and physical science, which do not fit in with the problem of induction. They're simply better than what the problem of induction would indicate. And in favor of that I'd say Newton's Laws are still used in spite of finding exceptions. "How is it possible for the rules we make up to be true over time?" -- or more directly with respect to the text, how is it we know 7 + 5 = 12?

He's constructing the world from cases which don't make sense when he considers the philosophical problems of what he terms the rationalists and the empiricists, and attempting an explanation for both of them while at the same time securing a place for the sacred outside of scientific knowledge.

But I don't think he's as guilty of stepping out to construct the world as much as Hegel is.

Hence my OP which makes the ICC* our glorious fundamental ontology's 'necessary being' --an enworldled community of 'ontologists' sharing its founding intention.

*The notion of an “ideal communication community” [ICC] functions as a guide that can be formally applied both to regulate and to critique concrete speech situations. Using this regulative and critical ideal, individuals would be able to raise, accept, or reject each other’s claims to truth, rightness, and sincerity solely on the basis of the “unforced force” of the better argument—i.e., on the basis of reason and evidence—and all participants would be motivated solely by the desire to obtain mutual understanding.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jurgen-Habermas/Philosophy-and-social-theory — plaque flag

I don't think what I've said would go against this, actually. Philosophers start somewhere, and I generally prefer collective efforts so it makes sense to say that collectives of philosophers start somewhere.

It's just the "foundations" part I'm questioning.

Kant takes the function of the sense organs for granted, yet the sense organs we can know anything about are only given in appearance, and yet this appearance is made the source of appearance. If space is just in our head, why would we think sense organs mediate an 'outside' (things-in-themselves, presensuous urstuff) ? — plaque flag

I'm pretty solid on Kant. @Jamal and @Mww have taught me much, but I done some reading on the guy.

It's not in the head, it's in the mind. At least, again, as I read it.

The Mind here isn't even necessarily human -- Kant speculates about other minds like ours from other creatures. The defining element of our mind is its possession of a sensible intuition which is defined with respect to the concept of an intellectual intuition.

"intuition" has a special meaning in Kantian philosophy, just to make things worse.

But what I intend by this is that the sense-organs are mere objects in the world of the sensible and as such are clearly as real as doorknobs, and that these are questions, at least according to Kant, for empirical psychology. With respect to the possibility of knowledge -- that's where his philosophy operates. How is it possible to know that the sense-organs are related to such-and-such an experience? Well because experience and the sense-organs are a part of the empirical world which is given to us through the combination of the categories through the schematism into the sensible intuition which we all share.

Which is to note, at least, it's not in your head as much as it is in our mind -- at least the transcendental necessities of our mind.

The so-called Münchhausen trilemma—that is, that all attempts to discover ultimate foundations result in either logical circularity, infinite regress, or an arbitrary end to the process of justification—can be overcome by moving from the level of semantic analysis to the level of pragmatics and recognizing that some presuppositions are necessary for the very possibility of intersubjectively valid criticism and argumentation. — plaque flag

I wouldn't rely upon the trilemma as much as the method I've already proposed -- we can come to see that philosophers start from different places through the humble method of comparison and contrast after having read the philosophers. And that's why I have doubts on ultimate foundations: seems like there's a lot of possible foundations to go around claiming as ultimate foundations. The task of the foundationalist, then, is to set out the ultimate foundation persuasively.

Hegel on the other hand is an absolute idealist, meaning that there is no 'thing in itself', that is itself a contradictory idea. There is nothing laying 'behind' our sensibility and the distinction sensibility and understanding cannot be made. Instead the world as it is necessarily confirms to the world as we understand it. The understanding is what is the world (The rational is the real). That is oftentimes read as something very exalted or esoteric, but I think it means nothing less than that something can be a certain something at all is because the way we understand, perceive, handle, interact with that certain something. Saying for instance that a door knob is not really really a doorknob, but instead a bundle of intuitions from some noumenal world, is nonsense for Hegel. A doorknob is a doorknob is a doorknob. There are just no god given doorknobs, they are a product of our interaction with the world. That is not a transcendental but an immanent logic. — Tobias

Thank you. I knew you'd be better at it :D

@plaque flag I'd note that the door knob example could be interpreted differently depending upon how we're setting Kant out --as a two-world theorist or a two-aspect theorist, and what we mean by both of those. The main thing I'd say is there is no doorknob-in-itself as I understand Kant's philosophy, that this is an empirically real object, and the transcendental object serves as a limiting concept for determination -- we only get to the two-aspect/world through the deduction of empirical reality and how it is we can know things a priori synthetically.

Which is to say that I've agreed that there is a kind of lazy Kantianism which relies upon the phenomena/noumena distinction, but I'd caution against attacking the distinction as much as the way Kant gets to the distinction.

Because then there'd be a reason to make a choice between two kinds of rationality -- one which relies upon a transcendental logic, and the other which relies upon Hegel's logic.

An ancient Greek philosopher said if horses had gods, their gods would be horses. — Art48

Xenophanes

Heh. I agree it's odd! :D

I'm at least earnest so I think I'm saying true things of Kant. Though I'd read his answer to What is Enlightenment? as a challenge to the traditionalists. He's an interesting philosopher because he engages so many perspectives and then goes on to invent a logical form which justifies and denies the two sides he perceived as being in error -- the rationalists and the empiricists, with an emphasis on Hume because Kant thought Hume a really good philosopher.

But I do have it already under the title “…Limits of Reason Alone”, Greene, 1934, which might explain why I didn’t recognize “bare reason”: re: the limit of religion in Bennet 2017, among others. Despite all that, I’ll look for a dedicated reference to it, see what all the fuss is about. — Mww

OK I thought I was crazy. That's originally what I wanted to say and then I wanted to check myself on google, and so I changed my phrasing to match what google would say. "Limits of reason alone" is the phrase that I wanted to express before checking myself.

What is bare reason? — Mww

https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/kant1793.pdf

It's been a minute since I read it, but that's the text I was referencing.

Place of reason. Is that supposed to indicate a condition wherein the faculty of reason is suited to be employed?

Yup! That sounds about right to me.

So Kant's place of reason means it is suitable for employment universally with respect to all experience, but not suitable for employment universally with respect to all reality?

Exactly!

So what grounds a universal reason in Hegel’s sense, such that its place is both with respect to all experience and with all reality?

The dialectic. He makes some, what I consider to be, off-hand remarks on Kant's philosophy, but it's his invention of the dialectic which overcomes Kant (at least, this is how I read Hegel's intent)

And if all reality is a possible experience, and in Kant there is a place for reason with respect to possible experience, isn’t that synonymous with Hegel’s sense of a universal reason?

“….. in the expectation that there may perhaps be conceptions which relate à priori to objects.…we form to ourselves…the idea of a science of pure understanding and rational cognition, by means of which we may cogitate objects entirely à priori. A science of this kind….must be called transcendental logic, because it has….to do with the laws of understanding and reason…..only in an à priori relation to objects.

I think the big conceptual difference between Kant and Hegel is their respective use of the concept "time". Hegel challenges the law of the excluded middle on the basis of time, where Kant accepts it because he believes Aristotle started a science of logic, and he's picking up that torch to further the project of a science of logic. Hegel builds a logic which "contains" or at least allows contradiction at certain points of time in the name of sublation, due to his reading of the history of philosophy (which, in its expression in The Phenomology of Mind/Spirit, isn't even chronological!)

I'd emphasize the popular quote "The rational is real, and the real is rational" -- where Kant would deny our knowledge of the real in certain respects (explicitly: God, Freedom, and Immortality).

Which is not to disbelieve in the pure thought that there may be conceptions which relate a priori to objects, but only disbelieve in the relating the conceptions to the objects, or, which is the same thing, disbelieve in cognizing objects entirely a priori given their antecedent conceptions.

Without a Kantian transcendental logic, how do space and time, purely transcendental conceptions, relate entirely a priori to objects? Apparently, Hegel has a way, himself a transcendental philosopher, so I’m led to think. Or at least a German idealist in some strict sense.\

Hegel: the categories define what it is to be an object in general, such that it can be given, separating the immanent from the transcendent;
Kant: the categories define** the conditions for knowing what an object in general is, its being already given, separating experience from illusion.
(**not really, but for the sake of consistency…..)

So….it’s fine to disbelieve in Kantian transcendental logic, which presupposes a fair understanding of what it is, but how is Hegel’s logic any less transcendental?

Heh. You're asking the wrong person. @Tobias would be a much more sympathetic voice if he's willing to pipe up on Hegel.

Hegel is certainly a German Idealist.

Rhetorical. Again…..I just had nothing better to do.

I'm flattered and glad to have you along :)

:eyes:
Do it!

Do it!

Do it!

Do it!

Yes. Now we optionally start walking on 'the dark side of God.' Tangent (?), but did you ever look at Blood Meridian ? Dark dark beauty. — plaque flag

Nope. I haven't broached Cormac McCarthy because it just seemed way too dark for me. I have enough dark thoughts to occupy my mind! :D

I like Derrida too. But I tend to think the wild thinkers can only wonder so far. — plaque flag

My experience of reading Derrida is trippy. Over time I started as a hate-reader and became a lover. I still need to complete the trilogy, though -- writing and difference is the one I haven't done the homework on yet. But I tend to interpret him as an uber-rationalist rather than a wild thinker, which is the point of this story.

Yup! If the fascists won the war we'd be singing the same praises we sing to democracy -- the new society finally cleansed of the dirty people from the old times (something like the USA's narrative with respect to Native Americans -- we brought them technology and science and reason and God!)

But I don't think of us as mere primates. I think of us as creatures with an ecological niche that happens to include language as an important part of that niche. And if I'm right about language it's basically the most important part of our ecological niche -- it's only because fewer of us have to die to change our ways that we are building the anthropocene (which, in turn, we are becoming aware of, will destroy us if we don't change). (OK this last paragraph is rambly in comparison to your question, but I wanted to include it anyways)

Yes, which we'd maybe both explain in Hegelian terms. For the record, I'm a liquid rationalist. The lifeworld evolves ceaselessly, and our own conceptuality is part of that evolution. — plaque flag

Here's where I think we actually disagree -- what I like from Kant's project is that there are limits to reason because I don't think human beings are rational. Even the philosopher is irrational, because the philosopher is a human being who loves rationality -- but as The Symposium points out the philosopher is only philosopher in that chase rather than when the chase is consummated. Today we might say when the chase is consummated that's when the philosopher becomes a scientist or a politician or a CEO -- anything more powerful and with authority. The philosopher's only authority is reason, and reason doesn't always speak the same to everyone.

And for the record, I am an ex-rationalist who still loves rationality. But I've come around to the idea that reason has its limits.

I mean I like Camus and Sartre in addition to Marx :D -- so I'd say no. The real is absurd if you ask me. Which is why we can interpret it in so many various ways. Note how this doesn't annul the real, though. The real is so real that even our categories cannot contain it, so the categories are not transcendental from my perspective -- I disbelieve there is a transcendental logic. And if we can cognize the absurd, which is the thing I think about and am uncertain of how to justify for others (so it's not quite philosophy yet, just opinion), that's a very clear refutation of Kant's philosophy.

I love Kant so it hurts me, but it's where the thinking takes me. Which is part of the philosophic spirit I'd say -- when reason is more powerful than you and forces you to think a new way.

Hey now. That doesn't sound like disagreement. — plaque flag

It's not :). I don't think you have a misreading -- it's far more appropriate when talking about Hegel, from my perspective at least, to talk of readings, and only the ones which are way off are misreadings (things like "if you think about it Hegel is basically a Cartesian" or something very obviously wrong to anyone whose read the texts).

But notice how your reading of Hegel contrasts with my reading of Kant?

With Kant we cannot know anything about God. So we could not make the inference that we are baby-gods or anything of that sort. That claim could not be justified by a Kantian rationality, but it can be justified in a Hegelian rationality.

Brandom also interprets Hegel as grasping our escape from (loss of) nonhuman authority and trying to address how such autonomous creatures could generate their own norms which are nevertheless binding. Neurath's boat, I think : reason is a self-challenging self-editing authority. — plaque flag

This is another point of departure for Kant, if we take Brandom's interpretation as stated. Kant embraces human autonomy, but then argues that it's rational to continue believing in the old (compared to the drives of the Enlightenment) ways -- at least within the bounds of bare reason. But it's also a point of consonance because Kant is very interested in the possible grounds for autonomous moral agents to live in accord with norms of their own creation. It's a funny thing in Kant that Nietzsche exploits -- he lays the intellectual groundwork for a total rejection of traditional morality in the name of defending traditional morality from the acid of Scientific Reason :D.

And that's probably a big point of divergence between Kant and Hegel -- the place of reason for Kant is not a universal reason in Hegel's sense as much as it is divided into different powers of human judgment. It's universal in that it holds for all experience, but it's not universal in the sense that it holds for all reality. Which is sort of what I was saying before in saying we have an example of two rationalities from the history of philosophy -- Kant and Hegel disagreeing upon the proper place of logic with respect to inferences about the real. (OK I started with Descartes, but since we're talking Hegel now I'm using him)

The matrix itself must be atemporal. The denial of an aprior knowledge/structure is given as an apriori knowledge/structure. The earnest 'skeptic' is always (tacitly at least) an ontologist describing the unchanging 'Matrix' of our experience. Or so I claim (well, I strongly suspect it....) — plaque flag

The Matrix must be atemporal, but is there a matrix at all? I'd say that Hegel's philosophy is anti-Matrix. Another credit to Hegel is he's definitely a post-Cartesian. The rejoinder there is that his solution is worse than the original problem, but he's post-Cartesian.

But note I was still playing Hegel-interpreting-Kant there. There's a way in which Hegel's philosophy is entirely a priori, but it's very different from Kant's notion of synthetic a priori knowledge. Or, at least, so it seems to me.

Hegel is a beast. I think I've always had to settle for misreadings of him that make him more coherent by throwing some of him away. — plaque flag

I wouldn't go that far. I think the reason Hegel's philosophy is a mess is because it's hard to say what a misreading of him even is. I've read fascists, anti-colonial communists, and liberals who all claim Hegel as their philosophical base. So clearly there's something inspirational in there for people -- but where you can go with the ideas is a very wide range of possibilities.

There are gross misreadings, of course, but making him coherent is part of what makes the journey with Hegel's philosophy what it is. So I wouldn't call it a misreading as much as one of the readings Hegel can inspire. (which is why I think his philosophy is an interesting mess)

At the moment, I suggest interpreting him as intensifying Kant's project. We can interpret him as a direct realist who grasped the meaninglessness of talk about entities which are completely disconnected from other entities and the necessary centrality of the storytelling detective in the detective story and all this implies. 'Absolute knowledge' is (from this POV) just a collapse of indirect realism at a certain level of inquiry's self-explication. The key theme is us realizing what we are already doing. What we have and live in is 'just' our autonomous-rational-critical sensemaking in this world together. The 'other side' of this sensemaking (postulated untouchable-always-filtered Reality. ---with an Official (?) conceptual articulation) is a token within that adventurous self-unfolding sensemaking --- eventually seen as a kind of phlogiston. But this doesn't close off a return to 'alienated' mysticism and other flights from autonomy.

I feel like he's ignoring Kant's project in order to do his own thing :D -- but it's an interesting thing so I don't mind. A messy interesting thing, but an interesting thing.

Human autonomy is where they agree, but human reason is where they disagree. This is important for the thesis that there is more than one rationality.

One thing that I find favorable about Hegel is he at least does not settle for a transcendental argument. He makes up his own way of reasoning to counter the transcendental move, and it revolves around the idea that thinking and the world are in motion together which is exactly the sort of thing you'd have to argue to undermine faith in transcendental structures: if even Logic and its categories are not forever-and-always concepts that become baptized in space and time through the Transcendental Subject -- but instead are time-bound then the categories are also subject to change just as the world and its objects are, and then we have a response to "If X necessarily Y" which is "not necessarily Y, possibly Y is false at such and such time". There is nothing to explain about a priori synthetic knowledge because there is no a priori -- rather there is the dialectic which the phenomenologist is able to see and explicate through training in philosophy.

Basically they disagree on the operations of logic with respect to the real, which I'd claim is a divergence in rationalities -- you can pick one or the other, and even both, but our understanding of the rationalities isn't derived from a super-rationality as much as it's our critical engagement with texts that allows us to see difference through comparison.

I completely understand the temptation to psychologize foundationalism in general, and I tend to find something plausible in such moves. But the psychological sword is sharp on both sides, and the 'anarchist' is just as easily 'diagnosed. — plaque flag

Heh. Where do you think my inspiration comes from? This is a diagnosis of the anarchist! :D (which isn't the same thing as a rejection, from me at least) -- where "radical", as in "root" serves as a kind of foundationalism.

FWIW, what interests me about this foundational project is its radical minimalism. I want nothing more than what's already implicit in the idea of autonomous-critical thought. What is the absolutely minimal constraint on 'scientific' ontology ? What conditions make it intelligible, coherent ? So that any rational challenge of it misunderstands itself ? — plaque flag

Fair. I like these questions. I think it's the last question is all I'm recalcitrant about, though for reasons already stated.

So I'd call them (from this sketched position anyway) pseudo-skeptics who don't understand themselves. The 'true' skeptic doesn't show up or at least refrains from projecting claims about what others can know. Epistemological claims are implicitly ontological claims, typically about the 'universal' subject. One inspiration for my critique here is a quasi-Kantian pose that pretends to humility but makes a massive claim on what others can rationally hope to know. — plaque flag

That I agree with. With Kant I know exactly what he meant by "metaphysics", but that's because he spent the time to spell it out. It took quite a few words to be able to rationally defend the belief that we cannot know such things, and many people even disagree with him on rational grounds after the fact in spite of all that effort.

But it's quasi-Kantian to pretend to humility while claiming everyone can only go this far. You have to write a book like the CPR to do that! :D Or at least spell out just what is meant by the limit and how it applies to not just yourself, but everyone.

What still attracts me to the Kantian limit on reason is Hegel's philosophy, which I think is a mess -- it's an interesting mess! But a mess. If we believe we can step outside of the limit of reason then you get the science of logic which is an utterly ridiculous book to me because it pretends to universality while clearly expressing European philosophical virtues. But there is a certain amount of gaminess to all this: like these imagined positions are attempting to undermine one another from the perspective of a minimal and necessary system but are just speaking past one another (after all, no Hegel, no Marx -- so there's value to Hegel's philosophy for me in spite of my protestations).

Which I think is what I like about the idea of a leaping off point, or a return to home, rather than a foundation. It acknowledges we have to start somewhere, that we all started somewhere, and for a coherent philosophy usually we'll return home to it (or find another home). And we have the aesthetic values of parsimony, elegance, and simplicity which can serve as a judgment of a home.

So I guess the perspective I'm coming from, to answer your original question, is the historical one. As a reader of philosophy we can compare and contrast philosophers. In so doing we see that different philosophers start from different places, some of which some of them call foundations. But the buildings they build, and the foundations they start from, are different from one another. It's this perspective which allows us to compare rationalities -- as a reader of philosophy.

To me that's already in the framework. What we are doing right now is in that framework. It's cooperatively adversarial and the reverse, as if the community was somehow shrewd enough to run a different 'logic' in every individual on its existential-discursive stage. — plaque flag

Cool :).

Glad to have you aboard, @Sam26 -- criticism is the spark of life in these conversations.

Also given my warm responses I wanted to pipe up. Though feel free to correct me @plaque flag

abstract

Conditions for the possibility of critical discussion cannot be rationally challenged without performative contradiction. Such conditions are therefore not only a sturdy foundation for further inquiry but ontologically axiomatic. Such conditions include a shared world one can be wrong about in a shared language. Another such condition is the participants willingly binding themselves to the coherence and justification of their claims, which is to say to being philosophers and not just daydreamers or mystics. — plaque flag

Let's say "critical" means "rational" in the first sentence. If you challenge rationality on rational grounds then you have to find a way to not undercut yourself. Some skeptics have managed, or think they have managed, but the challenge here is to say that skeptics are using the resources of rationality without acknowledging it.

explication

I take ontology in in this context to be “critical” or “scientific” in its intention, as opposed to relatively irresponsible myth-making. Granted that we put on the heroic robes of the “scientific” (critical) philosopher, as opposed to the mystic who denigrates dialectic as a means to truth, what have we already assumed in so doing ? How do these assumptions affect the project of ontology ? As its enabling conditions, they must be included.

Any other ontological thesis depends on the conditions for the possibility of ontology, so the ontologist is justified in putting ontology itself at the center of reality –-- and not on the outside peeping in. The same kind of realization is intended in “theology itself is ‘God.’” My position might be called 'neorationalism.' I suggest that our normative conceptuality is irreducible. A critique of psychologism is implied here, which might be developed in the thread.

I think this states that ontology can only be pursued on a higher ground than myth. "higher ground" would be something like taking the Bible as literal truth versus taking the Origen of the Species as literal truth -- people do make a distinction there, in practice. Darwin is better than the Bible when we think about what's literally true.