I can see your point. ‘Energy’ is a placeholder for the possibility from which affect emerges. I use ‘energy’ precisely because we don’t know what it is, and yet what affect does corresponds to what energy does: designates attention and effort across spacetime interaction. Except energy in physics is free from qualitative valuation, whereas affect is limited by it. So affect, as I see it, is a localised, logical reduction of energy by way of quality. — Possibility

Like all words, it requires context to understood, and then the values kick in. This is why functional concepts like 'material substance" are so vacuous when they are used in philosophy: they are supposed to be some kind of underlying substratum for all thinks, but all things presents a contextless state of affairs, which is not a state of affairs at all. But talk about material physics makes perfect sense. What is yarn? Well, it is a soft material of woven fabric, and so on.
Right, free of both qualitative and quantitative valuation.

This is where I tend to depart from traditional Western philosophy: recognising only one authority renders thinking clearer within language constraints, sure - but I find it lacks the accuracy required for wisdom. I prefer accuracy of understanding over clarity of thinking - this makes it difficult to write about my philosophy from a static perspective, granted, but much easier to practice it. I’m working on that. — Possibility

Accuracy of understanding over clarity? Absolutely! The world is NOT "clear". I don't know what you are reading, but I have wasted enough time on anglo american analytic philosophy to see that clarity for clarity's sake is a complete failure. Good if one is fascinated by puzzles (e.g., those Gettier problems) I guess, but dreadful if one has a passion for truth. Passion and philosophy have become such enemies, and foundational thinking handed over to hyperintellectuals with a gift for logic.

Analytic philosophy is dead. See Robert Hanna on this: Analytic Philosophy From Frege To The Ash Heap of History (I have a massive library of of philosophical works, btw. All are welcome to these pdf files if they conceive of how they might be sent with all due privacy)

Then I read Husserl. Then Heidegger, and onward. Changed everything. This IS philosophy.

‘The good’ refers to a localised, logical reduction of quality by way of ‘energy’. Ethics is limited by (relative to) affect: the attention and effort each of us is prepared to designate anywhere at any moment. The Chinese practice of foot binding is painful for the wearer, not so much for the parent who inflicts it, and even less for the future husband who values apperception of its results. — Possibility

True. It is the localization of this I take issue with. When value is localized, then arguments get very involved and unwieldy. Foot binding can actually be defended as a cultural practice. Those who inflicted the suffering on children were conditioned to believe that this was proper, and an entire society's beliefs backed this, and so on. Not that foot binding a good idea, but what are good ideas removed fromt he culture in which good and bad ideas are conceived?

Good question, I say, because it is here philosophical thinking begins, this process of "bracketing" culture to focus on things essentially true. Take this to its logical limit, and you find yourself face to face with the "pure phenomenon". This pain in the foot, not as good or bad "for" anything. But it itself, what is it?

Value is, in my thoughts, the final frontier. I borrow from Kant the idea of a transcendental deduction of value: Kant had to prove that pure concepts were not just a fiction, that these had to be posited in order to explain the possibility of the way actual judgment and thinking work. Value needs just this. So, what is it that is there in experience that requires a transcendental argument? Of course, good and bad. Empirically, the good is used as an instrumental term. Something is good because of such and such, this such and such is never stand alone, but is embedded in a body of contingency, like the justification for foot binding.
And so the argument moves forward toward absolutes or transcendental foundations, tha t is, toward a determination that they have an actuality beyond contingency.

I find myself somewhere in between, proposing a triadic model. Kant claims that pure reason has primacy as the structure of reality; you claim the substantiation of reality is affectivity. Both of you then appear to direct humanity towards embodying the good - an impossible task thwarted by this apparent opposition.

But it’s only an opposition if we want it to be. When we view these positions in terms of a triadic model - pure reason (logic), affect (energy) and the good (quality) - then what was a dichotomy is now a stable triadic system in which human experience is capable of embodying (and further purifying our understanding of) each position in turn, providing the necessary checks and balances to human knowledge. — Possibility

A couple of things. One is, energy is not another word for affect. In fact, I don't know what energy is, and neither do physicists beyond something blatantly question begging. Affect designates the emotional and attitudinal and even valuative phenomena in general and this takes one directly to the intuition of a pain or a feeling of contentment and this kind of thing. My first priority to clarity in thinking philosophically is recognize that there is only one authority and that is intuited presence of the world and its objects. Everything there is to talk about is there first.

The good as quality: Okay, but how is this demonstrated in the world? What is the context, that is? We talk about good couches and bad shoes all the time, and the standards are variable: maybe I want uncomfortable shoes (recall the Chinese practice of foot binding). Most think this variability demonstrates a variability in ethics, and this shows ethics has no foundation beyond the vagaries of subjectivity.
But this thinking is absurd. What we really want to know at the basic level is when a person says something is good, what does this mean in a non contingent way, just as we ask about reason what it is in a way that sets aside its incidentals (we are all rational about different things). This requires a transcendental deduction of affectivity.
I like this stable triadic system, but I think to stabilize something, one has to clearly reason through its parts, that is, what is there, in the world, and for this we need a kind of reduction that will allow for things to seen as they are in themselves. This is Husserl (e.g., Cartesian Meditations).

Rationalist for good reason, because the conditions intrinsic to a pure subjectivity, are the only possible ground from which representations for value foundations for being human are to be found, which are, the moral feeling, conscience and respect. See “The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics”, XII, A., 1780, in Thomas Kingsmill Abbot, at Gutenberg. — Mww

Metaphysical Elements of Ethics is a good one. Thanks!

I had to read around a bit to make sure I gave Kant his due. Duty rises from the absence of sentiment and motivation or anything outside the pure call of reason. But elsewhere he makes some concessions, but these seem incidental. "Disinterested benevolence" and "all duty is necessitation and constraint" are the ways Kant talks about feelings. It is our duty (that issues from pure reason) to do good whether we love others or not, and by love we can put any of the outreaching emotional attitudes.

**I find myself behind this very strong claim: Reason is the handmaiden of affect; it is a tool, and I am close to saying "and nothing more" but since I think our intellectual constitution is bound up with human agency itself (that is, to be a person at all, one must have a rational constitution which is essential for having an identity; this is another very interesting argument) that allows us to act on affect (here, compassion, empathy, caring, sympathy, love, commiseration, and the like), and think through to its realization, I cannot do this. Kant gives reason for this privileged position, but reason is empty (as he makes very clear repeatedly), and as "pure" all the more so (because explicitly so; indeed, I believe you will find that his concessions to feelings and conscience are only because they are necessary in the service of pure morality against the weakness of our own imperfect moral agency. We are not angels! if holy is defined as rationally perfect).

I am afraid I am quite on the opposite end of this from Kant.

To say he didn’t understand a thing because it doesn’t conform to a different criteria is mere disagreement. To say he didn’t understand a thing at all, when the exposition in which it is given is unknown to the claimant, is acceptable. To say he didn't understand a thing, in disregard of the exposition of it by the claimant, is dishonest. — Mww

I said he doesn't understand the value foundation of being human. Not that he doesn't understand a thing. If I said something like this, it was in context (or, I was being rhetorical?).

As my ol’ friend Phoebe would say.....well, DUH!!!!. To take apart a house doesn’t give you a house. When experience, or anything else conditioned by something, is analyzed, all that’s determinable is that which makes those things possible. How important can it be to understand such a proposition, when the act of it is its own apodeictic proof? — Mww

Kant would like to divide the world and I do not abide by divisions. What I say our analyses do not give us the world on a given analysis' terms I do not mean to endorse the Kantian phenomenon/noumenon division, as if language cannot possibly be about a thing in itself, but only about a representation. I rather mean to say that language fails in its useful grasp of things to tell us what a sensible intuition is. The real "behind the real" is not a remote noumena, but an immanent one.

Language has its own interpretational possibilities, bound up with culture and history, and interpretations come and go. But then there is the intuition as presence. This is a Husserlian point and it reveals something I think is essential to the matter of foundational philosophy: An idea may be false, but the presence of the false idea is real in the construction of an occurrent experience (like my writing this on the computer now) and is no less real than the sensory intuitions that ideas synthesize with to make the experience. So the error of language may lie in its interpretation, but, says Husserl, the actual language event as an intuited presence is apodictic.

The point of this goes to my claim that Kantian noumena need to be delivered from the dark reaches of the impossible (where analytic philosophy happily puts it. Dennett calls it "pre personal"). Noumena has no limits. Language is noumenal.

Which supports the notion that, neurobiology/physics aside, human mental machinations adhere to a representational theoretic. Representations presuppose that which is represented, which makes this......

just taking up something AS a particle of language.
— Astrophel

.....a perfect example of it, in that words merely represent the something taken up. Humans cannot communicate with that which makes communication possible, just as you say, the actuality itself (communication) is not this (communicating). — Mww

Then what does one do with this? That is, which way will you take, the analytic road or the continental road? Analytic philosophy simply resigns itself to this impossibility, and after a hundred years or so of tearing Kant apart, simply decides to give philosophy to science. Continental philosophy got very interesting.

Taking something AS is Heidegger's jargon.

An aside: consider that the only reason there are words, is because it is impossible to communicate in the images of pure thought. — Mww

I don't know what an image of pure thought could even be. Sounds like the purity of the thought would have to be first understood. But what could this be? Kant doesn't talk like this as he maintains the pure reason can only be witnessed in an embodied form.

Given the concession above, let it be that reason fulfills the initial condition antecedent to all that reduces to it, but the reducibility of which is itself unintelligible. It is clear, in this sense, that to analyze reason the faculty gives the antecedents which makes the faculty possible, but to analyze reason the condition, gives nothing, insofar as there are no antecedents for it.

Of course, those who reject uncaused causes, while still unable to prove a sufficient cause, find themselves in an awkward position indeed. Maybe best to just stick a finger in the dike, and accept that even if the cause, in this case reason itself, was actually known, it wouldn’t make any difference. — Mww

I think there is an end to this, and that lies with Derrida. At the point where we start circling round and round, and the hermeneutic tail of the serpent is grasped in its own jaws, we have to say uncle and admit that the error lies in our interpretative pov. The way out is to drop a pov. This is what Buddhists and Hindus do (not to put too fine a point on it). The one in the west to discover this is Derrida. Language at this level of analysis is indeterminate. It can be very determinate once contextualized, but when contexts run thin, or run out altogether (uncaused causes?? When this steps into thinking, then apodicticity itself has been abandoned), one has to pull back and see if something has changed in the world in light of this impossibility. Kirkegaard called this a collision between reason and actuality.

I say, Husserl was right, and I can't say what this is because it would take too long. You find throughout existential thought this motif of the qualitative movement (which started with Kierkegaard, though he was an amalgam of so much prior). Sartre called it reflective consciousness, Heidegger called it authenticity, Levinas talks about totality and infinity; and so on. But Husserl and his epoche mostly explicitly makes the idea clear.

Not if the value question has its answer in the very domain from which it is asked. Every otherwise rational, cognizant human, values, which makes every value question, answered. — Mww

By domain I guess you are referring to a context in which values are conceived. But these are not at issue. At issue is what makes value what it is. The question of value has an independent analysis. It begins with G E Moore and the non natural quality of value in ethics. This is a discussion of metaethics.

This in incoherent. There’s something missing. What haunts metaphysics is its impossibility of empirical proofs, but the rest....dunno. — Mww

For this, a discussion of metaethics is needed. When you say empirical proofs, there is in this the ethical dimension of experience. What is this? It is value. What is this? A proof, a transcendental analysis, is called for, keeping in mind what Kant had in m that was beyond analysis, the pure forms. Here, it is the "pure" value, the good. But where pure reason is empty, the good (and the bad) is palpable.

This is to some extent my own instinctive sense of reason. I find it interesting how many believers with a philosophical bent still attempt to use reason to demonstrate that a belief in God is rational and necessary. But then what? Even if reason demonstrates that God is necessary, could it not be that a responsible human says 'fuck off' to the deity? — Tom Storm

If that deity is simply a metaphysical embodiment of reason (??) then I suppose we would have to do what "it" said, I mean, this would be an analytic truth, for this god would really KNOW what it is that knowing is all about, so to defy what it says would be a willful contradiction, which, by this weird standard, would be what sin is reduced to....and tautology would be the df. of God's grace?? The massive absurdity of this revealing, I think. A perfect world without meaning beyond the agreement of concepts.
"Fuck off?" Enter Dostoevsky's Underground Man. This grand struggle we are thrown into is nothing so utterly and stupidly trivial as a Kantian philosophy suggests. (Kant, so against metaphysics, yet draws up in his antimetaphysics a sterilization of our humanness.)

This also resonates with me. Some might argue that reason is at war with affectivity and that the latter must be tamed by rationality as it too readily leads to conflict and reactive behaviours with ourselves and others. Affectivity is surely the prime mover behind the best and worst in human behaviour as it tends to activate a transcendence of personal and cultural limitations and allows us to make 'impossible' choices for good or ill. — Tom Storm

I think something like this is right, and Kant would agree. For him, a moral act must be born of duty, and I do have some respect for this: Our greatest philanthropists, like Bill Gates and his foundation, do make a big difference in the world and I am impressed by what money can do, by by them I am not impressed in the least. Those that are truly impressive are the ones who go into the worst environments to help. Doctors without Borders, for example.

But those I really admire are certainly NOT dispassionate and Kantian. They are DRIVEN in the best possible way. Often Christian (bad metaphysics forgiven here. They are not metaphysicians), but their hearts powerful engines of motivation. It doesn't bother me that their theology has holes.

which, I think, in very recent contemporary terms in the wake of the Kantian critiques of Kantianism mentioned above, has been put to bed for good by speculative realists — 180 Proof

Put to bed, yes, by good parents, good believers in the efficiency of parenting, exhausted by the demands of an errant "child".

What would human civilization and culture amount to without it? What is it that enables discovery of novel facts? — Wayfarer

I don't mean it this way. I mean, reason as such has no value, just like musical score without the performance.

This, I don't understand. What of pure mathematics? Isn't it an entire discipline solely dependent on reason? — Wayfarer

So there you are, studying pure mathematics. What would a full analysis tell you about this event? What drives it? One is not driven by the logical structure of the event. One interested, has a desire to know, is fascinated by the elegance of the complexity of mathematics, and so on. One might be tempted to call this will to power. But keep in mind that Nietzsche was a very sick man who spent his life seeking the power to overcome his many illnesses. His "aggressive metaphysics," if you will , and contempt for Christian passive metaphysics compromised his objectivity. But this leads to a discussion about affectivity and its analyses, for there are many kinds emotions, attitudes, moods, desires, drives.

To me, the whole issue rests with this: a study of affectivity and its aesthetics. Therein lies the final philosophical work, for "the beautiful" and "the good" as well as their darker counterparts are terms (see the brief above) that are, see the above, derived from a primordial transcendental whole (one way to say, nothing escapes noumena).

That just implies Kant talks of nothing but reason, and doesn’t talk about where meaning might be given. As big a deal as philosophy was in his day, it boggles to think he didn’t address it in some fashion. If it can be said meaning is synonymous with, or reducible to, value, there’s a veritable plethora of Kantian references for these. And of course, meaning in its common sense of mere relation, is covered extensively in his epistemology. — Mww

Look at his ethics. The good will, duty, the categorical imperative, no, Kant is a rationalist for a good reason: he doesn't understand the value foundation of being human.

.makes explicit you consider meaning is in fact reducible to value, which is fine by me. Then it becomes a question of whether value itself is reducible, to what, and in what sense. And more importantly, with respect to this thread anyway, is whether the sense of meaning reduced to the sense of value is found in Kant, and the form in which it is found. But from your point of view, the significance would reside in the possibility that the sense of value found in Kant is also found in existentialism — Mww

Not reducible to value. I think it is very important to understand that when analyze experience as experience, we are not going to generate anything that is what experience is. Analysis is an abstracting from the given preanalytic actuality, dividing it into parts and ways experience presents itself. the actuality of experience is transcendental. these functions we witness in judgment we call logic, co0ncepts, principles, and so on, but this is just taking up something AS a particle of language. The actuality itself is not this. There is no actuality called logic; rather, logic is a term "made" from observations of judgment and thought.

So value, reason, pragmatics, all terms that are abstractions of an original whole whcih is not reducible to anything. So when I say value is far more important (for it is a word that signifies importance itself) in describing a human being I don't mean say nothing else matters. Just that, if you will, this business of mattering, matters more than what else can be said. I think any undertaking one can take on, the value question is always begged: why bother at all to proceed? The question that haunts metaphysics is, why thrown into a world with this powerful dimension of affectivity? A rational inquiry into reason is certainly interesting and useful, but would be nothing at all if no one cared.

It must be a difference within a unity. — spirit-salamander

Yes, but what is the difference in the unity? The only way to discover this is by observation and description. One has to step into Husserl's epoche. This is radical departure from the usual discursivity. One takes the world as it is laid out as an intuitive landscape. If interested, take a look at his Cartesian Meditations.

The question would then be whether we are part of the world.
If so, a claim about us would be one also about the world.

If no, what does it mean if we are thought separately from the world. — spirit-salamander

What do you do with that chasm that manifestly separates me from this coffee cup? Cup there, me here. But then we have to deal with the entanglement of "me" and the cup, and "me" deserves double inverted commas because it does not show up on our perceptual radar. But clearly the difference is there.
Moving towards an apophatic approach. The questions is, what Makes the difference. Keeping in mind that the perceptual act comesbefore any supervening physicalist reduction.

But I want to explore just what is an 'object of intellect'? Here I want to suggest a somewhat novel definition and would like you to criticise it. I am of the view that numbers, logical principles, and natural laws (to name a few) are examples, in that they are real, but are only perceptible to a rational intellect. In other words, you and I, as sentient rational beings, are able to grasp concepts such as the concept of prime or the Pythagorean theorem, whereas a dog or a monkey cannot. And that is what I understand 'intelligible objects' to be. (See Augustine on Intelligible Objects, which has influenced my thinking considerably on this question.) — Wayfarer

I really don't think like this at all. If I were to say what it is I disagree about it, it would get rather involved. I read philosophers like Husserl, Heidegger, and onward. I like the French Husserlians like Michel Henry and Jean luc Marion., as well as Emanuel Levinas. Others, too.

But regarding Augustine's thinking: One objection is that reason simpliciter, that is, considering it apart from all else, is an abstraction, lifted out of palpable experience for analysis, but the analysis does not make itself an independent ontology from the palpable whole out of which is was abstracted. We conceive of what is rational by identifying the structures of judgment and thought, BUT: these structures are themselves the product of the processes that cannot be identified. As Wittgenstein said, logic shows itself only, but not in a way that allows for an analytic of its own nature. Logic, and this is straight from Kant, is at the most basic analysis, transcendental.

Another objection lies in the revealed nature of the way things appear: What is the "value" of reason? When Augustine argues that reason is what sets us apart from fence posts and dogs and cats, and from God, it is the "rational mind" he sets forth as what makes the determination. But what has to be shown is how reason is by its nature worthy of being determinative in this way: Reason is entirely without content. In Kant's terms, it is "empty". It has no meaning whatever until empirical contents are there to be synthesized with it. That we are able to grasp the Pythagorean theorem shows reason to be useful! But usefulness to what end? Meaning is derived not from reason, but from the world and its value. If I were to think of what God is, it would certainly NOT be a hyperrational entity, for reason qua reason has no value at all.

You see, this is derived from the Platonist conception of noumenon, in which the 'objects of intellect' are pure concepts. But the mistake that is often made is to believe that this says that such objects exist in an ethereal, other-worldly realm - which in my view is an error both profound and ancient. It is even a mistake that I think the Aristotelian objection to Platonic forms falls into. But nevertheless, I find the hylomorphic conception of objects as matter combined with form to be generally congruent with this understanding.

The upshot is, or one of them, that sentient rational beings such as ourselves parse experience in light of these intellgible objects. Generally we do that quite unconsciously (which is another meaning of 'transcendental' in Kant) - like, the mind calls upon these internalised forms in order to interpret what anything means. So in this understanding, the sensory element of perception perceives the material form of particulars, but the intellect grasps the form/essence/idea. Which is actually very close to classical hylomorphism (but not so much to phenomenology which is where your interests seem to lie.) — Wayfarer

Since you asked, my thinking has a progression:
Level one, reason is an abstraction derived from the pragmatic operations of the mind. Walk into a room, and a proper analysis of all you see lies in the way you would deal with them in a practical way. You "know" a blackboard for what you can do with it, same goes for lights, stairs and furniture and everything. The existnece of a blackboard, the "isness" of it is this pragmatic relationship. Language is essentially pragmatic, useful, and yes, we are better at it than cats and dogs who do not think symbolically. But two things: First, agency. What am I if not significantly a logocentric agent whose very self is a language structure? Second, language seems essential to carry one to higher expressions of existence. What THIS is about takes the argument to its next level.

The entire issue turns to what the self is and what it experiences. A phenomenological analysis of value, the self and language.

We can, after all, talk about the metaphysics of justice sensibly. After that, we can be directed to its intuitive examples. — Mww

Metaphysics of justice? I don't know what this is about. Kant doesn't go in this direction at all. He is not a metaphysician. Your quote refers to the transcendental dialectic where he covers God, freedom and the soul without compunction. Quite devastating, really.

That’s fine; it isn’t reason’s job to give meaning. — Mww

Then Kant is not the place to look for it. Not that I don't enjoy reading him, and he is very important, and opened lots of doors for more than century of dominance. But rationalism of any kind will have to deal with Kierkegaard, Nietzsche et al.

That’s fine, too. Not sure what a theory constructed to demonstrate it would look like, but then....I don’t have to. Affectivity may very well be the ground for modernizing extant theories, which in general happens all the time, but I’d be very surprised to see a metaphysical paradigm shift because of it. — Mww

That would be Existentialism.

OK...couple things here of relative importance. First, and least important, insofar as yours is equally a direct quote, this to support my “concepts without intuitions” remark:

“....extension of conceptions beyond the range of our intuition is of no advantage; for they are then mere empty conceptions...” (B149, S23 in Guyer /Wood and Kemp Smith, S19 in Meiklejohn) — Mww

Well, this is all academic.

Second, your quote is found in the intro to Transcendental Logic, A51/B75 the claim that it is the basis of the Transcendental Dialectic, is doubly confounding. You see my reference to empty concepts is found clear up at B149, which is at the Transcendental Deduction but still in the Analytic. Dialectic doesn’t even begin until A293/B350. There’s a veritable bucketful of information between those three points. — Mww

This synthesis of concepts and intuitions is basic to the Critique. Read the Dialectic and you find the speaks the same language. The reason you can't talk in good faith about the metaphysics of god, the soul and freedom is because these lack the sensory intuitions that is essential for making sense.

Third, and most important, this part arose because you said reason is empty. Not knowing how such a claim could stand, I moved empty to concepts, because that is something Kant actually said. I can’t find a reference for reason being empty, and without a citation, I have nothing by which to judge your assertion, mostly because I don’t think Kant said anything of the sort. If he did, it would certainly be in the Dialectic, I’ll give ya that much. — Mww

Well, concepts are empty without intuitions. Reason the synthetic function of concepts. Reason qua reason is empty. Hume said this earlier.

Ok, so if you’re saying reason is empty of meaning, I’d go along with that. Judgement gives meaning, at least to objects, in subsuming cognitions under a rule. Reason then, merely concludes the cognition and the rule conform to each other, from which is given knowledge.

This business of operating from different philosophies is hard work. — Mww

I am looking at what gives meaning to our world, and it isn't reason. Reason deals with principles and the form of judgment. Since when did the fact that a judgment is in the affirmative or a negation or a universal or a conditional have any meaning? These are empty, as modus ponens is empty, of content. Substance, call it sensory intuitions (the givenness of representations. Substance is really a vacuous term) does not deliver experience from vacuity. What does this is affectivity. Caring, despising, adoring, taking pleasure in, and so on.

The term meaning can go two ways. One is the dictionary definition, the other is the aesthetic or valuative. the former is what Kant has in mind. The latter is what I have in mind.

Hmmm. I won’t attempt to argue your assertion; you are quite welcome to it, and may even be able to justify it. But the qualified assertion is wrong. Kant says concepts without intuitions are empty. Actually, void, but, not quibble-worthy. — Mww

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. That is a quote. This is really the basis of the transcendental dialectic.

Momentarily granting the assertion, reason being empty with or without intuitions merely makes explicit the alleged emptiness of reason is unaffected by intuitions, which is correct, insofar as reason is unaffected by intuitions whether or not it is empty.

What do you mean by empty, and what do you think reason is, such that it could be empty?
———— — Mww

This would be a challenge to the idea that all you need is sensory intuitions and concepts and therefore you have meaning. Sensory intuitions as such have no value. My camera that monitors the front door could produce qualitatively then same thing: the knowledge of a machine, and we would all be very complex organic machines. This is if there were no value introduced into the knowledge experience. Without value, no caring, interest, meaning.

So, an agency of epistemic cognition that can synthesize intuitions into principles is an entirely empty affair. That agency has to be a valuating, valorizing agency to be human. Our world's most salient feature is that things matter. An analog might be that of a vehicle, full all the essential parts and functions, but altogether without the possibility of actual transportation.

Kant also accounts for that duality. So if Dewey got it right, but Kant got it right first..... — Mww

Frankly neither of them understood the aesthetic. Wittgenstein did. Note that he was not simply a gifted intellectual. He was a true aesthete had all of the passionate complications that go with this. Three brothers committed suicide. He himself considered this. A wealthy family of great musical prodigality.

I like Dewey though, because he insists that we cannot analytically divide our world into the rational and other parts that are not rational. It is all one, and analysis is an abstraction with no independent ontology. But with him, the aesthetic is reduced to a pragmatic experience.

Ok, I get that, but when people say "God" they usually mean a being, like you and me, only greater, much, much greater! — Agent Smith

But it is an argument with details. Do you think religion is reducible to a metaethical issue? You have to follow the reasoning. This is a beginning. If you don't have the patience for this kind of thing, just say so. If, having read this "essay" all the springs to mind "just practicing essay writing" then we'll just call it a day.

(NB: I'm open to engaging you (or any member) in a formal debate defending my oft-stated theism is not true position. We can arrange this with the Mods on the dedicated subforum – just say when.) — 180 Proof

thank you for that. But I do not hold orthodox views. See, if you have a mind to, the way this is handled in my discussion with Agent Smith. Comment as you please.

Provide one! — Agent Smith

Okay, but this is a process, not banter.. And it gets a little involved.

It begins with the concept 'god'. I should add, obviously. The trouble with metaphysics is basic terms are never clearly defined. Philosophical arguments are apriori arguments, and definitions are everything.

So first, things begin with house cleaning. God has to be divested of its trivial assailable properties. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence are mere anthropomorphic extensions. Greatest possible being (Anselm) the same. Rejected here is the Augustinian Platonism, Aquinas arguments and notions of first cause and teleological arguments. In short, we reject bad metaphysics. And really to the point, God is not a metaphysical concept, indeed, metaphysical concepts are really not metaphysical at all, fashioned out the very accessible conditions of their conception. Their "is" no metaphysics, just errant imaginative notions. We can say (remember Thomas Kuhn, the Kantian) science is problematic in the same way, can we not? Hundreds of years hence, will we still be entertaining the same paradigms? Not likely. How about a thousand years? Note how long the Christian ideas have been playing out. Metaphysics is just bad theory, not known to be bad at the time. Before Einstein, light was considered to travel through an ether and space was Euclidean. Bad theories, but not metaphysical because they were grounded in observations and theories about those observations. Is religious metaphysics any different?

You may be inclined to say they are very different, but this is because the metaphysics of science is about empirical matters and these are presented, solidly and mathematically, if you will, before us. But science moves with very different thematic purposes than those of religion.Religion is, essentially, a metaethical enterprise. It is essentially about redemption, addressing suffering and the open endedness of our ethical and valuative lives. Science can never go here, for, as Hume and Wittgenstein and others have made clear, value is not observable.

To be continued pending your approval, etc.

In my experience, Astro, this is backwards: it's the fact that all extant arguments for the existence of "God" (i.e. theism is true) are "made of straw" which itself constitutes a sound argument for the nonexistence of "God" (i.e. theism is not true). — 180 Proof

The question then is only this: Can you in a sustained dialog argue this position? Keep in mind that none of the above takes the matter to its core phenomenological basis. Only in a phenomenological reduction can God be properly explained. What this means is really quite simple: suspend the popular narratives and the Christian Platonism, all of which possess assailable metaphysics. Look rather to the world as it presents the essential conditions that are the material basis for God coming into culture at all.

Who cares that we can successfully argue that some Disney character doesn't exist? It is seriously philosophically naïve. The issue goes to ethical nihilism; it goes to epistemic analyses and the place of science in philosophy. There is a reason why Wittgenstein said. "What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics."

The argument for the existence of "God" is essentially a meta-value/metaethical argument.

despite zero evidentiary support. — Agent Smith

You should look at that again. I mean, take a methodical approach to this. You find that most arguments against the existence of God are made of straw. The substantive defense of God requires something other that a naïve description of what God is. Assuming God is an old man in a cloud or an infantile fantasy makes it easy to dismiss. But a philosophical approach is much sturdier that this.

Why should that be? Why care what the non-ration nature of the world includes, if it must still be met with our particular, human, method of understanding it? Even if we can say we find the substance, or, that there is substance found, by its affectivity on us, it remains a condition of human nature to determine both what it is, and how it relates to other substances.

That non-rational nature is indispensable is given, but it isn’t all there is. — Mww

Reason is empty. Necessary for dividing the world up into things and their properties, but without intuitions, empty, as Kant said. Add sensory intuitions and it is still empty. Interesting to imagine a world without value. No gratifications, but a landscape of variegations. One could still make logical propositions, true and false, and conversations could be paragraphs and pages long. But no caring, no interest, no experience of something being "good" or "bad". I imagine AI could be like this. Beneath the skin, I think cognitive scientists are closet Kantians, looking for a way to produce rational "functions" and thereby duplicating human intelligence.

But human intelligence isn't like this at all. Dewey had it right: our experiences are all "consummatory", that is, inherently aesthetic as well as pragmatic/rational.

Anyway, if one is looking for the essence of being human, it is not reason that drives our affairs. It is meaning-in-affectivity (which you mention above). Reason makes us more than "blooming and buzzing' infants, true. But affectivity is what is at stake, and the real question is Wittgenstein's: is there any value in the value of the world? It is a metaethical problem. Is what is good, Good?

Thought so

Of course you don't because you're reading an aside out of context which I made in reply to another aside made in reply to earlier comments in the context of me addressing "Pascal's Wager" ↪Agent Smith. It helps to pay attention, Astro, in order to avoid making irrelevant bird-droppings. Btw, my reply to the OP and "philosophical analysis" linked therein is here ↪180 Proof — 180 Proof

It's a lovely rationalization, common amount those who don't know how to respond to an idea they never thought of. What better way to deflect than heap the shortcoming with all that is outside what is clearly placed before one. You are faced with a question, if I have to spell it out for you: on the matter of God and religion, have you not gone astray in reducing the argument to a stalled childhood fantasy?

Look and note that, and you there, calling foul. No mention was made at all to previous posting. All that was taken issue with was the idea you put into play. So play it, if you can.

which reduces to.....no science is ever done without first being thought. — Mww

That is the essence of it. Thought is presupposed in everything "natural". This plays out extensively in phenomenology. But the real issue with this is with its rationalism, for 'thought' itself is also a particle of language that has the synthetic function of gathering particulars under a general. It is by abstraction from what is given that we arrive at our conceptualized world and all that is in it. But the whole from which reason and its categories is derived is a generative mystery (see, if you have interest, Eugene Fink's Sixth Meditation where Fink takes Kant to a deeper level of analysis; see his "enworlding"), however, we have to (as Kant does, of course) extrapolate from what is before us to what has to be the case in order for this "representation" to be what it is, and reason is just one part of this, a formal part, empty. Far, far more interesting and important is the non rational nature what is in the world. The extraordinary affectivity is where we find the substance of our existence.

Kant took the formal logical nature of our judgments and played them out all the way to their impossible "beginnings" (logical beginnings, that is, impossible because beyond our judcgments are not able to apprehend, nor even conceive the possibility of their own genesis)-- but what happens when we do this with the other dimension of meaning?: The aesthetic, affective, the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to, the passions and their depths, and so on?

Sorry, I don't see the "psychoanalytic" relevance to my post of your (non-philosophical) "projection". — 180 Proof

I don't see the talk about unsublimated early childhood fairytales having anything to do with a philosophical analysis of religion and God. There may be some truth in it, but truth lies everywhere. If you think religion boils down to just as you put it, then you haven't really encountered the core meaning of religion.

Moreso, I think: religion seems to me more like early childhood (nursery, fairytales, kindergarden) and science like late adolescence (sex, cars, junior college) – the latter never completely outgrows the developmental vestiges (defects, biases) of the former. — 180 Proof

But this is all just psychoanalytic that doesn't even qualify as philosophy. Fails to look at what underlies all of this. Prior to being a fantasy of childhood, there is the analysis of what is there is out of which fantasies are fashioned.

It's just that God isn't a part of the known universe; neither is God something concrete in our cosmos, and nor do any abstractions thereof apply to him. Put simply, there's nothing in our universe, physical/mental, that we can use as a starting point in grasping what God is. Re: apophatic theology (via negativa). — Agent Smith

The rub in this lies in philosophy's need to, possess the world, so to speak. The essence of apophatic thinking lies here: "God" (if we have to think like this) is an actuality that cannot be "said"; but many things are actualities, like this sore ankle or this amazing work by Brahms. So if we want to understand the ineffability of God, we should first look (as we should have done in the beginning) at the ineffability of perfectly accessible actualities. Here, philosophy looks for the Real to step forward AS a concept (just as with God) and it does not do this. A pen is a pen, but the reality of the pen doesn't work like this.

this is the beginning of the philosophical "apophatic" work, for it is the apophatic approach to give analysis to something and abstract from what is there, dismiss all that is NOT what you are looking for, and discover what is remaining.

This is phenomenology.

There seems to be significant difference and disagreement amongst the positions held by phenomenologists - Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty. I understand Merleau-Ponty rejects Husserl's transcendental reduction and intentionality. I wonder how anyone can tell which reading is faithful and who has the preferred approach? If you say that as a mere reader you can discern each position as intended and from this determine which approach is more helpful, then I must assume your mind is as penetrating and original as the author's. — Tom Storm

Yes, there is disagreement. I am no pro, but I have read these and I will say this: Husserl can be very detailed, but also very direct. But when he is direct, it still takes some getting use to, and this is something of an understatement. What I mean is that in order to understand his epoche, you have to see it as a method, a very different way to actually "observe" the world, for it is not a matter of taking up things with their purposes and their familiar meanings "ready to hand" if you will; and it is certainly not the kind of thinking an empirical scientist does. Not at all, and this is hard for most people to understand. It is not a theory in the usual sense. It has an altogether different subject matter, and that is perception itself. Before a scientist sits down at her microscope, she has before here, prior to any application of all that science's paradigms provide, the perceptual field itself, which is complicated, because it is not just Kant's sensual intuitions. It is inherently eidetic as well (as Kant said long ago" intuitions without concepts are blind and concepts without intuitions are empty). Objects in the world are not objects at all until you understand that they are "predicatively structured". this means that the perceptual field that lays before you has an eidetic intuitive presence as well, and this is to be taken as an intuitive presence.

Husserl thought that when one achieves this phenomenological reduction, suspending all that is assumed and functional in normal affairs, and having before one only a "residuum" of the apperceptive foundation, one actually apprehends the transcendental ground of all experience. Let him tell it:

For the sake of further clarification, however, it should be added that we must distinguish "straightforwardly" executed grasping perceiving, remembering, predicating, valuing,
purposing, etc., from the reflections by means of which alone, as grasping acts belonging to a new level, the straightforward acts become accessible to us. Perceiving straightforwardly, we grasp,
for example, the house and not the perceiving. Only in reflection do we " direct" ourselves to the
perceiving itself and to its perceptual directedness to the house.

Heidegger would call what Husserl is talking about "presence at hand": When you pull away from the familiar use of things and just look at them and describe them. I read John Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics and he says Heidegger thought Husserl believed in "walking on water" and this is a very big point: Husserl thought one could withdraw from the world's familiarity and behold the actual structures of the presence of the world (what Derrida will later call the metaphysics of presence). A very strong position to take. One might say close to a God's eye view, no? But there is something, frankly, truly spooky about this. I read in a letter from Husserl to I think it was Rudolf Otto, he wrote how his students were becoming Christian converts in their studies of phenomenology.

Anthony Steinbach wrote "Phenomenology and Mysticism" where he tries to defend radical spiritual interpretation of the epoche. These days, there is in the French post Husserlians like Michel Henry (The Four Principles of Phenomenology), Jean Luc Nancy Marion and others; prior to these there was ewmanuel Levinas, Husserl's student, I believe.

Anyway, you can tell where my tendencies lie--with Husserl. Heidegger was for me a profound reading. Nothing to equal, really, reading Being and Time. Changed the way I think about everything at the basic level. But Husserl made him possible and I do lean toward his radical what I call "revelatory" view on this. this pulling away from everydayness into a no man's land creates an unbridgeable chasm between the world and something Other.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Mysticism I am familiar with but I have no idea what the rest of what you say means but will read it again later and see if I can unravel it. I am not a philosopher and the idea of infinity has never captured my attention. — Tom Storm

An addendum: There is today a strain of philosophy that think's Husserl opened up an extraordinary kind of thinking that is not simply theoretical, but revelatory (speaking of noumenal presence within imminence). From Husserl's Cartesian Meditations, where he gives some light to his "phenomenological reduction" (epoche) :

But perhaps, with the Cartesian discovery of the transcendental ego, a new idea of the grounding of knowledge also becomes disclosed: The idea of it as a transcendental grounding. And indeed, instead of attempting to use ego cogito as an apodictically evident premise for arguments supposedly implying a transcendent subjectivity, we shall direct our attention to the fact that phenornenological epoch lays open (to me, the meditating philosopher) an infinite realm of being of a new kind, as the sphere of a new kind of experience: transcendental experience.

What a tantalising response. Can you say more about experience itself being noumenal? — Tom Storm

That would be mysticism, no? Meister Eckhart wrote, help me God to be rid of God. Something in the former obstructed by the latter. What would that be?

But in the "contradiction" between finitude and infinity, one looks for the ground where the finite simply ends, and off everything goes to infinity. Given the finite, the limited, the well structured and familiar, I see no "place" where this can stand apart from infinity. Infinity does not have its termination anywhere, but rather "runs through" all that is. If infinity is taken as a mere extension of the familiar, as in a sequence of negative time moments that has no end or a spatial extension of "further ons" with no end (both Kant denies in any way describes noumena, of course) then all we have is a concept of infinity that is, if you will, finitized, made finite. Pointless to even bother taking seriously if this is the best one can do, and Kant thought this the case. Clearly not what Eckhart had in mind with God. With him there is something entirely Other. And this Other is not the vacuous noumena of Kant.

I think the thinking on this leads to a focus on the nature of finitude. What is it that makes a thing separate from its eternity?

I understand the majority of what you state here from the individual meanings of the words you use and the context within which you use them but I am not so interested in this type of analysis. It is a very valid analysis I'm sure and certainly belongs on this forum, more than my approach does but I would refer you to members like Garrett Travers or fooloso4 to name but a few, for better feedback on the points you raise, than any that I can offer you. — universeness

Impressive. An honest answer. At any rate, if some time in the future you want to look analytically at nihilism, check out Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics. Perhaps Husserl's Ideas I. they don't talk about ethical nihilism, but they do give al discussion about foundations.

There is nothing in the empty void except that which we bring with us.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself. etc, etc.
All the horrible experiences the human race has memorialised since our civilisations began have surely screamed at us their main message:
THERE ARE NO GODS TO HELP YOU! HELP YOURSELVES OR PERISH!
We must accept this and build a fair, global civilisation with economic equality for all or perish as bad stewards of Earth.
Another species will emerge in time on Earth, if we cannot correct the historical
errors, which have led to our currently dangerous predicament. — universeness

But this is putting it all in a dismissive narrative about how all is lost and it is just up to us, and so forth. \

The matter gets interesting only when we examine what is there, in the ethical nihilism as a rejection of something. What is rejected, exactly? It is that there is an ethical foundation that lies in the deepest analysis of ethicality itself. What does this come to? One has to look at a given ethical problem, the anatomy of an ethical problem qua problem. This goes to the concrete circumstances of our prohibitions against causing others suffering through the many ways this can be achieved. At root, it is the pain itself, and the joy and pleasure: these rise to the surface of the discussion, for these are these existential foundations of ethics.
The question then is, what is pain? What is pleasure? What is falling in love? Being tortured?

A serious analysis of religion BEGINS here.

Man is an end in himself. Consciousness is self-producing and self-informing. This is what Hume didn't understand in his "Problem of Induction," or so called. The concept of 'circular argumentatin' can be applied to the human mind, no more than what it can be applied to the earth. Nor are humans an argument. We are conscious. The human brain developed and emerged out of the crucible of 3.5 bill years of evolution to provide us with the capacities you are using to read this now. If that is a reduction to you, as opposed to some mind-body mysticism you may be working with, then I don't know what can help you understand. There is NOTHING more complex or advanced in all the known universe than the human brain, and the consciousness it produces. — Garrett Travers

Massively, and I suspect willfully, misses the point. You have to think better about this: explain how it is that your material reduction of a person to brain activity escapes as a reduction itself, the same reduction? Observe the computer that sits before you: What are you experiencing, neuronal activity? How is neuronal activity experience as a computer? How does, a "computer" get inside this matrix of activity and make you aware of it? What is there in this relation you have with something that is out there beyond "you" that makes for the necessary EPISTEMIC connection? How does causal account in this relation translate into an epistemic account?
My guess is that you don't even know these issues exist. Rather typical.

My brain - yours as well - is designed to retrieve data corresponding to reality, with it to build coherent neworks of data that inform rudimentary behaviors and thoughts, then when enough data has been gathered, use those networks of data to formulate concepts that inform future actions and behaviors as a metter of executive function, and using that data we formulate values which inform all data networks gatherd in a feedback loop of information exchange. The human is the definition of explanatory matrix, and the only one we know to ever exist. Ontology, as far as my interests go on the subject, and maybe I'll do some writings tonight, is self-explanatory in all things, one merely needs to know what its functions are. Properties of actions, properties of function, in the case of humans, thoughts, and the relation between them contained therein. — Garrett Travers

By all means do some writings, but you will have to write about how this "the only one we ever know to exist" sits with phenomenological thinking. You likely think science is foundational, but this is because you have never read any continental philosophy.

I'm going to forgive this kind of statement, as a starter. If it happens anymore I'm going to inundate you with the content of my extensive philosophical training, that is still on-going in professional academia, as well as private, everyday pursuit. As far as suffering qua suffering, you're going to have to be specific about the point of exploration you'd have me analyze, as you could be meaning several things. Because, as it currently stands, we know suffering to be a function of the brain used to reinforce certain types of thoughts, granted it's not entirely clear why certain suffering functions are distributed as they are, but neuroscience is still young. As far as it not being a fact, such a thing is going to have to be qualified. I would take a look at this and get back to me on that fact business: — Garrett Travers

A function of the brain? True. But to call it this is to give interpretation that is outside of the interpretative context of pain as such, as it stands before waking experience. We live in a world of possibilities, and among these events as brain functions is just one.

Look no further for a neuroscientific account for this. Not that this has no value for, say the treatment of schizophrenia or other disorders, but it has limited philosophical use. this is why Rorty, e.g., straddled the fence, putting Heidegger among the three greatest philosophers of the past century. Rorty was something of a pariah in analytic philosophy, but this was because he knew the problems that were being ignored. He once succinctly put it: " No one can explain how anything "out there" gets "in here." He knew Heidegger was right. Scienctific account need to be seen AS account in unison or contradiction with others, but in essence a "regionalized" thinking that has its own ontic place and relevance.

Look, don't inundate me with anything. I don't have the time. But make your point. And spare me the threat of your awesomeness. But thank you for that all the same. It did give me occasion to smile.

Well not being a philosopher and lacking in any qualifications in the field, I am quite limited in the philosophical terminology that I can call upon.
I would say, from the evidence of observing human behavior in my own lifetime and from human behavior recorded in the books I have read etc. My interpretation of such evidence suggests to me that the 'existential foundation' I refer to is human fear of that which they do not understand and therefore conceive as a potential threat. A natural reaction to such fear in the long term is to try to learn more about the phenomenon but meantime seek protection from potential harm by engaging in tribal or/and biological support and psychologically attempting to establish further support from imagined benevolent supernatural forces. I think that's what humans do and I think there is a great deal of evidence for it, both current and historical. — universeness

Yes, and this is why there are so many of those ancient narratives: fear and hope. But take any narrative at all and you find it follows the rules of emplotment and development. There has to be dramatic content, jst as in life. A muthos is the memesis of a praxis (Aristotle). All eyes are on the actual human condition, therefore, the source of narrative content. One then asks, what is there in this one has to be afraid of, and hope for? Now we are talking philosophy.
What do you think it is?

Great Omniscient Diety. I just made that up btw, so please no one respond with "that's not what God stands for!" :naughty: — universeness

But this has no analysis. Ask yourself, what is the existential foundation for these stories, that in the world that gives rise to them at all.

A person is most certainly a brain. You do realize that all functions you exhibit, including those which are subconscious, are produced by the brain? — Garrett Travers

Keep in mind that it is a brain that manufactures this idea. When I look around the world and I see brains and nervous systems, these are massive clusters of axonally connected nerve cells, which are, my that perceptive event, also just this. So if you want to reduce the affairs of being a person to what a brain is and does, then this reduction applies equally your own reduction. There is no finer definition of circular thinking.
ALL that you have before you is what is. You are not in an explanatory matrix like a laboratory looking for causal bases of things. Causal explanations say nothing about the ontology of a something in the world. E.g., you cannot explain pain by describing neuronal complexities.

This kind of reductive thinking is what happens when people think that since science can make a cell phone it can therefore do philosophy. Science needs to know its place

I don't regard "suffer and die" as what I am meant to do, or that human life and consciousness is to be relegated to such as the decree of anyone or anything other than myself. We suffer as a function produced by the brain, we die because bodies are made of organic materials and elements that expire over time. Like all things do — Garrett Travers

No, no. You don't understand the question, which is forgivable since you haven't been properly educated in such things (not meant to be a unkind here. But it is simply a fact that philosophy is entirely neglected our culture's curriculum).
The question is about suffering qua suffering. Look at it. Put a lighted match to your finger and observe, to be a good scientist. You will find something qualitatively different her from the facts science generally deals with. Suffering is not a "fact" in the Humean sense.

Religion and Jesus? You have to step out of your comfort to se this. There you are, fingers blackened with gangrene, your children the same, each waking a moment nightmarish suffering as you yield to the black death....and so on. This is, of course, no fiction. Perhaps you'll be burned at the stake tomorrow. You raise your fist to heaven to no avail. Then you plead and beg, to no avail. You conditions screams for deliverance.
This is what Jesus is about, on the negative end of what we are.

So, what you'll notice about Jesus, just from a cognitive level in the sense that the brain desires conceptual frameworks with which to use as informational guides to action and behavior - which, is what concepts are actually for, mind you, and why they generate from consciousness - is that he checks all boxes normally reserved for individual exercise of executive function and exploration. What do I mean? We have in Jesus 1. a conceptual framework provided for us, no effort. 2. absolution of any failure to uphold the tenets of the frame work. 3. an ideal embodiment of the framework that we can constantly use to induce more action and thought both on the part of ourselves and others. 4. the open invitation of universal acceptance within the framework. 5. threats of punishment for those who reject the framework. 6. rewards for accepting the framework. 7. justifications for all bad phenomena (humans) and good phenomena (God). and 8. a definitive low-resolution explanation of all things in the universe. Or, stated another way: — Garrett Travers

I think you take over thinking to a new level. I can give you a dozen more explanatory contexts to fit Jesus into. No, a hundred more. It is easy to do. And it misses the point, in a ,well, most superfluous way (there are, heh, heh, easier ways to miss the point).

It is not a question of what the brain needs or does. A person is not a brain. Just compare the two and you will find 3 and half to 4 pounds of gray squishy matter on the one hand, and a thinking, caring experiencing person on the other. Two mistake the one for the other is impossible.

The point you miss? Tell me, why are we born to suffer and die? It is meant as a reference, not to historical philosophy or theology, but to the foundational conditions of being human.

The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely overlooks, was the very one that ancient philosophers indicated as φαινόμενα [phainomena] and νοούμενα [nooumena]; the opposition and incommensurability between these terms proved very productive in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later in the scholastics, in the conflict between nominalism and realism. This latter conflict was the late development of a seed already present in the opposed tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms φαινομένα and νοούμενα were already in use, then took possession of the terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of things in themselves and their appearance — Schopenhauer

The reason why Kant fails to understand noumena is because he is bound to the rigidity of categorical thinking. He is quite "manichean" on this: the world we can know is boundaried and closed to possibilities beyond the definitions allowed by the simple understanding that sensual intuitions are blind without concepts and concepts are empty without sensual intuitions. This is what you get when logic rules theory absolutely. All that matters is clarity. Kant would have made a good banker (or better, a good anglo-american analytic philosopher. Kant started both traditions, the analytic and the continental philosophies).

But this noumena, what are its boundaries? He imposes limitations on human knowing reasoning that since there are no sensual intuitions, there is nothing for a concept to be about, but why is this true? For surely the only reason he had to posit noumena is because he had no choice: representations had to be OF something. Look a little closer and you see that noumena must be posited only because there is something in the phenomenal presentation that insists. Now look at noumena and what it "is". There is nothing it is not, for how is there to be a line drawn? His my apperception of my hand in this occurrent event of typing to be excluded from the encompassment of noumena?

Kant doesn't see that noumena is just a term for what is in the phenomenological "presence". Experience itself is thoroughly noumenal. There is an insight here that is elusive, slippery. One way to say it is this: we live an breathe metaphysics. We think of metaphysics as being impossibly remote (like Kant does in the transcendental dialectic) but this is all wrong, simply put.

What stands in the way of realizing this in the perceptual encounter itself is, in philosophy, this Kantian intractability.

What is called wisdom is far remote from what professional philosophers do.

Because most of them are of them are undereducated and watch too many movies that valorize violence. Ever talk to these people? Well don't! No analytic skills at all. Cannot tell the difference between being angry about something and explaining it.

Guns laws? I want to say as the lunatic gun advocates do that people kill people, not guns. True enough. Put a gun in my hand and I tremble at the possibility. But then, gun prevalence and living in a culture of violence glorified in the media, this is a self fulfilling prophesy of sorts: Makes people into "gun believers", familiarizes the culture with guns and violence, and if one is brought up in this visceral assault on our humanity, then...well, "then" is the trouble.
Maybe there is an old Testament God and maybe the time nears to build that ark.

Yes, this is at the core of Derrida’s thinking, and Heidegger’s as well.
In 'Logic as the Question concerning the Essence of Language' Heidegger tells us he wants, 'in a confrontation with the tradition', to rethink logic, to "revolutionarily shake up the notion of logic" from the ground up, but that he can only provisionally point to his notion of the primordial ground of language as the basis of this new grounding of logic. Traditionally, language is thought as a tool of thinking, as secondary to thinking, as grounded on grammar, which in turn is grounded on logic. Heidegger says “the first thing we need is a real revolution in our relation to language.” — Joshs

Thanks for that! I have it here.
I don't know what this is about. I have always thought it was hermeneutics that sealed the fate of adventuring "beyond" for Heidegger. Taking up being in the world would never step beyond the boundaries of historical possibilities, just as science could never step radically out of the paradigms that make its thinking possible, just as a person's freedom is bound to personal and cultural history, still. Anything beyond must be familiar in its parts, and any revolutionary shake up can only shake what is contained therein, that is, "shake" language as such. If it is within language that the shaking occurs, then this cannot be beyond language.

Husserl: "the intuition of the past itself....is an originary consciousness" (Section 12)
Time therefore does not exist at all, it would seem to follow. After all, what has the past ever been other than a mode of a timeless actuality?

Language viewed as a logical grammar is self-referential. Language viewed through the phenomenology of someone like Merleau-Ponty is embodied, and therefore self-transformating. For Derrida language points beyond itself. Deconstruction , as a post- structuralism, began as a response to the structuralist models of language that think of it as a self-referential totality. — Joshs

The beyond of language?