Husserl’s notion of intentionality fragments the holistic weave of our frame of intelligibility into separated elements.

“It could be shown from the phenomenon of care as the basic structure of Dasein that what phenomenology took to be intentionality and how it took it is fragmentary, a phenomenon regarded merely from the outside. But what is meant by intentionality-the bare and isolated directing-itself-towards-must still be set back into the unified basic structure of being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-involved-in. This alone is the authentic phenomenon which corresponds to what inauthentically and only in an isolated direction is meant by intentionality.” — Joshs

It is care that unifies dasein. This is from The History of the Concept of Time, and I read the chapter and can see here why Heidegger might be accused of psychologizing in the way he deals with urges, propensities, love, drives and so forth. Seems convoluted but that is only because it takes a lot to get familiar; but so full of surprising entanglements as with with Augustine and the fable of Hyginus. What an extraordinary thinking person.

Still though, Husserl believed in a transcendental experience, as if, as I see it, if one were in the pov of divine omniscience, one would see it thusly.

I dont think Husserl understood what Heidegger was aiming at. Heidegger’s work was as transcendental as Husserl’s ( not in the Kantian sense) but more radically so. — Joshs

Heidegger more radical than Husserl? I wonder if you would say a few words about this.

Absolutely. That and that stupid farging noumena. Christ-on-a-crutch, how people can convolute that damn thing....like Savery’s ca.1620 dodo bird painting representing something the guy never once laid eyes on. — Mww

But the concept of noumena is not a fiction. But not Kant, rather Husserl et al.

Ah yes, Henry. I'm not a fan, nothing against him personally, but I really don't see what big contribution he made. One of my professors knew him personally, so he was frequently talked about in my program. Never managed to connect with his thought at all, but many others did, so, maybe I'm missing out. — Manuel

It really does depend on what a person is looking for at the outset. Phenomenology has this whole mysterious side that can be either be ignored or elaborated. It's not philosophical (wince!). Heidegger though Husserl was trying to walk on water (gotten from Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics).

I am guilty of this, too. I think being in the world rests of nothing but water, and we all are trying walk. (Wince, with emphasis!)

I tend to agree with your view and it's not many people who would claim that Husserl went beyond Kant. — Manuel

Way beyond, really:

...an infinite realm of being of a new kind, and a sphere of a new kind of experience: transcendental experience......a universal apodictically experienceable structure of the ego (Cartesian Meditations)

Husserl thinks one can experience something transcendental, not merely postulate it. This is why there is so much interest in the his reduction in the recent French Theological turn, so called. Michel Henry puts it like this: "So much appearing, so much Being...... (but then) appearing is everything, being is nothing. Or rather, being only exists because appearing appears and only to the extent that it does."

Henry takes the phenomenological reduction where it leads, to the primacy of the given. What is there and what can only be (as Kant would agree) but what appears before us, and any claim about what might not BE this can only have its basis in what appears. It sounds a bit like transcendental idealism is now clarified to transcendence IN the ideal, but the 'ideal" as a concept is obviated, for there is nothing to play against it, there is no Cartesian res extensa, nor is there a noumenal Other. The Other is appearance itself.
This is the final and radical relief from those absurd dualisms that haunt ontology.

Kant’s understanding of reason is logic relative to human experience. From our perspective, there’s no reason to consider logic beyond reason, and no real capacity to talk about it. But I would argue that an accurately practical understanding of reality is inclusive of unreasonable logic. It’s a further Copernican turn away from Kant. — Possibility

Here is what Eugene Fink (Husserl's protégé) had to say at the beginning of his 6th Cartesian Meditation:

.......instead of soaring up over the world "speculatively," we, in a truly "Copernican revolution," have broken through the confinement of the natural attitude, as the horizon of all our human possibilities for acting and theorizing, and have thrust forward into the dimension of origin for all being, into the constitutive source of the world, into the sphere of transcendental subjectivity. W e have, however, not yet exhibited the constitutive becoming of the world in the sense performances of transcendental life, both those that are presently actual and those that are sedimented,- we have not yet entered into constitutive disciplines and theories.

It is a radical thing to say. " Transcendental subjectivity" is an intuitively powerful concept. I don't agree with the attempt to "totalize" (Levinas) the world to make it make sense. One has to allow the world "its" freedom to present itself, and this requires a "turn" that radicalizes Kant's turn (noumena? what, I ask, is NOT noumenal?) Once the Cartesian turn has been examined for what it is, an attempt to discover an "absolute" ground in our existence and the world's, one is driven deeper into discovery on the interior side of the equation. "Absolute" deserves those inverted commas, of course. Language, the moment it is deployed, both cheapens and reveals.

I don't understand why you have gone from talking about cats to talking about brains. How do we know anything about brains if we don't know anything about the world? How can we say anything about brains if we can't say anything about the world? — Janus

What is the world? We certainly know it, but what is it that we can know it?

But Kant's a-priori presuppositions are, strictly speaking, false. We may individuate space and time as being different things, but they're not. We can't envision space without time, and maybe even time without space.

It's crucial to remember that Kant was a Newtonian, he took Newton's concepts of space and time to be a-priori, but these were empirical postulates made by Newton.

This doesn't mean that there's nothing a-priori, on the contrary, likely most things are, in some sense. But they're not obviously evident to discover, I don't think. — Manuel

But then, he wasn't talking about what is "really" there. His was an analysis, and he would be the first to say that such analyses are not true noumenally. They are true in analysis, and this of course is a conceptual matter about the intuitive structure of (representational) experience. Spacetime, on the other hand, is meant to be an a theoretical construct of physics.

Ask Einstein (who read Kant early on, I know) about the essential intuitions of time and space that are presupposed in putting together his theories and he will tell you this is apples and oranges.

Whether Husserl goes "beyond" Kant, is a matter of taste. Fair or not, we haven't really moved beyond the framework made popular by Kant. We have to modify some of his ideas, such as "spacetime" instead of space and time and most of us would say that his categorical imperative is impossible to live up to. — Manuel

That IS a loaded paragraph. For one, "spacetime" is an empirical concept. That is, its justification is traced back measurements of physical events, their quantities, relations and so on. Kant's thinking is strictly apriori: in order to even think about space and time at all, one has to have certain conditions in mind. It is the "presuppositions" of space and time, not how they are theorized about in science.

An accurate understanding of pleasure/pain, for instance, must take into account the relativity of reason — Possibility

This one I find curious. Is reason relative? Judgments are, but not in their form, rather in their content.

If you and I were in the presence of a fairly ordinary looking cat I can say 'look at the cat, what colour and pattern would you call that, tabby or tiger?' and I can be confident that the answer you give will be sensible and understandable. You won't say 'it's purple, no pattern at all'.

If that's not talking about something in the world, what would count? — Janus

But all eyes are on the process that produces the understanding. It's not like a person is some kind of epistemic mirror of transparency of the world such that the cat is there and I receive the cat in the relation. Quite the opposite: when I observe a brain's physicality, I see there can be nothing more opaque. If that brain can "see" the world as it is, so can a fence post. Yes, the lens in the eye allows light to pass through, and so on. But a brain is a thick organic mass. Nothing out there gets in here. (So how does one affirm the brain to talk about brains and their opacity if to observe a brain requires transparency? It does not.....or does it? Go with the latter, and you are inviting mysticism.)

I don't even know what that means. It seems to be some sort of weird inapt analogy between grasping with the hand and grasping with the mind; I'm not seeing the relevance. — Janus

You would have to consult Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason". He started it with his "Copernican Revolution". The matter turns on what he calls synthetic apriori judgments: The structure of the world is apriori.
But you don't really need Kant for this. Just ask in the most earnest and insisting way: how does anything out there get in here (pointing to the brain)? This would be a question that a physicalist/materialist would have to ask, framed like Neil DeGrasse Tyson would frame it. A brain is a physical thing. How can an epistemic relation exist between it and objects out there? It just makes no sense at all.

Doesn't this super-materialism just look like Christianity with the crust cut off? — kudos

Okay Foucault. And grades are the punitive consequences, the threat, that keeps you line. The classroom is a microcosm of Christendom.

Once you enter Hegel territory, I'm very suspect much of substance is being said. — Manuel

I occasionally go back to The Phenomenology of Spirit. I have to if I want to understand Kierkegaard, and it is not entirely nonsense, though it's not like he's not trying. I certainly do not understand him well, but K considers that Hegel didn't understand Hegel very well, which is the real problem.

Some of Heidegger is presented to us from his lectures, and these can be rambling, like his Parmenides, which I am reading now. Kierkegaard is frankly the worst offender. His style is filled with irony and metaphor and cleverness, combined with an extensive knowledge of the thinkers of his day.

All of the pre Kantians are pretty accessible compared to what came after. I just don't read them. Descartes is important, succinct. Should be read if one is going after Husserl and beyond. Everyone has a bone to pick with Descartes because his res cogitans and res extensa are so challenging. Now he was clear, I think.

Don't we see the same scene in philosophy when we allow freshmen to study Plato and give them a pat on the back even when they're totally off base? We see a light at the end of the tunnel, just as the religious people we snuff our noses at do. — kudos

If they're off base, they will fail the exam.

If you are studying the history of philosophy, then your exam will be dogmatic, you could say. The point would be to get you to understand something. More so if the course is about particle physics or genetics. The ground has to be laid. But with all of the paradigms you might be exposed to, there comes a point in your career at which you can actually put yourself at the cutting edge and see how those paradigms stand up to criticism. Human knowledge is, all of it, open.

Philosophy is different in that its foundations are less stable than science, more arguable. Popular religion is far worse. It doesn't require justification, only faith (and exegeses that are intra-justificatory, you might say) . What makes philosophy so important is that, like religion, it subsumes the whole of human knowledge claims (you know, God the creator rules over all, and so forth), all categories and disciplines, but it insists on objective justification. A tall order, you can say, obviously. The tallest, really. But note how philosophy and religion compete. Philosophy takes up thematically all that religion takes up, principally ethics! Science cannot touch ethics. Religion has ethics as its core concern. Only philosophy subsumes all.
Of course, you can say philosophy goes nowhere, or has no where to go since everything has been said. True and not true. Not much more to be said, but what has been said is hardly understood.

Of course it can; it talks about the world all the time. — Janus

That is a tough call. There are those who think explanations are all references to other explanations, not to put too fine a point on it. The proof lies in the way the answers to questions about any and all things in the world are provided in more language. What is a bank teller? A cat? Your understanding does not reach into the world and grab a cat. It produces definitions, descriptions, talk of properties, contexts, and all of this is language. Of course, we assume there is something out there that is a cat, but the meanings that id the cat are not out there at all.

s ordinary life not also a type of true inquiry? Not to sound offensive, but your zeal for true inquiry sounds a lot like a form of dogma. Why do you need this true inquiry? — kudos

To ask the question, e.g., why are we born to suffer and die can be authentically encountered, and can actually bring one to the threshold of deeper meaning, I would argue. Religious dogma keeps this kind of encounter at bay. (Having said this, I do see the value of a ready to hand dogma for those in crisis, and would not for a moment deny the the relief religion can give them. But this is another story.)

Ideas and concepts lead to actions, beliefs, notions. Don't you think so? — kudos

Of course. But they also lead to other ideas, and perhaps there are meanings in play that are not invented, but there to be witnessed, discovered. True inquiry can take one there. Dogma does not.

My own opinion is a mix of both of these perspectives, but fundamentally I believe that regardless of whatever merits a religious philosophy may have, in actual practice this intellectual apparatus functions as a propaganda device for the powers that endorse it. — _db

You sound like Foucault. Is there nothing substantive beneath the propaganda?

I think we in philosophy rely on dogmatism to the same extent that any religions we can name do. — kudos

Heh, heh....this certainly can't be true. It would assume authentic inquiry is no better than myth.

. I think much religion is dogma and antithetical to philosophy, in as much as wisdom isn't valued as much as obedience. — Tom Storm

Yeah, that is the despicable nature of popular religion. Philosophy, one like myself would argue, is the true religion. In the East they call in jnana yoga.

When I was reading some philosophy as a Catholic teenager I was not aware of the complexity of the relationship it had with religion. The first niggle was when a member of staff at my school said to me that he was worried that if I followed philosophy as a subject that I would end up questioning religious belief. That seemed strange and it was several years after that comment that I realised how the philosophy issues lead to deep questions about religious truth.

For many religious thinkers religion and philosophy were united, but as people have become aware that the assuumptioni of religion, especially Christianity cannot be accepted as evident truths it seems that the two have parted to a large extent, with the philosophy of religion being a branch of philosophy. Of course, there is theology, which is philosophy based, but from it's own reference point of certain 'truths' rather than from a wider angle. — Jack Cummins

At seminaries, Kierkegaard is only grudgingly taught. Thinking about religion both delivers one from the yoke of dogma, and puts the "reality" of religion in full view.

That's exactly right. In general, it's good to be clear and precise. But some people try to be so precise they end up saying nothing at all.

On the other hand - and this applies to Kant - one should be able to express these sophisticated ideas in a manner that most people would at least get a "flavor" of, if they wished to get the gist of the topic.

One can, I think, express Kant's basic notions without much verbiage, which is something he is guilty of. Look at Schopenhauer, for instance, he states many of Kant's ideas in a very clear manner (most of the time). — Manuel

The meticulous mind is very useful, but becomes fascinated by the turning of its own wheels. Thinking becomes inherently entertaining. But on the other hand, some of the most verbose philosophers are extremely insightful. For me, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and others. Verbose, did I say? Certainly. Sometimes after pages and pages, and you then get it, and then, why does he have to say it like that?

That is a very Buddhist observation. — Wayfarer

Right. And it never was the prerogative of language to BE what language talked about. The trap is hermeneutical: Can language ever talk about something other than language? For all my words have their meanings bound to one another, and without this "difference" among terms, meaning falls apart.
But deconstructing meaning leads to disillusionment with language, or, language's culture, history, science paradigms and so on, and a turn toward the presence of the world itself.

Miraculous, literally, that we can do this, because impossible. Meaning is supposed to be what can be said, and if being said is simply this contingent, assailable kind of thing, and if language is this "totality" that makes the world toe the line, then there is no hope for the understanding to step beyond this.

But this kind of thinking misses the point completely. The given actuality of the world is not given in language, but is given intuitively. It is language that has to toe the line to the world, and the world is magnificent, intractable, powerful, eternal, and note how words like this are so elusive, intellectually fuzzy. Analytic philosophers would NEVER talk like this. Hence, the failure of analytic philosophy.

Recall the origin of classical metaphysics with Parmenides. He was an axial age philosopher, contemporary of the Buddha. Parmenides is where the reality of the idea of the forms was first considered, so is the origin of metaphysics proper. (I suppose it is this that is the subject of Heidegger's criticism of Western metaphysics, although I've yet to study that in detail.) — Wayfarer

The flower blooms and fades, but the idea of the flower endures. Which is more real? This is where Plato started. I know Heidegger thought very highly of the Greeks, especially Parmenides and Heraclitus who he considered "primordial" philosophers. He was very interested in making fundamental changes in t he way we think and going back to these beginnings were part of this. But this idea that something deeply important has been lost through the ages of bad metaphysics is a good one. But for Heidegger the answer rested with language, as he thinks language carries forth meaning. But have never read that he could make that really interesting transition from language to intuition, which is one way to talk about what Buddhism is about. Putting aside the details and the mountains of academic work, Buddhism is THE primordial grounding for discovery. Of this I have no doubt at all.

I'm reading Heidegger's Parmenides now. He is always interesting, always leads us away from beaten paths.

I note your appeals to 'pure presence' and (I think) the pre-rational sense of being, which is somehow opposed to the rationalist view or the appeal to reason, of which you are generally dismissive. And I am intuitively sympathetic to that, as I did an MA in Buddhist Studies 10 years ago, and have pursued Buddhist meditation.

I reconciled some of my thoughts on the relationship of Buddhism and Platonic Realism on a thread on dharmawheel - see especially this post (only if you're interested.) — Wayfarer

On this that you wrote, apologies for getting carried away, but it is an interesting idea:

Vert sticky wicket. As with all philosophical questions, first, I say, drop the science. It has no place, nearly, in philosophy. Nominalists that I have read are generally guided by the lack of the "real" presence of concepts, numbers, but once this real is no longer defined in terms of physicality or materiality (whatever these could possibly mean; to me, they are just the reification of a scientist's perspective, an attempt to "solidify" science's claims into a foundation for all issues. But as foundational, they are instantly refutable), then ontological standards are turned on their head: the "out thereness" of physical objects yields to the "presence" of meaning. "Out thereness" doesn't vanish, it is simply understood as a contextually determined concept, which is often used. The salt is "over there" and Jupiter is many miles away.

Anyway, what does this have to do with numbers, concepts and ideas? Keeping in mind that even by a typical physicalist/nominalist's thinking, numbers exist, it's just that they are not numbers. They are reducible to, say, neurological events. I mean, a nominalist has to admit that thinking about a number is not the same as not thinking at all. But your realist (contra nominalists, adn this seems to be your position) wants to say numbers exist AS numbers. I agree with this, for I am convinced that if the number two is not real as the number two, than neither is a house or a chair, for a house is not a house apart from its "eidetic" constitution. The attempt to say the house has a physicality a number doesn't have forgets physicality is just a scientist's biased way of looking at things, and has no real meaning here, and has no foundational justification. Numbers have meaning, and further, meaning is the only real standard for ontology.

But then, all concepts are in essence interpretative entities, and so, a house is not eternally, platonically, a house. It is, as an "intuition of a house", apodictically real, but not in the Platonic sense of forms vs things that "have a share" of the forms. the former simply reduces my thought, talk, remembering, planning about houses, to the actual event of talking, thinking etc. The event did occur! And this is beyond doubt, this actuality of occurrent thinking is absolute. The taking up the givinness of sensible intuitions AS a "house" is no less real than anything one can imagine. BUT, in the way this thinking expresses truth, this becomes arbitrary. Truth in the everyday sense is pragmatic.

You say:

The Buddha (and the Bodhisattvas) are the archetype of all wisdom. And archetypes are, in fact, 'universals', of which individuals are examples or instances. And to my mind, that is how come the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas are real beyond their particular, individual existence (which I certainly believe is so).


While you can see by the above I don't agree with the Stanford article that says, "universals are occult pseudo-entities that should not be taken seriously by a responsible thinker concerned with ontology," but I do think your claim needs more. Being an archetype of wisdom is something thick with questions, isn't it?
My thinking is very concrete, but the concrete is CERTAINLY NOT what science and its nominalist's take it for.

The point about pure mathematics, is only that it is a real subject, something about which can be completely wrong, yet it contains no empirical percepts whatever. It is a vast area of knowledge - not even to mention applied mathematics, which has had such enormous consequences for our age. And that is the theme of the often-discussed essay by Nobel Laureate, Eugene Wigner, called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences - actually one of the first articles I encountered via philosophy forums.

And I'm still not seeing how Kant's philosophy of mathematics does justice to this subject, as I put it in this post, although I also recognise that nobody seems to understand what I'm talking about.

So - yes, I understand this approach I'm pursuing is different to yours, and also different to the general preoccupations of phenomenology. I'm trying to understand Platonic realism, which I think is real. I'm heartened by the fact that one of the pre-eminent scholars in that field, Lloyd Gerson, has recently published a book called Platonism and the Possibility of Philosophy, which 'contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world, and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a distinct subject matter for philosophy.' All of which is, I suppose, tangential to Kant, but nevertheless Kant is central to it. — Wayfarer

But Plato is metaphysics, Kant tries not to be. He doesn't think, as far as I've read (and this is certainly not everything) we can say anything about our mathematical truths issues from eternity. Plato says the world of becoming has a share of the eternal world of forms. Plato gets awkward when you pull away from things like virtue, justice, the good; see the "third man" arguments, e.g. Is there an eternal form of a cow? A toaster?
But I do see some light on universals in the Platonic sense, but it is not clear to me yet. The argument goes to agency, that is, being a person as an agent that can be aware in the essential way for enlightenment. There IS such a thing as enlightenment, but for this to occur, one has to experience a break with the world. This is another matter.

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.