Pop music may be different from classical in that pop trends change rapidly with the social zeitgeist. It seems a large percentage of pop artists lose team by the time they reach 40, and I think this may be due to two factors. First, the r aeros are carrying forward a sensibility, attitude and approach to the world that remains relevant and edgy up to the point where a younger generation of musicians more effectively taps into the new zeitgeist. Thus the Beatles(as a group and then as solo artists) Stones and Dylan remained relevant as they continually reinvented themselves , up until the point where they couldn’t keep up with the new trends. But this doesn’t explain why they cannot keep churning out highest quality ‘classic rock’ that their older fans would still find great, instead of sounding increasingly derivative and bland. I think this may be because certain creative fields are more suited to younger than to older artists. That is , the ‘has-been’ older pop musician continues to evolve as a person , but it becomes more and more difficult to convey this personal growth in terms of powerful sounding music. (They say that mathematics is is a young person’s field also. )
Philosophy , on the other hand , privileges those who are in their 30’s and 40’s. In Kant’s case, it was his 7th decade. A common. trajectory for at least some philosophical writers is to move from the more concrete and systematic style in the early years to the more ‘spiritual’ and poetic in the later years. Perhaps pop music doesn’t lend itself to the more murky and abstractive modes of thought that comes with older age.

I hold a relativistic outlook, and I see my positions as being products of my psychology, personality, experiences, education, culture and so on. — Judaka

I don't agree with why they say civility is no longer appropriate. — Judaka

As I suggested earlier in this thread, I suspect that it may not be possible to locate the way in which incivility is being intended in the op unless one connects it with a series of discourses that run through neo-Marxism, critical theory and post-structuralist writing. Put differently, it would be a question of differentiating between your brand of relativism and understanding of the role of social influence , and what I suspect is a more radical shift away from individualism toward a thoroughgoing socially constructed notion of subjectivity that the op is pointing to.

Translation: it pisses people off when their good intentions are being attacked and condemned on the basis of accusations of agendas of hegemony , privilege, domination and bias that is supposedly hidden and implicit in the idea of individualistic civility.

I’ll say

The way I read the op, the incivility that is in contention is a product of the discourse being advocated , which takes subjectivity to be a product of sociallly constituted dynamics. Thus terms like privilege, hegemony, oppression and colonization are deemed appropriate to describe behaviors and thoughts which are otherwise assumed to be the product of individual understanding. So the ‘ ‘ ‘incivility’ is to dare to accuse the individual
of unknowingly being in thrall to dominating powers

"liberals individuate; radicals collectivize" — StreetlightX

I would like to point to two types of ‘radicalized’ or collectivized thinking. The first hews closer to Marx than to Foucault and even maintains remnants of Christian moralism. It does so by seeing power as held by certain collectives. Foucault, instead, sees only differentials of force that flow though , form and reform subjectiviities as a social process, but are never merely possessed by individuals or collectives. Why is this difference important for the political understanding of incivility? I think the Marxist-inspired radicalism relies on a blameful finger-pointing moralism. If power can be invested i. groups , then those groups can be seems morally culpable band treated as such. This is the condemnation and accusation that those accused of injustice perceive as incivility.

An example of the non-moralizing radical alternative that comes to mind is Ken Gergen’s socialconstructivist approach.

In 1999 he penned an article about identity politics:.

“By and large identity politics has depended on a rhetoric of blame, the illocutionary effects of which are designed to chastise the target (for being unjust, prejudiced, inhumane, selfish, oppressive, and/or violent). In western culture we essentially inherit two conversational responses to such forms of chastisement - incorporation or antagonism. The incorporative mode ("Yes, now I see the error of my ways") requires an extended forestructure of understandings (i.e. a history which legitimates the critic's authority and judgment, and which renders the target of critique answerable). However, because in the case of identity politics, there is no preestablished context to situate the target in just these ways, the invited response to critique is more typically one of hostility, defense and counter-charge.

In its critical moment, social constructionism is a means of bracketing or suspending any pronouncement of the real, the reasonable, or the right. In its generative moment, constructionism offers an orientation toward creating new futures, an impetus to societal transformation. Constructionist thought militates against the claims to ethical foundations implicit in much identity politics - that higher ground from which others can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and unjust. Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy? As we find, then, social constructionism is a two edged sword in the political arena, potentially as damaging to the wielding hand as to the opposition.”(Social Construction and the Transformation of Identity Politics)

“For are we not all, in a Bakhtinian sense, akin to polyphonic novels, speaking in multiple voices, reflecting multiple traditions? If we inherit a pluralism of moral intelligibilities, on what grounds could we select among them - save from the standpoint of yet another inherited intelligibility? And, finally, if moral deliberation is inherently cultural, then in what sense are we justified in holding individuals responsible for the humane society? Isn't individual blame thus a mystification of our condition of interdependence?

“If we do envision the impulse toward action as a byproduct of relational engagement, we may also refigure the institutions of blame and responsibility. For if we hold single individuals responsible for their actions, we again position ourselves symbolically as God - here the supreme judge of good and evil. And in our godlike form, we effectively deny our participation in the culture, treating ourselves as the overseeing eye, suspended above the acts of mortals. In contrast, if we envision action as a relational outcome, our sensibilities are horizontally recast. Specifically, a stance of relational responsibility is invited, one in which we approach heinous and egregious action with a curiosity of context. That is, we broaden the network of participation, to consider how the relationships in which the erring individual was involved (personal, mediated, and environmental) have brought about such an end. And, as we broaden the relational context so as to include multiple others, so should we consider their relationships and how they impinge on the actions in question. And if our concern is sufficiently great, we may eventually reach the point in which we realize our own complicity in the action. Blame and responsibility are thus distributed within the community, and indeed the culture. We are all invited thereby to join together in actions that would establish more promising future. (Here, for example, we might consider our own participation in the problem of drugs, rape, homicide, and joblessness).”(Relational Humanism)

Thanks This piece should be trotted out every time someone begins a thread about the primacy of physicalism.

I highly recommend this recent book by Thompson. In it he shows the relevance of phenomenology for the understanding of organismic functioning as well as cognition.

https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/610970/mod_resource/content/1/09%20-%20Evan_Thompson_-_Mind_in_Life~_Biology%2C_Phenomenology%2C_and_the_Sciences_of_Mind.pdf

In my view no foundation exists, only positivistic evolution (hopefully progress), so the question of grounding is moot. — Enrique

What they are arguing is that empirical nature is based on mathematicized objectivity, a concoction of Descartes and Galileo that amounts to a restricted view , a view with blinders on. It is an idealized scheme that doesn’t know it is a scheme, and instead thinks that it is without foundation. The fact that many scientists now say that they reject naive , metaphysical realism in favor of a representational realism indicates that they acknowledge science operates with foundational presuppositions which change over time. A number of social and psychological scientists are taking one step further and moving beyond the foundations guiding most in the hard sciences. The changes in philosophy of science over the centuries reflects changes in foundational scientific assumptions about objectivity , reality , subjectivity and their relations.

If you roll it up into a ball, you'll find that it bounces (if you've kept it chloral hydrated). — frank

I gave it to the kid at the 7-11 by mistake instead of my debit card. He asked me why I was giving him Nietzsche’s brain. I apologized profusely. Fortunately it turns out they honor it there. I even got a free Slurpee.

That's interesting, but we need a different source. Two of Dr Sax's books have been criticized for inaccurate information, misrepresentation, and distortion. — frank

I keep a slice of Nietzsche’s brain in my wallet, and it looks tumory to me.

“I think they should be confused”. A bit of poetic license here. I was trying to ward off attempts to distinguish between the two ( or between philosophy and literature , science, politics or religion) in rigidly categorical ways, as I’ve seem done often. But certainly all the writers I mentioned make a fundamental distinction between their philosophies and their psychologies. Husserl allows us to bracket off empirical psychology along with the physical body and the natural world, yet leave the philosophical grounding intact. The same is true of Heidegger. Their psychologies are relative and contingent derivations of their philosophies , but the reverse is not the case.

What is the relationship between perception and reason, how do these facets of the mind influence will and action? It has been shown that both can be explained in materialistic terms — Enrique

“Husserl showed that in order to reach the transcendental or foundational level, one must not rely on any of the areas of being or experience that one is trying to found or ground.

These areas that are founded but not foundational include psychology, anthropology, and the natural sciences, physics in a broad sense. Heidegger says the same thing in his Introduction to Being and Time. Therefore, if one claims that naturalism is foundational, then one is taking one of the founded areas of experience and making it foundational. But this move begs the question. It is a vicious circle. Naturalism refers to one region of being, the region of nature. As one region among many, like the human and the animate,
the ontological region of nature requires grounding. When one uses one of the things requiring grounding to be the ground, you are basically copying the foundation off the
founded. I have already alluded to this circular reasoning when we were discussing immanence and materialism.”
Leonard Lawler

https://www.smh.com.au/world/nietzsche-died-of-brain-cancer-20030506-gdgprc.html?js-chunk-not-found-refresh=true

He had syphilis, which is neurologically devastating. — frank

The new thinking is that he had a slow growing brain tumor.

“ A study of medical records has found that, far from suffering a sexually transmitted disease that drove him mad, Nietzsche almost certainly died of brain cancer.

The doctor who carried out the study claims that the universally accepted story of Nietzsche having caught syphilis from prostitutes was concocted after World War II by Wilhelm Lange-Eichbaum, an academic who was one of Nietzsche's most vociferous critics. It was then adopted as fact by intellectuals who were keen to demolish the reputation of Nietzsche, whose idea of a "superman" was used to underpin Nazism.”

https://www.smh.com.au/world/nietzsche-died-of-brain-cancer-20030506-gdgprc.html?js-chunk-not-found-refresh=true

why do you think he is neglected as a thinker? — Protagoras

Freud was and still is an important figure within continental philosophy. You’ll find mention of Freud or Freudian concepts built into the theoretical underpinnings of Woke political discourse. And of course , critical race theory is partly based on crucial theory , which incorporates elements of Freud.

The American psychological and psychiatric communities tend to be interested only in the narrowly clinical aspects of Freud’s writings. This tendency goes back to the first translations in English of his work, which shows the American bias for empiricism over the humanistic elements. For instance , ich was translated as ego esther than ‘I’.

Psychology and philosophy - as I am sure you realize - not to be confused. If science is about the how of things and philosophy about the truth of things, then what is psychology about? — tim wood

I think they should be confused, since there is so much overlap between them. Nietzsche called himself a psychologist , Husserl showed the close relationship
between his phenomenology and intentional psychology (calling his transcendental phenomenology the truely grounding science), psychologists like Gendlin and Kelly were also philosophers, using philosophical explication to make explicit what was implicit in their psychologies. To me making an inquiry more philosophical is just the process of turning what has been tacitly assumed into an articulated presupposition. Thus there are more and less ‘philosophical’ psychologies.

Though Freud did make some interesting contributions, it must not be forgotten that he was quite critical of philosophy as he was of religion. — Apollodorus

He wasn’t critical of all philosophy.
Ernest Jones, a close friend and dedicated follower of Freud, recalls that Freud told him in conversation about that time [i.e. 1908] that Nietzsche was one of the 'authentically great men of all time' and that 'Nietzsche developed a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived.'

Freud [in his published 'Autobiographical Study':] "[Nietzsche's] guesses and intuitions often agree in the most astonishing way with the labourious findings of [my work]."

Fantastic. Or maybe all value systems are appearances of truths! — Xtrix

This could be , but it would be more consistent with Kerkegaard than Nietzsche.

True, we can deny it by having academic discussions about the nature of "truth", and talk of "alternative facts," etc. That seems to be the popular strategy these days. Glad to see you're helping to spread it. — Xtrix

I do my best.

Not all perspectives are right. Some further values better than others, according to him. By "truth" he means the ultimate truth of philosophers and theologians. — Xtrix

All ‘truths’ are mere appearances which emerge out of value systems. I agree that within a particular value system , there are normative conventions and constraints , but value systems continually change and do not become closer to any final truth. Furthermore , one might argue that conservatives are thinking from
within a different value system than liberals. Within the conservative value system, some ideas further values better than others. This is also true of the liberal value system. But what furthers conservative values is not the same as what furthers liberal values.

Will to power marks this endless relativity and flux of value systems. The only ‘truth’ for Nietzsche ( and Heidegger , Derrida, Foucault , Deleuze and others who follow Nietzsche) is this incessant , non-progressing flux of becoming.

it proves that some perspectives are WRONG. Yes, I do believe in truth
— Xtrix
— Joshs

Yes, because that's such a controversial statement.

Even Nietzsche would be laughing at you. — Xtrix

He certainly was laughing at something.

“It is no more than a moral prejudice that the truth is worth more than appearance; in fact, it is the world's most poorly proven assumption.”

“The world with which we are concerned is false, i.e., is not fact but fable and approximation on the basis of a meager sum of observations; it is "in flux," as something in a state of becoming, as a falsehood always changing but never getting near the truth: for--there is no "truth" (Nietzsche 1901/1967 Will to Power)

in any case, you're just changing the subject. I never once said there needs to be a "single universal perspective." — Xtrix

No, I think your statement below articulates what I had in mind more clearly than ‘single universal perspective’.

it proves that some perspectives are WRONG. Yes, I do believe in truth — Xtrix

There is 97% + agreement on what the problem is -- from those in the field. That's good enough for me. — Xtrix

That’s good enough for me, too, but this thread isnt talking about us, it’s talking about the large number of people who are doubtful it’s as big or immediate a problem as the scientists claim it to be.

I'm not interested in the minority who have been brainwashed into denialism by the fossil fuel propaganda juggernaut, — Xtrix

First of all, this is a very large minority. Secondly, believing the opposition is simply ‘brainwashed’ rather than operating from an entirely different frame of understanding than yours will keep you tied up in knots.


“Who mentioned anything about a "single universal perspective"? You're arguing against self-created phantoms.”

Assuming that those who disagree with you on this issue are brainwashed pre-supposes that facts can be separated from perspectives and values.

what's needed is wide-scale awareness and prioritization of the particular problem (climate change). — Xtrix

My point is that there will never be precise agreement , nor does there need to be, on what exactly the ‘particular problem’ is. There is already wide-scale
awareness of something called ‘climate change’ , but what exactly this means varies widely according to political affiliation , etc. More scare tactics from the left will just backfire.

What issue one considers worth prioritizing is a function of how seriously one considers the threat , which is itself a function. of how one construes the issue. You will not get right wing conservatives to see the issue in the way climate scientists do , because this is t about facts, it’s about complex worldviews within which the facts appear as what they are. Complex worldviews are extremely resistant to change. If you want to influence climate skeptics and others who are slow to act , you have to connect with their worldview and work with them from within those bounds rather than trying to get them on the same page as the climate scientists. Without your help, conservatives will eventually arrive at the realization of the necessity to act. Will it be too late?No. It would obviously be preferable from our vantage if they felt a greater sense of urgency right now , but I suspect they are going to have to be pushed to the precipice in order to act. That will be costly financially as well as in terms of lives and quality of life, but I don’t see any alternative.

can't see a way we survive unless there's wide-scale awareness and prioritization of this particular problem. — Xtrix

One could make the same argument about World war 1, World war 2 and the Cold war. People make accommodations to alien cultures ( peace treaties) and adjustments to perceived threats from within their own way of seeing the world , not by melding into a single universal perspective.

For me, the leading problem is one of values held and aspired toward by the majority of humans inhabiting this earth: both those in power and those who grant them their power.
— javra

Well said. This is also what I mean by awakening. A paradigm shift, a revolution -- all similar: a major, far-reaching event that happens relatively quickly. — Xtrix

The dream of a global awakening is an age-old wish. But I think it’s wrong-headed , and comparable to wishing that all species of animals were to awaken and begin exhibiting the same behavior. But just as animal species occupy diverse niches for a reason, so do human communities identify with diverse worldviews. Not only will we never get these communities to ‘awaken’ to the same understanding on any issue , we shouldn’t consider it a desirable goal. I think we will eventually overcome our climate challenges, but it wo nt be because our interpretation of the issues involved , the validity of the science or the means of resolution. will have achieved some sort of planetary consensus.

that the sky is objectively above the earth can be appraised to so be due to such a reason. Now, I take this to be hinting at a possible metaphysical interpretation of space in large, rather than expounding on how space in general can be construed to be contingent on observers. — javra

whether or not time is deemed contingent on mind, it can nevertheless yet be objectively real. — javra

Let me connect these thoughts with our previous conversation in which I associated the self-identity of a form with Cartesian substance as res extentia(which
led to your remark that I apparently didn’t want to engage seriously in the discussion). It was actually Husserl and Heidegger who who traced modern
science to the mathematization of nature , which proceeded by taking pragmatically constructed shapes and turning them into idealized geometrical abstractions. Objective space emerged from this idealization, a mathematical form supposedly existing independent of all observer perspectives.

Husserl, in Ideas II, says duration is a property of transcendent (real) spatial ‘things’, and real
spatial objects are presumed to exist in the pure mathematical ideality of geometric space-time..
“Every thingly being is temporally extended; it has its duration, and with its duration it is fit within Objective time in a strict manner. Thus with its duration it has a fixed place in the one world-time, which is a universal form of existence for all thinghood.”

“A true object in the sense of logic is an object which is absolutely identical "with itself," that is, which is, absolutely identically, what it is; or, to express it in another way: an object is through its determinations, its quiddities [Weisheiten], its predicates, and it is identical if these quiddities are identical as belonging to it or when their belonging absolutely excludes their
not belonging. Purely mathematical thinking is related to possible objects which are thought determinately determinately through ideal-"exact" mathematical (limit-) concepts…”

“In his view of the world from the perspective of geometry, the perspective of what appears to
the senses and is mathematizable, Galileo abstracts from the subjects as persons leading a personal life; he abstracts from all cultural properties which are attached to things in human praxis. The result of this abstraction is the things purely as bodies; but these are taken as concrete real objects, the totality of which makes up a world which becomes the subject matter of research. One can truly say that the idea of nature as a really self-enclosed world of bodies first emerges with Galileo. A consequence of this, along with mathematization, which was too quickly taken for granted, is [the idea of] a self-enclosed natural causality in which every occurrence is determined unequivocally and in advance. Clearly the way is thus prepared for dualism, which appears immediately afterward in Descartes. In general we must realize that the conception of the new idea of "nature" as an encapsuled, really and theoretically self-enclosed world of bodies soon brings about a complete transformation of the idea of the world in general. The world splits, so to speak, into two worlds: nature and the psychic world, although the latter, because of the way in which it is related to nature, does not achieve the status of an independent world.”

Heidegger says:

“Descartes does not allow the kind of being of innerworldly beings to present itself, but rather prescribes to the world, so to speak, its "true" being on the basis of an idea of being (being = constant objective presence) the source of which has not been revealed and the
justification of which has not been demonstrated. Thus it is not primarily his dependence upon a science, mathematics, which just happens to be especially esteemed, that detennines his ontology of the world, rather his ontology is determined by a basic ontological orientation toward being as constant objective presence, which mathematical knowledge is exceptionally well
suited to grasp.*“

I've actually wondered about the role of drugs. Look at the movements of the 1960s and look at what drugs were being used there versus say the 1980s. I personally think there's a lot to gain from psychedelic substances. — Xtrix

The idea that dosing world leaders with lsd would lead to peace was popular within the counterculture and one that lTimothy Leary fervently believed in. In fact, he thought that every major advance in human culture was associated with with use of a drug of some kind.
He found , however, that chemicals alone do not determine imagination. In his autobiography he recounted the story of trying to turn on Jack Kerouac and Arthur Koestler, only to be disappointed by their underwhelming reaction to the lsd experience.

Page 89 of Stambaugh.

The appearance and the real turned into the appearing doesn't get us out of the original desire, which Heidegger falls back on only in the later work. — Antony Nickles

For Heidegger, that which ‘appears’ is not an outside which shows itself to a self, an inside. In the first
place , Heidegger does not view Dasein from the vantage of a subject-object binary. If one instead speaks of self and world, then Dasein belongs to both poles. Specifically , the self is constantly changing creation. It exists in unveiling itself by projecting itself on a possibility. What it projects itself on is its world. So the self is its world as the possibility that it projects itself into. Put differently , the self is the tripartite structure of temporality as the past anticipating itself into the future.

“The phenomenological con­cept of phenomenon, as self-showing, means the being of beings-its meaning, modifications, and derivatives. This self-showing is nothing arbitrary, nor is it something like an appearing. The being of beings can least of all be something "behind which" something else stands, something that "does not appear”.”

For me this ties in with the principle/law of identity: any identity we can be aware of is itself an eidos and, as such, is cognized by us to be a whole give that, most always if not always, can be abstracted as being constituted of parts, with each identifiable part then itself, again, being an eidos. — javra

This is indeed a different understanding of whole, part and their relation in comparison with Husserl’s phenomenological approach. Your method, which is consistent with much empirical thinking going back to Aristotle, assembles larger wholes out of parts which maintain their own identity as they are joined together to form larger totalitites. Thus, your notion of form, eidos, whole is linked to identity as persisting presence to self, substance and res extentia. Husserl and Heidegger unravel the concept of self-present identity.

Note: I wrote this before seeing Xtrix’s comment. It sounds like we’re on the same page.

It seems here it doesn't matter the way we conduct ourselves (or the ways there are to conduct ourselves) as long as we are aware (present). But I think we are in the weeds already when trying to pin down Being either as knowledge or source, etc. — Antony Nickles

Being means: presence.
— Joshs — Antony Nickles

In this quote, Heidegger is distinguishing between the traditional understanding of Being and Beyng. In the mid 1930’s he began using this term ‘Beyng’ to further differentiate Dasein from being as presence.

“beyng occurs essentially not as cause and never as ground.”

Awareness for Heidegger isnt presence , it’s transit, an absencing, precisely a not being present to oneself. It is thrownness.

“Thus thrown in this throw, man is a transition, transition as the fundamental essence of occurrence. Man is history, or better, history is man. Man is enraptured in this transition and therefore essentially 'absent'. Absent in a fundamental sense-never simply at hand, but absent in his essence, in his essentially being away, removed into essential having been and future-essentially absencing and never at hand, yet existent in his essential absence. Transposed into the possible, he must constantly be mistaken concerning what is actual. And only because he is thus mistaken and transposed can he become seized by terror. And only where there is the perilousness of being seized by terror do we find the bliss of astonishment-being torn away in that wakeful manner that is the breath of all philosophizing.”

Derrida declared his indebtedness to Heidegger for inspiring his project of the deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence.Early on in Being and Time Heidegger takes on the genealogical history of being as presence in Western philosophy.

“ Mathematical knowledge is regarded as the one way of apprehending beings which can always be certain of the secure possession of the being of the beings which it apprehends. Whatever has the kind of being adequate to the being accessible in mathematical knowledge is in the true sense. This being is what always is what it is. Thus what can be shown to have the character of constantly remaining, as remanens capax mutationem, constitutes the true being of beings which can be experienced in the world. What enduringly remains truly is. This is the sort of thing that mathematics knows. What mathematics makes accessible in beings constitutes their being. Thus the being of the "world" is, so to speak, dictated to it in terms of a definite idea of being which is embedded in the concept of substantiality and in terms of an idea of knowledge which cognizes beings in this way. Descartes does not allow the kind of being of innerworldly beings to present itself, but rather prescribes to the world, so to speak, its "true" being on the basis of an idea of being (being = constant objective presence) the source of which has not been revealed and the justification of which has not been demonstrated. Thus it is not primarily his dependence upon a science, mathematics, which just happens to be especially esteemed, that determines his
ontology of the world, rather his ontology is determined by a basic ontological orientation toward being as constant objective presence, which mathematical knowledge is exceptionally well suited to grasp.* In this way Descartes explicitly switches over philosophically from the development of traditional ontology to modem mathematical physics and its transcendental
foundations.” (Being and Time)

Comparisons, differentiations, additions and subtractions are actions performed on already constituted formal objects
— Joshs

I want to call that out too. I think the qualification ‘formal’ is key here. Use of the qualifier ‘formal’ denotes this as a specifically philosophical expression. — Wayfarer

Not sure what you mean. How would you define a formal
object in Husserl’s sense?

There's a resemblance to Kant's 'synthesis', isn't there? — Wayfarer

Husserl from Philosophy of Arithmetic:


“Already Kant used the word "synthesis" (combination) in a double sense: first, in the sense of the unity of the parts of a whole, whether these parts are properties of a thing, parts of an extension, units in a number, and so on; second, in the sense of the mental activity (actus) of combining. Both significations are intimately related in Kant because, in his view, every whole, of whatever kind it may be, is developed from its parts by means of the spontaneous activity of the mind.

"Synthesis" therefore signifies simultaneously, for him, com­bining and the result of combination. That we presume to observe combinations in the phenomena themselves, and to extract them therefrom by means of abstraction: that is only an illusion. It is we ourselves who have furnished the combinations, and, of course, by means of the "pure concepts of the understanding," the categories.

“The theory of synthesis with which we have just become ac­quainted is untenable and is based upon essential misunderstand­ings. Kant failed to notice that many combinations of content are given to us where no trace of a synthesizing activity that produces connectedness of contents is to be found. Lange, again, pays no attention at all to those cases where composite representations owe their unity solely and only to synthesizing acts, while in the primary contents a combination is not present or does not come into consideration. According to him all combination is supposed to occur in the content, and of course in virtue of the form of space encompassing all content. This is false. The very concepts mul­tiplicity and number resist this view. The combination of the colligated contents in the multiplicity, and of the enumerated ones in the number, is not a spatial combination, just as little as it can be taken for a temporal one - and, we can immediately add, just as little as any other combination within primary contents.

…it also is to be emphasized that the entire underlying intuition, for Lange as for Kant - according to which a relational content is the result of an act of relating - is psychologically untenable.
Inner experience, and it alone is decisive here, shows nothing of such 'creative' processes. Our mental activity does not make the relations. They are simply there, and, given an appropriate direction of interest, they are just as noticeable as any other type of content. Strictly speaking, creative acts that produce some new content as a result distinct from them are psychological monstrosities.

Certainly one distinguishes in complete generality the relating mental activity from the relation itself (the comparing lfrom the similarity, etc.). But where one speaks of such a type of relating activity, one thereby understands either the grasping of the relational content or the interest that picks out the terms of the relation and embraces them, which is the indispensable precondition for the relations combining those contents becoming observable. But whatever is the case, one will never be able to maintain that the respective act creatively produces its content.

One may perhaps reply to us by pointing precisely to those synthetic acts which we have above verified in representations of number, and which, as we will yet see, are identical with our “collective" combinations. In their case it is indeed the act alone that is supposed to procure the combination. - In a certain sense this is quite correct. The combination of course subsists solely and only in the unifying act itself, and consequently the represen­tation of the combination also in the representation of the act. But there does not exist besides the act a relational content different
from the act itself, as its creative result, which the view we are attacking always presupposes.”


…it is clear that designation of numbers as purely mental creations of an inner intuition involves an exaggeration and a distortion of the true state of affairs. Numbers are mental creations insofar as they are results of activities which we exercise on concrete contents. But what these activities create are not new, absolute contents which could then be found again somewhere in space or in the "external world." Rather, they are peculiar, relational concepts, which can only be produced again and again, but which absolutely cannot be simply found somewhere already completed.”

the regularity would still exist even if we took our blinders off and the question would remain why the regularity persists. — litewave

The seemingly mathematically exact regularity would make way form a more complex pattern, What’s most valuable in the relation between the apple and gravity is that two previously unconnected phenomena were unified via an empirical explanation , not that a certain number (the gravitational constant ) resulted. In and of it self the constant, this ‘law of nature’ is not connected to anything. It is arbitrary. The most profound progress in science isn’t about arriving at arbitrary constants but showing the interconnectness of the world. As an example, a multiple universe hypothesis that makes the gravitational constant in this universe just one point in a spectrum of evolving universes, each with their own constants, changes the constant from an isolated and arbitrary number to part of an interconnected process of development. It could be that in a hundred years or so the physical laws have been replaced by a probabilistic , process -oriented physical model that puts unidirectional time at this core . We already are hints of this thinking with Lee Smolen and Ilya Prigogine.

So there are many kinds of models of regularities, and each has its drawbacks as well strengths. A strictly mathematical ‘lawfulness’ has as a drawback that everything that doesn’t fit into the model is rendered as chaos, randomness and chance. Prior to chaos theory, many physical behaviors were treated
that way ( cloud and smoke formations).

So if our sciences didn't do this, we would not experience the apple as falling down every time we drop it? — litewave

It’s not that the sciences are wrong, it’s that they operate with blinders on. So rather than just defining what is in front of me as this object moving in space according to a mathematical rule, we could embed this restrictive formulation within a much wider, richer and more interconnected experience that recognizes the contribution of my subjective schemes to what appears in front of me , and acknowledges the contribution of an intersubjectivity community of the construction of what we call ‘external’ reality.

It may be hard to see how this way of seeing improves physics , but it makes a profound difference to the social sciences and psychology, which have suffered under the rule of the methods of the hard sciences.

It is a spectrum of behaviour not a spectrum of gender. You don't change sex or gender by just being a man who is not violent — Andrew4Handel

You can change the gender -related behavior of animals with hormone replacement. This is an effect on the brain, not the sex parts or genes. Male mammals and birds behave differently than females. Have you ever owned a car or dog? Why’s isn’t this behavior a spectrum of gender?What is it that is at the very core of what we mean by gender, vaginas and penises or behaviors such as sexual attraction, masculinity and femininity? If I put you in a time machine and took you back to the womb , and then altered the hormonal environment to change your psychological gender , it wouldn’t change your biological
gender but every aspect of you style of interacting with your world would change in a gender -related way.

why do causal relations ("the constant conjunction between causes and effects", as Hume put it) persist in time? — litewave

Because our sciences substitute idealized abstractions for a more immediate and intricate experiencing of our world. The way we have carved up the world rigs the deck by forcing our experience into over-generalized channels such as objective causation and universal natural lawfulness. Then we mistake the peculiar constraints our models impose with the world itself.

If you’re arguing from the position that specific behavioral and affective dispositions are associated with biological gender, are you also making a distinction between chromosomal gender and biological gender? For instance, are there gay men who belong to the extreme effeminate end of a Kinsey behavioral scale and who consequently are likely to lack the aggressivity traits you are pointing to in trans women? If so , would you concede that there are intermediate psychological genders that the male/ female binary doesn’t capture?

I don't see logic as empirical in the sense of being 'dependent on experience' — Wayfarer

I see logic as innate to the structure of the mind, an innate capacity. In that sense, I'm sympathetic to the generally platonist view. — Wayfarer

Husserl wrote a book called Formal and Transcendental
Logic. In it he attempts to untangle centuries old
confusions concerning the origin and nature of formal logic.

“ Its naive presupposing of a world ranks logic among the positive sciences. We were saying above that logic, by its relation to a real world, presupposes not only a real world's being-in-itself but also the possibility, existing "in itself", of acquiring cognition of a world as genuine knowledge, genuine science, either empirically or a priori. This implies: Just as the realities belonging to the world are what they are, in and of themselves, so also they are substrates for truths that are valid in themselves — "truths in themselves"”.

logic or reason, the capacity to understand terms such as 'the same as', 'greater than', 'because', and so on - are based on the mind's ability to grasp the relations of ideas. Those abilities can't be explained in materialist terms. — Wayfarer

Husserl argues that the above terms are not irreducible primitives of mind but are in fact products of higher levels constructions based on interaction with a world. ‘The same as’, ‘ greater than’ and ‘because’ are no more innate, world independent capabilities than the understanding of causality is a Kantian category of mind. When he performs the transcendental reduction, every sense associated with interaction with real or ideal
objects , such as ‘same as’ and ‘greater than’ , vanishes along with these objects What remains as irreducible is the structure of intentionality , the appearing of something in consciousness as what it is in the particular mode of givenness by which I intend it. Intentionality is neither the province of the mind in itself nor that of the material world . It precedes both of these derivative and inadequate ideas. It is the inseparable mutually dependent relation between a subjective (egoic) and objective pole of the intentional act.

“ Experience is the performance in which for me, the experiencer, experienced being "is there", and is there as what it is, with the whole content and the mode of being that experience itself, by the performance going on in its intentionality, attributes to it.”

Comparisons, differentiations , additions and subtractions are actions performed on already constituted formal objects. But how is it that we are able to experience an object as a singular unit , separated out from a
multiplicity of which we deem it to belong , such that we can proceed to perform these feats of logic? Husserl’s fist published work , the philosophy of arithmetic, offers a fascinating genesis of such seemingly irreducible concepts as that of the discrete , self-persisting object from mix more basic acts , wherein there is as yet no concept of formal object.

For instance, according to Husserl, the basis of any sort of whole of independently apprehended parts(a whole in the pregnant sense) is the collective combination, which is an abstracting act of consciousness uniting parts.

“Collective combination plays a highly significant role in our mental life as a whole. Every complex phenomenon which presupposes parts that are separately and specifically noticed, every higher mental and emotional activity, requires, in order to be able to arise at all, collective combinations of partial phenomena. There could never even be a representation of one of the more simple relations (e.g., identity, similarity, etc.) if a unitary interest and, simultaneously with it, an act of noticing did not pick out the terms of the relation and hold them together as unified. This 'psychical' relation is, thus, an indispensable psychological precondition of every relation and combination whatsoever.”(p.78)

He conducted these researches under a psychological rubric , leading to accusations of psychologism from Frege and others. Ten years later he understood his method to be phenomenological, correcting the impressions of psychologism without affecting the substance of his description of the constitution of totality. In Experience and Judgement, he conducts a similar investigation under the heading of apprehension of plurality.

In any such whole the parts are united in a specific manner. Fundamental to the genesis of almost all totalities is that its parts initially appear as a temporal succession.

“Succession in time constitutes an insuppressible psychological precondition for the formation of by far the most number concepts and concrete multiplicities - and practically all of the more complicated concepts in general.”(Phil of Arithmetic, p.29) “Almost all representations of multiplicities - and, in any case, all representations of numbers - are results of processes, are wholes originated gradually out of their elements. Insofar as this is so, each element bears in itself a different temporal determination.”(p.33) “Temporal succession forms the only common element in all cases of multiplicity, which therefore must constitute the foundation for the abstraction of that concept.”(p.30)

While the first step of constitution of a multiplicity is the awareness of the temporal succession of parts, each of which we are made aware of as elements “separately and specifically noticed” , the collective combination itself only emerges from a secondary act of consciousness. This higher order constituting sense changes what was originally a temporal succession into a simultaneity by ‘bringing' back ‘ the previous parts via reflecting on them in memory. Husserl says that a combination of objects is similar to the continuity of a tone. In both cases, a temporal succession is perceived through reflection as a simultaneity.

“For the apprehension of each one of the colligated contents there is required a distinct psychical act. Grasping them together then requires a new act, which obviously includes those distinct acts, and thus forms a psychical act of second order.”(p.77) “It is essential that the partial representations united in the representation of the multiplicity or number be present in our consciousness simultaneously [in an act of reflection].”(p.33)

the principles of logic are discovered, not invented; however the brain evolves, it has to conform to them, it doesn't produce them out of itself. — Wayfarer

I may have misunderstood you. I thought you were arguing that logic is grounded in a transcendent platonic category of mind. If you are saying instead that logic is an empirical endeavor( discovered rather than invented) then I agree. But then this is consistent with Lakoff and Johnson’s account of the basis of mathematical logic in embodied interactions( not physical
causation but higher order intentionality).