Comments

  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    I am making use of Daniel Bonevac's Video Kant's Categories.

    Reason doesn't create logic, rather, what we reason has been determined by the prior logical structure of the brain
    RussellA

    A good video for the topic. Thanks. :up: However, I never said that reason creates logic. :D
    When you say reason doesn't create logic (whoever said reason creates logic - NOT ME), it sounds like reason is some kind of a biological or living entity itself as a lump of substance. That would be Sci-Fi, not Philosophy.

    Reason is a way our thoughts work. Logic has had many definitions since Aristotle's invention. In Kant, logic is the way reason works along with the Categories. Categorical items are not something that operate themselves. They are schema, i.e. form with the a priori concepts to be applied to the objects in the senses.  How does it work? It works according to the logic.

    I was thinking about what reason would be in general terms, and also looked for its dictionary definition.  It is a rational basis for one's action and judgement.  It is a really abstract concept.  You cannot tell anything about reason without its content i.e. what it was about, i.e. some description on your motive for your action, or your argument or proposition on something.  Without this content, it doesn't make sense in talking about reason.  And of course you can talk about reason as a property of mind just like in CPR.

    The brain must have a physical structure that is logically ordered in order to make logical sense of its experiences of the world.RussellA

    Kant is in effect saying that Chomsky's Innatism is a more sensible approach than Skinner's Behaviourism.RussellA

    Reason cannot be located in the brain. Again this is the hard problem on mind and body connection issue you brought up. Kant never said a word about the brain in all his works as far as I am aware. Maybe he did. I am not sure. I doubt it very much. He would have really nothing much to say about it even if he did. Talking about Brain and TI in the context of its location or connection would be a categorical mistake.

    Chomsky's Enactivism sounds like a type of SocioBiology subject. I am sure it has nothing to do with Kant's transcendental Idealism. Neither Skinner's Behaviourism.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    Cool. Will have a look at the video, and get back to you later in due course. :ok:
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    "To the things themselves" they said but those things were "phenomena", hence the name of the movement. This dualism was enabled by the influence of Kant on latter philosophy. Phenomena is not understood by the immediate sensations anyway, hence the mere fact that I know the moon is there when everybody closes their eyesGregory

    From my books on Kant, they all seem to agree in saying that Kant's main point for writing CPR was to draw a boundary on the power of human reason i.e. reason can only operate within the limits of our senses. What is not entered in the sense are not legitimate objects of human knowledge making Metaphysics as invalid form of knowledge.

    I don't agree with those views in the books, because Kant made clear himself, that he loves Metaphysics. Kant wanted to establish Metaphysics a subject which is different from Science in methodology and domain. Not invalid form of knowledge.

    In doing so, he had to create the concept of the thing-in-itself as an object of an unknown world, and the upshot is the 2 different type world i.e. noumenon and phenomenon which looks like a typical dualism. But whether it was a real dualism as such would be subject for debate. My view is that it wasn't a dualism, but was just a way of drawing boundary between what human reason can do reliably, and not.

    This sounds like Plato. Kant has a different "feel" to his work but that may be from the historical distance between them. Is it possible Kant was just a Platonist?Gregory

    I thought about Kant as a Platonic dualist too at one point, but as @Wayfarer pointed out, there are clear differences between Kant and Plato.  In Plato, the world of ideas was the real world.  The phenomenon world is a transit temporary and shadowy world. 

    That view was coherently supportive of the Christianity doctrines and had been adopted by the apologists from the ancient through the medieval times and even today. Platonic realism is the universals are the part of the reality in the world of idea, which is the true universe.  I don't think Kant would have agreed on that.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    To say that the our fields of perception alone give us phenomena i think is contrary to phenomenology, which Kant may have have been the first author of. Mentally we have, or for now have, a "frame" and we put all our sensations on this 2d frame in order to organize it. The phenomena of the window behind me is behind me, and the noumena could be anywhere. I even think sounds exist objectively. A reality outside of usGregory

    I am not sure even Kant says you have a 2nd frame where your sense contents get transferred into for further organisation.   Anyway, Kant was not a Phenomenologist, and Phenomenology didn't exist when Kant was alive.

    In Phenomenology, the content of perception appearing in your consciousness is all there is in perception.  You see your nose, and that is your nose.  There is no such thing as impression, ideas, or sense data of your nose.   But it doesn't end there.  Your perceived nose can trigger all other parts of your consciousness as experience. 

    Your perception is also your experience with intentionality.  You know that your nose is part of your body, it can smell, it can have a bloody nose, it also supports your sunglasses if you wear one.  In that bracket of the nose in your consciousness, it has all the mental properties attached to it such as memory, imagination and belief in the nose.

    So it is not that simple.  If you are interested more in Phenomenology you could read Husserl's book "Ideas", "Logical Investigation in 2 volumes", and even "Philosophy of Perception" by Merlou-Ponty, which are all meaty heavy going works by the main historical Phenomenologists.

    Anyway, like you, some people seem to interpret Kant as a naive idealist who claims that you have objects in your mind, and that they are the real objects.  There are objects in the external world, which cause the senses to perceive the objects, but you don't know if they are the real, and there is the world of Thing-in-Themselves independent of your perception. 

    That is the exact problem many people have been objecting to.  I think it is just an interpretation of Kant among many other different interpretations of him. But in reality, Kant never said that in his CPR or any other books he wrote.  He just said the existence of objects which look like they exist, but don't get caught by our senses are called Thing-in-Itself, and that is the way the world is, and how our perception works.  He doesn't push into the details of how they exist, why or what they really are.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    Difficult to escape from a metaphorical use of language. I am using "science" is a figure of speech that includes the instruments of science.RussellA

    I am still saying that, just the red patch colour visual perception would be more meaningful than the scientific instrument reading of the red patch emission of 700nm to the most ordinary people. :)


    Wholes have parts, which in turn have parts, which in turn have parts. But sooner or later one assumes there are parts which have no parts, ie, simples. In contemporary mereology, a simple is any thing that has no proper parts. Sometimes the term "atom" is used, although in recent years the term "simple" has become the standard.(Wikipedia - Simple (philosophy)). It may be that fundamental forces and fundamental particles are simples, but science may discover it to be something else altogether.RussellA

    ChatGPT says that atoms can be viewed with the special technical setup in the lab with the powerful laser powered microscopes, but I don't subscribe to that.  There have been too many fabrications in science theories and allegations on what they have achieved, and what is possible by the new technologies and scientific discoveries, but soon found out to be hoax fabrications.  ChatGpt can be handy for quick reference of simple queries, but it tends to spew out meaningless and groundless stories at times too, so I don't take it seriously.

    Unless I am in front of the microscope and seeing the atoms, I won't believe the allegations on the existence of atoms claimed by ChatGpt, some shady Sci-Fi forums or web sites.  Even if the supposed Atom images are seen in the microscope, how do you know they are atoms?  The concept atom was first made by the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus to denote the micro substance making up the universe.

    There is no legitimate conceptual, definitional or essential connection between what is being seen in the microscope and the concept "atom" apart from pure random arbitrary fanciful imagination, yes?

    It is shocking to see some people blindly believe and trust without questioning or reasoning whatever is thrown to their faces under the label of science , and then try to push that to the others. In that sense, science can be just like religions. It might be just symptoms of the popular science in general devoid of metaphysics.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    Science can tell us things that intuition cannot, such as when we perceive a red object, such as a post-box, the object may have emitted a wavelength of 700nm.RussellA

    Strictly speaking, wouldn't it be the instruments (invented and calibrated for their own convenience by humans) which tells the wave length of 700nm emission, rather than science? It would still be a mental idea when read by humans. The reading would be a contingent figure which has no meaning to the people in daily life. If the aliens made the instrument, it could be calibrated to read it as 10nm or 100 million nm.

    n a sense, "atoms" are a convenient figure of speech for mereological simples, whatever they may be, but could be fundamental forces and fundamental particles existing in time and space.RussellA

    See, could be, not necessarily or for definite. "could be" sounds a negativity in disguise here. :)
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    What is crucial is a logical connection between the thing-in-itself in the world and the appearance in the mind, and this connection is what Kant understands as the Category of Cause. Kant's Category of Cause is what ensures that there is only one cup, even though the cup may exist in different forms, first as a set of atoms in three dimensional space in the world and then as a two-dimensional appearance in the mind.

    Kant's Category of Cause is crucial to the viability of his Transcendental Idealism.
    RussellA

    I looked into this further, and it seems to me Kant's Category of Cause is a concept to be applied to the external world events as cause and effect.  It is not to do with perceptions or the mental principles of reasoning.

    I still think the process of reasoning coming to judgements activated by intuitions, perceptions or thoughts is operated by Logic.   Could you please confirm your thoughts on this? Thanks.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    Yeah sounds reasonable. :cool: :up:

    but science tells me that what I am actually looking at is a set of atoms in a three-dimensional space.RussellA

    Not sure, if science has to be consulted for that assurance. Wouldn't common sense or intuition do?

    And we don't really care about a set of atoms unless for some peculiar reason. To me atoms are just an abstract concept, that doesn't exist in the real world. Or if it did, it has nothing to do with me, or daily life.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism


    I don't think Kant must have thought there were two cups when he was making a coffee for himself, and took out a cup from the cupboard.

    There is a cup on his worktop, and that is it.  But there is a cup-in-itself according to his TI. So you might say Kant says that there are two cups?  That is absurd.

    But this is where Kant's Transcendental Logic kicks in.  TL will say, no this is the only cup in the worktop, and that is it.  TL is supposed to correct when your reason goes astray, and have illusions or broken thinking on the perceptions.

    With TL operational, you know that you have only one cup on the worktop, and there is no confusion in that. In Kant, Logic is not just A -> B, B -> C, therefore A -> C, like some other folks seem to believe.

    Logic is the engine of how rationality, intuition, perception, understanding and judgement works.

    For the idealist, the contents of what they visualise, believe, remember, imagine and think in their minds are also significant, as the object they see in real world. I think we must allow that, because it is the foundation and source of all arts and creativity in human nature.

    Of course the realists only allow what they see in the real world as the only existence, disregarding the mental contents. But that is what the realists are.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    It's strange to think of the phenomena/noumena distiction in relation to one's own body parts. Is there a nose-in-itself vs the phenomena of it?Gregory

    If I interpret thing-in-itself as some sort of copy or separate entity of an object, it sounds absurd to me. Therefore I look at it this way.  Thing-in-itself is the part that is not caught by my sensation.  When I look at an object, I cannot catch the whole part in my perception from one angle from where I am and my perspective. 

    I am looking at this clock on the desk.  All I see is the front face of the clock.  It is a real clock.  But the back of the clock is not visible to me because it is facing away from me, so the back is hidden.  That part of the clock which is hidden from the view is the clock-in-itself in noumena.  The front face of the clock which I am seeing in real time and space, so I can read the time, is the clock in phenomena.

    Just like that, you see your nose protruding out from your face when you look at it with your eyes slightly downward focusing on the nose. You see the top of the nose ok, and it is the nose that is caught by your visual sense, but the rest of the nose hidden from your sight. The hidden from the sight part of the nose is the nose-in-itself in noumena. The part of the nose that your see is sensible nose in phenomena.

    Some objects never appear in our senses, although we have abstract concepts such as God, afterlife, causality etc.  They are thing-in-itself without any possible sensation or perception.  This is my interpretation, and would be definitely way off the mark from the proper academic interpretations. I am just a hobbyist reader.  This interpretation of thing-in-itself as an unobserved part of objects sounds not too absurd, and actually quite reasonable and agreeable to me. But you may find it totally absurd and disagreeable on the idea, so feel free to agree to disagree, and forward your thoughts and ideas. :)
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    Sure. I understand this. What use do you make of it in life? Is it just of academic interest, or something more?Tom Storm

    I am sure there are some aspects that is useful for strengthening the Scientific principles for the Scientists from theoretic stance. For me personally it is purely for love of the knowledge and learning.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    Cool. You are the first one who laughed at my joke :D
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    It is a shame that you have to resort to the information coming from the popular media, rather than information that you reason, intuit and experienced.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    I'd say those are physical, not metaphysical, concepts. They are concepts which describe/ explain what is observed. Causality, gravity and relativity are not directly observable, but atoms are observable via electron beams just as microbes are observable via microscopes.Janus

    I don't agree with that at all.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    Yes... but I guess it still leaves us with open questions about which metaphysical models we may be willing to engage with, or accept as worth our time.Tom Storm

    I don't suppose anyone would take the whole Kant's system as some valid or useful system today.  The world has moved on, and 200+ years is a long time even in Philosophy. But there are definitely interesting bits in the system, and some philosophers extract the useful bits  from Kant, and synthesis with their own system e.g. Wilfrid Sellars.  For Sellars, Thing-in-Itself is a legitimate scientific existence, where the objects and phenomenon are unclear and daunting at first.  With ongoing investigations and observations, Thing-in-Itself can be manifested as the real scientific objects and phenomenon. But P.F. Strawson didn't accept that at all.

    And Kant's system gave the foundation for Husserl's Phenomenology, which is a very prevalent and influential system today. So, old metaphysics is not totally useless or bad.  For me, it is great study and reading material. :)
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    I don't think it was under threat, at least not from me. Metaphysics is inevitable. But I lack your forbearance.Banno

    Science is impossible without Metaphysics. Causality, gravity, relativity, atoms, ... they are all metaphysical concepts. In the external world, there are only the objects, motions and energies. Without the metaphysical concepts, Science have no way to establish theories and scientific laws. I have been telling that to Bob until the face got blue in his last thread "Metaphysics as illegitimate source of knowledge for science". :roll:

    You are quite correct "Metaphysics is inevitable."
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    I would say there is no "thing" called a concept floating about in a thing called a "mind." Concepts and minds all exist in the same world as chairs. What we call "concepts" are a consequence of our interaction with the world of which we're a part. We'd have no concept of a chair but for the fact that, as living organisms of a particular kind in an environment, we found it useful and desirable to sit on something different from the ground or a natural object, and we call what results from that a "chair."Ciceronianus

    :100: :fire:
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    I am just saying that using “you = Bob Ross” is ambiguous. Is bob ross my reprsentative faculties? Whatever exists in-itself that that faculty is representing? Etc…
    I am pointing out that that ambiguity is the source of our dispute (or your question) here: if my representative faculties were 100% accurate, I would never being about to know it with my faculty of reason. This doesn’t negate your point that yes, the representations, minus our a priori means of intuiting and cognizing them, would be 100% accurate but, rather, that, even in that case, I wouldn’t be able to epistemically (with reason) acquire such knowledge: so I would be forced yet to formulate the ‘thing-in-itself’ conceptually.
    Bob Ross

    OK Bob
    Thank you for your reply, and explanation. I am not sure if thing-in-itself is an entity that you are forced to formulate yourself conceptually. When you say, it is something that you formulate conceptually, it gives the impression that you know what thing-in-itself is.   That is what conceptually formatting implies. 

    But I think Kant never said that. Thing-in-itself is something that you cannot conceptually formulate.  If you can, then it wouldn't be  thing-in-itself. Would you not agree?


    Also, something I forgot to mention, even if the sensibility was 100% accurate, it does not follow that the representation is 100% accurate; because the sensations are intuited and cognized, which is synthetic.Bob Ross

    This statement seems to say that you have sensibility, representations, intuition and cognition in order to perceive an external object.  Suppose you made a cup of coffee, and placed it on the desk.  And you suddenly have a sensibility of the cup, a representation of the cup, an intuition of the cup, and then a cognition of the cup, and then if you are not 100% sure of all of them, you also have a thing-in-itself cup too.  Which one are you going to drink? :chin:
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    Me as a representative faculty would, but me as a self-reflective cognition (i.e., reason) or psychological tip of the iceberg (‘ego’) would never know. Another way to put it, is that one epistemically would never have any justification to say their sensibility was 100% accurate, even if it turns out, ontologically, it was.Bob Ross

    Hello Bob

    You seem to have forgotten to add your ESP, which can know the future, God and afterlife too. :)


    It is just an ambiguity between our uses of indexical pronouns (e.g., ‘you’, ‘I’, etc.).Bob Ross

    What do you mean here? The only thing ambiguous is the statement. I used 'you' to denote you = Bob Ross, and 'I' to denote me = Corvus. But I don't think I used 'I' on my previous posts, did I? I used 'you' to denote you for sure.


    You are deducing from, ontologically, one’s representative faculties being 100% accurate whereas I was starting from what one could epistemically justify with reason (and not the understanding).Bob Ross

    There seem misinterpretation going on even what I asked about. I did not deduce anything, but pointed out, and asked if what you have been saying about Transcendental Idealism could be a self-contradiction or possibly misunderstanding of T.I, or both.
  • Freedom and Process
    Any thread with "The universe" tends to be huge just like the universe, obscure and fascinating just like the universe. :)
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    I cannot say “this thing-in-itself is not square” but rather “I only have knowledge of a representation of the thing-in-itself, which is not the thing-in-itself.”. So I know the thing-in-itself is not a phenomena, but that does not count as any sort of knowledge of it.Bob Ross

    So you have knowledge of a representation of the thing-in-itself, but that does not count as any sort of knowledge of the thing-in-itself. Then where does knowledge of the representation of the thing-in-itself come from? I read you saying, it is not the thing-in-itself.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    it could be the case that my sensibility is 100% accurate and everything about the thing-in-itself can be and is gathered by my senses; but I would never know it.Bob Ross

    Hello Bob

    Isn't it the case that when your sensibility is 100% accurate and everything about the thing-in-itself can be and is gathered by your senses, you cannot fail to know it?

    In T.I. the reason that you cannot know the thing-in-itself is that your senses cannot catch it.  In other words, Thing-in-itself is not sensible, therefore you cannot know it.

    Saying that your sensibility is 100% accurate and everything about the thing-in-itself can be and is gathered by your senses, but you would never know it, sounds like a contradiction, if not misunderstanding Transcendental Idealism, no?
  • Freedom and Process
    But I think you'll run into trouble with your conception of space. If the room you're in is the limit of the universe, are you saying there is no space on the other side of the wall? Brian Greene uses this thought experiment, so don't poo poo it. :razz:frank

    I am in my study room now. I cannot see anything outside of the room. In my visual sense, all I see is the walls, a lamp, a desk, a bookshelf with the books in it, and there is a computer on the desk.  This is my true reality for my perception.  I can open a book, and it opens.  I can read what is printed in the book no problem, therefore it must be a true existence.  I can move my hands and wave in the air, and it moves fine, which proves there is space in the room too.  Motion is only possible in space.

    But outside of my room. I am not sure.  There was space along the corridor from my memory, but it is not visible to me now.  I can only believe that it would still be there.  Yes, my belief is very strong, there is space outside the door of my room stretching along the corridor, because I can remember it with strong vivacity.   But I cannot remember or intuit or perceive anything about Australia where Banno lives.

    I can only believe it is somewhere in the Southern hemisphere below Indonesia, and it will be getting very hot because by this time it would be, I read, the start of the summer in the place. I saw some wildlife videos made in Australia from youtube, and the massive wildness fields in the countryside too from my memory. That is all, so that is the ground of my belief on the existence of Australia.  But it is not my perception or memory.

    With no experience of my being in the place, my perception and memory is totally empty from the idea of Australia.  But still I can make some imagination on the place with the images I have seen in the youtube videos.  It is a very faint imagination, and not realistic.  I feel that my imagination is futile and unreal straight away.

    A concept of the universe is made partially from knowledge, but mostly from the beliefs.  There is no absolute agreement that such and such is the universally accepted concept for the universe. 

    Do I have to accept the place or an entity that I have no direct experience of, as a part of the universe?  Yes, I must, because it would be insane to deny the existence of Australia just because I have never been there.  But at the same time, I have no epistemic, metaphysical or logical ground for accepting the place as a part of the universe, because I have no experience of being in the place.

    When you say the universe, for me, it is the world that I have been, and am plus my belief in the rest of the place that I have never been, but heard, told, read and saw on the media.  And I am sure some religious people who believe in God, and heaven and hell would include them in the concept too.

    We have been talking about the universe all along, but it is very likely the universe we have been thinking and talking were all different types with different nature and meanings.

    So the concept of the world, and universe are seems arbitrary.  Therefore we must draw a boundary between the areas that divides the universe and non-universe, and agree on which objects the concept of the universe must include.
  • Freedom and Process
    Hmm. A lost joke, it seems.Banno

    I felt my joke was lost somewhere in the desert of Australia when I gave the example "one's acceptance of his town and the surrounding area as the only universe" :D, but din't get a response, but you seem to confirming it. Fair enough.

    But it wasn't a 100% joke. I am surprised why you think it is. In real seriousness, when I am in sceptic mood, I only accept things I can sense. They are only the real. All things which I am not sensing are in my imagination. memory or intuition, and they might not be real, or real. I have no certainty on their existence.

    For example, I have never been to Australia in my life. All I know about the place is from the books and Youtube. Why should I believe that it exists? For the same ground why should I believe the galaxies exist? I have never been in there, neither have you I know for sure.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    Instead, I know that what I am given is not a thing-in-itself, but the thing-in-itself could turn out to be a mirror (by happenstance) of what I am given (and I would never know it).Bob Ross

    Could you please elaborate and clarify on this sentence?  What do you mean by "mirror"? Where does the "mirror" come from? How do you know the mirror was given to you? By whom?


    Thusly, I cannot say "this X is not Y" but rather "I only have knowledge of Y, which is not X".Bob Ross

    Could you please give some examples with content?  Talking with "X" and "Y" in the statement sounds totally empty and makes no sense to me.
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    Not knowing anything about X does not entail knowledge of anything about X.

    Another way to put it, is that I have only negative knowledge of X by negation and never positive knowledge.
    Bob Ross

    For you to arrive at the conclusion that you don't know anything about X, you should have known,

    1. the fact that you don't know anything about X.
    2. the reason why you don't know anything about X.
    3. you don't know anything about X now, but you know that there is a possibility that you might be able to know about X, if a, b, c, ...
    4. You don't know anything about X now, but you know that there is also a possibility you might have mistaken or misunderstood something about X.
    ..... etc etc.

    You know a lot about X, when you don't know anything about X. Consequently the conclusion you don't know anything about X is false.

    Again this is not about semantics or contentless logic, but is highlighted from Kant's Transcendental Logic.

    And negative knowledge is also knowledge, no?
  • Freedom and Process
    You will end up asking, "What do you mean by that term?,"Leontiskos

    Not necessarily. It is not all about the terms and breaking it down in semantics. My main interest was actually, whether the universe should include God, or should God be regarded as the creator of the universe. Or because we are not the physicists or astronomers, whether the universe should be just the concept of world, in which we live in ... etc.

    I was suggesting to have / agree on boundaries of the concept of the universe, which might include coming up with the agreed definitions of the universe of course, but not necessarily if the boundary of the concept of the universe could be set.
  • Freedom and Process
    Well, yes - that's what these posts are about. I'm pointing out that we do not do so by specifying an essence; that the way we use language will often suffice. So it will quickly become obvious that your use of "universe" differed in scale from that of other folk.Banno

    I have not given out my definition of the universe, or mentioned anything about in which sense I am using the word yet. I think your comment was based on your rich imagination. :)

    I just pointed out that the term universe is one of the abstract concepts, which we might benefit from clarification. That's all. But obviously you somehow seem to think I am using the word universe in a different sense to the other people.
  • Freedom and Process


    Sure. But isn't one of the methods of Philosophy to ask and analyse meanings and definitions of terms in the sentence trying to find out if the concepts are meaningful and understandable?

    Philosophers wouldn't be interested in how the gravity works, how to calculate the sunspot numbers in the Sun, observe the locational changes happening in one of the galaxies, attempting to find the stars with possible life on them, or trying to count how many blackholes are existing in the Milky Way etc. Those would be the friggin 'physicists or astronomers' concerns.

    I am not sure if Quine, Wittgenstein and Kripke had been ever involved in discussions on the universe and cosmology.  They were logicians and linguists who were interested in the simple meanings, namings, objects, references and semantics in language and logic.

    If they were to discuss cosmology topics with the universe being the main theme, I am sure they would have wanted to clarify the concepts to begin with.  Maybe they would have had refused in discussing such topics first place, because it is not their forte or interest I am not sure :)

    The problem is that you could go with the definition of the universe in Wiki, and I could go with my definition of the universe which is my town and the surrounding areas I reside and walk about on sunny weekends, because that is the only area I accept as the real world for me.  If we engage in a debate on the universe and its free will, where would we end up? :D
  • A Case for Transcendental Idealism
    Whatever the things are in-themselves is entirely impossible to know.Bob Ross

    Not exactly entirely? For one thing, we know that they are impossible to know, so we know something about them partially, but not entirely.
  • Freedom and Process
    Perhaps it's the expectation of a "true essence" that is problematic.Banno

    What is the ground for your claim that it is problematic?
  • Freedom and Process


    In my Companion Book to Philosophy, there is neither entry for the Universe, nor the World. So I went to Wiki, and read about the Universe. It seems too monstrously vast in size and scale. I was wondering if human mind can ever grasp the true essence of the universe. If we cannot conceive the true reality of the universe, how could we conceptualise it?
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    Judgement corrects itself.Mww

    Judgement also needs content, no?

    Judgement is always about something. With no contents, judgement is impossible,
    You take up logic to arrive at some truth. But there is no content in the logic.
    There is nothing to put forward for the premises, and nothing for the conclusion, and there is no truth to perceive.

    What is the logic about in that instance? What can judgment do anything about it?

    Saying logic is contentless is like saying a car is engineless. A car is box with 4 wheels, but engineless. Because that is what a car looks like externally and cosmetically.

    I am saying, no way man, a car needs the engine. Without the engine, car will not start, or drive. Just an analogy. :)
  • Artificial intelligence
    To do what with all that free time? Play videogames? Watch films, preferrably consisting of nothing but deep fakes?baker

    Some will get bored with the free time, but some will enjoy doing what they enjoy doing e.g. travelling, dating (online chatting with the robots?), reading, meditating, or thinking what to do with the free time :)

    It seems to be in the interest of the stakeholders in the AI business that people consume and dumb down. What is more, it seems to be somehow evolutionarily advantageous to be an avid consumer and to dumb down, as this is the way to adapt to modern society, and adaptation is necessary if one is to survive.baker

    Yup, there will be some social problems stemming from the commercialism.
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    Logic is really only that by which our judgement is orderly, and adhere to the means for correcting itself.Mww

    I will come back the other points later, but for this, how would logic be able to correct itself, when it does not have any content in it? How would logic be able to correct the contentless content?
  • Freedom and Process
    If we conceptualize the universe as a single process, as opposed to a set of discrete objects,Count Timothy von Icarus

    But would it be possible to conceptualise the universe as a single process? Can the universe even be conceived or defined? If yes, how and what would it be?
  • Artificial intelligence
    The only actual smart devices I use are to control lights and heating. All the cooking, cleaning and gardening is mine alone.Wayfarer

    I suppose there are jobs that AI can never do no matter how capable and intelligent they are. For instance, suppose AI could cook, but they cannot eat the meals for you for sure. You must eat it yourself. :D
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    As for meaning, logic in itself, as a function of understanding, has to do with establishment of non-contradictory judgements alone. As with the concrete pad, empirical meaning can never arise without the a priori elimination of contradictions.Mww

    1. Whether the contents of the thoughts came from the external world, or arose in the mind by thinking, intuiting, imagining, memorising ... etc, they are all the contents of thought.

    2. I never said that it is "possible to think logically without logic being the form of the thinking system." Of course logic is the form of a thinking system, but it needs the contents. Do you notice you bringing up "a square concrete pad, if not for the construction of the very form required to receive the fluid concrete that subsequently solidifies into a square" ? in order to get your thought working? Without the content, how could you have demonstrated the logic?

    3. I think that was what I have been saying. You cannot separate objects and contents from your thoughts. If you empty your thoughts, then there will be no logic. Thoughts cannot operate without the contents, hence logic will always operate with the contents in the thought.


    Out of curiosity, what does that mean to you?Mww

    It means what it says "the world of reason", not "the world of confusion and muddle" :cool:


    Also, you were going to tell me which type of logic has its content already contained in it.Mww

    I think I said it already. All logic must have the contents to operate. Without it, it is a pseudo logic or a shell with nothing in it.
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    You are circling around in the loop of the inputs and logic. I advise you to jump out of it immediately to the world of reason. :)