Thanks for the thoughtful, and interesting, reply. I look forward to them, even while voicing opposition where I find it. As you are welcome to do as well. — Mww

Thanks! I'm likewise enjoying the exchange of ideas.

We don’t really care that a human is rational or moral, insofar as those are reasonable expectations pursuant to his kind of creature; we want to know how he got that way. Or better yet....how he didn’t. — Mww

So a general account would presumably be a question for the natural sciences. For example, an explanation of the evolution of (rational) human beings from earlier non-rational animals.

But it seems you're instead asking the conditions under which a person is rational, or moral, etc., since a human need not always act in those ways. Which brings us to the Aristotle quote...

“...Yet to say that it is the soul which is angry is as inexact as it would be to say that it is the soul that weaves webs or builds houses. It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul pities or learns or thinks and rather to say that it is the man who does this with his soul. The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed...” [On The Soul, I,4 in Smith, Oxford, 1931] — Mww

So an initial observation: nous is the Greek term translated as mind there, which is also often translated as intellect. It should be understood to name an activity, not a Cartesian-style mind:

Joe Sachs, in his introduction to Aristotle's On the Soul, 33, says, negating any Cartesian notion of mind in regard to Aristotle, that 'never does Aristotle construe the noun or verb [nous and its verb noein] as naming anything but an activity[;] ... even when Aristotle speaks of the intellect as passive, indeed as pure and unmixed passivity, he is still speaking of a high level of concentrated activity; in no way compatible with any notion of a mind stored with ideas.' — Maggie Ross

To continue the quote:

The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed. If it could be destroyed at all, it would be under the blunting influence of old age. What really happens in respect of mind in old age is, however, exactly parallel to what happens in the case of the sense organs; if the old man could recover the proper kind of eye, he would see just as well as the young man. The incapacity of old age is due to an affection not of the soul but of its vehicle, as occurs in drunkenness or disease. Thus it is that in old age the activity of mind or intellectual apprehension declines only through the decay of some other inward part; mind itself is impassible. Thinking, loving, and hating are affections not of mind, but of that which has mind, so far as it has it. That is why, when this vehicle decays, memory and love cease; they were activities not of mind, but of the composite which has perished; mind is, no doubt, something more divine and impassible. That the soul cannot be moved is therefore clear from what we have said, and if it cannot be moved at all, manifestly it cannot be moved by itself. — On the Soul, Book I, Part 4 (Smith)

Note the implied sense of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover there.

So going back to the concrete example from earlier, Alice perceiving that Bob won the race was an intelligent act - she perceived something that the sharp-eyed eagle flying overhead was incapable of perceiving. Similarly, a young child at the event may not yet have learned about competitive racing, thus would also not perceive that Bob had won. Nor, as indicated by the quote above, an old man whose eyes or intellectual apprehension had sufficiently declined.

So Alice's understanding depended on her perceptual capabilities and experience. But those specific dependencies can also be abstracted away. Anyone with eyes (or ears) and the intellectual capability could understand what Alice understood - that Bob won the race. In this way, Alice (and anyone else so situated) is thinking of things just as the Unmoved Mover would think them, i.e., as they are, eternally.

But note that there is no transcendent understanding implied here. Just the everyday kind requiring experience and observation. So Aristotle's Unmoved Mover can be understood as immanent in intelligent activity (which human beings exercise, at least sometimes), not transcendent to or separated from it.

[BTW, note that Aristotle's Unmoved Mover and its connection to the active intellect (if any) is an area of active research and controversy in Aristotelian interpretation.]

But Aristotle doesn’t seem to differentiate “knowing being” from plain ol’ objects, in that he treats them all alike, insofar as they are all conditioned by the same set of predicates. Re: the same, e.g., category “substance” of things being the same “substance” of soul, along with “movement” and “essence”. So there wouldn’t be a philosophical issue under those conditions. — Mww

That's right. For Aristotle, a knowing being is an object or being (that can't be predicated of anything else), just as a tree is. They are not duals.

Problem is, we have the capacity to ask why we are actually NOT exactly like all other objects, which is the issue Descartes brought to the table....

“....The absolute distinction of mind and body is, besides, confirmed in this Second Meditation, by showing that we cannot conceive body unless as divisible; while, on the other hand, mind cannot be conceived unless as indivisible....”(2)

....and is best exemplified in Kant....

“...This relation, then, does not exist because I accompany every representation with consciousness, but because I join one representation to another, and am conscious of the synthesis of them. Consequently, only because I can connect a variety of given representations in one consciousness, is it possible that I can represent to myself the identity of consciousness in these representations....”(3)

....where “this relation” is intended, within the context of the entire section therein, as the absolute and altogether necessary distinction between the subject (conscious that) and object (conscious of), which is the ground of the difference between us and other objects. In effect, Aristotle denies a distinction, Descartes warrants the distinction, Kant identifies the distinction.

Done deal!!!!! — Mww

Just to clarify, Aristotle is not denying subjects as conscious objects (say). He's denying that subjects (as conscious objects) and objects are duals. For example, for Aristotle human beings are rational animals. The "rational" predicate distinguishes us from other (non-rational) animals, but we remain a kind of animal. So the way to think of it is that humans are a more developed animal, not a being with an animal aspect and a rational aspect.

So that's how Aristotle and Descartes differ here. And what Kant is following up on.

Ryle's point is that there no empirical-observation/rational-thinking divide. (...) Alice sees more because she is rational.
— Andrew M

Do you see the contradiction? If there is no observational/rational divide, how does Alice see more than she merely observes? — Mww

She doesn't. Separating sensory perception and rationality is an abstract and after-the-fact exercise. Alice didn't observe something and then infer that Bob won the race - she simply observed that he won the race (contra both the Reductionist and Duplicationist who wrongly think the same thing has been observed regardless of whether Bob won or not).

It’s not difficult, actually. The proposition “Bob is running in a race” is a synthetic judgement, insofar as the conception of running and racing does not contain the conception of winning, for, as you have already noted, the race may not end or all the racers may be disqualified, ad infinitum. Therefore, there absolutely is an observational/rational divide, as soon as it is recognized that additional conceptions are required for additional understandings of any given empirical occasion. In order to understand winning, one must have already understood the race to be over. Therefore, the former is conditioned by the latter, which is an a priori rational judgement of an empirical occassion.

Think of it this way: in principle you cannot get to 10, when all you have is a 4 on one hand and a 6 on the other, with nothing else given whatsoever. — Mww

Racing does contain the conception of winning - it's the governing purpose. But there may be defeaters, as you note, that would preclude an event from being a race.

Running does not contain a conception of winning. But it contains other conditions whose absence would preclude the event from being a run. Or preclude the scenario from even being an event. And we could similarly go through any term used to describe the scenario and note its conditions (assuming we could do so accurately). But if Alice had to make separate judgments about all of this, as opposed to just observing things (with the option of retroactively changing her representation of things if need be), it would lead to infinite regress.

Which is to say, we can get to 10. But our hypothesis for how we got there might be a work in progress.

That is what I mean by holistic. Instead of a dualistic "physical" seeing + "transcendent" rationality, it's instead just a richer form of seeing.
— Andrew M

Which I understand, but at the same time consider to be a categorical error, in that a richer form of seeing is better known as understanding. And understanding is certainly not seeing in any sense, regardless of how convention wishes upon us the less philosophically taxing. — Mww

Language enables us to think about and understand things that we haven't directly seen. But language use itself is an acquired skill that depends on sensory perception and practical experience. There's no view from nowhere, so to speak.

Yes, but that natural ground is properly called understanding, in which the conception is already given. I understand what you mean when you pick up a handful of schnee because I already know what snow is, and you are showing me exactly the same thing in your hand. But I don’t understand schnee because of the word “schnee”; I understand it from the extant conception that schnee represents.

I would rather think language use has its natural ground in the commonality of conceptions. Conceptions are always antecedent to talk of them. Right? I mean......how can we talk of that which we have not yet conceived? — Mww

People don't always know what they're talking about. But when they do, it's normally the thing (snow) that is being talked about, not the concept (of snow). Per the anti-Duplicationist theme, a concept isn't separate from talk of the thing, although we can distinguish them in an abstract sense. Put differently, to be able to talk competently about snow just is to have the concept of snow.

The practical approach is not apodeictic (it's instead provisional), but neither is it arbitrary.
— Andrew M

Yep. No objections there. There are, however, things that are not provisional, that are apodeictic. — Mww

What would some examples be?

As far as I can tell, the apodeictic are formalisms (from math or logic, say) that we apply in specific circumstances. But whether they usefully apply or not in a given circumstance is a contingent matter.

It seems to me that what matters is not that things are apodeictic, but that they are applicable to the problems at hand.

Because there are two of those kinds of knowing things, the provisional and the certain.....how do we assure ourselves we aren’t confusing one of them for the other? If the answer to that is to start over, first we have to realize a manifest false knowledge, then we have to determine where to start over from. Then we have to determine why starting over from here is more or better justified then starting over from there. How do we stop this potential infinite regress? Because we are certain we know some things, the infinite regress must have its termination.

In addition, you said the observational approach is provisional, which is irrefutably correct given the principle of induction for empirical conditions, then it follows that the apodeictic cannot be empirical given the principle of contradiction, re: that which is provisional cannot be at the same time be certain.
That which is not empirical is necessarily rational or transcendent. That which is transcendent can have no empirical proofs, but that which is rational, may be susceptible to empirical proofs, depending on its content.

The empirical/rational duality is inescapable with respect to the human cognitive system. — Mww

As I see it, things we might call certain are themselves empirical. Even the law of non-contradiction had to be discovered/posited and used before becoming conventional (and it still is disputed in some applications, such as with paraconsistent logics, so the arguments for and against are still being made).

Also I'm not clear on why there would be an infinite regress. As I see it, we make provisional claims and hypotheses (which can include formal specifications). If there is a mismatch between hypothesis and experiment, then we have learnt something new which then feeds back into our hypotheses and experiments.

Le Penseur's thinking is private in a mundane sense and remains open to natural investigation.
— Andrew M

I am not aware of any natural investigation, or, which is the same thing, investigation using natural means, that has any chance of showing our private thinking. That our experimental equipment cannot show the word-images used for our thought, and our word-images are never given in terms of elementary particles, suggests natural investigation is very far removed from internal privacy.

I suppose philosophy is a natural investigation, and our private thinking is certain open to that. As long as we expect no empirical proofs from such philosophy, we should be ok. — Mww

Well we can always ask a person what they're thinking if we need to. That seems a natural approach. But we don't have to have to regard their reports as certain. People can sometimes lie, be mistaken, be inarticulate, confused or delusional, exaggerate, etc. And we can test these things.

The ghost only makes an appearance when that privacy is separated out from the natural world (whether in a transcendent realm per Plato or in a substantial mind per Descartes).
— Andrew M

Cool. So I don’t have to worry about it; I make no attempt to isolate my private thinking from the natural world. I understand there are, or at least were, a multitude of those holding with subjectivity as sufficient causality for the world. I say...a viral POX on them!!! — Mww

OK! We agree!

What was Kant's answer? That Alice automatically knows the logical conditions because they are a priori?
— Andrew M

Kant’s answer is that Alice doesn’t know a damn thing about logical conditions, as they are insinuated in Ryle. Alice’s entire cognitive faculty is absolutely predicated on them, of which she has not the slightest conscious notion. — Mww

Thanks!

Idle musings:

Odd, isn’t it? That Ryle goes to such great lengths to deny the ghost, but allows for the “silent ghostiness”?

“...the technical trick of conducting our thinking in auditory word-images, instead of spoken words, does indeed secure secrecy for our thinking…”(1)....... — Mww

Le Penseur's thinking is private in a mundane sense and remains open to natural investigation. The ghost only makes an appearance when that privacy is separated out from the natural world (whether in a transcendent realm per Plato or in a substantial mind per Descartes).

..........although auditory word/images I would be disinclined to call a technical trick. It is, instead, exactly how the human system operates. And aligning secrecy with a ghost, or occult, that is to say, otherwise inaccessible internality, is far too pejorative a conclusion. Not to mention, the “ghost” disappears immediately upon profitable argument contra substance dualism, re: Ryle’s “category mistake”, while allowing property dualism to remain relatively unaffected. At least til them ordinary language folks latch aholta vit. — Mww

Property dualism still retains mental phenomena, mental causation, and radical privacy. So it's subject to the same criticisms made by Ryle and others.

If we grant that the supremacy of the human aptitude is for knowledge acquisition, and by that if we arrive at knowledge, we should wish our knowledge to be as certain as possible and we should wish to understand what our knowledge actually entails. The best way to arrive at knowledge certainty, and to best way to understand what our knowledge certainty means, is to base the acquisition system for it on the only conditions which grant lawful authority, which is always certain in itself......logic. — Mww

It's worth noting that Aristotle purposed logic in a different manner to modern logic. For Aristotle, logic concerns entities (onta) that are the subject of predication, not simply formal sentences. Since the most fundamental entitities for Aristotle were observable concrete particulars such as human beings or trees (those things that aren't predicated of anything else), and those things are also subjects of change, contingency is unavoidably present from the beginning.

From here it is clear that logical conditions, of which Alice has not the slightest notion, are the methodological processes of human thought, that follow a logical series. She has no notion because they all occur in the steps of the process that Ryle calls “occult”, and you have called unverifiable. While this may all be the case, nothing is taken away from the those conditions being logical, even if we are unaware of them. — Mww

So as suggested above, that is also contested since Aristotle applied logic on the basis of observable distinctions, not idealizations. My outline of concepts in my previous post would be an example of that approach (which starts from what is observed - in this instance, people using language).

“....But modelling thinking on processes (...) which can be broken down into ingredient processes which have been coordinated in a certain way is a mistake…. “(2).

Not sure why not. If we start with this for a fact, and if we end up with that for a fact, we have every right to suppose the excluded middle that supports the end in keeping with the beginning.

“..."there cannot be an intermediate between contradictories, but of one subject we must either affirm or deny any one predicate" (3) — Mww

So as I see it, that would be shoehorning what is observed into what is theorized - in effect, it's the template or mold. That is, if one defines what thought or rationality is up front and in an idealized/transcendent sense, then that frames the way that everything else is understood. So substance or property dualism is the "necessary" consequence. No surprises there.

Whereas Aristotle starts from what is observed and develops logical principles and theory around that (including the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle that you appeal to).

The third choice I'm suggesting assigns agency to the human being, not to an idealist mind nor to a materialist brain.
— Andrew M

And if agency, that is, rationality, morality, consciousness, intellect, are all predicated on either mind or brain, how is agency accounted for if not by those? — Mww

They are literally predicated on human beings. It is human beings that are rational, moral, etc., not minds or brains. A brain is a part of a human being, not the whole; a mind is an abstraction over a human being, and not concrete. Whereas a human being is a concrete particular that is the locus of agency.

The modern subject/object dualism does not concern itself with the dual nature of real objects in the world. In transcendental philosophy, and perhaps post-medieval systems in general, the subject is he who considers the relationship between himself and those objects. In Aristotle, subject is what is being talked about, in which case the real physical object is the subject of discussion, and he talks about object as subject in at least two different ways, one in “Categories” and the other in “Physics”. All well and good, but not the same kind of subject/object dualism of the moderns. — Mww

That specific subject/object language usage is modern, yes. But the same essential dualism is found in Plato (as ideal Forms/natural world).

Aristotle rejected that dualism and while he had his own conception of subjects and objects, they were not as duals. Instead, for Aristotle, objects were the subjects of predication (Categories) and, in the case of particulars, the subjects of change (Physics).

For Aristotle, particulars exist independently of anyone's knowledge of them. So, for example, the Earth orbited the Sun a billion years ago, well before life emerged to know about it. Thus there were particulars (objects) at that time, but no subjects.
— Andrew M

This puts the particular right back into the purview of the the moderns, insofar as particulars are real objects, whether known from experience or not, and further allocates subject as a knowing being instead of the object of discussion. — Mww

OK. So if we were just discussing a synonym for "knowing being" (in the ordinary sense of human beings as distinguished from rocks or trees, say) then there would be no philosophical issue. But the problem is that it also brings with it the Cartesian sense of subject/object, internal/external, rational/empirical and so on.

To reiterate, dualism maintains a separation between subject and object. Whereas with hylomorphism, form and matter are inseparable aspects of every object.
— Andrew M

Ok, no problem. Where is the subject in hylomorphism? If it is true Aristotle speaks of object as subject, and attributes both form and matter to the subjects he’s speaking about......where is the speaker? You said before he was treated as any other object, so it appears all those human agency predicates are merely particulars of some certain substance. Even if that gives us what they are, it does nothing to tell us how they work, and how they relate to each other in order to work together such that “agency” has any meaning. — Mww

In that instance, Aristotle is the speaker - a person that is a subject of predication, change and agency.

To find out and investigate the nature of hylomorphic particulars - whether human beings, trees or rocks - is the role of the natural sciences.

Just when I thought we were going to agree, Kant adds an "on the other hand"! (...) Contra both the Reductionist and the Transcendentalist, Bob winning the race is on the roster of observables.
— Andrew M

Yes, absolutely. That isn’t the “other hand”, however, which resides in what does winning the race mean, over and above the merely empirical observation of it? — Mww

Winning the race doesn't mean anything over and above what is entailed by the observation of it. Ryle's point is that there no empirical-observation/rational-thinking divide. Instead observation, for human beings, includes the rational. Alice sees that Bob won the race. An eagle flying overhead does not, despite having sharper eyes. Alice sees more because she is rational.

That is what I mean by holistic. Instead of a dualistic "physical" seeing + "transcendent" rationality, it's instead just a richer form of seeing.

I meant to speak is to use language, and the use of language does not necessarily include verbalizing. I should have said “we don’t use language when we think....”, which was implied by the CPR quote “thought is cognition by means of concepts”. As such, I reject that thinking is the utilization of language, while granting that thinking has a governing purpose, re: proper relations of concepts in order for cognitions not to contradict themselves. And even if that is an unverifiable in itself, it can manifest as an observable when we get around to actually verbalizing. — Mww

English-speakers use the word "snow" to talk about snow. German-speakers use the word "schnee" to talk about snow. So we can abstract away the language-specific words and simply talk about the (abstract) concept of snow.

So concepts have a natural grounding in language use. Which is to say, we have the concept of snow when we are able to employ the word "snow" (or "schnee").

On that understanding, I agree with the CPR quote.

Man, just wait til things like schema, and phenomena, and spontaneity come up........no wonder Ryle scoffs at unverifiables, huh???? — Mww

I have no problem with them, at least in their ordinary sense. Should I?

Yeah, he got a lot of mileage out of that ghost thing, didn’t he? Sure we may observe that he is thinking. Doesn’t matter, though, really; observation of the manifestation of thought is not the thought process itself. We are still entitled to ask “why did you do that?” after observing what he did. — Mww

I fully agree. We should also expect that the answer is open to natural investigation, not dependent on a radical privacy.

I’m having trouble understanding how it is at all possible to deny the private subject of human rationality. — Mww

OK. It's a different way of allocating the facts that has no use for a private subject. Analogous to how a heliocentrist has no use for a geocentric center, even though it seems essential under that theory.

I picked the wavefunction because it is mathematically real, albeit unobservable in itself, hence questions whether or not it is transcendent. — Mww

As it happens, wavefunction collapse isn't mathematically well-defined. It's more of the nature of, well, we observed this electron spin here which is described by that bit of the wavefunction there, so let's just throw away those other bits of the wavefunction that don't seem to fit anymore. Except we reserve the right to put them back again if we're doing a Wigner-style experiment. You get the idea.

So transcendent (i.e., not naturally grounded)? It would seem so.

What infinite regress? Is mind required for the Earth to orbit the Sun?
— Andrew M

Of course not. Some productive rational methodology is necessary for us to understand that and how the Earth orbits the Sun, and any other empirical observation. The mind serves to terminate infinite regress in the series of possibilities in the sphere of transcendental imaginables. Because the sphere of possible experience is immeasurable, requires us to set limits in our methods somewhere, otherwise we have no apodeictic ground for our knowledge. No matter the arbitrariness of what the kind or form the limit has, the setting of one is necessary. — Mww

I think we start with the particulars that we ordinarily observe. We develop rules and processes as we go along. If we discover a wrong claim, we fix it and move on. If there seems to be something wrong with the rules or processes themselves, then we fix them and move on. It starts with practical concerns and builds theory around that, not the other way around - namely, building an arbitrary theory and shoehorning experience into that. The practical approach is not apodeictic (it's instead provisional), but neither is it arbitrary.

Which gets pretty close to the whole point: looking at it top down, if it is true there are many different senses of a thing, wouldn’t we seek a common ground for all of them? On the other hand, bottom up, wouldn’t we already have a common ground, in order to see the difference in senses of things? And because we can look at things either way, or rather, some things present themselves in one way or the other, wouldn’t we already have the capacity to understand them however they present themselves? — Mww

Sure, but that common ground might be more subtle than it first appears. There might be a family resemblance between uses of a term rather than necessary and sufficient conditions. I see this as an empirical endeavor - we can have hypotheses about how language terms function and relate to other terms, and we can test those hypotheses and revise if need be. So to have the capacity to understand something doesn't mean that it will be understood the first time - it may require a lot of investigation.

I get that hylomorphism attributes both matter and form to objects, such that form is relieved of its usefulness in minds. But I don’t get how that falsifies subject/object dualism itself. Aristotle grants that we think, for even the very opening paragraph of “Physics”, “...we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles...”, makes human thought explicit, of whatever kind it may be. — Mww

I'm not arguing that it falsifies it. It's a different approach that has no use for it. For Aristotle, particulars exist independently of anyone's knowledge of them.

So, for example, the Earth orbited the Sun a billion years ago, well before life emerged to know about it. Thus there were particulars (objects) at that time, but no subjects.

Mind is nothing but an abstract placeholder, a euphemism for that which serves as the logical means for terminating the speculative tendency towards infinite regress. It’s just a common word for a transcendental idea. We could speak for hours without ever once mentioning the word, all the while having the idea as the silent ground. — Mww

What infinite regress? Is mind required for the Earth to orbit the Sun?

Given your inclination towards intentionality, wouldn’t you agree that if Bob is in the race, then he is racing, and if he is in fact racing, he thereby intends to win? If he’s even in the race presupposes he intends to win, otherwise he’d just be a member of a group going from point A to point B, but from that alone, or that in relation to a standard of some sort, it couldn’t be said he is racing. — Mww

It's not so simple since "race/racing" can have different senses depending on the context. In our example, Bob is ostensively in a race. But if he doesn't intend to win then, as you say, he's not really racing, he's doing something else (e.g., pretending to race).

So, for example, Bob could have run in a race that he intentionally lost (e.g., he was being paid to lose) or unintentionally won (e.g., he was being paid to lose but the lead runner collapsed or was disqualified).

So granting he is thinking about racing because he’s in the race, and he’s thinking about winning because that’s the intent of racing, then wouldn’t you also grant he has different ideas about one as opposed to the other? And if he has different ideas, he must have different thoughts, and if he has different thoughts, he must have different subjective conditions which facilitate one in succession to the other. — Mww

We can characterize Bob's actions in different ways, but there isn't a requirement that an action be preceded by a thought, or needs a thought at all (people sometimes do things without thinking). If there were a requirement then, since that thought is itself an action, it must be preceded by a further thought. And so on in infinite regress. As it happens, this is Ryle's regress argument. (And note Kant's anticipation of the argument.)

Bob's intention to race is immanent in his running (form and matter are inseparable) which is, in principle, observable. His intention isn't something over and above the running itself (which would be to separate form from matter).

Fun stuff:

I understand how assigning agency to a faculty sounds kinda hincky, but really....we only have two choices, within our current knowledge base. — Mww

I agree with everything you say about "pure cognitive neuroscience" and "pure empiricism". You're making Ryle's point for him against the Reductionists. But, as discussed, I also reject Transcendentalism - they're two sides of the same dualist coin.

The third choice I'm suggesting assigns agency to the human being, not to an idealist mind nor to a materialist brain. Since you mention metaphysics, note that this third approach is found not just in ordinary language but also in Aristotle where particulars are the locus of activity (and also of cause and effect). A particular is not the material object of the Reductionist (e.g., Democritus), it is a matter/form compound (per hylomorphism). That precludes the need for the idealist subject of the Transcendentalist (e.g., Plato) since the form (morphe or eidos) of every particular takes on that role. So it's a holistic approach rather than a dualistic approach.

Per Aristotle, science investigates the nature of things. And his philosophy of nature explicates the logic of this investigation. Which also, as it happens, reflects back onto and includes the investigator (i.e., the human being themselves is a hylomorphic particular that can be investigated like any other particular).

To reiterate, dualism maintains a separation between subject and object. Whereas with hylomorphism, form and matter are inseparable aspects of every object.

“...we shall call those principles the application of which is confined entirely within the limits of possible experience, immanent; those, on the other hand, which transgress these limits, we shall call transcendent principles....”
(CPR, A296)

.....for no other reason than we ourselves determine the principles and we belong to the natural world. Nature being, of course, merely the manifold of occassions from which the principles can be thought. That things happen Nature is given; how things happen in Nature is determined solely by the investigating agency, the intelligibility of the former grounded explicitly in the a priori logical functions subsisting in the latter. — Mww

Just when I thought we were going to agree, Kant adds an "on the other hand"!

This is where I say that we don't need the "on the other hand", and you will then say that things would be unintelligible (lacking the necessary resources to ground things). But Ryle discusses this:

Our Reductionist is ex officio a zealous empiricist, whose constant complaint is that his Platonic or Cartesian or Hegelian opponent always fetches in unverifiables or unobservables to provide him with his occupational Something Else as Well. We sympathize until we find that our empiricist's own roster of observables is becoming disturbingly short, and his roster of unobservables disturbingly long. — Gilbert Ryle - Thinking and Saying

This gets back to the earlier example of Bob winning the race. Contra both the Reductionist and the Transcendentalist, Bob winning the race is on the roster of observables.

While I agree with Ryle that logical conditions are implicit in our practical experiences, the a priori has nothing to do with practical experience. I mean....that’s its distinction, having nothing to do with experience. So to reconcile, it must be that Ryle thinks logical conditions are themselves a priori, but if so, they cannot be implicit, but must be explicit. That is, logical conditions must be necessary, not just implied. We know this, because sometimes our observations contradict extant experience, and if the logical conditions weren’t already established, we wouldn’t have the means to recognize the contradiction. — Mww

The way I would put it is that those logical conditions are themselves discoverable (or, sometimes, negotiable). Bob might think that he has won the race, but then fails the subsequent drug test. He is disqualified even if he was unaware that that particular drug was on the ban list. So ours and his model for what it means to win the race can be subsequently revised. In which case we would retroactively change the language we use to describe Bob's race outcome - we thought he had won, but he hadn't. A metaphor here is that we are continually modifying the (logical) spectacles through which we view the world. Or, our experience of the world is like being on a boat that is continually being rebuilt while on the open sea. This applies not just to a human-created competition as is the case here, but generally to theories about the world (e.g., geocentrism / heliocentrism).

We don’t speak when we think; we speak when we express what we think. — Mww

Ryle isn't saying that we verbally utter words when thinking. He is saying that thinking is the utilization of language (with a governing purpose). So we can certainly think without speaking. But it's also possible to speak without thinking. And to speak thoughtfully, and to think out loud. Again, just one action - two aren't necessary (though one could also think for a while, then speak).

Why does that which is unobservable have to be transcendent? — Mww

The issue is that the unobservable is indistinguishable from a ghost. Ryle is arguing that the roster of observables is too short if it excludes thinking. We can observe that Le Penseur is thinking.

If the theoretical wavefunction collapse is unobservable in and of itself, is it therefore transcendent? Seems rather intellectually inconsistent, to categorically reject the unobservable in speculative metaphysics, yet glorify it in empirical physics. — Mww

Some interpretations say that wavefunction collapse is an illusion, others that the wavefunction isn't real. So maybe not the best example for making your point. ;-)

Alice barely knows how to count. How does she know about logical conditions? Kant has the answer; what does Ryle say? — Mww

The logical conditions are implicit in the language Alice uses to communicate and solve practical problems (whether in ordinary or specialized contexts). However she may not be able to explicitly articulate those logical conditions since that would require additional reflection and analysis, itself a skill.

It is similar to being able to play tennis without necessarily being able to theoretically explain what one is doing (as a coach would be able to do).

What was Kant's answer? That Alice automatically knows the logical conditions because they are a priori?

Easy stuff:

On my model, an object is something an observer can point to. So it has form in relation to an observer, it's not intrinsic or invariant. We get a sense of how things can vary for different observers from, for example, color perception studies in animals
— Andrew M

Point to....agreed, if “point to” means manually indicate a physical reality;
Has form......ok, but in relation to an observer is too ambiguous. In relation to can mean internal relation or external relation. Because you have stipulated pointing to, which implies external to the observer, dialectical consistency suggests form is external to the observer as well. — Mww

Yes it indicates a physical reality. Note that I reject an internal/external (or subject/object) dualism, so no such ambiguity arises on my model.

Is the externality of form because you speak from a doctrine of nominalism, insofar as form as a universal representation in intuition is denied? That’s fine, and because I speak from a conceptualist perspective, the root of our dissimilar epistemological metaphysics is given. — Mww

My position on universals is Aristotle's immanent realism. As against Nominalism and Platonic Realism in which we see, as Ryle puts it, "an Occam and a Plato skid into their opposite ditches".

I would deny that Bob racing and Bob winning are subjective conditions or thoughts at all, they instead take place in the world. Bob racing is a process that occurs over a period of time. Whereas Bob winning is a condition that obtains at a single point in time.
— Andrew M

Then apparently, you have no reason to think Bob is thinking about racing and winning, as he goes about his worldly event, — Mww

He presumably would be, but need not be. Whether Bob wins the race or not depends on whether he crosses the finish line first, not on what he's thinking about.

which you wouldn’t, if you deny subjective conditions. The only way to deny subjective conditions is to deny subjectivity, and by association, you must deny yourself as being a thinking subject. Hmmm.....who am I talking to, again? — Mww

As I've mentioned, I reject subject/object dualism. Minds don't think, human beings do.

To the fun stuff...

On the other hand, the search for a theory of everything does presuppose that the world is intelligible, even if we can't make sense of it right now
— Andrew M

Sorry, but I would not tend to agree with that statement either. I do not think that intelligibility is primal when it comes to building knowledge. I expect utility is more primal because it requires less energy/work/knowledge to enable us to reduce/increase certain entropy as desired to achieve desired outcomes. — Sir Philo Sophia

It may be that people are driven more by utility than understanding. But that doesn't imply that that the universe can't be understood.

A theory of everything (TOE[1] or ToE), final theory, ultimate theory, or master theory is a hypothetical single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe. — Theory of everything - Wikipedia

Note the terms "all-encompassing" and "fully explains". The universe can only be fully explained if it is intelligible.

For example, quantum particles and their behavior is completely intelligible to us; — Sir Philo Sophia

I assume you meant to say unintelligible there.

however, we can develop and detect statistical (math) generalizations that predict their observed behavior good enough to use them in useful devices/methods or to predict when/where they may occur with what likelihood and at what energy level, all w/ little to know understanding of what they really are about. — Sir Philo Sophia

That's true. But note that the proliferation of quantum interpretations also shows that people seek a deeper understanding of what is going on (beyond shut-up-and-calculate). And a complete explanation would also have utility.

I shall take that as saying we still agree language always presupposes experience.
— Mww

No, I don't agree with that!
— Andrew M — Mww

Reading back over I see that I somehow managed to completely misread your comment. We do agree that experience always comes before language.

I don't think what the blare of a trumpet sounds like is all that comparable to a ghost. — jjAmEs

Yes, to say that we can hear the blare of a trumpet (and compare it with other sounds) is perfectly fine. It's the positing of qualia as a mind-dependent substance or property between us and the world that's the problem. That's the ghost.

It seems to me by the first part of your post that 'how something appears to [me]' is not supposed to exist at all (is a hypothetical entity, like a ghost.) — jjAmEs

The word "appears" is ordinarily used when we are qualifying a statement in some way. For example, that the stick appears bent (when partially submerged in water). That's consistent with the stick being straight and it doesn't imply that there are bent-stick qualia. Similarly, if I said that the rose appeared pink, I'm speaking in a qualified way that suggests that it might not be pink in normal circumstances. Otherwise I would have just said that the rose was pink.

That's all ordinary use and perfectly fine. However in certain philosophical uses, an "appearance" becomes an entity in its own right that plays a "middleman" role in perception and experience. That's the ghost.

so, we detected presence of a particle having a collision pattern like a Higgs boson would have with very high probability, so we conclude we have knowledge now that the theoretical Higgs field exists to give gravity to particles, never knowing or understanding what that Higgs particle really was, only that something having that mass/energy exists was enough it gain knowledge.

makes sense? — Sir Philo Sophia

Yes and that's a fair example.

We have enough knowledge to formulate theories and make predictions even while lacking a deeper understanding about what is going on. On the other hand, the search for a theory of everything does presuppose that the world is intelligible, even if we can't make sense of it right now.

Thanks, but you're still talking generally. Can you give a concrete example, such as an everyday situation or a physics scenario that demonstrates your point?

Can you give a specific example?

Part Two:

The illusion of sunrise is much better, because it took so long to remedy, and because we thought of the sun as actually rising/setting for so long, we still use the terminology for it in common understandings. — Mww

Fair enough.

I don’t know what it means for an object to have form in relation to a perceiver. What is the relationship between your form and my properties? — Mww

On my model, an object is something an observer can point to. So it has form in relation to an observer, it's not intrinsic or invariant. We get a sense of how things can vary for different observers from, for example, color perception studies in animals and relativistic physics (reference frames).

I shall take that as saying we still agree language always presupposes experience.
— Mww

No, I don't agree with that!
— Andrew M

Then you are forced to admit to naming things, or at least to admit it is not a problem to name things, about which you know nothing whatsoever. In addition, you’ll find yourself unable to explain how it is that, sittin’ ‘round the dinner table as a kid, you didn’t understand what it meant when your parents talked about balancing the checkbook.

You’re talking about language in the sense of stringing symbols together to form a communication. I’m talking about the relation between a conception we think and the symbolism assigned that makes language possible. Because the same thing can be said in many different languages across cultures, and because the same thing can be said in exactly the same language regardless of culture, re: mathematics, and....as if that wasn’t enough...the same symbolism across cultures can indicate very different things, re: football, then it is readily apparent that experience of the thing being talked about, grounds the symbolism for talking about it.

Disclaimer: I detest language philosophy; its what professionals do because all the cool stuff’s been done already and they can’t think of a way to improve on it. — Mww

Perhaps we're at cross purposes here - I don't understand what you're arguing above.

All I'm saying is that someone, somewhere, has to observe a tree (i.e., experience something) before people can meaningfully talk about trees (i.e., have language about something).

Edit: On rereading, I see that I misread your initial comment. We do agree that language always presupposes experience. Sorry about that!

I regard realization there as a logical condition, not a process in time.
— Andrew M

Understood, and I can see that as a logical condition. What would you say to this: all human thought is singular and successive. If such should be the case, then change in subjective condition (Bob racing, Bob winning) is necessarily a process in time. — Mww

I would deny that Bob racing and Bob winning are subjective conditions or thoughts at all, they instead take place in the world. Bob racing is a process that occurs over a period of time. Whereas Bob winning is a condition that obtains at a single point in time.

He's denying a stamp-collecting approach to thinking and saying, either as a catalog of bodily movements or as a catalog of mental activities. Ryle brings in reason in the completion of that sentence where he includes the logical conditions under which thinking and saying occur, "... but some nexus of statable because statement-shaped conditions."
— Andrew M

See....I didn’t catch any of that from the passage. And I couldn’t unpack that last part at all. And I don’t understand “stamp-collecting”. — Mww

By stamp-collecting, I mean a purposeless sequence of actions. When Alice is looking for her keys, that does not consist of merely looking here and looking there (the Nothing But story). Instead Alice has a purpose that explains her looking, namely, that of finding her keys.

Now that purpose is not transcendent to her looking as a separate mental action (the Something Else As Well story), that purpose is instead immanent in her looking and is what makes her actions intelligible to others.

But I also think there is a give-and-take - some conceptual schemes are natural and well-motivated, others not so much. If I call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?
— Andrew M

No fair. We already know tails from legs. But if the very first naming of that wispy thing hanging off the south end of a north-bound horse was “leg”, or whatever.....that’s what we’d be calling it today, and all horses would have but one leg.

What is a conceptual scheme? — Mww

A way of thinking about the world.

In my contrived example, it would be a model of a horse as having four legs and a tail and an alternative model of a horse having five legs.

In science, it would include heliocentrism v. geocentrism, and classical physics v. quantum physics.

In the context of this thread, dualism and naturalism are different conceptual schemes.

Part One:

understanding denotes an achievement, not a task (nor a faculty or capability).
— Andrew M
......to better understand our disagreements is an achievement, which we can then say only evolves by the faculty of understanding being tasked to achieve it.

Such would be a semantic quibble if it weren’t already a theoretical tenet. — Mww

Sure. However the semantic quibble for me is the assigning of agency to a faculty...

Agreed, not private (per the PLA), because there is no such thing as a PLA anyway. I meant private insofar as inaccessible except as the necessarily abstract ground for transcendental philosophy. Therein, the mind is conceived as the irreducible condition for all that pure reason seeks for itself. — Mww

... and also here, the assigning of agency to (pure) reason. Only a human being is "tasked to achieve" something or "seeks for itself".

Your "except" above marks off our different approaches. You say mind is private because rationality transcends nature. I say mind is public because rationality is immanent in nature (and is thus observable). This is an example of reallocating facts - Ryle's logical cartography.

More commonly, I suppose, mind is what the brain does, which is just about as empty a conception as there could ever be. — Mww

It's a reductionist slogan and, as you note, an empty conception.

And your different way of conceptualizing mind would be......? Which I take as a different concept of mind, in as much as I think we all conceptualize, as a task, the same way. — Mww

I agree with the provided Bennett and Hacker quote, "Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise...". Whereas I reject the Cartesian-style conception of mind (and subject).

On ordinary language: thanks for the explanations; things are clearer for me with them, with respect to Ryle.
On theoretical terminology: understood, even if I maintain that hardly any of it is necessary. I mean...thinking and thinking deeply being two different things? I don’t see the theoretical benefit in that fine a distinction. — Mww

No, that's not the distinction. The distinction is between thinking (e.g., about a math problem) and the conclusion one reaches as the result of thinking (e.g., that 2+2=4).

So Alice might cognize that 2+2=4 after much cogitation. And note that she couldn't cognize that 2+2=5, since it's false - to cognize something imples that one has been successful - an achievement. Whereas Alice can nonetheless cogitate about two plus two equaling five or one hand clapping if that's her thing.

Put differently, it's like the difference between trying to find your keys (the task or process) and finding your keys (the achievement).

The minor objection: the passage itself may be a clear distillation of Ryle, but I don’t get where he thinks Descartes and Plato are transcendentalists. — Mww

Where he says, "Our Reductionist had begun by assailing Cartesian and Platonic extravagances on the basis of what can be, in an ordinary way, observed."

Those extravagences (the "lavishness of the transcendentalist") are Descartes' res cogitans and Plato's ideal Forms.

The major objection: for those I do see as Transcendentalists, or, more properly, transcendental idealists, it must be granted that the “lavishness of the transcendentalist” means the invocation of a priori cognitions and knowledge, and calling such invocation occult-ish and “transcending powers of perception”, is what is not even wrong.

Can you show what the lavishness of the transcendentalist is, that isn’t the advocacy of the a priori, to show what I thought Ryle meant, is incorrect? — Mww

Ryle mentions Kant earlier on:

If we did not know, we could now guess that there would have to arise a Hume to "reduce" thinking to mere processions of these faint and derivative introspectibles down channels shallowly dug by Association; and how there would then have to arise a Kant or a Bradley to impose upon these processions some responsible controls that transcend the pryings of introspection. — Gilbert Ryle - Thinking and Saying

Hume reduces thinking to constant conjunctions. In response, Kant transcendentalizes thinking. Ryle suggests instead that thinking "is saying things to [one]self with a special governing purpose". That's a natural definition that is neither reducible to just talking to oneself nor appeals to anything that transcends what is observable.

Note that Ryle recognizes purpose (and logic and reason) as immanent in this world. Not in a reductionist sense (Nothing But, the machine) nor in a transcendent sense (Something Else As Well, the ghost).

Ryle's broader argument is that by rectifying the logical geography here (i.e., rejecting both the ghost and the machine and reallocating the facts marshalled by the transcendentalist and reductionists), the natural world becomes intelligible.
— Andrew M

On the other hand, rejecting the alleged ghost and the machine the ghost supposedly lives in, seems to be rejecting the a priori aspect of human reason, and by association, the faculties in which the a priori resides. The intelligibility of the natural world is not the same as knowledge of the natural world, however, and because of that, I reject the notion that the latter is even possible without the former. — Mww

Yes, knowledge is not possible without intelligibility. So the point at issue is whether that's because the conditions of experience transcend the natural world or because they are immanent in it.

For Kant, the a priori imposes controls on "the pryings of introspection". For Ryle, logical conditions are implicit in our practical experiences and observations.

We're talking about the same thing, but just allocating them to different places.

What Wittgenstein's thought experiment shows is that if there were such a beetle, then we wouldn't be able to talk about it. Now we can talk about pain, colors and meaning - they have a place in the language game. Whereas the beetle - a hypothetical entity that can't be referenced or talked about - drops out as irrelevant.
— Andrew M

I mostly agree with you. Note however that we are talking about the beetle. — jjAmEs

Yes, but as a hypothetical entity. We can talk about ghosts as hypothetical entities as well, but we should resist the temptation to treat them as real.

To me qualia serve that kind of goal. Maybe what I call 'red' is what you call 'green.' No way to check! — jjAmEs

I call fire engines 'red' - what do you call them? ;-)

What you're referring to, of course, is how something appears to you. But in this case, it's more or less certain that things appear differently to each of us, at least to some degree, since a lot of things can affect that. We can appreciate this when we wear sunglasses.

So we can investigate what those conditions might be, from the reflective surfaces to the lighting conditions to the physical composition of our eyes and brains. In each case we're investigating real things, not hypothetical entities.

So none of this is a reason to treat how something appears to us as an entity itself. That's just sense-data which brings its own notorious problems. It's like treating the "bent"-stick-in-water as an entity in its own right.

I'm finding it difficult to keep my reply short! However I think we may be finding some points of agreement (or at least better understanding our disagreements!)

Understood. One can’t reject mind-related terminology yet still talk about mind-like things. Still, because minds, in and of themselves, would seem to be irrefutably private, it seems odd...or self-contradictory....to reject radical privacy in the mental sense, which is what we’re discussing here. — Mww

I would say irrefutably not private (per the PLA). Or, to take a broader perspective, we have different ways of conceptualizing mind:

Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise. Of course that does not mean that people do not have minds of their own, which would be true only if they were pathologically indecisive. Nor does it mean that people are mindless, which would be true only if they were stupid or thoughtless. For a creature to have a mind is for it to have a distinctive range of capacities of intellect and will, in particular the conceptual powers of a language-user that make self-awareness and self-reflection possible. [bold mine] — Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience - Bennett and Hacker

On my view, to interpret a figurative expression as a Cartesian-style mind is a conceptual mistake.

To say interest in cogitation, not credence: is self-defeating, for credence IS cogitation, as opposed to arriving at cogitation, by means of “pondering or trying to solve a problem”, which is, of course, what le penseur is actually doing when he thinks. — Mww

The difference is between task and achievement words (which Ryle describes in The Concept of Mind, p131-p135). Cogitation is a task word (which is Ryle's interest in his essay), credence (as with knowledge) is what is acquired or achieved as a result of cogitation. Consider the difference between running a race and winning a race. Winning entails that a race was run. But winning is not reducible to running. Neither is winning an additional task performed to the running. It is instead a logical condition that depends on specific criteria, such as that the runner crossed the finish line before the other runners, followed the rules, etc. So context matters here.

In a similar vein, thinking is a task word. Whereas to have made up one's mind is an achievement phrase.

Now, one may perhaps interject that Ryles is not talking about cognition when he uses the term cogitation. If that is the case.....I give up. Anybody can say whatever they want if they also invent the terms to justify it. Just going to be mighty difficult to find common ground, though. — Mww

So Ryle's usage here (as an ordinary language philosopher) matches ordinary use.

Cognition: The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.

Cogitation: The action of thinking deeply about something; contemplation.

Note how cogitation describes a task - that of thinking about something. Whereas cognition describes an achievement - the knowledge and understanding acquired as the result of thinking about something.

For Alice to cogitate about the tree (Are its leaves really green? Is it an illusion?) is one thing, to cognize that its leaves are green is a (logically) different thing.

....all possible, yet all reducible to........go ahead, take a guess. — Mww

As you may have also guessed by now, for Ryle (and in ordinary use), understanding denotes an achievement, not a task (nor a faculty or capability).

Alice might not understand why the tree's leaves are green, or what it means for them to be green at a deeper level. But she at least understands that they are green.

[Note that this is from my perspective, of course. Others may dispute that she understands that at all if they think such things are illusions, appearances or secondary qualities. But that is a difference over what is understood, not with how the term understanding is ordinarily used.

A discussion of dualism/naturalism is particularly challenging because there is a whole web of language that is interpreted according to one philosophical premise or the other (and sometimes an entangling mixture of both).]

If there are some mental activities in which language has no play, yet mental activities are completely comprehensible, the whole intentionality thing is rather worthless, at least from a radical private perspective. — Mww

Note that Ryle explicitly rejects the "thought is language" slogan, which belongs to behaviorism. Where language comes in is that we need language to identify thinking at all, which means that it is a public term.

That Le Penseur can think without visible indication is mundane privacy. And in those cases, we might sometimes be mistaken about what he's doing (perhaps he's fallen asleep). But radical privacy would be invisible even to scientists investigating brain activity or physicists describing particle movements. That's the interaction problem of the Cartesian model and why Ryle's ghost in the machine metaphor is apt.

Anyway, thanks for the reference showing me the ground of your arguments so far. Rest assured I don’t necessarily disagree with them entirely, even if I find such grounding both insufficient for theoretical completeness, and misguided in theoretical derivation. — Mww

And thank you for taking the time to articulate your position and objections. I think we both agree on the importance of a sound philosophical grounding for one's position.

...Our Reductionist had begun by assailing Cartesian and Platonic extravagances on the basis of what can be, in an ordinary way, observed. But now he reduces, in its turn, observation itself to Nothing But some oddly stingy minimum. However, this stinginess of the empiricist must not soften us towards the lavishness of the transcendentalist. For though he properly acknowledges the differences between kicking and scoring, or between just presenting arms and obeying the order to present arms, yet he goes on to make these differences occult ones. For since they are not to be the earthly or muscular differences demanded in vain by the empiricist, they will have instead to be unearthly, nonmuscular differences that transcend the referee's and the sergeant's powers of perception... — Gilbert Ryle - Thinking and Saying

In the immortal words of Herr Pauli......That is not only not right, it is not even wrong! — Mww

On the contrary, Ryle gets it right! And it's such a clear distillation of Ryle's view that I had to requote it. :-)

One has no business qualifying the transcendental with the transcendent, and neither are necessarily occult in nature. Ryles may have been nodding toward Steiner, re: “The Outline of Occult Science”, 1909, but Steiner was no proper transcendentalist, but rather a mere mystic, or spiritualist, a la Swedenborg. — Mww

It has nothing to do with Steiner and "occult" in that sense, but his description is apt nonetheless. Note that Ryle's reference is to Descartes (mind/body) and Plato (ideal Forms/natural world).

The transcendentalist - of whom Descartes and Plato are examples for Ryle - frame things in terms of a ghostly other-world and a mechanical or cave-like world of the senses. The reductionist, who Ryle also criticizes there, dismisses the ghost but retains the machine and/or cave metaphor.

Ryle's broader argument is that by rectifying the logical geography here (i.e., rejecting both the ghost and the machine and reallocating the facts marshalled by the transcendentalist and reductionist), the natural world becomes intelligible.

My model: as you put it, is pretty much the case, yes. — Mww

Thanks.

I balk at “her beliefs”, however, because if she knows the object as a tree, she has no need to merely believe in the properties that cause it to be a tree in the first place. This is a reflection on my thesis that we attribute properties to objects, as opposed to your thesis that objects are necessarily in possession of intrinsic properties belonging to them irrespective of the perception of them. — Mww

OK. But isn't that open to the problem of Crusoe attributing bentness to the (straight) stick? Does he "know" it is bent at the time?

Also note that I deny that an object has intrinsic properties. I instead say that the object has form in relation to Alice.

Anyway, my guess is that we're saying the same thing here in our respective terminologies. We can sometimes be mistaken about what we think we know but, in general, need not be.

I shall take that as saying we still agree language always presupposes experience. — Mww

No, I don't agree with that! Though I accept that we sometimes retroactively change the language used to describe a prior experience. For example, Crusoe's experience always involved a straight stick, not a bent stick, even if he had described it as bent at the earlier time.

Besides, realization can be considered really nothing other than a change in subjective condition, and all change takes time, so...... — Mww

I regard realization there as a logical condition, not a process in time. As an analogy, when Bob crossed the finish line, what was the time lapse between the states of "has not yet won the race" to "has won the race"? The question doesn't really apply since to win is the logical condition of having crossed the finish line first, not a process in time.

I know what you’re trying to say, and at first glimpse there is force to the argument. But the argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, because no explanation sufficient to facilitate it has as much power as an explanation that refutes it. The only reasonable recourse such argument has going for it, is to deny the theoretical reality of what Ryles calls “....any catalogue of simple qualities and simple relations, whether rude or refined...”. Which is tantamount to denying reason itself, because reason is exactly that catalogue. — Mww

He's denying a stamp-collecting approach to thinking and saying, either as a catalog of bodily movements or as a catalog of mental activities. Ryle brings in reason in the completion of that sentence where he includes the logical conditions under which thinking and saying occur, "... but some nexus of statable because statement-shaped conditions."

By analogy, we don't find Bob's race win either in his bodily movements or in his or others' private thoughts. It's instead a logical condition that obtains in that scenario (with the context being that a competitive race is being run, there's a start and finish line, there are rules of conduct, etc.).

As I'm reading you, there are surface similarities here to a Kantian-style transendentalism (just as Plato's Forms have surface similarities to Aristotle's forms). The issue is whether reason is apart from nature or a part of nature (suitably expanded to incorporate intentions and purposes).

We understand this, because the very first instance of naming anything, is never conditioned by what the object is, but only as how we wish to know it. — Mww

OK, thanks. I take you to be saying that we can conceptualize things however we like (as long as its coherent). If I want to define chairs as having backs and you don't then that's fine. The thing we're looking at doesn't care what we call it or how we categorize it.

So that's fair enough. But I also think there is a give-and-take - some conceptual schemes are natural and well-motivated, others not so much. If I call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?

(And note that it's Ryle - see, naming matters!)

In short, the folk metaphysics of dualism seems to be not absurd but only blissfully unaware of how the beetle in the box cannot ground the talk about the beetle. Perhaps denying the beetle is also saying too much? — jjAmEs

What Wittgenstein's thought experiment shows is that if there were such a beetle, then we wouldn't be able to talk about it. Now we can talk about pain, colors and meaning - they have a place in the language game. Whereas the beetle - a hypothetical entity that can't be referenced or talked about - drops out as irrelevant.

So I think its reasonable to talk about pains, colors, etc., as we ordinarily do, and deny the ghostly entities.

Metaphysically the hard problem is just a sub-problem of 'why is there is anything at all'? Certain philosophers gesture at the limitations of explanatory discourse. That there is a world in the first place cannot be explained as a matter of principle. — jjAmEs

It seems to me that there should be explanations for these things. I'm not sure how not having satisfactory answers given our present state of knowledge should ever imply that there are no explanations to be had.

But I see Chalmers as articulating a very real and profound philosophical problem, which is that no matter how much knowledge we accumulate about the objective domain - and after all, this is what science is in the business of - that the nature of the knowing subject will always elude this analysis. — Wayfarer

You frame the problem in terms of a subject/object dualism which, as jjAmEs has also noted, makes it insoluble by definition. So the point at issue is really a conceptual one of naturalism versus dualism.

My interpretation:

It's the inability to explain how and why humans experience pain, etc., that constitutes "the hard problem".

Do you agree with that characterization of the problem?

↪Andrew M So do you think a third-person description of pain is pain? — Wayfarer

No, a description is not the thing itself. Is that what you're asking?

If Alice says, "My tooth hurts" (first-person) and Bob says, "Alice's tooth hurts" (third-person), then both are describing exactly the same thing - Alice's toothache. However neither Alice's nor Bob's description of her pain is the pain itself.

Yeah, so how do you reject the hard problem of consciousness? — Zelebg

I reject the hard problem of consciousness because it's premised on dualism. I reject dualism because it arises from a language confusion (which we briefly discussed here). Philosophers Pigliucci and Hacker make the same argument:

I think that the idea of a hard problem of consciousness arises from a category mistake. I think that in fact there is no real distinction between hard and easy problems of consciousness, and the illusion that there is one is caused by the pseudo-profundity that often accompanies category mistakes. — Massimo Pigliucci - What Hard Problem?

The philosopher Peter Hacker argues that the hard problem is misguided in that it asks how consciousness can emerge from matter, whereas in fact sentience emerges from the evolution of living organisms.[76] He states: "The hard problem isn’t a hard problem at all. The really hard problems are the problems the scientists are dealing with. [...] The philosophical problem, like all philosophical problems, is a confusion in the conceptual scheme."[76] — Peter Hacker - Hard problem of consciousness (other views) - Wikipedia

Thus, to resolve the issue as stated, I submit that all acts of the intelligence are characterized as radically private, all intelligent acts are naturally observable, and in general, the human does both. — Mww

So I characterize it differently on my model. Keep in mind(!) that I reject radical privacy, but not mind-related terminology.

Alice might point at the tree in a focused way, in a distracted way, or entirely randomly. The first involves intelligence, the latter two not so much. Or perhaps it turns out that she wasn't pointing at all, but instead made an incidental hand movement while talking about something else. So context matters here.

Describing an action as intelligent is a way to characterize that action (as opposed to the action being thoughtless, for example). There isn't a separate private mental act over and above the action.

And, contra behaviorism, neither is her action reducible to a mechanical or external body movement. That framing implicitly assumes the dualism that is at issue.

Ryle again:

There have always existed in the breasts of philosophers, including our own breasts, two conflicting tempers. I nickname them the "Reductionist" and the "Duplicationist" tempers, or the "Deflationary" and the "Inflationary" tempers. The slogan of the first temper is "Nothing But . . ."; that of the other "Something Else as Well . . ." — Thinking and Saying - Gilbert Ryle

--

An analogy would be with a photograph of Alice's son Bob. ...
— Andrew M

Looks a lot like the ol’ map/territory paradox. — Mww

OK, so I'd like to try to use those metaphors to illustrate our respective models.

On my model, when Alice looks at the tree, she is not looking at a photograph of the territory (since there is no photograph), she is looking at the territory which has a specific form in relation to her. Her beliefs about the territory are her map (e.g., that the tree has green leaves).

Whereas on your (Kantian) model, Alice is looking at a photograph (the territory in sense) of the territory-in-itself. Her beliefs about the photograph are her map (e.g., that the tree has green leaves). Whereas the territory-in-itself remains unknowable.

Does that capture your model, on your view?

Ok, understood. But your model presupposes knowledge. — Mww

Not quite. It presupposes objects that can be known about.

You asked about how the first person bootstraps their knowledge on my model. The answer is that they try something and, if that doesn't work out, they try something else (assuming they survive long enough to do so). And language builds up around those experiences.

For example, suppose Robinson Crusoe needs to build a shelter and he's looking for a tall, straight stick to support the roof. He encounters a stick partially submerged in water. He assumes he's seeing a bent stick and continues looking elsewhere. This is a kind of naive realism that assumes that things are always just as they appear. From his perspective, he believes (mistakenly) that he has acquired knowledge of the object.

Later he happens to pull the stick out and realizes it is straight. He makes a mental note of the implications of this discovery for future reference.

And so knowledge and language accrete in tandem with practical experience. One step forward and, sometimes, one step back.

Now would Robinson Crusoe have had a considered philosophical explanation for all this? Probably not. Lucky for him that we're here!

A couple of points. First, the above is not a description of Humean constant conjunctions, it is a description of Crusoe's practical experiences in terms of his purposes and achievements.

Second, on my model, the references to "pull the stick out", "realizes" and "mental note" do not imply a physical/mental dualism. They should be understood as holistic descriptions of his actions.

That is, he did not "physically" pull the stick out and, as a separate action, "mentally" realize that it was straight. Instead his realization that it was straight was part-and-parcel of pulling the stick out - a single action (which we can then go on to separate in an abstract sense for analysis). Note that in some other context, he may pull the stick out and not realize it was straight. The key is to resist reducing those two different actions (in their respective contexts) to equivalent "physical" behaviors + some additional and separate "mental" activity.

With "mental note", that should be understood as remembering something (in contrast with writing it down on paper). It has an apparent Cartesian implication, but it's just a way of speaking about the exercise of a particular human ability, in this case committing something to memory.

The model says that on the condition that Alice has identified a tree, she has acquired knowledge.
— Andrew M

Not my model. My model says on the condition that Alice has knowledge, she has thereby acquired the means to identify an object in the world. Whether or not the object is a tree depends on something else. — Mww

Do you mean that if she has knowledge of the appearance (the photo in my illustration), she can then go on to identify an object such as a tree? Also, what does "whether or not the object is a tree" depend on?

What is your conclusion then: there is no hard problem, there is no qualia, or what? — Zelebg

I reject them both (and the mind/body dualism they presuppose).

In my view, Wittgenstein's point about the beetle in the box is a radical insight. It applies not only to pain or sensation but also to the issue of meaning. If the concept of pain depends on social convention, then so does the meaning of 'subject' and 'object.' The basic philosophical prejudice is arguably the notion that words are attached somehow directly to mental entities. And then this prejudice understands social practice to be secondary and derivative, ignoring that the functioning of a concept is radically dependent on social practice. — jjAmEs

Nicely said. This contrast in approach to meaning can also be traced back to Plato for whom the natural world was secondary and derivative (compared to the ideal Forms), and Aristotle for whom the natural world was intelligible.

Yes, our feelings are our own and not someone else's. And we don't literally see someone's pain, though we might see that they are in pain.

For me, the philosophical point is that pain, happiness, someone's belief that it is raining, etc., can all be referenced (and, in principle, explained) on a natural model - there's no need to invoke a Cartesian-style mind/body distinction. Further, such a claimed distinction rests on a category mistake - the idea that we are ghosts in machines (per Ryle's metaphor). Both idealist and materialist theories of mind can fall prey to this category mistake (in distinctive ways):

Although neuroscientists are committed materialists, and adamantly insist on this aspect of their anti-Cartesianism, they have, Bennett and Hacker argue, merely jettisoned the dual substance doctrine of Cartesianism, but retained its faulty structure with respect to the relation of mind and behavior. — Notre Dame review of Bennett and Hacker's Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience

↪Andrew M
So I had to read all that just to see your point is that you are refusing to talk because you have nothing relevant to say about it. — Zelebg

It seems you misunderstood my response. If pain were radically private (in the Cartesian sense), then we would not have language to talk about it. Yet we do. So the term pain must have public criteria. This is surprising to many people. The links were to Wittgenstein's arguments against the possibility of a private language, in case you or other readers weren't familiar with it.

For me it's not as some in is thread might see it. It's not that private experience like pain is being denied. We know what people mean by such talk (we know how to get along in less philosophical conversation.) Nor is something like the presence of meaning being denied. But this general notion of immediate contact with sensation or meaning is revealed as a largely unquestioned assumption, to those willing to suffer the damage such an insight does to their current attachments. — jjAmEs

Yes, exactly. :up:

↪Andrew M
If you mean "Is breaking your toe painful?" then, yes, it is. If you mean "Do we have radically private, immaterial experiences?" then, no, we don't.

I mean subjective experience, of pain for example, yes radically private. You deny? Ok, let us hear your reasoning then. — Zelebg

Language depends on public criteria. See Wittgenstein's private language argument and specifically regarding pain, see his beetle-in-a-box thought experiment.

By intentional, I mean directing one's focus towards something (i.e., the thing she is intentionally talking about or acting on).
— Andrew M

The very epitome of a dualistic nature: focus towards immediately presupposes focus from. The thing being acted upon presupposes an actor, doesn’t it? — Mww

There's no dispute that Alice is acting intelligently here (whereas the tree doesn't have that capability). The issue is over whether this is characterized in a naturally observable way or in a radically private way (as exemplified by the Cartesian mind).

Nevertheless, the minor objection is still the question....what could Alice possibly be pointing at, if not an object that impresses her senses? Perhaps the hyphenation has some meaning, but I don’t see any difference between object-of-sense and object of sense. There is no contention in saying she is pointing to the object itself, which must be something she senses. Otherwise.....why bother with the act of pointing, or indeed the act of speaking, at all? — Mww

It's of course true that she wouldn't be pointing at the tree if she hadn't sensed it. What I'm distinguishing here is the object itself (which she has a representation of) and the representation itself (as a kind of reified object).

An analogy would be with a photograph of Alice's son Bob. When Alice shows the photo to a friend and says that this is her son Bob, she doesn't mean that the photograph she is pointing at is her son, she means that the person that the photo represents is her son. That's the case even though the friend only sees the photo.

That's what I'm indicating with (hyphenated) object-of-sense there. It seems that Kant understands the object of sense to be a representation (like a photo or, more dynamically, like a shadow in Plato's cave or a movie), not the thing-in-itself.

Whereas on my model, Alice is referring to the thing itself (which is independent of how Alice represents it, or even that Alice ever senses it at all).

At any rate, usually Alice pointing to tree is chalked up to experience, insofar as Alice already knows the thing she’s pointing at is conventionally named as “tree”. The major objection then becomes, just because we are told why she points the way she does, because of something she knows, does not tell us anything about how she arrived at the correspondence required between the pointing, or talking, she does physically, and the understanding she does mentally, such that the pointing and the understanding don’t contradict each other. What is being asked here is, and what convention of naming things reduces to, is, what happens to Alice between being told “this is a tree”, and her comprehension of what she’s being told? — Mww

So on my model, "correspondence" is not the right term here, which implies a matching up between what she is doing physically and what she is doing mentally (i.e., dualism). But she is not performing two activities, she is performing one activity which is simply pointing at the tree. It's an identification (i.e., that this thing that Alice is pointing at is what she means by tree), so isn't subject to dualism's intractable interaction problems.

Now things can go wrong in various ways - misjudgments, illusions, dreams, hallucinations. But these are naturally characterized as different activities to what Alice is doing above when she successfully identifies the tree.

This raises the issue of how she can be certain she has successfully pointed at the tree (perhaps it is an illusion). The short answer is that she can't be certain. Nonetheless, her action can be successful as in the given example.

Think of this as a formal model for how language terms operate. It proceeds from knowledge of the thing, not knowledge of the appearance.

Form as in what objects look like, or form as in general characteristic of a class or group of objects. If a tree has a specific form for Alice, how does Alice tell one kind of tree from another? If Alice can tell one tree from another, it cannot be merely from the form “tree” that facilitates such separation, but would seem to require a form for each and every single aspect of difference. The interconnectedness of the root system of aspens absolutely cannot be derived from the mere form “tree”. — Mww

We can suppose a form for every difference, but some characteristics will be deemed important or general, others less so. Aristotle, for example, proposed essential and accidental characteristics. Wittgenstein proposed family resemblances. The bottom line here is that we go with what works. After a while we develop more formal processes around that (as exemplified by the scientific method).

The maybe arises in particular in the fact that things Alice can intentionally point to or talk about may not have a form as does the tree. Alice can certainly point to examples of injustice, and talk about beautiful things, but she is only talking about things under certain conditions. Alice can talk about time, but she’s gonna have a hellava lot of trouble pointing to it. — Mww

And people do have trouble. But as you imply, the principle is the same on my model - they just involve more complex abstraction from what we point at than is the case for a tree.

And the incompleteness arises from the very simple question.....where does the form reside? How is it possible to determine with apodeitic certainty, that forms reside in the objects, or that form resides in the cognitive system from which identity and representation of objects is given?

I wouldn’t be so bold as to make a positive claim in that regard. — Mww

The form is in the object (in relation to Alice). It's not determined to be there with certainty, it is instead presupposed by the model.

One instead chooses whether to use this model or some other model (assuming one thinks about these sorts of things at all, which is Wayfarer's usual complaint).

I grant Alice has a form for herself, which has been called, among other things, the transcendental object, or transcendental ego, the “I” of subjective activity. But the “I” is never used in pure thought, and only becomes manifest in communication as an explanatory placeholder.

I don’t dispute your rationality, one can think whatever he wants, but I nevertheless categorically reject the notion that Alice observes herself, or that she is in the scene. Way too much Cartesian theater for me.

And Alice isn’t in the scene as much as she IS the scene. — Mww

So what is Alice observing when she looks at her hands? Merely her body? On my model, the "I" for Alice is a human being, not a mind or a body.

As long as you see that it is absolutely impossible to know everything there is to know about anything a posteriori, which the principle of induction demands, then you must see it is possible for there to be a reason why the two instances of an object are not identical. And possibility is its own justification; we don’t need to know what the difference is, only that a difference is possible. This is why the thing-in-itself is a knowledge claim, not a reality claim. Reality does not depend on us, but our knowledge of reality sure as hell does. — Mww

I agree there is no certainty when one claims that this thing that they are pointing at is what they think it is. There are various ways of going wrong. The model says that on the condition that Alice has identified a tree, she has acquired knowledge. So her claim is always provisional.

But that is just what is at issue. For the purpose of making this point, there is no 'object itself'!
— Wayfarer

Well I guess that's that then! It's all an illusion... ;-)
— Andrew M

Not a mere illusion. Things have a degree of reality. — Wayfarer

Shadows on the cave wall...

This is the model of ordinary public language (see Wittgenstein's private language argument), of Aristotle's naturalism (particular/form) and of physics (system/state), among others.
— Andrew M

But it's based on a implicit realism which is itself a mental construction - vorstellung, I believe is the German term for it. And besides - it's a model, and where there's a model, there's a mind! — Wayfarer

Seems like we agree. So what's the problem?

↪Andrew M
We can acknowledge dreams (and hallucinations and illusions) without supposing that we can't successfully refer to things even when we are awake and of sound mind.

We either experience qualia or we don’t. What do you say? — Zelebg

If you mean "Is breaking your toe painful?" then, yes, it is. If you mean "Do we have radically private, immaterial experiences?" then, no, we don't.

But that is just what is at issue. For the purpose of making this point, there is no 'object itself'! — Wayfarer

Well I guess that's that then! It's all an illusion... ;-)

In everything you say, you are starting from the assumption that there is a real object. But what you assume to be 'the object itself' is precisely what is at issue. You're instinctively presuming a realist position, against which you're then criticizing what you understand as Kant's distinction between appearance and reality. In your view, 'everyone knows' that the world is real, populated by really-existing objects independent of our perception of them. But this is what is being called into question. — Wayfarer

Yes, you're calling it into question. But why? And what's your argument? I describe my model above - what problem does it have?

↪Andrew M What Alice is referring to when she points at the tree, and the tree itself, are the same thing.

Of course, because you forgot to include internal/subjective perspective. For example when Alice is sleep waking and dreaming she is pointing at a tree, while in fact she is pointing at a truck that is about to run her over. — Zelebg

Yes, there are lots of ways things can go wrong. And so we make ordinary language distinctions between being awake and dreaming.

We can acknowledge dreams (and hallucinations and illusions) without supposing that we can't successfully refer to things even when we are awake and of sound mind.

↪Andrew M
An alternative possibility to consider is that the mind/body problem (and subject/object dualism generally) is the result of a category mistake.

How do you arrive to that conclusion? — Zelebg

By thinking about how the term mind and other related terms (like thinking) function in everyday communication. The answer is that it's a way of talking about intelligent activity. From earlier in the thread:

Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise. Of course that does not mean that people do not have minds of their own, which would be true only if they were pathologically indecisive. Nor does it mean that people are mindless, which would be true only if they were stupid or thoughtless. For a creature to have a mind is for it to have a distinctive range of capacities of intellect and will, in particular the conceptual powers of a language-user that make self-awareness and self-reflection possible. — Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience - Bennett and Hacker

See also Gilbert Ryle's critique of Cartesian dualism.

Referring to internal/external distinction as "dualism" makes potential point of confusion with substance/property dualism. It’s unclear if you yourself are not confusing the two. — Zelebg

Substance and property dualism are specific expressions of dualism. You can find different expressions of dualism in Plato, Locke, Kant and others. Internal/external or subject/object is a more general characterization of dualism:

A subject is a being who has a unique consciousness and/or unique personal experiences, or an entity that has a relationship with another entity that exists outside itself (called an "object"). — Subject (philosophy)

In my view, the ordinary object we point to (the intentional object) is not a representation or an object of sense.
— Andrew M

That’s fine, no problem. No matter how one goes about labeling his mental machinations, he is still obliged to demonstrate how such machinations become knowledge, and indeed, common knowledge, such that any congruent rationality understands him. If you claim something about some ordinary object, you then have to explain how it gets its very particular name, and also explain it such that it is possible for me to give it the same name. — Mww

OK. By intentional, I mean directing one's focus towards something (i.e., the thing she is intentionally talking about or acting on).

When Alice points at a tree, she is not pointing at an object-of-sense or a representation, she is pointing at the thing itself which, by convention, has the name "tree". Now Alice both senses the tree and represents it conceptually, but note that I'm describing Alice's cognitive activity there, not the tree.

Alice has a specific cognitive system such that the tree has a specific form for Alice (which is how she is able to identify and represent the tree). Even she herself has a specific form for Alice. Thus she can also observe herself pointing at the tree. She is in the scene that she is representing conceptually.

This is a non-dualist model - there is no internal/external distinction here. There is just an object that exhibits a specific form in relation to another object that it interacts with (or, in the case of self-reference, observes to be itself).

This is the model of ordinary public language (see Wittgenstein's private language argument), of Aristotle's naturalism (particular/form) and of physics (system/state), among others.

All that being said, it remains indisputable that whatever is external to the brain absolutely cannot be the same as whatever is internal to it, which makes explicit some form of representational system for human knowledge of objective reality is indisputably the case. Such must be the ground of any epistemological/cognitive theory. — Mww

So the dualist internal/external distinction is just what I'm disputing here. What Alice is referring to when she points at the tree, and the tree itself, are the same thing. The tree has no intrinsic representation, it instead has a form for Alice (which may or may not generalize to other human beings and sentient creatures).

The mind is constitutive in the sense that we are intentional about what we are pointing to (and thus a perspective is implied). But it is not constitutive in the sense of coming between an object and our judgment of it (as is implied by Kant's thing-in-itself/appearance distinction).
— Andrew M

In saying this, you're assuming the reality of the object outside your judgement of it. — Wayfarer

Yes, but Kant also assumes this in positing the thing-in-itself. What I'm saying is that the object itself is what my judgement is about, not a Kantian appearance.

This is what makes your approach more like Locke's. And that is understandable, as Locke's is very much a kind of common-sense realism. — Wayfarer

Except that Locke's primary/secondary qualities distinction is, itself, a Cartesian carryover. It's all about figuring out whether qualities belong to the subject or the object which presupposes the dualism in question.

The only interesting, pragmatic and meaningful context to talk under the theme of subject/object, is the mind-body problem and basically two questions: — Zelebg

An alternative possibility to consider is that the mind/body problem (and subject/object dualism generally) is the result of a category mistake.

So it's the tenet of representationalism where I part company. In my view, the ordinary object we point to (the intentional object) is not a representation or an object of sense. That precludes the Kantian thing-in-itself/appearance distinction.
— Andrew M

Kant would not claim that 'an object is a representation of something unknown'. That is much more like representative realism which is the idea that our perceptions are caused by the intrinsic qualities of objects, and based on these perceptions we can infer things about them. — Wayfarer

That's essentially what it is for Kant, except that the "intrinsic qualities of objects" (Lockean primary qualities) are also part of the appearance/representation. Thus nothing can be inferred about the thing-in-itself, which is unknowable.

See below (bold mine).

REMARK II.

Whatever is given us as object, must be given us in intuition. All our intuition however takes place by means of the senses only; the understanding intuits nothing, but only reflects. And as we have just shown that the senses never and in no manner enable us to know things in themselves, but only their appearances, which are mere representations of the sensibility, we conclude that "all bodies, together with the space in which they are, must be considered nothing but mere representations in us, and exist nowhere but in our thoughts." Now, is not this manifest idealism?

Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings, all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i. e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses. Consequently I grant by all means that there are bodies without us, that is, things which, though quite unknown to us as to what they are in themselves, we yet know by the representations which their influence on our sensibility procures us, and which we call bodies, a term signifying merely the appearance of the thing which is unknown to us, but not therefore less actual. Can this be termed idealism? It is the very contrary.

Long before Locke's time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things, that many of their predicates may be said to belong not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go farther, and for weighty reasons rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary, such as extension, place, and in general space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality, space, etc.)---no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. As little as the man who admits colors not to be properties of the object in itself, but only as modifications of the sense of sight, should on that account be called an idealist, so little can my system be named idealistic, merely because I find that more, nay, all the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance. The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown, that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself.

I should be glad to know what my assertions must be in order to avoid all idealism. Undoubtedly, I should say, that the representation of space is not only perfectly conformable to the relation which our sensibility has to objects---that I have said--- but that it is quite similar to the object,---an assertion in which I can find as little meaning as if I said that the sensation of red has a similarity to the property of vermilion, which excites this sensation in me. — Prolegomena Part I §13, Remark II

When Critique of Pure Reason, First Edition, was published, many reviewers said that Kant was basically repeating Berkeley, which caused Kant to include in the second edition a 'refutation of material idealism' to distinguish his doctrine from Berkeley's. — Wayfarer

So I agree with Kant's conclusion here as against Berkeley:

In Berkeley’s position, a subject’s perception of an oar in the water as crooked is not a misperception, for “what he immediately perceives by sight is not in error, and so far he is in the right,” and it is misleading only because it is apt to give rise to mistaken inferences (Berkeley 1713: Third Dialogue); while for Kant this perception is in error. — The Refutation of Idealism - SEP

I don't *think* you're really getting Kant's 'critique' but I'm hardly able to try and set you straight on it, as I'm not well read in Kant. The single point of Kant's philosophy that I appeal to, is his 'copernican revolution in philosophy', that being the constitutive role that the mind plays in our construal of nature. The world is not something that simply exists irrespective of our cognitive capabilities, there for us to discover; all of our knowledge of it is the product of the synthesis of perceptions and judgements which constitutes reality for us. — Wayfarer

Where I disagree with Kant is his idea that an object that we point to, such as a tree or a person, is a representation (i.e., a sense-data object, or appearance). The mind is constitutive in the sense that we are intentional about what we are pointing to (and thus a perspective is implied). But it is not constitutive in the sense of coming between an object and our judgment of it (as is implied by Kant's thing-in-itself/appearance distinction).

First, Kant didn’t attribute any geometry to space, but rather, to objects in space. Kant was a “magister” in math and tutored university-level mathematics, so it is highly unlikely he wasn’t aware of non-Euclidean axioms, such that triangles on the surface of a sphere do not have angle summation of 180 degrees. But that fact does not negate the Euclid’s “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”, which remains true even if one cannot get from A to B in a straight line. The truth that one cannot cut through the Earth to get from NYC to Hong Kong does not falsify the fact that cutting through the Earth is the shortest way. — Mww

However the Earth itself is curved in spacetime due to its mass. So there is no Euclidean straight line from NYC to Hong-Kong through the Earth. (Unless one projects the line "outside" the universe.)

It is clear Kantian synthetic a priori judgements require necessity, which experience cannot deliver. Therefore experience cannot falsify them.

Consider, even though time dilation and length contraction have been shown to be the case, as regards relativity, all that began with pure mathematics, which are.......wait for it......all synthetic a priori propositions. Einstein had to think all this stuff before he ever wrote anything down, and had to wait years for technology to catch up enough to demonstrate the the truth in the math.

Also consider, no matter what relativity says, a guy doing geometric functions anywhere in the Universe can still use Euclid’s axioms. He’s still human and so was Euclid, so......

It’s always helpful to keep in mind just what relativity means. — Mww

OK, so it seems you're saying that both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry would be synthetic a priori for Kant.

Then it is an entirely separate question of how to mathematically represent the universe, which is a question for physics (and involves experience).

Because the Kantian cognitive system is representational, there must be representations for each step in the procedure, so appearance is simply the first representation in the transition from external real physical to internal speculative theory.

...

Depends on what his system is thought to be. Actually, it is a speculative cognitive system, meant to show a possible method for the human intellect to arrive at an understanding of himself and his environment. Keyword...speculative. The theory was never meant to establish a truth about anything at all, except itself as such. Hence, the theory doesn’t solve any problems, except those the theory explores, and then only if one grants the tenets of it. — Mww

Thanks, that makes sense. So it's the tenet of representationalism where I part company. In my view, the ordinary object we point to (the intentional object) is not a representation or an object of sense. That precludes the Kantian thing-in-itself/appearance distinction.

The very idea of failure of language per se seems incoherent to me. The point for me is that certain ideas may lead "naturally" to unreflective reification. — Janus

Yes, in the context of this thread, the idea of mind comes to mind.

One example of faith consists in believing that there is any natural knowledge of God's existence. — Janus

Yes, though I would note that Aristotle didn't seem to be motivated by faith.

The Unmoved Mover is actually quite distinct from God. Aristotle demonstrated that anything eternal must be actual. In this way he separated the concept of "eternal" from "infinite". "Infinite" was demonstrated as necessarily potential. He then posited the Unmoved Mover to account for the eternal actuality, that actuality which is necessarily prior to the potential for material existence. However, he described the eternal actuality as a circular motion, which is a description of a material thing, with infinite time duration. So his Unmoved Mover is a faulty concept which falls back into the category of an infinite material existence, which he had demonstrated was impossible. The Unmoved Mover is inconsistent with his logical demonstrations. — Metaphysician Undercover

For Aristotle, it's the celestial spheres that move in a circular motion (as moved by the Unmoved Mover). The Unmoved Mover, per its name, doesn't move.

So the Neo-Platonists and Christian theologians understand "eternal" in a different way, meaning outside of time. And this is how God is understood, as outside of time, not as Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. This is very important, because "eternal" in this context does not mean an infinite duration of time (what Aristotle demonstrated as impossible, then turned around and proposed as Unmoved Mover), it means outside time. — Metaphysician Undercover

For Aristotle, time is the measure of change. The Unmoved Mover does not change, so time is not applicable for it.

Did Kant think that our existing language that we use to represent the world and acquire knowledge somehow fails us?
— Andrew M

I'd say it fails us insofar as it unreflectively leads to naive realism, which is an unwarranted standpoint, or at least a distorted, because incomplete, picture of our situation. — Janus

Though that would seem to be a failure of a person to understand how the language terms function rather than a problem with the language itself.

My thoughts also. I was taking issue with those who believe otherwise. — Wayfarer

:up:

However, no scholastic would have said you could have reached an understanding of God without revelation in the first place. Given faith, then reason could be deployed in support of faith, but for those without faith, reason would not suffice. — Wayfarer

Not a full understanding, sure. But certainly the Scholastics believed (and the Catholic church still teaches) that faith presupposes natural knowledge of God's existence.

The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent a man, who cannot grasp a proof, accepting, as a matter of faith, something which in itself is capable of being scientifically known and demonstrated. — Summa, I, Q.2, art.2.