Comments

  • Thing-in-itself, Referent, Kant...Schopenhauer


    Not those idealists of a certain kind:

    “….. For although education may furnish, and, as it were, engraft upon a limited understanding rules borrowed from other minds, yet the power of employing these rules correctly must belong to the pupil himself; and no rule which we can prescribe to him with this purpose is, in the absence or deficiency of this gift of nature, secure from misuse….”
    (CPR)

    “…. We may further remark here that some minds only find full satisfaction in what is known through perception. (…) Other minds, on the contrary, seek merely the abstract concepts which are needful for applying and communicating knowledge….”
    (WWR)
  • Thing-in-itself, Referent, Kant...Schopenhauer


    “…. All that in any way belongs or can belong to the world is inevitably thus conditioned through the subject, and exists only for the subject. The world is idea….”

    Even if it could be said “conditioned through the subject”, does it follow that all “…exists only for the subject…”?

    I don’t see how that which belongs to this, can exist only for that.

    What say you?
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    I think the very fact that we must posit an unknowable "in itself" defines our condition and is far from irrelevant.Janus

    Oh absolutely. Simple complementarity principle: if we insist there is that which is knowable, that which is unknowable in itself is given immediately.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    Do you mean getting clearer via critical thought…..Janus

    I meant the curtailment the extravagances of thought without stifling it. The subject imagining freely, but understanding he can only go so far with it.

    don't think being affected pre-cognitively can be like anythingJanus

    Cool. Just what I was hoping to hear.

    that there are processes that are, or "something" that is, that we cannot be aware of creating this shared world of things we inhabit.Janus

    There very well may be those processes. I just figure if we not only aren’t, but couldn’t possibly be, aware of them, it makes no difference to us whether there are or not. How would we ever be able to tell? Correct me if I’m off-base, but isn’t that what the doctrine of phenomenology posits? Those processes creating this shared world we may be able to know about?
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time


    I hear ya.

    My getting us clearer as subjects, is probably more closely related to metaphysics, which in turn is closer to your mention of critical thought.

    What do you mean by….what would it be like to be……affected pre-cognitively?
  • Parsimonious Foundationalism : Ontology's Enabling Assumptions
    Kant thought Hume a really good philosopher.Moliere

    Acute. Celebrated. Ablest, most ingenious, of skeptical philosophers. A few of one’s accolades for the other.

    If only he’d taken that one last step……
  • Parsimonious Foundationalism : Ontology's Enabling Assumptions


    Ahhh. All’s well that ends in reason alone.

    Still….bone of contention, due to my lack of sufficient study perhaps….seems odd Kant would declare it rational to behave in accordance with the old ways, but declare sapere aude in keeping with the new-fangled Enlightenment philosophy in which behavior would definitely not be in such accordance.
  • Parsimonious Foundationalism : Ontology's Enabling Assumptions
    I think the big conceptual difference between Kant and Hegel is their respective use of the concept "time". Hegel challenges the law of the excluded middle on the basis of time, where Kant accepts it because he believes Aristotle started a science of logic, and he's picking up that torch to further the project of a science of logic. Hegel builds a logic which "contains" or at least allows contradiction at certain points of time in the name of sublation, due to his reading of the history of philosophyMoliere

    Good. Thank you. A response not loaded with useless metaphors, just straight answers to direct questions. ‘Preciate it.

    On “Religion Within the Limits….”, I must confess to not including it in my favored field of study. Religion, donchaknow. (shudder).

    But I do have it already under the title “…Limits of Reason Alone”, Greene, 1934, which might explain why I didn’t recognize “bare reason”: re: the limit of religion in Bennet 2017, among others. Despite all that, I’ll look for a dedicated reference to it, see what all the fuss is about.

    Carry on.
  • Parsimonious Foundationalism : Ontology's Enabling Assumptions
    Kant embraces human autonomy, but then argues that it's rational to continue believing in the old (….) ways -- at least within the bounds of bare reason.Moliere

    What is bare reason?

    ….the place of reason for Kant is not a universal reason in Hegel's sense. It's universal in that it holds for all experience, but it's not universal in the sense that it holds for all reality.Moliere

    Place of reason. Is that supposed to indicate a condition wherein the faculty of reason is suited to be employed? So Kant's place of reason means it is suitable for employment universally with respect to all experience, but not suitable for employment universally with respect to all reality?

    So what grounds a universal reason in Hegel’s sense, such that its place is both with respect to all experience and with all reality? And if all reality is a possible experience, and in Kant there is a place for reason with respect to possible experience, isn’t that synonymous with Hegel’s sense of a universal reason?
    ————-

    “….. in the expectation that there may perhaps be conceptions which relate à priori to objects.…we form to ourselves…the idea of a science of pure understanding and rational cognition, by means of which we may cogitate objects entirely à priori. A science of this kind….must be called transcendental logic, because it has….to do with the laws of understanding and reason…..only in an à priori relation to objects.

    I disbelieve there is a transcendental logic.Moliere

    Which is not to disbelieve in the pure thought that there may be conceptions which relate a priori to objects, but only disbelieve in the relating the conceptions to the objects, or, which is the same thing, disbelieve in cognizing objects entirely a priori given their antecedent conceptions.

    Without a Kantian transcendental logic, how do space and time, purely transcendental conceptions, relate entirely a priori to objects? Apparently, Hegel has a way, himself a transcendental philosopher, so I’m led to think. Or at least a German idealist in some strict sense.

    Hegel: the categories define what it is to be an object in general, such that it can be given, separating the immanent from the transcendent;
    Kant: the categories define** the conditions for knowing what an object in general is, its being already given, separating experience from illusion.
    (**not really, but for the sake of consistency…..)

    So….it’s fine to disbelieve in Kantian transcendental logic, which presupposes a fair understanding of what it is, but how is Hegel’s logic any less transcendental?

    Rhetorical. Again…..I just had nothing better to do.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time


    Given my understanding of the conceptions the words “unworldly nonsense” represent, it is safe to say I’ve never spent one second of time on it.

    If it is indeed the case there is all too often, which necessarily includes just once, a quantity/quality inverse ration on forums, or any trans-communicative medium, how is it self-flattering arrogance to state that case?

    The criteria for arrogance cannot be contained in the necessity that all judgements are subjective.
    ————-

    The Democracy of Objects is interesting, and offers clues on your writing style.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time


    ……all too often with the inverse quantity/quality ratio.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    Philosophy gets us clearer on empirical reality perhaps….Janus

    If one holds with the position that it is we who decide what reality is, or, perhaps, how the reality that is, is to be known as such, that says more about the decision-maker than what is decided upon.

    Philosophy gets us clearer as subjects, yes, regardless of that to which we as subjects direct ourselves.
    ————-

    “…. But whoever thinks he can learn Kant's philosophy from the exposition of others makes a terrible mistake. Nay, rather I must earnestly warn against such accounts, especially the more recent ones; and indeed in the years just past I have met with expositions of the Kantian philosophy in the writings of the Hegelians which actually reach the incredible. How should the minds that in the freshness of youth have been strained and ruined by the nonsense of Hegelism, be still capable of following Kant's profound investigations? They are early accustomed to take the hollowest jingle of words for philosophical thoughts, the most miserable sophisms for acuteness, and silly conceits for dialectic, and their minds are disorganised through the admission of mad combinations of words to which the mind torments and exhausts itself in vain to attach some thought. No Critique of Reason can avail them, no philosophy, they need a medicina mentis, first as a sort of purgative, un petit cours de senscommunologie, and then one must further see whether, in their case, there can even be any talk of philosophy….”
    (WWR, Preface, xxvii, 1844)
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    I take it -- and I'm hoping you do too --that the point of the philosophical enterprise is getting clearer on reality.plaque flag

    ‘Tis vain hope, I must say, although you are nonetheless welcome to take that point.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time


    In the text, Descartes stipulates that the I exists….as a thinking thing. The common iteration of that stipulation only states “I am”, which does not necessarily indicate an existence. And even if reducing the I that exists to the I that is, merely because it is the very same as the I that thinks, re: I am that which thinks, still doesn’t say much about what that I is. Cognitive representation, and its coalescence into a system, had yet to become a speculative doctrine predicated on logic alone.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    Brandom’s Kant is committed to the view that the unity of apperception is achieved through a process in which an agent unifies her judgments…..

    “…. The first pure cognition of understanding, then, upon which is founded all its other exercise, and which is at the same time perfectly independent of all conditions of mere sensuous intuition, is the principle of the original synthetical unity of apperception….”

    In the first it is said the unity of apperception is an achievement by means of a process, in the second it is said the unity of apperception is that by which processes are achieved. While each of these are or may be the case in their respective philosophies, they are not compatible with each other.

    “…. if I investigate more closely the relation of given cognitions in every judgement (…) I find that judgement is nothing but the mode of bringing given cognitions under the objective unity of apperception.….”

    This just shows distinctions in the domains of such unity. In the objective the cognitions are presupposed insofar as there is consciousness that their representations are already united, in the synthetic the unity is only the consciousness that those representations can be united.

    Brandom’s Kant may well infuse responsibility and whatnot into a purely transcendental systemic methodology, but Kant himself does not. There is a natural sense of responsibility and commitment in the general human condition, but they do not reside in principles contained a priori in understanding. It is absurd to suppose one is responsible or committed to that which is necessarily mandated for him exclusively by his intellectual constitution, however speculative it may be.

    Nahhhh…..the unity of apperception isn’t an achievement, even in the loosest sense. Pretty hard to achieve a fundamental principle. On the other hand, if the unity of apperception is an achievement, than it isn’t a view to which Kant is committed.
  • Hidden Dualism


    Just offering a hidden dualism. No big deal. All the other ones been beat to death, so,…..
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    I am me because there are others who are not me.plaque flag

    I am me because it is impossible I am not, regardless of others.
  • Entangled Embodied Subjectivity
    I think it's clear that truth is….. “When a thing, in reality, meets all the prerequisites to be a dog, then it is a dog".Judaka

    As do I, and that kind of clarity for truth obtains for any thing whatsoever, by reducing to the simple proposition that truth, generally, is the accordance of a cognition with its object.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    I got nothing else to do, so……



    Is the illegality found in the categorical error of at once denying and affirming the same thing?

    Or is the illegality a logical fallacy exhibited in some propter hoc iteration?

    Or is methodological solipsism merely the occassion of denying while affirming common sense realism?

    Assuming at least one of those is a sufficiently reasonable interpretation, how do you figure Kant does any of those three things?

    And even if none of those are sufficient interpretations, what is it about taking for granted, which reduces to presuppositions, that makes such taking illegal, which reduces to logical law?
    ————

    It seems as though you’re just saying Kant contradicts himself, regarding the notion of causal common sense realism, or perhaps just in his employment of the conception itself.

    What is the usual way that common sense realism grasps the causal relation between objects and sensory apparatus? If Kant takes the way the relation is grasped by common sense realism for granted, but takes it for granted illegally, then it must be the case he is not in fact grasping the causal relation in the way of common sense realism at all, but has instead inflicted onto it that which doesn’t belong to it.

    If he takes for granted common sense realism’s grasp of the relation between objects and sensory apparatus is the case, which is its affirmation, how can he at the same time deny it?
    ————

    All objection disappears with the exclusion of “simultaneously”, insofar as he does grant the object/sensory apparatus causal relation common sense realism professes to endorse, but does not grant that relation as a “legally” sufficient condition for what subsequently occurs because of it.
    ———-

    He did inherit from others the so-called methodological solipsism…..how could he not, being immersed in academia….but he moreso expanded it, by inventing a new one, to which, of course, it is doubtful he would have given that doctrinal or theoretic name or acceded to its implication.
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    Feedback. It's very beautiful and difficult and 'foolish.'plaque flag

    Feedback. The charitable expression of circularity, which is indeed foolish, yet at the same time, inescapable. Using reason to investigate reason. Like….no problem there, right?

    Humans. The only species known to confuse themselves and simultaneously insist they’re not.

    (Sigh)
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    I take critical philosophy to be interested in articulating the limits of speculationplaque flag

    Cool. I’d go as far as to take it a step further, and call it the limits of reason. But then, I suppose speculation presupposes reason, so….close enough.
  • Hidden Dualism
    ….the brain and its functions are also representations….Bob Ross

    Odd innit? In the attempt for empirical knowledge, the irreducible origin of it is impossible to know.

    Humans don’t think/cognize/comprehend in its rational method, in the same terms as the source of their knowledge requires in its physical method.

    THAT’S the hidden dualism, I should think.
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    Positivism and phenomenology are 'basically' Kantian, seems to me. Perhaps all [ critical ] philosophy is.plaque flag

    Usually philosophy is critical of something, but Kantian philosophy on the other hand, is critical of philosophy itself. Or maybe the general metaphysical discipline specifically.

    Positivism, that is plain ol’ basic positivism, re: Compte, 1844, if it actually does deny knowledge not derived from experience, cannot be Kantian.

    Phenomenology…..ehhhhh, I dunno. Not sure whether, or even how, the Brentano/Husserl doctrine relates to Kantian phenomenalism. I think the doctrine of intentionality towards an object attributes more to human intelligence than it deserves, beside the fact the origin and methodological placement of Kantian phenomena is not a conscious state of the subject, whereas in Brentano/Husserl it is insofar as it is much more related to experience itself.

    Disclaimer: I have but cursory familiarity with those P philosophies. Maybe just enough to get me into trouble if I say too much.
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    What's weird about my view is its stubborn and intense anthropocentrism.plaque flag

    I’m a firm supporter of the relation between the human intellect, and the method by which the world is understood by means of it. It’s not weird at all, it’s impossible that is could be otherwise.

    Feuerbachplaque flag

    YIKES!!! A Young Hegelian?!?! Schopenhaur’s favorite targets, and he t’weren’t proper gentlemanly about it, neither.
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    the world is only for or through such persons. (….) the world is independent of any particular individual subject,plaque flag

    Do these not contradict each other? Or, how do these not contradict each other? Can a thing be both for and through, and independent of that for which it is for and through?

    To whose transcendental ego have you favored as your own?
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    I'd say the subject is just a person, a total human being.plaque flag

    So no subject/object dualism?

    So I'll concede that, strictly speaking, bodies do not experience.plaque flag

    So tacit acknowledgement of subject/object dualism?

    There is no right or wrong here. Just whatever one favors, er…..subjectively.
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    Is anything real ?plaque flag

    Of course. Just shouldn’t mix the empirically real with the logically valid.

    Are you really (earnestly) claiming that human bodies experiencing the world aren't real ?plaque flag

    Human bodies are real;
    Experience is a condition of an intelligent subject;
    The body is not an intelligent subject;
    Bodies do not experience.
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    our subjectivity only makes sense if understood as localized in world-encompassed flesh.plaque flag

    Ehhhh…..subjectivity is just another in a series of useful fictions and makes sense only in speculative metaphysics, a useful fiction which has its location in pure reason, a useless fiction itself….and the fictional circle is enlarged and self-sustained by the quantity of useful fictions contained by it. As such, its locality is irrelevant….even metaphorically….when elucidation of its purpose is all that can be expected of it.
    ————

    I can only aspire not to be stupid about it….Janus

    Aye. You, me, and hopefully all those who “rise to the height of speculation”.
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    We know nothing of a world apart from the one given to our timebinding cultural flesh, though this same flesh can daydream about pure ur-matter or pure fleshless subjectivity, forgetting itself as a condition of possibility for that daydreamplaque flag

    Which reflects back on that age-old dilemma….the body is certainly necessary, but it is not itself sufficient for such subjectivity. What is given to the cultural flesh is useless without that which has the capacity to do something with it, and even if cultural flesh is merely a euphemism for the brain, the knowledge how regarding subjectivity, is still as missing as it ever was.

    I get my realism directly, I’m here to tell ya, got the scars and assorted blemishes to prove it, which is very much the same as reality not being hidden from me. How it is understood may be incorrect, but I can still go through the motions.
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    Are we then allowed to say…..(the) actually perceived…..should….be regarded as…. intrinsically foreign to it…. — Husserl

    “The physical thing as determined by physics, however, is nothing foreign to what appears sensuously”
    -Husserl

    Ok. One problem solved. The second just says the first should not be allowed.
    ————-


    “What makes itself known here — by being made known in intentional unities pertaining to mental processes of consciousness — is obviously something essentially transcendent. According to all this it is clear that even the higher transcendency characterizing the physical thing as determined by physics does not signify reaching out beyond the world which is for consciousness, or for every Ego functioning as a cognizing subject.”
    -Husserl
    plaque flag

    It is clear that the physical thing determined by physics as obviously something transcendent yet at the same time does not signify reaching out beyond the world which is for consciousness….disregards the concept of immanence, insofar as the domain in question herein, is determined physical things.

    How does that which is made known in intensional unities pertaining to mental processes of consciousness, signifying a conjunction with such processes, have at the same time a higher transcendent characterization? There is no real difficulty, as long as one understands the use of transcendent as a characterization under certain conditions, conforms to the notion of transcendental characterization under generally similar conditions, albeit from a greater specificity regarding the method for appearance-processes, re: A288/B344.

    Nahhhh….the real problem arises from the former, transcendent, characterizes determinations by physics hence contained in consciousness, whereas the latter, transcendental, denies the very possibility of any determination, hence to consciousness.

    Husserl justifies the noumena Kant prohibits, by assigning a different quality and domain to transcendental logic.
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    General commentary, or, the fine line between critical thought and throwing Jello at a wall. As says, philosophy is thinking for oneself, carrying the tacit implication that he’s not being stupid about it.

    …..our deliberations….did not take due notice of the physical thing as determined by physics….for which…. (the perceptually given) physical thing (…) is said to function as a “mere appearance,” perhaps even as something “merely sub­jective.”…. — Husserl

    Are we then allowed to say…..(the) actually perceived…..should….be regarded as an appearance of…..something else, intrinsically foreign to it and separated from it? May we say that, theoretically considered, this something else should be accepted as a reality, completely unknown by acquaintance, which must be assumed hypothetically in order to explain the course of mental appearance- processes? — Husserl

    …..such theories are possible only as long as one avoids seriously fixing one’s eyes on, and scientifically exploring, the sense of a physical thing-datum and, therefore, of “any physical thing whatever,” a sense implicit in experience’s own essence, the sense which functions as the absolute norm for all rational discourse about physical things. — Husserl

    The perceived physical thing itself is always and necessarily precisely the thing which the physicist explores and scientifically determines following the method of physics. — Husserl
    ————-

    Apparently, the physical thing determined by physics is other than the perceptually given thing of mere appearance.

    What does it mean for the actually perceived to be regarded as an appearance of something else?

    How can that appearance of something which is or should be accepted as a reality, at the same time be completely unknown…..by acquaintance?

    While it may be the case the physical thing is separate from its mere appearance, it does not follow from the separation, that it is intrinsically foreign to it, which casts dispersions on the claim the appearance is of something else than the physical thing determined by physicists.

    If theories for the course of mental appearance-processes hypothetically assumes the reality of the something else of mere appearances, a sense implicit in experience’s own essence, which presupposes it must be known by acquaintance, to then claim the perceived physical thing itself be always and necessarily the thing the physicist explores, is self-contradictory.

    Husserl 1929: the origin of transcendental logic is predicated on the content of judgements being genuine objects which “mental appearance-processes” require, re: phenomenology;
    Kant 1787: the origin of transcendental logic is predicated on form alone, irrespective of the empirical content “mental appearance-processes” would require, re: pure a priori synthetic propositions.

    And so it goes….
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?


    Cool. So is innatist epistemology an offshoot of, or derived from, the rational idealist doctrine, or implicitly contained in it? Or is it the other way around?
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?


    Not being familiar with Cudworth, I went to SEP, and it starts off by saying his philosophy “defies classification”. Is he the root of your rational idealist tendencies, cuz he’s the earliest? Minor contributor?
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    I'm not a fan of reductionism.Manuel

    Well then. Here we go again. A proponent of reasonable elimination, but not of reductionism.

    Sorta like eating soup with a fork, innit?

    Agreed on +/- 90%; the rest here is just filler. Not important.
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    We eliminate as much as we reasonably canManuel

    Ooooo….a metaphysical reductionist. Ain’t you just fulla all kindsza surprises.

    Gonna have to amend my Christmas card list. You know…after I start one.
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?


    Cool. Noumena limits a priori what can be thought with respect to the nature of reality, the ding an sich limits a posteriori what can be experienced of it.

    Once a dualist always a dualist, right?
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    All I'm claiming, is that I believe the idea of the "thing-in-itself" is more coherent, for the type of limiting notion Kant was introducing.Manuel

    Ok, I’ll buy it. Let’s finalize: what limiting notion does the thing-in-itself represent?
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    If we want to attribute only what is strictly necessary to such an idea as the negative noumenon, then it is simpler to assume the existence of a single "thing"Manuel

    Ok, I get that. Without a minimal content, any conception is empty hence meaningless. The idea, or in Kant-speak, the notion, of the thing-in-itself, is a simple concept, the strict necessity of which would be only its negative relation to things that are met with intuition. Such is a function of logic.

    But there are still a multiplicity of examples that conform to the notion, and don’t contradiction the rule that the experience of them as objects is impossible. A single example may well suffice for the idea, but it won’t hold for the affects of things on our sensibility.

    Just for the record, there is the argument that the strict necessity for an idea, is the comprehension of the relation of the conceptions contained in its definition. I would agree, under this condition, that to say things-in-themselves, the plurality of the idea, adds to the conception that which is superfluous. Does this get us on the same page?
  • What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
    Plurality is a category and can only apply to phenomena….Jamal

    I thought we were talking about the plurality of real existences, which phenomena are not but representations of real existences.

    Categories apply to the thought of things, which would include those which appear in whatever quantity, which in turn presuppose the thing-in-itself from which each are given.
    ———

    We see plurality…..Manuel

    Do we? Or do we think it, in connection to a series of relations?

    Is the best place to find Schopenhaur’s objection in the Appendix for WWR? Don’t recall the argument, but…I’m old and forget shit all the time, donchaknow.