When I refer to the red flower, I am doing so as a shorthand for my experience of the red flower. — Kenosha Kid

Is there some benefit for you, in the shorthand over the experience? What does the shorthand do, that the experience hasn’t already done?

Under which circumstance could objective reality remain inaccessible to us? — Mersi

None.....

What fundamental properties (or flaws) must we accuse of our cognitive faculties to justify this assumption? — Mersi

....iff we accuse our faculty of sensibility of proper physiological function, which is passive indifference to its input. The cognitive faculties operate on that which is given to it, which presupposes sensibility. It isn’t, therefore, the cognitive faculties that determines accessibility.

Objective reality in itself, as a conception in general, is always inaccessible, so if anything, the cognitive faculties could be accused of creating that which is valid for itself, but nonetheless impossible for sensibility. But we as intelligent agents lose nothing by it, for it is certain that the constituency of the general conception remains accessible to sensibility.

Qualia: what’s done when the good stuff has already been done.

Ehhhh......think I’ll leave it to the audience from here on out. Assuming there is one. Let them be the judge.

And this prevents us from just going right back to a new bias, a new inclination of a different color, but inclination nonetheless?
— Mww

Yes, but the decision is made from a more fully developed intellect (...) more rational (...) develop the full capacity of logical reasoning (...) a matter of introspection (...) a matter of time — Metaphysician Undercover

That's the whole point. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, my point exactly. Yours is predicated on education, the qualifications above listed being more attributable to experience than mere education. One cannot even become properly educated without those qualifications. Or, in other words, becoming educated presupposes those qualifications. Either way, and however reduced. It is education that comes as a consequence, and never as an antecedent.

So any bias can be overcome, that's the nature of free will, and will power. — Metaphysician Undercover

And that right there is the proverbial knife-in-the-heart of your predication on education. Will power cannot be taught. And while experience is a form of education, absent the stipulation that says otherwise, education as used herein indicates the formal, sit-down-shut-up-and-memorize brand of it.
————-

We naturally have feelings, but can certainly distinguish a good one from a bad one.
— Mww

I don\t agree that we can "certainly distinguish a good feeling from a bad feeling". Sometimes the distinction is easy, other times not so easy. — Metaphysician Undercover

Categorical error aside, easily or difficultly, even problematically, distinguishing a good feeling from a bad, or the relative degree of one or the other with respect to themselves, is a distinction.
————-

Doubt implies dismissal Without the opportunity for correction.
— Mww

No, "doubt" implies indecision. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hmmm....yeah, I’ll own that. I should have said implies possible dismissal.
————-

we need to reassess the principles to see what the problem is. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep. Given the principle......

Learning to overrule whatever biases one is inclined toward due to genetics or predisposition, is part of a proper education. — Metaphysician Undercover

.......the proposed counterargument suggests both a reevaluation of conditionals and a reassessment of the principle the conditionals endorse.

With respect to which, I offer, for your consideration: education in the minor and my experiences in the major determine the possibilities toward biases in general, my biases represent a rational determination from those possibilities, which is called persuasion, my innate predispositions judge a priori whether my biases conform to my nature, which is called interest.

Agree with any of that?

....some innate biases can be overcome. — Metaphysician Undercover

True enough, if one accepts that biases are innate. I don’t think I’d go that far, and apparently, neither do you, because you said, “inclined toward due to genetics or predisposition”.

we cannot properly distinguish between good and bad biases, when we are already biased. — Metaphysician Undercover

We naturally have feelings, but can certainly distinguish a good one from a bad one. It follows that how we feel about a bias may be exactly how we distinguish them from each other, by how the object of each affects us.

This means we must rid ourselves of all biases, form an open mind, then reassess all those dismissed biases from this newly established position. — Metaphysician Undercover

And this prevents us from just going right back to a new bias, a new inclination of a different color, but inclination nonetheless? Hell.....even the claim of having an open mind is a bias of its own.

Skepticism instructs us to doubt..... — Metaphysician Undercover

True, but it serves no purpose to doubt ourselves into oblivion. If humans are naturally inclined to biases and cognitive dispositions, it seems rather futile to effect their collective demise. Besides, I suspect there are some biases we refuse to over-rule, and in conjunction with them, the innate predispositions we couldn’t over-rule without destroying the manifest identity to which they belong.

Therefore we must subject anything which appears as knowledge, to doubt. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ehhhh.....rational criticism, perhaps. Doubt implies dismissal Without the opportunity for correction.

I get what you’re saying; I just think you’ve gone too far with it, in terms of practical purposes and the consequences for philosophy.

No fair. If I’m transported to a time not my own, I should be classed accordingly. If a mere paysan I might grab a seat, if I’m a Rousseau/Voltaire-type, I might not. Louis’ cousin.....I’d beat a hasty retreat to Quebec. One could argue it was the degree of exploitation, rather than education, which determines attendance. All quite irrelevant regardless.

Still...can a innate predisposition, as such, be subjected to over-ruling, whether by education or otherwise? And what of a good bias? Should my innate predisposition to help the proverbial lil’ ol’ lady cross the street be educated out of me?

You made no distinction between the relative values of our individual biases, grouping them all as biases in general, the compendium of which we can be taught to overcome. To that alone, I make objection.

Learning to overrule whatever biases one is inclined toward due to genetics or predisposition, is part of a proper education. — Metaphysician Undercover

My education sucks. I have this bias, this predisposed inclination, to detest beheadings that I haven’t learned to over-rule.

Thoughts can trigger emotions, but there can also be emotionless thoughts. To complete I would say that emotions require thoughts not the other way around. — neomac

There ya go. Now the parameters are set for the assertion of pros and cons.

I agree thoughts and emotions are different, and I agree with your statement on thoughts. To complete, all that’s needed is an exposition for what emotion is, along the same lines as what thought is. If that can be done, the difference between them is given.

But the onus is on you, as the thread author, to set the stage with a statement similar to the one you gave on thoughts.

Thoughts can trigger emotions, but there can also be emotionless thoughts. — neomac

Good, but incomplete, in that “thought” is the subject in both parts of the proposition. In a discussion of differences, a congruent proposition is needed, in which the other part of the difference is the subject.

Within the debate between materialism and idealism it could be asked which is primary? — Jack Cummins

Sure, but within that dualism the necessary brain/mind distinction is given, from which some relative primacy follows.......so why the question in the thread title?

Under the assumption that doing philosophy is not the same as philosophizing, at the most fundamental level, as individuals, the consequence of the inescapability of biases on our philosophy, is that they become indistinguishable.

Philosophy proper is the a priori organization of cognitions, biases are cognitions, so.....

is the rational, the cognitive, derived from the non-rational, the non-cognitive? — Srap Tasmaner

Seems necessarily so. No brain, no conscious thought, right?

there is no magic thread to stitch the two together — Srap Tasmaner

Maybe there isn’t a need to stitch together that which is inseparable.....

That there are these two realms seems inarguable. — Srap Tasmaner

.....sorta just like that.

You could read the ‘language-game’ approach as suggesting that there are rather more than two realms, but they’re all just a matter of how we use language in different ways for diverse purposes in varying circumstances. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, well......we already knew all that from the manifold of both possible and impossible experiences, your “varying circumstances”, that the construction of the language a priori represents. Doesn’t matter; however many more than two realms are posited, all reduce ultimately to just the original two.

I don’t have a knock-down argument that the cognitive (rational, linguistic) is grounded in the non-cognitive (non-rational, non-linguistic). I’m not sure there can be one. — Srap Tasmaner

Hume acknowledged as intellectually empty and philosophically lazy (paraphrased) in arguing that we think merely because we have a brain, in regard to the principle of cause and effect. How a singular cause affords an infinite plurality baffles us, and is by that, quite unsatisfying while at the same time being rather undeniable. So, no, I’m not sure there can be one either, other than how can it be otherwise, which is pretty much what Hume thought 300 years ago.

“...It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate....”
(E.C.H.U. 1. 1. 3., 1748)

It’s easy to describe such a ‘mechanism’ but pointless, because there is no chance at all that you could describe an algorithm that could predict what he was going to play. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep. Hence the notion of spontaneity. Great as a mechanism, but just try demonstrating where our internal, pure, spontaneity comes from. Even choosing that conception prohibits anything to be said about it. The entirety of Kantian conceptual schemes depends on it, not because it is necessarily true, but only that it doesn’t contradict anything. And in a purely logical system, what more is needed?

Oh well. — Srap Tasmaner

(Sigh) Same as it ever was........

But what if reason evolved to provide fitness rather than truth? — frank

What sense of fitness?

But there are two other ways to ask that question: (i) what makes human knowledge possible? and, in a somewhat different vein, (ii) what makes human beings knowers? — Srap Tasmaner

Interesting.

(i) asks the same as the original, insofar as there is no good reason to ask about knowledge in other creatures when a human isn’t even certain of the conditions for his own.

(ii) is given immediately upon his knowledge of something. He who knows is a knower. Somewhat tautological in itself, but still leaves unanswered what makes knowledge possible, hence what makes knowers possible.
————

tired analogy of describing the progress of a game in terms of its rules — Srap Tasmaner

Tired indeed. What a waste of time.

there are things about playing soccer they do not know. But there are also things they do not know how to do in the other sense: they cannot do them; they lack certain skills — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, found as far back as at least Platonic “knowledge of” vs, “knowledge how”, and later in Russell’s “knowledge by acquaintance”, and a veritable myriad of similarities in between. I for one know nothing about soccer, but I could learn it well enough to play the game according to its rules. On the other hand, I simply do not have the musculature required to play soccer as a actual game, which implies competitive abilities.

And there are things about playing soccer you cannot understand if you lack those skills. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, I suppose, maybe. Like....how the HELL did he do that!!! But I think I would still maintain that I can understand how, e.g., a bicycle kick can be done without my personal ability to do one. This shows understanding antecedes experience, except for sheer accident or reflex.

The development of a skill new to you can change how you understand the game — Srap Tasmaner

That, or I’m just putting the understanding I already have to more profitable use. I think a sense of accomplishment most often is merely conformance to an expectation, which must have been understood as possible in the first place.

But I get it.
—————

If having some skill is a prerequisite for having some cognition, then by ignoring skill you would miss an entire class of cognition, and mischaracterize what’s left. — Srap Tasmaner

I would agree, if such were the case. Having some cognition because of a skill doesn’t tell you how you got the skill, if it didn’t come naturally. So we end up with, practicepracticepractice, at the end of which we cognize how wonderful we’ve become at some particular thing.

But what if some cognition is prerequisite for a skill? Musical prodigies, natural athletes excepted, the rest of us have to think before we act.

Good stuff. Maybe elaborate some more, here and there?

Thus the importance of honoring language games? — frank

I honor reason, without which there wouldn’t even be a language game.

Which just shows reason isn’t perfect.

Why would it be far fetched? — frank

Sorry. I didn’t mean to come off as pejorative. I was just paying more attention to the keyword “speculative”, then the subject “holographic universe”.

Even established precepts or methods can seem far-fetched. It’s just that the speculative carries the implication of being more-so.

holographic universe. (...) Apparently it's a serious thing, tho. — frank

Could be. Some have likened “The Allegory of the Cave” as a forerunner, and that was certainly a serious thing, at least philosophically, in that things are not always as they seem.

But I wonder.....how far-fetched does it have to get, just to argue established criteria?

The properties experienced of the object are subjectively imposed.
— Hanover

I pointed out that experienced properties of the object are not imposed by us (that is, are not subjectively imposed) — Janus

I wasn’t invited, but I’m taking a seat on the affirmative side of the bandwagon anyway. You know.......”Copernican Revolution” and all.

....knowledge...the fundamental way human beings relate to the world.... — Srap Tasmaner

How would you know if you had failed? — Srap Tasmaner

HA!! Exactly right. Toss this....ok, still know stuff. Toss this....ok, still good. Toss this...still here. Toss.....

...knowledge....one of the fundamental ways human beings relate to the world — Srap Tasmaner

Hmmmm. You’d end up tossing the tossable, and still know stuff. At last, you end up with THE fundamental way you started with.

.....knowledge.....not quite fundamental..... — Srap Tasmaner

Ahhh, after defeating the other two, what’s left? What if knowledge is merely an end in itself, having nothing whatsoever to do with the means? It becomes the case, then, that the means are the more fundamental, and if we start tossing them one at a time, we might find knowledge evaporates at the very first toss. And if that happens, we’ve arrived at the THE fundamental way of understanding the world, we’d find it isn’t knowledge itself, but that which makes knowledge possible.

Impasse. How do we know what it is that makes knowledge possible. Common rejoinder is.....education. Nobody wants to deny that they were taught everything they know. From day one they’ve been instructed in every-damn-thing, which leads to the abominable construct that culture/language is more powerful than reason.

Humans. Forever taking the easy way out.

When it comes to empirical knowledge, I would say the limits cannot be predetermined. — Janus

Oh absolutely. We can’t say what the limit of knowledge is, but we can still say what the limit of knowledgeable things is. This isn’t so much a limit on knowledge, but rather, a limit on experience.

But then, some say experience is knowledge, so there is that.....

I dunno. If that which we can know about is limited to phenomena, then parsimony suggests that serves as a limit on knowledge itself. On the other hand, the sheer quantity of possible phenomena far exceeds the time available for any one human to know of them.......

And new knowledge changes old knowledge.....

And we don’t even know what we don’t know.....

AAARRRGGGG!!!!

Apart from representational models another simple way of framing perception is saying that we see objects as they are revealed to us — Janus

This is correct, as far as framing perception. But perception is not representation, it is sensation, and that fully empirical. Some representations are of empirical perceptions, but representations themselves are rational.

there is for us the merely logical idea of what the object could be in itself. (...). Or what import could it have — Janus

It’s import, in accordance with the theory from which it arises, is to limit our empirical knowledge to only that which can be a phenomenon for us. Otherwise, nothing prevents us from claiming knowledge of everything there is, even without the possible experience of it.

In humans, knowledge is not of things but of representations of things. I think obviously.
— Mww

Is it so obvious, though? This is one way of thinking about the situation, to be sure, but is it the best way? — Janus

Best is irrelevant if it’s the only. I hear of other system methodologies, but I don’t understand them well enough to qualify their respective values. Enactivism, or some such? Dunno.

There shouldn’t be any problem with the fact that what the brain works with, is not the same as what perception works with, whatever that difference is called.

But it isn't necessarily true that there are physical objects.
— frank

Given a certain set of initial conditions it is. Different conditions, different theory, different theory, different predictions/conclusions/possibilities .....
— Mww

Yes, but I think that's another way of saying that physical objects are possible, but not necessary. — frank

Maybe, but I for one won’t be stepping off the curb in front of a sufficiently massive fast-mover to test a mere possibility.

But it isn't necessarily true that there are physical objects. — frank

Given a certain set of initial conditions it is. Different conditions, different theory, different predictions/conclusions/possibilities, right?

But there are physical objects that it is possible to know about, so there must be things as they are in themselves.
— Mww

This is a hinge proposition? — frank

As in Wittgenstein? I’m not sure, and he may not have been either. But under the assumption that a hinge proposition is a proposition immune from skeptical doubt, hence necessarily true or false, Kant would just call it an analytic tautology. I mean.....if there is a thing we know about, a thing as it is in itself is logically given, hence free from our skeptical doubt of it, at least ontologically.

to the extent we wish to depart Kant and speculate upon the noumenal, we'd be required to impose causation upon it because that's what synthetic a priori truths do - they force a particular view on the world. — Hanover

True enough, but causality is given, insofar as it resides in the categories as a concept, but speculation on the noumenal, in departing from Kant, requires a faculty of intuition not belonging to us as humans. So technically, we need to impose a faculty we don’t have, rather than a causality we do.

Actually, because noumena are conceived, they already are subsumed under causality anyway. Kant says the conception of noumena is merely understanding overstepping its proper domain by thinking an object as schema of a category to which a proper schema, as an intuition, cannot be synthesized.....because there isn’t one. Herein is the transcendental use of a category, when it is restricted to the empirical use, by the theory under which understanding operates. A spectacular and catastrophic no-no. Metaphysically speaking.

“....Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind. Hence, it is as necessary for the mind to make its conceptions sensuous (that is, to join to them the object in intuition), as to make its intuitions intelligible (that is, to bring them under conceptions). Neither of these faculties can exchange its proper function. Understanding cannot intuite, and the sensuous faculty cannot think. In no other way than from the united operation of both, can knowledge arise....”

Kant's notion of the 'thing in itself'; is it. for him, unknowable — Janus

In humans, knowledge is not of things but of representations of things. I think obviously. And furthermore, predicated solely on incident physiology. It does not follow, and it is vacuous to suppose, that from the singular nature of the human intellect, the sole and necessarily preemptive methodology by which things are known to us, that things could not be otherwise. They could not be otherwise within us, but they could be otherwise without us. We cannot empirically know they are not, therefore it is logically possible they are. Anything not known or knowable by us, in accordance with the knowledge system intrinsic to us, be it whatever it may, if it is at all, is as it is all by itself.

In Kant, then, the ding an sich is given as an ontological condition, and yes, it remains an impossible epistemological one. On the other hand, if the human knowledge system is in fact not representational, this particular speculative metaphysics is immediately falsified, and the ding an sich disappears.

Shirley you of all people understand that we must use the knowledge system we have, to tell us about the knowledge system we have. Hence, the intrinsic circularity in human reason. As soon as we recognize it, at least one attempt to circumvent the inevitable contradictions incurred because of it, is to restrict exactly what we are allowed to claim as knowledge. So, given a certain methodology for knowing things, that which is necessarily external to that system cannot be included in its purely internal functions, instead serving merely as occasions for its empirical use. There are no physical objects in the system, therefore it is not of physical objects themselves the system knows. But there are physical objects that it is possible to know about, so there must be things as they are in themselves.

Q.E.gawddamnedD!!!!!

Or not.......

I can't make any sense of the version of Kant presented here. — Srap Tasmaner

It’s modernized. Therefore it’s mistaken.

Hanover is the closest without mentioning Kant specifically.

The footprint and the flower are Hume, not Kant at all. See “constant conjunction”.

You fight a worthy battle.

I'm interested in hearing what people's views are on the notion of the enlightened individua — Tom Storm

Because the thread title capitalizes the e in Enlightenment, I infer from “what is it to be Enlightened?” to indicate adherence to the conditions given from the particular historical human development represented by that name. Thus.....

“....Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage**. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on--then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me. Those guardians who have kindly taken supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind (...) should consider the step to maturity, not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous. First, these guardians make their domestic cattle stupid and carefully prevent the docile creatures from taking a single step without the leading-strings to which they have fastened them. Then they show them the danger that would threaten them if they should try to walk by themselves. Now this danger is really not very great; after stumbling a few times they would, at last, learn to walk. However, examples of such failures intimidate and generally discourage all further attempts....”
(Kant, 1784, in Mary C. Smith, 2000;
** “immaturity” in Friedrich 1949, Humphrey 1983, Schmidt 1996)

With the freedoms today, it is hard to imagine a time when people in general not only seldom thought for themselves, they didn’t even realize they could. I find it quite ironic, that two empirical revolutions, in science with the telescope and in culture with a beheading, became launchpads for a revolution of a purely rational nature.

But....like most revolutions.....the predications for which are too soon forgot.

Who am “I”.

....which reduces to nothing more than a metaphysical object querying itself.

I can say that, express it objectively, because “I” thought it up.

Not much point in asking about that for which the answer is contained in the question.

as a way of grounding the natural sciences, you need to write “The world I find myself in”. — Srap Tasmaner

The world I find myself in is the world as it is, preemptive of my considerations of it.
— Mww

Well, this can’t be the first thing you say. — Srap Tasmaner

As a way of grounding I take to mean the basis of, or, what comes first. The start. The given. It may not need to be the first thing said; the world I find myself in is so primordial I don’t need to say it.

On the other hand, to complete the phrase to a subject/copula/predicate proposition: the world I find myself in grounds the natural sciences, reduces to world/grounds/science, so “world” is the first thing I say after all. Superfluous to be sure, but still......
————

I mean, where else would we be found
— Mww

So this is a reasonable starting point, and all Heidegger does is take exactly this and think it through, alright, so what is a world? what does it mean to be in one? — Srap Tasmaner

Ahhhh, well....that’s a different thinking through. What is a world and what does it mean to be in one presupposes the world I find myself in, and these are the very considerations I first mentioned, that I make upon the world as a consequence of being in it. So yes, this is a reasonable place to start doing the natural sciences, but iff the possibility for them is already established. Those “a priori conditions” mentioned in your B & T quote.
———-

if we are found in the world, then everything else we can know about must be found in the same world
— Mww

And then this is the next thing — although Heidegger keeps fiddling with the order in Being and Time (....) Are the things we find in the world “in” it the same way we are? How hard is it to see that the answer has to be “no”? — Srap Tasmaner

Pretty hard for lil’ ol’ me, I must say. I don’t know how the fiddling works, so maybe there is a way that things are not in the world the same way I am. I’m a thing in the world, that thing wandering around in the night sky is in the world. “In” in the same way must have bearing somehow, apparently.
———-

At the very least, there’s the simple point that the universe does not consist of a philosopher and the table he gazes at thinkingly; there’s the whole rest of the world around them and they’re each in it. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, but what explains how they all might not all be in it, all in the same way? At the risk of opening my mouth and sticking my foot in it....to say all things are not in the world all in the same way overturns the principle of parsimony. Which I suppose can be done, but I would think only with a parsimony deeper or more fundamental that the existent version.

Good stuff. Thanks for the highlights.

And that’s very much what Heidegger is up to: before you can do the sort of ontology he attributes to Kant, as a way of grounding the natural sciences, you need to write “The world I find myself in”. — Srap Tasmaner

This is exactly right. The world I find myself in is the world as it is, preemptive of my considerations of it. This is also why Kant doesn’t bother with ontology as a discipline, the simple reason being we don’t care that we find ourselves in a world.....I mean, where else would we be found.....when we really want to know what constitutes the world that we’re in. Besides, if we are found in the world, then everything else we can know about must be found in the same world. But even if we knew everything there was to know about things in the world, we still wouldn’t know the world as it is.
————

But what do we mean by ‘a priori’? What did Kant mean? — Srap Tasmaner

“.....But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion), an addition which we cannot distinguish from the original element given by sense, till long practice has made us attentive to, and skilful in separating it. It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and not to be answered at first sight, whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called a priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience. But the expression, "a priori," is not as yet definite enough adequately to indicate the whole meaning of the question above started. For, in speaking of knowledge which has its sources in experience, we are wont to say, that this or may be known a priori, because we do not derive this knowledge immediately from experience, but from a general rule, which, however, we have itself borrowed from experience. Thus, if a man undermined his house, we say, "he might know a priori that it would have fallen;" that is, he needed not to have waited for the experience that it did actually fall. But still, a priori, he could not know even this much. For, that bodies are heavy, and, consequently, that they fall when their supports are taken away, must have been known to him previously, by means of experience. By the term "knowledge a priori," therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience. Knowledge a priori is either pure or impure. Pure knowledge a priori is that with which no empirical element is mixed up. For example, the proposition, "Every change has a cause," is a proposition a priori, but impure, because change is a conception which can only be derived from experience....”

Nutshell.

Your view of feeling and cognition as separable entities
rests on your model of thinking in general in classically cognitivist representationalist terms, inspired by the workings of a computer. — Joshs

Yes, but pre-dating computers by a couple centuries. Such system may not hold as much sway as it did, but it is still around, and in its strictest sense, is impossible to refute.

We can’t say that world first exists and then we understand it. — Joshs

Hmmm. So can we say we first understand the world and then it exists? That seems patently absurd, so what can we say, respecting such if/then propositions?

Language does not exist external to its use by us in the world. — Joshs

Yep. If language doesn’t exist externally unless used by us, then it is constructed internally by us. In order to use a word, such that it exists in the world, it must first be invented. After that, it is merely recorded. Inventions are not accidents, they are purposive. Therefore words are purposive. What purpose can there be, for an internal invention, and, if internally invented there must be an internal inventor, so what is the internal inventor?

Words are not relational at all, — Joshs

Green relates to color. Grass relates to a plant. Green grass relates color to a plant.

In enactivist models, by contrast, there are no inner representations of an outer world..... — Joshs

That’s fine, as long as it covers all the bases the representational system covers, and more besides, otherwise it’s just another theory that might add to our knowledge, but isn’t sufficient falsification of its predecessor.

So you are arguing that we can extract the meaning of a word concept that is independent of all feelings that may accompany our experience of that word. — Joshs

Technically, I’m arguing from a point where words are irrelevant. To feel and to think is not to speak. To speak is to convey, or report, feeling and thinking. That said, I can dissect your comment this way:

1.).....I experience a word you say when I hear it: cyclotron;
.........Assuming no distinguishing mannerisms, no uncharacteristic inflection or intentional mispronunciation, I immediately assign no feeling to that word, and I immediately have no understanding of any feeling you may or may not have, not conjoined with the saying of the word;
.........I immediately intuit an object. I intuit a certain object if I already know what the word I heard represents, or I do not intuit a certain object, but merely a something of which I have no experience;
.........I have now extracted the meaning of the word iff I already know the object to which it relates, or, I have not extracted the meaning of the word if I don’t. All and either without the invocation of any feeling whatsoever.


2.) .....I experience a word you say when I hear it: HALLELOO-YAHHH!!!!!
..........Given a distinguishing mannerism, I immediately understand you have invoked a feeling antecedent to the saying of it, but I have no understanding of what that feeling is from the mere experience of the word;
..........I do not intuit an object for this word, insofar as there are no objects known to me that I represent to myself with that word;
..........I do not extract any meaning of the word, because it doesn’t relate to the intuition of an object, but I do understand it represents some feeling in general of yours not given in me by the word itself.

All rather moot, in that I seldom experience a single word, but if I do, that’s how it works in me.

3.)....I experience words you say when I hear it contained in a sentence: Cyclotrons are found in the root wad of aspen trees;
........I immediately intuit a plurality of objects all in relation to each other, either I know one, another, several, all or none;
........If I know all the objects, I immediately intuit a necessary contradiction, insofar as my knowledge of these objects never has conjoined them to each other; if I only know any single one of the objects I immediately intuit a possible contradiction. If I know none of the objects I intuit nothing but a manifold of objects with no cognizable relation to each other at all, even with a full experience of the sentence I heard you say;
.........I now may or may not have extracted a meaning for the words representing my intuition of a group of objects represented by the words I heard in the sentence, but only to the degree by which they conform to my knowledge of each of them AND my understanding of the possible relations between them.

If I ever invoke a feeling of any kind with respect to these examples, it is only and always a non-fallacious post hoc ergo proper hoc sequential possibility. There is no innate necessity for invoking feelings onto that which I may or may not understand or of which I may or may not have knowledge.

So.....the argument follows that because it is sometimes evident that people do assign feelings to words, even if under some specific technicality they can’t, then people usually assign feelings to words and are merely not aware they are doing it. Of course, this major premise only holds water if there is a specific technical authority that affirms it with stronger conclusions then the negation.
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If you are claiming that this pragmatic mattering and relevance is the province of feeling, and feeling can be separated from cognition, then you would seem to be disagreeing with Wittgenstein about the separability of mattering-use from the intrinsic meaning of word concepts — Joshs

It should be clear I do not claim the mattering and relevance of words is the province of feeling. It is the province of rationality, cognition, understanding, under the umbrella of reason.

Wittgenstein says that we only ever actually experience a word in its contextual use. — Joshs

I don’t think so. To “only ever actually experience a word” is to treat it as a mere object, by which we first perceive it, then subject the word to the cognitive process, resulting in the experience of it. Shown above are two examples of the experience of a word that doesn’t even have a contextual use. Better to say understanding of a word is in its contextual use, at least in juxtaposition to experience of it, insofar as experience of a word as mere object doesn’t necessarily tell us anything. Hence.....dictionaries.

99% of the time people understand each other simply because they use words the same way, which makes explicit they have assigned words common to them, to conceptions common to them, which presupposes understandings common to them. From then on, it is experience alone, the end game of reason itself, that tells one guy, when he hears another guy say, “I saw a boat”, that he probably, but not necessarily, means he perceived one and not that he might take a tool to it in order to cut it up. Experience tells the same guy when he hears another guy say, “I saw a log” that he either perceived a log, or, he is actually going to cut it up. In each of these cases, the experience of the word “saw” in its respective statement is exactly the same, which makes explicit use and/or context in conjunction with experience is insufficient for non-contradictory mutual understanding. It cannot be otherwise, for the context from which the word is spoken is not included in the word is it is received by the listener.

At the end of the day, is correct, in that few people care about this stuff. Language has become so prevalent in this smaller-world, technologically advanced human community, in its structure, meaning and use, that the source of it has become neglected.

Sure. I can imagine a person void of emotion but still able to reason, make rational judgements. I wouldn’t expect a hearty “Howdy, neighbor!” from him, though.

But being void of emotion has no bearing on having both emotion and reason, yet limiting each to a particular use.

Yes, he would be motivated by reason generally, but being void of emotion, he would have no use for pure practical reason. In effect, it could be said he was void of pure practical reason and that’s why he had no emotions. There was nothing to inform him of what his emotions should be. Or it could just as well be that he had no emotion so there was nothing on which practical reason could exert itself. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Further indication of the separability of reason, or more properly, rationality, and emotion, in that they are governed by different kinds of reason.

Hellava rabbit hole we got goin’ here. Ain’t it fun??? Interesting?

Suits me.

No matter how you slice it, this here is a minority game. — Manuel

What to you say about the adage that not everybody does philosophy, but everybody has one?