I might also say: "I eat therefore I am" or "I sneeze therefore I am" or "I walk therefore I am". — Ken Edwards

You can say this if you wish, but Descartes covered it as not in accordance with his thesis, in Principles of Philosophy, Pt 1, Sec 9.

To say “I doubt therefore I am” is valid in itself, but reducible. Probably why ol’ Rene didn’t stop at doubting as the irreducible ground of his argument, but only as the necessary condition for it, given in ibid Sec7.

Best to keep in mind exactly what he’s demonstrating in this particular part of the thesis.

A statement can be certain and false, and uncertain and true. — creativesoul

And? Not....or? For a, re: singular, statement?

My compliments; a fine sample of proper philosophizing, these last few pages. I could continue to argue almost all of it, but to more spoil your effort than gain from mine. Just as it would have been, were our dialectical roles reversed.

Carry on.

Witt spends a lot of time showing how learning a concept is being able to continue a series.. even into new contexts. — Antony Nickles

Isn’t that reducible to experience? If context stands for the the myriad distinguishable opportunities for using a concept, doesn’t that presupposes the time and place of them, which is the same thing as experience? It follows that a possible miscommunication using a common concept can be merely a matter of uncommon experiences.
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People generally aren’t drawn to that picture, your “concepts" being thought (then?) turned into words”. They haven’t a clue that’s what happening, because it’s all theory. Could be no one does that. So why diagnose a reason for something that is no more than speculative theoretic?
— Mww

This is complicated (it took the whole PI to draw it out), but the idea is that humans have a desire for certainty, and a fear of our human frailty (failings), and philosophers slide from there into radical skepticism, which, along with our ability to understand words without context, allows for a theoretical philosophical picture of how (all) language works, which skips over our human frailty and separateness. — Antony Nickles

I grant that humans have the innate desire for certainty, but I reject they fear their failings, at least on the same scale as they desire certainty. But I suppose OLP’s idea of failing has to do with general language use and because humans are always talking, they’re always in fear of failing in their language use. So...even while we are aware OLP has exposed what it considers a problem, has it done anything to fix it? What does a philosophical picture of how all language works, actually do for human frailties, other than seeming to disregard them?

Ironically, you and I are in the same leaky boat here, insofar as the average smuck on the street doesn’t care how my speculative epistemology works, and he doesn’t care about your how all language works. On the other hand, is it the case that for sufficient importance, procedures are in place to prevent failings in language use, so in that sense, there is a fix, albeit hardly philosophical.
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The point being that a "concept" for Witt is not like an "idea" of something, or, say, conceptual--just language. — Antony Nickles

A concept is just language? You know...I think I might know a reason why he comes up with that. It is impossible to have language without concepts, so if I speak, I must already have the ground for speech. Or writing, or communication in general. Combine that with this somewhat less than satisfying metaphysical gem (A50/B74), “....(spontaneity in the production of conceptions)....”, in that nobody likes the idea of stuff just popping up unexplained. So for Witt, the spontaneity is relinquished for the objective manifestations of concepts in language. But he’s just kicked the speculative can down the philosophical road, wouldn’t you say, in that we still need to know what makes language possible.
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By showing how public meaning and language are......what?
— Mww

How much language and our concepts are public (rather than determined by me); that they are meaningful to (all of) us in the ways our lives are attuned "in judgments" Witt will say (not only in definitions of words). #242. — Antony Nickles

OK. The “how much” was missing from your original and my C&P of it.

Kinda tautologous, but ok. Language not public isn’t really language anyway, right? Didn’t somebody say there’s no such thing as private language? Even that ubiquitous “voice in my head” manifests in the same speech as I would use publicly.

Concepts, on the other hand, as I’ve hinted before, always originate privately, by the first instance of it, and which usually, but not necessarily, subsequently become public in the communication of it. For which we must fall back on spontaneity....but, so be it? Not many choices in the matter, actually.
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All I can put out there is that I think OLP's early intent on accounting for the desire for the picture of language as something internal (meaning, thought, intention, "mental activity" Witt will say) attached to or corresponding to a word or object, lessens its interest in anything else "mental". — Antony Nickles

Agreeable, in principle, yes. The lessening interest in anything else mental would be redundant, hence not necessary. This is part of the certainty humans desire, as you said. All certainty is a relative judgement, once a judgement is made, there’s no profit in belaboring that judgement. It remains possible nonetheless, to replace it with a better one, a more certain one, which is merely an interest of its own.

off the top of my head: we don't "follow" Grammar, as we do rules; — Antony Nickles

Also agreed, in principle. The rules I’m concerned with are not something to be followed, as in some sort of objective conformity. Rules in the sense I’ve been using, merely indicate a logical significance in accordance with a complementary system, the empirical knowledge of which we have no privilege. It’s the same as, we don’t know why that happened but there must have been a reason for it....this theory doesn’t tell us how this happens but if it wasn’t in conformity to a rule we can say it wouldn’t have happened.

Probably doesn’t relate to your Grammar....just thought I’d throw it at you, see if it sticks.

I'll let the formulation of Grammar as "rules" go for now, and say I agree that Grammar has been established beforehand (as part of learning and joining society), though "completely" is also a bit far, as seeing that "we are responsible for" "the saying" does play an extra part because, once said/done, we are bound to our expressing, acting, "responsible for" having said it, for answering why, how, among all the possibilities and among what part of the context is important, we said this now, here--we are called out by it, seen in it. — Antony Nickles

“Completely” wouldn’t be a bit too far, if there is a time frame earlier than, or in addition to, learning and joining society. It seems to me, that if the onus is on each of us to take responsibility in the saying, if we are “bound to our expressing”, we’d want something more authoritative than the meager accolades of society. That which merely assuages the ego, as in, “Hey, you expressed that correctly! Good for you!!”, comfortably disguised as “Ok, fine; you’re playing by the rules”....isn’t the taking of responsibility. Yours is the beforehand as part of learning/joining, but with no true account of the extra part of being bound by the responsibility in expression because of agreement with the rules.

Your form of OLP wants to turn what it looks at as learning/joining, into rote instruction. There should still be an account for how learning is done. Your OLP wants to account for responsibility in expression by a subject, but doesn’t account for the authority within the same subject, by which the responsibility is obtained. It follows that the rules are contained in the subject, antecedent to, and hence authority for, any expression whatsoever.

What your OLP doesn’t understand is that rules are a euphemism in the accounting for language. The brain doesn’t use rules; they only appear in the discussion of the brain’s activity. It shouldn’t be a contention that whenever language is in use, something necessary is occurring beforehand. Otherwise, we are nothing but mere playback machines, to which, of course, responsibility in expression cannot pertain.

There is absolutely nothing whatsoever contained in “Finnegan’s Wake” relating to particle physics, but Gell-Mann named the first-ever exposition of a particular member of it, a “quark”. Point being, no matter the word, somebody somewhere at some time, determined its relation, and that determination had nothing to do with learning or joining society, but rather, contributed to a society for its members to learn.

But I get it, honest, I do. There are immeasurably more people these days, so few new experiences, so few new words. Everybody uses the same words, but with uncommon intimations, which facilitates an examination of the expressive ambiguities of the many at the exclusion of the compositional certainty of the one. Just beats the hell outa me how so much emphasis can be attributed to that which takes no account of its fundamental conditions. Incredible waste of time and effort, I must say.
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And to which the question regarding images becomes its most relevant.
— Mww

And here I think I can say that if the idea that I am guessing as the answer to the riddle.... — Antony Nickles

See what I mean? What I posed as just a simple question, you turned into a riddle. There is no reason to do that, there’s no hint in being a mere question that there is a disguised sublimity contained in it. You, of your own accord, before even considering a response, thought my expression as having qualities not justified by the words used in it.

I would say Witt is trying to diagnose the reason people are drawn to that picture by showing how public "meaning" and language are, and how "understanding" is relational (see comments above) at a point where knowledge reaches its limits. — Antony Nickles

People generally aren’t drawn to that picture, your “concepts" being thought (then?) turned into words”. They haven’t a clue that’s what happening, because it’s all theory. Could be no one does that. So why diagnose a reason for something that is no more than speculative theoretic?

By showing how public meaning and language are......what?

To show how understanding is relational....has already been done.

To show how understanding is relational to a point where knowledge reaches its limits.....I can’t unpack that. Knowledge has it limits, but such limits don’t have anything to do with understanding. We can understand a possibility without ever knowing the reality of it.

Witt and Austin's goal is that our lives ([all] our judgements, distinctions, interests, in this language-game) are attuned to these words (concepts**), not that words "arise" from "concepts" (as in "ideas" I would guess) which are thought (casually, or otherwise). — Antony Nickles

I understand that. Even if our lives are attuned to these words, it still would seem relevant to say where these words come from.

Witt's idea of "concepts"** (completely different) is a grouping of regular and complex parts of our lives (language games) like justice, meaning, understanding, but also, forgiving, threatening, sitting in a chair, pointing, learning a series, seeing, seeing an aspect, and that each of these have their own Grammar (roughly, ways they work, as they are part of our lives) — Antony Nickles

I don’t have a problem with calling all those things “concepts”. I would only say the objects of those concepts are what’s part of our lives. Seeing is a concept; what is seen is the object of the concept of seeing; learning is a concept, a series is the object learned about, etc.

What does the double asterisk and the (completely different) attached to “concepts” mean, from the point of view of Witt and OLP?

Have their own Grammar (roughly the way they work).....sounds an awful lot like rules to me. And we’re right back where we started.

So....nothing on images? Familiar with the science of visual thinking? From mention by Einstein, 1942 to books by Pinker, 2007, and originating as a speculative condition for human cognition, in Kant, 1781, the idea has been around quite some time. Being around much longer than OLP isn’t sufficient reason for it being better, but it is sufficient reason for OLP to account for the possible validity of it.

Question: are images part and parcel of human mentality?
— Mww

Well this sounds like a loaded question......

Yeah...no. No more loaded than the title of the article, must we mean what we say. No, it is not necessarily the case that we must mean what we say, and, yes, images are part and parcel of human mentality or no they are not.

......what is "mentality"? Are we saying imagination? Or just the ability to bring up an image?....

Mentality is whatever you think it is, and from which whether images are part and parcel of it, is then determinable. We are not saying imagination, because we already said mentality. If it was the ability to bring up images, then they are presupposed and the question remains as to their part and parcel.

.......but I'd need more I think. — Antony Nickles

Ok. I’ll wait.
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That's all you took from that essay? — Antony Nickles

No. I discovered where you got your writing style.

With respect to content, however, there is this, which I found enlightening, after dropping out all those stupefying cogito interruptus parentheticals:

“....What now needs emphasizing is that (...) justifying a statement or an action is not (...) justifying its justification. The assumption that the appeal to a rule or standard is only justified where that rule or standard is simultaneously established or justified can only serve to make such appeal seem hypocritical (...) and the attempts at such establishment or justification seem tyrannical (....)....”
pg 191

And with this next...

“...And what we mean (...) to say, like what we mean (...) to do, is something we are responsible for....”, pg 197

.... is merely a reiteration of that which has always been the case, long before this article was written, because the rules for what is meant by what is said, are never simultaneously established in the saying, but already completely established beforehand in the relation between the words said and the conceptions thought, from which they arise. And to which the question regarding images becomes its most relevant.

as completely opposed to Mww's proposed definition of "principle" as an absolute truth) — Metaphysician Undercover

I don’t mind disagreements with my words. They should actually be my words, though.

No need to rectify it; just letting the world know I committed no such metaphysical blunder as defining principle with “absolute truth”.

And seeing as how the physical arrangement cannot be changed.....what arrangement is left that can, and still conform to observation of the physical arrangement? — Mww

If the objects stayed the same, that does not mean the structure stayed the same, unless the structure is the object, but the structure is what changed. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yours doesn't consider the implications in mine.
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But to say that the sun goes around the earth every day, is simply wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

Big deal. That does absolutely nothing to explain the reality that geocentrism was the standard cosmology model of its day.
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What form does a principle have if not a propositional form? — Metaphysician Undercover

Some are relational (Kant, ‘ought implies can”, 1785; “principle of evidence, Hume, 1748; “Sufficient Reason”, Liebnitz, 1714; varieties of Ockham’s Razor), some categorical (Principle of cause and effect, Principle of non-contradiction, ...).

Propositions reduce to principles, principles determine propositions.
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What a 2 represents in a particular instances of use is the symbol's meaning in that instance. — Metaphysician Undercover

I know about the what; I’m talking about the how (did a 2 get into Nature seeing as how it isn’t there naturally). You’re talking about what it’s there for, to relate a use to a meaning. I wish to know how the representation occurs such that it can be used.

Hint: meaning is not contained in the how, the how has no need of meaning.

Common affliction these days; neglecting the chronology relating thought and expression.

Stubborn bunch, aye. They’ve done the heavy lifting, so perhaps have earned the right.

I’m familiar with the essay. What I found quite telling about it, is located in fn2, wherein it is admitted that the explication of the stated purpose of the essay, follows conditions “as I understand them to be”. The implications of that admission are staggering from the point of view of my particular armchair, antique, frayed and butt-crushed as it may be, insofar as “understanding” is precisely the quanta of the heavy lifting to which the especially post-Renaissance continentals directed themselves, and the anti-metatheoretical analyticals have back-burnered.

Question: are images part and parcel of human mentality?

That Copernicus knew the geocentric system, is clearly not the cause of him developing the heliocentric system, because millions of people already knew it as well. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then you may want to ask yourself how it came to be, that it was only one of the millions, that changed the science for the millions.

But clearly the old conceptual structure was rejected, lock stock and barrel, and replaced by the new. — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually, it wasn’t. I anticipated the objection, by stating “commonality of objects”. The general conceptual structure stayed the same; the arrangement of the structure changed, or the orientation of it, if you’d rather. And seeing as how the physical arrangement cannot be changed.....what arrangement is left that can, and still conform to observation of the physical arrangement?
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This is a problem epistemologists have, how can knowledge be wrong. If it's wrong, it can't be knowledge. — Metaphysician Undercover

Easy: it isn’t knowledge that’s wrong, it is the incompleteness of the conditions for it, or misunderstanding of the complete conditions, that are wrong. As I said before, knowledge is at the end of the chain, so it is theoretically inconsistent to claim an end is a fault in itself. Think about it: how is it that you and I know everything there is to know about shoes, but you know your shoe size and I do not. Can you claim, without being irrational about it, that my knowledge of shoes is wrong because I don’t know about two of them?
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And it really doesn’t change or help anything, to call uncertainty a flaw, even if in the strictest possible technical sense, it is.
— Mww

When we're talking about knowledge, clearly uncertainty is a flaw. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, well....the flawless is the perfect, and metaphysics only permits perfection as an ideal, which would make unflawed knowledge a metaphysical ideal. Experience of metaphysical ideals is impossible for humans, so we grant the flaw in knowledge given from experience in order to abstract it from the metaphysical, and call it uncertainty. There is even a principle by that very name.
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If we thought up the so-called a priori principles, and we are sentient beings, then how could these principles be free from the influence of sense experience, to be truly a priori? — Metaphysician Undercover

How can it be, that there are no 2’s in Nature unless we put them there? Because of an active domain specific, if not exclusive, to human sentience over and above their domain of mere reactive experience.
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So scientists focus on their capacity for making predictions rather than trying to find the true nature of things. — Metaphysician Undercover

The true nature of things has been theorized as out of our reach, since 1781. Your statement merely confirms the theory has yet to be falsified.
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how you would differentiate between a principle and a premise. — Metaphysician Undercover

At bottom, a premise is usually a subject/copula/predicate proposition. A principle is a synthesis of conceptions into a necessary truth. From that, a premise can be the propositional form of a principle, but a principle does not have a propositional form. Furthermore, the employment of a principle is in the logical ground of a law, but the employment a premise is only in the ground of a logical argument and never the ground of a law. Building on all that, depending on the construction of the proposition, a premise may be contingent, whereas a principle cannot be.
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The "logical structure of perception" is what I am arguing against. I think it's nonsense to say that perception uses logic. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perception does not have a logical structure and perception does not use logic; it is a passive receptive faculty only, that which makes physical sensation possible. Reason, on the other hand, is the necessary systemic logical function used by humans, by means of which passive perceptions are structured into known objects. You know.....theoretically.

Kant’s aesthetics structures the capacity for what we feel to interact with our faculties of imagination and understanding without interference from judgement. — Possibility

All good and well said. If anything, I might take exception to your statement with this:

“....Whether now the Judgement, which in the order of our cognitive faculties forms a mediating link between Understanding and Reason, has also principles a priori for itself; whether these are constitutive or merely regulative (thus indicating no special realm); and whether they give a rule a priori to the feeling of pleasure and pain, as the mediating link between the cognitive faculty and the faculty of desire (just as the Understanding prescribes laws a priori to the first, Reason to the second); these are the questions with which the present Critique of Judgement is concerned....”

It is clear Kant attributes to judgement different areas of concern, one area definitely given in the cognitive, the other of no special area in the aesthetic. Buried in the text is the exposition that regulative judgment does interfere.....arbitrate?....so to speak, regarding the condition given from the appearance of an object and how the subject feels about it.

“....because the Understanding necessarily proceeds according to its nature without any design; yet, on the other hand, the discovery that two or more empirical heterogeneous laws of nature may be combined under one principle comprehending them both, is the ground of a very marked pleasure, often even of an admiration, which does not cease, though we may be already quite familiar with the objects of it. (....) There is then something in our judgements upon nature which makes us attentive to its purposiveness for our Understanding — an endeavour to bring, where possible, its dissimilar laws under higher ones, though still always empirical — and thus, if successful, makes us feel pleasure in that harmony of these with our cognitive faculty...”

And because we already know imagination is responsible for the synthesis upon which judgement acts, and feelings of pleasure is a synthesis, it follows that judgement acts on feelings. It’s all in the text, if one can dig it out, and then accept what’s dug out.

And here’s why. I guess. Seems to me anyway. The account for any term of art whatsoever, are all necessarily derivable a priori from phenomena, yet objects themselves merely from the properties by which they are known, cannot render to us our feelings, our subjective condition, illicited because of those properties alone. We are hardly amazed that a basketball is spherical, but we may be stupefied to cause a spheroid to drop through a circle 50 feet away.

CofJ is long and dense to the point of impenetrability, so I might have it all wrong, or at least arguable. I don’t claim to be certain, so forgive me for appearing that way.

Of course we cannot examine the coming into being of knowledge without knowledge having already come into being, but how is that point relevant to anything? — Metaphysician Undercover

It is the entire raison d’etre of speculative epistemological theory, that which satisfies the standard human interest for justifying the condition of his certainty.
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the reality that, e.g., heliocentrism could never have come to be known, if the standing knowledge represented by geocentrism wasn’t being first examined by Aristarchus. Just because Ptolemy turned out to be wrong doesn’t take away from his knowledge.
— Mww

You have no logical association here. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not sure what logical association is needed here, insofar as I qualified my assertion with “the reality that....”, which is an ontological condition.

so we cannot logically say that the existence of heliocentrism is dependent on the prior existence of geocentricism. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, that logical association. Two things: the commonality of their respective objects, and the historical record. The first needs no exposition, the second defines the condition. The logical possibility that heliocentrism could have come to be without the antecedent geocentrism is irrelevant in the face of fact that the record shows Copernicus developed the former because he knew something about the later, sufficient to justify changing it. I grant you would have been correct iff Copernicus had absolutely no experience whatsoever with Ptolemy, but the record immediately falsifies that condition.

So we can logically say the existence of one is entirely dependent on the other, given the historical facts. Just as the reality of quantum physics was dependent on the existence of the so-called ultraviolet catastrophe. Can’t use logic to change history.
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in many cases principles are built on existing principles. — Metaphysician Undercover

Minor point, but no: laws are built on principles, rules are built on laws, suppositions are built on rules, but principles are not built on each other. If they were, each principle would be contingent, hence any law built on a contingent principle, is not properly a law.

Since we cannot account for those fundamental principles, then all of our knowledge of knowledge is fundamentally flawed. — Metaphysician Undercover

Agreed, almost. We can account for principles simply from the thought of them, but they are not thereby empirically proven. It follows that our empirical knowledge, when based on them, is not so much flawed, as always uncertain. And it really doesn’t change or help anything, to call uncertainty a flaw, even if in the strictest possible technical sense, it is.

If we cannot account for the fundamental principles, that's no problem, we just posit a priori principles and there you have it, problem solved. — Metaphysician Undercover

Facetiousness accepted, because in fact a priori principles do not solve the problem (of the uncertainty of empirical knowledge when based on principles). Nonetheless, the intent of assigning the nomenclature “a priori” is to indicate the impossibility of denying the inception. It must be absolutely true a priori principles are real, because we cannot deny having thought them, and given the human proclivity in seeking the unconditioned, that which is thought is as close to perfect undeniability as we can get, and anything perfectly undeniable is also just as perfectly unconditioned.

What a priori principles do solve, is the fundamental starting point for whatever follows from them. It is the termination of cognitive infinite regress, and serves no other purpose. Metaphysical reductionism writ large.

But now you are rejecting that assumption, saying that there might not even be such a thing as knowledge. I don't think you can have it both ways. That would just lead to ambiguous meaninglessness. — Metaphysician Undercover

Careful now. I didn’t say knowledge wasn’t a thing, but only that it may not have a character, as you implied with “we cannot characterize it as the type of thing which continually builds upon an existing foundation“. I meant by it to indicate knowledge isn’t the thing that builds, but is instead the thing that is built, such that that characterization is false.

The argument sustaining the assertion knowledge may not even be a thing, on the other hand, derives from the concession that even though no epistemological theory is provable, calling knowledge anything at all is still solely dependent on the theory used to explain it. However and always, if the theory is wrong, and the theory describes knowledge as a certain kind of thing having a certain character, than knowledge is not that kind of thing and doesn’t have that character.

So in effect, you are correct, in that we cannot have it both ways, if we expect to gain any profit from our knowledge theories. We do so expect, hence we do so grant the conclusions of our respective favorite theories, and run with them.
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This is what I think is fundamental to knowledge. We start with premises which prove very useful, and since they are so useful they seem solid to support structures of knowledge......

Yes, agreed.

.....An important thing to remember here, is that the principles at the base of the structure have been around for the longest.

Ditto.

.....they are actually the weakest ones, having been put into use the longest time ago when the state of knowledge was most primitive. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok, premises support the structure, principles base the structure. Premises currently useful can certainly supervene on the formerly useful, yes. It could, however, also be said the principles at the base of the structure, being around the longest, are the most powerful, because they have been used to evolve knowledge from the primitive. Cause/effect come to mind, along with the Three Laws, on which nothing has yet supervened. So it is actually the premises that are the weakest because they can be supervened.

If I were to analyze the idea to a finer point, I might say premises support what knowledge is about, while principles base the structure of knowledge itself. In this way, it is explained why some fundamental principles have lasted so long and some supporting premises fall by the epistemological wayside.

Good talk. Socrates would have to give us the Athenian equivalent of a gold star, methinks.

Not your fault, for....

if I am a Cartesian philosopher, I can (....) still not recognize ‘language game’ or ‘picture theory ‘ any differently than Mmw (...) after many exchanges with you. That is, such notions will be forced into what my Cartesian pre-conceptions impose on them. — Joshs

.....it is just like that.

So be it. To strike out is to show one should stick to his own game.

I bow to your esteemed Admiral-ness. I have not the range nor caliber for such registry.

I might request you trounce that pretentious Kantian wannabe over yonder, for I, but for being entrenched in this rotten Manila harbor, fain would myself sally forth to partake of particularly destructive broadsides.

HA!!! That was fun. Silly....but fun.

in the philosophical examination of how knowledge is acquired, something must already known.
— Mww

I disagree with all of this, at a most fundamental level. (W)e cannot philosophically examine the acquisition of knowledge with the presupposition that something must already be known, for the acquisition of knowledge, because this is contrary to the observed evidence of empirical science. — Metaphysician Undercover

Except you aren’t at the fundamental level, obviously, because my assertion presupposes knowledge already acquired.

Your rejoinder is even more absurd empirically, considering the reality that, e.g., heliocentrism could never have come to be known, if the standing knowledge represented by geocentrism wasn’t being first examined by Aristarchus. Just because Ptolemy turned out to be wrong doesn’t take away from his knowledge.

Works in reverse just as well: how could knowledge acquisition ever be examined, if there was never anything known?

Empirical knowledge isn’t destroyed, it’s replaced. A priori knowledge, if one grants the validity of it, is neither destroyed nor replaced. Even if not accepted as a general knowledge condition due to the impossibility of its empirical proof, it can still be granted logical necessity.

Since we cannot characterize knowledge as relying on something already known, we cannot characterize it as the type of thing which continually builds upon an existing foundation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yet, that is exactly how science is done, and science is both the means and the ends of human empirical knowledge, so.....the asymptotic relation is glaringly obvious.

Nevertheless, it’s irrelevant, because that’s not what I’m doing. I’m not characterizing knowledge, but theorizing on its acquisition, which presupposes its character is already determined, as it must have been, in order to grant it is something possible to acquire by the means supposed for it. The state of knowledge builds on its existential antecedents, yes, but that doesn't in the least give any indication of what knowledge is. It might just be that knowledge doesn’t even have a character, but it is a characterization of something else. Knowledge may be characterized as merely the condition of the intellect. But that still doesn’t indicate what knowledge is, but only what it does.

Metaphysical reductionism....don’t hate it because it’s beautiful.

There is an age-old argument that each rational being has his own philosophy, that by which his intelligence, inclinations and personality in general becomes susceptible to their respective manifestations. So saying, it follows that each rational being, upon being linguistically engaged, is, in effect, philosophizing in accordance with it, objectively.

Ordinary language can be taken as the content of any linguistic engagement, thus OLP can then be taken as each rational being’s internal ground for his philosophizing by means of that content, and such philosophizing suffices as that by which such internal ground is represented. From here, it makes sense that he intends differing meanings for articles of his linguistic engagement depending on the differing contexts of its expression, all in accordance with an overarching personal philosophy with respect to all of them. As such, each engagement is itself a measure, or an example, of a philosophy.

How’m I doing? Close? Ballpark?

I don't see how a rule is an identity. It might be a principle that a person would use in an effort to identify something, but that does not make the rule itself an identity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Point. Worded backwards: identity is the rule, or, as you say, a standing principle by which the determination of the correspondence of properties to an object, or the correspondence of objects to each other, is possible.
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Do you really believe that when a child is learning to call a dog a dog, it goes through a synthesis/reduction process of possible properties — Metaphysician Undercover

I don’t care. From a metaphysical point of view, that is, as opposed to mere anthropology or rational psychology, reason is presupposed as developed sufficiently to be the ground of learning, which has more to do with some arbitrarily sufficient measure of extant experience. In other words, in the philosophical examination of how knowledge is acquired, something must already known.

Besides, given that a young dog is the same kind of thing as an old dog, it is logically consistent that a young brain is the same kind of thing as an old brain. No matter how an old brain learns or knows things, it must be the case the young brain learns or knows things in the same way, or, at least can learn or know. Otherwise, it becomes possible, e.g., that a child is taught of a thing, yet learns of some other thing, which can never explain how that other thing came to be. Rather, it is always the case that a child simply does or does not learn the one thing, rather than learns some other thing instead, and it is here that, by whatever means any human learns anything, the explanation is given, because the knowledge system is common to all humans.

And the quantity of brain, said to condition the quality of it......the bigger the brain is the finer the knowable is....is irrelevant, insofar as the question concerns the how of its operation, and not the extent of its content.

So....do I think? If the child is thinking on his own accord, yes. If he is being instructed, no. Remember learning your letters? Tracing the little dotted resemblances of the shape representing them? Tell me you were mentally actively thinking....cognizing by means of concepts..... and not merely motivating your hand to follow the dots. And afterwards, henceforth forever, was it the hand motion you remember for the letter you want to write, or the rule that the shape identifies the name of the letter you want to write?
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You neglected the influence of social relevance. — Metaphysician Undercover

HA!!!! I offer Col. Jessup: “YOU DAMN RIGHT I DID!!!!”

‘Nuff said.
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One cannot make a valid deductive argument which relies on premises which are not stated, or "behind the scenes". — Metaphysician Undercover

(Sigh) Illustrative purposes. The path is enough, but you still gotta move your own feet.

So there is no "cognitive system" happening all the time — Antony Nickles

Yeah.....and there is no fire alarm system until the horn sounds?

I stand ready to help in understanding if that is of any interest. — Antony Nickles

Sorta asked for help, or at least showed interest, by inquiring as to method. You’ve been adamant in maintaining OLP is best understood by its examples, which suggests there isn’t a method, per se, or OLP isn’t really a philosophy, per se. But it could be just me, in as much as I am not familiar with any philosophy not grounded by its own conditionals, by which something is explained.

And I’ve already admitted to those damnable cognitive prejudices, so...there is that. In addition, my personal philosophical domain is far anterior to language anyway, so a claimed philosophy with language in its name, isn’t going to tell me what I wish to know.

Pain as such, pain simplciter (...) is not a contingent "bad" but an absolute. — Constance

Agreed. It is a feeling, alongside its complement, pleasure, these both absolute, or, irreducible, in themselves. The other basic part of the overall human condition.

I defend a rather impossible thesis: within the self there is the oddest thing imaginable, which is value. — Constance

Sure, we’re all imbued with a sense of value to be assigned. But value assigned is itself contingent on the object to which it is assigned.

I think I’d have gone with virtue over value, but....ehh....it’s your thesis, not mine, so, have at it.

the synthesis of a plurality of phenomena under a general rule is called inductive reasoning, it's not identity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Inductive, yes, henceforth from the establishment of the rule. The rule is the identity, the reasoning is either deductive in the establishment of the rule by which a thing becomes known, or inductively, by which subsequent perceptions are identified as possessing sufficient correspondence to the original.

My “synthesis of the plurality of phenomena” indicates the establishment of the rule, phenomena herein, not the number of objects perceived, but rather, the variety of properties the matter of some particular object exhibits, and the synthesis being the reduction from all possible properties held in intuition, against only those exhibited by the object, which is deductive and leads to the rule from which the representation follows as its conception, in turn represented by its name. The rule thus established by which all following instances of sufficient similarity are identified, those all represented as schema of the original conception. Family, genus, species, member. Simple as that.

Your principle of induction arises when members meeting the criteria of the particular conception, are thought in general a priori, or perceived as a group empirically, re: a kennel or off-leash park. This way, reason doesn’t waste itself with unnecessary effort, instead only noticing possible breaks in a pattern. The proverbial.....seen one dog, seen ‘em all kinda thing.
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What is at issue is how does he know that they are the same kind of thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Easy. When sufficient properties exhibited by the subsequent perception correspond to the properties of the original. Neuroscience posits feedback loops called memory, speculative epistemology posits the faculty of intuition, in which are held conceptions given from extant cognitions.
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I don't see how the principle of non-contradiction is relevant, because he can see that the two things, have contradictory properties (different colour, or different size, for example), yet he still calls them by the same name, "dog". — Metaphysician Undercover

My Mustang is gold in color, m’lady’s car is some oddball green, or some damn thing....I really don’t know what to call it. Is either vehicle less a car because they’re different colors? Differing manifestations of the same general property do not rise to the level of contradiction. A guy calls the black dog “George”, but calls the white dog “Mutt”. No contradictions in evidence.

We also have a truck. There is some property of a truck sufficient to contradict calling it a car. The insurance company does indeed charge different rates for the car as opposed to the truck, but the distinctions must be sufficient, and color is not one of them.

Cars and trucks are both motorized vehicles. Motorized vehicle with a trunk is called a car, vehicle with a bed is called a truck. Calling a vehicle with a bed a car is a contradiction. (Hybrids superfluous to the argument). Guy with two dogs calls them both dogs because there is no sufficient proprietary contradiction.
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In Aristotelian logic these are accidental properties. — Metaphysician Undercover

Be that as it may, we are.....I am.....concerned here with the categorical syllogism method of Aristotelian logic. The classes of ideas or notions and their relation to each other. The major given in the yet undetermined observables (perception, the possibility of conceptual criteria), the minor given in the intuition derivable from the synthesis of the observables (phenomenon, the conceptual criteria), and the conclusion given in a determined correspondence (understanding, the conception itself).

The premises are behind the scenes, the conclusion is present to conscious thought.
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What is going on behind the scenes remains as unknown, and that's why we have so much difficulty agreeing on metaphysical principles. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh absolutely. It’s all speculative theory, and could be all catastrophically wrongheaded. But as in all theory, all it has to do is be internally consistent and not in conflict with observation. In which case, one theory is no better or worse than any other; none of them being susceptible to empirical proofs, even if they stand as logically coherent.

And the game continues.......

And it seems strange to me you would reserve reason to humans. — tim wood

Actually, I’m only reserving reason we can know about, to humans. I did say animals may have their own kind of reason, but even if they did, we couldn’t do anything with it.

Do you say that dogs, e.g., are incapable of reason or capable of reason (near as you can tell)? — tim wood

Incapable of reason as it is understood by humans.

Are you prepared to say we're the only beings in the universe able to reason? — tim wood

Oh hell no!!! But of all the creatures we know about, and in consideration of what we know about them, we are the only ones with the capacity to consciously create both the means and the ends of our behaviors, as opposed to mere reaction to instinct or training.
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given gross circularity, that which is derived from it cannot be any more certain then the circularity itself permits.
— Mww
Consider what you consider certain. That certainty must be subject to the same critique, Does that suddenly make you feel less certain? — tim wood

What I consider certain is the impossibility of it being otherwise. From there, the only things I consider certain are the three laws of logical thought. I don’t think the laws are subject to the same critique as that to which the laws apply, but they are subject to the same circularity. Reason tells us what the laws are, then uses the laws to tells us what reason does. Do I now feel less certain? No, I can’t allow myself that, because if I do, I have no ground whatsoever on which to justify anything at all.

You know....The Esteemed Professor himself says, just because we think the world a certain way doesn’t mean it couldn’t be any other way.

It follows that the question is necessarily predicated on a misunderstanding.
— Mww

the question is, why isn't noumena dismissible as dialectic overreach, as delusion, with "the mere
dream of an extension of the pure understanding"? — Constance

This, for all intents and purposes, is a different question altogether. To this, I would say noumena can be dismissed as dialectical overreach, for those not academically disposed. I wouldn't grant dialectical overreach between, say, Kant and Schopenhauer. Those two guys would hash this stuff out forever, and I bet neither would give an inch even with similar metaphysical predication.

the "it" so readily referred to — Constance

Actually, how often are noumena readily referred to? I know Kant confuses the issue somewhat by referring to them here and there, and it does take some concerted effort to recognize the conceptual or speculative consistency in doing so. But all in all, with respect to the overall knowledge treatise, they can be ignored.
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One way to say this is to yield to delimitation of the understanding, but in doing so admit there is an incompleteness, in metaethics, and in a full disclosure of world ontology — Constance

One possibility or the other: either we claim to know everything given from full disclosure, or we claim that not everything is knowable given from the limitations imposed by our cognitive system. Nothing wrong with admitting incompleteness or loss of full disclosure. Ful disclosure just might be too much for us to handle.

As an aside, it should be remembered that Kant isn’t restricting the understanding with noumena, in fact, he’s letting it run wild.....letting it think what it wants. He’s limiting sensibility, by making it inoperative except for objects to which space and time can be intuited. This now, may indeed prevent a full disclosure of world ontology. But then, transcendental philosophy wouldn’t work, and you’d need a different explanatory methodology.

The person would only be using the principle of identity if the two different dogs were seen as the same dog. — Metaphysician Undercover

True enough, if we were concerned with the notion of identity given by Parmenides, which has to do with one thing in relation to itself. We are, on the other hand, only concerned with the conceptual notion of identity, which has to do with the synthesis of a plurality of phenomena under a general rule.
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And since the person knows that the two different thing which are called by the name "dog" are not the same thing, the principle of non-contradiction is not even relevant. The two different dogs might have contradicting properties. — Metaphysician Undercover

First... he knows they are not the same thing while knowing they are different instances of the same kind of thing; he knows all this because the synthesis of contradictory predicates is held in abeyance. Or, the principle of non-contradiction inheres in the cognition.
Second..... two different dogs can have different properties, but those properties cannot contradict the general conception under which they are all subsumed. One dog can have four legs another have only three without being thought as different concepts.
Third....two different dogs cannot have contradicting properties and still both be conceived as dogs. One dog having four legs and the other dog having wings is an irrational cognition translated from general conceptions that contradict themselves. A dog with wings is not a dog and a bird with four legs is not a bird.
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My position is that there is no reason to assume that what is going on behind the scenes is a matter of applying criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover

No one should fault you for that. So what....there isn’t any behind the scenes going on, or there is but it doesn’t manifest in applying criteria? There must be a behind the scenes or the notion of being conscious is meaningless. So it reduces to.....what is going on behind the scenes if not the application of criteria?

I think not,
— Mww
And might well you think, but why (exactly) not? ("There are more things....") — tim wood

Horatio here, and all I’m sayin’ is, given gross circularity, that which is derived from it cannot be any more certain then the circularity itself permits. It is still the case that reason tells us what reason is, which is the gross part of the circularity. Poor choice of adjective, maybe.
(years ago, a guy initiated me on the geometry of asymtotic lines. I had thought reason to be circular, but what if it was generally circular but at the same time asymtotic, which gives a spiral? It would seem from this that reason could be the cause of itself but still progress be means of itself. Then I got lost in the complexities and didn’t follow through on it. Anyway.....)
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Do we or does anything we know of do anything other than relate to other things? — tim wood

Relation is a cognitive term, so relation only means anything when thought is involved. To ask whether things relate when we don’t think abut them doesn’t make any sense. Best we can do is profess ignorance.
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Logic is not the master. — tim wood

It is the master of our kind of thinking. Theoretically anyway. Can there be a method for human thinking that has no logical base?
————

Is there another kind of reason in other kinds of animals? Could be, but....so what? We can’t do anything with it,
— Mww
Care to reconsider this? — tim wood

In what way? Where would I start? Help me out?

if Kant was so sure noumena was not an intelligible idea, then why bring it up at all? — Constance

If it wasn’t intelligible, he couldn’t have brought it up. He did, so it is. And he said so. He actually said, under certain conditions, the conception of noumena are necessary. That which is unintelligible cannot at the same time be necessary. In Kant, an idea is a concept of reason formed of notions by the understanding itself (A320/B377), and noumena are concepts thought by the understanding (B306). It follows that the question is necessarily predicated on a misunderstanding.

That is, what is the ground in the world that makes bringing it up not pure nonsense? — Constance

The ground for bringing it up is not in the world; if it were it would be incomprehensible anyway, which is the same as nonsense.

An excellent question, I think. — Constance

No, it isn’t, given these two basic transcendental premises:

“...But I can think what I please, provided only I do not contradict myself...” (Bxxvii fn)
“...understanding may be represented (...) according to what has been said above, as a faculty of thought...” (B94)

It is clear, that if understanding is that which thinks, then understanding can think whatever it wants for it is I to whom understanding belongs. Therefore, it is at least non-contradictory and at most entirely admissible, for understanding to think noumena if it wants. And it does want to, in metaphysical parlance, in assuming the possibility of non-sensuous determinable schema subsumed under the categories, which Kant terms objects-in-themselves.

Now it can be surmised why he had to bring it up: he’d already proven the categories only apply upon being presented with sensuous objects as phenomena, that is to say, under entirely empirical conditions and by that the means to cognize them, so it would have been catastrophic to allow a category to present objects to itself that can never be phenomena, after having allowed such objects to be legitimately thought, albeit under entirely pure a priori conditions yet maintaining validity in the cognition of them nonetheless.

At bottom, with no further reduction necessary, this is exactly how I do not contradict myself.

Easy-peasy.

The premise with OLP is that we regularly do not know what the criteria for a concept are (they work behind the scenes as it were),
— Antony Nickles

Oh come on, this is nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover

Just a quick butt-insky here, if you don’t mind. I think it is the case that the average person doesn’t know how it is he knows things. Regularly, a guy accepts his knowledge as being merely given from personal experience or instruction by rote. If this be granted, it follows that not only does the average joe not know what a concept per se is, he also won’t have any idea what it means for a concept to have its criteria. To him, a dog is just some particular thing; the ways and means between the thing and knowing it as a particular thing are (regularly) undisclosed to him. It is only when he wants to know its kind, its degree of danger, etc., must he then determine supplemental conceptions to add to the conception of dog in general, such

From here, it is easier to see that there are only two criterion for any conception....the principle of identity for those conceptions relating to conceptions in general, and the principle of non-contradiction for those conceptions supplementing given general conceptions.....both principles operating entirely behind the scenes.

People act out of habit when they talk. And acting out of habit is not applying criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover

Or, it is applying criteria behind the scenes, without ever being conscious of it. Makes sense actually; regularly-learned folk don’t need to consciously examine the validity of a thing’s verbal description when the habitually communicated description has always sufficed. Nevertheless, theoretically-learned folk will maintain that the cognitive system as a whole must still be in play, otherwise, we are presented with the necessity for waking it up when needed, and then the determination of method for waking, and then the necessity of determination of need, ad infinitum......and nothing rationally conditioned is ever successesfully accomplished.

So....my thinking is that OLP as I understand it, is at least superfluous and at most utter nonsense, but that the criteria for our conceptions, operating “behind the scenes”, and therefore not “regularly” known as belonging to our knowledge structure, is not.

tell me that no reason is manifested there — tim wood

Reason by what standard? If ours, then surely not; we don’t know how our own reason works, assuming there is such a thing that isn’t merely a premise in a metaphysical theory. That something is happening between our ears there can be no doubt, but whatever is happening is at the same time the very thing that tells us what is happening, so we have a thing representing itself. In other words, we’re telling ourselves what ourselves are telling us. So we’re going to gain something, are we, by using that gross circularity to tell us about the exact same thing but in a different situation under different conditions? I think not, mon ami.
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You appear to have extended this to reason. — tim wood

There is no use whatsoever for inventing concepts like understanding, consciousness, synthesis, experience, knowledge.....reason itself, except as means for US, as humans, to relate to other things. So presumptuous of us, on the one hand, and absolutely necessary on the other, if you ask me, to use concepts relating to humans for their own purpose, in observing the operation of animals nothing like us except for being of alive and taking up space.

It would be impossible to talk about experiences in other animals, if we hadn’t already determined what the concept entails, and we can only determine what the concept entails, when we relate it to ourselves. We invented it....what else could it be applied to, sufficient to justify its invention?

Is there another kind of reason in other kinds of animals? Could be, but....so what? We can’t do anything with it, we can only make inferences pursuant to observation, from which we know nothing of its reasoning, that isn’t in fact contingent on our own. As you say...cat for cat, dog for dog, and so forth.

Now, the common rejoinder is, because all biological entities are composed of the same elemental chemistry, they must obey the same physical laws. It follows that because all brains operate under the same physical conditions, it must be the case that the manifestations of their operations must have an intrinsic congruence. But logic informs us that a condition being necessary is not the same as being sufficient, which means if we can find a situation of disparity for similar possibilities, it may simply be a case of insufficiency. Now it becomes a matter of lesser animals meeting the condition of necessity, but lacking the condition of sufficiency, and BOO-YA!!!....animals in fact might reason, just of a different kind than, and therefore unavailable to fundamental examination by, humans.

But I ramble. Old people do that a lot, I’m here to tell ya.

Oh.......did you see the fireworks in DC last night? Man, that was the most intense display I’ve ever seen. Most impressive, I must say. ‘Course...I don’t get out much, so there is that.

of animals that appear to have mental capacities (very much to be clarified), it seems to me not that they are different in kind, but in degree. — tim wood

Sneakers and loafers are both shoes, but they are different kinds of shoes. A size 3 shoe is different in degree than a size 11 shoe of the same kind, but neither of them fit a size 9 foot.

Report that a car just hit a mailbox, first thing you’ll be asked is....what kind of car was it? If degree was more important, you would have been asked....how hard was the mailbox hit?

Doesn’t matter the degree of a brain; it matters what it is capable of, and kinds of brains have different kinds of capabilities. Degree would matter regarding the same kind of brain, it’s general capabilities being developmentally predicated on evolution, long term, or merely common experience, short term. A hummingbird brain is never going to evolve enough, nor experience the requisite preliminaries, to do calculus.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Complexity is just another word for degree. Did you know and elephant has more neural connections than a human, and he can’t even write his own name. An orangutan has only slightly fewer neural connections in a brain roughly the same size as a human, but he picks his nose in public, fercrissakes!!!!

Territorial animals will kill interlopers of their own kind, and matriarch lionesses apparently torture an interloping female lion before allowing the rest of the pride to kill it. Does that grant a human the warrant to suppose such animals have a moral disposition, when, as far as he knows, it is only himself that supposes moral dispositions per se?

A whale dives hundreds of feet for squid. Does that grant a human warrant to suppose a whale knows a priori, to hold his breath, when a human knows a priori, not that he must hold his breath underwater, that being merely instinct, but rather, what will happen if he doesn’t? Odd, isn’t it, that young whales don’t attempt to dive with the adults, but does that give a human the warrant to suppose the youngster thereby knows a priori he is at the mercy of orcas?
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because I have seen with my own eyes.... — tim wood

....and whatever you’ve seen, and therefore anything derived from it, is bound by your own cognitive system. You have not the means to judge by any other system whatsoever. So......what exactly have you seen? Nothing but that which is within the bounds of your system to report, which can tell you nothing about any other reporting system unlike yours. Which is what we’re talking about here, at bottom: @possibility and his a priori information synthesizing capabilities.
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Nagel 1974: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf

reluctance of philosophers to venture into the domain of psychology. — Possibility

One informs the intellect, the other insults it? Opinion only, of course.
Philosopher: I can tell you how I think.
Psychologist: I can tell you how you think.

Kant would never concede a relation between empirical neurological research and pure reason. At the same time, if he had any knowledge of empirical neurological research, it is unlikely he would have spent 12 years developing transcendental philosophy. Still, that particular bell can never be unrung.
————

I’m afraid there’s a lot to unpack here, though. — Possibility

True enough, and starting with the recognition of anthropomorphism. The bane of good philosophy, but conveniently overlooked in the other sciences. What warrant have we to classify the mental capacities of lesser animals, ref. Nagel, 1974. No matter what we think about how lesser animals process information, such thinking is only possible from the way we think about anything at all. It looks to us as if dolphins enjoy surfing, and it looks to us like eagles play catch with their catch. Might be nothing but another kind of observer problem.

You ask what if we let go of the assumption only higher intelligence animals synthesize information a priori; I say the strictly human criteria by which lesser animals synthesize information a priori, can never be met.

Still fun to talk about, though. As long as nobody claims to have all the answers.

Kant argues that a priori knowledge (what we appear to ‘just know’) can be synthetic......

A priori knowledge can be synthetic...yes. A priori knowledge can also be analytic.

.....and demonstrates this synthesis by converting qualitative variability in phenomenal experience into a rational structure.....

Is there another way to say: demonstrates this synthesis by converting qualitative variability in phenomenal experience into a rational structure? This would be good to know, in order for me to understand why such synthesis allows all a priori knowledge to be synthetic. Sure, you could use qualitative phenomenal experience to justify “to fall up contradicts gravity”, but why would you? And what about a priori knowledge by which no phenomenal experience is at all possible, re: all parts of space are themselves each a space”, yet still has a rational or logical structure?

.....In my own constructionist view this allows for all a priori knowledge to be understood as synthetic - but there is no allowance for this in Kant’s anthropocentric perspective of knowledge. — Possibility

Which is fine, depending on what you mean by constructionist, given that the concept exemplifies the difference between some speculative epistemology in metaphysics based on reason, and some psychology of learning in the physical world based on experience alone. Although, it might be hard to disseminate how all a priori knowledge is the kind of knowledge susceptible to being learned, as opposed to being merely thought. Might be what Kant had in mind with:

“....For it would be absurd to think of grounding an analytical judgement on experience....”

So does your constructionist perspective deny analytic a priori knowledge?

Yes, we learn from a young age by means of qualitative relation, and I suppose psychology has more to say about it than philosophy.

Kant's... criteria......
— Mww

This the philosopher's dream of power. — Antony Nickles

I suppose, yeah. He does admit his intention to:

“....bequeath a legacy to posterity, in the shape of a system of metaphysics constructed in accordance with the Critique of Pure Reason, still the value of such a bequest is not to be depreciated....”

Still, I doubt if he sat around indulging in vainglorious rumination, “I’m gonna be remembered long after Baumgartner, Schelling, Mendelssohn, et al are merely faded wannabes”. Dunno....I wasn’t there.

Fine line between rampant ego and manifest genius.
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OLP was (initially) directed at traditional analytical philosophy and the metaphysics, representationalism, positivism, and descriptive falacy, etc., of philosophical theories or statements that, among other things: communication/rationality works in one universal or specific way, or towards a particular standard, that it is dependent more on individuals, and that we have more control in how it works. — Antony Nickles

This implies a distinction between traditional analytic philosophy, and philosophical theories regarding metaphysics, representationalism, etc. Is that right? Is there a distinction? Or are you meaning to say, directed at analytic philosophy and those philosophical theories and statements contained in it?

Doesn't matter, really. All philosophy is human rational construction, therefore is itself confined to the species, it is dependent on individuals and they do have control in how it works. It’s a simple as, objects and ideas control my intelligence, the ends by which I philosophize, but I and only I control my intellect, the means by which my philosophy is developed.
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What it (OLP) is trying to do is put the human, say, voice, back into the philosophical discussion by bringing up the contexts in which our concepts live. — Antony Nickles

If OLP doesn’t have its own method sufficient to justify its tenets, hypotheses or claims, it is nothing but a compendium of illustrative examples and not a philosophy at all. Such method may explain how bringing up the contexts in which our concepts live, puts the human “voice” back into philosophical discussions. It might begin by showing how there can even be a philosophical discussion that doesn’t have a human “voice” participating in the discussion, and making the discussion possible in the first place. But, I suppose, as in “ordinary”, there might be a different......grammar.......for “discussion” in regards to OLP as opposed to conventional discourse.

Do I recall you positing that the ordinary in OLP doesn’t mean conventional use of words? Hopefully, because we both know concepts don’t “live” in the conventional sense.
—————-

It's (OLP’s) necessity is to breath new life into a tradition which has removed us from its considerations. — Antony Nickles

I agree analytic philosophy tends to remove us....us being thinking subjects as such.....from its considerations. Still doesn’t tell me how OLP puts us back, which wouldn’t at the same time make it just another form of speculative or theoretical metaphysic, imitating the ones we already have.

The current policy is driven by the notion that all human life has intrinsic value and that our response to covid is all about preserving those valuable human lives... — dazed

Where is the remnants of theism in that, necessarily? How is it that such policy would be impossible if not for theism? It isn’t, of course, for such policy is altogether possible if there never were any such thing as theism, which makes explicit the policy never was necessarily grounded in any degree of theism in the first place. Innate human values are, after all, products of pure reason, and thereby do not require anything transcendent for their logical validity.

Apparently, the thread title and the opening text contradict each other. Or at least, the text does not support the title unconditionally.

I don’t think he believed humans were as constrained by discursive understanding as CPR suggested with regard to noumena. — Possibility

Hmmm....yeah, I can see that. Understanding itself is not constrained with respect to noumena; it is allowed that understanding thinks objects belonging to the categories, and those objects would be called noumena. On the other hand, if the categories can only apply to phenomena, and phenomena are the only possible objects of experience, and objects of understanding called noumena are themselves not phenomena, then it follows noumena cannot be cognized as objects of experience.

“....But, in this case, a noumenon is not a particular intelligible object for our understanding; on the contrary, the kind of understanding to which it could belong is itself a problem, for we cannot form the most distant conception of the possibility of an understanding which should cognize an object, not discursively by means of categories, but intuitively in a non-sensuous intuition....”

So we are constrained by discursive understanding with respect to cognitions, but understanding itself is not constrained with respect to noumena as general conceptions.
——————

Kant structured this aspect of human perception in an additional dimension of affect or feeling. — Possibility

Yes, he did. But at the same time, he had precious little respect for the burgeoning science of psychology, which makes me wonder why he felt the need to examine purely subjective conditions with which this aspect of human perception concerns itself, albeit outside moral considerations. Transcendental moral philosophy is necessarily predicated on subjective conditions, sure, but knowledge of calculus and dump trucks? Or, our feeling of the beautiful/sublime inspired by them? Ehhh.....not so sure about that. Seems all he did was take the transcendental doctrine of a faculty of judgement with respect to empirical cognitions, and transplanted it into an a priori ground for something beyond itself.

Still, in the preface to the A critique, he made it a point to have “.....the intention of erecting a complete and solid edifice of metaphysical science...”, elaborated in the B preface, “.....attempt to introduce a complete revolution in the procedure of metaphysics, after the example of the geometricians and natural philosophers....”.

So I suppose all that in the CofJ is how such completion is attained.

I have argued from OLP in my post about Wittgenstein’s lion quote (@Mmw) — Antony Nickles

Yeah, I got some enlightenment from that; just not enough to rearrange my metaphysical prejudices. This thread is interesting as well, but doesn’t really cover new ground, does it? Like....method?

the point of OLP is that words "embody" the unconscious, unexamined ordinary criteria (not made-up, or philosophically-important criteria)--all of the richness that is buried in them of all the different ways we live. — Antony Nickles

And from this is raised the question...how can the hidden, unexamined, unconscious criteria be called ordinary? If some embodiment is unavailable for examination, how can it be said to be ordinary? And if ordinary just stands for “not made up”, how is that not self-contradictory, if words are exactly that....made up in order to properly represent the objects to which they are meant to relate?

I accept there is a certain unconscious part of the system from which words arise, but I reject the words themselves can arise from unconscious criteria, or that they necessarily embody such unconscious criteria. Case in point....phenomena have no names, but subsequently cognized objects derived from them, do.

Kant was well aware of this (hey, you mentioned him three times already, so......), thus ensuring his method allowed words to merely represent the concepts used by the understanding in its relation to objects of experience. As such, they do embody certain criteria, but such criteria is by no means hidden or unexamined, insofar as both concepts and the words which represent them in objective manifestation, arising from perceptions or from pure thought, are entirely present to conscious mental activity**. From here, it is nothing but the domain of general employment given by common experiences, which sustains the notion of “ordinary”, and somehow or another this became sufficient causality for language philosophers to simply assign a different connotation to “ordinary”, but with insufficient explanatory methodology for doing so.

So we arrive at: to whom is OLP actually directed, and why does to whomever it is directed, need it?

Here’s my version of OLP: I speak, you listen; you speak, I listen. If we communicate successfully, fine. If we don’t...start over. Wash, rinse, repeat. Don’t need any analytic philosophy for that.

**Not quite, but elaboration is beyond the scope, methinks. Not for you so much as the subject matter.

Is it always wrong to interfere with autonomy or can it be right under certain conditions? — Tom1352

First, one would need to stipulate where, and in what form, autonomy resides. For instance, in deontological moral philosophy, autonomy can’t be interfered with at all, otherwise the concept is self-contradictory and the entire philosophy refutes itself.

Second, one would need to show interference is in fact an act upon autonomy, or merely an act upon the volitions that follow from it, or, nothing more than a hindrance with respect to personal happiness/well-being.

But to answer the question, from my point of view anyway.....interference with autonomy is impossible, so whether such interference is right or wrong, is unintelligible. Still, with a sufficiently broad notions of interference and autonomy, the possible connections between them become more apparent.

Copernicus’ revolution, for Kant, was more about the moveability of the spectator than its de-centralisation - even though arguably the most significant effect of that revolution was to de-centralise the limited human perception (empiricism) in relation to knowledge of reality. — Possibility

What Copernicus proposed was indeed about the movability....the motion....of observers relative to a stationary Universe, in opposition to the standing general consensus. And now I see what you meant by de-centralizing the limited human perception, insofar as the seed being sown that we ourselves are not The Big Picture, so to speak.
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Even so, with that moveability, which I understand, I am left with this seemingly unrelated moveability, which I do not......

So Kant synthesised human knowledge (...) and even rendered it moveable (by phenomena) in relation to possible knowledge of reality (noumena) — Possibility

......insofar as, according to Kant, there is no knowledge of noumenal reality possible for intelligences imbued with merely discursive understanding, such as is claimed for humans. Would I be correct in supposing you mean, that because of the speculative predication of phenomena, human knowledge is restricted to a sensory-determinant empirical domain, in effect removing it from any noumenal reality? That actually does make sense to me, in spite of the inconsistency explicit in the concept of “moveability”.
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His transcendental or synthetic a priori knowledge (imagination in relation to understanding and judgement) was an anthropocentric perspective of the conditions for knowledge of reality. — Possibility

Interesting take on a fairly well-hidden gem in Kantian metaphysics. Other than appreciating your familiarity, I might say your proposition only works when the proper imagination is tacitly implied. I say that because, while productive imagination is the relation between intuition and understanding/judgement, and can be thought as an anthropocentric perspective of the conditions of empirical knowledge, it is not itself a priori knowledge, which requires an object consciously known as such. This is relevant because if it is true Kant realized......

the structure of metaphysics was more dependent upon ‘feeling’ than he had anticipated. — Possibility

.....and it had already been proven feelings are not to be considered the same way as are cognitions, and because it had already been proven judgements are absolutely necessary constituents of the entire human rational system, there must be another kind of imagination, iff some form of synthesis is required in order to facilitate judgement based on feelings alone, and iff imagination is still necessarily responsible making these kinds of judgements both possible and authoritative.

I don’t think Kant realized that metaphysics depended more on feelings than he anticipated, which implies the CofJ was a stop-gap treatise, when in fact he already had in mind a tripartite doctrine to cover all aspects of the human cognitive system, from the very beginning. To say otherwise says Kant denied human feelings, which of course he couldn’t do and still call himself a proper philosopher.

Long story short, the affect on the pure subjective condition by objects of sense, which is what we call feelings, or, how we are internally affected by something of perception, which is different than how we think about the object as it is, implies a judgement. But the faculty of judgement, the connection/conjunction between understanding and reason with respect to cognition of objects leading to possible knowledge of them, is consequentially very far from the methodological chronology of merely being subjectively affected by them. Therefore, there must be a kind of judgement intrinsic to the system which serves to connect such pure affect on us as subjects with feelings from the empirical affect on us as subjects with cognitions, with respect to one and the same object. From there, its off to Never-Never Land!!!
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It’s more that no knowledge is at all possible without ‘feeling’. — Possibility

I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said so far, as much as I disagree with that.

At any rate, thanks for helping me out with that de-centralizing, moveability thing.

For Kant’s shift to take effect......

Presupposes it didn’t, because:

......Kant was missing a step.....

And that missing step takes the propositional form:

.....de-centring our perspective of temporal reality by rejecting the assumption that the existence of humans (and their rationality) was the plan or purpose of eternity — Possibility

First, if it is we seeking an investigative domain, I don’t see how it could be otherwise than it is we who are central to it. De-centralizing our perspective, whether of temporal reality or anything else, would seem to immediately negate the validity of our investigations, the correctness of them being as it may.


Second, is “Kant’s shift” the same as your so-called “Copernican turn” of a day or so ago, and if so, wherein, as laid out in CPR Bxvii, and from subsequent speculative justifications in relation to it, is the implication that the “plan or purpose of eternity” is precisely that humans should exist because of it? I submit there is no such implication, which then suggests “Kant’s shift”, the one that hasn’t taken effect, lays in some other conceptual scheme, in which may be found the assumption “the existence of humans was the purpose of eternity”, that should have been rejected, such that that shift would take effect. So...if that was Darwin’s position, how could it have been used by Kant? What Kantian “shift” possibly would have occurred had Kant only theorized as Darwin did?

Does academia nowadays consider Darwin an Enlightenment transcendental philosopher? If not, why would anyone think his empirical anthropology theories would find standing in Kantian speculative epistemology?

I’m following the ongoing dialectic with respect to the Critique of Judgement, which I appreciate, insofar as hardly anyone does that. Guess I got confused as to how the CPR, having to do with the possibility of a priori knowledge, could have any relation to the CJ, which has to do merely with “feeling” in a certain sense only, and from which no knowledge is at all possible.

Anyway.....just wondering.

Well done.

The questions and answers never were more important than that which makes them possible.

Asking questions about the questions merely proves it.