making them fail the claim that they are both universal laws. — god must be atheist

The GR should never be claimed, logically, as a universal law; a rule is never a law nor universal. It isn’t, for good reason, called the golden law.

The c.i. Is never claimed to be a universal law, at least by its author. It is, in fact because it’s in print, proved impossible that it could ever be a universal law. We are only to act as if our will could create such law for EVERY one.

Doesn’t the fact need to be interpreted in order to determine its correspondence?
— Mww

As I said in my first post: he is using it as a fact in comparison to the choice (the conviction) — Antony Nickles

The more times I read all this stuff, the closer I get to what you’re trying to say. So, yeah, the juxtaposition isn’t of the concepts in each sentence, it is the juxtaposition of the sentences to each other. My fault, for getting stuck in the minutia, in that I reject the arguments of both sentences outright, which makes it very hard to reconcile them into any sort of comparative relatedness.

You say the lion sentence is to be taken as a fact demonstrating an impossibility. It is only to be taken as a fact because its author so stipulates, but the sentence does not demonstrate an impossibility. It can’t, because the whole thing is predicated on contingencies. Thus, in order to understand the author’s overall intent, I am forced to disregard that the entire thesis begins with a logical error.

Fine, he wants me to accept the sentence as fact, ok, I do that. Then comes the other half of the dichotomy, concerning a moral circumstance. The conviction that the feelings some dude in pain are inaccessible to us when in truth “we CAN know”, but choose to be convinced we can’t, which casts us in a moral dilemma. Here is where requiring the lion sentence to be taken as fact is related, for we relieved of moral responsibility insofar as it doesn’t matter if lions could talk, we wouldn’t understand them anyway, so whatever their feelings, however they arrive at them, we couldn’t tell what they were anyway, so can’t be held liable for denying the accessibility of them. But on the other hand, because some dude and I are of similar enough “forms of life”, we should be non-transparent to each other (only he knows what he will do (is) wrong”), which in turn suggests stuff about him, including his feelings, shouldn’t be hidden from me (“only he knows what he intends is nonsense”).

And all that needs doing, in order for those two parenthetical assertions, and indeed how the two antecedent propositions, the one on fact and the other on conviction, can actually be the case......is to grant that concepts have different meanings. Or, the grammar of concepts are not etched in stone, so the reasoning using concepts is adaptable to circumstance.

I talk with you only to understand Witt, but even if or when I do, I’m not going to accept that OLP philosophy
—————-

Importantly, these are two senses of knowledge within its Grammar (possibilities): to know (to guess with evidence, experience of the person, etc.) as opposed to knowledge as certain, prediction, infallibility, etc. — Antony Nickles

This is yet another manifestation of the classical Platonic rendering of knowledge of, as opposed to knowledge that. Saying to know is to guess, is a flagrant disregard of logic, and has been since forever.

It is not that we CAN NOT know/understand the other.....we decide that without knowledge......we have no obligation to respond to their pain. — Antony Nickles

I might grant this is what Witt is telling us, then immediately reject it as not the case at all. It is never our knowledge of others that predicates our moral obligations. Even if I know everything there is to know about about you, I am not obligated to respond to your feelings because of it. I am obligated by HOW I feel about myself, not WHAT I feel about you, and certainly not either how or what you yourself feel. My knowledge, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t even enter into it, except it avails my immoral actions.
————-

The idea of a sentence or a word in isolation is only a thing in philosophy--stemming from the desire to tether it to something determinate, certain, universal. — Antony Nickles

Yes. Tethering to the irreducible, the apodeitically certain, is the whole modus operandi of human reason, and consequently, for possible mutual understanding because of it. Witt credits language use for understanding, or lack of it, but proper philosophy reduces language to its components, and those are the actual ground for understanding, and by association, the prevention of misunderstanding. Rather than worry about what a word means in a language, it is a better effort to realize how words originate of themselves, for then we find the meaning of a word is given BY its origin, and understanding henceforth becomes a matter of its relation, and its meaning becomes merely a matter of convention.

This relates directly to why I asked you about what Witt intends us to understand by the “picture”.

Anyway....5 minutes to football, so.....I’m outta here.

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."

I will argue that it is essential to put the above sentence in the textual context in which it was written to see its USE here by Witt--(...) that it is used in its sense as an uncontested FACT (not to be refuted or interpreted, nor an open question, nor a thesis, etc.) — Antony Nickles

I can grant the sentence is being used as an uncontested fact, but if it is not be contested, refuted or interpreted asks the question....why did he say it? Apparently Witt is allowing himself to do something with it, even if only to demonstrate something else, which seems to require some sort of correspondence with an uncontested fact. Doesn’t the fact need to be interpreted in order to determine its correspondence?

Is it the various grammars of the concept “talk” that is under examination? Is this the juxtaposition that is the whole point? Lion-talk/human-talk? Perhaps it is the grammar of the concept “talk” vs the grammar of the concept “understand”. If so, the sentence is either true or false. But it is already very well established that every sentence is either true or false. Which reduces to the grammar of the concepts that makes them one or the other, or, enables us to see they can be one or the other. If grammar of concepts is Witt’s sense of reasoning with concepts, and it is also already well established that reasoning is the condition that makes sentences true or false, what is the sentence, and by association Witt himself, really saying? He isn’t telling us anything we didn’t already know.

Ok....so a different viewpoint. Sorta like, if I’m in the habit of putting on my left shoe before my right, and I for whatever reason decide to put on my right shoe first, I certainly would have a different viewpoint of shoe priority, but in the end, I got shoes on both feet. Gross oversimplification, of course, but isn’t it the same principle?

Would you accept the sentence, “asking forgiveness is easier than asking permission” to be a suitable substitute for the lion sentence?
—————

"I cannot know what is going on in him" is above all a picture. — Antony Nickles

Can you help me out with picture? Picture of what, picture of what kind, how do I know it as such, what am I enabled to do with it, what am I enabled to do because of it......and whatever else may apply as far as this topic is concerned.

Thanks.

This has two things going on. Acting and intending, and the knowledge of those. To intend (to do) something, and, to mean (something) have two different ways they work (or don't)--different grammars. — Antony Nickles

This makes W’s grammar/reasoning synonymy more apparent, in that my philosophical perspective attributes to acting pure practical reasoning, and attributes to meaning pure theoretical reason. And now I see why, in the second paragraph of your first response to me, ethics/morals were its concern, which has to do with acting. I certainly agree that the acting I do and the meaning I impart have different ways they work, for they are each derived from their own ground of reasoning. If I already grant acting and meaning are different in a certain way, I don’t profit significantly in seeing that they are different in some other way as well. That is to say, why acting and meaning are said to have different grammars, when I acknowledge them cum hoc as having different reasoning, still escapes me, but that’s ok.
————-

Yes, I can know what you are going to do; "look he is going to ask her out!" — Antony Nickles

I disagree. “Going to ask” is not asking, so stands as merely a possibility, and any possibility has its immediate negation just as possible. You may know he intends to ask, or that he means to ask, but you can’t know he asks until he actually does. He could be hit by a wayward cyclist (beer bottle, panic attack, ad infinitum) a split second before he gets the words out. Asking is acting, intending to ask is meaning, and because they are different grammars, given the above, the reasoning is different, again, from the above. Therefore, what it is permissible for you to know must be different, if such knowledge comes from the reasoning. Which of course, it must, because it couldn’t come from anywhere else.

Something unexpected happened or outside the grammar of our expectations. — Antony Nickles

Yes, just like that. Outside the grammar, being the same as other than the reasoning, of our expectations. Obviously the second contradicts the first, so what should I make of that?
——————-

Meaning' is like the imagined 'hidden' inner process. A concept's grammar is its possibilities of sense--not a fixed 'meaning' like a definition either. "It's a blue day." — Antony Nickles

Yes, I see that. As a matter of philosophical fact, it is because concepts do have specific meanings, that it is possible to tacitly understand days are not blue, and nonetheless allowance is granted to mischaracterize the meanings of concepts within certain limits given sufficient experience. I suppose the “imagined ‘hidden’ inner process” to indicate the rational arrangement of all the myriad associations contained in the concepts, that is, their schemata, into an order which obtains a meaningful statement coincidental to speaker and listener. As such, your “it’s a blue day” transfers to my “he is exhibiting pathological despondence” if I’m a clinical psychologist, or “sucks to be you” if I’m just a rabid Nietzsche-an cynical nihilist. “Here...have another hit on this” if I’m an old hippie. (Grin)
—————

But trust me I can tell when you've reasoning is wrong. — Antony Nickles

Sure, under certain conditions. That which is tautologically true cannot be reasoned wrong, and if I do, you can certainly tell. Logical fallacies and categorical errors are entirely sufficient for distinguishing wrong reasoning. Other than instances of analytically certain statements, you can only tell what I mean for you to know on the one hand, and I can present any reasoning I want but if you have no experience whatsoever with what I’m talking about, you can tell nothing at all about my reasoning. You may have your conclusions with respect to it, in that you might say I’m so full of crap my eyes are brown, but that is grounded in your reasoning, not mine.

But if we understood each other by coincidence or accident, would it matter? — Antony Nickles

No, but that’s taken out of context. I said....coincidence from accident, you say coincidence or accident. My philosophy denies anything is ever understood by accident, because understanding is a logical procedure in which the objects must align with the subject necessarily in order for there to be understanding in the first place. This is the only way misunderstanding is possible. The difference between yours and mine, is mine has the accident in coincidence, yours has the accident in the understanding.
—————

trickery, pretending, lying, charade, etc. look exactly like the real thing (maybe), so: how do we KNOW! — Antony Nickles

Depends on the degree of “(maybe)”, doesn’t it? An obvious lie is easy to know qua falsehood, a well-disguised lie is not. On the other hand, if reasoning to a lie, or the grammar of the conceptions if you insist, looks EXACTLY like the real thing, which I suppose to be reasoning to a truth.....you can’t know. The real thing can only be as you know that thing, so if what he is saying looks exactly like what you know, nothing new is given to you by which you can make a distinction between them, leaving you with no more than what you already knew.
——————-

Witt does say its amazing that we can communicate at all. — Antony Nickles

Doesn’t that depend on the domain of discourse? In the overall history of mankind in general, isn’t misunderstanding the exception to the rule? It follows that if the misunderstanding is the exception, then the ability to communicate, which is the facilitator of mutual understanding, is not so amazing. I can see, however, that Witt’s detractors might say exactly that, considering they might think Witt made common language use FUBAR because of his very own philosophical investigations. By the way.....did Witt have any peers playing the role of serious detractor?

I’m open to being convinced Witt’s proclamation, “He alone can know what he intends" is nonsense: to say "He alone can know what he will do", wrong....” is possible. Gonna take a powerful argument in its favor, I must say, and while I admire your attempts, illuminating by glimmer as they do, I’m requiring a epiphanic spotlight. An Archimedes lever to move my Enlightenment predispositions, doncha know.

how you correlate reasoning to grammar....
— Mww

....briefly (...), the OLP....idea of grammar is that each concept, say, knowing, or, an apology, has its own (or multiple)....ways it can make sense, how it works (or fails): e.g., understanding--when can you say someone else understands something? how do you explain it? what is proof for understanding, say, math, a poem, a person? etc., each concept having its own (subject to change and adaptation as we change our judgments, standards, lives, etc: what is justice, these days?). — Antony Nickles

So grammar is the science of application of concepts? Can we say that? If concepts have a plurality of meanings, grammar is the method for picking the better of them? Ok....to what end?

When I pick use a word representing a concept, and indicate some meaning by it, is that word intended to demonstrate my reasoning, or is it chosen to align with your understanding of my reasoning?

“...To say "He alone can know what he intends" is nonsense: to say "He alone can know what he will do", wrong....”
(From your Witt, P.I., p. 223)

Am I suppose to gather from all that, that I can know what he intends, if only I choose the right word for the concepts? So I say...did you intend ____?; he says, nope, not that. So I say, well, did you mean ____?; nope, not that either. I see a serious problem here, don’t you?

On the other hand, I say, did you mean ____, and he says, no, I meant _____, to which I say, oh, cool, I get it now, or I could just as well say, ohfercrissakes, that just doesn’t make any sense at all.

In the immortal words of Strother Martin, what we have heah.....is a failyah......to cuh-MUNicate.

And here’s the kicker. All I wrote just now? All I’ve ever written, actually? I submit, My Good Sir, that it is impossible for you to tell, if I got it right, whether I used my grammar (reasoning) correctly with respect to your understanding, or merely from my own, and they happen to coincide from sheer accident. And, if I got it wrong, it is impossible for you to tell whether I chose my meanings with the intent to make you think I got it wrong, when I understood you perfectly from the get-go. Both of which catastrophically falsify Witt’s prophecy given above.

BOOM!!!!! Mic drop, exit, stage right......
(Kidding. I’m just thinking out loud. No offense. You may rebut as you see fit)

That's different - an Hegelian critique of Wittgenstein... Curious. — Banno

Technically, Hegelian would be triadic, but my dyadic thesis/antithesis is just me philosophizing in Kantianese.

He's trying to get the reader to see from a different viewpoint. — Antony Nickles

Understood. I suppose that might work for one who hasn’t an entrenched viewpoint already. It may also work, even for him, if OLP made enough sense to displace it. Personally, I’m happy with what I got.....I better be, considering the time and effort I’ve invested in it.

No, I most certainly wouldn’t label W as a German idealist either; yes, Hegel unpacks juxtapositions....in his own profoundly roundabout way...., and I’d be interested in what you have to say about Kantian “grammar” with his categories. I’d be pleased to see how you correlate reasoning to grammar, from your “...one of the main points of Ordinary Language Philosophy would be there are different kinds of reasoning ("grammar")....”

I don’t wish to detract from your thread, so if your attention is warranted elsewhere, I can wait.

labeling Witt’s sentences as “Thesis” is not exactly accurate. — Antony Nickles

I meant it as indicating the opening statement as affirmation, in accordance with continental dialectical reasoning, re: German idealists in general. The antithesis, then, follows as subjecting the opening to negation, or just some sort of modification. I didn’t label W’s statements themselves in any way at all; I just copied them verbatim. Still, I could have used point/counterpoint, so......
—————

The “unperceived physical proceedings” are the writing and the jig-saw puzzles, etc.—which are hidden in the sense of, away from view. — Antony Nickles

Hidden from the guy, yes. I just went off on a rant over the gross dissimilarities between empirical invisibility and rational invisibility, and how silly it is to juxtaposition one against the other.

Anyway.....good talk, and, carry on.

Point/counterpoint, and rhetorically speaking........

If laws constrain the universe, it should be possible the laws constrained the universe in such a manner that anything preventing consciousness from arising, was itself prevented.

Conscious beings create laws, laws constrain the behavior of the universe, therefore conscious beings are responsible for the behavior of the universe. If conscious beings created different laws, the universe would behave differently. But if the universe behaved differently, it becomes possible the conscious beings act differently, in which case, the different laws they created would constrain them from creating the laws that cause them to act differently.

To reconcile the paradox, either the conscious beings are not contained in the universe the behavior of which they are held responsible, that premise already asserted, or, laws do not as much constrain the behavior of the universe, as to serve merely as sufficient explanations of, or predictions for, the behavior of the universe pursuant to its own natural conditions.

Granting that the proof of a logical proposition is not given by its form but only by its substance, proof of the former is altogether impossible, insofar as the conscious beings which suffice as substances to insert into the form are entirely unobservable therefore determinantly inconclusive to reason. The proof of the latter, on the other hand, is possible, for the substances to be inserted into the form are sufficiently observable, hence determinantly present to reason.

All taken from the quoted passage:

Thesis:

All this would be guessing at thoughts; and the fact that it does not actually happen does not make thought any more hidden than the unperceived physical proceedings. — Antony Nickles

Antithesis:
What does not actually happen? I ask a guy to assign meaning to a language he doesn’t understand mandates a mutually perceived physical proceeding.....I’m talking to him, after all, and I know he hears me. So this cannot be the thing that does not actually happen. The only thing left that does not actually happen, and is therefore the unperceived physical proceeding, is the objective exemplification by which meaning is assigned by the dude to whom I’m asking. All that reduces to a categorical error of modality, the schema of which is existence, to posit that which doesn’t happen is equal to being hidden. There is nothing to hide so it being hidden is superfluous.

Still, it must be the case that he thinks something, even if it’s only to think it impossible to give any meaning because he lacks the judgements necessary to connect what he perceives to what he understands. The unperceived physical proceeding, in this case speech reflecting the assignment of meaning, according to W, is hidden from both of us because it never happened, but the thought demonstrating that the meaning is impossible to present as a physical proceeding, must have happened, and is only hidden from me, to whom it did not happen, but cannot be hidden from the guy from whom I’m asking a meaning be given. This is the categorical error of relation, the schema of which is community, in that it is supposed one thought is denied to, or hidden from, both parties when it is only hidden from one.
—————-

Thesis:

If I see someone writhing in pain with evident cause I do not think: all the same, his feelings are hidden from me. — Antony Nickles

Antithesis:
No, I do not, but I do not, because I think nothing immediately with respect to his feelings, as a predicate of my observation of him writhing. Given the evident cause, I immediately grant him the objective reality of being hurt, the writhing I see immediately grants merely one of a plethora of immediate corresponding physical representations of being physically hurt, both of which are a posteriori judgements.

I can and I do think, mediately, all the same, his feelings are necessarily hidden from me, in that the causality of his representations are not contained in the physical representations of them. And I am justified in that thinking, for the simple reason I am not the one writhing with evident cause. If I already understand feelings as pure a priori representations, and I know no a priori cognition is transferable, it follows as a matter of course, his pain is inaccessible to me, hence I am permitted to say they are hidden. This, incidentally, relieves the categorical error of modality.
—————

Thesis:

"I cannot know what is going on in him" is above all a picture. It is the convincing expression of a conviction. It does not give the reasons for the conviction. They are not readily accessible. — Antony Nickles

Antithesis:
If I know, or if I do not know, something, I must have reasons. And they must be accessible to me, otherwise the knowledge is quite empty.

Knowledge can be defined as a judgement valid because its ground is objectively necessary. That which goes on in him is subjective in him, hence inaccessible objectively in me, therefore I am justified in claiming I cannot know of it. These are my readily accessible reasons derivable from a definition.

A conviction can be defined as a judgement valid because its ground is objectively sufficient. I am certainly authorized to say what goes on in him is objectively sufficient, under the condition that he and I are both the same kind of rational intelligence, in that I allow him the same ground for his as I require for mine.

It follows that what I know is not the same as that of which I am merely convinced. I am always authorized to claim my convictions are given from the same reasons as my knowledge, but I am not authorized to claim my knowledge is given from the same reasons as my convictions.

A picture, considered as some mental image, can be a convincing expression of a conviction, but not in the case where I have certain knowledge antecedent to the image. While it is true images are not the source of reasons in any case, where some proposition is predicated on a knowledge, those reasons are not needed, so their inaccessibility is moot. I need reasons for my convictions iff I cannot arrive at knowledge from conviction alone.

The lion will have to wait for Page 2, assuming there is one.

Thanks for the interesting thread, and the chance to ramble on over it. Hope I followed your wishes, but if I didn’t.....ehhhh.....no page 2.

It means that both Janus' seeing red cups, and my seeing red cups always always always includes red cups. — creativesoul

Absolutely, but this proposition is, for all intents and purposes, tautological, for it presupposes a certain knowledge given from a particular experience of a given object, but in a plurality of occurrences. Otherwise, there is no warrant for either red or cup for any of us, but only the presence of some object imbued with some existential conditions.
————-

How do we arrive at the need for "qualia" from here? Is the notion just being used in a sort of closeted subjectivism stance? — creativesoul

Saying to perceive a particular object is the same as what it feels like to perceive a red cup iff that particular object contains that which corresponds to the quales of red and cup, still doesn’t inform us of the origin of red or cup, or the synthesis of “object” to the quales “red” and “cup”. It is clear how the altogether distorted notion of qualia were arrived at, but the need for them has never been properly justified, in that they are neither sufficient nor necessary for what they’re supposed to do. And anything neither sufficient nor necessary can be summarily dismissed, insofar as doing so offers no jeopardy to that which is already established as the necessary means for human cognition and experience in general. Theoretically established, of course.

Drive-by thread posting. Gotta love ‘em, huh?

Fine....I’ll say it: moral law never was, nor could ever be, fait accompli. The notion of moral law stands as a valid object of pure practical reason, but any proof of its universality and absolute necessity.....which in principle are the conditions of any law.....is impossible. Calling it a law doesn’t make it one.

So.....where do we start, in trying to discern what such law is?

Commands of reason inform as to what an act ought to be, but has no power to force the act to be done.
— Mww

So what determines the action? — Brett

Circumstance, usually. And judgement with respect to whatever the circumstance happens to be. Action itself is a posteriori, that is, empirically given as manifest in the world. Morality, taken as a fundamental condition of human nature, does not concern itself with the action, but only with the pure a priori principles to which an action must accord necessarily, in order to claim moral worth for itself.

Only a philosopher examines morality from a metaphysical point of view. Everydayman has no use for such understandings, he being capable of navigating the world without ever questioning exactly how he does it. He may well feel good or bad over something he’s done, but without having the reasons for the source and thereby the construction of those feelings. But under the same circumstance next time, should he do something differently such that the feeling from that action is different, he will recognize that there must actually be reasons, and from differences may then interrogate himself as to their source and construction.
————-

We can even abdicate any responsibility if we choose to. — Brett

No, we cannot. Reason belongs to us necessarily, so whether we admit it or not, we are intrinsically responsible for ourselves in toto, for the excruciatingly simple principle that says reason is itself responsible for every single thing we do. We may very well abdicate that which reason demands, but we cannot deny the responsibility for failing to satisfy such demand. It is impossible, after all, to will that which is beyond the ability to obtain, that being nothing but a mere wish.

Spoken like a scientist overly concerned with hair! — Kenosha Kid

Oh yeah!?!? Well....(sputterchokegasp).....your definitions of consciousness are all wrong!!!

Consciousness: the quality of all my various and sundry representations united under one representation.

Consciousness is not a thing, so it has no properties. It is nothing more than the condition of the intellect, so necessarily accounts for experience with respect to objects, and at the same time, pure thought, which has no object. It is the compendium of all that I think about.

Don’t you dare tell me you can get all that from a display on a machine strapped to my head. As my ol’ buddy Gilda Radnor would say, “it is to laugh....”

Part of our reason is the ability to choose between two possible outcomes. — Brett

Part of, yes. Choosing between two outcomes reduces to cognizing a relation between means and ends. Fishing, say, with worms gives one possible outcome, fishing with lures gives another possible outcome. This part of our reason is purely theoretical, indicating the outcomes are not actually within our control. And yes, we are not restricted in our choice of bait, but we also have no promise of success in fishing.

The other part of our reason is the purely practical, in which the ends are given necessarily from the means, which is the ground of the c.i. itself, re: “act only....”. Here, we have no choice in our actions, but we have splendid success in our morality.
—————

That’s what makes us free, as opposed to animals. — Brett

We are not free, nothing makes us free, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with animals. I find no profit in comparing my inner workings to a cow’s, and question those that do. I’ve found them to be terrible philosophers.
—————

Being free we can make a moral choice. We can make the wrong one as well. If C.I. is at the command of reason then why the wrong choice? — Brett

We make moral choices because our very nature imbues us with moral agency, plain and simple.

We make wrong moral choices because we, as humans, are susceptible to a plethora of opposing interests, desires, wants and needs.

Commands of reason inform as to what an act ought to be, but has no power to force the act to be done.
————-

How can the idea of moral actions based on C.I. work in this age? — Brett

Cultures have changed, individual human members of cultures have not. There has been no significant human evolutionary changes in the mere 250 years or so, since the Enlightenment and with it, Kantian moral philosophy. No moral disparity between ripping off a farmer’s wife over a couple potatoes then, or ripping off a kid over an x-box now, nor between paying yourself for the wife’s potatoes and helping the proverbial lil’ ol’ lady cross Broadway in midtown.

One shouldn’t conflate the moral with the ethical.

Any proof of that? — Brett

Nope. Speculative epistemology holds no proofs. Examples of it......well, there lots of that, from which valid inductive inferences can be drawn.

If it’s a command of reason then why so many bad acts in the world? — Brett

Because “bad” is relative.

Can reason command anything? — Brett

Not really. A command of reason is just a metaphysical precept (Kant calls it a formula), that grounds stuff like duty, respect, self-obligation, the principle of law. It’s a guide for a particular manifestation of subjective moral determinations, a priori. And I stand by that, even if I haven’t always complied with it.

Because isn’t reason a universal human faculty and from that comes the ability to choose between possible outcomes? — Brett

Reason, the composite rational methodology, is a universal human condition, yes, but humans don’t use reason, the active procedural faculty, the same universally.

Proper morality does not choose between outcomes; it decides the one outcome that conforms to the agent’s moral constitution. Kant calls it the worthiness of being happy, but I can leave that be, myself.

the c.i. may be a command of reason, but it depends on the reason. — tim wood

Absolutely. In other words.......be careful what you wish for.

Hey......

Yeah, true, the number depending on the reference literature. Kant himself says there is only one, then goes on to alter it slightly so one becomes three: so-called the law of universality, the law of autonomy and the law of humanity. Gregor, Palmquist and Guyer say there are eleven. Hypothetical imperatives, on the other hand, are as numerous as the desires from which they arise.

Me...I stick with the Good Doctor:

“....There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely, this: Act only.....”
(FPMM, 1785, pagination unavailable on iPad ebook......sorry)

Let the good times roll.....

Oh go on, answer it! Pleeeeeeease? — Kenosha Kid

Ok, fine. The Rock....with or without hair?
———————

the modern world and how we live in it and how we look at it according to Kant’s Categorical Imperative and how that’s applied. — Brett

The c.i. Is not an application to the world; it is a command of reason, that conditions the subjective moral determinations applied because of the world. In effect, the c.i. has to do with the moral agent, not the world in which the agent happens to find himself.

Not to kill could be a c.i., insofar as the c.i. begins with “act only.....”, which makes explicit that if a moral agent does not kill, he is in accordance with his own principles. But that’s not the problem. The problem arises in the continuation of the c.i. to its end, which is, “....were to be a universal law”.

In other words....be very careful what you wish for, as there are no possible exceptions whatsoever to a c.i.

what is seen, is a mechanical representation of my thinking.
— Mww

Therefore:

I will admit that pure reason is an individuated closed system and by association, is inaccessible to general external inquiry.
— Mww

must be false, since observing that mechanical representation is a form of external enquiry. — Kenosha Kid

Categorical error: seeing a mechanical representation, an altogether empirical enterprise, is very far removed from the a priori originating cause it. Ther’s precious little difference between that, and this:

the description of a thing is not that thing.
— Wayfarer
Good point. — Kenosha Kid

Not to mention, given that observation implies attention, you are in the metaphysical position of turning the mechanical representation into a cognitive representation of your own. And, if that wasn’t un-scientific enough fer youse guys, you probably should invoke a judgement relative to your understanding of the mechanical representation of my thinking about fooling you by intentionally mis-tying my shoe. Which of course, you will never be able to do, for no judgement is at all possible with respect to second-hand, non-empirical predicates. You may certainly think I purposely did what I did, but such thinking on your part can have no sustaining visibility from the device you put on my head to watch my brain.

Barbarians, 42; lions, 0.
————-

In order for science to study consciousness, it must reify it, or, which is the same thing, turn it into a phenomenon
— Mww

It's still not shown why this is problematic........

It is problematic by implication, insofar as turning a thing into something else presupposes that thing never was what it’s being turned into. The question remains...is it still possible the presupposition itself is false, such that there never was any turning into, in the case at hand, consciousness always was a phenomenon so science didn’t have to reify it in order to study it.

You have sufficient reason to suppose consciousness is already a phenomenon insofar as you suppose properties belonging to it, hence available for scientific study, and I have sufficient reason to suppose consciousness is merely a quality to which no such thing as properties can ever belong, hence cannot be a phenomenon and therefore invisible to scientific study.

Given that the criterion of the truth of a conception, that is to say, the constituency of the manifold of representations possible to subsume under it without contradiction, I would ask.....how is consciousness defined from a perspective of it being a phenomenon? And a follow-up would ask...is there any doubt that being conscious-of is not the same as conscious-ness?

.......There are good methods precisely for this. — Kenosha Kid

Good methods for precisely this taken to mean methods for the scientific study of consciousness.

Are you going to bring in psychology? Or are you going to restrict scientific study to the conditions explicit in the scientific method pursuant to the hard sciences?
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in what sense do you say metaphysics is doomed?
— Mww

Well... who would win in a fight between Superman and The Rock? — Kenosha Kid

I don’t know what to do with that. Sorry.

Which assumes that thinking is ethereal, i.e. the mind is a closed system and anything that goes on inside it is completely transparent to outside interrogation. — Kenosha Kid

I don’t use mind with respect to thinking, mind being merely a logical placeholder having no pure functionality of its own except to arbitrarily terminate infinite regress. I will admit that pure reason is an individuated closed system and by association, is inaccessible to general external inquiry. We can talk of it post hoc, but not concurrent with it.
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what neuroscience sees is the opposite: we can see you think. — Kenosha Kid

No, we do not; what is seen, is a mechanical representation of my thinking. Strap a machine to my head, watch me tie my shoe. You see traces, graphs, lit sequences......I see my shoe being tied. Watch me repeatedly, set a norm, and you can subsequently see a representation of my intent to mis-tie my shoe, while I, on the other hand, will see a shoe already mis-tied.

What remains is a difficult classification problem: how we identify a particular neurological activity with a particular mental activity. — Kenosha Kid

Difficult indeed. And with a neural connectivity average of 12.9 x 10^8/mm3**, the physical process of burrowing down to specific network paths in order to correlate them to specific cognitive manifestations, may very well destroy that path.
**Alonso-Nanclares, et. al., Department of Anatomy/Compared Pathological Anatomy, Madrid, 2008)
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.....no science is at all possible that has no relevant thought antecedent to it, of which consciousness itself is an integral member.
— Mww

What is the claim here, that since thinking involves consciousness, we cannot start to think about consciousness? It simply doesn't follow. — Kenosha Kid

It doesn’t follow because it’s no where near what I said.

The claim is scientific study of anything at all, necessarily presupposes both the empirical object to which it is directed, or at least its predictable possibility, and the rational means for its accomplishment. In order for science to study consciousness, it must reify it, or, which is the same thing, turn it into a phenomenon, the misplaced concreteness fallacy of which metaphysical study has no guilt. I understand science cannot abide the “fictions” of which metaphysics inevitably is guilty, but still, if we are careful in our construction of them then we have something to talk about in pure conceptual form, rather than a hodge-podge of conversational idioms.

Now don’t get me wrong. Science is the second most valuable paradigm in human life, right after the human himself.

Oh...forgot: in what sense do you say metaphysics is doomed?

And yours, too, re: the argument that the hard problem is defined into being so.

Leave it to reason to confuse itself.

we ought to be able to identify it in an object of study by what how it behaves. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, we can identify consciousness in the human object by studying how the human behaves. All that is required is acceptance that a human also “behaves” in an internal domain apodeitically known only to himself, in addition to his observable behavior known to others, behavior tacitly understood as some ends in accordance with the means sufficient for it.

The internal behavior in the human object of study, such behavior apodeitically known only to himself, is his thinking. Any characterization of the means for such behavior, by which the ends of such behavior are sufficiently, but henceforth also necessarily, given, can have no possible external explanation whatsoever, for that which is known only to the self can be explained only by the self, and then only with respect to the self.

While it is established that the brain is ultimately responsible for any human occupation, sheer accident and pure reflex excepted, it is clear the human does not think in terms of brain mechanics, which are predicated on natural law, from which follows inexorably that thinking is entirely dependent on its own nature. And if human thought is never in terms of natural law, it becomes clear that the notion.....

The scientific study of all aspects of consciousness, such as perception and identity, fall within psychology and therefore, where possible, neurology. — Kenosha Kid

.....is catastrophically false, under the predication that scientific study is itself in terms of natural law, in conjunction with the absolutely necessary condition that consciousness is a product of human internal behavior alone, which is not. The intrinsic circularity, as ground for asserting the falliciousness, is obvious, insofar as no science is at all possible that has no relevant thought antecedent to it, of which consciousness itself is an integral member.

It is current physics which must throw up its hands in defeat, and grant extant metaphysics its true purpose, for even if it should eventually come to pass that certain natural activities in the brain are proven sufficient causality for some immediately correlating thought, it never will appear as such to the possessor of both the brain and the thought. Especially as metaphysics has already explained internal behavior sufficient for use by the human in possession of it, all the while in complete disregard for his own brain. Not to mention, metaphysics has already identified consciousness, and feels no need to prove anything about it, except the logical validity of its place in a system.

“....Besides, when we get beyond the bounds of experience, we are of course safe from opposition in that quarter; and the charm of widening the range of our knowledge is so great that, unless we are brought to a standstill by some evident contradiction, we hurry on undoubtingly in our course. This, however, may be avoided, if we are sufficiently cautious in the construction of our fictions, which are not the less fictions on that account....”

Not looking for a response; just opinionatin’, doncha know. But thanks for a decent opportunity.

The bulbous center of the wheel cover on a ‘52 Chrysler is bigger than the entire hand of a 3yo.

Souvenir fabrication, my ass.

it's not determinate scientific knowledge that can be confirmed or falsified by inter-subjective observations. — Janus

Which is fine; that which is not primarily empirical has no business being addressed under empirical conditions anyway. Logical speculation remains, and carries the weight of its own law, the ground of which ought to have inter-subjective assent. Where the law is to be applied.....that’s the problem.

That being said, I agree that......

as to whether consciousness exists, and if so what kind of existence it enjoys, is a misguided question. — Janus

.....for the question should hinge on what validity it enjoys, existence being categorically moot.

Cool.

are the empirical objects the mind-independent ones realism is concerned with? — Marchesk

Yes, but Kantian epistemology is not so concerned.

Some renditions of idealism may endorse direct perception because ideas are right there in the mind, whatever that actually means, but transcendental idealism does not. T.I. endorses, in fact is necessarily predicated on, direct perception because “....For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears—which would be absurd....”.

The fundamental initiation of all Kantian cognitive metaphysics is the statement that objects are given to us, which makes explicit perception is a direct affectation on sensing physiology. It follows that we never interpret the perception, but rather we interpret the impression the perception imparts.

Anyway....if all this is generally understood already, somebody should tell me so I don’t butt in where I don’t contribute anything.

I would say it depends on the observer. — Claude

Yes, it would, insofar as we have no warrant to stipulate that the human intuitive, representational system is the only possible means to experience. It follows that an observer operating under the auspices of a system not intuitive or representational, may include what we think as noumena to be as necessary a constituent as phenomena are for us. Still, our system immediately precludes any possibility of understanding such differentiated methodology, at least according to this particular theory.

there is no such thing as a property of language less conscious experience that we've called "redness" — creativesoul

Agreed. Quality of redness is not a property; it is the condition of the property of red. We experience the property, we merely think the relative condition of it.

Try critical self-analysis, rather than metacognition.

I don’t understand this noticing a weasel.

My problem with it is the implicit assumption that the apple is red the way it looks red to the perceiver. In my view, the awareness of red is added by the perceiver. — Marchesk

While I subscribe to that condition as well, it may be worth remarking that the schematic doesn’t qualify the real object perceived as having any color at all. There is a real object, we are aware....wordlessly in fact....of that real object. Doesn’t look to me like the implicit assumption of color is given, so I don’t see a conflict with our view.

The problem would arise if the schematic specified red apple instead of real apple, followed by awareness of red apple instead of awareness of real apple, in which case of course, red is certainly not added by the perceiver but is antecedently specified as a property of the apple, a contradiction to our philosophical d’ruthers.

Did I miss something? I hate it when that happens........

some in Kant's time said he had merely rehashed Leibniz. — Gregory

Perhaps in some respects, but the “REMARK ON THE AMPHIBOLY OF THE CONCEPTIONS OF REFLECTION“ , A261/B316, is a 20-page destruction of Liebnitz’s monadology. Amphiboly being Kantian transcendental-speak for, “don’t mistake a noumena for a phenomena, dammit!!!!!”. And the major condition of doing so is by attributing space and time as properties of objects, not where they properly belong, as the pure a priori forms by which objects are presented to us. In other words, space and time belong to the thinker, not the object thought.

From that, it is clear a materialist understanding of Kant, with respect to space and time at least, doesn’t work. Materialism for Kant is the acknowledgement of the reality of material things, but such acknowledgement does not extend to our empirical knowledge of what those things actually are. We do not and cannot know things; we can only know the representations of things.
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I think Hume really disturbed Kant and the three critiques can be seen as his attempt to heal his faith and psychology — Gregory

Yeah, one could say he was disturbed. Hume said of pure reason, “consign it to the flames”, while Kant based his entire epistemology on the very thing Hume declared worthless. I’d be disturbed, too. Although I’d likely use a rather stronger word for it.

Kant’s faith didn’t need healing, and he rejected psychology as a doctrine, having “...its origin in a mere misunderstanding....”.

....another whole metaphysical can of transcendental worms.

The word "noumena" originally meant "that which is thought" and it seemed to me Kant choose this for a reason. — Gregory

He probably did, perhaps because, in the interest of a complete metaphysical system, and after positing that the understanding is the faculty of thought, he then forced himself into.....

A.).....saying just what it is that the understanding thinks,
B.).....the understanding is the source of concepts which arise spontaneously merely from the thought of them,
C.).....thus he must, to be consistent, acknowledge the understanding can think what it wants, but some of what it thinks has no application in the metaphysics he was creating from scratch with respect to human knowledge,
D.)....he couldn’t call that which the understanding thinks that is itself outside the system of knowledge “illusory” or derivatives of it, because that term had already been used against pure reason as a whole,
E.)....he couldn’t call what the understanding thinks ding an sich because that had already been assigned to real objects external to us,
F.).....he couldn’t regulate spontaneity without contradicting the validity of our conceptions’ origin,
G.)....he settled on granting the understanding the capacity to think “objects in themselves”, and called them noumena.

“...The understanding, when it terms an object in a certain relation phenomenon, at the same time forms out of this relation a representation or notion of an object in itself, and hence believes that it can form also conceptions of such objects. Now as the understanding possesses no other fundamental conceptions besides the categories, it takes for granted that an object considered as a thing in itself*** must be capable of being thought by means of these pure conceptions, and is thereby led to hold the perfectly undetermined conception of an intelligible existence, a something out of the sphere of our sensibility, for a determinate conception of an existence...”

***considered as a thing in itself does not mean objects in themselves are the same as things in themselves. It means only that understanding considers phenomena in the same way sensibility considers real external objects. First, real external objects are given to the faculty of representation initially as a sensation, which imagination synthesizes with intuitions to generate phenomena. Second, phenomena are given to the faculty of understanding as undetermined objects, or, as an “object in itself”. Third, understand thinks to determine what the “object in itself” is, by the only means available to it, the categories, but the categories do not have the power to determine what any kind of object is, but only sets the conditions under which real physical objects external to us, are possible.
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”thing-in-itself", "noumena", and "phenomena" are just different ways we perceive objects. — Gregory

The only way to perceive objects is by means of the sensations by which the cognitive system is given something to work with. None of those three listed conceptions/notions/ideas affect our sensory apparatus, only the “thing” of the “thing-in-itself”, does.
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there is no mention of conatus in the Critique of Pure Reason. — Gregory

The Critique is a treatise on knowledge, which presupposes whatever being it is possible to know about. While he grants ontology as one of four major domains of metaphysics in general, he has no use for it in a speculative transcendental theory of human empirical knowledge.

“....Its principles are merely principles of the exposition of phenomena, and the proud name of an ontology, which professes to present synthetical cognitions a priori of things in general in a systematic doctrine, must give place to the modest title of analytic of the pure understanding...”.

Here he is saying ontology doesn’t do what its proponents attribute to it, that is, his peers and the immediately antecedent philosophy from which his peers ground theirs. It bears remembering that Kant instituted a paradigm shift in the philosophical thinking of his day, which he then used to refute everybody. Still, in the interest of keeping his job, he had to play nice.....somewhat.....because his peers also held their own respect, which required great care in besmirching indiscriminately. It is within this perspective, including the controversy between Jacobi and Mendelssohn with respect to pantheism, a form of dogmatic determinism itself grounded by Spinozianism that the Kantian transcendental aesthetic found its primary use. It was, in effect, the philosophical politics of the day, that Kant even got involved in the pantheism debate in the first place, and some literature even suggests the use of the first edition of the critique to support one side or the other inspired the second edition, with its changes eliminating, or at least clarifying, pertinence.

“...It is hard to comprehend how the scholars just mentioned [Mendelssohn and Jacobi] could find support for Spinozism in the Critique of Pure Reason. The Critique completely clips dogmatism's wings in respect of the cognition of supersensible objects, and Spinozism is so dogmatic in this respect that it even competes with the mathematicians in respect of the strictness of its proofs....”
(Essay, “What Does It Mean.....”, fn#6, 1786)

Dating makes explicit the debate could only have used the 1781 edition, in which was included an entire section of the specifics of realism vs idealism. The 1787 edition completely eliminates that entire section, replacing it with a much shorter and less controversial rendering.
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Lastly,

The Critique of Pure Reason feels mechanistic to me — Gregory

As well it should, with a nod to wayfarer. It took 800 pages to create a theory, in which every possible tenet relevant to it, is named and given its place, and then, how all the tenets operate as a whole in order to arrive at something irrefutable. Knowledge.

Because of this, then necessarily that, is quite mechanistic, yes. Nevertheless, to grasp Kantian metaphysics as a complete system, rather than each as its own system, all three critiques need be understood together. Kant was, for better or worse, the ultimate dualist.

All the above, except the quotes, is my understanding alone, and I make no claim for academic standing.

It seems that phenomena is noumena. — Gregory

If that is the case, why would an entire chapter be dedicated to distinguishing one from the other?

“...That sort of intuition which relates to an object by means of sensation is called an empirical intuition. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called phenomenon...”

“...If, by the term noumenon, we understand a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensuous intuition (...) But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensuous intuition....”

Whether object impossible for us to sense, or not an object we could possibly sense, either way, noumena mean absolutely nothing whatsoever to us as intelligences with intuitive rationality, for no intuition of one can ever be held by us.
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The exactly what of phenomena is unknown, for it has not yet met the necessary conditions for empirical knowledge. Hence the “undetermined object”.

The theoretical what of phenomena, that is, what part does this particular member of a speculative cognitive system play.....is limited to that which affects the human sensory apparatus:

“....For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses...”

Phenomena are the possibly determinable, but as-yet undetermined, representations of “the objects which affect our senses”.

The CI is one of the best philosophical renderings in history, to this day. — creativesoul

No doubt. And that has only to do with his moral philosophy. His speculative epistemology has been professionally superseded....or neglected outright......which leaves we armchair types to keep it alive.

Probably because we don’t know any better. Or just maybe...there isn’t any better.