Comments

  • About IT (not the clown)
    the only solutiondussias

    What does only IT can or can’t be actually solve?
  • Fallible Foundationalism
    .....muttering to self from the back of the room....

    Damned if I can figure out how the pain I never knew I was in, stopped being one.
  • Where could I find a quietist philosopher or resource to defuse philosophical problems with quietism


    This would be quite laughable.....if it weren’t, for most intents and purposes, the sad truth.
  • Presenting my own theory of consciousness


    I read it, and I have some familiarity with a few of your references. However, being steeped in Enlightenment cognitive metaphysics, I’m in no position to critique the technicalities. Still, the schematic of the state/control systems fit nicely with Kantian transcendental philosophy, which is stipulated as a logical process. Names are different, functionality is generally the same.

    Bottom line.....too modern for me, but nonetheless a worthy treatise.
  • Who was right on certainty...Descartes or Lichtenburg?


    ....all of which reduces to Descartes’ cogito. So where does that other guy’s “more right on certainty” lay? In “thinking occurs”, which is just about the emptiest expression imaginable. You know...like....grass is. Balls bounce. Up is that way.

    What do you think the cogito expression was actually meant to represent?
  • All mind, All matter, Dualistic


    With all that, beginning with that double-damned double slit, it’s easy to see where human consciousness could be deemed responsible for the actions outside itself. Leave it to a human, to attribute that of which he has precious little understanding, as being responsible for that of which he has, arguably, only slightly more.
  • All mind, All matter, Dualistic


    Thanks.

    I wonder though, did Wigner actually come right and declare explicitly that consciousness causes collapse, or did somebody take his “....consciousness is necessary for the completion of any quantum experiment...” and translate it thus. Because in order for any experimental result to mean anything, which would indicate a completion of it, it must be presented to some conscious agency for understanding. That much would seem to be the case, but doesn’t say consciousness was the reason the experimental result manifested as the measuring device prescribes.

    Even von Neumann stated the wavefunction collapse can happen anywhere on the chain from measuring device to “subjective perception”, but subjective perception is not necessarily consciousness, but only a partial constituency of it. And happening at, is not the same as causality for.

    Anyway....the beat goes on. All the way to the fridge for a beer. Or better yet....ice for a cocktail.
  • All mind, All matter, Dualistic


    Oh. Sorry....guess I wasn’t understanding what you were saying....about why the special point regarding QM. Are you, sorta rhetorically, just saying the mind of the experimenter is just as involved in QM theories as it is in everything else, without exercising any causality of its own? If so, I agree.

    Who has represented himself as a purely mentalist interpreter?
  • All mind, All matter, Dualistic


    I think the special point with respect to QM is direct experience, and the habitual proclivity of human intelligence to mandate empirical knowledge on it alone. Because direct experience is impossible on some small scale, the experimenter inserts himself, by the construction of his experiments, into situations he cannot actually witness, and he experiments in compliance to the mathematics he has himself invented. In effect, he justifies his inventions, but doesn’t witness Nature as it actually is, the classic example being the collapsing wavefunction, which of course, does not exist.

    Another one is “spooky action at a distance”, which, last I knew, was up to a whopping 11 miles!!! So we end up with the altogether classical connundrum of knowledge that (spooky action is a fact), but not the knowledge of (wtf IS it?). So, the mind is certainly involved, but at the same time is completely left out.

    Carrying the involvement of the mind to extremes, we arrive at stuff like....e.g., electrons, don’t even exist as real objects....as opposed to non-contradictory objects of reason....until they are determined by measurement of the effect of their intrinsic causality. This only makes sense if it is true human empirical knowledge is absolutely predicated on direct experience and experience has intuitive structure, which QM has shown to be suspect.
  • All mind, All matter, Dualistic


    Thanks. I had a feeling it would be Feynman, from your statement on fields being real, which Feynman declared by “...By a field, you remember, we mean a quantity which depends upon position in space....” (CalTech lectures, Vol2, Ch2), which would seem to make explicit fields are indeed real, at least in some particular sense.

    That, and this wonderful piece of intellectual incredulity: “....They split in half and …” But no!...”, the exclamatory part which you repeated herein. Pretty easy to see where your sympathies lay, I must say.

    Those lectures are here: https://feynmanlectures.caltech.edu, In which Vol3 has a nice easy dissertation on varieties of double slits , but nothing about......er......boobies. Or colored lights.

    Anyway.....I just want to satisfy myself that bell curves aren’t merely a different manifestation of the standard interference pattern.
  • All mind, All matter, Dualistic


    Can you supply an accessible reference for that colored light/boogie double slit experiment? Accessible meaning free.....I’m a YankeeVirgoBabyboomer, and paying for stuff for which I have no real use is anathema to me. But it is new and therefore interesting, so.....I’d appreciate it.

    I grant the notion that consciousness in and of itself doesn’t necessarily collapse a wavefunction, but at the same time, I find it entirely irrelevant what happens in Nature, if no consciousness is aware of it, and is capable of relating such natural events to itself.
  • All mind, All matter, Dualistic
    Why would you need a theory of consciousness to examine an experimental setup where consciousness is absent?Kenosha Kid

    True enough, but what experiment can be set up, and by association, what experimental setup can there be, that doesn’t have a conscious agency for its causality?
  • All mind, All matter, Dualistic
    it might have been him that also pointed out that conscious observers are high-temperature bodies and cannot mediate coherent superpositions.Kenosha Kid

    Tegmark, 2000, “Importance of Quantum Decoherence......” in refutation of Orch-OR, Penrose/Hameroff, 1994.

    Unless you’re talking about something else, in which case.......never mind.
  • Who was right on certainty...Descartes or Lichtenburg?
    Why presuppose that which has been proven?
  • Should we care about "reality" beyond reality?
    Reality (...) Everything that can be grasped by reasonEremit

    reality beyond, is the ground of all existenceEremit

    How does one reason to the ground of all existence, when such ground is excluded from that which is within the “grasp” of reason?

    It appears to be nothing more than “...a lame appeal to a logical condition, which is no doubt a necessary condition of the existence of the conception, but is far from being sufficient for the real objective possibility (of it)...”, insofar as reality, as stated, in conjunction with the validity of the complementary nature of human reason itself, permits the notion of “beyond reality”, even at the expense of knowing anything about it, which of course, leaves the second assertion without proper warrant.
  • Empiricism is dead! Long live Empiricism!
    Where are all the forum's KantiansSrap Tasmaner

    If the notion of human experience is justifiable, then empiricism must be valid, in order to serve as the ground for knowledge of real, physical things, which is exactly what experience is. But knowledge of physical things is not the only human knowledge there is, so while empiricism remains valid, it is nonetheless limited by itself.
  • Coherentism
    Lots of good stuff in there, but I’ll limit myself in return.

    I would say cognition requires one to understand.....
    — Mww

    OK, so I would place observation in the same category as cognition.
    Metaphysician Undercover

    I won't fuss over the proposed division between sense and observation.Metaphysician Undercover

    The second is fine; whatever reason there may be to fuss over the division between sense and observation is semantic, and doesn’t interfere too seriously with the technicalities. But if observation is suggested as having similar characteristics....being in the same category.....as cognition, we are met with an insurmountable technical inconsistency, for cognition makes explicit an understanding, but observation holds no such requirement, insofar as it is common enough to sense that for which there is no immediate recognition. In other words, cognition implies knowledge, mere observation does not.

    But I think I understand your groundwork: if there is an “unconscious” form of judgement at the one end of the cognitive sequence, which has been mentioned as imagination, and a “conscious” form of judgement at the other, which has been mentioned as judgement proper, then it follows that the outputs of these forms of judgement will have something in common between them. This may very well work, except for the realization that nothing in the unconscious mode can be anything but purely theoretical, from which follows necessarily that our observation, if categorized as proceeding from “unconscious” judgements, can also be nothing more than theoretical. But they are not, nor can they be, and still keep with the hope of empirical knowledge, as humans indulge themselves in it. One doesn’t theorize hearing a siren; he actually, truly, and with apodeictic certainty, hears a siren.
    ——————-

    I believe that this way of dividing the different mental activities is not representative of reality.Metaphysician Undercover

    It’s not supposed to represent reality; it only represents the compendium of faculties contained in a possible methodology used by humans in particular, to understand the reality in which they find themselves.
    ——————-

    between conscious reasoned thought (cognition), and unconscious brain activity. I'd say that this is derived from our habit of separating human beings from other animalsMetaphysician Undercover

    No need for such derivation. It is quite obvious there is an unconscious aspect of human mental activity, right? I mean.....we are never aware of the output of sensation and the input to the brain, yet when we stub our left toe we never jerk our right foot. Might this be your “unconscious” judgement?
    ———————

    The problem here, is that we cannot proceed through the conscious mind, to determine the effect which sensation has on the unconscious part of our being.Metaphysician Undercover

    Correct, which is why we theorize scientifically, and speculate metaphysically, on what is going on unconsciously. Everything between sensation and understanding is speculative, re:, unconscious, including appearance, intuition, space, time, imagination, phenomena, ending with conception. While one guy’s guess is as good as another’s, it helps to have as few explanatory gaps as possible.
    ——————-

    To limit "the affect the objects have" to the consciously apprehended affect, is a mistake. .Metaphysician Undercover

    Perhaps. But we both accept that we know things. If nothing else, the best we could say is we both sometimes make exactly the same mistake. And if everybody makes exactly the same mistake, we might as well call such mistakes, knowledge.
  • Coherentism
    Observation requires that the person understands and remembers what has been seen.Metaphysician Undercover

    So you say, which is fine. I would say cognition requires one to understand, and experience is that which he remembers as having been observed in particular, perceived in general.
    —————-

    My argument is that some form of judgement (unconscious judgement) must be passed on sensation prior to observation.Metaphysician Undercover

    I suppose imagination, the unconscious faculty that transforms sensations into phenomena, could be thought as a form of judgement. But such transformation is still a consequence of perception rather than prior to it.
    ————-

    Whether you list off these items, or those items, is a big difference, because it indicates that what you have noticed, or "observed", is different from what you have "sensed".Metaphysician Undercover

    Whichever items are mentioned in a list merely indicates a relative impression those objects made, whether from familiarity, some arbitrary characteristic...shiny, odd-shaped, whatever. The list of cognized items will always be fewer than the list of sensed items, because the mind doesn’t bother registering those in the periphery, or those with relatively minor impression. In effect, there is always a possible list just as you’ve hypothesized, in everyday life.....when I look at the tv, the walls of the room are right there, but I don’t sense or observe them.

    On the other hand, the lists of related items could very well be different for different people, and there are people who can relate many more items on the list than others. In addition, the more time spend on sensing or observing, the more likely the list of items increases proportionally. Because of these variables, it must be the case that something other than sense or observation is responsible for relating the items on the list.

    I grant there will be a difference between the totality of the items and the items that make the list, but I don’t grant it as relating to a difference in sense vs. observation.
    —————-

    But if it is true that there is a difference between sensation and observation, as I describe, then we have to account for that type of "judgement" or whatever it is, which induces us to observe only specific aspects of what we sense.Metaphysician Undercover

    You 1: what you have noticed, or "observed", is different from what you have "sensed"
    You 2: there is a difference between sensation and observation, as I describe

    There is a difference between sensation and observation, but this is not as you described, that being the difference between what is sensed and observation. Sensation is the affect the objects we have sensed have on us...a tickle, a sound, a taste, etc. These are all sensations which merely represent objects that physiologically affect our sense organs.

    I don’t know what to do with this, now, because I’m not sure what it is you’re arguing.
  • Coherentism
    I suppose we may be using "observation" in different ways.Metaphysician Undercover

    Perhaps. For me, everything in its place: sound sensation is hearing, tactile sensation is feeling, olfactory sensation is smelling.....sight sensation is seeing, and that which is seen is observed. We do not observe the smell of frying bacon, we do not taste B-flat, and we do not hear the sight of fast-moving clouds.

    To me, observation implies judgement having been past on the acts of sensation, such that a decision as to what will be remembered out of all that has been sensed, has been madeMetaphysician Undercover

    From the above, it is clear any sensation has its possible judgement, but their respective sources, hence the conceptions under which they are subsumed, will be completely different. Observation directly requires extension of matter in space, for instance, but the sensation of sound only directly requires changes in air pressure, which is not required by extension.

    Judgement passed on sensation, rather than being mere observation, is empirical knowledge. Sensation upon which a judgement is not forthcoming, insofar as we must admit to an “I don’t know” about it, still manifests as an experience. Aesthetic judgements, on the other hand, those having to do with non-cognitive feelings, or the sublime, are just the opposite, insofar as, while possibly motivated by experience, are not themselves judgements of experience, thus knowledge with respect to them is given immediately.

    Obviously, empirical judgements are susceptible to change with sufficient subsequent experience, but aesthetic judgements are not so susceptible, being grounded in the subject’s innate sense of quality, re: Hume’s “missing shade of blue” gedankenexperiment.
    —————-

    Reason, being conditioned only by itself, would have the capacity to produce any sort of fantasy, any imaginary thing.Metaphysician Undercover

    Yep. Self-control is not intrinsic to reason. We can certainly imagine anything we like, except the logically impossible. Which is ironic, because only reason gives the laws of logic, which reason then uses to control itself. So perhaps we trust reason over sensation because reason belongs to us, is present constantly, and if we didn’t trust it, we couldn’t claim to know anything whatsoever, including the very same laws of logic, the principles of mathematics, and even our own selves, which is absurd.

    Nevertheless, if one chooses to trust sensation over reason, he will be at a complete loss as to explaining what the sensation actually represents, unless he reasons about it, which puts him right back to trusting reason over sensation.
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?
    Can you say positively and concretely where and what the noumenon, -a, is/are?tim wood

    No, but from the text, I gather noumena would be representations of things in the world, arrived at by rationalities with means other than the intuitive system used by humans. I might be able to say how they are a logical possibility, or even a sheer happenstance of the understanding, but I can’t say anything about the reality of them. If I could, they’d be phenomena, hence not noumena after all.
    —————

    being prior to perception, remains inaccessible to perception.tim wood

    That which is prior to perception remains inaccessible to empirical knowledge, yes.

    Perception doesn’t access anything, it is just us being affected by something physical, external to our senses. Perception isn’t part of the cognitive process, it is merely the occasion for the use of it.

    If you mean by inaccessible to perception that something can’t be perceived at all, that’s fine, but being inaccessible doesn’t have anything to do with being prior to, because prior to perception presupposes the possibility of the very perception being claimed as inaccessible. A thing can’t be totally inaccessible, which would be the same logical deduction as being impossible, and be presupposed at the same time.

    Real physical objects in space and time are the cause of sensations in us, as effects, perception being the means by which one becomes the other. That’s why it is said perception is passive.....it doesn’t do anything except pass forward the data.

    Not to say any of that is gospel, mind you.
  • Coherentism
    Don't you think that there is judgement inherent within observation?Metaphysician Undercover

    Inherent in? No. Consequential to, certainly, with respect to time. Judgement presupposes that which is to be judged, either a posteriori perception on the one hand, or a priori thought on the other. We can think and arrive at a judgement without perceiving, but we cannot perceive and arrive at a judgement without thinking.
    ————-

    What do you mean with "conditioned by itself"?Metaphysician Undercover

    Reason is a prime human asset, along with the moral constitution. Reason conditioned by itself just means there is nothing else required for reason to function as that asset, other than the compendium of cognitive faculties incorporated within it. Things are required to reason about, of course, but not to function.

    Reason doesn’t create itself, but it does create its own objects. Consciousness, the ego, the self....a myriad of representations that are nothing but objects of reason.

    But it’s all speculative metaphysics, so......grain of salt here, dump truck full there.
  • Coherentism
    Why ought we trust natural reason as superior to observation whenever observation gives us incoherency?Metaphysician Undercover

    We trust reason over observation because reason is conditioned by itself, whereas observation is conditioned by Nature.

    Observation, being a strictly passive, unconscious mental activity, is not responsible for incoherency, such being the domain of judgement.

    It follows that even if judgement, a product of reason, occasionally leads the thinking subject astray, it is rarely the case, and even if there is a case, it is reason alone that has the ability to rectify its own mistakes.
    ————

    It makes complete sense to talk about "understanding" in a general sense, and determine characteristics which are proper to itMetaphysician Undercover

    Absolutely. Although, treating understanding as a fundamental human cognitive faculty, doesn’t really warrant scare quotes, Nietzsche’s “inverted goat’s feet”. No reason to be scared of it, or doubt its reality.

    Worthy subject matter, anyway.
  • Categories


    “...Categories are conceptions which prescribe laws a priori to phenomena, consequently to nature as the complex of all phenomena (natura materialiter spectata). And now the question arises—inasmuch as these categories are not derived from nature, and do not regulate themselves according to her as their model, for in that case they would be empirical, how it is conceivable that nature must regulate herself according to them, in other words, how the categories can determine a priori the synthesis of the manifold of nature, and yet not derive their origin from her?....”
    (CPR B163)

    I might suggest starting with “Of the Schematism of the Pure Conceptions of the Understanding“, A137/B176, not so much to know how the categories arise, but rather, what is contained in them. Some of them, anyway. He says you’re supposed to be able to “easily” fill in the rest, if only you had “the proper ontological texts”, and because I have no idea what those texts would be, I never did fill them in.

    The category of substance, for instance, has conceptions contained in it, such that the schema, the group of all relevant conceptions, of substance, is the permanence of the real in time. For some of the others, the schema of possibility is the accordance of the synthesis of different representations with the conditions of time in general, the schema of reality is existence in a determined time, the schema of necessity is the existence of an object in all time.

    Anyway.....have fun with it.
  • What is "real?"


    Yeah......but I don’t mind. As my ol’ buddy Horace laments, Quodcunque ostentis mihi sic, incredulus odi.
  • What is "real?"
    That which has an effect/affect.creativesoul

    Seconded.
  • The More The Merrier Paradox
    X makes the observation.....
    ....A single observation just doesn't suffice....
    TheMadFool

    we need to elicit the aid of Y and Z....
    ......."did you see that?" or "did you hear that?", etc.
    TheMadFool

    Hmmmm.....what are Y and Z going to do, tell X he didn’t make an observation? Better not, lest the gedankenexperiment immediately contract itself.

    A single observation does suffice, at least for the determination that perception has been met with something. Doesn’t matter that the observation doesn’t relate to extant knowledge, it’s still an observation of something real, otherwise it couldn’t have been an observation. It’s just an O, but it must be a real O.

    assigning a probability value for O being real.TheMadFool

    How could it not be real? There are no observations of the not-real. Even a mirage is real, albeit mistakenly judged as a false reality. Besides, even Y and Z, all else being equal, would observe a mirage just as mistakenly as X.

    if I'm correct, there seems to be serious flaw with the repeatability principleTheMadFool

    For a mere observation, I would agree; the repeatability principle is irrelevant. For assigning a name to the observed, given lack of extant knowledge of it by X, Y, and Z, that would require some kind of three-way agreement. Or, they could all just call it what they want, and since there’s only three of them, probably wouldn’t hurt much. But let any one of the three, in turn, tell a forth, and the forth guy is gonna have some trouble.

    Interesting, even without all the probability stuff.
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?
    they really can't because then no real novel discoveries would take place at all3017amen

    That’s the way I see it. Humans have this propensity for “what if...”, for no apparent reason, other than some arbitrary question simply presents itself. At the immediacy of “what if...”, all is a priori. Thereafter of course, pure reason becomes practical.
    ————

    it seems a priori knowledge has inner necessity and also true universality.3017amen

    Agreed; the conditions under which contradiction is impossible. And if contradiction is impossible, that for which necessity and universality are the grounding principles, absolutely must be true, re: the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, all bodies are extended....and a host of others.
    ————-

    In other words, why do I care whether all events are causational, and what causes me to wonder about cause?)3017amen

    Ya know.....we as plain folks probably don’t. But reason does, because in order to answer a question with absolute certainty, it must not be met with merely another question. In other words, the answer must be unconditioned, have no contingent predicates. But it’s not the finding of the unconditioned by which we think as humans, it is the search for it by which we think, and when we’re all happy, insofar as this any one question is answered sufficiently, we stop looking for the unconditioned by simply neglecting its relevance.
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?
    No one else tossed in a nickel here, so allow me......for whatever my nickel’s worth:

    Kant might not have believed in a thing in itself.Gregory

    It isn’t a question of believing. There are things, our knowledge of those things only extends as far as the representation of them, therefore there very well could be something left over in the thing that isn’t represented. That’s not a fact, it’s merely possible, because otherwise, we are justified in claiming complete knowledge of things, yet time and again we have been shown to be wrong. So either the fault in knowledge is from the system we use to acquire it, or, the thing wasn’t as well known as we thought. If we can prove the apodeictic certainty of our knowledge system, then it remains that the fault lays in the thing itself. Or, the thing as it is in itself.
    —————

    If you throw out the noumena all we have is appearance that contradicts itself.Gregory

    Noumena are already great big nothings anyway, so throwing them out isn’t really doing anything.

    In Kant, appearance is how physical sensation....the output from sense organs to the cognitive system....is represented in the system. As such, appearance cannot contradict itself because mere appearance isn’t yet anything contradictory. It just is something, the nature of which system has not yet determined. From sensing a tickle, we do not yet know what caused it. Could be a hair, a bug, the wind...whatever.

    In Kant, the only part of the system that contradicts itself is understanding, and the part that contradicts the system as a whole, is judgement.
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?
    And if this dichotomy were so "traditional", it could not play any serious role in the Copernican turn, which is hardly admissible.Sentience

    It is traditional, it doesn’t play a part in the Copernican turn, as you call it, admissibility aside.

    The real dichotomy on Kantian metaphysics, is between sensibility and understanding, the former historically the only condition for knowledge, derived from experience alone, the latter forthwith being shown to be just as valid as a knowledge source, but derived from pure thought alone, and actually is the ground for knowledge a posteriori. It’s always been that way, Kant just made the reality of it accessible.
    —————

    How can they be completely un-Kantian if they adhere to the analytic/synthetic dichotomy?Sentience

    I never said they were. I said to be un-Kantian is to reject a priori synthetic propositions, the domain of principles and what is derivable from them.

    It occurs to me that you may be attempting to understand Kant with some post-modern analytic system. If you can do that, fine. I haven’t seen it yet, but that only means either you haven’t done it, or you have done it and it flew right over my head. Either way....my interest is waning.
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?
    How can they adhere to the Copernican turn then?Sentience

    The pure empiricists don’t, holding with the assertions that the physical world is primary, as opposed to the rationalists who hold with subjectivity being the primary. The transcendental idealist, on the other hand, recognizes the equality of both, in conjunction with each other.
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?


    Don’t we need to distinguish between rejecting synthetic propositions, and a priori synthetic propositions? I agree the rejection of the a priori would seem to halt the thinking that is always antecedent to hypotheticals, but wouldn’t necessarily halt the thinking, if not antecedent to then at least in conjunction with, observation.

    And the scientific method, hence the physicalists, always start from observation, so I agree, synthetic qua contingent propositions cannot be rejected. Actually, I don’t think a priori synthetic propositions are rejected either; it’s just that they are not recognized as such.
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?


    Ok. So you think that because Kant gave a synopsis of the differences between analytic and synthetic judgements, truths...whatever...that he is responsible for the reality of them? Do you see there is scant difference between Aristotelian necessity/contingency propositional dualism, and Kantian analytic/synthetic propositional dualism? What is different, and strictly Kantian, is the a priori designation for synthetic propositions, those having nothing whatsoever to do with experience, not in their proofs, but in their construction, the validity of which neither Aristotle nor Hume considered.
    —————

    it is even not true to assert that Hume is close enough to Kant in this regard.Sentience

    Correct. Hume rejected a priori truths, and a priori reason in general, being a proponent “constant conjunction” rather than admitting the purposes and validity of pure a priori cognitions.
    ————-

    Therefore, those who reject synthetic a priori propositions but adhere to the dichotomy itself are still Kantian enough to create a controversy I have formulated.Sentience

    Those who reject the a priori synthetic domain reject transcendental epistemological philosophy, hence cannot call themselves Kantian enough for anything. Adherence to the dichotomy itself, merely the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions alone, could apply to anyone who thinks about it. But it all goes haywire for the common understanding when the a priori conditions are appended.

    Not to say there isn’t some controversy formulated, but I don’t really understand what it is. Guess I’m just not feeling it, as you’ve put it forward.
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?
    Isn't a "singular concise, logical methodology" in question precisely the analytic/synthetic dichotomy in the first place?
    — Sentience

    Before I respond to that, I would ask, how would you think it is so?
    Mww

    Well, prima facie, because the dichotomy in question is perhaps the main logical innovation of Kant that occupies one of the central places in his argumentation.Sentience

    Kant didn’t innovate the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, those having been in philosophical existence for millennia, and to which he paid little mind. Aristotle, remember? All he did was propose, then prove, the validity of a certain kind of synthetic proposition, the a priori kind, which itself came to occupy a central place in his argumentation. The others he merely considered as given, and of no particular import with respect to transcendental philosophy.

    So I still don’t know how you think this is so.
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?
    I don't fully understand why noumena are not things-in-themselves and would rather say that noumena are things-in-themselves from the point of view of Kant's implicit assumptions.Sentience

    That is a falsification of Kantian theoretical conditions. The thing of the thing-in-itself is a real physical object, the affect on our sensibility giving us sensations. The in-itself of the thing in itself is that which is not represented in us as phenomena, but is that which belongs to the thing as it is in itself without being represented. But that which is not so represented, is not thereby noumena. The common misunderstanding of Kantian theoretical conditions is that just because we don’t know the thing as it is in itself, and we do not know conceptions represented as noumena at all, that the thing in itself is noumenal. This is catastrophically false, from a purely transcendental Kantian point of view. There is no reason whatsoever to consider objects the understanding thinks, which are mere conceptions, as being equivalent to that which belongs to an object as it is in itself, the very conceptions of which are unavailable to us.
    —————

    Isn't a "singular concise, logical methodology" in question precisely the analytic/synthetic dichotomy in the first place?Sentience

    Before I respond to that, I would ask, how would you think it is so?
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?
    time, space, and causality are 'subjective' precisely because of grounding on synthetic a priori judgments.......

    I think this is backwards. Pure intuitions are subjective, but by being subjective, that is, “...as the formal capacity of the subject's being affected by objects, and thereby of obtaining immediate representation...”, with respect to space and time only (not causality, which belongs to the pure categories of the understanding), synthetic a priori judgements become possible. From “...For there are no other subjective representations from which we can deduce synthetical propositions a priori, as we can from the intuition of space...”, it is clear the subjective representation is always antecedent to any proposition constructed by means of it.
    ————-

    ........the role of the latter in the Copernican turn is decisive.
    Sentience

    Granted, in as much as the logical proof of the possibility of synthetic a priori conditions justified the metaphysical leap from objects being necessary and sufficient for human knowledge, to objects being necessary, but not in themselves sufficient.
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    As for the noumenal/phenomenal, (...) it is at least clear that this dualism is simply an integral part of the Copernican turn.Sentience

    I don’t see it, myself. The metaphysical paradigm shift, re: “...When he found that he could make no progress by assuming that all the heavenly bodies revolved round the spectator, he reversed the process, and tried the experiment of assuming that the spectator revolved, while the stars remained at rest. We may make the same experiment with regard to the intuition of objects. If the intuition must conform to the nature of the objects, I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori. If, on the other hand, the object conforms to the nature of our faculty of intuition, I can then easily conceive the possibility of such an a priori knowledge....”, has nothing to do with a dualism, per se, but only with a singular concise, logical methodology.

    Key is “nature of our faculty of intuition”, which is the source of phenomena. Noumena, on the other hand, as has been mentioned, is the preview of understanding, and its propensity to think objects which never avail themselves to the human version of intuitive representation. In the Kantian cognitive system, understanding is far removed from intuition, requiring a synthesis with it, and in the case of pure thought, has no synthesis with it at all.

    Now, you may be of the mind that noumena are things-in-themselves, which gives rise to a natural dualism. But noumena are not things-in-themselves, thus the dualism is destroyed. To say noumena could be things-in-themselves to rationalities other than those using the human representational variety, is an altogether empty assertion, for it would be impossible for us to even understand how such could be the case.
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    whether there can be an explanation of how the Copernican turn could be possible without appeal to synthetic a priori truths.Sentience

    I would say not, at least from an Enlightenment approach. The necessity and universality of a priori cognitions in general had to be proven possible, in order to give the transcendental theory the power of logical law. To make it irreducible to inductive principles alone, in other words, which is the mistake he accused Hume of administering as a valid epistemological philosophy. It bears remembering that Kant was an Aristotelian logical advocate, thus grounded his theory on syllogisms out of respect for their susceptibility to empirical proofs, which Hume and the empiricists of the day could not provide.
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    'positivists' consider metaphysics 'meaningless'.Sentience

    Do they? Or do they think the science of metaphysics is meaningless? If so, it’s probably because there is no such thing as a proper science of metaphysics, as even Kant himself came to admit. But that takes nothing away from metaphysics being a valid explanatory cognitive theory.

    Anyway....if you’ve got decent counterarguments, fire away.
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?
    both distinctions are very important for Kant, so one could suspect that they are somehow interconnected. It seems that, after all, the connection is indirect — through the doctrine of synthetic a priori judgments.Sentience

    Neither one are that important, the one merely sets the stage for what Kant needed to logically prove, that Hume was wrong....or at least incomplete....insofar as there is such a thing as an priori pure reason, and one has a better understanding of his own knowledge, if he doesn’t “commit it to the flames”, and the other is merely a tacit admission that the human intuitively based representational system of a posteriori knowledge acquisition is not necessarily the only kind there is.

    As for positivists and such.....ehhhh.....I don’t care that much. They’re just names, after all. All certain knowledge of real things is given from experience, to be sure, but not all certain knowledge is of real things. The problem rests entirely on the respective susceptibility to proofs, and the methodology by which they are obtained.

    I’d be interested in an expansion on your line 3 reasoning. Without that, I’d withhold comment on the questions derived from the line of reasoning.....which I might not agree with.
  • Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?
    It is not uncommon to assert that Kantian dualism between the noumenal and the phenomenal rests precisely on the analytic/synthetic dichotomy.Sentience

    First I’ve heard of it.

    Analytic/synthetic distinction has to do with judgement or cognitions, in the form of logical propositions, in which the conception in the predicate directly relates to, in the case of the former, or indirectly adds to, in the case of the latter, the conception in the subject.

    On the other hand, phenomena has to do with the faculty of sensibility and its representation of things which are perceived, which always relates to intuition, whereas noumena has to do with the faculty of understanding and its representation of things that are merely thought, hence never relate to intuition, but to conceptions alone.

    Seems to me to be two very separate domains of discourse.

    Kant is very clear on exactly what he means by both the analytic/synthetic dualism, and the phenomenal/noumenal dualism, each having its own named section within the pertinent chapter. Post-Kantians, neo-Kantians and non-Kantians alike are nonetheless rather fond of taking The Esteemed Professor epistemological places to which he would never have agreed to go, the thoroughness of his thesis being the clue. I mean.....in 800 pages, you’d think he would have covered just about everything he wanted covered. Still, he does shoot himself in the foot a couple times, so, there is that........(sigh)
  • Reason And Doubt


    Glad I’m not Thomas.