Using the Earth as the example, what is the undetermined object here? — Andrew M

As you probably know, the first critique is 700-odd pages and took ten years to compose, and included in there, in order to fulfill the.....

“...completeness and thoroughness necessary in the execution of the present task. The aims set before us are not arbitrarily proposed, but are imposed upon us by the nature of cognition itself....”,

.........are terminologies for every damn thing specific to it. That, in conjunction with the methodology to which the terms belong, leads one down the merry, albeit unabridged, path of theoretical human thought.

So skip to the chase: an object presented to sensibility is nothing but affect, lets us know there’s something for the mind to get involved with. Imagination takes the affect, synthesizes to it a bunch of intuitions. (The psychologists simply call this memory; neurobiologists call it activated neural networks; physicalists, brain states...etc, etc, etc). Now we have a phenomenon, an undetermined object. Object because it is now intuited as being external to us hence empirical, and undetermined because as yet no concepts have been thought for it, which is the job of the understanding. We cannot yet have any knowledge whatsoever of the phenomenon, not even that sensibility has been affected. Again, psychologists call this the unconscious; neurobiologists call it part of the autonomic nervous system, physicalists call it hogwash....etc, etc, etc.

All the above is relatively instantaneous, of course. In the case of Earth, which is nothing new, all the concepts pertinent to the phenomenon have been previously processed, so all that’s required is for judgement to give its blessing.....yup, that’s Earth all right.....we cognize logical consistency, and know we’re looking at, talking about, picturing.....whatever....a very specific object of common experience.
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where else would the Earth exist? — Andrew M

Because the real object Earth affects sensibility, it’s physical location absolutely must be in space and time, an altogether convenient way of saying.....outside us, and serves as validation of objective reality. The representation of the empirical object that resides in the mind exists as a collection of determinant conceptions, thereby experienced, and referred to, as Earth.
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So why would Kant be assuming we know anything of objects a priori? — Andrew M

It isn’t that we know anything of objects a priori, it is rather that the means of knowing anything at all rests on principles a priori. Every cause has an effect; all bodies are extended; no two straight lines enclose a space....and so on. Some concepts we know a priori as ideas of conditions that have no object, round, singular, existence, necessity, to name a few, similar to Platonic Forms, Aristotelian predicaments (categories), even Hume’s passions.....which really aren’t, but ok.
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I do not acknowledge noumena. They serve no purpose other than to make people go where Kant himself refused to go and suppose for themselves things he never meant. It’s fine to understand how they were developed, but to use them for anything cannot be done.

Anyway......

If you treat free will as a catch-phrase instead of an a priori conception qualified by a transcendental idea.....

........you might be a metaphysical redneck.

Rhetorically speaking.

2

One man’s mess is another man’s Voluntary Diaspora Toward Infinite Becoming.

Deleted, cuz phat phingers made a mistake and fixing it wasn’t working......

That is, without human beings there is no phenomenal domain, and the Earth only exists within the phenomenal domain. — Andrew M

“......The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called phenomenon....”

While it is true that without humans there is no phenomenal domain, it does not follow from Kantian speculative epistemology that the Earth **only** exists within the phenomenal domain. The Earth is named in accordance with conceptions belonging to it, so is known to exist as a determined object. Still, it is phenomenon only insofar as the immediate temporality of the human cognitive system passes it by rote to judgement.
(Judgement merely for logical consistency a posteriori, because understanding already thinks the phenomenal object as representation contains the manifold of conceptions experience says it should have)
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nonetheless the phenomenal domain is not the world of naturalism since the former is dependent on the perceiver (per Kant's "Copernican revolution"). — Andrew M

While this is true, it is a misinterpretation of the so-called “Copernican Revolution”, which is in its simplest form:

“.....I may assume that the objects, or, which is the same thing, that experience, in which alone as given objects they are cognized, conform to my conceptions—and then I am at no loss how to proceed...”

It is clear the use of the method used by Copernicus, in switching perspectives, pertains to Kant long after the phenomenal stage in his rational system espoused in the first critique. All he is doing is justifying a particular means by initially assuming an end. Then he goes back to establish the means such that the end is logically obtained as originally assumed. Combined with the part above about phenomenal domain being undetermined objects, and here objects are given in experience thus really determined, is shown the difference in the temporal placement.

Furthermore, the whole idea behind bringing Copernicus into the scene was to justify a priori cognitions, which obviously have nothing whatsoever to do with the world of naturalism, but only the possibility of knowledge with respect to it.

“....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......( )......Before objects are given to me, that is, a priori, I must presuppose in myself laws of the understanding which are expressed in conceptions a priori. To these conceptions, then, all the objects of experience must necessarily conform....”

It is the how they necessarily conform that is the ground of the epistemological theory itself, and where all those confusing terms and their temporal locations are to be found.

Or so it seems........

I don’t know so much about Husserl, but I’m pretty sure Kant wouldn’t go so far as to say the transcendent is necessary for experience.
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t + 8hrs: either you fixed it or I read it wrong initially. Either way....now I’m at peace with the world as It appears to me.

All it does is to reveal the already bleeding obvious logic of our ways of talking about (empirical) things. — Janus

Agreed. Looking back, after recognizing the empirical truth of some proposition, and then saying such truth was always the case, or the conditions that enabled that truth were always the case, is just absolutely useless practical information. Who gives two shits and half a dollar if a thing always was before anything is known about what it is.

Therein lies the issue with the concept of truth. — leo

Not really that much of a deal, given the Big Picture. Human empirical knowledge, that is, what we think of as true as detailed in propositions, is absolutely predicated on experience. Because extant experience is a minute fraction of possible experience, it follows necessarily that extant knowledge is a minute fraction of possible knowledge. Hence, what we think of as true is only so, until experience shows it isn’t.

My point is that this true proposition is true under this set of criteria, that true proposition true under that set of criteria. — tim wood

Wha......that was all you were trying to get across the first time? Ok, fine. At least I see a way clear of that aporia issue.

Which leaves us with.......because, as you say, truth depends on which set of criteria is in use, it is reasonable to ask which set of criteria the rational agent uses? If a human uses a logical system, insofar as cognition logically sustains or contradicts observation, then we’re right back where we started.
(Major premise, minor premise, conclusion; understanding, judgement, cognition. The conclusion we call valid or sound, the cognition we call true or false. Same-o, same-o.)

With that in mind, we don’t prove it’s hot outside, per se, but rather, we prove that the observation it’s hot outside is sustained.
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I just have come to see it (knowledge) as a many and not a one, nor reducible to a one — tim wood

And I will hold up the other end, by saying knowledge is reducible to one, but necessarily of many things. Knowledge *of* and knowledge *that* is still just knowledge. Knowledge itself being no more than the condition of the intellect.

I’m out of shoes.

And that truth is, there isn't one. — tim wood

I never took you for such an epistemic nihilist. You done went and killed off knowledge!!!!

Riddle me this, my good man: If the general expression X + Y = Z is a logical truth, the denial of which, as was mentioned herein would trash the system of mathematics, why wouldn’t anything specific you plugged into the expression....that would fit of course....be just as true?

I don’t care who y’are; that right there was funny.

I shall not rain on your well-organized parade, but I do wonder about that aporia thing. Just seems like if there are general logical laws, specifics plugged into those laws properly shouldn’t be susceptible to aporia.

Ruunnn......rabbit run!!
Dig that hole, forget the sun....

(Sigh)

I like it. Most of it.

Suit yourself.

truth is not seen as belief but as "what ought to be believed". — leo

Interesting.

The same place everything else human comes from, that isn’t fully and sufficiently biologically/physiologically explanatory.......pure reason.

Yeah yeah yeah....I know. Brain states and all that. Even if the words cat and mat relate to certain action potentials across certain gaps in certain pathways in certain brains, it is completely irrelevant, because we don’t think or express thoughts in those terms. Be that as it may, and it is of course, if we don’t give reason its just reward, which is the juxtaposition of those terms into the terms we actually do use, we may as well stop talking. By “we” I mean everybody.

A week ago I wrote, “Understood, and accepted......as far as it goes.”, in response to practically the same point you’re making here.

Nevertheless, I defer from the correspondence in the theory you use, to the correspondence in the theory I use. I don’t think your version goes far enough in the explication of what is correspondent. What I accept is that there is a certain relation between propositions and states-of-affairs.

But as you are often inclined to say.....how does that work, to which I say.....change the realm of the correspondence and you’ll have the how, at least from one point of view.

No religiosity required. Not even a “cosmic religious feeling”, as Albert would have us know.

Some truth values are a matter of judgement. I am well aware that “Terrapin Station” is the name of a 1977 Grateful Dead album (I owned it on 8-track, as a matter of fact), but the proposition “you are a Dead-Head because you use a facsimile of it to represent yourself”, is nothing but my personal judgement. The truth value of which is no more than merely possible, however, because there is no contradiction between the conception contained by the subject of the proposition I constructed for myself (“Terrapin Station” represents something) and the conception contained by the predicate of that same proposition (Dead-Heads sometimes use representations of Grateful Dead experiences).

The whole point is that there are some truths without judgement, therefore judgement cannot be an absolutely necessary qualification for all truth. That is not to say what is absolutely necessary, but only what isn’t.

I'm (vaguely)familiar with the introduction of CPR where Kant called judgment an innate talent that cannot be taught, etc. I disagree because judgment is far too complex a thought/process for a human to be born with already fully intact and working(innate). — creativesoul

It does not follow from the availability of an innate capacity, that it’s proper employment is thereby given.

“.....A physician therefore, a judge or a statesman, may have in his head many admirable pathological, juridical, or political rules, in a degree that may enable him to be a profound teacher in his particular science, and yet in the application of these rules he may very possibly blunder—either because he is wanting in natural judgement (though not in understanding) and, whilst he can comprehend the general in abstracto, cannot distinguish whether a particular case in concreto ought to rank under the former; or because his faculty of judgement has not been sufficiently exercised by examples and real practice. Indeed, the grand and only use of examples, is to sharpen the judgement....”

Note “real practice”, a.k.a......experience. The capacity to judge is innate; the capacity to judge the synthesis of intuition to conception is developed, because both intuition and conception are themselves developed.

One never thinks about the physicality of getting a fork to his mouth, but let something go haywire, and he invariably recalls the very physicality in order to figure out what happened. Given enough experience in some thing, attentive thinking diminishes with respect to that thing, but cannot be said to be non-existence. Otherwise, it would be impossible to recall anything at all.

The setting out happens after the thinking, although the time differential borders on immediate. But it obviously cannot be instantaneous. We see this in, e.g., when the eye looks aside during verbal communication.

Nothing is ever written, spoken or displayed, that isn’t first thought. Seems like we should analyze how we came to our thoughts before we analyze how other minds are affected by our communication of them.

If judgment were necessary for truth — creativesoul

They are not, necessarily. Any analytic proposition is true in itself, without judgement related to it. “All bodies are extended”, “A = A” require no judgement whatsoever; extension belongs to bodies necessarily, and that an identity is not itself is both logically impossible and absurd. That “logically impossible” and “absurd” are themselves judgements, but under the conditions given in separate propositions which are not analytic.

Judgement is the means to a truth in synthetic propositions only, wherein the subject concept and the entirely different predicate concept contained by the proposition are understood as standing in logical relation to each other, or they are not, judgement decides, and cognition is the demonstration.
(E.g., I thought wrong, because I misjudged the situation as I understood it)

Now, now....go easy on the po’ boy. He’s just jealous there isn’t a decent naive realist philosopher that can’t be run aground by even a mediocre Kantian espousing a logically consistent epistemological dualism.

(Chuckles to self....ego? ME??? Nahhhhh)

So, I would say that there were no facts, just as there were no truths or any determinate actuality, prior to the advent of humans. — Janus

Mark me up in that column as well. All that is required for facts and truths to arise may very well be extant, but in their own natural form, not in some form constructed by human understanding as a means to organize itself.

May your studies abate your apathy.

Peace.

The proper dialectically consistent response to a proposition with a singular conception in its predicate (truth is a judgement), is with a predicate containing a singular conception of its own, hence truth is a cognition. However, just as judgement in and of itself is not the prime explication for truth, neither is cognition, in and of itself, insofar as truth is a relation, and no singular conception can in any way be relatable.

A more exact formulation for truth with respect to judgement might be: judgement is the necessary means to truth, and by association, the more exact formulation for truth with respect to cognition would be: cognition which conforms to its object is the necessary condition for truth.

On my view truth is a judgment. — Terrapin Station

OK, I accept that. I’d rather go with truth is a cognition. Judgement is always the means, truth is only one of three possibly ends, along with falsity and indeterminacy. Cognition is that part of the whole operation we’re actually aware of, usually as an image. While there’s no harm in saying truth follows from a judgement, that’s not the same as saying truth is a judgement.

It’s the same as saying “I understand what you mean”. Saying I understand is just a shortcut for the whole mental process, a simple version of “what you just said about X conforms exactly to what I think about X”. We say truth is a judgement because the most obvious capacity for arriving at a truth is to judge something internal and related to it, but overlooked is the fact there are certain analytic propositions, necessarily true, for which no judgement is at all required.

Put the proverbial shoe on the other existential foot, and we have the problem of synthetic propositions, which all correspondence theories entail by definition, which in their turn require a judgement regarding the subject/predicate correspondence contained by the proposition itself, for the truth which may or may not follow from it with respect to a certain condition in the empirical world. If one is to claim truth is a judgement, it is only with synthetic proposition does the claim carry any weight, but at the same time stands to be easily dismissed as an insufficient claim.........if one digs deep enough into the metaphysical weeds.

Take your water bottle; it’s dry and dusty down there.

Yeah, there’s always been a philosophy built on that idea, from Anaxagoras to Hegel. Could be, I dunno. I guess it depends on what one chooses for his bottom line.....some basic assumption from which all else is given rise, everything from usefulness to mere possibility. The logical laws of thought come to mind, as being absolute, irreducible, necessary truths.

We have yet to evolve from our proclivity to imagine what experience cannot teach.

There is that, but humans always seek truth, yet have no access to the transcendent. So if truth somehow reside in, or is predicated on, that which we have no contact outside our idea of its possibility, truth itself can be no more than possible. Which relegates logic and mathematics to being dead in the water. Seems to me the best way to relieve truth’s arbitrariness, is to predicate it on something a little more available to our reason.

There is an argument that the final cause of reason, that which is itself unconditioned, giving irreducibility its ground, suggests the transcendent domain logically. But we live in the phenomenal domain, so what we think truth is should be derived from it or its manifestations alone. Even then, we still have things we can’t explain with empirical principles.

Sucks to be us, don’t it?

our judgements in my view cannot coherently be described as “truth” — AJJ

Agreed. Judgements are not described as truth. A state of affairs empirically, or analytic propositions a priori, are described as truths.
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Why judge truth on the basis of a cognition conforming to its object being irreducible? — AJJ

I guess because its negation is absurd. If I see a cat on a mat, and I judge the cat is not on the mat, such that I can say the proposition “the cat is on the mat” is false, after I’ve perceived it to be so, I am what the aforementioned passage indicated: I’m just plain stupid.

“The moon is made of green cheese” is a valid proposition, and before anybody got there to determine what the moon is actually made of, no judgement is intellectually valid about the truth of the proposition**. Silly, yes; exemplary foolishness, yes; truthful?.....unknown, because the criteria for establishing the truth of the moon’s composition has not been met. Now that it is known with certainty what the moon is made of, even though I have no direct experience of it, there is still empirical evidence available to me, which satisfies the logical criteria for the affirmative judgement that the proposition “the moon is made of dirt and rocks and stuff” falsifies the proposition “the moon is made of green cheese”.

** Feynman advanced a similar proposition in his “sum over histories” paradigm, when he said because we don’t know which path the particle took on it’s way to it’s exhibition, we can just as honestly say it went every path available to it. Which are, of course, infinite.
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I shall leave you with your medieval transcendentalism, preferring the continental Enlightenment version, myself. As you say....we all speak from our personal prejudices.

Very well, but are you not then left with the need to show how it is true that something has participated in it? In effect, would you not have to judge whether that something has participated? To say something about X is true because it has participated in truth is just an ill-disguised tautology, is it not? It really doesn’t tell you anything.

.......left without an explanation of truth unless it is objective — AJJ

Truth can be properly defined, but I’m not sure that’s the same as an explanation of it. I’m not sure truth being something we discover the participation in, as being any more so. To say truth is that a cognition conforms to its object is irreducible, and perhaps therefore sufficient for an explanation?

Ahhhh.....I see what you mean. Yes, well, the human cognitive system is for the most part purely speculative in its fundamental operations. So it may be said reason is judged to be the foundational reason for judging.....a roundabout way of overstating the obvious. It is, after all, absurd to posit we don’t think as a matter of course; it’s what we do. If it is natural for us to think, it is just as natural to claim reason is the be-all end-all of the human mental apparatus, for reason is nothing if not merely the elaboration of the act of thinking. That should be foundation enough, and perhaps the proof of it is that it’s negation is impossible, but on the other hand is encountered the intrinsic circularity of reason investigating itself.

The idea of truth by discovery presupposes truth is a property in itself. Even if it is, as long as humans are involved, things like meaning and value enter the scene, and we’re right back where we started. Still, if you like your objective truth.......go for it.

......explanatory regress, which in effect means there is no foundational reason for judging a proposition to be true. — AJJ

I don’t see a prevarication, or equivocation. I don’t judge the proposition/state of affairs duality for its correspondence, but rather I judge the subject/predicate duality for its correspondence. In this view, there can’t be any explanatory regress; either intuition corresponds to conception by rule or it does not. End of story. Well......end of that story anyway.

Where do you see prevarication coming from? If by it you mean the occasion where one person cognizes a truth but another person does not, under the exact same conditions, I am reminded of......

“....For although education may furnish, and, as it were, engraft upon a limited understanding rules borrowed from other minds, yet the power of employing these rules correctly must belong to the pupil himself; and no rule which we can prescribe to him with this purpose is, in the absence or deficiency of this gift of nature, secure from misuse. Deficiency in judgement is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a failing we know no remedy. A dull or narrow-minded person, to whom nothing is wanting but a proper degree of understanding, may be improved by tuition, even so far as to deserve the epithet of learned. But as such persons frequently labour under a  deficiency in the faculty of judgement, it is not uncommon to find men extremely learned who in the application of their science betray a lamentable degree this irremediable want....”

Guy calls me up, says....dude, guess what? The cat’s on the mat. What else could I say but....wonderful. Glad to hear it. There’s no way possible for me to grant the truth of the proposition, because I have no means to eliminate it’s negation. The most reductive judgement I’m allowed is granting that it is certainly possible the cat is indeed on the mat, because it is conceivable that he is, in turn because I have extant intuitions of cats and mats and no experience of them ever being mutually exclusive. Conversely, I am also not rightly allowed to judge that the cat is not on the mat.

This is why care needs be taken to understand just what is corresponding to what. The correspondence theory of truth says a proposition is true if it matches a state of affairs, but one still is absolutely required to know with apodeictic certainty what that state is, if he is to cognize a truth about it by means of a subject/object proposition. This is why logicians say P is true IFF it is the case P. If follows that the empirical condition must be antecedent to the proposition itself, anything else warrants merely a possible truth. And.....er......truth be told, the proposition actually presupposes the state of affairs to which it’s asked to correspond.
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Addendum the first:

If the example proposition doesn’t correspond to the state of affairs unless I judge it to, on what basis am I making that judgment in the first place? — AJJ

Herein lay the problem with the correspondence theory of truth understood in this manner. If the proposition does not correspond to the state of affairs to which it is asked to assign a truth value, it’s because a judgement has been made by which the subject of the proposition does not belong to the predicate, state of affairs be what it may. One does not judge whether the proposition corresponds, but whether the subject and object correspond, or not, from which the truth is cognized, or not, with respect to a certain empirical condition. This is a lot easier to grasp if it be granted that any truth is thought long before it is ever put in propositional form, and the only reason to put any thought at all in propositional form is to communicate it.
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Addendum the second:

It seems, so long as you lock truth within the mind, you get an explanatory regress. — AJJ

I would rather say, not so much an explanatory regress, but a tentative quality of knowledge, and by association, of truth itself. I shy away from explanatory regress because there are theoretical predicates for the human rational system, logically consistent and governed by the principles of universality and necessity. In other words, laws. But then, no matter what anybody says about it, somebody else can say something else, so.......so much for laws. That being said, experience informs us empirical knowledge is never static, even if pure a priori knowledge most certainly is.

I think we say we lock truth with the mind because that’s the only way we can, being the kind of agency we are. It’s why fundamental dualism is impossible to refute. And also why, even if we are not entitled to our own facts, we are sometimes entitled to our own truths.

I do not think "freedom" has any place in the physical world. It's simply not something the laws of physics provide the grounds for. — Echarmion

Absolutely. And, as if that wasn’t enough, it does not follow necessarily, that because empirical claims are unprovable, and the concept of freedom is unprovable, that freedom is an empirical conception. It is logically consistent, on the other hand, that because the empirical domain has its principle causality, the rational domain should have its own principle causality. Freedom’s as good an idea/concept/word as some other, seems like.

Correspondence: whether or not, and the manner in which, a proposition relates to a state of affairs;
Proposition: a declarative subject/predicate linguistic construction;
State-of-affairs: a given condition of some physical domain.

A subject/predicate linguistic construction is a rational capacity;
The condition of any physical domain is given by the human sensory capacity and is the ground of experience;
Therefore, that a proposition relates to a state of affairs is the relation between reason and experience.

All rational constructions are the determinations of the understanding;
All intuitions are the representations of the sensory capacity;
Therefore, the relation between reason and experience is the relation between intuition and understanding.

It follows necessarily that correspondence, re: whether or not, and the manner in which, a proposition relates to a state of affairs, must be determined by a human faculty that is not intuition nor understanding, and is called the faculty of judgement and is a spontaneous determinant. If the judgement is such that an intuition conforms to a conception, it is affirmative and the cognition which follows from it is true, and serves as a definition of truth, insofar as a cognition absolutely must conform to its object. If the judgement is such that the intuition does not conform to the conception, the judgement is either negative or undetermined, but in either case, no affirmative cognition is at all possible, and therefore no truth is given. Truth follows from a judgement, but a judgement does not necessarily offer truth, even if it is always the means to the possibility of it.

In addition, it is clear the advocate of the correspondence theory should have an ontological theory to support his truth claims, in order to justify, at least, his consideration of whatever a physical state of affairs might be. It is equally clear any ontological theory must use the correspondence theory it is trying to support, in order to claim any such state of affairs actually does in fact obtain, and the use of subject/predicate propositions is the form of such claim.

Bottom line........truth is what we think it is, until it becomes contradictory to maintain the thought. The truth about an object is the only permissible sense of the term “objective truth”, because all truths are, when properly critiqued, merely thought, hence predicated on a rational condition alone. Proofs of them, on the other hand, have their own predication.

“And now you know the RREEESSSSTTT of the story”.

Everything, whatever that may be: does it have a spatial or temporal location? — frank

That every thing has a spatial and temporal location is merely the convention of human intelligence, as the means to show position of objects relative to diverse observations of them. It is much less a matter of convention to suppose the Universe is a thing, for none other than the entirely insufficient reason that because it can be talked about it must exist, and that which exists empirically must meet the conditions of time and space. Juxtapositioning these major and minor conventions brings about a contradiction, insofar as on the one hand the Universe as a thing is required to be extended in space and successive in time, because that’s what convention says things do, yet on the other hand no thing extending into one space can at the same time contain the same one space all else that is knowable, themselves extends into.

It follows necessarily, and with respect to the OP, that the Universe is not a thing therefore not subject to the same condition as things, or, the Universe is a thing extended into a space other than the space the Universe’s constituent objects extend into. The former is possible but unknown, the latter is possible but unknowable, from a strictly human perspective.

Fun question.

Ok.

Understood, and accepted......as far as it goes.

I attest that I do not always think in sentences yet I hold a whole passel of self-evident truths. Am I to understand your meta-theory covers that?

What form does a meta-theory of truth have? What is it about truth that a meta-theory can be constructed around it?