Comments

  • How do you tell your right hand from your left?
    …..people have difficulty detecting philosophical problems….frank

    ….which presupposes there is one. Well, shucks, Mr. Bill, seeing as we’re all human, of course there is one. But which one is at issue here? It certainly can’t be as simple as telling one’s left from his right hand. Left is over here, right is over there and n’er the twain shall meet. What’s the big deal?

    “….his (Kant’s) basic argument in the 1768 essay is that Leibniz’s view does not enable one to distinguish between a left handed glove and a right handed glove….”

    That’s the basic philosophical problem, circa1768, and I’ll wager people have difficulty detecting it, because they haven’t a clue as to what the ground of the basic philosophical problem actually was, insofar as it requires knowing what Leibniz’s view was.

    Leibniz 1679 and Wolff 1716 maintained similarity and equality as necessary and sufficient conditions for the congruency of things, re: enclosable in the same limits. Pre-Critical Kant maintained similarity and equality may be necessary but are not in themselves sufficient, in that orientation is also required to entail congruent counterparts. It follows that incongruent counterparts are those entailing similarity and equality of constituent structure but of dissimilar orientation.

    Dissimilar orientation: left is over here, right is over there. That’s how I tell one from the other. Which is quite an empty consolation, altogether haphazard, which highlights the REAL philosophical problem: how to get from the absolute space implied by the equality/similarity conditions for the congruency of things, to the apprehension of spatial relations in and of themselves, irrespective of things in spaces, yet serves to “prove” the implications of “Leibniz's theorem” wrong?

    Anyway….Kant’s 1768 proof was itself falsified by the Möbius strip and the Klein bottle, even though he himself had given up on it by 1770’s PhD dissertation and his Critical-era 1786 Metaphysics of Natural Science, in which was deconstructed the Newtonian notion of absolute space, and with it, by extension, the Leibniz/Wolff conditions.

    As my ol’ buddy Paul Harvey used to say, now you know the rrresssssst of the story.
  • Donald Hoffman
    Objects (…) must have a way of being, independent of us, in virtue of which they exist independently of us.Manuel

    I see a green tree.Manuel

    What is wrong here?Manuel

    The entire raison d’etre of the first Critique, is to prove those two statements are contradictory.

    I think your interpretation of Kant would be called a "deflationary" one?Manuel

    I’m ok with that, if “deflationary” means getting to the bottom of why those two statements are contradictory.
  • Donald Hoffman


    I thought context might help. Or not.

    You may know Kant considers the “I” that thinks to be the ground of consciousness, just meant to provide that “….all my representations belong to me alone….”, such that there’s no chance for “…a varied and many-sided self as there are representations….”.

    I bring this up because a distinction is required between the understanding that thinks, which is the same as taking for granted it can consider objects as things in themselves, and the “I” that thinks. Conceptions belong to understanding, they arise through spontaneity with respect to phenomena, and they also arise spontaneously even without the synthesis with phenomena, hence the intelligible object, and this is what it means for the understanding to think, the spontaneity of conceptions.

    The “I”, on the other hand, that thinks, indicates only the synthesis of representations in consciousness, which means the conceptions represented are already given, which means understanding has already thought. This makes sense when we say, “I understand”, which makes explicit “I” as the transcendental ego representing the self, is not the same as the faculty of understanding, which is merely a logical functionary.

    Here, too, when he says, “I can think whatever I please provided only that I do not contradict myself…”, it happens that when understanding considers the objects it thinks as intelligible existences, understanding is contradicting itself, by trying to apply a category, existence, to that which isn’t even available for it to be applied to, insofar as such availability requires sensibility, not mere thought.

    Another way to think about it…..time. When we say, it just popped into my head, we’re talking about a sheer instant, that time when there was no considered object, and the next when there was. At that point of “there was”, there is no other cognitive constituency at work, there just hasn’t been any time for it.

    Ok, so now let it be given the human cognitive system doesn’t stop working, there are no blank spots while conscious and otherwise naturally functional. So we got this time of a considered object, and if the system keeps on rolling along as it should, it will do what it supposed to do, which is to form a cognition of the thing it just took for granted as a considered object. So now let it also be given that the means for cognizing anything at all has certain requirements, and one of these requirements is synthesis of representations…..and we find there just aren’t any representations present in the system to be synthesized, at the time understanding merely considers an object in itself.
  • Donald Hoffman
    Kant speaks about "things in themselves" and these are the ground of appearances. We do not know how this grounding relation works…..Manuel
    .

    The things-in-themselves are not the ground of appearances; if they were they would not be “in-themselves”. Things are the ground of appearances, hence the grounding relation of appearances is known to us. Cause and effect: for every sensation as effect there is necessarily a thing which appears, sufficient as a cause of it.

    …..only that it must be so, otherwise objects would relations all the way down, and that's incoherent for us.Manuel

    Objects are relations all the way down, insofar as they remain intelligible for us. Given from the principle of cause and effect, it is only incoherent for us when we look for one of those without the other connected to it. So…don’t look there.
    ————

    On the other hand, Kant speaks of noumena.Manuel

    Yes, he speaks of it, but only from pure understanding’s perspective….

    “….the understanding (…) takes for granted that an object considered as a thing in itself must be capable of being thought (…) and is thereby led to hold the perfectly undetermined conception of an intelligible existence (…) for a determinate conception of an existence, which we can cognize in some way or other by means of the understanding….”

    ….this isn’t to say understanding is in the act of thinking an object, but is comparable to what we would simple call something “just popped into my mind”. This cannot be the ding an sich from which are given the things that appear to sensibility, it is a thing in itself because it comes to understanding as a singular whole thought. Obviously, if something (in or as itself) pops into your mind, it must be capable of being in your mind (in or as itself), which is the same as it must be capable of being a thought (in or as itself). So whatever happens to pop into your mind is at that exact point, being nothing more a perfectly undetermined conception which exists nowhere but in your own intelligence, but it is there, which kinda suckers understanding into thinking it can do something constructive with it. But….as we all know….understanding can’t cognize a damn thing on its own. So it is that understanding takes for granted it can think objects, which it can, and can do something with them, which it cannot. Those things are the intelligible existences, the undetermined conceptions, called ……waaaiiiitt for itttttttt…..noumena.

    Positive or negative noumena don’t matter; each is noumena as far as understanding is concerned, and since understanding is the problem-child here, the exposition of its flawed or illegitimate functionality is paramount. Besides, positive or negative noumena have to do with intuition anyway, in which either there is a kind of it we don’t have, re: that kind which can develop its representations given merely intelligible existences, or, there is that kind we do have, re: that kind which develops its representations only because there are real existences.

    These are my impressions and I might have misread many things myself.
  • Donald Hoffman
    You will not bait me.....Manuel

    I wouldn’t dare such a thing.
  • Donald Hoffman


    Thanks, and hopefully I got it right enough. I got ’s attention, so…..we’ll see.
  • Donald Hoffman


    I look forward to it, and the opportunity to be shown how something in what I wrote can be understood at least differently, and perhaps better.
  • Donald Hoffman
    I am under the impression that Kant believed thing in itself or noumena was required for phenomena to appear.Gregory

    No need to remind you the tread subject is Hoffman. With that out of the way, and admitting I know very little of Hoffman’s philosophy, I’ll just say this:

    ….Kant’s thought is the thing-in-itself was required for the things that appear;
    ….the thing of the thing-in-itself just is the thing that appears;
    ….phenomena are not that which appears, but are intuitive representations of things that appear.

    ….noumena are never even in the conversation, they do nothing, are nothing, and cannot ever be anything, to us. They were never meant to be the same, never meant to be understood as similar or identical, as the thing-in-itself, but were only ever to be treated in the same way, re: as some complete, whole yet entirely unknowable something, by the cognitive system from which they both arise.

    …..Kant says things-in-themselves are real existent objects (Bxx), but never once says noumena are anything more than “…a thing which must be cogitated not as an object of sense, but solely through the pure understanding….” (B310).

    Gottlob Schulze was wrong.
  • Donald Hoffman
    What comes to mind for me is that the argument of the Third Meditation could, or may HAVE been, used by Kant in defense of noumena's existence. The thing-in-itself lives in twilight but it has to be there….Gregory

    Half-agreed, yes. Meditations 3, #14 and #15 forward a good, albeit generic, rendition of the subsequently infamous transcendental ding an sich. But it remains to be said, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the even more infamous transcendental noumena, for which, within Descartes’ notion of ideas and their relations to existent objects, and Kant’s of understanding and its relation to conceptions, there never was nor ever could be, any existence whatsoever.

    Kant defended noumena as a valid conception in us, but that is not to defend the existence of any noumenal things for us. And for Kant, such existence cannot be defended, insofar as to do so contradicts the criteria by which existence of things is given.

    Now, to be fair, he did say noumenal things cannot be said to be impossible, so maybe that can be considered a quasi-defense for an existence which was, for all intents and purposes, a mere conception. But to grant such existence in concreto destroys transcendental philosophy itself, which just might be why some folks go through the motions of attempting to prove it.
  • Donald Hoffman
    ….God must exist.Gregory

    Yes, insofar as substance is that which requires nothing for its existence (F. P., #51), of which there is but one, re: God, hence all substance to humans then being that which depends on nothing for its existence in us, but still nonetheless requires dependence on God in order to even be in us in the first place.

    But we cannot know of substance merely from its existential dependence, which I take you to mean by your “archetypes would be empty”, but only from an irreducible attribute by which at least the presence of a substance is known. He goes on to say “thought” is the irreducible attribute by which “mind” substance is known, extension the irreducible attribute that makes “thing” substance known (ibid, #53).

    I favor this argument, or at least the ideas it provokes, insofar as it serves as the fundamental ground of subsequent transcendental idealist methodology, by which mind/body dualism in general became the established standard for epistemological metaphysics, and the ontology relative to existential dependence of substances being God, is logically negated within that standard, without contradicting its establishment.
    (“Logically negated” here indicating not that it is impossible for God to be a causal condition of substance, but only that such causality is not necessarily the case. From here is developed the notion of pure practical reason, which in Kant is conditioned by freedom, and from THERE, is developed Fichte’s notion of freedom attributable over a much wider scale than mere thought, or substance of mind. And that development, finds no favor in me.)

    Oh. Its Passions of the Soul, 1649. Maybe a liberty taken by a translator, that labels it as passions of the mind?
  • Donald Hoffman


    Have it your way.
    ————

    Are you saying the self is a substance or not?Gregory

    Not. The schema of substance is the permanence of the real in time, and it is only by it that the succession and/or coexistence of phenomena can be determined. On the other hand, while it is possible to think “self”, it is not and can never be phenomenon, and merely represents the permanence of the unchangeable in all our conceptions, rather than the relation in time of those, to each other, which is called cognition.

    Descartes went to relatively great lengths to describe what kind of substance “mind” was, initial premise being, matter is definitely substance so if mind is very different from the matter of the body, it must be that mind a very different substance**. Those who came later made it clear that if substance is this it cannot be that, and while ol’ Rene was close enough in what “mind” does, he never quite let it be known how it does what it does, which, obviously, relates precisely to what it is, or at the very least, to what it is conceived as being.
    (** F.P., 1., #51- 64, 1644)
  • Donald Hoffman
    It seems to me consciousness is not a qualityAmadeusD

    Never said it was; qualitative measure belongs to or describes the state of the subject, and represents not that he is conscious of uniting all his representations under one conception, but that the unity is possible in him. In effect, in Kant, consciousness is the precursor to the synthesis of conceptions in a judgement; in order for that synthesis to be possible, there must be that by which synthesis itself is possible, and that resides in the self, as opposed to judgement which belongs to understanding, as unity between the self and all representations of which the self is conscious. And it is quality not quantity, because the number of representations is irrelevant with respect to the “conjunction” of any one of them with any other, hence the self’s consciousness of it, which just is the quality of his state.

    Or not. Take your pick.
  • Donald Hoffman
    However, if you think Kant coukd have refuted Fichte, it would be interesting to see how.Gregory

    I didn’t say anything about refutation; I said I could argue one against the other, which is easy because they go in different directions from a common transcendental origin.

    I’m not a fan of emergent consciousness. It is enough, that consciousness is nothing more than the qualitative state of the human subject. Parsimony: be as simple as possible without being so simple further explanation invites self-contradiction.
  • Donald Hoffman
    Here is my commentary…..Gregory

    ….and quite well done, I must say. I don’t feel it is my place to argue your position, even while I wouldn’t have any problem at all arguing Kant against Fichte. Which isn’t that big a deal; each successor wants more from his own philosophy than on whomever’s it is based, and a third-party arbiter can pick out the differences.

    He wanted to establish a very fact upon which all philosophy could be based. Was this just the cogito?Gregory

    Kant, positing the “I” that thinks as a transcendental idea, contradicts himself by attempting to make the cogito a fact; thus, it must remain a mere logically necessary condition in a speculative metaphysical philosophy.

    Do you think Fichte was successful in making the cogito a fact?
  • Donald Hoffman
    ….the metaphysical foundations of science has him constructing nature from intelligence….Gregory

    He constructs an understanding of Nature in accordance with a specific kind of intelligence. I don’t understand that project as “constructing” intelligibility, when such must already be given in order for an intelligence of any kind to fathom anything at all from that to which it is directed.

    There has to be something "out there" that wasn't phenomenal or spiritual from which intelligence can bounce its intuitions off of.Gregory

    Agree, and from that arises the notion that, no matter what that something out there happens to be, its intelligibility must given in order for a judgement to be determinable with respect to it. If a thing is intelligible in us as this or that thing, its intelligibility as becoming this or that must already inhere in the thing as a condition of it. That it is a thing is conditioned by its extension in space; that it is this or that thing is conditioned by its intelligibility.

    The "I" posits itself. Why? For the reason that it can. It's a strange loop.Gregory

    Yeah, I suppose. “Strange loop” a euphemism for the intrinsic circularity of pure reason herself, insofar as it is necessarily the clandestine use of reason by which reason becomes comprehensible enough to express as a speculative intellectual system. That there is that which thinks, is itself a thought.

    Thanks for bringing up Fichte in juxtaposition to Kant, but I still don’t see the constructing of intelligibility in either of them. Not that there it isn’t there, just that I’m not familiar with it as such.
  • Donald Hoffman
    The other problem is that of the "construction" of intelligibility….Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yeah, I suppose that’s my problem here: the idea of “constructing” intelligibility, that intelligibility is something constructed. I find nothing to suggest Kant’s philosophy, or, indeed anyone else’s, is about that, and in particular following from it, this notion of constructing the intelligibility of things.

    What's to say all minds don't construct radically different worlds?Count Timothy von Icarus

    Nothing at all; sometimes a mind does create….determine….a radically different world. Subsequently, if enough other minds come to the same judgement, that radically different world comes to be. Like….stop using leeches in medicine; let’s wipe out indigenous cultures in order to satisfy some conceived greater need.

    But we are supposedly constructing all that understanding?Count Timothy von Icarus

    Understanding is a merely speculative faculty of human intelligence, which is itself that which constructs. The use of personal pronouns helps to facilitate whatever conversations arise from intelligence, but intelligence in and of itself, in its natural activity, has no use for them.

    ….what is contained in the construction cannot be said to be present in what it is constructed from.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Correct. From a philosophical point of view, human intelligence is a speculative procedural system, in that the end (that which is contained in the construction, re: experience/knowledge) is not present in the means, or, that which the ends are constructed from (phenomenal and conceptual representations).
    ————-

    The problem comes up only when it is assumed that it is impossible to see the world as it "really is," because such knowledge would require "knowing the world without a mind."Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yes, such an assumption would be more than a problem; it would be an irrational venture into absurdity. Thankfully, no one of sufficient reason has ever been guilty of it.

    It remains conclusive, that is impossible to see….sense, intuit, comprehend, cognize, judge, experience….the world as it really is, but not because of the absence of a mind, but merely because that which does all that stuff, re: theoretical reason, is not part of what that stuff is done to, re: existential Nature.
    ————

    how exactly do you check that experience corresponds to what is outside experience?Count Timothy von Icarus

    That isn’t how it works. The checking, which is not the construction but presupposes it necessarily, is done by the congruency of one experience with another antecedent to it.

    Fun stuff, donchathink?
  • Donald Hoffman
    The idea of "constructing" seems unobjectionable if it is kept in mind that the intelligibility of things is not being constructed out of the unintelligible, but of course the exact opposite is true for Kant's usage.Count Timothy von Icarus

    So the idea of construction in Kant’s usage becomes objectionable because the intelligibility of things is constructed out of the unintelligible?

    Is it your intention that your readers should understand you to mean Kantian speculative metaphysics in general, and transcendental idealism in particular, is unintelligible, thereby making his idea of “constructing” objectionable, insofar as Kant’s idea of constructing is predicated on both of those philosophies?
  • Donald Hoffman
    Can possibilities really be reduced to zero?
    — Mww

    I take it what it means is that prior to measurement there is the superposition described in terms of the wave function but the moment a measurement is registered then all possibilities other than the one describing that specific outcome are now zero.
    Wayfarer

    Ahhh…yes, got it. (Kinda figured that’s what you meant): All OTHER possibilities reduce to zero. If all possibilities reduce to zero there is no outcome, hence nothing to describe, which is a contradiction to the act of measurement.
    ————-

    It's clearly descended from Kantian philosophy.Wayfarer

    Agreed, clearly. But still, just as I favor probability over possibility, so too I favor determined over created. To say we create, especially with respect to that which is regulated by empirical principles, suggests more power in us than we possess.
  • Donald Hoffman
    I think the implications take the theory a satisfying distance away from Kantianism.Bodhy

    (2017)
    “….Implications: Our results contribute to an understanding of the world in which neither objects nor spacetime are observer-independent….”

    (1787)
    “….It is therefore from the human point of view only that we can speak of space, extended objects, etc. If we depart from the subjective condition, under which alone we can obtain external intuition, or, in other words, by means of which we are affected by objects, the representation of space has no meaning whatsoever.…”


    “…. in general, (…) space is not a form which belongs as a property to things; but that objects in space are quite unknown to us, and what we call outward objects**, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose real correlate, the thing in itself, is not known by means of these representations, nor ever can be, but respecting which, in experience, no inquiry is ever made.…”
    (**re: immediately aforementioned objects in space)
    —————

    Now, granting that cherry-picking in general is beneath the dignity of proper philosophy, a valid counterargument is still possible for any given stated position. So it is that a “satisfying distance” proposed by one, can be judged as no meaningful distance at all, judged by another.

    If you’d said the means by which Hoffman, et al arrives at the conclusions supporting their theory is a satisfying distance from Kantianism, you’d have been quite right.

    Just sayin’, and of no particular import.
  • Donald Hoffman


    Yep. Even if the permanent substance of an object remains, the experience of it, which for us is the same as knowledge about it, in separate times and conditions, is merely possible.

    Simply put, the permanence of substance can never justify the permanence of knowledge. From which follows as a matter of logical necessity…..that I put some thing someplace at a time is not in itself sufficient for my knowledge of it at any other time.
    ————-

    Added later…..cuz I’m old and sometimes forget what I meant to do:

    Can possibilities really be reduced to zero? Seems like that would be the same as there being zero possibilities, which kinda makes experimental results rather suspicious.
  • Donald Hoffman
    It is the observation that reduces all the possibilities to zero….Wayfarer

    To….one?

    Philosophy 101Wayfarer

    Indeed. If that were not the case, it might actually be impossible to explain how we make mistakes, insofar as given that we did in fact all see…..sense, understand, cognize, experience, and whatnot…..the external world as it really is, there shouldn’t even be any.
  • Donald Hoffman
    ……most idealists would say there is an objective world.Tom Storm

    Dunno about most, but the ones that write books I own just say there are objects, the rest is either given through inference, or superfluous.

    Isn't the key issue what is the nature of the world we have access to and think we know?Tom Storm

    KEY issue? I don’t think the nature of the world is key; it is the nature of particular things, that is, insofar as they are the constituency of our empirical knowledge. And I should hope no one thinks he knows the world, it being just some general concept used to denote the containment of all things, the nature of which, other than the schemata subsumed under it, is irrelevant to us.
  • Donald Hoffman
    If you meant that consciousness is an 'unifying' activity, in a sense yes, I agree.boundless

    I didn’t mean that; I said consciousness is a capacity, understood, in accordance with a particular methodological system, as a necessary condition of intelligent agency. That being given, it can be deduced consciousness doesn’t unify; it is that under which unity occurs.

    Not claiming a truth here, only a logic validated in a theoretical procedure.
  • Donald Hoffman
    ….it is notoriously difficult to define what is most immediate to usboundless

    Odd, innit. That with which we are most familiar….our own inner workings, whatever they may be…. is the very thing we know the least about.

    With respect to specificity, I rather think, assuming an interest in such matters despite the absence of sufficient empirical facts from the scientific method proper, little remains but to fall back on logical constructions, the certainty, hence the explanatory value, of which is our own responsibility.
  • Donald Hoffman
    I would not say that 'consciousness' is a capacity, but an activity.boundless

    ….are conscious or can be conscious.boundless

    To be conscious is to unite conceptions in thought, an activity with a vast plurality of representations; consciousness is that by which conceptions can be so united, all under one singular, irreducible representation.

    The first represents the activity “I think”, the second represents the capacity of the “I” that thinks.

    Or not…..speculative metaphysics and all that.
  • Donald Hoffman


    Dunno quite where you want to go with this, but I wonder if positing “rational” consciousness implies a variety, but on the other hand, you’re trying for a bare-bones definition, which shouldn’t allow any.

    Still, I grant the notion of rational consciousness, insofar as I hold there to be no other kind. Consciousness of empirical conditions, which is exemplified by your definition predicated on experience, is still a rational construct.

    We’re paddling in the same philosophical canoe here, whatever our respective particulars be.
  • Donald Hoffman
    Consciousness is the capacity for experienceWayfarer

    I think it deeper than that: consciousness is the unity of all my representations.
  • Donald Hoffman
    ….mind-created world thread.Wayfarer

    Link?

    (Never mind; found it)
  • Donald Hoffman
    …..everyone freaks out.Wayfarer

    Ehhhhh…..not my problem. No one will ever find space by the bucketful, and if you ask a guy for a minute of his time, that is exactly what you won’t get.
  • Donald Hoffman
    Because, what can space be without scale? and time without duration? Both of these entail perspective, and perspective is what the observer brings. (I think this is also consistent with Kant’s analysis.)Wayfarer

    “…. if we take away the subject or even the subjective constitution of our senses in general, then not only the nature and relations of objects in space and time, but even space and time themselves disappear.…” (A42/B59)
  • Donald Hoffman
    I'll take a look.T Clark

    I only brought it up, cuz I flashed on that being us, if your, “After all, objects of cognition are also objects of nature.”, happened to occassion an argument, because…..a-HEM, obvious to the most casual observer…..they are not.

    All in the good spirit of my ol’ buddy Rene’s method for “rightly conducting reason and seeking truth in the sciences”, donchaknow.
  • Donald Hoffman
    Or did I misunderstand what you wrote?T Clark

    Or, I misunderstood what you wrote. I took…..

    it is reasonable to call into question the mind-independence of the objects of cognition.T Clark

    …..as characterizing objects of cognition as already being mind-independent, which is possible if objects of cognition and objects of Nature are treated alike. If one thinks they cannot be treated alike, then questioning the mind-independence of objects of cognition is perfectly reasonable, insofar as it is impossible they are, while the questioning the mind-independence of objects of Nature, is not reasonable insofar as it is impossible they are not.
    ————-

    After all, objects of cognition are also objects of nature.T Clark

    There’s a movie, 2011, “The Sunset Limited”, where the entire cast consisting of only these two rather excellent actors Jones and Jackson, engage in a pure Socratic dialectic, involving all sorts of one-idea/proposition-leads-to another kinda stuff, attempts by the one to get the other to concede a point, using premises without mutually granted relevance.

    Surely you see where I’m going with this.

    Anyway….hopefully the original confusion is cleared.
  • Perception
    Yet between a pair of colours….there is a third….jkop

    Hume, E.C.H.U., 2. 2. 16, 1748.

    …..no way to systematise colours with their looks.jkop

    R.O.Y. G. B.I.V, from a prism?

    In passing; just me, thinking out loud is all.
  • Donald Hoffman
    I also believe it is reasonable to call into question the mind-independence of the objects of cognition.T Clark

    To question the mind-independence of a thing, is to suppose the possibility of that thing without a mind.

    To even state an affirmative belief presupposes the validity of each and every conception, and their non-contradictory relation to each other, which constitutes the judgement such belief represents.

    If the major function of a mind is pure thought, and the major contribution of pure thought is cognition, and the product of any cognition is an object, albeit of a particular kind, how can it be reasonable to believe objects of cognition may be possible without a mind?
    —————

    Perhaps the stated belief is intended to indicate an affirmative questioning of mind-independence in general, of which objects of cognition are merely a part. But there is nothing in that form of belief that is sufficient to suggest contingently on the one hand, or prove necessarily on the other, that the belief is not itself a mind-dependent object of cognition.
    ————-

    It is reasonable to question mind-independence in any degree, with respect to any supposed mind-related function, iff it is possible to question mind itself outside and apart from the glaring self-contradiction of having to use mind in order to deny the very possibility of whatever functionality is supposed as belonging to it.

    In the interest of fair play, I can still ask how it is that you think it reasonable to question the mind-independence of objects of cognition, given the mutually agreeable presupposition that objects of Nature are not what is meant by objects of cognition.
  • Is the real world fair and just?


    Ok. Thanks for your time.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    ….the common-sense observation that a person is the subject of experienceWayfarer

    What if the person is me? Does common sense then say I am the subject of experience, or does it just say, I experience?

    ….’til tomorrow….
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    I can't understand the distinction you're trying to make here.Wayfarer

    And I can’t understand the distinction that has been made for me.

    Color of ball…
    Size of box…
    Meaning of phrase…
    Intent of speaker….

    …in all of those, there is a condition assigned to a representation. Doesn’t matter what the condition is, only the relation it has to that which is represented by it. Color, among other conditions, belongs to the representation of ball; size belongs to box, meaning belongs to phrase, intent belongs to speaker, ad infinitum…..

    …..but subject DOES NOT belong to experience, but is presupposed by it. A ball is never presupposed by its color, or any condition which represents it, as opposed to that condition by which it was even possible in the first place.

    Minutia: that which Everydayman ignores but with which the critical thinker amuses himself.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    The centrality of 'the subject' is fundamental to phenomenology….Wayfarer

    I never would question the centrality of the subject, irrespective of the discipline used to describe it.

    My contention is the relation of subject to experience, in which “subject of experience” makes no sense, under the assumption that “subject” here was meant to indicate a rational intelligence.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    It is the subject to whom all this occurs or appears. The ‘unknown knower’.Wayfarer

    mind is not ‘a thing among other things’.Wayfarer

    That humans and other sentient beings are subjects of experience is both obvious and centralWayfarer

    The first two are logically obvious and metaphysically central, yes. That being said, there are various ways to affirm the conceptions of subject and experience, but I for one, am having trouble affirming the conjunction of them with each other:

    ……superficially, iff it is the case there is only and ever objects of experience, from which there must be as many experiences as there are objects, it is self-contradictory for there to be subjects of experience, for the “I” which represents the cognition of self or subject, must always be singular;

    ……while notoriously forbidding….a euphemism for the likely-ness for mistaking its intent…..the Kantian exposition detailing the cognition of the self as subject, re: B407, “Paralogisms….”, prohibits self from being thereafter cognized as extant object, it does not follow, at least from such exposition, that self is subject of experience, and self, being already denied as object of experience, leaves an apparent transcendental paralogism;

    ……taken at face value, “subject of experience” is a synthetic proposition, insofar as the conception of subject or self cannot be found merely in the conception of experience itself, but on the other hand, the proposition is an a priori judgement, insofar as the concern is the synthesis of abstract conceptions. Synthetic a priori propositions are first and foremost principles regulating understanding by the use of the categories in relation to appearances. But the self or subject is never an appearance, hence cannot have empirical conceptions subsumed under it as schemata, hence cannot be regulated by the categories, from which follows the impossibility of it being a judgement with respect to experience, for which the categories are the necessary ground.
    —————

    All that being said, I admit your reasoning for “humans (minds, selves, subjects) are subjects of experience” is probably justified from the mere historical scarcity of your making of unjustified claims, if only I were to understand how such reasoning comes about, my personal cognitive prejudices notwithstanding.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    We do not arrive at knowledge except through a temporal, inferential process.Leontiskos

    All that, and it is absurd to then insist arriving at knowledge is something we do, as some post-moderns would have for us. The temporal, inferential process is the doing, the process merely belongs to us as a species-specific kind of ratiocination.