Does the term "religion" refer to nothing? — Banno

Hard to believe this is so mystifying. Religion is clearly reducible to the "material" conditions that gave rise to it, that is, to what is IN the world that inspired or provoked all the story telling. One has to ask this question first. Otherwise, it would be like explaining a shoe with no understanding of the foot and what it does. Shoes would be disembodied narratives without this. And this is why religion is opaque: it is presented as disembodied narratives.
The question is, then, what is there, in the world, that is the foundation of religion, and minus the historical accounts, minus the specious metaphysics, minus the comfort of authority, and minus everything that is merely incidental. It is a reduction that is sought.

We begin with the self, the "I" that is conscious, the "I" that has thoughts. The "I" has thoughts about things external to the thoughts themselves, things that change with time, and these things are called phenomena. All the "I" knows for certain are phenomena - the colour red, a sharp pain, an acrid smell, a sour taste, a crackling noise. The "I" has thoughts about these individual phenomena, but more than that, the "I" combines these individual phenomena in various ways. The "I's" thoughts are about phenomena and various combinations of phenomena. — RussellA

Okay

The nature of relations is critical. My belief is that relations do ontologically exist in the mind (the Binding Problem). We call these combinations of phenomena "noumena". We think about particular combinations of phenomena and sometimes we give them a name. The combination of phenomena, the colour red, an acrid smell, a crackling noise we can name "fire", and this "fire" is a noumena. We can say that combinations of phenomena exist in a logical reality, in that noumena exist in a logical reality. A logical reality that exists in the mind. — RussellA

But this is confused; I mean, you cannot say, "We call these combinations of phenomena "noumena." What you say here about noumena really has to be more closely looked at. What do you mean "this fire is a noumenon"? When we say "fire" it is EXACTLY what noumena is not, for Kant is very explicit about this. If you disagree with Kant then say so. I know I do.

Noumena are combinations of phenomena. But a combination is a relation. As relations only ontological exist in the mind, noumena only ontologically exist in the mind. We can think about the noumena occupying a space, but such a space is only a logical space, nothing more than that. When thinking about space, as we are thinking about the relation between phenomena, we are thinking about a logical space. — RussellA

Logical space? Wittgenstein? You know, there is in Heidegger's B and T a kind of space that is utterly distinct: What is "close" is what is brought to mind. My glasses may be physically close, but as I ignore them to think about Chinese bar tenders in Beijing, the latter are much closer. Proximity by extended space is only ONE way to think about this, and only when it comes to mind, is this relevant. But in terms of your actual affairs, Kant's space is certainly NOT primordial.

But when you say things like noumena being combinations of phenomena, you have to explain yourself. Clearly you've stepped out of Kant, which is fine with me, but then you use his language and it sounds all wrong. What, in this idea, is a phenomenon? You will talk about combinations, but Kant's idea of a combination is the synthetic function of a concept. Without this there is no thought at all, and what lies before you is unspeakable, or, if you follow someone like Dennett (and Husserl and Heidegger and Derrida; all of them), what is there before you IS in its being there at all, conceptual. You cannot separate these. They are the essence of being an object.

One has to first admit this. Then one can go on to what Kierkegaard says about the collision between concepts and actualities: IN and through this conceptual apparatus, is disclosed the world's eternity. Both IN and OUT of time, for to think at all is to be in time, yet time is quantifying the world: the world is immediately grasped, in our daily living, in a kind of spatialized way. Not a continuity, but divided. Remove the divisions (a debatable concept) and eternity stands before you, subsuming all, of you will: the eternal present. Wittgenstein talked like this, a big fan of Kierkegaard, as was Heidegger.

Our finitude is created by time, the events that divide things. Dewey called this "consummatory". His Art as Experience is a very good read. He was a pragmatist, and he and Rorty made me a qualified pragmatist. Heidegger's Being and Time has pragmatism as a principle feature. It is through thinkers like this that one continues on with Kant, even as much as they depart from him. They are all, in one way or another, phenomenologists.

You sound like someone who who could think in this vein.

(FH Bradley's Regress argument). — RussellA

Phenomenology does not separate the relation from the "related". To do so leads one to affirming a thing apart from the relation, and that isolates the object beyond apprehension. THIS is Kant's noumena. Entirely metaphysical, in the bad sense of this word. This kind of thing is what gave rise to analytic philosophy's positivistic

The REAL question is, what is there in the world and its analysis as a world. The "beyondness" is there. This about separation is, however, very important: In the bond of relations we have the power to critique, second guess, put distance between us and the institutions that would claim us, so we don't simply go along, allowing our lives to be lived, if you will, in the third person. But this interposition of consciousness into the cycle of events that move forward so automatically, is MOST interesting. It is not simply a matter of declaring oneself independent, as with a political opposition, say; it is a partial termination of the institutions that flow through you, that define the meaning of our lives in culture and language. Here, we are thrust into something else entirely, not just an adjustment of thinking.

It comes to point, for many, that the foundational philosophical problem we face requires something revelatory for its resolution.

Vladimir Putin exists. Where p = Vladimir Putin, (∃x)(x=p)(∃x)(x=p)

Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist. Where s = Sherlock Holmes, (∀x)¬(x=s)(∀x)¬(x=s) = ¬(∃x)(x=s)¬(∃x)(x=s)

As I thought, in predicate logic, predication is only possible for existent things. You can't talk about particular nonexistent objects while you can about them as a class: — Agent Smith

I suppose the matter comes down to soundness and validity. We can talk about anything at all if we like, and if the logical form of what we say is in tact, no contradictions, then we can say the talk has logical validity, of course. But if the talk is just scrabbled eggs in the observed world, then it lack soundness. So if you say, "there is a man named Sherlock Holmes, and he does not exist, you are running a contradiction, saying he is and is not at once. But note the language: There IS a man named SH. What do we mean by this? This is ambiguous in the symbolic representation if by "is" what is meant is "exists". Once you disambiguate, and qualify "is" as fictional, speculative, imaginative or the like, then the logic doesn't produce an absurdity.
So, I can talk about particular nonexistent objects, as is done in the novels. But the context of what is "real" and not, itself is fictional; the standard is simply different.

A maximally great being exists. As you can see, Anselm is usimg existence as a predicate i.e. (∀x)(Mx→Ex)(∀x)(Mx→Ex) where Mx = x is a maximally great being and Ex = x exists. We can see where Anselm goofs up. All maximally great beings are existent things (IF x is maximally great being THEN x exists). The class of maximally great beings can be an empty set, but then the consequent claims there's a member in that set. — Agent Smith

On the other hand, whether or not this can be an empty set is still entirely at issue. The claim is the set cannot be empty since it is analytically true that the greatest possible being exists. Taken as logical construction only, the matter rests on the definitions: does existence have to be included in the GPB because what a GPB IS, is existence. It would not be the GPB if it did not exist, just as a body would not be a body without extension. This goes to essence or definition, which goes to the term "greatest". There is that notorious response by Gaunilo's greatest possible island. But greatness is a contingent term and is built out of the terms that apply: a great couch is not a great telescope. So then, what kind of greatness are we talking about when we are talking about God (capital 'G')? The standard omni this and omni that are just arbitrary. Being absolutely knowledgeable is just a vacuous extension of the way we talk about ourselves, e.g. And omnipotence begs the question: what good is this? Only one thing can fit this bill, and this is goodness: what is GOODNESS? Goodness is not arbitrary or question begging in the description of God.

Conclusion: It has to be understood that logic will only produce more logic. Existence is, well, existential, and this makes the appeal to the world. God's existence is reducible to the existence of what must exist, and it is not some guy sitting on a cloud. What must exist is goodness. The GPB of the world concept comes to this. A highly disputable proposition.

Notice how (∃)(Cx∧¬Ex)(∃)(Cx∧¬Ex) is self-contradictory (there exists a dog that does not exist). — Agent Smith

It would depend on how you take the existential quantifier, for 'existence' is ambiguous, but is treated as unambiguous in the symbolism. See how the entire equation is is problematized by this ambiguity. Existence can only be a predicate if it is possible for something not to exist; such is the case for all predicates: their opposites have to make sense. "The snow is white" makes sense only if it is possible for snow to be other than white. "Snow has a color" is not a predication, it is analytic, for it is impossible for snow not to have a color--apodictic that all things have a color; can't imagine a thing and no color in the same object. If you treat existence like color, then the predication is really a tautology, and "all dogs exist" is merely tautologically true. But if existence can be defined as synthetic (in Kant's terms) and some things do not exist (unicorns?) then "X exists" is a predication. But it depends.

Best I can do.

Kant said that a priori knowledge is "knowledge that is absolutely independent of all experience". I propose that such priori knowledge is innate within the brain, a product of over 4 billion years of evolution and is part of the physical "hardware" of the brain.

I am curious as to your belief as to the source of this a priori knowledge, this pure intuition of time and space intrinsic in our minds? — RussellA

Apriori knowledge at its source, is transcendental. Hence, transcendental idealism. We can observe it in its USE. But "purely transcendental use of categories therefore is in reality of no use at all, and has no definite or even, with regard to its form only, definable object."

Kant included causation within the category of pure understanding, an a priori pure intuition, where an effect requires a cause. Given causation as an a priori pure intuition, it follows that the observer must know without doubt that there has been a cause to the phenomenon, and this cause may be called a "noumenon". — RussellA

Not this. As an intuition, causality only applies to phenomenona. What causality IS in some noumenal sense, is unknown. One cannot speak as though noumena "causes" phenomena. It could be, he speculates, a preestablished harmony, or some other (as I recall. Haven't read CPR in a while). If you find he talks like this, it is because 'cause' is the only term he can think of that might describe the relationship?? But clearly, he does not mean we have in causality an understanding of anything noumenal. Such knowledge is impossible.

IE, I am not aware of any justification by Kant as to why a priori pure intuitions should of necessity correspond with the reality of the external world. This is the same problem found in Indirect Realism, in discovering the reality of the external world through internal representations. — RussellA

But one does not "discover" this reality if by reality you are talking about noumena. It is undiscoverable. Noumena is just an empty but necessary concept. You can read why he talks about it in the Transcendental Analytic.

There must be a distinction between the whole and its parts. When we observe something, we are observing a whole made up from a relationship between parts. As relations don't ontologically exist in the external world, as illustrated by FH Bradley, and relations do ontologically exist in the mind, as illustrated by the Binding problem, we can say that the parts of the object do exist in the external world, but the whole object, as a relation between its parts, can only exist in the mind as a concept. — RussellA

Yes, but the whole is the problem. A whole is only conceivable in relation to a part, just as up is only conceivable relative to down. Meanings are generated in opposition. Noumena are not "the whole". They are not a "they", which is just a manner of speaking. Impossible to imagine, since to think at all is to divide, relate, play against, etc.

I look at noumena very differently for Kant or you. I hold that the noumenal necessarily subsumes the phenomenon such that what I behold AS a phenomenon, like my cat on the couch, is, tail to ears, noumenal. There is no finitude, and the divisions are what they are, and they too are noumenal. Nothing at all can escape the what we see as eternal, noumenal, infinite. Take a single index of identity: time: how "old" is this hand? Given that ex nihilo nihil fit. Space and time, when pressed for basic meanings, are apodictically eternal. Take a given phenomenon, and it can be demonstrated that what you observe is reducible to eternity, that is, all the terms used in the totality of lexical possibilities, yield a foundational indeterminacy.

The parts we observe are assembled in the mind into concepts - a table is a table top plus table legs, a house is a roof plus walls plus windows, etc. But many mereological permutations are possible of the parts we observe within the external world - a table top plus table legs, my pen and the Eiffel Tower, etc. We sensibly choose and name those particular combinations that are beneficial to our evolutionary well-being and survival. — RussellA

I don't doubt that language is good for survival and reproduction.

It follows that if we think of noumena as objects in the external world consisting of a relationship between a set of parts, then it is true that noumena don't ontologically exist in the world, as relations don't ontologically exist in the external world, but only in the mind of the observer as a concept. — RussellA

I don't think of noumena as objects at all. I think of noumena as the indeterminacy inherent in all that is. And I think, to understand what this means takes a withdrawal from the thought itself.

IE, in my terms, it follows that our understanding of noumena as defined as objects in the external world must be transcendental in that objects in the external world don't ontologically exist. — RussellA

"Don't ontologically exist" is an odd phrase.

I wonder how amenable you would be to the following. A bit wordy I'm afraid:

I am far less interested in objects than I am in the self. After all, I am, in the recesses of my "interiority" a noumenal being. This transcendental ego is my self, and this has its analysis found in the examination of the generational ground of experience, right there, where the thought rises up and becomes manifest. You see, where a scientific approach would try to reconcile the brain and its observable features like the analysis of its biochemistry, the structure is neuronal systems, and the whole rest of this empirical field of study, phenomenological approach takes Kant more seriously: All that can be known is phenomena, and the brain is a phenomenon, a densely processed phenomenon . It is not as if there is no connection between the brain and experience; this is not denied or refuted. It is rather that THIS too, this connection, is a phenomenon, making the true generative source of experience still noumenal. We want very much to say brains produce consciousness, but this connection remains entirely alien to our grasp: We simply cannot infer from our phenomenological grasp of brain chemistry and so on, that this grasp IS the way things ARE "in themselves". That remains with metaphysics.

On the other hand, there we are observing the world and it is intuitively powerful, this presence of things and our engagement. It is not possible that I am not experiencing "reality" for what is real can only be a measure of the way reality is presented. I mean, this IS where we get the term 'reality' in the first place. We do not get reality out of an abstract analysis, or from a concept like material substance. It issues from the eating and the breathing and the full sense of existing in the world.

I ask myself this: how is it possible that I can experience the world as a world and not just the locality within a cranium? By any measure one can imagine, I should not be able to experience the (noumenal) world. One has to be very careful with this, because it is most tempting to see the apparatus in place, the lens of the eye, the light reflected and absorbed by the object, the tactile feel corresponding and it all fitting so neatly together, etc., and conclude: I am surely receiving the (noumenal) world indirectly. But one can never get around, in an empirical way, that the thick membrane of brain tissue simply has no epistemic access to the "outside". The lens of the eye quickly turns into clunky brain matter. Even the lens is, on analysis, this.

Only one impossible answer: we do in fact experience the (noumenal) world; and our experience is not localized to this grey physical mass. Consciousness is, after all, noumena. Nothing escapes this. Certainly not phenomena.

Sure, politics is just ethics recast. Ethics concerns our relation with others, as does politics. It is a misguided emphasis on individualism that misguides folk to libertarianism. Libertarianism is one symptom among many, indicative of the problem of individualism as ethics.

What is it you want? — Banno

Just wondering, really. Cooperation and individuality. Not an easy equation.

I understand this and agree. But perhaps one can also be dogmatic about not being dogmatic and end up sinking in a quicksand of mutually opposed world-views. — Tom Storm

I guess you are referring to one who is a kind of rebel without a cause, someone who will not compromise at all. I think this can be understood in two ways: One is the irrational nonconformist, the anarchist, and I see no hope for people like this. The burden of living is living with others, and this has a very insistent sense of obligation in it, ethics. The other sees with clarity that these obligations we have are entangled with history and hardened thinking and challenges these to the purpose of better understanding. Here, I find one rule: do no harm (Mill's famous rule). Everything that follows from this is at issue, but this I take as foundational.

I don't understand this sentence. — Tom Storm

I mean, irony is the stuff prose and poetry are made of. It is the essence of entertainment itself, and irony is in its essence opposition, the strain that is created in resistance. Meaning itself, it can be argued, as a play of language in which one thing is not another and in this tension, the singularity is born, is ironic.

This may seem far flung. But Kierkegaard wrote his doctoral thesis along these lines (a have read only parts myself. It is about Socrates and his incessant questioning of everything. The question pierces complacency, stirs the world up. Ironic tension permeates social discourse) and Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity talks like this. This latter is excellent.

Indeed. And it is the tension inherent in pluralism. It's very easy to have the semblance of order, stability and certainty if we are living in a theocracy. — Tom Storm

I quite agree.

My interest is in ethics, as prior to politics. Or better, as what politics ought be. — Banno

Ethics prior to politics? But all politics is, if you will, an ethics prior to itself as it's good standing rests with essential defensible moral grounding. I generally criticize libertarian thinking on the grounds that it encourages a division of wealth that isn't morally defensible.

No ethics, no politics. What, therefore, ethics do you have in mind?

Say some more. — Tom Storm

I speak of the dogmatic approach to living and thinking. Unquestioned rules and ideas. to me the question, that is, the resistance that is posed by the possibility of an opposition, this needs to be free. It most assuredly does cause trouble, but living in this "tension" of irony in which all things stand challenged and nothing sits too firmly, this is the essence of a free society.

No, I am talking about individualism, the social theory "favouring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control". — Banno

You're talking about classical liberalism. Libertarians think like this, while also looking to ease restrictions on social values as well. Anyway, if this is what you object to, then more power to you. There is, on the other hand, the notorious "they", the ones who keep an Orwellian eye out for odd behavior, make sure we all toe the line, the omnipresent guards of the panopticon, that implicit standard of what is right and what is taboo that we all internalize.

I want to say I despise this kind of thing, but obviously, this needs to be qualified. This is the stuff arguments are made of.

Not speaking for Banno, but for me culture (for all its problems) is built out of cooperation and the overarching goal is to include as many stakeholders as possible. You can see that the significant problems of human existence - resource allocation, climate change, war, can only be successfully dealt with and remedied through cooperative ventures. If not, we are lost. — Tom Storm

In political terms, in global political, I most strongly agree. But in terms of the way we stand at the receiving end of a body of determinative thinking, no.

Most of politics since Thatcher and Reagan. Trumpism. Neoliberal economics. The failure to invest in social capital, such as education and health, let alone roads and pipelines. Shit, celebrity itself, the worship of individuals to the detriment of quality. Rap music. Need I go on? — Banno

Oh. So you're talking about some kind of libertarianism. That is not individualism AT ALL. That is economic fascism.

But it's interesting to see that

But I do think that individualism is harmful, indeed, emphasis on individualism is one of the nasty things lurking in the background of much of the demise of what we might loosely call western culture. Failing to acknowledge our mutual interdependence has led to the peneary of our common wealth.

We are in this collectively. That involves giving up some part of your autonomy. Get with it, or go live in your grass hut. — Banno

Individualism killed western culture? Quite a thing to say. What part of western culture are you talking about? Given that culture is literally built out of dissent.

That's probably true. But I tend to work to minimize the inclination by not reinforcing hierarchies unless I can't avoid it. :wink: — Tom Storm

Yeah. That's the spirit. One has to know when one is simply going along with the climate of thinking. But philosophy attempts to take this kind of independence to its extreme end, which is why it is not well received, because no one wants to think that hard about what is there, at hand, and familiar. Philosophy is a radical extension of what it means to question an authority. Foucault: Am I being ventriloquized by history? Ever word I speak, after all, is learned, but have I assimilated language, or has language assimilated me? Assimilation here means in authority.

Only if that's how you construct your worldview - in terms of power relations. Personally I see reliance as an issue of mutual trust and positive regard. But it may depend upon the context. The notion of 'rely' and 'others' needs further clarification. — Tom Storm

It is a fuzzy term, I think, in the extreme. The concept of an authority is not simply a fiction, I would argue. Any social concept you can think of has some hierarchical feature built into it, even if not explicitly so.

Maybe you meant to word your concept differently? "Authority" means they have command over you. But if a person you rely on does not live up to your expectations, they don't have command over you. You're forced at that point to rely on someone else, or yourself. Someone with authority can punish in a way separate from your reliance, like putting you in prison or harming you in other ways. — Philosophim

If only life were that easy. Authorities get very entangled in human affairs, politics--in government, at the office, at school, and so on. Such a mess.

This is false, for the simple fact that authorities rely on those without authority. Short of physical force, no one actually has power over others. A president is only a president because enough people agree that they are a president. It is an illusion, or rather a social construct. Societies are constructed on a series of ideas and agreements, nothing more. — praxis

You sound like a defender of anarchism (not anarchy, which is very different). These people say there is no authority above the individual. I may yield to your authority only if I choose to do so, and set the standards for compliance, given the obvious need for a deference to representative and delegated offices in a complex government.
They are keen about things like direct democracy rather than having a bunch of elected officials making decisions for us. Lately, I lean toward Plato's philosopher kings democratically elected. And for this we need a very educated society. One day.......

I agree with you that Kant in Critique of Pure Reason argued that we can only understand the truth of the noumena in the world by applying a priori pure intuition to the phenomena we receive from these noumena.

Kant wrote: "Space and time are its pure forms, sensation in general its matter. We can cognize only the former a priori, i.e., prior to all actual perception, and they are therefore called pure intuition; the latter, however, is that in our cognition that is responsible for it being called a posteriori cognition, i.e., empirical intuition." (B60)

He also wrote: I call all representations pure (in the transcendental sense) in which nothing is to be encountered that belongs to sensation. Accordingly the pure form of sensible intuitions in general is to be encountered in the mind a priori, wherein all of the manifold of appearances is intuited in certain relations. This pure form of sensibility itself is also called pure intuition. (B35)

However, Kant does not explain the source of these a priori pure intuitions. He does not explain how we are able have these a priori pure intuitions. — RussellA

Those pure intuitions are transcendental and cannot be explained. It would be like explaining how the absence of space and time is possible.

And when you say, "truth of the noumena in the world by applying a priori pure intuition to the phenomena we receive from these noumena" Kant would not go along. Noumena are not received at all. It is entirely outside of "receiving". Noumena are posited because representations have to be of something.

Having said this, though, I think, not Kant, but me, that in order for noumena to make any sense at all, there must be something IN the comprehensive analysis of phenomena that reveals this. It is not like some heuristic that is posited because helps further another line of thinking. It is an existential claim about something other than sensory intuition that is intimated, an "intuition" of Being itself, if you will, that comes, not from outside as if empirical theory could generate it out of something empirically discovered, but within the world of ones "interiority" (Kant's TUA.....is YOU in the most intimate sense of the term). This is why I talk about mysticism. If you are going to take seriously some impossible interface with noumena, it is not going to happen through a discursive reasoning process of what is "out there" because what is out there will always be conditioned evidence and noumena are not conditioned. Talk about a brain? There are no brains that can be conceived that are not routed through the phenomenal construction: A brain is a phenomenon! As are my couch and plate tectonics and evolution and on and on. So a noumenal encounter would have to be revelatory, not discursive.

Direct Realism is the common sense view within the philosophy of mind which states that objects are as they appear to be. All objects are made of matter and that our perceptions are entirely correct, in which case noumena correspond with phenomena.

Indirect Realism is the view that there is an external world that exists independently of the mind, but we can only perceive that world indirectly through sense data. Sense data can only represent the mind-independent world, meaning that we can only ever know a representation of the external world, in which case phenomena can never allow us to know noumena directly.

I personally believe in Indirect Realism. I understand Kant's position as also being similar to that of the Indirect Realist, even though he did not use this terminology — RussellA

But that is not Kant. We do not become aware of noumena indirectly. We do not become aware of this at all. This is the trouble with analytic philosophy and the attempt to tall about Kant and transcendental idealism.It does not have any thematic development for this. And I will say this with emphasis: If you are looking for some way to make sense out of Kant's idealism, and to build on this, elaborate on what Kant laid out there, then talk about direct and indirect realism is not a viable alternative as it insists that empirical observation, somewhere in the discoveries through microscopes and telescopes, is going to be relevant. This ignores Wittgenstein as well as Kant. Rather, one has to follow Kant as Kant was indeed "followed": through Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Neitzsche, then Husserl, Heidegger, and so on, then Saussure, Levi Strauss, Derrida; look, it's not that I am such a master of all this, but I have read a lot of it and this is the really the only way to develop with Kant. One simply has to start taking phenomenology seriously; Kant started it.

Where do our a priori pure intuitions come from? Some would say from a metaphysical god, others would say that there is a physical explanation.

It follows from my belief in Physicalism, where everything in the world is physical, a world of matter and forces, and my belief that we are not born as "blank slates", in that all our behaviour is learned, that we are in fact born with innate a priori pure intuitions. These innate a priori pure intuitions are part of the structure of the brain, part of the hardware of the brain, part of the physical arrangement of neurons within the brain.

It seems clear that the brain has the physical structure it has as a consequence of an evolutionary process lasting over 4 billion years. A process where organisms change and evolve over time, along the lines of the natural selection as set out in Darwin's On The Origin of Species.

IE, our a priori pure intuitions are a direct consequence of a physical evolutionary process. — RussellA

Yes, I see you believe this. Physicalism? It is just a term used by those who want science to rule our thinking on philosophical matters. It is a scientist's term (as well as an everyday term) that attempts to reduce questions about the world to ones science addresses. The term itself is entirely without meaning. It is like Kant talking about noumena, utterly transcendental:

The purely transcendental use of categories therefore is in reality of no use at all, and has no definite or
even, with regard to its form only, definable object. Hence
it follows that a pure category is not fit for any [-p. 248]
synthetical a priori principle, and that the principles of
the pure understanding admit of empirical only, never of
transcendental application, nay, that no synthetical principles a pm'ori are possible beyond the field of possible
experience.

Kant gave you the idea of the structure of thought, you think this structure can be talked about in the context of empirical thinking, and you are right about this. But if you think this boat is going to sail straight into some kind of consummation of Kantian idealism, you are entirely wrong.

Best read Husserl.

Kant assumed that our a priori pure intuitions are true to the reality of the world. However, would this be the case if as a result of a physical evolutionary process? — RussellA

SInce evolution is an empirical concept, then you are apples and oranges in this. Kant's phenomenology is logically prior to a concept like evolution. It is about the grounding of experience that is presupposed to any and all empirical theory. A term like "physical": This is a concept, no? A subsumption of particulars under a general; and synthetic act of a structured psyche. This is why hermeneutics is so important, for it sees this and therefore puts interpretation first, and it is not physicality that takes priority, but meaning, and this goes to language and logic.

Not true, it seems to me. For Kant, knowledge needs both empirical observation and rationalism. Kant is not saying that we don't observe the world, but he is saying that what we think we observe is determined by the innate nature of our brain. Innate are the pure intuitions of time and space, a prioiri knowledge that we know independent of experience. He wrote in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics 1783 - "And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something." Kant postulated that the mind intuits sensory experience, which it then processes in the faculty of the understanding to produce an ordered predictable world.

IE, Kant believed intuition of objects in the external world is the primary source for our understanding. — RussellA

Just no, to any association to the brain and "what we observe". The brain is an empirical concept, it is preanalytical, and empirically we certainly do observe it. But he is not saying "what we think we observe is determined by the innate nature of our brain." You may be saying this, and like I said, this is not unreasonable, but it is a break away from Kant.
I haven't read that Kant uses the term "mind" (geist) but his transcendental unity of apperception does not align with modern thinking about minds and their objects, thoughts, feelings. Maybe you have something where he talks like this, though. But sensory intuitions are not postulated, but are directly witnessed in his CPR. Noumena are postulated.
And where I said all empirical theory is suspended, following Kant, I was talking in the context of his critical analysis. He does, of course, and this is taken up very seriously later on, say that empirical theory is really the only wheel that rolls. But his CPR is an apriori thesis, not an empirical one. One arrives at the proposition that only what is said empirically and analytically can make sense via his apriori arguments.

My reading of transcendental is not that of the supernatural, but rather that that there are many aspects of the world that we cannot explain using current scientific knowledge, such as the mind-body problem. This is not to say that such problems cannot be explained by future empirical science. — RussellA

It depends, are you saying your reading is Kant's? Because Kant is essentially saying no to this "future empirical science," unless you can show how to epistemically bridge phenomena and noumena, I mean, show how noumena can be at all known. The only way one can conceive to this is to leave Kant entirely in the attempt to make what is noumenally postulated, manifestly apparent. THAT would be mysticism.

Heidegger opens that door a crack (see his brief reference to Buddhism in the Spielburg interview, der spiegel interview; see also his What IS Metaphysics. He is no mystic, but then, there is the post Heideggerians like Michel Henry and Jean Luc Marion who follow through.

Kant's Transcendental Idealism

Determinism
My belief is that every thought or feeling we have is expressed within the physical structure of the brain. I accept that others may believe that we may have thoughts and feelings beyond that which is determined by the physical structure of the brain, such as a god, but I personally don't.

Transcendental Idealism
The brain can get information about the external world through the senses - sight, sound, touch, hearing, smell. Kant is making the point in his theory of transcendental idealism that we know things about the external world such as causation, time and space that we could not have discovered by observing phenomena through our senses, as illustrated by Hume. He calls this knowledge a priori knowledge.

A priori knowledge
As our knowledge about causation, time and space is not discoverable through our senses alone, and yet as all knowledge is expressed within the physical structure of the brain, then this knowledge must be a pre-existing part of the brain. A priori knowledge is part of the built-in hardware of the brain, where empirical a posteriori observation is part of the software. We know a priori the nature of causation, time and space as much as we know the colour red when observing the wavelength 700nm.

Evolution
A priori knowledge cannot be explained from an empiricist viewpoint, where the human mind is a "blank slate" at birth and develops its thoughts only through experience. A priori knowledge can be explained as the product of an evolutionary process that began on Earth over 4.5 billion years ago, a continuous process of synergy within the world from unicellular organisms to human brains of up to 100 billion neurons. Darwin was the first person to develop the theory of evolution by natural selection. As Kant died before Darwin was born, Kant was not able to benefit from Darwin's insights.

Knowledge
We know causation, time and space in two distinct ways, as a priori knowledge built into the physical structure of our brain by evolution, and as a posteriori knowledge discovered through empirical observation.

IE, we experience the empirical world (the software) through a "meta-empirical" world (the hardware). Our a posteriori knowledge (the software) is transcended by our a priori knowledge (the hardware). — RussellA

Yes, I see you have an empirical theory about apriority, but you don't seem to be acknowledging something entirely elementary: Apiority is a structural feature of empirical existence itself. It is not accessible for examination. Of course, you can talk as you do above, and this is fine, but you would be talking about how apriorityshows itself, not apriority.

As our knowledge about causation, time and space is not discoverable through our senses alone, and yet as all knowledge is expressed within the physical structure of the brain, then this knowledge must be a pre-existing part of the brain. A priori knowledge is part of the built-in hardware of the brain, where empirical a posteriori observation is part of the software. We know a priori the nature of causation, time and space as much as we know the colour red when observing the wavelength 700nm. — RussellA

Just as long as you know this is not how Kant would or could talk at all. "The brain" is an empirical concept. Apriority is not brain hardware if you are speaking in Kantian terms. Apriority is transcendental. a presupposition to all empirical thinking, and its "purity" means it cannot be cast in terms of any other explanatory context.
I am saying a line has to be recognized between transcendental idealism and empirically based ideas, that is, science.

We know causation, time and space in two distinct ways, as a priori knowledge built into the physical structure of our brain by evolution, and as a posteriori knowledge discovered through empirical observation. — RussellA

I do see the temptation to think like this, and I don't think talk about the brain and apriority is wrong, really, if you want to talk like that. Many do. But that is not where Kant leads. Kant leads to talk like this: We must rise above

the dogmatism of the natural attitude, or, where inquiry is not satisfied with that, instead of soaring up over the world "speculatively," we, in a truly "Copernican revolution," have broken through the confinement of the natural attitude, as the horizon of all our human possibilities for acting and theorizing,
and have thrust forward into the dimension of origin for all being

This is from Fink's Sixth Meditation and the "natural attitude" is the naïve world of empirical science. All empirical theory is suspended, following Kant (Note the Copernican Revolution is a direct reference to Kant). These philosophers want to examine the world given the assumption that empirical theory itself rests on something more fundamental. I think you can see this, based on your comments, but when you talk about brains and evolution, you have clearly departed from Kant and his legacy. What next, is it that apriority is reducible neuronal networks? Physical nerve systems of axonal connectivity? Not that this is wrong, but you will have a hard time maintaining concepts like apriority in the context of brain talk.

I don't read science only. Theology is a firmer base of knowledge and offers a firmer ground for understanding phenomena or their nature.

Phenomenoa lay at the base of knowledge. Our brain, by means of its virtual infinite formal capacity, structures the phenomena and the structures behind it, while it gets informed by these structures at the same time. — EugeneW

Sorry for the all the writing. I have to watch that.

There is no brain talk in phenomenology. The brain is there among the rest of the world's phenomena, but it is a phenomenon, and does no explanatory work for discovering what is going on at the level of basic questions, for before a brain is a brain in a scientist's world, it is a construct of language and logic in time and space. I ask the scientist, brain? And in order to give an answer, one must be always, already in a world that makes sense of this. What kind of world is this? THIS is the foundational question. Science and religion are both constructs of language, and so language holds the key to understanding, not what these are, but what is possible for them to be, not unlike knowing what a telescope is does not tell you what something that is seen, but tells you this with an understanding what a telescope does first. It is the intervening process between the known and the knower, you could say (always wanted to read Alfred Whitehead. I will one day) that holds the answer to questions like, what is the world? What is real? Questions concerning religion reduce to what there is that actually stands before us that would make religion meaningful? One looks at time, its structure, the way anticipation is a powerful foundational feature of being in the world. There we are in this forward looking situation in each moment, each thought, prospect for the future, this "anxiety" that is a structural part of experience itself, an anxiety we never really experience until we withdraw from the mundane course of affairs and ask weird existential questions. Kierkegaard (to address the religious side) calls this positing spirit. Heidegger calls this metaphysics (this wonder of standing apart and encountering the world as this vast indeterminacy), and on and on.

Evolution explains Kant's a priori

We are observers of the external world, yet we are also part of the world. We have an existence upon which we build an essence. This existence did not arise yesterday, or the day we were born, but has been underway for billions of years. We have evolved in synergy with the world. Humans are born with certain innate abilities, in that the brain is not a blank slate, as described by both post-Darwinian "evolutionary aesthetics" and "evolutionary ethics". In the 3.7 billion years of life on earth, complex life forms have evolved to have certain innate intuitions necessary for continued survival. It is not the case that we have certain intuitions and they happen to correspond with the world, rather, our intuitions were created by the world and therefore of necessity correspond with the world. Through the process of evolution the mind gradually models the world around it. If the model had not been correct, then the mind and body would not have survived. Therefore, the sensible intuitions innate within the mind have been created by the world in which the brain has survived.

IE, it is not the case that the mind has an intuition of the world that it exists within, rather, the intuitions of the mind necessarily correspond with the world it exists within, otherwise it would not have been able to successfully survive and evolve. — RussellA

I mostly have to disagree with the basic idea here, even though evolution I find no issue with any more than any other science. The problem I have is, in the bringing of Kant together with an empirical theory, your are in oil and water territory. Evolution is an empirical theory, which, had Kant been exposed to it, would likely have agreed, as long as you are not talking about philosophy. But his transcendental idealism is what is presupposed by empirical theories. He is thinking at a level "beneath" this: the underpinning of all science is the foundation of intuitions and their concepts.
Interesting thing to say, that " it is not the case that the mind has an intuition of the world that it exists within." This, to me, IS the problem. On the one hand there is no way out of Kant's world of phenomena. I mean, impossible (in modern physicalist terms: why oh why am I not observing, literally, neuronal networks, roughly speaking, and ONLY neuronal networks? Where IS the way out? Can't be shown, and after 200 years of philosophers and others examining this, I have to say, Period!). On the other hand, my apprehension of the world as a world very clearly shows that I am not merely confined to this "empirically reality" and this is very hard to pin, that is, how I literally "know" my cat is "out there" in the impossible, meta-empirical way.

The causal relation I have with the world does not translate into an epistemic relation. Causality is not an epistemic term, in any model I can conceive, it demonstrates no ability to transmit, carry, bring forth, intimate, convey etc. any object to establish a true knowledge claim. What is it to know something is the case? The very first order of business is to identify what the "something" is and this cannot be done, and all the philosophers since Kant know this, even the ones that want to put miles between what they do and what Kant did. Read Wittgenstein's Tractatus and you find Kant is everywhere implicitly informing this.

To me, this is the second most important philosophical problem there is. The first is with ethics.

It is true that Kant (1724 to 1804) did not propose an evolutionary mechanism for a priori pure intuitions, as he was not able to benefit from Darwin's (1809 to 1882) theory of evolution, Kant's principle of "synthetic a priori judgements" remains valid.

IE, We are born with certain innate abilities that have taken billions of years to evolve, and based on these innate abilities we can observe the external world, but we can only observe in the world what our innate abilities allow us to observe. Our understanding of the world is from observed phenomenon which are given meaning by a pre-existing and innate understanding of them. The physics of the world is understood through an innate knowledge that transcends experience, ie, a metaphysics. — RussellA

Yes, I see. But you have stepped over the line: To speak at all! is to be bound to the conditions of the structures of cognition and sensibility. There are no "billions of years" and had he known about Darwin he would not have received the "benefit" as a philosophically relevant theory. Evolution is an empirical idea. The matter he was looking at is what empirical thinking is in a more basic analysis. Even talk about "apriority" itself is first a concept, and all concepts are principles of synthesis, gathering particulars under a universal. The "purity" of the concepts that are in the structure of the logic that allows one to speak at all, this is transcendental, and one may not speak of this at all. There is NOTHING that can be said that explains apriority. "Preexisting " innateness? Are these temporal terms? There is no time into which one may "fit" a metaphysical concept.

FH Bradley's regression argument illustrates the that relations have no ontological existence in the external world. The Binding Problem, that we experience a subjective whole rather than a set of disparate parts, illustrates that relations do have an ontological existence in the mind. As Kant argued that we make sense of the world by imposing our a priori knowledge onto our a posteriori observations in the external world, similarly we can also make sense of the world by imposing a reasoned relational logic onto a relation-free external world.

IE, both these show the inherent limits to our understanding of the world, in that we will only ever be able to understand those aspects of the world for which we have an a priori ability to understand. This means that there are things about the world that will forever be beyond our imagination, as a horse's understanding of the allegories in The Old Man and the Sea will forever be beyond the horse's imagination. — RussellA

Strange business. I don't know if you follow this kind of thinking, but this is, it can be argued, what Derrida is saying. Structuralists like Saussure and those who follow, hold that meanings are found in the structures of the language that produces them. There is no "author" of a text, for the text is indeterminate, contingent on the receiving intellect. THEN it is determined, as I read it. Derrida says, this structure itself is indeterminate. Of course, it has the determinacy that allows us to speak of it, agree, share ideas, but none of these are free of the context that makes them possible, and this context itself is this kind of diffuse relational manifestation of differences among contextual elements. The basic idea is, I hazard to say, that there is no stand alone meaning, at all! Even structured meaning in my head has no center outside itself to affirm it.
Some see this as a true epiphany: the way to apophatic affirmation of the "presence" of the world.

Yeah I think anything continental covers that analytic can or does but not vice versa. — Shwah

I think they just gave up in the analytical US. So controlled, but so tedious, mostly.

That depends on your theology. — EugeneW

Is there nothing there theology cannot handle? Something that persists regardless?

But maybe I'm just old school. Others may believe that feeling now trumps thinking. Or the hermeneutics of approved texts is where it is at. — apokrisis

But one gets hung up on clarity with just this rigorous standard, and the when things get interesting, clarity gets dogmatic, as if the best we can do is stick with old vocabularies. Nah! Not that feeling trumps thinking; but that feeling is there for the analysis

The former lines up with analytic philosophy. — Constance

I should add, minus the attitude.

Everyone is a philosopher as we all seek wisdom in whatever we're doing. Thieves want to be more successful etc etc so the term is really useless. — Shwah

Yes, the philosophy of knitting....ponderous, provocative. But then, why are we born to suffer and die? One of my favorite philosophical questions. It can be just knitting with an attitude; or, it can be so profound it'll drive you mad. The former lines up with analytic philosophy. The latter with continental. More or less.
It is truly something, one could argue, to really grasp the indeterminacy that all presumption to know.

...to live in a vast and proud tranquility; always beyond... — Nietzsche

Yes. And in solitude. Philosophy takes one the doorstep of religion, and there you sit like some abandoned child. Don't let them take you IN!!!! But stay there, take a look around the place; look at terrain, peak through a window. Take notes. THEN: Find the SOB who left you there!

This is a topic by itself!
Can you at least describe it shortly? — Alkis Piskas

One way to look at it is to note that all knowledge is justified belief, and justification is always presented in a logical form, as is necessitated since a proposition without logical form is literally nonsense. But where is the justification for logic's validity? It has none: logic cannot explain itself because the explaining would require logic. Logic is "its own presupposition."

It is because logic is a quantitative delimitation of anything it applies to.
— Constance
Can you explain this please? — Alkis Piskas

The world "out there" that we talk about all the time has nothing of the values we give it in doing so, it can be argued. I observe a lamp, but the singularity of the one lamp is only brought about by the application of a concept, a general term, When I look casually at the lamp, I acknowledge its singularity, just that lamp and not a table or a chair, either. All of this singling out is not part of the thing over there we call a lamp. We do this when we observe it.

Knowledge is a quantifying process. When we say some or all or one, logic calls this quantifying. Just talking about a thing at all is a quantifying act. (I remember Hegel's discussion: to say something is here, or there, or beyond, and so on, is to apply a general idea: many things are here or there, so the conditions of the application of the terms are , if you will, tokens of a type, particulars of a universal, and in this occasion, applicable. The point would be that you acknowledge this to be an independent singular perception, but actually, it really is not like this at all. As you observe, you condition the observed.

I can see some truth in all this, esp. concerning "divisibility". However, I think that Zeno's "paradoxes" are much easier to explain --or rather, to reject: space and time are assumed to be discontinuous and thus divisible. Which is a fallacy. Space and time are continuous and thus indivisible. Neither of them has a start, middle or end. We can only divide them arbitrarily for description purposes. Thus, we get distances in space and periods in time. These serve to measure and compare things with each other.

Every so-called "paradox" that based on a fallacy is a "pseudo-paradox". Zeno's are among them.

I can talk also about the remaining elements --God and Einstein's space time-- but that would overburden this post! — Alkis Piskas

Right. Interesting. You might find Kierkegaard's take on concept of time enlightening:

If time is defined correctly as infinite succession, it may seem obvious that it should also be defined as present, past, and future. This distinction is, however, incorrect if considered as implicit in time itself, because the distinction arises only through the relation of time to eternity, and through eternity’s reflection in time. If a foothold could be found in the infinite succession of time, that is, a present, which was the dividing point, then the division would be quite correct. However, precisely because every instant, as well as the sum of the instants, is a process (a passing by), no instant is a present, and in time there is accordingly neither a present nor a past nor a future. Thinking that this division can be upheld is due to an instant’s being spatialized,

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin

Note this idea of a spatializing of time. A provocative notion. He is saying that in space things appear fixed, settled, but time is not this. Real time is a process that has no parts like past, present future. It is a seamless "passing by".

I agree with what you have written.

The question is why are geometry and reality very different

For me, the reason is that relations are foundational to our logic, yet relations have no ontological existence in the external world.

This explains why geometry and reality are very different, the world is alogical, language is self-referential, we live in epistemology and the world is utterly metaphysical.

If there was a more persuasive explanation why logic and reality are very different than because of the the nature of relations, then this would be of interest. — RussellA

What? That sounds like something I would say. I probably take it further than you. If language is self referential, the there are two ways to think about this. One way says the world as the world is bound up with the ways we know it; ontology and epistemology cannot be separated and my coffee cup IS a coffee cup AS a bundled phenomenon. The idea of the cup is literally the cup-thing itself. So, I point to my cat, and the pointing, the concept, the predelineation of the past informing the present occasion as well as the anticipation of what the "future cat" will be, do, all of this is constitutive of the occurrent apperception of my cat. All of a piece. Any separation of parts would be an abstraction, which is fine because this is what analysis is, as long as we don't think analytically determined entities ae entities in their own right. Another way is to understand that the knowledge that brings the palpable thing into understanding and familiarity is qualitatively distinct from the palpable thing. To me, this is a very strong and even profound claim. It is not about some noumena that is postulated but beyond sight and sound; it's about the palpable presence of the thing, and its being alien to the understanding, so their you are, confronting metaphysics directly. This is called mysticism.

Sartre may not have been a mystic, but his Nausea has very strange encounters between Roquentin and the world (the chestnut tree, etc) which are close.

Perhaps it is sufficient to know what pragmatically works. I turn the ignition key on my car and the engine starts. I don't need to know why the engine starts, all I need to know is that turning the key starts the car. Why not treat the external world as an empirical experience and not search for any sense beyond this. — RussellA

Because the world is an open concept, and where there is openness, there is inquiry. I guess philosophical inquiry has a value difficult to see. As an objective enterprise this is most true. But as a personal desire for understanding the world that is sincerely driven by need to know, this is always important.

My belief is that logic and reality are very different because of the nature of their relations, and this I can justify. However, my justified belief that logic and reality are very different because of the nature of their relations can never be knowledge, as I can never have a true understanding of a reality that is relation-free using reasoning where relations are fundamental. — RussellA

On the other hand, logic is not nothing. An idea is not nothing.

This is catastrophically false, but none of your co-respondents noticed nor cared, even though every single one of them is fully immersed in it, so.....you got off scot-free. Almost. — Mww

I'm so glad you came to save the day. You need to put a little meat on those bones. You have read the Transcendental Dialectic? But then, the notion of pure reason is no empirical concept. What metaphysics do you have in mind?

There are also aspects that are clearly deterministically explicable , like the child who didn’t understand or the schizophrenic who heard voices telling them to kill. In P.F. Strawson’s famous paper ‘Freedom and Resentment’, he distinguishes between such obvious examples where ethical judgement doesn’t apply, and examples where what he calls our reactive emotional-valuative moral attitudes do apply. He concludes that we should listen to our reactive emotions that drive us toward retributive justice. My question for you is how you parse valuative emotions like anger. Nussbaum and Pereboom reject anger because they see it as aimed at payback, retribution and revenge, which are backward looking valuations. — Joshs

I read the Strawson and I think he makes an excellent case for explaining the constitution of our mutual moral regard for others and how he shows that "the preparedness to acquiesce in that infliction of
suffering on the offender which is an essential part of punishment is all of a piece with this
whole range of attitudes of which I have been speaking." Yes, we do live in these complex attitudinal relationships with others, and, if I take his meaning, determinism, while he admits, the truth or falsity of a general thesis of determinism would not bear on the rationality" of our choices or attitudes, he wants to establish a compromise. This is not an ontology. It is not engaged in asking, what can we say about the the being and its foundational features? It is rather saying, we must have certain " reactive attitudes" (generalized or specific) in place in order for moral agency itself to make sense, and these presuppose accountability, responsibility, guilt, innocence and other.
An interesting enlightening essay for me. I too "lean" away from determinism in light of this kind of thinking. And all of the assumptions possessed within a society's system laws and morals have implicit prima facie validity. Of course, when taken as a whole, the system is massively imperfect. this land is mine. Why? Because I bought it, own it. How does the purchasing power of your position give you this right of ownership? I worked for it? Oh, you mean you "mixed your labor" in the world and this labor produced the right? But what if you didn't do a damn thing, and it was given to you? And what if the purchasing opportunity were only provided for a certain arbitrarily geographically determined few? And what if you legally manipulated the system....and what if you lived in a miserable environment and grew up with no educational standards at all and your purchasing power is near the minus numbers; and on and on.
The point I would make is that IN this defacto system of "reactive attitudes" the need for self correction pushes against this fabric of consensus, and enlightened objections are grounded in determinative arguments: A person's successes are determined by the mere giveness of circumstances and abilities. Failures have reasons. Strawson is right to say there is a tender balance in the inhibiting and permitting good will and compassion and this must go on (which I think is the gist).

But inquiry is the spoiler, as usual. And it is not that inquiry about basic assumptions is going to be popular. this is always reserved for the study hall. If those who write about such things were on a boat, and the boat sank, it would take most of the readership with it. At any rate, I look at freedom very differently. The hammer head flies off, I am thrown into a discontinuity, if only for a moment till processes take over once again. This second can be protracted. I think freedom lies there.

I am a strong believer that intuition and introspection are valid, powerful, means of gaining knowledge and understanding. But, in the end, their results are still subject to the scrutiny of observation, experimentation, and reason. When you give intuition primacy over those factors, you've left philosophy and crossed the border into the bleak wasteland of voodooism, mysticism, and Republicanism. — T Clark

Of course, you are right, if you take intuition to be simply the immediate response your brain hands you to something you encounter. A mother's intuition, or the common sense that tells you a woman's place in the kitchen or something Donald Trump might think of. These "prereflective" beliefs are notoriously ill-conceived. But logic? Geometry? There is an element of necessity here that will not yield to any analysis. We may have the knowledge claim of what this is wrong, and I am sure this is true; I don't think for a moment that we understand what causality "really" is, same for logic: we are paradigmatically bound, you could say, in this. But the pure intuition is not going anywhere. Impossibilities are not possible, and, as a pure intuition, a causeless effect is impossible.

It is not the only approach, not even close.
— Constance

Im sure there are a lot of approaches. I prefer the approach the theory is the reality.

What happens is science's views become derivative, and primacy goes to it the Cartesian center
— Constance

I disagree. Scientific views become reality.

You can deny there is such a thing, which is fine; but you have arrived at a foundation for discussing things philosophically: phenomenology.
— Constance

Phenomena lie at the foundation. Indeed. But there exists stuff behind the phenomena. Scìence can lift the curtain and make that stuff visible. It's all a perception, I agree. But a truthful one.

Physics is now derivative, and this means its explanatory basis as a science with all of its paradigmatic historical progression, is held to be reducible to affairs at a more basic order.
— Constance

Physics is now a derivative? I don't agree. All natural processes have a fundamental basic blocks. Truly existent matter. True, its nature remains unknown, though we can feel it by eating it.

Not fantasy. More real than real, if you like: the intuitive horizon that is presupposed by science. Hard to talk about, really, unless you read about it.
— Constance

More real than real? You mean what the nature of matter is? Then I agree. It's the content, the charge of matter that gives us consciousness. It's not that hard to talk about. — EugeneW

It is not as if I expect you to see this and it does take work to familiarize yourself. But if all you read is science, you will never grasp phenomenology. This is the way of it with all things. Kant through Derrida has to be read. A must if you are going to talk about the foundations of knowledge claims.

And just look at how dismissive you are of something that altogether denies you want you want. Brains cannot do what you insist must be assumed. No way in good intellectual conscience you can think like this. When you find yourself at the very basis of your thinking about something, and the whole thing falls apart, it's time to move on to something that doesn't do this.

Sayin you don't agree is not an argument. By all means, make your case.

I was that someone. So I responded and it is exactly the idea that is being discussed here. And, by the way, yes Russell was exactly contradicting the basic intuition that a spontaneous cause is impossible. — T Clark

No, He was arguing that he could not make sense of it. The intuition is without an arguable basis. When we talk about it, and caste the intuition in terms, and these terms have associations, and these bind the argument to implications, and so on. This is how this goes. This intuition qua intuition is not assailable.

So, is it your position that your intuition trumps reason? Common sense must be right? I know the feeling you are talking about. When someone says that x caused y, I know what they mean. I've thought about that a lot and come to the conclusion that, except in a few very simple situations, it just doesn't work. — T Clark

Intuition is far from common sense. It simply stands alone. It would be like talking about qualia, but then, qualia, like being appeared to redly, really is not discussable. The moment you drop language, you stare dumbly, and when you try to discuss it, you find yourself deep in context, deep in the contingency of language, for red is not yellow or green, and color is a principle of subsumption, a classificatory term, and so on, and now one is on the road to arguing about being appeared to redly. Causality suffers the same fate. But there is in this something Other, this insistence it has, is an intuitive presence. It is "prior" to discussion. This is, again, NOT at all to say that there is some unassailable way to talk about this; not that we can definitively say what it is. This would be like explaining logic which says Wittgenstein, "shows itself" but not its generative nature.
When it is said that apodictic intuitions can be argued about, they are not arguing about the intuition; they are arguing about what is SAID about the intuition. You really should take a look at Russell's The Notion of Cause. Massively verbose.

Suffering is suffering. What more do we need? :wink: — Tom Storm

Some would say suffering requires redemption, not to invoke religious dogma, but as a stand alone phenomenon.

It's the only plausible way to approach reality. We assume what our brain creates is a true image. Wouĺd you assume we're given a fantasy? Would you prefer it? — EugeneW

But this is a critical point. It is not the only approach, not even close. What happens is science's views become derivative, and primacy goes to it the Cartesian center. You can deny there is such a thing, which is fine; but you have arrived at a foundation for discussing things philosophically: phenomenology. Physics is now derivative, and this means its explanatory basis as a science with all of its paradigmatic historical progression, is held to be reducible to affairs at a more basic order.
Not fantasy. More real than real, if you like: the intuitive horizon that is presupposed by science. Hard to talk about, really, unless you read about it.

Like Zisek (who I am not in the thrall of) I generally reverse the Dostoevsky idea - 'with god anything is permittable' - hence inquisitions, forced conversions, homophobia, holy wars, misogyny, slavery. There's not an egregious behavior available to humans that hasn't been justified by a direct appeal to god. Now I do understand that this has no bearing on whether god approves or not, it's just a comment on the alleged moralizing effects of theism. — Tom Storm

I did mean to say I am not that find of him, but found him at least a clever dynamic presence.

But god: it is a term that requires better clarity before one can talk well about it. It is a mostly fictional account of why we were born to suffer and die and what we need to do to get free of it. this makes it a concept about the world, not about the way narratives tell us things. The issue is suffering, plain and simple (and happiness, but this for latter), and God the creator, the omniscient, omnipotent, the omnibenevolent, all out the window, as logocentric overreach and manipulative, dogmatic hyperbolic dismissibles.
Suffering, then. I ask, what is it? A very good question.

I totally understand where you are coming from here. I'm sympathetic too. Personally I don't see god as realistic and I'll come back to this in a tick. For me morality is unlikely to be metaphysical - as far as I can tell morality is created to facilitate social cooperation in order to achieve our preferred forms of order. And maybe Rorty holds to a similar view. Generally communities come to a shared agreement about the core values. But I agree with you about the odd gap between Rorty's philosophy and the certainty of his 'real world' ethical positions.

Like Zisek (who I am not in the thrall of) I generally reverse the Dostoevsky idea - 'with god anything is permittable' - hence inquisitions, forced conversions, homophobia, holy wars, misogyny, slavery. There's not an egregious behavior available to humans that hasn't been justified by a direct appeal to god. Now I do understand that this has no bearing on whether god approves or not, it's just a comment on the alleged moralizing effects of theism. — Tom Storm

No, Zizek is entertaining, and seems right on several things, like his Hegelian ideas (of which I know relatively little). And I like his Marxism, which I think holds a powerful truth about societal injustice.
As to morality, as I am explaining to Josh above, knowing it will end up badly because my views on ethics are very unpopular, ethics needs to be looked at phenomenologically, and I simply mean it has to be analyzed for its essential features apart from what is endlessly and tediously hashed over in the attempts to make sense of our attitudes and beliefs and the world. Is there something that makes ethics a problematic that fitting to its nature. Long story short: value.
An arguable idea.

He went further. He said the idea of cause in physics is meaningless. — T Clark

But the idea is not what is discussed here. It is not logical discursivity that discovers the essential that tells us something cannot move unless acted on. What makes causality so intractable to analysis is that it is intuitive, and not empirical, and such things are not reducible. I mean, we can try to call them something else, but language always forces matters into its own designs, hence Russell's trouble. It is like talking about metaethics (now that I think of it). We deny that ethics has an absolute foundation, such that in any given ethical case, there at its core something absolutely coercive. This is not because there is nothing like this there, but because the moment you try to talk about it, you place it in the dubious hands language and analysis. Causality as an intuition is taken AS causality in play, in context. But as an intuition, it is unassailable. Causality the same, I argue.