The Biggest Problem for Indirect Realists
Periodically, Kants CPR comes back to haunt me: it is like a world-class quality carbut theres one screw slightly loose. Theres one part of the whole transcendental idealism which poses a threat to the entire enterprise and of which I would like to explore with this forum: the paradoxical and necessary elimination of knowledge of the things-in-themselves via particular knowledge of thing-in-themselves.
Kant begins with the presupposition that our experience is representational and proceeds to correctly conclude that knowledge of the things-in-themselves is thusly impossible. However, anyone who questions the legitimacy of this presupposition readily realizes that its justification rests purely a posteriorion the empirical evidence of our representative faculties as presented to us in our conscious experience (or of another); and, as such, presupposes, from the onset, that one can trust their experience enough to know that (1) they exist (2) with representative faculties (3) in a transcendent reality which (4) has other things in it and of which (5) ones representative faculties are representing. This incoheres with the original point. E.g., if I can trust my conscious experience enough to conclude that I exist in a world with other objects, then I thereby trust it to know at least some things about the things-in-themselves (namely, that I and other objects exist in reality). Likewise, e.g., if I remove the a priori means and modes of intuiting and cognizing objects, then I left with no reason to believe that I exist with other objects in reality; because the evidence I had for it was empirical, and the object of my body and other bodies (or objects) are perfectly unintelligible when stripped away from the a priori means by which I was able to cognize them to begin with. However, e.g., me taking on the endeavor to remove the a prior means of cognizing myself with other objects (and of which does result in unintelligibility of my own existence) presupposes that I exist in the first place, and so can be said to be secured transcendentally as a necessary precondition for the possibility of my representational experience....and we go round-and-round all day!
The question then becomes: if we can trust our experience to tell us that we exist with other things in a reality, then why can we not trust that very same experience, which is tainted by our a priori means of cognizing reality, to tell us about other things in reality?
The truly perplexing paradox arises when one accepts empirically, through trusting ones conscious experience, those minimum 5 claims about the things-in-themselves; because, then, they are committed to the idea that they cannot know anything about the things-in-themselves (for all we can know about the world is filtered through the lens of our a priori means of cognizing it). There then appears a stalemate, catch-22, between the resulted claim and the claim required to get that result.
How do we reconcile these problems as indirect realists that accept that our conscious experience is representational? If we do trust our conscious experience to tell us about the things-in-themselves to some extent (as a necessity and way out), then how do we determine the limits of what we can know about the things-in-themselves? If we dont trust our conscious experience to tell us about the things-in-themselves to some extent, then what grounds do we have to accept Kants presupposition (that our experience is representational)?
Special shoutout to @Mww, which is our friendly neighborhood transcendental idealist that will have much to say on this topic (:
Kant begins with the presupposition that our experience is representational and proceeds to correctly conclude that knowledge of the things-in-themselves is thusly impossible. However, anyone who questions the legitimacy of this presupposition readily realizes that its justification rests purely a posteriorion the empirical evidence of our representative faculties as presented to us in our conscious experience (or of another); and, as such, presupposes, from the onset, that one can trust their experience enough to know that (1) they exist (2) with representative faculties (3) in a transcendent reality which (4) has other things in it and of which (5) ones representative faculties are representing. This incoheres with the original point. E.g., if I can trust my conscious experience enough to conclude that I exist in a world with other objects, then I thereby trust it to know at least some things about the things-in-themselves (namely, that I and other objects exist in reality). Likewise, e.g., if I remove the a priori means and modes of intuiting and cognizing objects, then I left with no reason to believe that I exist with other objects in reality; because the evidence I had for it was empirical, and the object of my body and other bodies (or objects) are perfectly unintelligible when stripped away from the a priori means by which I was able to cognize them to begin with. However, e.g., me taking on the endeavor to remove the a prior means of cognizing myself with other objects (and of which does result in unintelligibility of my own existence) presupposes that I exist in the first place, and so can be said to be secured transcendentally as a necessary precondition for the possibility of my representational experience....and we go round-and-round all day!
The question then becomes: if we can trust our experience to tell us that we exist with other things in a reality, then why can we not trust that very same experience, which is tainted by our a priori means of cognizing reality, to tell us about other things in reality?
The truly perplexing paradox arises when one accepts empirically, through trusting ones conscious experience, those minimum 5 claims about the things-in-themselves; because, then, they are committed to the idea that they cannot know anything about the things-in-themselves (for all we can know about the world is filtered through the lens of our a priori means of cognizing it). There then appears a stalemate, catch-22, between the resulted claim and the claim required to get that result.
How do we reconcile these problems as indirect realists that accept that our conscious experience is representational? If we do trust our conscious experience to tell us about the things-in-themselves to some extent (as a necessity and way out), then how do we determine the limits of what we can know about the things-in-themselves? If we dont trust our conscious experience to tell us about the things-in-themselves to some extent, then what grounds do we have to accept Kants presupposition (that our experience is representational)?
Special shoutout to @Mww, which is our friendly neighborhood transcendental idealist that will have much to say on this topic (:
Comments (298)
Drop the black and white thinking in the sentence below...
Quoting Bob Ross
..and recognize that we can have some degree of incomplete knowledge of things-in-themselves?
By claiming we have conditional knowledge of the things-in-themselves, you are denying that representational experience cannot afford us knowledge of the things-in-themselves (which I noted Kant had rightly pointed out in the CPR). So we would, then, have to discuss what reasons we have for thinking that the a priori modes by which we cognize objects can afford knowledge of a thing as it is in-itself. I will start the discussion with two "arguments".
Firstly, the phenomena are a result of the cognition of sensations and not things-in-themselves; and those sensations are limited by our sensibility. Our sensibility is incapable of migrating the properties of the things-in-themselves over to the understanding because they are limited to how they are pre-structured to sense (such as the two forms of sensibility: space and time). For you claim to hold, you would have to explain how it can be that our sensibility can migrate the properties of things-in-themselves to our understanding.
Secondly, any given phenomena stripped of the a prior means of intuiting and cognizing it is left perfectly unintelligible (viz., remove all spatial, temporal, mathematical, logical, etc. properties from the phenomena and you have nothing left to conceptually work with other than a giant '?'); so whatever the thing-in-itself is will be exactly what is unintelligible: it is the 'thing' stripped of the a priori means of cognizing it.
I'd suggest seeking scientific understanding of what the sensations are a result of. It seems you might need some understanding of the role the things themselves play in your experience of sensations.
What are the details of the light that reflected off the thing and into your eye?
Do you see consideration of such matters off limits for this discussion. If so, might it be that you are trying to understand things in overly simplistic terms?
Quoting Bob Ross
Translating into wondererese yields, "If the functioning of a person's brain is disabled, the person won't have intelligible thoughts." My response to my interpretation is, "Right. And???"
I'm afraid you would need to elaborate for me to understand what you see as a problem.
I'm no expert, but I think I have enough understanding to pinpoint a problem with this analysis. I think you're misinterpreting the significance of the 'ding an sich' - you're representing it as something real yet innaccesible, and then expressing a kind of frustration that we're left with only 'the representation' as a kind of inferior copy of The Real Thing. You want to 'peek behind the curtain', so to speak. But to make this comparison, you have to put yourself outside both the appearance and the thing in itself, as if they could be compared.
Consider this account of the matter:
[quote=Emrys Westacott]Kant's introduced the concept of the thing in itself to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. The concept was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience. But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the thing in itself as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. [/quote]
Quoting Bob Ross
You could just as well say, were we unconscious, then we'd know nothing. The 'apriori means of intuiting' just are the activities of the conscious mind/brain by which it assimilates and interprets information about the world. All well and good - but then you try to work out what there could be in the absence of that - which we can't know, as a matter of principle. And sometimes knowing you don't know something is what needs to be understood.
[quote=Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Bryan Magee, Pp105-106)] Anyone who supposes that if all the perceiving subjects were removed from the world then the objects, as we have any conception of them, could continue in existence all by themselves has radically failed to understand what objects are. Kant did see this, but only intermittently in the gaps, as it were, between assuming the existence of the noumenon 'out there' as the invisible sustainer of the object. He expressed it once in a passage which, because so blindingly clear and yet so isolated, sticks out disconcertingly from his work:
'If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, as this world is nothing but the phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of our own subject, and is a species of this subject's representations.'
(An) objection would run: 'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to what Kant has just been quoted as saying, that is impossible.'
Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was twofold. First, the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room. The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.
This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood, so that these statements appear faulty in ways in which, properly understood, they are not.
Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.
This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.
Schopenhauer's second refutation of the objection under consideration is as follows. Since all imaginable characteristics of objects depend on the modes in which they are apprehended by perceiving subjects, then without at least tacitly assumed presuppositions relating to the latter no sense can be given to terms purporting to denote the former in short, it is impossible to talk about material objects at all, and therefore even so much as to assert their existence, without the use of words the conditions of whose intelligibility derive from the experience of perceiving subjects. Again, then... transcendental realism cannot be stated. It is 'the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself. But 'just as there can be no object without a subject, so there can be no subject without an object, in other words, no knower without something different from this that is known . . . A consciousness that was through and through pure intelligence would be impossible . . . For consciousness consists in knowing, but knowing requires a knower and a known. Therefore self-consciousness could not exist if there were not in it a known opposed to the knower and different therefrom.'... Consciousness is intrinsically intensional it is always consciousness q/"something: it always has an object. [/quote]
I don't see any puzzle. It comes down to what is meant by saying we don't know things in themselves. Insofar as they are thought as what gives rise to our experience of a world of things, then of course we can say we do know them. But it can also obviously be said that we only know them as they appear to us.
Quoting Bob Ross
If he correctly concludes, how can a paradox arise? Isnt a paradox only possible if he wasnt correct with his conclusion, given the initial conditions? Is it that a paradox is being manufactured from a misunderstanding?
Thing-in-themselves are never considered by those faculties providing empirical knowledge: . 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 ..
Things-in-themselves are only ever considered by the faculty of reason: .. objects when they are considered by means of reason as things in themselves, that is, without reference to the constitution of our sensibility ...
Really shouldnt be that taxing to grasp the notion knowledge .regardless of the adjective describing it ..of thing-in-themselves is impossible, insofar as representation is necessary for all knowledge of anything, and things-in-themselves are only considered by reason, which is not part of the constitution of our sensibility which provides representations.
I don't think it's truly paradoxical at all. As with most "paradoxes," it's a matter of language, attitude, perspective, not fact.
Quoting Bob Ross
Here's the heart of the problem. There is no true "justification" for Kant's presuppositions because they can not be established empirically. This is not a criticism, because it's true of indirect realism, direct realism, and all other philosophical isms. For example:
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
None of these things can be established empirically. There are many, many problems like this in philosophy - there always have been and always will be - until we give up and recognize these kinds of statements are not true - they are assumptions, presumptions. We need them in order to proceed in the world, but they are human inventions, not properties inherent in the world.
Quoting Bob Ross
Again, there is no paradox because the claims are neither true nor false. We act as if they are true, but there is no way to establish that.
As I see it, this is a good way of looking at it, but it is not paradoxical.
As I've noted in my responses to @Bob Ross's posts, the specific cognitive mechanisms of perception are not relevant in addressing his concerns.
I like the quotes from Westacott and MacGee you've provided, especially this:
Examples of illusions, dreams, hallucinations etc. tend to make some thinkers conclude that the object of experience is not the external object but a figment of the perceptual apparatus, conceptual scheme, language, culture etc.
But if the object that we see is only our own phenomenal object, then how can we explain its relation to the external object?
We can't, and idealists know this, but "solve" the problem by rejecting the external. However, Kant's transcendental idealism maintains the external object by distinguishing between its empirical sense and transcendental sense.
In its empirical sense it's an object of experience, but in its transcendental sense it's an abstraction, an object without properties, hence imperceivable.
But it seems to make explanations of perceptual experience ambiguous, e.g. when we see the empirical object, do we see the object or our own phenomenal representation of... what? It also seems to make skepticism true, e.g. do we see the object, a representation, or an hallucination?.
After the First Edition of the CPR was published, many critics said that Kant was no different to Berkeley, which greatly annoyed him. Accordingly in the second edition he included the 'refutation of idealism', a summary of which can be found here. The salient point was that he wanted to differentiate himself from Berkeley by showing we must be aware of an external reality, in order to maintain (or index) or own sense of the temporal succession of experiences.
I think, again, a problematical perspective is introduced here:
Quoting jkop
The question is posed as if it is possible to compare the appearance and the object, implying that they are separable. I think that relies on an implicit 'world-picture' of the self and world - but that itself is a product of the brain/mind! We can't 'get outside' phenomena in that way. (There's something distinctly Zen about all this, in my view.)
Furthermore, it's in no way 'our own phenomenal object' (suggesting solipsism) because our minds all rely on the same a priori categories. We all share the same categories, kinds of objects, species, etc.
I agree we can't get outside phenomena. The question follows from concluding (from illusions etc) that we see external objects by way of seeing something else first (e.g. sense-data, mental representation etc). That's indirect realism. It creates an insurmountable gap between what we see and what it supposedly represents.
Idealism and naive realism are two ways of closing that gap, but Kant rejects both. His ontology consists of categories, not objects. Objects are conformed by the categories. It sure seems to assume that there are two objects, or two versions of one object: one we see, and another we don't see.
The source of phenomena does not cognize ..
it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion)
..which demonstrates that receptivity and cognition are separate faculties, hence the functions of them must be commensurably separate, even while necessarily working together for a given end.
Phenomena result from . The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so far as we are affected by the said object, is sensation. That sort of intuition which relates to an object by means of sensation is called an empirical intuition. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called phenomenon. ( ) It is, then, the matter of all phenomena that is given to us à posteriori; the form must lie ready à priori for them in the mind, and consequently can be regarded separately from all sensation ..
But the matter and form of which a phenomenon is constituted still does not result in one .
. we find existing in the mind à priori, the pure form of sensuous intuitions in general, in which all the manifold content of the phenomenal world is arranged and viewed under certain relations .
..and it is then the case the synthesis of matter and form is required in order to result in a phenomenon: . synthesis is that by which alone the elements of our cognitions are collected and united into a certain content, consequently it is the first thing on which we must fix our attention, if we wish to investigate the origin of our knowledge ..
The phenomenal world is only intuition itself, and, the certain relations are between the undetermined object and space and time. Arranged and viewed is merely a euphemism for cognized, which is clearly post hoc relative to the synthesis of the matter of sensation to the pure form in the mind a priori.
Elements of our cognitions are that which constitutes them, but are not them. Phenomena then, are one of two elements of our cognition, the other being conception, there being possibly a manifold of each for any given cognition.
Quoting Bob Ross
Any given phenomena presupposes the a priori means of intuition, otherwise none would be given. Stripping such a priori means makes phenomena impossible, insofar as all that could remain is its matter given from mere sensation, making the intelligibility of them irrelevant.
In simplistic common sense, as well as a dualistic epistemological metaphysic, such as CPR promotes, the knowledge of what an object is, is impossible by its sensation alone**. THAT there is an appearance of something is determinable from its sensation, but that an object appears, from which we know only the mode of its reception, re: which sensual device is affected, does nothing to facilitate the objects relation is to our understanding, or, which is the same thing, how it is to be, first, cognized, and consequently, known, by us.
(**An argument prevails still, that experience grants knowledge of things from their sensation alone, but this negates the systemic functionality of human intelligence, which is necessary to relate to which experience a repetitive sensation refers. Enter ..consciousness, the highest transcendental object belonging to humans alone, as a derivable product of pure reason. For whatever THATS worth.)
Nice post Bob. This is essentially the question, "What is knowledge?" I wouldn't call it a paradox per say, just incomplete. If you recall from my knowledge theory, reality is the undercurrent to anything we define and believe. We have evidence that there are things in themselves, because we have identities and beliefs that are often contradicted by something outside of our control. If I see a rotten apple and think, "That looks good, I'll eat that and won't get sick", the reality of food poisoning will invalidate your representation soon after you consume it.
Reality is, "The thing in itself". The limits of our representations of things in themselves is based on what is contradicted, and what can stand concurrently. Even then, we don't know if we're even interpreting what to do with the contradiction correctly. For example, it could be that a rotten apple is actually an infestation of undetectable aliens. However, its impossible to claim something like that from the representations we have. So we call it, "Rotten" or "A food state of decay that will make a person sick if they eat it." No matter how we represent the rotten apple, eating it will make us sick, and any other representation that it will not is contradicted by "reality".
So in sum, we are limited to knowing there are things in themselves by contradictions to our representations by experience. That's it.
I dont think you are fully understanding the OPs proposed paradox yet, but I think we can get there.
Scientific understanding is a posteriori (i.e., it is purely empirical [besides the underlying philosophical presuppositions of it]); and so if we accept that scientific knowledge can tell us that we have representational experience (viz., that indirect realism is true) and about how we represent objects which impact the senses, then we are immediately and necessarily conceding that we can trust our representational experience to know about some things about the world as it is in-itself (namely, what was noted before). The paradox arises because when we accept it, because then we must also perform a transcendental investigation of it (which is philosophical, as opposed to scientific) and that investigation produces the conclusion that we cannot know things-in-themselves. Even on a scientific note, the science supports we cannot know the things-in-themselves with respect to the first reason I gave: if you accept that we have scientific knowledge that we have sensibility and that our brains cognize objects based off of the sensations therefrom, then you should also accept that the sensations cannot possibly a priori migrate properly the properties of the things-in-themselves (since they are preconditioned by the prestructured way by which the sensibility senses); and so the objects of our experience (i.e., phenomena) are really representations of sensations and not things-in-themselves.
The paradox arises because we had to trust that scientific (or more generally empirical) knowledge that we have sensibility and representative faculties to begin with (which is also mediated fundamentally by our a priori knowledge)so we are trusting that our experience can give us knowledge of the things-in-themselves to some extent even though we thereafter must conclude we have no knowledge of the things-in-themselves.
Do you see what I mean?
If I were to take a jab at translating into wondererese I would say: We accept we have a brain and that it represents objects which are outside of it and this brain is incapable of knowing the things-in-themselves because it represents sensations according to how it is [and its neurological receptors are] pre-structured, but this acceptance of all the previously mentioned required us to trust our experience, which is produced by that very brain, to know that we had a brain in reality as it is in-itself in the first placethereby contradicting where we began.
I am not merely pointing out that if our brains didnt function properly, that they would function properly; which is all I understood your translation to say.
I appreciate your response and quotations, but I don't think it addressed the OP whatsoever. I am not noting in the OP the implications of only knowing the "images of reality" but, rather, a paradox that arises for anyone who accepts that they have a brain and it represents objects which exist outside of it according to a priori modes and means. They must trust their experience to believe that indirect realism is true (in the sense of the commonly accepted version of it) which necessarily trusts their a priori modes of cognizing reality to give information about things-in-themselves, and then the theory necessitates (from this indirect realism) that we cannot now the things-in-themselves at all.
Both claims seem perfectly cogent to me and seem necessitated by accepting indirect realism in the sense of having a brain that represents reality; and so I am wondering if anyone has a solution or any useful comments on how indirect realism (or some sort of idealism) could salvage itself.
If you can only know them as they appear to us then you cannot know them as they are in-themselves, but you have to claim certain things about things-in-themselves to begin with: namely, the five claims I noted in the OP. See the paradox?
E.g., If you can trust the appearances of your experience to tell you that you exist with a brain which cognizes objects that are outside of it (and that this is true in reality as it is in-itself: not appearance); then this contradicts the notion that you cannot know the things-in-themselves and that you can only know appearances. Either you know you exist only facially or you know it as a matter of fact about reality in-itself.
:wink:
The paradox was outlined in the OP, and arises out of Kant correctly concluding (from the stipulations) that we have no knowledge of the things-in-themselves.
You tell me!
All these were fair points. I was thinking of phenomena as the result of our cognition to keep things simple. Techincally, yes, phenomena are the intuitions which are, thereafter, cognized.
Shouldnt it be intuited, since the, according to you, phenomena are the result of a priori intuition and not cognition?
By phenomena, I was referring to the end result of intuition and cognition: we were just talking about two different things. What term would you use for such an end result which includes the two elements you described (namely phenomena and a priori knowledge)? Viz., whats the object which we experience called then?
Sadly, I dont think you addressed the paradox from the OP: what were your thoughts on it?
I'd say I have "some degree of incomplete knowledge" of what you mean. :wink:
I think you are using a definition of "knowledge" that I would find unreasonably rigid, and as a result you see a paradox where there is none, but I'm not wanting to go into that in depth, and others here are likely better equipped than I to discuss that with you, so I'm going to bow out of the discussion. At least for a time.
As you noted, this isnt a critique of the OP. All philosophical positions are like this: so I am failing to see how you are resolving the paradox or denying its existence. All you noted is that we cannot provide a strict empirical proof for any philosophical position.
You dont believe that philosophical statements are propositional? E.g., you dont believe that two objects cannot be in the same place and time is propositional?
With all due respect, you didn't even attempt to address the OP at all.
Nice to see you again, Philosophim!
I see. Am I understanding you correctly to be denying the claim in the OP that we cannot know anything about things-in-themselves if we only have representational experience?
If so, then heres the two arguments I gave @wonderer1 and @180 Proof:
Firstly, the phenomena are a result of the cognition of sensations and not things-in-themselves; and those sensations are limited by our sensibility. Our sensibility is incapable of migrating the properties of the things-in-themselves over to the understanding because they are limited to how they are pre-structured to sense (such as the two forms of sensibility: space and time). For you claim to hold, you would have to explain how it can be that our sensibility can migrate the properties of things-in-themselves to our understanding.
Secondly, any given phenomena stripped of the a prior means of intuiting and cognizing it is left perfectly unintelligible (viz., remove all spatial, temporal, mathematical, logical, etc. properties from the phenomena and you have nothing left to conceptually work with other than a giant '?'); so whatever the thing-in-itself is will be exactly what is unintelligible: it is the 'thing' stripped of the a priori means of cognizing it.
Correct. A 'thing in itself' is a logical limit. If we observe some 'thing', there has to be something to observe. But if we are observing it, we realize we are observing it by interpreting things like light, sound, touch, and nerve firings. Logically, we cannot see the thing as it is 'in itself' because we are always observing it through another medium, and then creating one or many identities or discrete experiences out off it.
Even though I'm seeing a red ball in front of me, I'm really seeing the light and interpreting it. The light is bouncing off the ball, so something is there. But I can't understand what its like to see a ball without light bouncing off of it. I can't understand the feel of the ball without my nerves firing a sensation of touch in my brain. If I remove all of my senses, there is no way I can 'observe' the ball. And I cannot myself 'be' the ball.
But, despite my lack of observation, the ball is still there. Light still bounces. If someone throws it at me when I'm not aware, it will hit me and cause me to stumble. So the representation is not merely a dream or will, it is an attempt to grasp and understand. This is why what ever we attempt to represent must be applied or tested to see if what we represent is at the least, not contradicted by the underlying reality.
To sum it up very simply: We observe something. We interpret that observation as a representation of that something. Because we can only know that something through observation and interpretation, we cannot know that something as if it were unobserved and uninterpreted. Thus the placeholder for this logical determination is a 'thing in itself'. And there is nothing more to know about them then that.
Quoting Bob Ross
I do not believe in apriori knowledge apart from instinct. What some might call apriori, I call, 'intellectual capacity'. But the idea that we know something without being or analysis has never really logically worked for me. Regardless of your view on it, I do not believe a 'thing in itself' is known apriori, but only after logical analysis and experience.
Bottom line, my thoughts are .either there, 1.) isnt one, or, 2.) is one albeit of illegitimate origin.
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Quoting Bob Ross
No. The context for that comment was knowledge. First cognized refers to an activity of understanding. Phenomena are the result the synthesis of the matter of sensation with the arrangement of that matter according to an a priori space and time-conditioned form.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Hence the potential illegitimacy: we cannot be talking of phenomena in two different ways, or phenomena as two different things, and still say the originator of them is correct in his conclusion, insofar as that very conclusion is predicated on the nature he himself prescribes to them.
The two elements of our cognitions I mentioned were phenomena and conceptions. I have yet to mention a priori knowledge for the simple reason at the juncture of phenomena and conceptions, in and of themselves alone, there isnt any to mention, in that the faculty of reason which is the source of it, isnt yet in the explanatory picture.
The end result of the unity of those two elements, phenomena and conception, is thought, itself a third of what the faculty of understanding does. There is no definable end result as such, which includes phenomena and a priori knowledge.
The object we experience is called, is expressively represented by, whatever name understanding thinks for it. In general, on the other hand, objects of experience itself, that of which experience is composed, as the end of a system of knowledge, are the determined empirical representations of what was initially sensed as the undetermined object of intuition.
To be fair, you may have a legitimate paradox in mind, but the expression of it herein, the conditions by which you promote its validity, cannot follow from the text in which you say it is to be found.
To be even more fair ..cannot follow from the text as I understand it, and the quotes from which establish the mistakenness of those attributions used as validity. In particular, the notion of stripping away a priori predications, which, if deemed even possible, destroys the entire transcendental philosophy which grounds our system of empirical knowledge in the first place, making any paradox related to it, moot.
All due respect, I think theyre directly relevant, and if youre not seeing why theyre relevant, it is because of the way youre framing the problem. As has been noted above, there is no paradox in the work youre citing. I think youre sensing it as a paradox because you have an innate conviction that the world is innately real - and yet Kant seems to call this into question. So its more a kind of cognitive dissonance. Isnt that the source of the paradox youre claiming to describe, in simple terms?
Again, I feel this particular passage is relevant:
I think the OP is underwritten by just such realistic assumptions.
After reading your response, I went back and reread the OP. I think I misunderstood the argument you are trying to make. I still don't think there is any paradox, but I certainly haven't made that case.
I'll quote the part of the OP again to which my first post is a response
For many indirect realists, arguments from illusion, dreams etc. are "grounds" for accepting representational experience.
Kant is more sophisticated, but his presupposition (that objects are conformed by the categories and the perceptual apparatus) amounts to the conclusion that we never experience objects directly, only indirectly by way of experiencing conformed versions first.
You just quoted the OP out of context, and made an argument that does not even remotely attempt to resolve the paradox described in it.
I am not following how you are avoiding the paradox described in the OP here. If one takes a realist or an idealist approach, they get the same problem.
The paradox is that the thing-in-itself, which Kant most definitely claims must exist as a transcendental truth, cannot be known if our conscious experience is representational; but to know that ones conscious experience is representational requires us to trust that very conscious experience to know some aspects of the things-in-themselves (such as that we exist with a nature such that we represent objects which impact our sensibility).
What you are noting that Kant calls into question, is the material worlds existence; and depending on which version of the CPR you will find that part taken out. All it suggests, as Schopenhauer noted, is that Kant was entertaining (ontological) idealism at one point; but eventually swapped it for indirect realism.
This OPs problem for indirect realism applies just as much to any (ontological) idealism which posits that our conscious experience is representational.
An a prior conception is a prior knowledge: that is knowledge which one has independently of any possible experience.
So when you see a ball, you would call that the thought of a ball and not the phenomena of a ball? This doesnt seem to cohere well with Kants semantics, but admittedly I dont have the time to go back through the CPR and grab quotesso take this comment with a grain of salt.
This is cheating. I am asking what you call, generically, the thing which is the result of the intuition and cognitionof which we experienceand you just replied with its whatever our brain thinks it ise.g., a ball. I would call it, most generically, a phenomena: I am still unsure what you call it.
Do you not believe that transcendental idealism presupposes that one has cogent knowledge that the individual exists in reality as it is in-itself and is of such a nature as to have representative faculties which represents objects which exist in reality in-itself according to how it is pre-structured to sense and represent? These are all claims about the world as it is in-itself, and not merely as it appears to us.
Without admitting that there are a priori means by which your brain cognizes objects, then you have no basis to claim that our observations are limitedthat they are not 100% mirrors of reality as it is in-itself. Direct realism would still be on the table.
To be fair, what you described is, in fact, a simplified statement of exactly what a priori knowledge is...so I am not convinced you actually disbelieve in it (;
This logical limit that you described is the same as saying, in philosophical jargon, the thing-in-itself cannot be known, because we can only ever experience a thing which was the result of a prior processes and of which pertain solely to the way our representative faculties are pre-structured to represent.
So, likewise, I dont really see how you are getting around the paradox either.
The ball which you see, and any experimental investigations of the light and how it reflects off the ball, is conditioned by the a priori means by which your receptivity senses and your brain represents; and so you cannot understand what the ball is like itself at allnot just what it would be like without color.
Viz., your understanding of the ball is fundamentally construed by the two pure forms of sensibility (i.e., space and time), riddled with a priori concepts (e.g., quality, quantity, relation, etc.), a priori mathematical relations (e.g., 3 ft diameter, etc.), a priori logical relations (e.g., principle of non-contradiction, excluded middle, identity, etc.), etc.; and so there is absolutely no way for you to know how that ball exists independently of those means of knowing it (re: just try to strip away the a priori means of understanding the ball, and you will certainly have nothing conceptually left but an object with no definite properties).
The paradox arises, and of which you have not really resolved, when you realize that you had to trust your experience to tell you that you exist in a transcendent world, you have representative faculties, and that those faculties are representing external objectsall of which are claims about reality as it is in-itself. You right to note that the thing-in-itself is off limits if those claims are true, but thats exactly why it is paradoxical: you had to accept that very claim is false to accept the original claims to begin with, and then by accepting those claims come to deny the other one. See what I mean?
The way in which we know our own being, and the way we know the existence of other objects, is
different. It's the distinction between the first- and third-person perspective. I think that Kant agrees with Descartes that knowledge of our own being is apodictic i.e. it cannot plausibly be denied, as it is a condition of us knowing anything whatever (cogito ergo sum). However, knowing that we are is not the same as knowing what we are. And you may remember other elements of the famous essay in which Descartes made that claim, where he considers the possibility that all of what we perceive might be the consequence of an illusion cast by an 'evil daemon'. So the fact that we can have certain knowledge that we ourselves exist, yet be unsure that all our cognitions are reliable, is not in itself paradoxical, but instead one of the insights that Kant is responding to in his work.
Quoting Bob Ross
An object with no definite properties is not an object at all. To be an object is to have properties.
Quoting Bob Ross
Again, the key difference about knowledge of objects, and knowledge of your own faculties, is that the latter have an immediacy and first-person nature which affords a direct insight into their operations. I think Kant is intuitively exploring the nature of knowledge and reason through interogating the operations of his own mind. That is quite a different process to analysing e.g. the motions of bodies, which is done through precise measurement and specification of the conditions under which measurements are taken. Again its the distinction between first- and third-person understanding.
It has been claimed that Kant is a precursor to cognitive science ref. But rather than go into the detail of that, suffice to consider your 'paradox' in light of that framework. What Kant is famous for is the insight that our knowledge of the world is a constructive activity of the mind (his famous Copernican Revolution of Philosophy). We're not, as Locke and Hume say, tabula rasa, blank slates upon which ideas are inscribed by experience. The mind is actively constructing 'the world' (in the sense of the world of lived experience) moment by moment, which is where the categories come in. That is what makes Kant a source both of modern cognitive science and phenomenology, although they develop his insights in many different ways.
The perceived paradox hinges on a misunderstanding of the different types of knowledge that Kant is discussing. While Kant acknowledges that we have an apodictic awareness of our own existence as thinking beings (first-person knowledge), this does not imply that we have direct knowledge of our cognitive faculties as things-in-themselves. The recognition that our experience is representational is a product of transcendental reflection, not direct knowledge of the faculties themselves. Thus, the claim that our knowledge of the world is representational does not require us to have knowledge of things-in-themselves, but rather to understand the conditions under which experience is possibleconditions that Kant elaborates through his analysis of the categories and the forms of intuition.
Quoting Janus
How do we know that we have incomplete knowledge if we didn't already know what was missing? If we come to the conclusion that something is missing then how did we do that, and does that really mean that we have incomplete knowledge if we know what is missing?
Quoting Bob Ross
Yet we use words to represent things that are not words and don't have much trouble understanding each other. I don't see how representations prevent us from getting at things in themselves in a deterministic universe where causes leave effects and we can communicate and solve crimes by using the effects to get at the causes.
Because the knowledge people have about things (including other people) is not a black and white matter, but a matter of degrees.
I don't think it's a black and white matter either. It is dependent upon our current goal and what information is irrelevant, not missing, to our goal.
Suppose I design some complicated electronic gadget, and sell it to someone who has a use for what the gadget does. Most commonly the purchaser of the gadget doesn't know the gadget to anything like the degree that I do.
But then my knowledge of the gadget is far from complete, because to make the gadget I bought subgadgets to build the gadget out of, and I don't know everything that the subgadget designer knows about the subgadget. Furthermore, as we descend the gadget/subgadget/... hierarchy we are going to run into the uncertainty principle.
Well, whether the product "works" can be a matter of degree as well. Suppose the gadget is a voltmeter. Whether it works to measure voltage with the accuracy and precision desired can be an important question, and at some level the accuracy can only be a guess because for practical reasons what a volt is, is going to be defined by some metrological body (in the US NIST) which will only provide a limited level of uncertainty. Furthermore, the uncertainty provided by leading national metrology institutes is very much a function of the NMI's ability to account for quantum factors.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You might be surprised at the extent to which practical matters bump into quantum limitations in today's world.
Well, it helps to pull apart popular "uses of Kant" and Kant's actual philosophy here. Kant doesn't speak of brains, neuroscience, genetics, etc. when making his case. Nor is he by any means the originator of the idea that our sensory system, the particularly human way of reasoning, etc. shape how we experience the world. This is in ancient and medieval thought, and the way Kant is often invoked today is often more in line with the ancients/medievals and British empiricists than Kant himself.
Kant's arguments are based on "what must be necessary for thought to exist as such."
To be honest, it's sort of a mystery to me why Kant's name is invoked alongside appeals to neuroscience, genetics, etc. People could as well point to Aristotle or Aquinas on the idea that "everything is received in the manner of the receiver." Kant's line actually differs significantly from how his name is often invoked, and this is why the "paradox" shows upit's the result of mixing Kant's conclusions with empiricist arguments about the way perception is shaped by biology, physics, etc.
Now, the other thing you get at is that Kant does seem to dogmatically assume that perceptions are of objects. That's Hegel's big charge, worked out in the Logic. Hegel agrees that perceptions are of objects, but he thinks that starting out by presupposing this is how Kant ends up with the noumenal and his dualism problem.
Exactly. Representationalism might be challenged on other grounds, Occam's Razor (if things are already likenesses of themselves why are we positing additional likenesses?), an infinite regress of Cartesian theaters, a rejection of substance dualism leading us to question the need to posit mental representations, the greater parsimony of enactivism theories, etc. but it does not presuppose total ignorance of the "the world outside perception." Kant's stronger theses about knowledge of the "noumenal" don't need to go along with representationalism.
Given the procedure shown below, there is a systemic distinction between a conception and knowledge. We think an a priori conception iff there is no condition from experience contained in it, conceptions themselves being the purview of spontaneous discursive understanding or transcendental pure reason, a priori knowledge simply indicates that knowledge possible from a priori conditions. In other words, the conception alone is not knowledge.
Quoting Bob Ross
If I see a ball, I dont call it either of those you mentioned. I call it a ball iff I already know it as such, or, if you inform me thats what that thing I see, is.
When I see a ball, is not the same as what happens when my cognitive system operates correctly according to theoretical transcendental idealism.
In operating correctly, the system is affected by an object .
(I sense via vision, re: I see .)
(Remove long typically over-blown dissertation on correct metaphysical operations. Youre welcome. (Grin))
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Quoting Bob Ross
Ok, generically, youre correct enough. Generically. In everyday situations. Mere convention. But convention cannot satisfy the relation between my the unity of phenomenon and conception, something we subconsciously do, and your what do you see when you see a ball?, an experience, something we consciously have. So I wasnt cheating; I was being overly-analytic. Unnecessarily precise.
And I didnt say whatever our brain says it is; I said whatever our understanding says it is, insofar as the faculty of understanding, in its full procedural operation, thinks, judges and cognizes .all those systemic artifices which are grounded in logic as opposed to being grounded in external reality and externally affected physiology, and internal reproductive imagination, re: intuition, the sum of which is called sensibility.
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Quoting Bob Ross
I do not believe, more accurately stated as I do not hold with the opinion, transcendental idealism presupposes humans possess knowledge of some kind or degree, but does presuppose nonetheless, that the human individual is of such a nature as to have representational faculties imbued in a system by which any knowledge at all is possible. It follows that whatever cogent knowledge a human has, simply makes explicit the system presupposed as contained in the nature of individuals, is sufficient for the provision of it, and thereby denies to that system Lockes notion of innate knowledge as such, while at the same time refuting Humes rejection of pure knowledge a priori.
I do not see all these claims as being about the world as it is in itself.
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Could it be that the biggest problem for indirect realists, is being called indirect realists?
:100:
I don't know if this was meant to be addressed to me since I didn't say we have incomplete knowledge of things in themselves. That said I agree with the idea. Just as an example we have good reason to think other animals see things differently than we do. We can't see things as they do so there way of seeing things is a different kind of knowledge of things than ours. There for we can say that our knowledge of things is incomplete. We also seem to necessarily think that things must have an inherent existence that is not (fully, at least) apprehended in their appearances to us, or even the totality of all their appearances to all the creatures they appear to.
Might it be an even bigger problem, to label oneself with a philosophical label at all? To me it kind of suggests a closedness to different ways of looking at things.
(Not to say I won't make use of philosophical labels, as succinct ways of attempting to communicate a crude sense of what my perspective is.)
:up: The direct/ indirect polemic seems to me to thrive on the failure to recognize that the two ways of thinking about our experience are just two different perspectives. It doesn't have to be an absolute either/ or but is rather just a matter of different ways of thinking in different contexts.
Hmmmm ..
I think were allowed a certain closedness, which may reflect a related philosophical label, provided weve been intellectually honest in the procurement of it. Were not entitled, on the other hand, intellectual honesty notwithstanding, when such closedness is falsified upon stronger ground.
I have no qualms about admitting to the rejection of some different ways of looking at things.
To say that animals see things differently than we do implies that we know something about how they see things. We sense things differently using different senses. Seeing a surface and feeling a surface provides us the same information in different forms. If we can be informed of the same thing via different methods then it seems to me that there isn't much more, if any, to the thing in itself. If there is then we'd never know it and wouldn't even be able to use it as evidence that we don't experience things as they are.
Do we experience our mind as the thing in itself? Is that what one means by the thing in itself is that you have to BE the thing?
Again, the goal will determine the level of accuracy (information) that is needed to accomplish the goal. All other information is irrelevant, not missing or not known. If it weren't known we wouldn't even be able to talk about it and use it as an example of missing something in the thing in itself.
Quoting wonderer1
Examples?
It seems to me that any merging between the macro and quantum worlds is going to happen with a good explanation of consciousness.
We infer that they see things differently on the basis of observation and analysis of their different sensory setups. We can infer that they see different ranges of colour, or even only in black and white for example.
It's true that we can get the same or similar information from different sensory modalities, but the sensations themselves are different. All of that information falls inot the category of 'how things appear or present themselves to us'. It seems natural to think that there must be more to things than just how they appear or seem to be. Of course we can never know more than that, but the fact that we are compelled to think of the 'in itself' has many ramifications for human life. Not in terms of something we know, but in terms of what we can never know. The knowledge here is just self-knowledge.
As to our experience of mind I think this is a real minefield. If mind consists only in our experience and judgements would it follow that we know all there is to know about it? Psychedelics and altered states in general show that we have the potential for very different experiences, so it would seem presumptuous to imagine that we have explored all there is to know about what it is possible to experience.
As much as the marketing department where I work might wish that were so, that isn't how things work as far as I can tell. There seem to be hard limits to what can be done in a great many ways regardless of goals.
Quoting Harry Hindu
There are all sorts of metrological limits, in addition to the ones which affect measurement of voltage.
Modern logic ICs are running up against quantum limits which pose problems for shrinking transistor size.
Then to look at things from a different angle, you can buy a quantum random number generator to plug into your computer.
I really liked the term a priori when I first entered into philosophy, but I found it had problems over time. I do not believe 1+1=2 is apriori for example. Which is why I boil it down to instinctual and intellectual capacity. IE, that people are capable of doing logic is innate, but the practice of classical logic specifically must be learned.
Quoting Bob Ross
Close, but not quite. A dog can experience a thing as well, but it cannot come up with the idea of "a thing in itself". That requires language, thinking, debate, etc. It is not an innate conclusion, but one of applied reason.
But let me see if I can get closer to your point without apriori. If I understand correctly, you're essentially noting that we observe and conclude things about the world. Since we can only observe representations, how do we know there's something under those representations? We only know because sometimes, the world contradicts our interpretations. Therefore the only logical thing we can conclude is that there must be something beyond our perceptions and interpretations that exists. Its not a proof of "I see the thing in itself" its a proof of, "Its the only logical conclusion which works."
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. We know that aposteriori is what I'm claiming. We have the capacity to reason and understand this, but it can only be argued as a matter of logic, not any innate knowledge.
Quoting Bob Ross
Its not necessarily about trust, its about experience. You and I have both had instances in our lives where our perceptions and beliefs about the world were contradicted in unexpected ways. Thus we conclude that there is something that exists apart from our understanding and perceptions. Once we explore this further, and understand how the senses and the brain work, we come to the logical conclusion that we cannot know anything in this world apart from interpretation. Yes, even the "Thing in itself" is an interpretation. An simlilar analogy is 'space'. Space is 'emptiness' which is defined in relation to other things. "Things in themselves" are defined in relation to what we cannot interpret. Its a logical construct that helps us understand the difference between what we interpret, and 'what is'.
I don't see this as a contradiction, as long as one is not trying to assert that one has special knowledge of a 'thing in itself' apart from a logical representative construct itself. Yes, if we claimed, "That" is a thing in itself, it would be absurd. But we're not claiming this. We're simply claiming, "There are contradictions to my will and beliefs int the world. Therefore there must be something beyond my interpretation that exists independently. I cannot know what this is specifically, but the logical concept I will represent as "A thing in itself".
Good discussion as usual Bob! I always like how you drill in. I'm heading out on vacation this week to Yellowstone park with some friends, so I won't be available to reply for a while. I'll read your reply when I get back for sure. Until then, stay great and I hope the discussion is interesting!
I don't understand the point you're making here. Providing real-world examples would be helpful here. The hard limits would be the limited relevant information to achieving some goal. Most information is irrelevant to achieving some goal. You don't need to know how fast your lawn grows to get a spacecraft to Mars. We don't need an infinite number of significant figures after a decimal point to successfully land a spacecraft on Mars.
Quoting wonderer1
Events appear random when we don't have a proper explanation of the event. Once we do, the event is no longer random but predictable. What roles does the observer effect play here, ie consciousness? Our senses are macro sized objects trying to get at quantum sized objects. There's bound to be some kind of preliminary misinterpretation of the behavior of quantum sized objects. There are many different interpretations of quantum mechanics to say one way or the other.
Then what is missing exactly if we know the way they see the world?
Quoting Janus
But I asked what a "thing in itself" even means. It sounds like a misuse of language. Does it mean to BE the thing in itself? If so, is there a BEING to a chair, table, house, car, or rock? If not then there is nothing missing.
Quoting Janus
So the thing in itself includes all states of the thing in the past, present or future? We don't see an apple on the table in the future. We see it in the present. We are talking about the thing in itself at this moment. I'm talking about the right here and now. Do you have direct access to your mind in it's current state? Are you experiencing your mind as "the thing in itself" at this moment?
Even with that said, we can make predictions and get at past causes by our present observations. If we get at the past causes and make accurate predictions, again - what is missing?
We infer the way they see the world. It doesn't follow that we can see the world that way.
Quoting Harry Hindu
We don't know what things are apart from how they appear to us. Once that is realized it is possible to make the logical distinction between how things are for us, how they are for other animals and how they are in themselves. Some believe that physics shows us how things are in themselves, but the problem is there is no way to know if that is true, and anyway even the quantum physicists say that they can form no coherent picture of the quantum world and that understanding it is only possible via mathematics. What QM does seem to show is that things are not what they seem.
No, I didn't do that either.
The biggest problem for indirect realists (that's the title of your OP) is their own assumption that we never experience objects and states of affairs directly. How is knowledge possible even under such conditions? Hence the complexity of Kant's investigation, and its seemingly paradoxical use of two worlds or perspectives. Such problems don't even arise for direct realists or idealists.
Suppose I have a visual experience of shapes and colours. There is no doubt in my mind that this visual experience has been caused by something external to the visual experience itself. There is no doubt in my mind that this visual experience didn't cause itself.
It seems part of the a priori structure of the brain to expect that everything that happens has a cause. This cause may be called the thing-in-itself.
The next question is about the relation between my visual experience of a shape, for example, and the external cause of my experiencing this particular shape.
Either, the cause is identical to the effect, Direct Realism, or the cause is different to the effect, a representation, Indirect Realism.
But we only know the effect and can only reason about the cause.
For the Direct Realist, what information is there in an effect to be able to know its cause?
If it were possible to determine from an effect its cause, it would be possible to look at a broken window and know what caused it to break.
I don't quite get the problem. Let's say that there's something hiding under my bed cover. I cannot see under my cover to see what it is; I can only see the bump in the cover (and maybe the cover moving). Any knowledge I have of the thing under my cover is at best an inference.
It's the same principle with things like Kant's transcendental idealism or indirect realism.
And then on the further extreme the idealist claims that there isn't anything under my cover; there's only the cover, which happens to have a bump (and maybe is moving).
I apologize for the belated response! My schedule got hectic.
Correct. But:
Kant clearly denies the cogito ergo sum argument, and argues in the CPR that we cannot know anything about the self as it is in-itself because our self-consciousness, albeit it different, is still representational. It is important to remember that Descartes was arguing for the self as a simple substance; and Kant was arguing for the self as the unity of apperception, which has transcendental validity insofar as it is necessary for constructing our conscious experience:
CPR: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/reason/critique-of-pure-reason.htm#:~:text=That%20the%20I%20or,mental%20representation%20of%20all.
If all you are noting is that Kant believed that there must be something which exists which is producing the conscious experience which I have, then that is true; but this is not the same as the cogito argument (in its original argumentation).
This is critical because nothing I said that you quoted denies the I as the unity of apperception; and Kant is denying any knowledge of the self as it is in-itself. So, the paradox again arises such that I cannot trust even my own internal sense to give me information about what I am in in-itself and yet I can trust it enough to know that I am at allseems problematic, no?
My point was that that we could say there is an object, but nothing about what it isnothing about its properties. I just worded that confusingly.
Hopefully the above helps clarify why this does not resolve the paradox. Viz., if you can trust your internal sense enough to give you accurate enough information to know you exist [with representative faculties], then you necessarily can know some information about how the world really is.
Thats fair, I use those terms to explain it because it is easier to convey to other people. Most people have never heard of transcendental approaches to truth.
Could you elaborate on this part? I still think theres a paradox even if you speak in purely Kants terms. We only know that objects are a necessary precondition for our experience IF we trust our experience to some extentwhich he then turns around and denies is possible. I think this might be, although I am not familiar with Hegels critique, what you are referring to with Hegel:
This sounds like Hegel identified the paradox as dualism problem. How does Hegel resolve this issue then? That might help resolve it here.
Hmmm, I dont buy it. The concept of an apple is knowledge of what an apple isthats part of the whole idea of having a concept of an apple.
Thats fair. Again, as I noted in your DM: thats besides the point.
I get why you went that route, but wouldnt you agree the brain is the representational knowledge of those faculties?
But, then, you have to concede that you have to trust your conscious experience to derive that that experience is representationalno?
Otherwise, you are just blindly presupposing that objects effect our sensestheres nothing, without the aid of experience, that can be used transcendentally to determine that.
I can see that to some extente.g., the faculty of understanding is not a comment on what such exists as in reality as it is in-itself.
What would you call it, then?
Assuming by thing-in-itself we mean the object qua itself (independently of our experience of it), it sounds like you are denying that you cannot have any knowledge of the things-in-themselves; which cannot be true if there is an a priori structure by which your brain intuits and cognizes objects (which you equally affirmed).
This doesnt seem coherent to me.
The problem is that you have hidden the paradox, but it is there in your example. Either you trust the evidence you are using to infer whether or not there is such a thing under your bed, and what it is, or you do not. If you do, then you are trusting that evidence to give you accurate information about the "under the bed as it is in-itself": if you deny that have any such trustworthy evidence, then you have not reason to believe you can infer, other than blindly and absurdly, what is under there.
Sorry for the belated response!
The metaphysical underpinnings for 1 + 1 = 2 is that our brains construct our conscious experience according to math insofar as the plotting of objects in space is inherently mathematical.
Of course, the other alternative would be just say that math is a way that our over-arching faculty of reason nominally parses our conscious experiencewhich is the strongest version of mathematical anti-realism.
That logic is a priori does not entail that we can perform, intellectually, logic properly since birth. These are separate considerations: the former is about how inherently logical our conscious experience is, the latter is about how logically sound our over-arching reason is at argumentation and reasoning.
The point is that a thing-in-itself is the thing as it is in-itself: of course, it is a separate note that one may not have any self-reflective knowledge of it. Knowledge is, though, a requirement for cognition: your brain has to know how to do things and how to apply concepts and what not in order to construct the conscious experience you are currently having.
Nothing about what we think is going to happen, self-reflectively, nor its contradiction entails that there is an object which impacted our senses (and of which we are experiencing). You seem to be conflating the faculties which produce our experience with our self-reflective knowledge of that experience. Viz., I may be wrong that this object next to be is red, but that my experience contradicts me is not the same as reality contradicting me.
To me, I would agree that the best explanation, given experience, is that there are objects impacting our senses: but that is derived from empirical data from (ultimately) our experience itself. E.g., I experience getting knocked out by a ball, I experience an optical illusion, I study biology, etc. This is not inherently a process of reality contradicting me: it is me confirming hypotheses through empirical study.
Wouldnt you agree that you have to trust your experiences, to some degree, to even posit that reality sometimes contradicts your perceptions?
No worries at all!
I am able to believe that there is something under my covers without looking under my covers. I use what I can see to infer the existence of something that I cannot see. This is not a paradox or a contradiction or any sort of logical fallacy.
We can only do this because it aligns with our experience. It poses no obstacle to indirect realism to use hte best of what we have.
I see @Michael is doing hte Lord's work already. Really telling how uncomfortable people are with the facts of perception.
I don't know if it's problematic. I think we need to acknowledge the sense in which we are indeed 'a mystery to ourselves.' As I said, we know that we are, but it's quite conceivable that we don't fully understand what we are, and I don't see how that presents a paradox.
Quoting Bob Ross
Again Kant does not deny empirical realism. He qualifies it.
Although Kant and Indirect Realism overlap, it gets confusing when both Kant and Indirect Realism are discussed alongside each other, even though the concept of Indirect Realism was around during Kant's lifetime.
Wikipedia Direct and Indirect Realism
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Quoting Bob Ross
You are correct in that as regards Kant and the CPR, the topic of things-in-themselves is a paradox. The CPR leaves us with the paradoxical nature of things-in-themselves, and in that sense the CPR is unsatisfactory, but that is how it is.
It is true that Kant in the CPR does try to justify transcendental knowledge in section B276 "the Refutation of Idealism" using the example of time, but his argument is unpersuasive
The word "transcendental" is a name not a description, and tells us nothing about the nature of transcendental knowledge. It doesn't even tell us that there is such a thing, in the same way that even though the name "unicorn" may exist in language, unicorns don't of necessity exist in the world. In the same way, if asked how to travel instantaneously through time and space, I can say through "wormholes". Naming something "transcendental knowledge" tells us neither whether it is possible in the first place nor even if it were possible how it is explained.
Kant in the CPR has no escape from this paradox, no explanation and no persuasive justification. Within the CPR, the thing-in-itself is a paradox and remains so
The problem is how to obtain a priori necessary knowledge from a posteriori contingent knowledge. Kant in the CPR says "transcendentally", but this is just a name, as "unicorns" and "wormholes" are just names not descriptions.
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Quoting Bob Ross
As regards this topic, your position seems similar to Kant's
This is the problem. How to discover a priori necessary knowledge from a posteriori contingent knowledge.
Locke said we have innate knowledge, which Kant rejects.
Hume says our knowledge comes from the observation of the constant conjunction of a posteriori events, but this does not give us a priori necessary knowledge
Kant in the CPR developed Hume's idea, and said we have a priori necessary knowledge transcendentally from a posteriori contingent observations. But "transcendentally" is just a word and is meaningless in itself.
My belief is in "Innatism", the view that the mind is born with already-formed ideas, knowledge, and beliefs (Wikipedia Innatism), whereby my belief that my experiences have been caused by something else is part of the structure of my brain.
The problem with the CPR is that Kant doesn't explain how "transcendentally" is possible, leaving the paradox within the CPR of the possibility of knowledge about things-in-themselves.
No worry, I just got back a few days ago myself!
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. That is an innate ability. But creating the symbol of '1' and base ten arithmetic are aposteriori.
Quoting Bob Ross
No objections here. I think that works as well.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. Logic proper must be learned through experience. The capacity to be able to learn and practice logic is innate. A fish cannot learn logic no matter how much it experiences.
Quoting Bob Ross
Agreed.
Quoting Bob Ross
Belief is a requirement for cognition. Knowledge is a potential result of cognition.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. A thing in itself is not 'an object'. Its a logical concept. 'An object' is known by how it impacts our senses. Light reflects for sight, and air vibrations bounce for sound. 'A thing in itself' is the logical conclusion that there must be some reality that exists apart from our senses. Because we can only know 'objects' through our senses, we cannot know what a thing in itself is as 'an object' but only a logical concept.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I'm trying to note that there is belief and knowledge that is gained from the interpretation of our senses. I can 'see' red for example, but then notice the light wavelength is green. My senses experience red, but the reality is it is green. This is like a color blind person. Reality does not contradict my experience of red, only my interpretation that it is objectively red.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. And the way it is confirmed is the fact that the interpretations are not contradicted. A 'thing in itself' is not an object though. It is the logical concept of an underlying reality that we can never fully know. 'An object' is part of the logical belief and knowledge system that is, or is not contradicted by reality. We use contradictions and lack of contradictions, because contradictions are the only true way we can asses whether we are at odds with reality. If there is no contradiction, then we cannot claim that we have affirmed the underlying reality, but that we are merely concurrent with it at some unknown level.
Quoting Bob Ross
Absolutely. But there is trusting your experiences, then trusting the beliefs and interpretation from those experiences. What you experience, is what you experience. It is our beliefs and interpretations of what that means in reality which is constantly circumspect. We only gain logical and emotional confidence in those interpretations when they are not contradicted.
It does not appear we are that far apart here on concepts, if at all!
The whole idea of having, the only reason to have, a concept, is to represent that thing perceived, by a name. The name apple merely indicates how the thing perceived is to be known, which is called experience.
Quoting Bob Ross
I may be misunderstanding, but assuming I do, no, I would not agree. Faculties are function-specific members of a system described in a metaphysical theory. Theres no possible method by which those faculties can be found in a brain, they being merely logical constructs, and by the same token, theres nothing empirically provable, hence nothing falsifiable, in a metaphysical theory. All that can be said, insofar as empirical verifications for non-empirical theories are out of the question, is the brain has nothing to do with abstract conceptions authorized by such theory.
So what good is it, is the usual modern ask. Its all we got to work with being the best answer.
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Quoting Bob Ross
All I have to trust is that my knowledge obtained at one time, does not contradict Nature in another time.
That my experiences are representational, or, that all my experiences are of only representations, is proved at sensibility, systemically long before the experience itself, therefore I have no need to trust them to prove their constituency.
Quoting Bob Ross
Why do I have to presuppose that objects effect my senses, when my sensations apodeitically prove my senses have been affected? If I can see a mosquito bite me, if I can smell the bacon I hear frying, why do I have to presuppose either one of those objects?
And on the other hand, why subject myself to the absurdity of supposing what just bit me, or that stuff Im about to consume, wasnt an object at all?
Theres nothing that can be used transcendentally to determine ..what, that it is only objects that effect the senses? Why do we need a transcendental source to determine empirical circumstance? We may like a transcendental source for determining how empirical circumstances are possible, but the fact of sensation already proves it, so why bother?
Im a little in the dark here, not sure how you arrive at the questions you ask.
Let's go down this path which you are describing: I think that will be beneficial. What about your perceptions do you think gives you accurate enough information to make an inference about reality as it is in-itself?
How can you know that you exist at all? That you exist itself also requires inherent trust of one's experience: we experience in a way where there seems to be an 'I' vs. 'other'.
Even the direct realist (if also a scientific realist) can believe in the existence of things that he cannot directly perceive (e.g. electrons and dark matter), and believe that these things are very unlike the things that he can directly perceive.
Whereas the direct scientific realist believes that his direct perception of a Geiger counter gives him reason to believe in the existence of radiation, the indirect realist believes that his direct perception of qualia/sense data/whatever gives him reason to believe in the existence of a Geiger counter.
Your reasoning as it stands applies to believing in anything that one cannot directly perceive, and so would call into question almost all of science (especially particle physics).
Or referring back to my original example, your reasoning would entail that it is irrational to believe that there is something moving under my bed covers.
Are you willing to commit to this?
No it would not. I was trying to entertain your analogy to help further the discussion, but it is technically a bad analogy: it is already littered with phenomenal knowledge and requires no knowledge of the things-in-themselves. You would have to give an example which posits inferred knowledge of a thing-in-itself from phenomena to demonstrate your point: it is uncontroversially true that we can infer about phenomena, or possible phenomena, from given phenomena (such as a ball being under the bed without seeing it).
The epistemic dualism that inevitably arises in indirect realism is exactly because the very idea of a bed, covers, and something being underneath them is phenomenal; and once you strip away the a priori means of cognizing them, there is no intelligible bed nor covers left.
What you are trying to do, mistakenly, is claim that you can infer the things-in-themselves like how you can infer something phenomenally from other phenomena: these are not the same at all.
I have no problem with saying that I can infer about things as it relates to phenomena; but inferring about things-in-themselves from phenomena is a contradicto in adjecto.
In the CPR, an object which our sensibility is incapable of sensing, or which our understanding is incapable of cognizing, are noumena: they are sub-species of things-in-themselves. Noumena are equally unknowable as any other things-in-itself: your sensibility, intuition, and cognition are only capable of knowing things as it is a priori structured to.
Now, if by science you are smuggling in scientific realism, then, yes, I think a transcendental idealist would have to be a scientific anti-realist of sorts; but this does not mean that science isnt applicable to phenomena. In fact, thats exactly what Kant arguedviz., science is grounded in a priori principles and of which are only universally true for human experience. Thats kind of the whole point Kant is trying to argue for: the synthesis of rationalism with British empiricism.
[s]You are equivocating: one can be a direct realist without being a scientific realist. Every direct realist must be an empirical realistalbeit it rare, they could reject the scientific process of study.[/s] EDIT: Ignore this part: I read it wrong.
A thing-in-itself is the concept of an object which we cannot know anything about: so it necessarily is an object. You make it sound like it is purely abstract: it is no more abstract than the concept of an object, which refers to a real object.
It seems like you agreed with me, so I am not following why you do not believe in a priori knowledge. If your representative faculties must already know how to do certain things and already has certain concepts at its disposal, then it must have a priori knowledge. Perhaps it has to do with:
To keep things simple, lets assume the traditional interpretation of knowledge: a justified, true belief.
You cognition must have more than a mere belief to know how to do what it does. E.g., your cognition has a priori knowledge on how to construct objects in space because it clearly does it correctly (insofar as they are represented with extension). The necessary precondition for the possibility of experiencing objects with extension is that your brain knows how to do that.
I'm conflicted. On the one hand, my understanding of hte physical elements of perception lend themselves to 'No'. But, my understanding of my experience in the round lends itself to 'yes'. However, I think 'common sense' is often not at all sensible and reject arguments of the likes of Searle and Austin which literally hand-wave these problems away. They seem to refuse to do philosophy when it comes to perception, and enquiring into their own (imo clearly erroneous) priors. They don't seem to even be priors - they wont tell us their priors!! LOL
So, I have to say i'm not entirely sure where i land here anymore. It's likely in the previous discussions I was dead-set on 'no'.
I am going to condense our conversation into one, to keep track of it better.
This part is where you lost me. How is its representation not the end result of the judgments, concepts, and reason?
From my reading of CPR, the thing-in-itself is what impacts the senses.
This doesnt seem coherent with Kants schema: Kant refers to what we end up seeing, hearing, etc. as phenomena. This is why I am trying to get you to answer what you call the end result which is a part of ones experience; and I still have yet to hear an answer.
This is peculiar to me, as, then, the brain does not know the concept of quality; nor any of the twelve categories of the understandingnor does the understanding if you want to avoid using the term brain.
Wouldnt you agree, though, that the brain is the representation of the thing which has those faculties? Its two sides of the same coin.
Because none of that is about things-in-themselves. If you agree that seeing a mosquito bite you indicates there is a mosquito, whatever it may be exactly, in reality in itself which impacted your senses; then you dont believe we cannot know anything about things-in-themselves...for you just admitted that a mosquito is an animal which exists in reality in-itself.
Because the material world you experience is material because of the a priori way that you cognize itre: space and time.
I don't understand what you're trying to argue here.
I am simply explaining that we very often, both in particle physics and everyday life, observe one thing to happen and then use that thing to infer the existence and behaviour of something else.
The direct scientific realist believes that such things as dark matter, gamma radiation, and electrons cannot be perceived directly, and can only be inferred by the effects that they have on the things that can be perceived directly.
The indirect realist believes the same thing, but just adds things like apples and chairs to the list of things that cannot be perceived directly.
It's the same reasoning for everyone, they just disagree on where the line is drawn. Is it at the mental/neurological/biological, or further beyond the body?
This is a really good point, just by the by, imo.
It points out the strict incoherence of referring to the organ of perception as anything more than a result of it's own function. Which is ... wild.
Quoting Michael
I think this is, perhaps, a little far, but given the point I've elucidated above I think its pretty clear that there is no line to draw, if we're going to accept that the organ/s of perception do not rise to the level of 'certainly extant as they are'.
So, in other words the categories of understanding manifest in unique ways that tend to obviate necessity of a purely a priori noumenal conception.
You have to exist to question it!
Interesting fact: St Augustine anticipated Descartes' Cogito by several millenia:
[quote=Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji, "Self", 2006, p.219]But who will doubt that he lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? For even if he doubts, he lives. If he doubts where his doubs come from, he remembers. If he doubts, he understands that he doubts. If he doubts, he wants to be certain. If he doubts, he thinks. If he doubts, he knows that he does not know. If he doubts, he judges that he ougth not rashly to give assent. So whoever acquires a doubt from any source ought not to doubt any of these things whose non-existence would mean that he could not entertain doubt about anything.[/quote]
Your handwaving may rise to that charge, though.
Not particularly interesting, no.
Ive posted quotes from CPR proving this is not the case. I would like to see where in your reading of CPR, that it is.
For my part, you have previous tried to do this but I have not seen you succeed. The CPR seems to explicitly state that the thing-in-itself is what impresses on the senses, which triggers phenomena, from which we infer the thing-in-itself based on the apparent logical requirements of the phenomena.
If you could find something that directly addresses this (no where is this to be found, so far) that would be helpful. Acknowledging the difficulties interpreting Kant, it's almost certainly best to figure out what you think is doing this job before arguing about whether or not it obtains in the text. As an example of why this is fundamentally important:
"The noumena are not objects of our possible experience; but by the same token, we can neither know how they are in themselves, nor can we know what influence they exert upon our sense perception."
This quote doesn't do what you're wanting, on my view.
Have you read the CPR? In modern times, the idea that we cannot know anything about the things-in-themselves has been largely left behind; and the vast majority of people are naive realists. Even the indirect realists do not tend to be as strong in their position as Kant was: they tend to still think that how we perceive reality is predominantly a reflection of reality in-itself.
The problem is that you are not making any real objection to the idea that we cannot know the things-in-themselves: you are just sidestepping it by noting the uncontroversial fact that we can infer things from other things.
You have to remember, Kant divides the world into the phenomena and noumena (roughly speaking): propositions acquired through empirical observation are only valid as universally true for human experience. The inferences you are talking about are things Kant would place squarely in the phenomenal---not noumenal---world.
I didn't follow that: there's no such thing as a "noumenal a priori concept".
something has to exist for me to question it. You must demonstrate why that something must be an 'I' which is me---a valid critique from Nietzsche.
Sure thing. I don't have time right now to skim back over the whole thing to pull a quote, but the introduction seems to obviously allude to it:
--- CPR, p.1
In the Prolegomena, section 32, he also clearly explicates this as well:
If you think about it, it makes no sense to say that the thing-in-itself is not the object which impacted our senses: that's the whole point of the idea of having a representational system based off of sensations.
I see, I think this is where a major difference is. Its because it is an abstract. There is nothing to observe. There is nothing to verify. It is a pure logical concept. An object is "A ball" Its something that we can identify, observe, and conclude what it is. A thing in itself cannot be observed, identified, or concluded as anything more than the abstract logical concept that it is.
Quoting Bob Ross
The point that I disagree with in apriori is that we can have knowledge without experience. We have nothing besides instinct and innate potential when born. What we reason with and on is through experience. Without experience, we have suppositions and unverified concepts. Even a 'thing in itself' is verified by the experience of having reality contradict our interpretations of it. If you recall my knowledge theory, I divide knowledge into distinctive and applicable for this reason. At one time, I used the apriori distinction, but found it problematic when I tried to remove experience from consideration.
You may want to start another thread on apriori and see what other people say on it as well. I believe the concept of dividing mental constructs and applied constructs as valuable, but apriori doesn't quite nail how the mental construct of knowledge works.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct, and this aspect of apriori I agree with. As you've noted, I call it 'instinct and intellectual potential'. But its not 'knowledge'. Knowledge can only be gained from experience, even the experience of the self. A baby may have an instinct to want to walk, but it still has to learn how. Instinct propels us to action, but knowledge is only learned by attempting those actions.
Maybe laymen and philosophers, but that's not the view of those who study perception scientifically.
Take Perception#Process_and_terminology for example:
And also this:
Whatever "rational" grounds you might have for believing in naive realism, it is incompatible with physics, biology, neuroscience, and psychology.
I going even think most philosophers are naive realists. They're mostly non skeptical realists but that's substantially different.
Notice in the text its objects which affect our senses, not thing-in-themselves. Which is to say things-in-themselves are not that which affects our senses.
Then Id love to know, for you to inform me, what sensation I would receive from a thing-in-itself. If I receive a sensation in conjunction with the sensory device being impacted, then I should be able to smell, hear, taste, etc., a thing-in-itself. How, then, do I distinguish it from a thing?
Section 32 is intended to make clear the thing-in-itself just means not thing-in-us. The thing of the thing-in-itself is that which appears to sensibility, the thing-as-it-is-in-itself(without-influence-on-a-sensory-mechanism) is that which does not. Thats what he means by one being the ground of the other. That things-in-themselves are the ground of things is utterly irrelevant, when it is only things that appear, and of which are the matter of phenomena.
The thing is provided by Nature, appears to us and becomes empirical knowledge; the -in-itself is provided by reason, .that is, without reference to the constitution of our sensibility ., representing only non-appearance, and is merely a logical inference.
Obviously, without reference to our sensibility means sensibility has no part to play, hence is not affected, which means it is not an appearance, insofar as it is appearances only that do affect our sensibility. See A28/B44.
And of course this tired claim has been shown to be unsupportable any number of times in the recent thread, Perception. These blind appeals to "The Science" seem to be just the sort of non-interactive evangelization that the forum rules prohibit.
Besides, the belief that science can adjudicate the Kantian question just belies a misunderstanding of the Kantian question, not to mention the science.
Let's take the words of Albert Einstein as an example:
If you want to argue that naive realism is correct then fine, but it's clearly the unscientific view. The findings of physics, neuroscience, and psychology are firmly opposed to it, despite your insistence otherwise.
This, itself, is based on a tendency for experience to converge in its narrative though, as doesn't do much at all for hte problem itself. Searle is a perfect example of ignoring hte problem, for a more palatable exegesis ("I think "go up" and my hand goes up" is all he has to offer in terms of securing hte inference as knowledge). That doesn't make it any more or less 'true' - It could be the case that our experience is a relatively close match, ignoring biographical impediments to psychological interpretation for ease, to what we 'actually look at'. But it could equally be nothing of hte kind. It seems to be more a result of hte modern turn toward 'continental' or 'post-modern' philosophy as it presents less conflict when presented to non-philosophers, largely because it turns on not having to answer difficult questions (in my view) and can simply be word-gamed away ala Hegel, Witty etc... such that a question of 'Do we really see things as they are?" becomes a non-question. Its ammo for bad-faith discussions about meaning and intentionality. This is, to be 100% sure, an illustration of my personal bias in these ways - but i think I'm pointing out either legitimate distinctions, or legitimate gripes.
To my mind, being a naive realist because its easier (it undeniably is easier, regardless of plausibility) is as useless as not taking a position.
I dont think direct realism is per se incompatible with science: it depends on the view. Personally, Ive never heard a good argument for direct realism, but I see no inherent incoherence with it conjoined with science.
Also, Leontiskos is absolutely correct to note:
Scientific investigations of how we perceive already, to some extent, presuppose the a priori modes by which we intuit and cognize objects, being that we must study the intuited and cognized version of our own representative faculties, and so the Kantian question is still very much alive and puzzling.
Hmmm, I disagree with this inference here: an object which is not a possible object of experience is not thereby no object at all. We are not talking about some abstract thing, like a Platonic form, that exists in a supersensible realm nor are we merely talking about a concept in our brains nor mindswe are talking about a real object, a physical object, which simply is not cognizable by us. See what I mean?
I am not following. If you agree that your brain has to know how to intuit and cognize objects in space independently of any possible experience that it has, then you cannot disagree with the idea that some knowledge our brains have are without experience.
But it clearly said it in the Prolegomena! Quite frankly, I am pretty sure it also says it outright in the CRP; but I dont have time right now to skim through and try to find itso take that part with a grain of salt.
You would receive sensations from your senses of what it sensed of the thing as it were in-itself. I dont understand how this is controversial. Viz., the ball hits your arm, your neurons fire, intuiting & judging & cognizing & happen, and then you experience the feeling of getting hit.
You are talking about a thing-in-itself as if it never excites our senseswhat then, is the point? That seems like a noumena in that stricter sense of an object which is not a possibly sensed or/and represented by our faculties.
Why would that be the case? If the ball hits your arm, you end up experiencing the sensations of the ball that were interpreted by your brain into some sort of perception: the ball as it is in-itself doesnt get perceivedit gets sensed.
I am not following what you are arguing: are you saying that the thing as it is in-itself does NOT excite our senses such that we perceive something?
Im saying I think thats what Kant wants understood. What do you think the thing-in-itself actually is, what concept is being represented by those words? As far as that goes, what do you think the Big Picture is for CPR? What does he mean by critique. And why, exactly, is it that the thing-in-itself ends up as one of the necessary limitations proved for this particular, albeit theoretical, method of human cognition and empirical knowledge?
The A/B pagination listed above is the place to start. If youd researched it, youd see what is meant by that is (without reference to our sensibility).
The thing as a whole excites such that we perceive, but it isnt the whole thing we intuit from that perception. The thing as a whole is not the same a a thing in itself.
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And make no mistake: by his own admission, but in modern venencular, Prolegomena is CPR For Dummies, so if one wishes to critique the one, he must set aside the other.
Quoting Bob Ross
If it does, and all else unsusceptible to equivocation, Id be forced to re-think.
Having gone back to this after a long break: Absolutely not and it seems totally ridiculous you could claim so.
Quoting Mww
The exact type of incomprehensible non-statement that CPR parochialism leads to, all too often. This tells me, as similar things do with many other 'classical' works and writers, that you have inhabited this world to such a degree as to write sentences that do not make sense outside of your interpretation of the one work (or, perhaps one philosopher). There is nothing wrong with doing this, but you would need to make this make sense outside of that for it to hold much water. How does this translate to non-Kantian language?
Kant makes clear that he knows there is a mysterious link between the thing-in-itself and our perception. We can't know, other than the a priori categories, how there's a connection between the two, but that is enough to know it exists by logical inference. Without hte connection between our perception, and the thing, there is nothing to infer and no transition to make between anything, and anything else. Perception would be completely and utterly arbitrary. But Kant is clearly, and unequivocally not claiming that they are not related. Your positions here would require that either:
1. thing-in-itself and our perceptual experience are entirely unrelated; or
2. The fact we cannot access thing-in-itself is somehow a reason to utterly ignore that previous issue.
I see nothing, anywhere, that could support either position. Do you read other work?
Right. :up:
Quoting Michael
Einstein? The more you post the more evangelistic your approach becomes. This is a site for philosophical argument. Evangelism is literally against the rules.
YEA!!!!
Quoting AmadeusD
Make sense outside of what .my interpretation? Or outside of one work? The work under discussion is CPR, so there is no other work that matters.
I never said nor implied my interpretations were the case, hence the liberal account from quotation; its almost a given they may not be, insofar as the quotes themselves may be misappropriations. If anyone wishes to refute what I say, he should have at it, but Id ignore any attempted refutation that does not arise directly from Kantian philosophy.
This is the crystalisation of what I think is wrong in your approach... And perhaps explains some of the deader-ends you've met in discussions about Kant/CPR.
Think as you wish, and I dont understand dead-ender, so .
I am still not understanding what you are claiming the thing-in-itself is: I am saying it is the thing which excites our senses. Can you put in simple terms what you think it is?
It represents an object in reality as it is in-itselfi.e., qua itselfi.e., independent of any experience of it
Kant is outlining the limits of reason; especially as it relates to rationalism vs. (british) empiricism.
Because something representational requires something which was not representational which grounds it.
Haha. I also read the CPR: Ill try and pull some quotes sometime this week for you.
The persistent error I see with this, is the idea that the ding an sich is a 'thing behind the thing', that it's 'the real thing' as opposed to 'the apparent thing'. And the reason why I think that's an error is that it attempts to take a perspective from which you're able to compare them, which, according to Kant, you can never do.
@Mww - do you concur?
This seems the only relevant, or rational inference from Kant. Otherwise we're left with ding en
sich- ???????? - experience. Rather than ding???en??sich - perception - experience. Which is what he outlines, filling the ????'s with a priori concepts. That's actually the exact problem he explicitly states is his intention to solve, after Hume. And, I think that's what happens in the book... Whether i agree is different.
What, in your view, is Kant trying to say excites the senses?? The sense data subsequent to a ding en sich in the presence of a human???
The thing in itself is the thing considered by reason alone. As the referenced quote says.
Quoting Bob Ross
Nothing independent of experience or possible experience can ever be represented. Or, which is the same thing, representation is always and only of things of possible experience. No human can ever experience an object considered by reason alone.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, and no. Limits, but not as relates to rationalism vs empiricism.
Quoting Bob Ross
No. The limitation is proof for the impossibility of an intelligence of our kind ever cognizing the unconditioned.
But clearly incorrect. Otherwise, our experiences would be of nothing. And that's not Kant's position.
If 'the thing in itself' denotes the thing "independent of any experience of it" then how can it be "the thing that excites our senses"? To say that is to contradict yourself.
There is absolutely no contradiction to say that something in the world triggers a set of processes, the end-result of which are our experience, and denying that we experience the thing that triggered it. This is hte case with plenty of actual objects. We don't experience something by it's shadow. Yet, under certain conditions, we have a fully sensible representation of the thing. It just leaves open error. Obviously. I think Kant scholars are trying, erroneously, to claim we can't even accept the error - there just is nothing. But this would preclude having any experience at all, if we can't infer a cause. It's an over-read of Kant and is just stupid. It's the same as claiming God is the inference from the Kalam instead of 'a cause of some kind'. Just.. silly.
Real thing as opposed to apparent thing is a common misconception, yes, which makes the comparison by means of them, moot.
But in light of this ..
. At the same time, it must be carefully borne in mind that, while we surrender the power of cognizing, we still reserve the power of thinking objects**, as things in themselves. For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears, which would be absurd
is found tacit acknowledgement that the thing that really exists that we do cognize, as first it appears, is the thing of the ding as sich, which also must really exist, but is not cognized because it isnt that which appears.
This is what Bob was trying to get at by saying the thing-in-itself is the ground of the thing we perceive. The problem is, the thing we perceive is the undetermined object . of intuition, which just says while it may be the case there is a ground for it, we have no means to determine anything about it, so ..like .who cares? If the perceived object is undetermined, what is there to say about its ground?
(Hegel and Schopenaur did, but thats another can of transcendental worms altogether.)
** from which comes thing in itself considered by reason alone , which .(sigh) .was the A/B pagination clue I left for Bob.
Quoting Emrys Westacott
Note also that many or all of Kant's criticism of rationalism were directed at the philosophers of his day (Christian Wolff and others) who proposed various teleological, ontological and other 'proofs of the existence of God'. This kind of proof was what Kant said reason could not establish. It doesn't mean that he doesn't believe in God, but, as he said, he had to declare a limit to knowledge to make room for faith. (I personally think there is another cognitive mode altogether, connected with religious insight, but that is yet another transcendental can of worms altogether.)
A sense of mystery indeed. The raison detre for the first Critique was to first, reign reason in from its proclivity for seeking the unconditioned, and second, prove the possibility and validity of synthetic a priori cognitions.
With respect to the first, granting possibility of knowing about the thing in itself promises knowledge of everything whether it be experience or not, which is immediately contradictory, insofar as we are constantly learning.
Does this other cognitive mode happen to have a typically south-central Asian name?
Quoting Wayfarer
If the thing-in-itself is known to us as appearing objects, why is it said things-in-themselves are unknown to us?
If the thing-in-itself appears, it isnt in-itself. It is isnt in itself, and it is something that appears, then it must appear to us, which becomes phenomenon in us, which becomes an object of experience for us, and the entire transcendental aesthetic contradicts itself.
So either Hegel and Schopenhaur were right, or, the transcendental aesthetic does not contradict itself.
Six of one, half dozen of the other?
Quoting Janus
The underlined is where I, not so much as disagree, but can't understand how this could refer to anything, inferred or otherwise. It seems to want to obtain certainty of the existence of something which is claimed to have zero effect on our experience - which, clearly, cannot be the case. If we have literally no connection, whatever, to the thing, it doesn't exist. But it is required for Kant's system to get off the ground, so it seems(on my reading, and account) that Kant would not accept this, but instead say:
Quoting Mww
That's what I was trying to illustrate Kant actually said, as opposed to claiming there's no connection (which I think is counter to reason, Kant and sensibility viz It would result in no experience, or nothing to be said about it anyhow - and there's an entire CRP LOL.
It must, necessarily, be that from which experience derives rather than arises, to have any aspect whatsoever. The only aspect is it's logical necessity as a grounding for experience, whether or not we can cognize anything at all beyond the necessity for it to exist. Add in the a priori's and we can, at least, see "ding en sich->perception->experience" holds for Kant, regardless of the murkiness, and potentially un-speakable nature of hte first "->". It's this, which the a priori categories are required to fill. And, i think Kant does a good job.
Quoting Mww
I think a better version would "Known to exist but nothing about it need, or could be known". Not 'known' in the sense phenomena are known - It's just logically sound to infer it (the above goes some way to elucidating why that's the case).
It's made more explicit in them, but it's also there in the Western traditions. I often feel that in Asia there is not so much of a gap between the ancient and modern.
Quoting Mww
Check out this blog post.
There has been a well-known disagreement between Kant scholars as to whether Kant intended a 'two world ' interpetation or a 'two aspect' interpretation. I favour the latter. Its just a logical distinction between what things are for us and what they are in themselves. Of course the latter cannot be anything for us by definition apart from being the mere logical counterpoint to phenomena.
My claim is that the scientific evidence shows that naive realism is wrong, and I support this claim by referring to experts in the field, such as Einstein, who best know what the scientific evidence shows.
Are you claiming that Einstein and I are wrong in claiming that the scientific evidence shows that naive realism is wrong, or are you claiming that the scientific evidence itself is wrong?
No, we don't know what it is. We don't know if its an object, if its physical, if it many things, or something beyond our imagination or comprehension. All we know is there is some 'thing', and 'thing' in only the loosest and most abstract sense. All of those words you used to describe it are words formed from physical sensations, or interpretations.
A ball is not a thing in itself for example. If we were to comprehend what the thing in itself was behind the sensations which lead us to interpret it as a ball, it could be a magical unicorn spinning in an endless circle spewing rainbows and evil demons that dance the cha cha. We don't know. We CANNOT know. It is a logical limit of knowledge.
'A thing in itself' is simply a logical abstract to point out this limit. It is not a 'thing' 'in' or 'itself'. It is a phrase of limitations. It is the constant understanding that everything we know is a representation, and 'the unknowable' the 'thing in itself' could counter our representations at any moment.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, our brain does not have to know how to intuit and cognize objects in space independently of any experience it has. It has the capacity to do so. Just like our minds have the capacity to take light and concentrate on aspects of them. We have the ability to discretely experience, but that ability is not knowledge. We can know that we are discretely experiencing. We can learn that some of our discrete experiences can be applied to the world without contradiction, while some cannot. But we don't know which ones can until we apply them.
Think of it like this. A newborn has the capacity to be able to walk one day. Does it know how to do so apart from experience? No. It doesn't know how to walk until it tries to stand repeatedly and learns how to balance. It doesn't know how to talk until it babbles, gets responses from others, and learns language. It doesn't know how to do math until its shown a symbol called 'one', and shown this thing called 'addition'.
When you speak of knowledge without experience, you must speak of a newborn. Because every second after that new experiences are flooding that child's mind as it tries to make sense of the world. There is instinct and potential in a child, but the actual knowledge that a child has is gleaned from every experience they have.
This is the part I disagree with. A child does not know how to construct things in space. It has the potential to. It then can know that it has, and can believe that its constructs match reality. Only after applying these construct to reality, can it know that its constructs are either concurrent with, or not contradicted by reality. But we can never truly know what reality 'is', because its always a representation of it.
Skimming over a couple of the other replies here, I think its the term 'thing' that's throwing people. We can rephrase a 'thing in itself' to 'the unknowable reality' Its not a 'thing' like an 'object'. Its just a logical conception that we always interpret reality, and we cannot know reality as it is uninterpreted. That's all.
Edit: I just realized there's other simple ways to explain it. The brain in the vat. An evil demon. The matrix. All of these are 'things in themselves' that we could never know. Its just the same type of argument.
This is helpful: I am also wondering if this is what @Mww is talking about. I am viewing the thing-in-itself as the thing as it really is. What is your interpretation, then, of the ding an sich?
I guess I didnt follow it: can you elaborate more on this?
I am thinking that we use reason to determine that there must be a thing-in-itself which is the ground for our experience of some thing; and that this is a claim in concreto about the thing as opposed to in abstracta. I think, now, you may be saying vice-versa.
That was the whole underlying context of the CPR. Kant was addressing philosophers like Descartes, Wolf, etc. and Locke, Hume, etc. with respect to their long standing disputes about knowledge.
So, the thing-in-itself to you is not real? The thing as it is unconditioned isnt real?
Experience is not sensations. Sensations are the raw data which is intuited, judged, and cognized into a representation which, as a result, is your experience. E.g., a ball excites your senses by "impact" of whatever it is in-itself exciting your sensibility, and then sensations of that excitation are passed to your brain to interpret...there's nothing contradictory going on here.
..which has always two aspects, the one, the object considered as a thing in itself, without regard to the mode of intuiting it ( ), the other, the form of our intuition of the object, which must be sought not in the object as a thing in itself, but in the subject to which it appears .
A bone of contention that shouldnt be. I mean .as long as one trusts the translator(s).
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Quoting Janus
Logic belongs to understanding, the faculty of thought/cognition, noumena are understood as logically counter to things-in-themselves .
.. At the same time, when we designate certain objects as ( ) sensuous existences*, thus distinguishing our mode of intuiting them from their own nature as things in themselves**, it is evident that by this very distinction we as it were place the latter, considered in this their own nature, although we do not so intuite them, in opposition to the former, or, on the other hand, we do so place other possible things, which are not objects of our senses***, but are cogitated by the understanding alone, and call them intelligible existences (noumena). ..
* because we are affected by them;
**the above mentioned two-aspect dichotomy;
***a very different kind of two-aspect dichotomy.
..we see other possible things which are not objects of our senses to be not sensuous existences, from which follows if not sensuous existence then intellectual existence, but existence nonetheless, in opposition to phenomena which are nothing but representations of existences given from the mode of being intuitions. As well, but are cogitated must implicate things, or objects, in order to maintain dialectical consistency with the beginning when we designate certain objects. That is to say, when we designate certain objects as sensed must relate to certain objects as cogitated. As found here:
. things which the understanding is obliged to cogitate apart from any relation to our mode of intuition, consequently not as mere phenomena, but as things in themselves .
things and objects of course, being equal and things-in-themselves always being apart from any relation to our mode of intuition, which is representative by means of internal imagination, yet always part of the causality of that which appears to those modes, which is sensuous by means of external reality.
So .understanding forced to cogitate things not as phenomena but as things-in-themselves ..but understanding cannot cogitate objects as things-in-themselves, insofar as things-in-themselves belong to reason alone. And here is the ground of ***, the very different kind of two-aspect dichotomy, which obviously isnt going to work.
This whole exposition in CPR is to show understanding, with respect to human knowledge, has no business thinking objects on its own, which is to say cognitions with noumena as their objects are illegitimate, even if constructed with non-contradictory conceptions. And it is the illegitimacy of those cognitions by which noumena and things-in-themselves are confused with each other, insofar as both are futile attempts at representation, albeit under different conditions.
Now, and quickly because looking around I dont see anybody still here .things-in-themselves belong to reason and noumena belong to understanding because reason is the only fully transcendental faculty, whereas .
. We have seen that everything which the understanding draws from itself, without borrowing from experience, it nevertheless possesses only for the behoof and use of experience .
..and nothing in experience, as such, is transcendental. It follows that things-in-themselves, because they can never be for the behoof and use of experience as such under any conditions whatsoever, while noumena would be if only our faculty of intuition was intellectual rather than sensuous, can only belong to that faculty which does not concern itself with experience as such, but only the construction of pure a priori principles by which the manifold of experiences are arbitrated with respect to each other and to reality itself.
IknowIknow ..shades of R.E.M.? Ive said too much I havent said enough.
I agree with your comment therein; it was a very well done exposition.
Good enough superficially .
Quoting Bob Ross
..and superficially because reason cannot do in concreto claims, but is transcendental, which is itself either theoretical or speculative. Even practical reason has a pure aspect, and while not always transcendental, re: with respect to moral judgements, is still entirely in abstracta.
So it is that reason does inform the system that for a thing that appears a thing-in-itself is a necessary condition, but makes no concrete claims with respect to that condition.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, addressing, but not in relation to one opposed to the other, but one combined with the other, re: human empirical knowledge requires both a rational and an empirical aspect, and, conversely, no empirical knowledge is at all possible without some determinable aspect of both. But, and more importantly, a priori knowledge is both possible and valid without any empirical content whatsoever, but relies nonetheless on empirical conditions for its justifications, re: pure mathematics.
Quoting Bob Ross
By definition the real is that which is contained in reality, and by definition reality is that of which the susceptibility to sensation is given. The thing-in-itself does not meet the criterion of susceptibility to sensation hence is not real. But it can still exist as a necessary condition for that which follows from it. Just as space and time are not real, but suffice as necessary conditions, in this case, as pure intuitions a priori, necessary for the construction of phenomena.
Also, as transcendental ideas given from reason, things-in-themselves are not real, in the same sense as things are real.
Also, the thing as it is unconditioned is a contradiction, in that sensibility is always conditioned by appearances. If the thing didnt appear it couldnt be a thing, hence the reality of a thing serves as the condition for its appearance. Space and time are the conditions for the experience of the thing, not for the appearance of the thing.
But to answer the question, no, things-in-themselves are not real to me. Or anybody else, iff he finds himself under the auspices of this particular speculative epistemological methodology. It does not follow from the condition that reason proposes a real existence, that there must in fact necessarily be one that corresponds to it.
Metaphysical reductionism, or, a dog chasing his tail. One must chose what to make of philosophy in general, right?
Ive seen that myself, but dont remember, and couldnt find, where I saw it. I thought Guyer/Woods marvelous intro, but, no luck. Anyway .good point.
Quoting tim wood
Absolutely. And we depend on Mother to make us aware our inaccuracies, hopefully not at too great an expense.
Quoting tim wood
Funny, innit. An ordinary folk looks out, is perfectly convinced he sees a tree, but you the metaphysician tell him, nahhhh, you dont. You see a thing, and that thing is only called a tree because somebody, somewhere, some long time ago, said so, and youre just regurtitatin whats been taught to you.
But then, theres markedly more ordinary folk than there are metaphysicians, so ..there ya go. I see a tree rules the day.
A relevant passage from here:
Relevant indeed.
Existence questions are hard, and Kant among others, doesnt bother with them.
Theres a world, its really a world ..so what? World being, of course, an abstract entity. Sorta like Rawls (?) .wheres the university.
(Crap. I can't remember the author or the name of the paradox. Maybe identity. Guy sees all the accoutrements which constitute a university, but wants to know where the university he came to visit is located.)
Yes, that is also how I read it. Perhaps something is getting lost in whatever is wrong with the language i'm using. I don't propose there are two worlds - I propose that the 'ding en sich' must logically arouse whatever causes phenomenon to occur in us, and so i guess I just allow for a transitive relation that sounds more robust than a simply logical inference. The below strikes me as entirely sensible, and 'correct', but could be giving the inferences that I would reject. Appreciate if anyone could see where I'm losing it:
The thing in itself is, essentially, the same 'thing' as what is represented in phenomena, but it is not represented and so is, in fact, 'the thing' and not the representation, which is, in fact, the phenomena.
:up: Yes it seems that whatever we say about this there will be a way or ways of interpreting it that will make it look aporetic.
Gilbert Ryle's category mistake from The Concept of Mind.
As an analogy to this that the direct realist can accept; we do not see magnetic fields, only the affects that magnetic fields have on other things such as metal.
Kant (and other indirect realists) simply apply this same reasoning, arguing that metal is to phenomenal experience as the magnetic field is to metal (except, at least with respect to sight, there is not even direct physical contact between metal and the sense organ).
Of course, we are able to formulate mathematical models of this magnetic field, use these models to try to predict observable phenomena, either falsify or fail to falsify our models, and in doing so can be said to "know" something of the "thing in itself", but I'm not sure if this sense of knowing the thing in itself is the sense that is relevant to Kant's remarks above.
But then even if scientific realism is inconsistent with transcendental idealism, one can be an indirect realist and a scientific realist, so if this discussion is trying to equate indirect realism with transcendental idealism and argue that any problems with the latter are also problems with the former then I think it commits a fallacy. Much like the scientific realist, an indirect realist can accept that we can know something about things that we cannot directly perceive.
Daccord.
Hey .I got the R right.
Thanks.
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Quoting Michael
The quote is self-contradictory:
.objects of sense as mere appearance, yes;
.based upon a thing-in-itself, yes;
.know not this thing-in-itself, yes;
.but only know its appearance ..no. The thing-in-itself does not appear; if it did, it wouldnt be in-itself. It would be that object of sense as mere appearance, hence the contradiction.
Under what authority do we rightly confess?
You should read the next part:
i.e. the only thing we know about distal objects is how they affect our senses.
I considered that part irrelevant, insofar as we know nothing of a thing by its effect on our senses, except that is an undetermined something .. To say we know how they affect our senses is already given by sensation, which only informs as to which sense it is, but nothing whatsoever about the thing, except its real existence.
I am getting closer to understanding what you are saying, but I am still not quite there.
Heres the core of our issue:
I understand better now why you deny the existence of things-in-themselves: you are operating under a false understanding of what reality is. Reality is not itself the totality of that which is, at least in principle, capable of being sensedthats whats called our limits of sensing reality.
Do you really believe that all objects in reality are possible objects of sense for humans? I find that obviously and patently false. Theres absolutely nothing about reality that entails that there isnt an object which we are incapable of sensing.
If you take that reality is the totality of existence, on the contrary, then you find that things-in-themselves, as properly understood, are the things which comprise that totality.
Agreed, to some extent. By physical, I do not mean material: I mean mind-independent.
Even if we could not even know that it is mind-independently existing; the thing as it is in-itself is not purely logical (in that case): we are talking about some thing which existswe are talking in concreto.
Correct me here @Mww. I would say that my example was bad insofar as the intuition aspect of representation in space is non-cognitive (so there is no knowledge in that regard), but that our faculty of judgment, understanding, and cognition must formulate justified, true, beliefs in relation to the a priori principles and conceptions in order to actually represent the objects in space, according to spatial-mathematical relations.
A newborn does not have the capacity to walk: the biological structures required are not there (e.g., muscle, bone density, etc.). Now, once it has that capacity, of course, I agree it still has to learn how to walk; but this is disanalogous.
Everything described in the transcendental analytic applies to newborns. E.g., newborns know how to cognize objects in space and time, to cognize in accordance with logic, to cognize in according with math, etc.
Obviously, the newborn doesnt have the self-reflective knowledge about it (that would be needed to solve a math problem at school).
This is an equivocation. We are talking about the child qua its representative faculties; not its self-reflective reason.
True.
Cmon, Bob. You asked if things-in-themselves are real for me, I said no (by definition), and now you say I said things-in-themselves dont exist for me. Thats not even wrong, as my ol buddy Wolfgang used to say.
Ive never denied the existence of things-in-themselves, for to do so is to question the very existence of real things, insofar as the mere appearance of any such thing to human sensibility is sufficient causality for its very existence, an absurdity into which no one has rightfully fallen.
Quoting Bob Ross
Why would you not?
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, agreed. Which calls into question why you might think it not possible that all objects in reality are possible objects of sense in humans. I mean .all any one of them has to do, is appear to our senses, and VOILA!!!! .were capable of sensing it. Doesnt mean they will or must, but iff they do.
Quoting Bob Ross
Hmmmm. Might this be backwards? If, instead, you take existence as the totality of reality, there remains the possibility of existences that are not members of reality, hence not members of that which is susceptible to sensation in humans, i.e., dark energy. Quarks. And whatnot.
Added bonus if you let the totality of existence contain all of reality, that of which reality is not a condition may still be contained in it. Then you have justification for permitting things-in-themselves as existing but not for being real. Not to mention, we conceived the idea of e.g., dark energy, from its effects, so by the same token the idea of things-in-themselves is conceivable by their effects, re: things.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes.
Quoting Bob Ross
Ehhhh not so sure about that. According to spatial-mathematical relations is a form of knowledge, which flies in the face of what was already given as the case, re: there is no knowledge in regard to representation in space.
Objects are already represented in space by intuition, and are called phenomena. The in order, then, for these first two, is for the possibility of empirical knowledge, or, which is the same thing, experience.
And a minor supplement: justified true beliefs assuming one grants such a thing in the first place .are given as stated, but in relation to a priori principles and conceptions is close to overstepping the purview of understanding, which, as afore-mentioned, is for the behoof and use of experience alone. While understanding may be in relation to such principles and conceptions, they do not arise from it, which hints theres much more to the overall system.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here.
It is not a contradiction to say that the only thing we know about the magnetic field is how it affects the behaviour of metal (although it may be false).
And it is not a contradiction to say that the only thing we know about distal objects is how they affect our sensory experience (although it may be false).
Agreed. But what exactly are we proving? All we can prove is that there is something mind-independent. That's it. And we can only prove there is something mind independent because we have experiences that contradict what our mind wants to believe about reality. We only know that there have been contradictions and that there may continue to be contradictions. We don't know what's causing it.
Quoting Bob Ross
My point is that capacity is not knowledge. Knowledge is learned through experience. Can you cite something we could say is knowledge that did not require any experience to gain it? And if you can, how is it knowledge and not a belief?
https://acidmath.com/blogs/news/here-s-how-bees-and-butterflies-see-flowers-no-wonder-they-love-them
As you can see in the above article, how a bee or a butterfly knows a flower is very different from how we do. So what is a flower apart from any observation? Is it actually a flower as we think of it? Is it an evil demon manifestation? Can we even call it a 'flower'? Or is it the part of something more? We just can't know. And that's all the 'thing in itself' is. Its an unknowable outside of the mind existence.
Im saying, the effect of objects on our senses is necessary, but not sufficient, for knowledge about them.
It is necessary for the human cognitive system, in whatever form it actually is, to do something with that effect, within its intrinsic capacities, sufficient to relate the effect the object imparts, to a cognition of it, such that what was initially given as mere appearance can be known as a certain particular object.
I sincerely am not trying to straw man nor misrepresent your view: I just dont get it (: .
You distinguish between the Real and the Existent; and that makes no sense to me. Traditionally, as far as I can tell, the term real refers to the same thing as existent. If it is real, then it exists; and if it exists, then it is real. This clearly does not hold in your schema.
How is this not the same thing as saying Ive never denied that things-in-themselves are real, for to do so is to < >? I dont get it.
Two reasons:
1. Sensibility has an a priori structure for sensing; so it follows that any given sensibility may be limited such that it cannot sense a particular object; and
2. We are scientifically aware of many objects which are real (i.e., exist) but cannot be sensed by certain species. E.g., humans cannot hear certain wavelengths that dogs can, dogs and humans cannot sense the atoms that comprise a chair, etc.
I dont understand why one would limit reality to what we or (more generally) any sensibility can sense. Dont you agree that we have knowledge of things which we cannot sense? Do you think we can sense electrons?
I think it would help if you elaborate on your distinction between the Real and the Existent; because I dont see how quarks, e.g., are not realjust like electrons. Are you saying that anything that we cant sense, but of which we know exists, isnt real?!?!? Is an electron not real to you?
Dont you think that cognition has to play a role in mathematically mapping and constructing objects to have particular relations to each other within our spatiotemporal (outer) experience? I dont see how intuition could intuit all that without the faculty of understanding. E.g., to represent this particular cup with these particular dimensions on a table, the brain would have to make judgments on how to do thatno?
What do you take a priori knowledge to be then? If you were to explain it to @Philosophim, what would you say?
I am not following how we only know through contradictions (between our experiences and reality). I can imagine perfectly fine a person who infers correctly, without contradiction, that their conscious experience is representational; and then proceeds to correctly identify that there must be a thing-in-itself which excites the senses which, in turn, begins the process to construct the conscious experience which they are having.
Where does the contradictions come into play, there?
The most basic example that comes to mind is mathematical knowledge. Your brain necessarily has to already know how to perform math to construct your conscious experience; and this is why mathematical propositions, in geometry, are applicable and accurate for experience: the axioms of geometry reside a priori in our brains, and so does the standard operations of math (like addition, subtraction, etc.). Mathematical knowledge, insofar as it pertains to how our brains cognize, is independent of any possible experience.
Of course, as I noted before, our self-reflective knowledge of math is learned (usually in school).
Mathematical propositions are valid in virtue of being grounded in how our brains cognize; and they are only valid for human experience. They are true, justified, beliefs about experiencenot reality.
Perhaps thats where the confusion was: the a priori knowledge we have is not knowledge about reality, but about how we cognize it.
I would say that we merely say that there is some thing which is exciting our senses, and of which we represent as what we normally perceive as a flower.
Agreed; but thats not a purely abstract thing, then. It is a concreteunknown.
Does the first law of motion exist? Do numbers exist? Does the law of the excluded middle exist? Point to any of those, and you're indicating a set of symbols - f=ma, 2x2=4, etc. But the symbol is only a representation of a concept. And in what sense do concepts exist? Why, in the mind, you might say. Yet they seem to give a great deal of traction over the world at large, they seem to straddle the relationship of mind and world. I say that that such 'intelligible objects' as they are called (although the term 'object' is a little misleading) are real, but they're not existent qua phenomena. They're real as objects of thought - which is the original (as distinct from Kantian) meaning of noumenal.
Which is what Kant picked up on, but then he altered the meaning of it to conform better to his schema.
Nevertheless, the basic point remains: if concepts such as number and logical laws are included, then the scope of 'what is real' far exceeds the scope of 'what exists'. That this idea is no longer intelligible to us, is due to the cultural impact of empiricism, which generally identifies what is real with what is existent, to its detriment. (See also Augustine on Intelligible Objects.)
I have to say, this is entirely intelligible to me and (linguistically) solves a problem I've had for some time - there are clearly non-physical objects of experience. They are real, but do not exist. Thank you for clearing this up for me so succinctly.
The trouble is that the folk arguing so vehemently against direct realism have not understood where it stands. Those here of a scientific bent are talking about something quite different to those of a philosophical bent.
The SEP article is detailed and broad, and ends with the following:
Quoting The Problem of Perception
How can it be?
Edit: Added "here". Philosophers who are arguing for direct realism are not always at odds with the science. The comment is directed at those hereabouts insisting that they are. Response to .
But It is no help to simply say science takes one view, and philosophy takes another, though this is obviously true. In discussion, trying to make them cohere seems a reasonable thing to try to do. That said, it probably doesn't butter any bread for what you're saying, just seemed worth noting.
As regards the SEP article, that conclusion on follows if you accept the writer's positions. If you refer to 3.3.1 of that page, it seems pretty clear that what's being done is recasting the indirect realist in a way that it can be subsumed under an extended version of 'direct realism'. I don't really have a problem with this. It allows for what (I think, anyway) my position is and I'd claim indirect realism of some form.
That said, if this page is read in conjunction with the Sense Data page several issues presented actually somewhat fall away. For instance, where it treats Robinson's more recent takes on Sense Data, none of the objections go through: The empirical fact that light takes X time to reach us from objects which no longer exist can't be beaten in the way a lot of 'indirect' perceptual takes can be. There's no philosophical fanangaling which can make a star exist at the time the light reaches our eyes without seriously altering the definition 'exist' (or, importantly, that can make colour inhere in the surface of an object. There simply is nothing but intuition to this). The conclusion is quite telling, in contrast to the one you've quoted:
"Finally, although treatment of color as a primitive property that literally inheres in sense data (whether such data are considered to be surface portions, mental objects, or third things) is not widely favored, it is also true that, metaphysically, there is no settled home for phenomenally experienced color. The endeavor to account for the phenomenal characteristics of objects and their properties is ongoing."
This either contradicts, in some indirect way, that conclusion that there's no longer a debate between the two views (because, indeterminate) or it requires that we're talking about both positions within a concept that can include both. And that may be something more akin to a language problem, the way you seem fairly committed to. However, the conclusion above makes it quite clear: there is no theory which accounts for experience from objects without pretending our perceptual systems aren't as tehy are. Hence, the dichotomy between the scientific, and philosophically-inclined versions of hte discussion. Luckily, neither page gives any logical conclusion on the positions. Rather, several and IBE's it's way to something of a consensus. All very well.
The single most important thing one can learn from philosophy in my view.
Yes, something like this is argued in Semantic Direct Realism that I often quote. There's phenomenological direct realism, or naive realism, that indirect realism opposes (consistent with the scientific evidence), and then there's semantic direct realism which agrees with the indirect realist's rejection of naive realism but calls itself direct realism anyway.
I see something like that here as well, where some accept the existence of mental representations but still call it direct realism even though representationalism is indirect realism.
I think part of the problem is that some here think that "I see a tree" and "I directly see a tree" mean the same thing, when in fact the adverb "directly" modifies the verb "see".
Depends on your metaphysical views. For me, I would say concepts exist in minds; and those concept reference existent things when those things really exist. I dont see anything problematic here nor puzzling. My concept of an apple exists in my mind, as I have formulated it, and it references something which does exist (beyond that mere concept) which is called an apple.
Numbers exist a priori.
Your response does help though, as you seem to be using a similar schema to @Mww. Perhaps Mwws point is that the real for him is phenomenal, and existence is noumenal (roughly speaking).
Ehhhh, I dont buy that. If you take a platonic account (like you did in your quote here), then numbers, e.g., exist in a supersensible realm. For plato, numbers are real and exist; and specifically are real and exist in the sense that they are abstract objects in a supersensible realm. I think trying to separate real from existent adds unnecessary confusion: I think you could easily convey your point by noting that these abstract objects would not exist in the universe.
Too simplistic. For that which is real its existence is given; a real thing cannot not exist (necessity). For that which exists, whether or not its real depends on experience; a thing may exist without ever being a real thing of experience (contingency).
Quoting Bob Ross
No, it doesnt. Sensibility has an a priori structure for representing; sensing is entirely physiological, real physical things called organs being affected by real physical appearances, called things.
Technically, though, the a priori structure of sensibility itself, as the faculty of empirical representation, resides in reason, insofar as the matter of sensation is transcendental. But with respect to the operation of the empirical side of human cognition, the transcendental aspect has no influence.
Quoting Bob Ross
Or is that we are scientifically aware of second-hand representations of those objects? We dont perceive electromotive force, re: voltage, as a real thing, but do perceive its manifestations on devices manufactured to represent it. Even getting a real shock is only our own existent physiology in conflict with a force not apprehended as such.
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Quoting Bob Ross
If we can't sense it, cant indicating an impossibility, how would we know it exists? if follows that if an existence is impossible to sense, it is then contradictory to say that same existence is real. That which is impossible to sense cannot be thought as real. That which is as yet not sensed, indicating a possible existence, holds a possible reality in conjunction with it.
Anything else is merely logical inference given from direct represention of an indirectly perceived, hence contingent, existence.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I do not. We can think things we cannot sense, which is to say we can conceive things we cannot sense, from which the logical inference for the possibility of things we cannot sense, but in its strictest relation, there is no experience, hence no empirical knowledge, of things we cannot sense.
Such knowledge is the conclusion of a systems function in its entirety, which makes explicit if the system does not function in its entirety, there is no possibility of a conclusion given by it, which is sufficient reason justifying that in the absence of sensed things the system has nothing on which to direct its function, so not only does it not function in its entirety, it doesnt function at all, with respect to empirical conditions.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Well .thats just the system functioning without regard to empirical conditions. In this case, the entirety of it is not required, which is fortunate on the one hand and awful damn convenient on the other, because in the case of a priori cognitions, there isnt anything given to sensibility for the remainder of the system to use.
Technically, though, empirical knowledge is the synthesis of conceptions derivable from intuition, whereas a priori knowledge is the synthesis of internally constructed conceptions, without the input from intuition, re: mathematical symbology and geometric figure, logical principles, axioms, imperatives, and the like.
This is relevant, in that with this distinction in method and initial conditions, comes the justification for distinguishing between the real, and the merely valid.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Oh, I know, Bob. Its just that this stuff is so obviously reasonable to me, yet I cannot get either inkling nor epiphany from you from its exposition. Which means Im not presenting it well enough, or, youre of such a mindset and/or worldview it wouldnt matter what form the exposition takes. Nobodys at fault, just different ingrained perspectives.
Well...
One thing is to state this within an everyday context of tables and chairs and going to work and going to sleep and the whole routine thing. This is the given.
But in the empirical world, there are no certainties, only grades of confidence. They can be quite high (I know what I am experiencing at this moment) to medium (I don't know if that person is pretending to be in pain) to low (am I dreaming?).
You can't prove objects exist. We take it for granted for the sake of convenience, but the proof is not established. It may sound excessively skeptical, but is nonetheless a serious issue.
If not Kant himself, then his predecessors are on the right track, the world is representation (Kant, Schopenhauer), notion (Burthogge), or anticipation (Cudworth).
We can then say we have high confidence that our notions are real things in us. But as to the objects which cause these anticipations, we know very little if anything.
Well said.
Otherwise is Humes constant conjunction. Never once have I put a cup in the cupboard, come back later and NOT found that cup just where I left it. Hence, my claim that I know that stupid cup is right where I left it, even without seeing it, is proven?
Nahhhhh .its just easier on my poor ol brain to think the vanishing impossibility that it isnt there, suffices for proof that it is.
Quite. For all we know the cup could have vanished from existence, or turned into a basketball or anything you can imagine. Quite unlikely, but we can't say for certain - at least I can't.
But to claim the cup remaining were I last put it proves it exists, no more proves that because I can see an oasis in the distance on a hot sunny day, they must exist in the world as well.
It is easier on the brain. I personally can't get over the fact that what we take for granted (almost) completely is precisely what we put into the object. It's so counterintuitive, goes against every fiber of my instincts that I can't believe it. Yet it must be true.
Yeah. I think it fairly clear (and this from canvassing hte use of 'direct' in all contexts I'm aware of it's usage in) that using 'direct' to cover a literally indirect method of access (we can invoke the Shadow idea, on top of pretending we're Direct Realists proper to illustrate why this is so) is not helpful. But, if the case is such that this means its a 'misuse for a better cause' as it were, and resolves teh problem by accepting this 'indirectness' but not admitting it separates us from the world... fine.
Yes, fair. I think that's what I'm groking from your directions (plus some further digging). It doesn't quite shift my position though, as that wasn't quite the motivator for it in the way it seems to be for Michael (although, I'm quite sympathetic there). I don't need direct realists to be in conflict with the science for my position to hold philosophically, I don't think. But it helps, where I can use it.
:up: It is, at this point, feeling that way
Odd, then, that youve created a long OP, and engaged in a multi page discussion, about just this fact, with no resolution apparent. Perhaps you're taking too much for granted!
Quoting Bob Ross
No confusion. A moderately well-educated person will understand that there is the 'domain of natural numbers' yet this is not an 'supersensible realm' in any sense other than the metaphorical. It is not some ethereal ghostly realm. Numbers and logical principles are not physically existent and yet our reason appeals to them at practically every moment to navigate and understand the world.
I thought you were taking a Platonic stance: I must have misunderstood. It sounds like, then, you believe that numbers are real a priori? Either way, they exist and are real. That's confused and muddied language to make a distinction between what is real and what exists.
Depends on what you consider a proof. If you mean a scientific or otherwise empirical verification through an experiment, then obviously no. But it can be proved by empirical evidence in all probability: I dont have any problem with your idea that our a posteriori knowledge is probabilistic.
Those are all very, very different positions; but you said it like they are all claiming the same thing.
The very idea that objects cause these anticipations (or more accurately: representations) is itself subjected to your own critique; which you seem to have overlooked.
Is this real thing the object which was given to the senses? I am not following.
Why would it be necessary that a cup exists because we experience a cup? I dont see the necessity you are talking about here.
The way we sense is prestructured (e.g., neurons) in a certain way to react to stimuli; and I would consider that a priori insofar as, transcendentally, there must be some prestructured way to react to stimuli (i.e., to sense). Otherwise, you are suggesting that somehow our sensibility can sense without any physiological means of sensing.
I dont see how it would be. Our neurons send the sensations to the brain; not vice-versa.
Ahhh, so you are a scientific anti-realist; this makes more sense now. I think we have good reasons to believe, e.g., that electrons exist.
Why not, though, just use real and existent interchangeably and note, instead, that not all the models and concepts we deploy to explain experience necessarily exist in reality (i.e., are not real)?
Why convolute it with an uncommon distinction between two very obvious synonyms?
Through empirical tests with the help of self-reflective reason. Thats how we discovered, e.g., germs (even before we could see them with a microscope).
Wouldnt it be if it follows that if an existence is impossible to sense, it is then necessarily presupposed that it still exists because we stipulated it as an existence which is impossible to sense?
It seems like, for you, all that is real is perception. When the Real is usually what is perceived.
Thats an equivocation. (1) I wasnt asking just about empirical knowledge and (2) your using the term empirical to only strictly refer to what is sensedthats not what it usually means.
I know that my car is in my garage even though no one is sensing it. For you, this is invalid knowledge.
Then, representing objects in space is a priori knowledge; which I thought you were denying because it is intuition.
We are getting there (;
Not really. Not in this specific case. They are using different words to signal the same general thing: what we have access to are out mental constructions, not external objects.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is what is being discussed in effect: when we speak about "ordinary objects", we are actually speaking about representations (notions, anticipations) and is what any example we can use to illustrate any point consists of.
The only "help" I can see this offering, as opposed to thinking that we see are objects themselves, is that conscious experience is what we are most confident exists in the universe.
We complicate things considerably if we say that we are confident that objects (which ground) our representations also exist. It's a postulate, which I think makes sense, but now we have to worry about "proving" representationsin addition to objects which stimulate these representations.
The latter is extremely obscure to analyze with much depth.
I can understand why you would say that, as it seems a strange distinction to make, but the distinction between what is real and what exists is nevertheless a valid one. But I won't take it further at this point.
Something exists if it is in the domain of discourse. Frodo walked into Mordor, therefore there is something that walked into Mordor.
Something is real in contrast to things that are not real - is it real money, or counterfeit? Is that really water, or a mirage? Is that a real argument, or just a vague rant?
Other uses are parasitic.
The poem folds word over on themselves, talking about that about which we can say nothing.
Quite witty, and an object lesson for those philosophers who write page after page about that of which they cannot speak.
Best avoided.
That god is but doesn't exist? Just shows how very special you are...
(I've had a look around your recent essay - respect for putting the effort into an extended argument such as that, and taking the time to get the prose right. Good work. My cynical quips about speculative physics would be misplaced.)
"Objects of experience" or 'aspects of understanding or judgement'? Perhaps an example or two would be helpful.
-Mww
Is this real thing the object which was given to the senses?[/quote]
Yes.
Quoting Bob Ross
It is necessary that some thing exists, which becomes the experience of, in this case, cup.
Quoting Bob Ross
The thing is necessary for human intelligence to have something to work with. If not the thing, then at least something not contained in any part of human intelligence, which is the same as being outside all parts of it, so why not just call it an appearance, in which case the thing is just shorthand for that which appears.
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Quoting Bob Ross
That just says what we sense with, is prestructured, which is true. Ears hear this way, eyes see this way, and so on. Science has a lot to say nowadays about the way we see, that wasnt available in the times of traditional metaphysical theory. But even so, I suspect empirical science hasnt much consideration for a priori ventures into the sublime.
Ehhhhh .until 1925 anyway, when scientists became philosophers once again, or at least were forced to think like one.
Quoting Bob Ross
Errrr .wha??? We dont care what neurons do when talking about speculative transcendental architecture. Youre explicitly demanding neurons send the feeling of a mosquito bite, when the science legislating neural activity will only permit neurons to send quantitative electrochemical signals.
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Quoting Bob Ross
That was never a contention; believing in a thing is very far from knowledge of it.
Quoting Bob Ross
The real and the existent are pretty much already interchangeable, and none of the concepts we deploy to explain experience exist in reality to begin with, so .whats the point?
Quoting Bob Ross
Then its no longer impossible. Sensing an affirmative second-hand representation proves a possibility. Sensing changes in spectral lines proves that which changes state is possible, without sensing the electrons themselves.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Yes you were, you just didnt know it. Because youre talking sensing, the only knowledge youre going to get from it, if you get any at all, is empirical.
Quoting Bob Ross
Thats all its ever meant to me. I use empirical to describe a kind of knowledge, rather than a posteriori, which prescribes its ground or source.
What else does it refer to for you?
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Quoting Bob Ross
For me its unjustified to call it knowledge.
What do you really know, with respect to the car itself, when somebody tells you he put your car in the garage?
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Quoting Bob Ross
Representing objects in space is a priori; it is intuition, which isnt knowledge.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Helps to keep foremost in mind here .were not talking about things you know, were talking about how you know things.
They only have a tendency to exist. We know they don't have any determinate existence until they're measured. That is an implication of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. We also know that sub-atomic phenomena can behave as both waves and particles, and so are not really either one or the other, as those two forms of existence are incommensurable.
Lets break this down. First, remember at this point that there is a difference between having the idea of what a 'thing in itself' is, and whether its something that exists and is knowable. We also need to break down what we mean by 'knowable'.
This is why in my knowledge theory I broke down what knowledge is into two camps. Distinctive, and applicable. Distinctive is 'knowing the experience I have'. So if I have an experience of a 'goat'. That's the experience I know I had. Then there's applicable knowledge. "Was that actually a goat, or was it a sheep I misidentified?" "Distinctively I know the definition of a goat and a sheep. But was my belief that what I experienced was a goat, correct in reality? So I have the distinctive knowledge of 'experience' of identifying a goat, but not the applicable knowledge that the identification of a goat was of an actual goat.
Ok, now back to 'things in themselves'. As an identity, I can distinctively know what 'a thing in itself' is. "A thing in itself is a logical conclusion that there is something that I am observing, but can only observe it through the senses and brain interpretations. But because I can only know it through observations, I can never know it apart from the interpretation of those observations". How do I applicably know this? According to its definition, I cannot.
So what is applicably knowing? If I take a definition of a goat, and apply its properties to a creature without contradiction, and without it overlapping a separate identity I've created in my mind (like a sheep), then I applicably know that creature as a goat.
Of course, unknown to me, its a space alien. Its so good at disguise, that there is no way with my current capabilities that I can detect its a space alien. "The thing in itself" is a space alien, but I applicably know it as a goat. Now this first part is simply a primer to the next step, "I applicably know that this thing is a goat, but I can never applicably know if that's 'the thing in itself'.
If I can only know applicably through testing, observation, and a lack of contradiction, how do I applicably know of something apart from all sensation and interpretation? I would have to 'be' what I am trying to applicably know. Its like consciousness. I can observe that my friend is conscious by their actions. But do I know what its like to 'be' that friend? To know them as they are 'in themselves'?
Applicable knowledge is obtained from our interactions and interpretations of the world. We know a 'goat' by the fact that its not contradicted. If our 'goat' started flying and shooting laser beams from its eyes, our applicable knowledge would then be contradicted. But even if it did not, if it was really a space alien, we would only be able to applicably know it as a goat. "The thing in itself" is the conception of something which CANNOT be applicably known. Therefore it is entirely a logical conception that results from our understanding that 'we cannot be what we observe, so we can only known it from our outside observations of it'.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is incorrect. What we have is the ability to discretely experience, and over time, learn to conduct comparisons and quantities between them. A newborn does not come with the knowledge of 'addition', '1', or anything else. This is all learned over time through experience. What they have is the capacity to understand these relations, but by no means does this entail that there is some innate born knowledge.
For example, we applicably know math through 'base 10'. But math can be in any base. Base 2, or binary, is the math we use for logic circuits. Hexadecimal, or base 16, is used to calculate computer memory. Are we born with the innate knowledge of hexadecimal? Did you know when you were born that the number for base ten '11' is 'A' in Hexadecimal? Of course not. Just like you had to carefully be taught base ten, and basic math as a kid, you would need to have the experience of learning hexadecimal.
As for geometry, this also has to be learned. As a baby, you don't quite understand depth perception yet. It takes time. You grow and learn how the world works as a physical set of interactions. You have to be taught, or can learn through logic and observation, that "A squared + B squared = C squared" on a triangle. But all of these things have been rigorously proved over centuries through careful testing, observation, and application. None of this is known innately.
Quoting Bob Ross
They are valid in the fact they can be applicably known in reality. It is 'the logic of discrete experience'. But this must be experienced, tested, and learned to be applicably known. We can of course create what ever experience of math that we want distinctively. I can distinctively create a math in base Steve. Steve + Visit = Snacks for example. But this can only be applicably known if ever time Steve + Visit happens there always results in Snacks.
Quoting Bob Ross
The ability to think is not generally prescribed as 'knowledge'. Just like the ability to 'move my limbs' doesn't mean I know 'how to move them to walk'. This is why I noted earlier we were very close on the definition of apriori. I agree that we have instincts, innate capacities, and 'our innate existence'. But none of that is 'knowledge'. Knowledge can only be obtained after some kind of experience. Even distinctive knowledge is the creation of an identity that we then remember. But we must first have an experience to identify because we can claim knowledge of it.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. But notice you've described how you know a flower purely through your representations and senses. What is a flower apart from that? What if the thing in itself that we're 'dividing' into a flower is really a few other things around the flower? What if the air two millimeters away from the flower is also part of the flower in 'the thing in itself' but we just don't interpret it that way? What if its a space alien? (I really like that example don't I?) What is it like to BE the flower? These are all things that are outside of our capacity to applicably know. This limit is a logical reminder that there are some things outside of our applicable knowledge. At that point, we induce if you recall. So a thing in itself is not a probability or a possibility. It is a cogent inapplicable plausibility. It is a concept that we can never applicably test, but one that pure reason cannot seem to do without.
Quoting Bob Ross
It is purely an abstract thing that cannot be applicably known. Its plausible that it is a concrete thing. We know that we cannot applicably know it. And that's as far as we can go.
I suppose that just depends on what way you're comfortable presenting hte notion. I mean to say that there are things that exist outside of minds, and things that exist only within minds. Something like an 'intention' or numbers, or the complex network of inter-related memories and partial memories that create a specific state of mind... Things that can't be pointed to, in any way, basically. I think it's completely coherent to say that these things are real, in the way Banno uses the word a few posts ago, and that they do not 'exist' in the way something would want to exist while not being experienced by consciousness.
Please elaborate, as I am not following. Give me an example of where something is real but does not exist (if applicable); and where something exists but is not real (if applicable).
So a real thing is real because its existence is given, and a fake [viz., non-real] thing is an existence which is not given? How, then, do you distinguish from a fake thing which is does not exist, and one which does (but of which both are not given to the senses)?
Agreed; but you are also saying that this necessary thing that is given not only exists but is real; which implies that a thing which exists but is not given is not real.
Those are the sensations, no? What, then, is a sensation?
True, but the sensibility must have some pre-structured way of sensing before anything is intuited or cognizedi.e., without reason. Talking about neurons is just a nice analogy.
I think we have good reasons to know, e.g., that electrons exist.
Not at all under your view! The real is only a subset of existent things which are given or (perhaps) possibly given to the senses. I have no clue why we would assume that most, if not everything, can be sensed by our sensibilityviz., given to the senses.
But, then, you would have to deny any a priori knowledge; since we only know that empirically. That which is a posteriori is not the same as that which is empirical---dont you think? E.g., I must use experience to extrapolate the a priori structure by which I experience, which is technically empirical, and yet it is not itself derived from what is given to the senses.
All knowledge starts with experience, but that does not mean all knowledge comes from experienceas Kant would say.
Even if you think the empirical is the same as what is a posteriori, then I think you still see my point: we can reason about our experience to know things which are not directly perceived.
I know it, because I have a true, justified belief. E.g., I just drove it into the garage, went inside, and now am being asked is the car in the garage? 5 seconds afterwardsyeah, I think I have a justified belief which is true (i.e., corresponds to reality).
If I take your position, then we have virtually no knowledge of anything. You dont know you exist, that you brushed your teeth this morning (even though you remember doing it), etc. All knowledge ultimately is probabilistic and uncertain, except for maybe a small set of things (like logical axioms).
What makes something a priori and knowledge, then? I know that all bodies are extended because of the way my brain represents objects a priori in space; and I know that the shortest line between two points is the line drawn between them because my brain < >.
I think I may get what you are saying a bit, though. Are you noting that the act of synthesis in space that our brain does when intuiting is not itself knowledge, because there is not agent acquiring information but rather there is just a pre-structure for doing so, and that propositions that we (qua agents) know a priori because of that pre-structure (e.g., all bodies are extended)? I can get on board with that.
I am not familiar enough with quantum physics to comment back: I don't understand how to reconcile qp with practical life---it seems incoherent.
I appreciate the elaboration!
Firstly, a priori refers, within the context of transcendental investigations, as that which is independent of any possible experienceviz., independent of empirical data. Knowledge is just a justified, true belief (with truth being a version of correspondence theory) or, more generically, ~having information which is accurate. Knowledge a priori, then, is when one has a true, justified belief about something which was not derived from empirical data (but, rather, the means by which our representative faculties intuit and cognize that data). The proposition all bodies are extended is universally true for human experience and a priori because the way we experience is in space (necessarily); and so this is a priori known. Now, to your point, of which I concede, in order to acquire this a priori knowledge one must have the self-reflective cognitive abilities to reason about their experience transcendentally; and so a baby, I agree with you, necessarily does not have a priori knowledge even though they necessarily have an a priori means of experiencing and the a priori propositions are true of their experience as well (e.g., all bodies are extended). I was conflating, I think, that which is a priori with that which is a priori knowledge. E.g., intuition (necessarily) in space is a priori but is not knowledge, but some propositions are true a priori and are grounded in it (such as the line drawn between two points is the shortest path in geometry).
Secondly, I recognize that you reject the JTB theory of knowledge; so let me try to address yours as it relates hereto.
When we ask what is knowledge?, we are expecting an monistic answere.g., it is < >and not a plurastic answere.g., it is < > and < >. You are saying that knowledge doesnt have one fundamental identity but, instead, is two separate irreducible onesnamely applicable and distinctive.
This immediately incites the question: if A is knowledge and B is knowledge, then arent they inheriting the same type of knowledge and, if so, thereby the question of what is knowledge? is still unanswered?. Thats like me saying knowledge is a priori and a posteriori. Ok. But we are asking what is knowledge?; so how did that answer the question?
Of course, you probably have an answer to this that I dont remember .it has been a while (;
Briefly, I will also say, that your schema doesnt negate the possibility of a priori knowledge (in your sense of knowledge): it would be applicable knowledge, as the whole metaphysical endeavor of transcendental investigation would be applicable knowledge. The question becomes: why dont you think that we can apply a priori knowledge without contradiction and reasonably to the forms of experience (viz., the necessary preconditions for the possibility of experience) given that we both agree that our experience is representational?.
The fact that we can do math in different bases does not negate that the same mathematical operations are occurring, and that they are synthetical, a priori propositions.
Correct. I was using the phrase too loosely.
Ehhhh, then you cannot claim to know that there must be a thing-in-itself at all; or otherwise concede that you can know applicably, through experience, that if our experience is representational then there must be a thing-in-itself.
Then a thing-in-itself is not a concept which is purely logicalthat was my only point on this note. It is referencing something concrete. @Mww is denying this, and I thought so were you.
What exists is what you can meaningfully encounter. But there are many things we take for granted as real which we cant encounter and which dont exist in that concrete sense. They are constituted as agreements, conventions, rules, and the like. Where do interest rates or exchange rates exist? Not in banks, or financial institutions. They are real even though we cannot encounter them in the sense we encounter existents. A contract is not just the piece of paper, but the meaning it conveys, likewise a national constitution or a penal code (adapted from here). Humans are embedded in a web of such meanings, which are every bit as real as the material objects we encounter but which are not existent in the sense that sensable objects are. We don't notice that, because that web of meanings lies beneath the threshold of conscious attention, unless we make the effort to bring it to awareness.
So these are factors in our cognitive life that are real but not phenomenally existent. As to things that exist but aren't real - well, fictional characters would fit the bill. We will both know who Bugs Bunny and Sherlock Holmes are, so we have a common reference point, but they're not real. Nowadays we're constantly bombarded by unreal imagery.
In actuality, conscious experience always comprises the synthesis of phenomenal existents - sensable objects - and the cognitive faculties which incorporate them into a web of meaning. That is what Kant was on to. But because of the natural extroversion of today's culture we tend to exagerrate the former and fail to notice the latter - we tend to think that only what is 'out there' is real, and fail to notice how much of what is 'out there' is really put there by our own minds.
They consist in what the banks or financial institutions do. They consist in concrete actions. Failing their actualization they exist merely as ideas in peoples minds.
In experience, I can do nothing with, thus have no more than passing interest in, that which does not appear to my senses. For that of which I merely think, which would be that thing which for me cannot be real because I have no intuition of it, theres no difference in my internal treatment of a real and a non-real thing, insofar as the only representation for either of them is a conception or a series of conceptions, in accordance with a rule.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is a logical contradiction when viewed from proper understanding, to which a fake thing is nonsense and a non-real thing is impossible, re: optical illusion, and a transcendental antinomy when viewed from reason, to which a synthesis of ideas and experience occurs but from principles without the power to unite them, re: deities, infinite time of the world, etc..
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Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, for any experience, a real existent is necessary for it. For that of which existence is possible, but for which there is no appearance to my senses of it, I can affirm nothing of its reality, for there is nothing to affirm.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, sensibility must be capable of accomplishing what reason theorizes in its prescriptions for it. If we are not conscious of the machinations of sensibility as an empirical faculty in a physical system, and there is a feasible method for its machinations as a metaphysical faculty in speculative system, why would those of us not in the field of cognitive neuroscience and related disciplines, care how it does it?
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Quoting Bob Ross
It is safe to assume every thing can be given to the senses, iff it meets the criteria of pure intuitions and pure conceptions proposed as belonging to human intelligence. Every thing is not, nor can ever be, the same as everything, and a silly language game ensues for lack of separating the respective notions from each other, according to rules.
Quoting Bob Ross
Not quite. Dialectical consistency mandates that, for us, the real and the existent are necessarily codependent, it follows that the merely possible existent holds as only possibly real. In other words, it is not certain that possible existences are real.
The real, then, is the set .not a subset ..of existent things given to the senses, which says nothing at all about things not given to the senses, and for which, therefore, the real has no ground for consideration.
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Quoting Bob Ross
All experience is from that which is directly perceived. That which is not directly perceived cannot be experience. Hence to reason about experience, and to know things not directly perceived from that reasoning alone, is a posteriori reasoning. Knowledge of that which is not directly perceived is possible, but does not descend from, or relate to, experience, hence is called a priori reasoning. These are principles, pure conceptions, and so on, which ground experience but are not experiences themselves or reasoned from them but rather, make reasoning about them possible.
This is the difference between . though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience ..
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Quoting Bob Ross
Your answer doesnt respect the question. Trust me, its pertinent, at least to the theme were immersed in up to our eyeballs in right now.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Pure reason. What a human does, and the conclusions he infers, when he thinks in general.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Cool. This pre-structure is very far from the pre-structure you assigned to sensibility, however. The pre-structure here, re all bodies are extended, is an empirical principle, in that it applies to things alone, and is only susceptible to natural proofs, but our knowledge of this arises through separate pure principles of universality and necessity, in that without these pure principles, the empirical principles cannot have natural proofs at all, from which follows the possibility some bodies are not extended, and we are presented with a contradiction and our knowledge of empirical things becomes forever undeterminable.
(Sidebar: technically called Humes dilemma, for which ol Dave had no answer.)
Quoting Bob Ross
Exactly. What does that even mean to not have determinate existence until they are measured? It sounds like confusing the map with the territory. They are confusing the measurement with the electron. To say that something doesn't have a determinate existence is to say that it hasn't been measured yet. If what we are measuring does not have a determinate existence, then what is being measured and what property of the electron is the measurement pointing to? If it isn't pointing to anything then how can we say we actually measured an electron?
Quoting Banno
All you are describing here is a category error, where some information is a product of our brain (Frodo and Mordor), and assumed to point to something outside of our brain as opposed to a product of some other process (how money is made). Counterfeit money is real money when you buy things with it. It is only when someone is able to make the distinction (measured) and no longer accepts it does it become counterfeit (if we are to apply the same line of thinking Wayfarer described about electrons).
They both have causal power. The idea of Frodo and Mordor can cause you to talk about them and draw pictures of them and movies being made about them. Counterfeit money can cause other things to happen in the world. They are both real and exist in that sense. To be real, or to exist, simply means that thing has causal power. It is both an effect of prior causes and a cause of subsequent effects.
Frodo and Mordor are real ideas. They exist as ideas. The category error comes about by asserting that Frodo and Mordor are not just ideas.
The thing-in-itself is a purely logical concept, distinguishing the concept of the empirical thing as sensibility would have it, from the concept of the empirical thing as reason itself would have it without input from sensibility. Thus, a purely logical concept can still have reference to something concrete, even if cognition of something concrete belonging to that conception, is not determinable from such mere reference alone.
Space, a purely logical concept if there ever was one, would be useless if it didnt refer to concrete things, so there ya go. The categories, even while being deduced a priori from reason, reference concrete things, in that no judgement regarding cognitions of concrete things is possible without the relevant schema of categories.
So, no, I do not deny the thing-in-itself references something concrete, while maintaining the thing-in-itself is a purely logical conception.
Hopefully theres no need to clarify the sense of logic being used here. But just in case, it is entirely syllogistic and propositional in its expositions in the form of a particular philosophy, that is, first in its theoretical construction and then its subsequent analysis, as governed by Aristotles laws of proper rational thought, with the additional methodological limitation from Kant, that understanding and reason are the two cognitive faculties the metaphysical functions of which are legislated by those laws, which is not as much its philosophical exposition as its speculative use by a system predicated on that philosophy.
I disagree. Counterfeit money is counterfeit from the get go, having not been manufactured in a way that grants it legitimacy.
Quoting Harry Hindu
There's your problem, right there.
None of this explains what it means to be real. What property of counterfeit money, mirages and arguments are we are comparing exactly if not the causes or circumstances that are necessary for them to exist?
Quoting Banno Exactly. Counterfeit has a determinate existence prior to being measured and it is in measuring (comparing the appearance of real money to counterfeit money) that one knows it is really counterfeit money.
Counterfeit money is real/exists in that there are prior causes that are necessary for it's existence and causes different things to happen when someone knows it is counterfeit. There is real counterfeit money and real money. You can hold up a counterfeit bill and say, "This is a real counterfeit bill".
Counterfeit bills and money are made of electrons.
Frodo and Mordor have a determinate existence as ideas. So there is no problem in saying that "Frodo is real" because Frodo is real, as an idea. The issue isn't when someone says "Frodo is real". It is when someone says "Frodo is a person", just as if someone to hold up a counterfeit bill and say, "This is money". It seems to me we can dispense with term "real" altogether and just use "exist".
I appreciate the elaboration!
The only issue I have is with your semantics: I think you are using existence as if it is reserved for only things which exist materially (or perhaps physically). E.g., the monetary value of a diamond exists because there is a monetary value to a diamond; my feeling of pain exists even though it is not located anywhere in material (or perhaps physical) reality; the agreement which a contract represents exists because there really is an agreement being made between both parties; etc. Nothing about this suggests that these things exists as a different type of existence nor that they are real but dont exist. Something exists if it isthats the only and nicely circular way of defining being.
Technically, fictional characters exist and are real fictional characters. What you are doing is conflating this with colloquial language where one would mean by is this fictional character real? is this fictional character referencing a person or thing which existed beyond a mere work of fiction?. I think your real vs. existent distinction collapses once the ambiguity in colloquial speech is resolved.
Why isnt it real for you if you have no intuition of it??? Your car in the garage isnt real right now, even though you have every reason to believe it is there, because you cant currently sense it?
This is incoherent though: you are saying that there could be a thing which is in reality but is not (i.e., does not exist because it cannot be given to the senses). Do you see what I mean? You are playing around with being in ways that are not fundamental enough (:
Then, you are claiming that all a posteriori knowledge is about non-existent things; since only directly perceived things exist, and knowledge of not-directly-perceived things constitutes a posteriori knowledge.
How so? Isnt it epistemically justification enough to claim that the car is in the garage (even though I dont see it right now) because I had just drove it in there 5 seconds ago?
Correct; and I believe this is exactly to say that all bodies are extended is true for human experience; but not for reality as it is in-itself.
I think we are saying the same thing, then. I am saying that the concept refers to something concrete.
Nooooo. The concept of space refers to extensionI think you are thinking it refers to something concrete because it is used to represent objects.
If by pure logical conception you just mean that it is a concept which is derived from pure reason; then I agree.
Things that exist as phenomena. And recall, 'phenomena' means 'what appears'. Whereas what I'm calling attention to are what were understood to be 'intelligible objects' in classical philosophy, using number as an example. Notice the difference between 'the diamond exists' and 'the value of the diamond'. Its existence is phenomenal, but the value it has is derived from perceptions of worth.
I will often concede that it is perfectly intelligible to say in normal speech, that the number 7 exists, but the square root does not. But that, strictly speaking, the number which you indicate is actually a symbol. What is real is what is denoted by the symbol, and that is not something that exists in the sense of being real independently of any mind (as only a mind can grasp number.)
Quoting Bob Ross
What I'm doing, is calling attention to a real distinction which has been lost sight of, for deep historical reasons. You will know that the description 'realist philosophy' has a completely different meaning now, than it did in medieval culture. Now, it means 'belief in the mind-independent reality of objects'. Then, it meant 'belief in the reality of universals.' I say that in the transition from the medieval to the modern, something of importance was lost, which we now can't even see as nominalism (the view opposed to scholastic realism) won out.
C S Peirce upheld this same distinction.
//
[quote=Joshua Hochschild, What's Wrong With Ockham?] Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophys highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom.[/quote]
I understand you will probably reject this, because of the overwhemingly nominalist cast of modern culture and philosophy. But that's OK, and thanks for reading.
Because of the definition in play for the conception of reality, which is a category, having all the real as schemata subsumed under it, re: .Reality, in the pure conception of the understanding, is that which corresponds to a sensation in general; that, consequently, the conception of which indicates a being (in time).
I spoke of things I merely think, and for those things, there is nothing that appears to me by my perception of it, hence no sensation, no intuition, no phenomenon, so do not meet the criterion of the definition of the real in play.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct, it isnt a real thing as far as my sensibility is concerned, unless, of course, I can perceive it by being in the garage along with it. But to say I have every reason to think it is where I put it when Im not there, is wrong, insofar as I only have one reason, re: I have the certainty of knowing I put it there. The best I can say otherwise, is that I have no reason to think it isnt still there, but that does not authorize me to say I know it is still there.
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Quoting Bob Ross
The parenthetical is wrong: a thing can exist and not be given to the senses. Without the parenthetical the statement is a contradiction, re: there could be a thing in reality but is not.
I would agree to the statement that there could be a real thing that is not given to the senses, or, there could be an existence Ill never experience.
Quoting Bob Ross
Except Ive never used the word, preferring exists or existence instead. The word and concept represented by it is contained in the quote above, but thats not my usage. And I use existence because to me thats as fundamental as it gets, with respect to real things.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Why are you talking about knowledge, when Im talking about reasoning?
Quoting Bob Ross
No. Only perceived things are real; things may exist that are not perceived. But if a thing is perceived its existence is given. All of which is irrelevant, insofar as to reason about an experience presupposes it, and the existent thing perceived in order to make the experience possible. From the faculty of reason, the thing reasoned about is an indirect perception, or, if you like, a historic perception.
Technically, the content of the experience being reasoned about, resides in consciousness, so isnt perception, direct or otherwise. I should have written that differently. But still, reasoning about experience is a posteriori reasoning because its contents are all empirical.
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Quoting Bob Ross
If you read the damn question, youd know you werent the one driving!!! THATS how so.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Hmmm. Ya know, that could be reasonable, in that space refers to concrete things, which always must be extended, so maybe space refers to extension.
However, I personally take the idea of extension in relation to things, from A21/B35, which says .
..Thus, if I take away from our representation of a body all that the understanding thinks as belonging to it, as substance, force, divisibility, etc., and also whatever belongs to sensation, as impenetrability, hardness, colour, etc.; yet there is still something left us from this empirical intuition, namely, extension and shape .
.key part being what the understanding thinks. It follows that understanding cannot think away extension, which leaves in to remain in empirical intuition. Empirical intuition, now, as defined at A20/B34, is that intuition which relates to an object through sensation. Sensation, as defined just beforehand, is the effect of objects on the faculty of representation insofar as we are affected by it.
Still something left for us, then, seems most likely to be that which can never be dismissed from the things that appear to the senses. This makes more sense when we consider that in thinking away all that belongs to things, we cannot think away the space in was in. The space of the thing is represented a priori in us by the extension of it represented a posteriori by its appearance to us, therefore extension must belong to the thing.
Another way to look at it: we can easily think the non-existence of things, but can never think the non-existence of space. The non-existence of a thing reduces to the mere absence of extension, while the space remains for a thing to be extended into, making explicit they are not the same kind of representations.
So it is that space, as a pure intuition all its own, doesnt refer to extension, but refers to the relation of things to us, and thereby is a condition belonging to the subjects themselves. Extension, as well as shape, on the other hand, represents that condition of things the negation of which is impossible, for otherwise there is nothing to appear, hence belongs to objects alone.
Something else: in normal cognitive operations, understanding thinks that which belongs to objects in order to cognize something about them. Understanding has no need to think extension as a necessary conception in its syntheses with a phenomenon in order to form a cognition of it, which makes explicit extension is already given. Support herein arises from the predicates of a particular speculative metaphysics in which the categories are necessary for the cognition of things, and in which extension is not a category.
To me, because understanding cannot think away what it hasnt first connected, and it cannot think away extension hence doesnt need to think of things in accordance with that conception, extension itself doesnt belong to any part of the internal system by which things are thought. Which leaves extension belonging only to things as they are given. Furthermore, if it is the matter of things which is given to sensibility, as the text mandates, it follows that extension is necessarily presupposed.
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Quoting Bob Ross
YEA!!!
(Does the happy dance, feet just aflyin, enough to make Snoopy jealous, I tell ya)
I appreciate your response.
I think we are currently in different headspaces: you view this as a dispute between nominalism and realism, whereas I see it as a semantic note. For me, reality is the totality of what exists; and existence is the primitive concept of being. What I understand you to be doing, is trying to convey an interesting point with (in my opinion) bad semantics by making a distinction between existing qua the universe (or what is phenomenal) vs. qua the form of that universe. The problem with this is the same as @Mww: you are positing that something can not exist but is, when, in truth, what you are really trying to convey is that something can exist which is not a part of the physical universe. It is impossible, still yet, for me to coherently parse your semantics since you confirm the existence of things which do not exist (according to your schema)e.g., the square root.
I was not, and am not, suggesting that nominalism is necessarily true: I wasnt intending to comment on that whatsoever, and still dont feel the need to given my complaint above. However, if I must, then I would say that the rationality which we perceive as the form of the universe, to me, is the transcendental ideality of human a priori cognition. To me, I struggle with providing any proofs about reality as it is in-itself. To me, to take a realist account, in the medieval sense, is to necessarily posit that the a priori ways by which we experience is a 1:1 mirror of the forms of the universe itself; and I have absolutely no clue why I should believe that. Likewise, to posit a nominalist account, I dont see any reason to believe that, given the modern perspective, we understand that reality in-itself lacks any forms. Perhaps you can give some insight into this.
Perhaps I am too stuck in the Kantian mindset; but the Peirceian perspective you quoted was, by my lights, about reality in-itselfnot phenomena.
By way of footnote, there is a sense in which that is true for Aristotelian and Thomist philosophy. It is because the forms or essences of particulars are what is most real about them, and nous is able to directly apprehend them, whereas the senses only know indirectly. Anyway thanks for your patience Bob. It's a thesis I'm pursuing in history of ideas but very I'm very much a voice in wilderness.
So what? There are many attributes and properties of things that do not exist independently of the thing itself. We don't say that the ripeness of this apple isn't real because it can't exist independently of this apple. You seem to be making an unwarranted special case for minds.
Symbols are real. Symbols exist. They are the effects of prior causes and causes of subsequent events. In this sense they are real and exist.
I don't want a footnote Wayfarer: I want a response (:
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
From a high level, your instinctive intuition of the world is that you are separate from it. Ideas, including universals, are in the mind but are not attributes of reality as such, which 'lack any forms'. I presume you would also say that you believe the world to exist independently of yours' or anyone's mind, that it is something we discover and explore through empirical means. The customary modern notion of the world is that its 'mind-independent' nature is a hallmark of the kind of reality it has - 'reality is what continues to exist when you stop believing in it' as Philip K. Dick said.
But, and again from a high level, what I'm calling attention to the sense in which the mind constructs reality on an active basis moment by moment. The world is not simply a given, and we ourselves are not passive recipients of information about it. Every sensory signal we receive is absorbed through the process of apperception and then incorporated into the background of our existing understanding. That is the thrust of Kant's 'Copernican revolution in philosophy': contrary to what the empiricists say, the mind is not tabula rasa, a blank slate on which things are merely impressed. Things conform to thoughts, rather than vice versa. (That's why I included the video 'Is Reality Real?' Cognitive scientists are also very much aware of the constructive activities of mind. That's why Kant has been called 'the godfather of modern cognitive science'.)
The second point I want to make is about 'the Cartesian division' (or 'anxiety'). This refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his divisions of "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other". (Richard J. Bernstein Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 1983)
That is very much bound up with the ground of modern culture, although as we're embedded in it, it can be very hard to notice (i.e. 'fish unaware of water'.) But the upshot is, just as you say - ideas and forms are in the mind, the vast Universe inchoate, driven only by the processes described by physics, devoid of intentionality. That is the political and philosophical background of modern liberal individualism.
I have more to add on why I hark back to scholastic realism, but that's enough for one post.
My apologies Mww, I forgot to respond.
Ahhh, I understand now. For me, what is real for my understanding, in the Kantian sense, is not the same as I would define reality. My understanding is limited, and deploys a limited concept of real in order to construct my conscious experience. Through reason, pure reason, which is purely self-reflective, I can know that reality must be far more than what the understanding determines it to be.
Perhaps I used your terms incorrectly: then it would be you are saying that there could be a thing which is in reality but is not (i.e., is not real because it cannot be given to the senses).
I think I get where you are coming from now: you are using the concept of reality which is a transcendental category of the understanding; and deny, for some reason, the concept as understood by self-reflective reasonby meta-cognition.
Like I said before, my first point would be a semantic note: when something is not real, it does not exist because it is notunder your view, this does not hold because some things which exist are not real.
My other point, now, would be that our self-reflective reason has the ability to understand, just like it can about other transcendental things, that the true concept of reality cannot be identical to that category of the understanding which you refer; because something can be which is not sensed.
If you deny this, then the very concept of reality, as a category of the understanding, is not real; nor anything which is not currently being sensed; nor anything else transcendentally determined. I think you are just going to bite the bullet on this; so let me just point out that if there really arent these a priori modes of cognition (which they cannot be real according to your view) then that undermines the grounds that anything object which is cognized is realfor how can something which isnt real cognize something which is?????
(:
I appreciate your elaboration!
I dont disagree with anything you said in your response; but what I am wondering is if you believe that there are forms to reality as it is in-itself or not (which is what realism and nominalism, which you brought up, are debating). If you agree with me that the forms of reality are really attributed by our cognition; then they are not real (in the realists sense) but rather transcendentally ideal; and this would be a position which is neither nominalist nor realist (in the sense of those terms as you defined them). What are your thoughts?
Very perceptive question. That was the reason I called out scholastic realism, and C S Peirce's recapitulation of it:
and that:
I think that's a clear and intelligible statement of Peirce's distinction between existence and reality. His point is that universals such as logical laws are constitutive of nature itself but not on the same level as phenomena. Bertrand Russell also recognises this:
Quoting Russell, the World of Universals
Russell is intuiting here the distinct ontological status of universals, which he calls out:
[s]Compare with[/s] Consider the Aristotelian conception of 'nous' (nowadays translated as intellect). It is 'the basic understanding or awareness that grounds rationality. For Aristotle, this was distinct from sensory perception, including imagination and memory, which other animals possess. Discussion of nous is connected to discussion of how the human mind sets definitions (i.e. grasps meaning) in a consistent and communicable way, and whether people must be born with some innate faculty to understand the same universal categories in the same ways' (wiki). (Peirce, of course, came before Russell and Moore's repudiation of idealism, so it was still the dominant influence in the philosophy of his day; Peirce is often categorised as an 'objective idealist' which is nearest to my own inclinations, far as I can tell.)
At the heart of that sense of knowing is something again that we can't easily see, but it's the absence of that sense of division from the world. And that sense of 'otherness' is an existential plight, a way-of-being in the world. But for the pre-moderns, the world was the expression of a will, and was related to on an 'I-thou' basis, rather than the 'us-it' basis which seems natural to moderns. The cosmos was, as it were, animated by the Logos, and this world but one station on the scala naturae, the 'stairway to heaven'. (This doesn't mean for one moment that it was all peace and light in the pre-modern world, history bears witness to that, but stay with me.) We were participants in a cosmic drama, not bystanders in an indifferent world. Before Descartes, 'ideas' were not understood as the possessions of individual minds but as ideas in the Divine Intellect (a foundational principle of Christian Platonism).
In that pre-modern context the knower has a different kind of relationship with the known. We are in some sense united with the known through the ability to grasp its essence, to know what it is. Indeed, metaphysical insight could be construed as 'knowing is-ness', seeing the essence of things.* (You can see how that even underlies early modern science, with the caveat that it is predicated on just this division of subject and object which is the source of the above-mentioned Cartesian anxiety.)
Now to your question as to whether these are 'transcendentally ideal'. I agree, but this can't be taken to mean that they're subjective. Perhaps you could say that they are characteristic of how any mind must work, not simply my mind or yours. That is closer to Peirce's sense.
In all this, I'm trying to maintain the awareness of levels of being, an heirarchical ontology. Of course we can't 'go back' to the pre-modern ontology, but we need to understand and re-interpret it.
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* Compare: [quote=J. Krishnamurti;https://jkrishnamurti.org/el/content/what]If you see "what is" then you see the universe, and denying "what is" is the origin of conflict. The beauty of the universe is in the "what is"; and to live with "what is" without effort is virtue.[/quote]
I think this vision of 'what is', is at the heart of both philosophy and mysticism, and that we generally don't see 'what is' (tathata in Buddhist philosophy) because of that sense of otherness.
See also Sensible Form and Intelligible Form.
As it should be, and does ..
..the understanding which is occupied merely with empirical exercise, ( ) is quite unable to do one thing, and that of very great importance, to determine, namely, the bounds that limit its employment, and to know what lies within or without its own sphere .
but on the other hand .
Quoting Bob Ross
..troubles abound from such insistence, insofar as .
.the dogmatical use of reason without criticism leads to groundless assertions, against which others equally specious can always be set, thus ending unavoidably in scepticism .
. correction and guidance seemingly required ..
.because it aims ( ) to serve as a touchstone of the worth or worthlessness of all knowledge à priori .
.and in this case, where youve given understanding the power of cognizing the content of experience and calling it knowledge, you then your invite pure reason to question, arbitrate and possibly overthrow that very power.
Pure reason, in its dogmatical use, cannot inform you there MUST be more to reality than understanding determines, insofar as immediately upon deducing there must be, it may also deduce with equal justice there cannot be, you end up knowing neither, and you, in order to maintain rational integrity, revert back to what understanding has already told you, re: reality is that which is susceptible to sensation in general, from which, a priori, properly critiqued pure reason can only inform for that which does not appear, the reality of it remains undetermined.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Meta-cognition. Ehhhh .thinking about thinking. What a waste. Thinking about thinking just IS thinking. I dont know how what seems to be me thinking, comes about, I havent a freakin clue. All Im doing here, is iterating my comprehension of some theory by which the ways and means of what appears to be my thinking makes sense to me, without any possibility of it actually being the case. Im not thinking about thinking; Im thinking about the content of a speculative metaphysic, my actually thinking, if there be such a thing, be what it may.
So it is that within the predicates of this particular theory, there is no such thing as meta-cognition, the description of a system in operation in the talking about it, which I know because it is me describing it, is very far from the system in operation, in itself, which I dont know at all, and for which I can say nothing**. It is only in the description can stuff like concept as understood by self-reflective reason be said, insofar as in the operation of the system itself, reason doesnt understand and understanding doesnt reason.
In my comprehension of the theory, then, it arises that, yes, I use reality as a pure conception of the understanding, a category, because thats what the theory stipulates, and likewise deny to reason the use of that category, and all other categories, in its transcendental activities, for transcendental reason is that by which the deduction of them, the restrictive applicability of them, hence their objective validity, is given.
And now it comes to pass, that this cannot be true ..
Quoting Bob Ross
..because pure reason is the origin of the concept of reality transcendnetally in the first place, which instantiates it as the true concept understanding uses in its synthetical apperceptions a priori, regarding things that appear to the senses. While the category reality belongs to understanding for its use, and while it is not the same as the conception named reality thought to arise spontaneously in the synthesis of conceptions to phenomena for the act of judging objects, these are two very different functions of understanding itself and are deserving of their differences.
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Because something can be which is not sensed, is a logical inference, which must be separated from existence. There can be conceptions, there can be intuitions, there can be judgements, the actual experiences of which are impossible, just as there can be inhabitants of some other celestial body, the experience of which may be possible. Reality can be but not be sensed, but reality is not an existent. We experience real things, or, if you like, and loosely speaking, we experience things that are in reality; either way, we do not experience reality. As it is with all the pure conceptions of the understanding deduced by pure reason transcendentally: necessity can be that required for experience but necessity is not itself sensed; causality can be that required for experience but causality is not itself sensed, and so on.
Same with pure intuitions deduced transcendentally a priori. We manufacture the conception of time to understand Nature, but we have no understanding of the reality of time itself, insofar as it can never be an appearance to sensibility, but only reason to it for its necessity as a primary condition for everything else.
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Quoting Bob Ross
I do deny reality as a category, reality as a condition. Or, I affirm that reality as a category, is not real, as well as all else transcendentally originated. As far as the real juxtapositioned to the not currently being sensed, still leaves the possibility of sensation in the future, by which the reality of the thing would then be given. Reality, being defined as the reception of sensation in general, makes no allowance for time, or, which is the same thing, allows for sensation in any time.
Is this legitimate? Yes, not only legitimate, but necessary, within the predicates of this particular speculative metaphysics, for which logic is the only arbiter. The more pertinent question then becomes .is this particular metaphysics itself, or the tripartite syllogistic logic which grounds it, legitimate, and for that, only a subjective motivation or inclination suffices for the determination of an answer.
(** and Wittgenstein thought he had itself an epiphany. (Sigh) Sorry, dude; long before you it had already been covered)
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Quoting Bob Ross
First you have to prove why it must be that only the real can cognize the real. Or, prove from a pure, empirically grounded, science, that the non-real cannot cognize the real. In no other way can you prove it is impossible the merely valid can be sufficient to cognize the real. Failing that, it comes about that we already know how something which isnt real can cognize the real. Whether or not that knowledge is worth a damn, is another question altogether.
Quoting Bob Ross
If we say 'experience' here is 'empirical data', then I'm fine with this. Our thoughts, memories, etc are all 'experience', but I suppose not define here. What we should be careful with is defining thoughts that are based on experience, vs thoughts that have no basis on experience. For example, if I remember a tree, my memory is now based on the experience and identify of a tree. True 'non-empirical' based experiences are what we would call 'instincts'. When a newborn is born for example it cries, and it can breath even though it hasn't breathed yet. The moment after it breathes, any thought on breathing is based on empirical experience.
Quoting Bob Ross
A JTB theory of knowledge has long been countered by "The Gettier Problem". But lets go with the idea that knowledge is something obtained through reason that is the best stab available at understanding reality. What is apriori knowledge if apriori is simply instinct? The moment a baby kicks, it knows what its like to kick through its empirical sensations. The moment a child learns about ''the number 1' its now empirical knowledge. 'Apriori knowledge' is a misnomer. It doesn't make any sense.
Quoting Bob Ross
Notice that even in this sentence you justified a claim of apriori by saying 'we experience'. All bodies are extended is something we empirically learn by experience, not anything we are born with.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, I did, and it has been a while. :) You may want to re-read it again now that you're much more versed in philosophy and discussions, or at least the summary that was posted right after it on the revision I posted a while back. So we don't get into that too deeply right now and can remain focused on the point here, I'll simply answer, "Yes, its consistent at its base between the two types".
Quoting Bob Ross
Its similar, but not exactly the same. The most like apriori is distinctive knowledge. Thus if I kick, I have an experience of that kick, and identify it distinctively in some way from the rest of my experience. I know that experience distinctively. It doesn't mean that if I kick, a burst of air will erupt and shatter a wall in front of me. For that, I need to apply my kick to the air to see if that result happens.
Quoting Bob Ross
My disagreement purely rests on the fact that 'apriori knowledge' does not make sense as I noted above. The thing that is aprior is instinct or innate capability, not knowledge.
Quoting Bob Ross
There is no instinct to do math in any base. It takes time for this to develop in humans.
"Quantity recognition: around 6 months
Quantity recognition is often the first mathematical skill children learn. Well before counting, babies as young as 6 months can demonstrate a basic understanding of quantities just by observing objects. Research suggests that babies can distinguish between different quantities, especially when the difference is significantfor example, six apples versus 12 apples.
By 10 to 12 months, babies may apply this skill when making choices."
https://blog.lovevery.com/skills-stages/numbers-counting/#:~:text=Quantity%20recognition%3A%20around%206%20months&text=Research%20suggests%20that%20babies%20can,this%20skill%20when%20making%20choices.
Quoting Bob Ross
I cannot applicably claim to know there is 'a thing in itself'. Its a logical induction. Its plausible that a thing in itself exists, and implausible that it does not. Therefore its the smart money bet. But it is not applicably known, and because it is such a broad and unspecified definition, nothing else besides that fact that we say, "There must be something that exists in itself apart for what we observe" can ever be said about it.Quoting Bob Ross
You misunderstood, I was creating a hypothetical in the example. My point was to give a concrete to the abstract. To demonstrate a possible 'thing in itself' and demonstrate that no amount of observation could discover it, as everything we observe from it leads us to view it as something completely different then what it really is as itself.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. I think I understand now what you are going for, and I agree despite our semantic differences :up: .
Like I said before, I just think it is best to reserve the term 'real', 'actual', etc. for 'it exists'; and 'existence' as 'being'. Otherwise, you end up having to posit that something can not be real but exists or what exists may not be real (depending on how the semantics are hashed out).
Good discussion, Wayfarer!
No worries at all, my friend!
I would say it is also independent of the imagination, thoughts, memories, etc. being that it is the necessary preconditions for that as well.
Not quite: an instinct is a way one is predisposed to reacting to experience; whereas the a priori means of cognizing objects is a way we are pre-structured to experience. To your point, we could very well say that there are a priori instincts we have vs. ones we learn. My point here is just that you are invalidly forming a dichotomy between instincts and experience which turns out to be a false one.
I no longer see the gettier problems as problematic at all (tbh); but you are correct.
You arent thinking about it properly, and this is what is the root of the confusion. Not everything that is a priori is instinctual (like I noted before); and a priori knowledge is any knowledge which has its truth-maker in the way we experience as opposed to what we experience.
This is why Kant noted that math is a priori; because no matter what you are experiencing, the propositions in math are true in virtue of the way we cognize objects in space and time which is true for anything a human will experience. 1 + 1 = 2 is true as grounded by the way our brains cognize, the mathematical axioms which it has, and not because of something we learned about something which we experienced (in terms of its purely empirical content). This is why Kant famously said that all knowledge begins with experience but that does not mean all knowledge arises out of experience.
Again, all knowledge begins with experiencenot all knowledge arises out of it. The space which objects are presented to you in is purely synthetic: it is something your brain added into the mixnot empirical data.
The problem you are having is that experience encompasses both an a priori and a posteriori aspect; and so there are equivocations being made here by both of us in our discussion. I will try to be more clear from now on. What we are discussing is not if knowledge begins with experience, but if there aspects of our experience which are not experiential.
No, my point is that your theory sidesteps the question: it doesnt address it and doesnt eliminate its possibility. Nothing about distinctive vs. applicable knowledge negates the possibility of a priori knowledge: the a priori vs. a posteriori distinction is a different one than you are addressing in your theory; and I am merely noting that a priori knowledge is not incompatible with your view.
Bases are just different ways to represent numbers: I am talking about numbers themselves
I don't think we're in disagreement with the idea of apriori, just apriori knowledge. You're using math, but as I'll note, I still don't see that as knowledge independent of experience. Can you give some other examples of apriori knowledge?
Quoting Bob Ross
I believe instinct includes this, but also the impetus to act at all. Apriori essentially includes the package of being prior to experience. The apriori of a fish would be very different from a human. One could also posit its the being and potential prior to experience.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm with you all the way until the last sentence. It may be due to the way you're defining instincts. I'm talking about instincts as the being of a person prior to any experience. So its not a false dichotomy, its a true one.
Quoting Bob Ross
In the way we experience... So let me note again the point about 'distinctive experience'. In the paper I comment that "I don't know why I distinctively experience, but I do." That isn't knowledge. Actions and instincts prior to experience are not themselves experience. The first time I discretely experience, I now have that experience. But there was no experience before that allowed me to discretely experience. Its an innate capability. Innate capabilities are not knowledge. Knowledge can only be gleaned from experience. So while apriori can work on its own, apriori knowledge is a contradiction.
Quoting Bob Ross
I noted that math is the logic of discrete experience. But it still needs to be learned through experience. One cannot begin to understand the logic of discrete experience without first discretely experiencing. And that IS an experience. Every thought, feelilng, and 'mental' existence, is an experience. We forget sometimes that even when I touch something, that experience is 'mental'. The carpet doesn't feel soft outside of our touch. Its our touch interpreting the carpet into some type of sensation in our brains. Whether I have a though by touching carpet, or a thought while sitting on a couch imagining a blue sky, those are still experiences.
Quoting Bob Ross
He almost had it. Since we innately discretely experience, we all share that same aspect of viewing the world. And because we can be logical beings, we can figure out that there is a logic to discretely experiencing. Thus if you reason through it, you can conclude some type of expression of 'math'. But these are things we must learn though experiencing. Just like the fact that physics exists in our world, we don't know about it unless we experience it. Apriori means 'independent of experience'. Knowledge is "What can be logically concluded by experience that best fits reality". Apriori knowledge is therefore a contradiction. You cannot have knowledge, which is dependent on experience, that is also independent of experience.
Quoting Bob Ross
A fun and poetic saying, but it does not make logical sense. Knowledge by experience is an either or situation. If you must have experience for knowledge, you cannot have apriori knowledge, or "Knowledge by experience that is independent of experience". Something isn't being reasoned through correctly.
Quoting Bob Ross
All empirical data is from your brain Bob. All experience is in your brain. We are fortunately able to interpret that there is a world outside of our brain that we try to master. The only difference is, 'Thoughts through nerves that hit the brain" vs "thoughts in the brain without nerves".
Quoting Bob Ross
This needs to be more clearly defined then. How can one have experience and also not have experience? I think its a confusion as to believing that the senses are a different kind of experience then thoughts without the senses. This is a fine distinction, but they are both experiences. That's the difference between my point of 'discrete experiences' vs 'applicable experiences'. Both are experiences, and both can gain knowledge. Apriori knowledge is "Knowledge without experience, but it still starts with experience", which breaks down the more you think on it.
Quoting Bob Ross
Again, numbers are signs, which are learned through experience. The sign '1' never had to arise in human society. The sign for one could have just as easily ben 'ua'. What we can learn by discretely experiencing is that we can focus on a 'discrete', or one that is separate from everything around it. We then have the capability to hold a '1' and a '1' discrete experience, and group that into a new discrete experience that we label as '2'. While I believe most people have the innate capacity to do this process, it does not result in 'math' or 'numbers'. If one is able to function with a basic logic of discrete experience, then one can do this. But to know one can do this, one has to experience it first.
The point is that there is no knowledge apart from experience. All knowledge is gained from experience. Our innate capacities determine what types of experiences we can have, and if we can reason through them in a particular way. But knowledge of that only comes after doing so. "Discrete experience" and "distinctive knowledge" solve the problem, "apriori knowledge" doesn't quite work.
It is grounded ini.e., make true in virtue ofsomething which is not empirical. The space which objects take up on your conscious experience is not empiricalit is not a posteriori. Any knowledge which one has which is true in virtue of the way, e.g., objects work in space is a priori.
I think you are thinking that a priori knowledge is knowledge which one has independently of ever having experienced anything; and I am partially to blame to for that: I was misusing the term a while back.
Taking space as another example, the axiom in geometry that the shortest path between two points is a straight line connecting them is a proposition that is true in virtue of the way we experience as opposed to what we experienceit doesnt matter the empirical data which our brains represent, the a priori mode of representing them in space remains the same.
What I think you are thinking, is that because we can only knowledge this after beginning to experience that we do not have a priori knowledge; but the a priori in a priori knowledge is conveying how it is groundedspecifically that it is not grounded in empirical data.
a posteriori knowledge is knowledge which is grounded in empirical data, and is, thusly, about reality; whereas a priori knowledge is about how we perceive reality.
This isnt a coherent sentence: the a priori...what?
Then the root of our disagreement there is merely semantical: thats not usually what an instinct means. For example, Websters is a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason.
Instincts are behavior patterns not attributable to being learned through reason; and most the a priori pre-structure of cognition, intuition, judgment, etc. do not fit that bill.
The point that I was making with applicable vs. distinctive knowledge, is that it doesnt preclude a priori knowledge; and it would be applicable knowledge in your theory (assuming I grant our theory in its entirety).
Heres the definitions you have in your summary:
I discretely experience, and I extract from it the necessary forms of that experience (as opposed to the empirical data of that experience); and I apply my hypothesis without contradiction to reality, thusly making it applicable knowledge that is a priori knowledge. I dont see anything incorrect going here, even in terms of your position.
Ok, @Mww, I see your point now: reality cannot include the a priori modes of cognizing it; so our a priori faculties are not technically real in that sense, but must be grounded ontologically in something which allows for those faculties to existwe just cant know definitively what that is (viz., I do not know myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself).
I cant tell if you are saying we just self-reflectively use math to navigate experience, or that math is a form of how we experiencethe difference between saying, e.g., the ball has mathematically features itself (phenomenally), or that we just use math to nominally understand the ball (phenomenally).
You arent understanding it (with all due respect); and I can see now this is the root of our disagreement. You are thinking that a priori knowledge is knowledge one comes born with in the sense that they dont have to glean it from the forms of experiencethats not what it means.
Space data is not empiricalyou are using the terms to loosely. There are aspects of your experience which your brain produces as a matter of how it is pre-structured to represent vs. the actual empirical data it is representing.
I was noting that not all aspects of experience are empirical; and I cant tell if you agree with that or not (yet).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/apriori/#ExamIlluDiffBetwPrioPostEmpiJust
Honestly, the above is a greater and more accurate source of the definition of apriori, and some of the issues. Specifically, I' m going to refer to section 4 " What is the nature of a priori justification?" Take a read and see what you think. Feel free to ask me to revisit any of the above notes when you're done. But as it is now, I think the terms need better clarification to continue.
Sorry I didn't see this: I wasn't linked to it. Philosophim, I am not going to make your argument for you (:
If there is something in that article that you think is relevant, then you will need to bring it to our attention as it relates to what I have said.
Another footnote - scholars have commented on the influence Kant and Schopenhauer had on Freuds theories. See this The point being many aspects of our own psyche are not available to casual introspection but are in some important sense sub- and unconscious. Meaning the ancient dictum Know thyself is not nearly so straightforward as it may seem.
Yes I just wanted you to read section 4, but there's no direct link. You can ctrl+F and type the phrase in to find it directly. I'm also not trying to have you make my argument, I just know when there are other better references then myself. I read Kant's work on knowledge many moons ago, and I would not deign to be an expert on the specifics. We are not really at a point of debating if Kant's ideology works, but we seem to be debating the meaning of what Kant was saying. That type of discussion requires good references.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, and so now I need a new clarification of what you mean by apriori. That was the crux of what I was against. Kant is easy to read at a surface level, but when you get into the specifics of it, problems start to crop up.
Quoting Bob Ross
Are you sure this makes sense? Isn't how we perceive reality also how we empirically experience reality? A color blind person would have a different empirical experience then a normal color sighted person. Is that experience apriori or aposteriori? Let me link the first section of the article I linked.
"A standard answer to the question about the difference between a priori and empirical justification is that a priori justification is independent of experience and empirical justification is not, and this seems to explain the contrasts present in the fifteen examples above. But various things have been meant by experience. On a narrow account, experience refers to sense experience, that is, to experiences that come from the use of our five senses: sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste. However, this narrow account implies that justification based on introspection, proprioception (our kinesthetic sense of the position and movements of our body), memory, and testimony are kinds of a priori justification. And if we had different senses, like those of bats (echolocation) and duck-billed platypuses (electrolocation), experiences based on those senses would provide a priori, not empirical, justification on this account which takes a priori justification to be independent of experiences based on the senses we have.
Given these considerations, perhaps experience should be taken to mean sense experience of any sort, introspection, proprioception, memory, and testimony. This sounds like a hodgepodge of various sources of justification but perhaps what unites them is that, leaving aside memory and testimony, these sources provide us with information either about the physical world or our inner world, either the outer world through perception or the inner world of what we are feeling or thinking, or information about our bodies, through introspection and proprioception. Memory and testimony are not primary sources of justification; their primary epistemic function is to transmit either a priori or empirical justification. So the proposal should be seen as a way of distinguishing the primary sources of justification into two categories of justification: a priori and empirical.
As noted above (see, sec. 3) and below (secs. 4.4 and 4.5), independent of experience should not be taken to mean independent of all experience, but, as a first approximation, to mean independent of all experience beyond what is needed to grasp the relevant concepts involved in the proposition. It is sometimes said that a priori justification can depend on experience insofar as it enables the person to acquire the concepts needed to grasp the meaning of the proposition which is the object of justification, but experience cannot play an evidential role in that justification (Williamson 2013: 293). Later we will see that the notion of enabling experience might better be expanded to include experience needed to acquire certain intellectual skills such as those needed to construct certain proofs or create counterexamples (see, secs. 4.4 and 4.5, below).
Suppose there is a significant difference between a priori and empirical justification. This still does not tell us what the basis of a priori justification is. One view is that rational intuitions or insights are the bases of a priori justification; experiences, as construed above, the bases of empirical justification. Before discussing the nature of rational intuitions or insights, we should first distinguish between intuitions and intuitive judgments and consider what the content of intuitive judgments evoked in thought experiments is."
The point of the above is trying to make the definitions of apriori and aposteriori work, because Kant is unclear and seems to contradict himself at times (or perhaps through the language translation of his works) when he says "experience". What truly separates the two? As I've noted, there really is no mental difference between the empirical and non-empirical. To me, the true difference is in 'application' or 'assertion'. The empirical asserts that one's mental constructs represent an intake of something independent of oneself, while 'mental' aspects, such as thoughts and memory, are taken to be something that is dependent on oneself. Or maybe a better phrasing is, "of the self". But they are both experiences.
Quoting Bob Ross
So if I am blind and have no sense of touch, it is true in virtue of the way I experience? That doesn't make any sense. It is known 'to be true' (known by application) based on empirical experience. We can also know it 'by definition'. But knowing a definition of something doesn't make it true in application. I can know the definition of a pink elephant, but it doesn't mean I'll ever know one empirically.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, that's fine. I'm trying to note the parts of apriori that work. What works is when you note apriori as 'innate being'. This includes instincts and physical potential. These are the only things which are independent of empirical experience. You could think independent of ever having any sense, but what would you think about? You wouldn't even know what space is let alone have a memory of anything but some dark and wordless nothingness. You wouldn't even know what 'dark' is, it would just be a senseless existence. Everything else that we reason about in our head has its root in empirical experience. We create identities, memories, and then have the innate ability to part and parcel those memories into ideas, imagination, dreams, and other thoughts. But to say they are 'true'? What exactly about them is true Bob?
Quoting Bob Ross
Distinctive knowledge is the closest to the loose concept of 'apriori knowledge'. Its an evolution of the concept without the problematic definitive issues of what apriori is. Never do I say distinctive knowledge is 'true'. Never do I separate the empirical from the mental with distinctive knowledge. The separation is when you try to take those memories and experiences, and apply it to a world that is independent of your wishes, desires, and interpretations. The idea of apriori does not do this.
Quoting Bob Ross
How does a person who has no senses understand space? And if it was inborn, how come it takes several months to learn?
(Development of spatial development in babies)
4 to 6 months:
Begins to grasp objects and explores them with hands and mouth.
Starts to show depth perception (judging distances between objects).
https://www.visionlearncenter.com/post/milestones-for-visual-spatial-development
Quoting Bob Ross
I agree with this. What I'm noting is that apriori meaning "thoughts(?) that are independent of empirical experience" needs special care. If you are to claim an understanding of space is apriori, how can that understanding of space be completely independent of empirical experience with the assertion that is it true?
I skimmed through it, and none of it seemed to reference Kant: it was about, more broadly, how many philosophers have contended we should use the a priori vs. a posteriori distinction (and how it relates to the nature of experience). Theres so much densely packed into section 4, of which you wanted me to read, that I am clueless as to what you are wanting to discuss about it. If there is something in there you want discuss, then please bring it up specifically so I can address it adequately.
empirically experience doesnt make sense, and is the source of your confusion: like I said before, experience is both in part a priori and a posteriori; and it necessarily must be that way. The term empirical (usually) refers to the content of experience which is of reality,
We do not have five senses: any pre-structured means of receptivity of objects (which includes ourselves) is form of sensibility. So, introspection, proprioception, echolocation, and electrolocation are straightforwardly senses; I am not sure what they mean by testimony; memory is just the reinvocation of previous experience and so is has both a priori and a posteriori aspects to it; and hallucination, although they didnt mention it, has for its a posteriori aspects fabricated data.
a priori justification is linked closely to knowledge: it would be evidence grounded in the way we experience as opposed to what we experience if we take the Kantian use of the terms, and more broadly it would be any evidence grounded in the way we think about reality as opposed anything about reality itself (e.g., law of identity as a logical law by which we self-reflectively reason about our experience).
Ive made it clear what separates them: what are you contending is wrong with my distinction?
How can they not be different? One is about what is in reality and one is about something other than how reality is itself: they are mutually exclusive categories.
In principle, there can be a human which lacks the faculty of understand and reason such that there is no space in which objects are being represented, because theres nothing being represented (from the outer senses) at all. What you are positing, is fundamentally a person who not only is blind and doesnt have a sense of touch, but cannot sense at all. All senses that we have which are outer senses fundamentally are cognized in space (e.g., I close my eyes, touch nothing, feel no outer objects, but can still sense where my left finger is located without touching itthats in space).
The point about these sort of a priori propositions being true for human experience; is that they are true for the human understanding: the way we experience; and, yes, it is entirely possible for a human to lack the proper ability to understand reality.
Not everything you said is rooted in the empirical aspect of experience; and thats what you are equivocating. That a person could think without experiencing anything in space and, lets grant for your point, which I highly doubt is possible, who lacks a concept of space does not lack it because of lacking empirical datathey lack it because one of the a priori pure forms of sensibility, space, was never used by the brain (because perhaps their brain is damaged and cannot do it). They lack the concept of space self-reflectively because theyve never had an outer experience (which would include that a priori form).
On a separate note, this hypothetical is impossible in actuality; for one cannot think, self-reflectively, through reason without using the concept of spaceeven if they have never experienced it. Everything we think about implies separation between, at least, concepts.
Moreover, it is plainly seen that the lack of the concept of space is not due to a lack of the empirical aspect of experience (if I were to grant your hypothetical as possible), because if they were to be given a hardcore drug that causes them to hallucinate utter nonsense, which would not be based off of any empirical data because they have never had any, they would immediately become acquainted with spacethusly, it is a priori.
Assuming you mean that they have no outer or inner senses; then they cannot understand space, because they lack the ability to understand anythingwhat you are describing is a dead person.
Babies from birth represent objects in space, but they do not from birth know that in which the objects are represented is space; but once they have the sufficient self-reflective cognitive abilities, they can know it and it is a priori knowledge because it is not justified by any empirical datait is justified by the non-empirical way that their brain is representing.
Hopefully that helps clear some things up. Good discussion, Philosophim!
Bob
It was more to note the point between apriori as 'without experience' vs aposteriori as 'with experience' and your note that there is a difference between empirical and non-empirical experience. My point is that finding that dividing line between what is gained with empirical experience, vs none at all, doesn't leave us with anything we could commonly call knowledge.
Quoting Bob Ross
Then I need a little clarification as to what you mean by this below:
Quoting Bob Ross
I interpreted this to mean we can have empirical experience, and non-empirical experience. What is the difference between apriori and aposteriori experience in your view then?
Quoting Bob Ross
I'll agree that proprioception and echolocation are definitely senses, but introspection? There's no reading of the outside world in this case. So if I'm thinking about the outside world, its not a sense, but if I'm thinking about myself, its a sense?
Quoting Bob Ross
And where is this distinct separation in memory? If an illusion, which is a misinterpretation of empirical sense data is aposteriori, is any misinterpretation of anything aposteriori? The point here is its difficult to see the dividing line.
Quoting Bob Ross
If it was clear, I would not be asking again. :) I'm noting that in practice, giving an example of how one can have knowledge apart from experience doesn't make any sense. Apriori knowledge is often understood as understanding something independently from experience. You noted earlier that apriori does involve experience, but you seemed to divide this experience between the empirical and non-empirical. This is where I'm confused.
Quoting Bob Ross
See this is generally not seen as knowledge. If I have the capability to see red, that's just an innate part of my being. Its not something I 'know'. If I've never seen red before, I can have the capacity to know what it is when I see it, but I don't know what red is apart from experience.
Quoting Bob Ross
Right, they don't know what space is in that sense, because they've never encountered it before. They have the capacity to understand what space is, but no experience to know what space is in that way. What you seem to be claiming, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that someone knows what space is before they've experienced it. Even under the JTB, knowledge is a 'justified true belief'. Where is the justification, or the belief in something one has never experienced?
Quoting Philosophim
Then I'm not sure you're actually using apriori correctly. I agree with this notion, but I'm not sure that's what Kant actually believes. We seem to have a notion of 'without experience, but experience'. There's a lack of a terminology that doesn't devolve into contradictions here.
Quoting Bob Ross
Breaking this down, you're pointing out what I am. You can't reflect on space if you've never experienced space. Meaning that any knowledge gained from this would come from experience. How is knowledge gained? How is knowledge gained apriori? How is this 'apriori knowledge' a JTB?
Quoting Bob Ross
This makes no sense. If you've never experienced space or its concepts, you don't know it. Moving your fingers and coming up with an idea or notion of space is learned by experience, not apart from it.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm just talking about lacking the five senses. "Inner senses" is a misnomer. Senses refer to the five ways we are able to gain information from the outside world.
Quoting Bob Ross
But it is justified by the experience of space. Again, I agree that babies have an innate capacity to come to certain conclusions about space, but that knowledge is learned by experience. Where is the knowledge of space without experience, which is the idea of 'apriori knowledge'? The ability to see red, does not mean one knows what red is before one has experienced it. Do we have apriori knowledge of red? No. Because apriori knowledge doesn't make sense as Kant defined it.
I appreciate the response, and I see that we need to address more the a priori vs. a posteriori distinction more in depth before we move on to that distinction as it relates to knowledge. So, for now, lets forget about a priori vs. a posteriori knowledge, and focus on the generic distinction itself.
Yes, this is the root of the confusion (I think). When I was saying, before, that a priori knowledge is knowledge gained independently of experience, I was using my terminology too loosely and that is my fault: what I should have said is < > independently of our experience of reality, as that denotes the aspects of experience which are a posteriorii.e., empirical.
By experience, I just generically mean the conscious awareness of which one is having; so why would I say theres an a priori and a posteriori aspect to that experience? Because, simply put, there are things which my brain is adding into the mix (i.e., are synthetical) which are not actually of the sensations (of objects in reality) in order for it to represent them in the conscious experience which I will have of them.
The Kantian way of thinking about it, philosophically, is essentially:
1. An object impacts your senses.
2. Your sensations produce sensations.
3. You brain intuits objects from those sensations in space and time.
4. Your brain cognizes objects, according to logical rules and conceptions, in space and time.
5. You experience an object, or objects, in space and time.
If the sensations are intuited in space and time, then space and time are not contained themselves in the sensations; and it is even clearer when you realize that your brain cannot possibly learn how to represent things with extension nor succession to do it in the first place. Hence, the extension and succession which you experience things in and of, are not from the sensations and hence are not empirical (even if the brain learns how to represent the causal relations of things better with space and time as it develops).
So, e.g., space and time are forms in and of which your brain represents things and are not properties of the things-in-themselves (whatever they may be). This means that space and time are like the containers in which the content of experience is placed; and this is just a simplified way of saying that they are a priori and used to represent a posteriori content.
No. I think that theres a difference between the self-reflective reasoni.e., meta-cognition and self-consciousnessand non-self-reflective reason (i.e., cognition and consciousness). My brain has the capacity, as you put it, to represent in space and this extensional representation is not a reflection of any extension, per se, that an object itself actually has; but I must come to know, by experience, that I can extract out one of the forms of my experience as spatiality and that is is a priori.
This is why Kant famously said that all knowledge begins with experience, but not all knowledge arises out of experience. It was an catchy way of saying not all knowledge is acquired and grounded in empirical dataa posteriori data: there are certain ways we are pre-structured to perceive which necessarily are not reflections of anything in reality.
Through experience, but not through empirical data. It is a transcendental investigation into how our cognition represents things, independently of what is being represented, in pre-structured ways.
I cant speak for what Kant actually believes without being in his own mind; but I can say that the CPR seems pretty clear to me that what he means is that experience contains both an a priori and a posteriori aspect because there are necessary preconditions the possibility of that experience which are about how we are pre-structured to experience as opposed to the representation of the empirical, sensational content of that experience.
I was entertaining your idea that someone could be thinking, self-reflectively, without ever having an inner or outer sense of space. If that is true, then they still would implicitly being using the concept of space, because reason fundamentally thinks in terms of space. E.g., if I am thinking about bawwws vs glipglips, even if they are utter nonsense, I am making separations and distinctions between them, which is inherent to reason, and this is conceptually spatial. You cant have thoughts which dont imply any conceptual separation between other concepts and ideas which you haveviz., you cannot think without space. You may not call it space; you may not know it is space; but when you are thinking you are thinking in terms of space. If you dont believe, then just try to come up with a counter-example, and I will demonstrate that it is still using, implicitly, conceptual separation between thoughts, ideas, and concepts in play.
Of course there are inner senses: they are senses of oneself or, more broadly, any sense capable of sensing the being which has those senses. Which leads me to:
I was assuming by introspection we are talking about self-consciousness, and this requires an inner sense; for one cannot know they are experiencing by merely experiencing: they must also have the capacity to acquire knowledge about their own experience. It is entirely possible to have a brain that is damaged in such a way as to still experience but lack self-experience.
You only have knowledge of yourself insofar as you affect your own senses. Which entails that there is not I think, therefore I am kind of direct window into ones own self.
If reality is 'what is', then isn't anything we experience reality? Again, what it seems you want to say is there is a distinction between the classic empirical and non-empirical modes of experience. Quoting Bob Ross
Again, this seems to be an empirical and non-empirical distinction. Perhaps what would help is to clearly show a non-empirical aposteriori example and an empirical apriori example?
Quoting Bob Ross
But this is just wrong. Modern day neuroscience and understanding of brain development shows this is a learned process. I get what Kant was saying hundreds of years ago, but we've learned much more about the brain since then. Again, I will note what is possible is that we have the capacity to understand space and time through our being. But that is not knowledge that we already know without experience. Space and time are identities we create to label experiences. But we don't know these identities before we encounter them.
Quoting Bob Ross
But this is everything, and not exclusive to space and time. Any identity attributed as a representation is not the property of the thing in itself. The thing in itself is the logical layer of the unknown upon which all representations rest. And that's it. There's nothing that can ever be concluded from it besides that.
in which the content of experience is placed; and this is just a simplified way of saying that they are a priori and used to represent a posteriori content.[/quote]
How is this different from any other identity like 'red', 'giraffe' or 'Bob'? :)
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting AmadeusD
Bob, are you talking about the ability to discretely experience? This requires no innate understanding of space, just the ability to separate what one experiences into identities. "Space" is a very particular identity that assumes depth and location. We can learn this, but its not innate knowledge. Having experience, then being able to focus and divide that experience into 'experiences' is innate. We can also know the division of these experiences once we have make them. This division of experiences at its base, does not necessitate space or any form of empiricism. That is developed later.
Quoting Bob Ross
The problem is this assumes that experiences apart from the empirical are not reality. Every experience you have is part of reality. The question of whether your interpretation of that experience represents aspects of reality beyond the experience itself (I see water, therefore water is a X location in space and not a mirage) is correct when applied beyond the inductive.
Quoting Bob Ross
Again, there are problems here because you note that empirical data is reality, while non-empirical data is not.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, reason does not fundamentally think in terms of space. It thinks in terms of discrete experience. It thinks in terms of inductions and deductions based off of this discrete experience. I see water over there, when I normally see water, in my past experience this means there is water over there. I go over there, and the water vanishes. It was a mirage. Distinctive knowledge, beliefs, and the application of those beliefs. Empirical experiences are merely one subset of discrete experiences. "Space" is one such concept that is formed and reasoned on. It is not known innately.
Quoting Bob Ross
Senses refer to the empirical. There are only five of them. Using the term, 'inner sense' as if it means 'one of the five senses' is a misnomer. Self-reflection is a type of thought, not a sense. If you start blending sense into internal thoughts, then the this easily makes every experience a sense. Its good to have tight separations of terms at times or else you run into making it too generic. Self-reflection after all is simply conscious awareness. Which means non-self-reflective awareness can also be a sense...and now the term 'sense' doesn't really mean much anymore beyond 'experience'.
That's nice of Wayfarer, thank you.
:up:
Alright @Mww and @Wayfarer, your mysterious forces are beginning to sway me. In having to explain this to Philosophim, I am starting to appreciate your distinction between what is real and what exists: it seems I have to posit that distinction now to resolve the ambiguity.
Philosophim, the ambiguity is that you are using reality, like I usually do, too vaguely and loosely. The a priori aspects of your experience exist (viz., there are these a priori aspects to your experience) but they are not real (viz., these a priori aspects of your experience are not in reality but, rather, modes of cognizing reality).
Space, as a pure intuition, is not in reality nor it is a property sensed of the objects that are in reality: it is the way that your brain is pre-structured to intuit phenomena; and so space, as a pure form of sensibility, is not real (because it is not of reality) but certainly exists (as a pre-structured way for your brain to represent and intuit sensations).
I did that with space: what did you disagree with there?
You are equivocating. The scientific fact you pointed to was whether a young person knows what space is; and not if it transcendentally uses it to intuit and cognize objects for its conscious experience; nor if it transcendentally uses it with its self-reflective reason to understand its own conscious experience of things. These are three completely separate claims, and the first one is what scientifically you were noting.
Neuroscience is useless for transcendental investigations; and to not understand that is to misunderstand, fundamentally, the Kantian problem of experience.
Then, you must believe that you arent consciously experiencing in space and time before you conceptually understood that you were; which is nonsense.
The difference is that properties of things are a mixture of empirical and non-empirical content. We cognize them based off of sensational data, which is empirical. Space and time are pure a priori, because they are not based off of sensations at all.
When our brains cognize a ball, you are right that it represents sensations of a thing in correspondence with certain pure and impure a priori conceptions; but there is an empirical aspect to it; whereas that it has extension and is placed in a sequential sequence is pure a priori.
It depends on what you mean. If you mean an concept which we self-reflective deploy for our conscious experience, then it is no different. If you mean a concept which is ingrained in how we represent reality for our conscious experience, then it is quite obviously drastically different. The former is an idea we have of our conscious experience, the latter is an idea which our representative faculties has for constructing our conscious experience.
Thats what conceptual space is! It is transcendental, because it is necessary precondition for the possibility of using self-reflective reason. Therefore, I am right in concluding, even in your terminology, that we must already use space even when we dont know what space is. That was my original point that you denied.
We already agreed this is false; and scientifically it is utterly false.
Lets take the simplest example of inner sense: thoughts about thoughts. I can introspectively analyze my own thinking about other things, and this is because my inner thoughts are presented to me in time. If my inner thoughts were not presented to me, if they were not respresented to me, then they would not be formulated experientially, consciously, in succession. My brain has already sensed and properly sorted my thoughts, under the preconditioned a priori modes to represent them, for me to consciously experience my own thoughts. Time, without space, is the pure intuition for the inner sense; simply meaning, that for reflective consciousness, it is represented by the brain in time alone and never in space.
If I take your argument here seriously, then my thoughts, which are presented to me in organized succession, are somehow non-representational and my brain somehow could organize it in succession without any sensational data of its own thinking processes. How is that possible, Philosophim?!?!?
This is what I was trying to get at, but there's no real explanation for why this is the case other than 'it's required for what we take to be experience'. However, some mental experiences (usually drug-induced) can counter this potential. The mind, either without, or unaware of, the body, may not need these a prioris to 'experience' something like timeless space for instance.
Though, you addressed your response to Bob, so i'm unsure exactly the intent.
I don't think you can deflate Kant's claims so easily. Despite the 'marvellous progress of modern science' there are philosophical issues which will not yield so easily to those clever folks in their white lab coats.
A scholar named Andrew Brook has published books and papers on the intersection of Kantian philosophy and modern cognitive science, exploring how Kants insights align with and contribute to contemporary understanding of the mind. Brooks work emphasizes that Kant anticipated several concepts central to cognitive science, particularly the notion that cognition involves active processes of structuring and organizing experience rather than passively receiving sensory input. Brook sees Kant as a precursor to theories in cognitive science that propose the mind as a system that imposes order on incoming data, emphasizing the minds role in synthesizing raw sensory data into coherent experiences.
For Kant, as Brook underscores, this means that the mind doesnt simply react to raw sensory data; rather, it actively organizes and interprets it in line with certain fundamental principles that are implicit in the nature of experience itself. These principlessuch as causality, unity, and temporalityare not derived from experience but are necessary for experience to have any coherent form. Brook views Kants insight here as crucial: it suggests that experience is structured by inherent cognitive faculties that synthesize sensations into a unified whole, making perception itself possible. This structuring role of the mind underpins cognitive processes, creating a foundation on which experience unfolds.
That process is what is described as 'transcendental' - not in the sense of 'beyond experience' but implicit in the nature of experience. It is 'transcendental' in the sense that it refers to the conditions that are always operative within experience, shaping it from within, not transcending it in a mystical or otherworldly sense. The transcendental conditions Kant describes, which Brook highlights, operate in a way that is fundamentally invisible to direct introspection. Theyre not accessible through casual reflection or even careful self-observation, because they are so ingrained in the structure of experience that we cant see them directly. They function as the very backdrop against which experience is possible, like the frame of a picture that remains unseen because our attention is always focused on the content within.
One of Brooks focal points is Kants idea of the transcendental unity of apperception, which describes the selfs role in providing coherence to experience. Brook interprets this as a fundamental cognitive function: the capacity to unify various sensory inputs and thoughts under a consistent self-conscious perspective. He connects this to modern discussions on self-awareness, suggesting that understanding the selfs role in cognition is critical to grasping how mental states are integrated. Brook also argues that cognitive science benefits from a Kantian perspective in addressing issues like consciousness, self-reference, and the structured nature of perception, showing that Kants insights help bridge philosophical inquiry and empirical study, while deepening our grasp of the minds foundational structures.
Kants influence persists in social sciences and philosophy precisely because his insights about the mind's role in shaping experience laid the groundwork for modern theories that emphasize the constructive nature of perception and knowledge. Constructivism, for instance, echoes Kant by asserting that knowledge is actively constructed, not merely passively received. Enactivism, with its focus on the dynamic interaction between organism and environment, builds on Kants notion that perception depends on structures and activities within the perceiver, rather than solely on external stimuli. Phenomenology also draws deeply from Kant by emphasizing the role of consciousness in constituting the meaningful world around us, exploring how subjective experience shapes our understanding of reality.
In all these approaches, Kants idea that our minds contribute fundamental structures to experience remains a guiding principle. Each tradition takes up Kants insight in its own way, exploring how knowledge, perception, and meaning arise through active engagement with the world, rather than as direct imprints of objective reality. This ongoing influence shows that Kants work continues to offer essential insights into how we understand ourselves and our place in a world that we, in part, construct through our own cognitive and perceptual frameworks.
Ref: Kants View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Andrew Brook.
*ChatGPT was utilised in drafting the above text*.
HA!!! Mysterious forces.
Theres some great stuff in your post here, Bob. I particularly note your introspectively analyze my own thinking and its relation to time. One more step, and it becomes clear why there are only two pure intuitions, given the dualistic nature of the human intellect.
I might mention your #2 from a few days ago, but that wasnt addressed to me.
Anyway ..carry on.
How is it not real? Its a real experience. Its our interpretation by noting whether our real experience can be accurately applied beyond the current experience we are having. So, I can discretely experience what I call a 'tree', and that discrete experience is real. But is my belief that it is a tree something that I know, or something that I believe? That's when we apply. If we have to have two definitions of 'real', perhaps we should re-examine how we're putting our model together.
Quoting Bob Ross
My point is, is that any discrete experience is real. You experience space. Then, when you apply that belief about space by reaching out to grab something, you apply that belief accurately and are able to retrieve that cup. But we have all misjudged space before in application. I've reached out to grab something and missed. Thought I would catch a ball when I opened my hand and didn't. But I don't know 'space' as a discrete experience apart from experience. Knowledge cannot be gained without experience.
Quoting Bob Ross
You need to be extremely clear. If I judge space as catching a ball, what part is apriori, what is aposteriori? If babies cannot grasp spatial relations prior to six months, what do they know about space apriori?
Quoting Bob Ross
My point is that I am unable to see your division between aprior space and aposteriori space. Philosophy should always side with what is currently known, and the solid science of spatial awareness development in kids is something we should not dismiss. Otherwise we're debating fiction.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, we are continually experiencing. Then, we create discrete experiences. Two of those are 'space' and 'time'. We then apply these identities to the reality we experience to make it to work on time by driving a car to another location. Just because we use the concepts of space and time without thinking, does not mean that these concepts and their application was done apart from the experience we built from our first moments out of the womb (Possibly within too).
Quoting Bob Ross
No. This is just wrong. It is a fact that the concepts of space and time are developed over time. It is on you to show proof that space and time are concepts apart from experience. I'm siding with science on this one.
Quoting Bob Ross
Correct. Then everything is apriori. Because we experience everything by discrete experiences. But that isn't knowledge. That's just the ability to sort our experience into 'pieces' or 'identities'. Creating an identity is distinctive knowledge. It is not applicable knowledge. But no distinctive knowledge is gained apart from experience. There is no innate knowledge. Just the innate capability to discretely experience.
Quoting Bob Ross
Incorrect. Space is a concept we learn by bodily extension. Discrete experience comes first, the concept of 'space' comes after. Discrete experience happens whether we come up with the concept of space or not. Lets take your point in another way. "I breath, therefore I must already know what breathing is before I've ever breathed." No, you don't know what its like to breath before you breath. You have the potential and capability to. But it is not 'innate knowledge'. Existing and living in space, and learning that and adapting to it, does not mean you have innate knowledge of time and space.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I did not agree to this. Please link to a scientific reference to senses beyond the five.
Quoting Bob Ross
Your thoughts are not represented to you. You experience them. There is really one thing in itself that we know of. Your experience. The act of 'experiencing' is the subjective reality that is, and there is nothing more that it represents. We can think about it. We can wonder how its put together. Adding an extra layer of 'represents' doesn't mean anything. We have thoughts, and we have thoughts on thoughts. But those thoughts on thoughts are still thoughts. They are experiences. We can know them as we have them. But we do not know them before we have them.
I can know I discretely experience. But I don't have to know what I discretely experience to discretely experience. The act itself is not knowledge. Knowledge comes after/during the act. We can exist in time and space without knowing about time and space. It doesn't mean we innately know about time and space. This false conclusion you are drawing is that because we exist in time and space, that we must have innate knowledge about time and space. No. Knowledge is learned by experience. Knowledge by definition, cannot be innate.
Understood. But this is a different claim then, "Innate knowledge apart from experience". Its not knowledge. Its instinct and being. We do not have to have ever thought of the concepts time or space, and we would still function because we are beings of time and space. The argument that our ability to function is innate knowledge, means that even a single cell amoeba has an innate knowledge of time and space. That's absurd. It is a being in time and space. That doesn't mean it has innate knowledge of it apart from experience.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, this is my point. There is experience, and there are innate ways of experiencing dependent on your being. But this is not 'knowledge'. Knowledge is a process that concludes an interpretation of experience is not contradictory to reality. So the reality of the experience itself is known as one experiences. If I see a pink elephant, it is a real experience that I know I'm having. If I take an extra step and state, "My experience is an accurate representation that there is an actual pink elephant apart from my experience," then we run into beliefs, and must find a way to ascertain whether we can know that it is so. My point has been that 'apriori knowledge' is a misnomer. The definition of knowledge itself does not allow it to exist apart from experience.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have no disagreement with this. But that does not mean 'apriori knowledge' is a term that holds up under scrutiny. Kant is not describing knowledge, he is describing being.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree that Kant's influence on philosophy and its evolution are phenomenal. My disagreement is not with Kant, or to imply he is a bad philosopher in any way. My point is that the apriori and aposteriori distinction has serious problems with it that can be resolved with a much better model of 'being' and 'knowledge'.
:smile:
Could you elaborate on this? I didnt follow this part.
Mww, always feel free to chime in on these conversations if you have something to add (:
I dont recall what this #2 was from a few days ago, but feel free to address it if you would like.
I am not sure there is much more I can say on this point other than reiterate: what you mean by real here is just a vague notion of existencei.e., that you are having an experiencewhereas what I am indicating is that the a priori aspects of our experience, e.g., of a tree is purely epistemic and not ontological. If you want to use real in your more generic sense, then that is fine: it does not avoid the issue that the a priori preconditions for that experience are not a part of realitythey are, rather, the epistemic tools which human cognition has for cognizing reality. Do you see this difference I am noting (irregardless of the semantics)?
It is not a part of reality, though. Do you agree with that?
discrete is a word which references an idea engrained, fundamentally, in space. You may say that space is not conceptually known, self-reflectively, by merely discretely experiencing, but do you agree that, at least, space is the ingrained form of that experience in virtue of which it is discrete? Can we agree on that, and then work our way up (so to speak)?
I need clarification: are you asking for an example of a prior vs. a posteriori aspects of experience OR a priori vs. a posteriori knowledge?
Your original question (above) was about the former, and now I think, based off of your response (above) that you are actually thinking about knowledgenot those innate aspects of experience.
There is no a posteriori spaceit is pure intuition. What I think you are confusing is self-reflective knowledge with transcendental knowledge (and innate capacities, as you would put it). So lets start with the basics. Do you agree that:
1. Babies experience (outer objects) in space.
2. Babies do not have any self-reflective conceptual capacities (through reason) that they experience (outer objects) in space nor what space is as extension.
3. A child can, at some stage of development, understand notionally what space is without being about to apply language to explain it.
4. Adults have a self-reflective understanding of what space is, and can apply language to explain it.
Lets start there.
Hmmm, maybe I am misremembering your theory: I thought you agreed with me that our experience is inherently, innately, discrete; which implies that space and time are the forms, even if you dont think they are pure a priori, of that experience.
Again, you are confusing self-reflective knowledge with transcendental knowledge. No one is denying that we develop the concepts, in the sense of self-reflectively, of space and time over time; but this doesnt negate the fact that space and time are the pure forms of our experience independently of our self-reflective, conceptual understanding of them.
???
The experience which you have, as I noted before, is as in part a posteriori; otherwise, you are doing the equivalent of hallucinatingsince there is no empirical content.
Bodily extension presupposed space: your experience presupposes space as one of its forms. Space is more fundamental than what you are calling your concept of space; because by concept, you are referring to a concept derived self-reflectively.
Heres one of the roots of our confusion: you are failing to recognize that cognition has a dual meaning on englishit can refer to our self-reflective cognition (e.g., thinking about our experience) or our transcendental cognition (e.g., our brains thinking about how to construct experience). I would like you to address this distinction, because you keep equivocating them throughout your posts.
You agreed here:
Quoting Philosophim
Heres a basic article from a neuroscientist: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-many-senses-do-we-have . Exteroceptive vs. interoceptive senses are just the scientific way of saying outer vs. inner senses.
Do you deny that your brain is organizing your thoughts in time to construct your experience of them (of which you can introspect)?
In its simplest form, that which doesnt require any explanation and without regard to any exceptions, we perceive things, and we think things. If the primary conditions for both of those very dissimilar activities had equal functional necessity, we couldnt distinguish one from the other. But it is in our nature that we can, and we are perfectly aware we can, and that without any self-contradiction whatsoever, the content of either being whatever they may.
It follows that for the thought of things and the perception of things, even of the very same thing, there is necessarily a primary, fundamental difference in whatever it is that enables us to do both, such is the dualistic nature of the human intellect.
Again, on its simplest form, if we can do both, and each is different than the other, it follows that perception of things is conditioned differently than thought of things. Most obviously the difference in perception and thought, is one is conditioned necessarily on real things external to us and the other is not so necessarily conditioned.
So all we need is that which makes external necessary, which is nothing more than a relation between the object and the subject affected by it, and we ended up calling that relation space, such that the subject and the object are related to each other by the necessary differences in their spaces. It turns out mighty convenient that we can also determine the relation of objects to each other by their spaces.
All well and good, but turns out not all we need, in that space doesnt give us something else just as necessary, that being, the immediate recognition that a multiplicity of objects is perfectly warranted, but absolutely not any of them in the same space. Or, and just as important, we can immediately recognize the existence of an object and the immediate non-existence of the very same object, which ..DUH!!! .has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the space of it. From all that, we conceive coexistence, duration and succession, and call that recognition, time. And this is why we have two and only two pure intuitions. I mean, we just don't need more than two, and any less negates the functionality of our kind of strictly empirical intuition.
Now, since time and space have to do with our perception of objects, yet have nothing to do with each other, we can now proceed to what is missing from the thought of objects, such that the difference in these perception/thought activities is valid, without the negation of either because of the intrinsic relation they may have to each other. Right? I mean, the object we merely think is not external to us, so there isnt a representation of it as a phenomenon at the time of its thought, which absolutely requires a space, but is only represented as a conception, which doesnt.
(Heres where someone telling you he put your car in the garage prevents your knowledge of it being there, insofar as all you know is what he tells you but not of anything regarding the object he tells you about. All youre allowed, is to think the car is where he said he put it, contingent on his honesty, but you have no ground whatsoever to claim to know either the moral inclination of his honesty, or the empirical location of the car.)
Ehhhh enough already. In perception, it is a fact more than one sensory device can be affected by the same object, but in thought, it is impossible to think more than one object at a time. So it is that perception is conditioned by both space and time, but thought is conditioned by time alone without regard to space. But those objects we think, if they have already been antecedent cognitions, re: from memory for the psychologists in the audience, or consciousness for the philosophers, have already been condition by time as a pure intuition in phenomenal representation, and if not already cognized must be nonetheless a possible phenomenal representation, insofar as to think an impossible object is itself impossible, and thereby in conjunction with the categories which are themselves, not conditioned by time, but conditions of it. And we end up with time as the fundamental condition of thought, even if not as a pure intuition as needed for perception.
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Your #2:
Quoting Bob Ross
That got the Andy Rooney-esque single raised eyebrow from me. Like wha???
Anyway, 5 days ago, so long passed.
Sorry if I talked too long about stuff too obscure. Its what sometimes happens to the elderly retired hence otherwise idle. (Grin)
I hadn't thought of that, but it's true! The amoeba must at very least have an innate sense of itself as being separate from its environment, otherwise it would perish. Of course an amoeba has no consciousness of its own existence, but in some fundamental sense time means something to it, that it does not mean to a rock.
I wonder if this post, although not addressed to you, might have been relevant to your enquiries?
I think so, but this is usually handled with the terms empirical and non-empirical. Both experiences of the empirical and non-empirical are real. The only question is when we state that our conclusions of the experience are not contradicted by reality. I may experience a tree, but if I then claim, "That tree exists as an entity, not only in my experience, then we are making claims about reality that extend beyond our experience. To claim it exists as a tree is to claim that it exists independently of me.
So for example, if I experience a tree in a forest, that's real. But if I say, "I know that tree exists as a real entity apart from me," then we are applying our discrete experiences in ways beyond the experience itself. This is where the terms belief and knowledge come into play. Deductively I can know its a tree by going over a careful process. Inductively I can believe the tree will still be there when I shut my eyes. Empirical experiences are experiences that are assumed to be sensations that represent things outside of myself. Non-empirical sensations are those which are generated inside of myself. But they're all sensations, and they're all real.
The term real simply means, 'what exists'. I feel the above terms are clear and largely unambiguous, which is important for any model and discussion of knowledge. My issues is, "What is apriori"? Its not clear, and its not unambiguous. And if we can't make it clear and unambiguous, then maybe its not a great term to use. In the above two paragraphs, what would you consider apriori? What clarity and accuracy would the term add?
Quoting Bob Ross
No, your discrete experiences exist. They are real. It is our interpretation of those existences when we start to claim, "Because I experience X, I know that X exists apart from myself," that we get into beliefs and knowledge.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I can't agree that the term 'discrete' references space in some way. I feel like you're confusing 'living in space' with 'knowing space'. Because we live in space, we will act and sense things from space. Again, my reference to an amoeba. All things act as if they live in space, because they are beings that live in space. There is a basic instinct and capability to come to terms with this, and to learn how to ambulate, eat, and live in space. But no living thing has knowledge prior to interacting with space. Go one further. An electron circles around a hydrogen atom. Does it do this because it knows space and time apriori? When it is flooded with energy and separates, does it do this because it innately knows how? This is just the way its being reacts to stimulus. So too with living beings.
The way a being lives, even a conscious one, is to have experiences. These discrete experiences become memories, and beliefs can form about them. Only a process of deductive justification can result in knowledge of whether those beliefs are true or not. As such, no knowledge is innate, because all knowledge is born of experience.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't know myself. What do you see as 'apriori'? What does the word mean without ambiguity? Does it need to have another term tied to it like experience or knowledge? If so, give both.
Quoting Bob Ross
Apriori and aposteriori are often seen as divisions between 'knowledge apart from experience (I generously say "apart from the empirical"' to fix this, and "Knowledge from experience (or the empirical). So there should be an aposteriori conception of space. If I measure the table as being 1 meter long, isn't that an aposteriori conception of space? If that's not, what is it? Further, what is a clear term of 'transcendental knowledge' vs 'self-reflective knowledge'? How are these different from beliefs?
Quoting Bob Ross
Translated:
1. Babies have discrete experiences. Some of these are empirical, or through the senses.
2. Babies do not express apparent knowledge beyond instinct that there is a thing that exists outside of themselves that we identify as 'space'.
3. A child eventually comes to realize that there is an outside reality apart from itself.
4. Adults can create an identity for the idea that there is something outside of one's own consciousness called 'space'.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, my point is that we experience, then we focus on parts of that experience. Over time we refine this. Thus a child has the experience of living, but the discrete identity of 'space' is not formed yet. It is like looking out into the vast ocean for the first time, then realizing there's waves, and that patch over there is a different color. We can also go reverse. Experience the parts, then then expand to a whole. But as a new being, there can only be the flood of sensations that we slowly part and parcel over time. I have a theory that shrooms diminish or shut off this discrete experience aspect for a time based on testimony of people saying they stopped seeing divisions and saw everything as one. (Just a fun aside)
Quoting Bob Ross
I see no difference between these two definitions. Empirical and non-empirical are clear and distinct. I don't see how these definitions are clear or add anything to the discussion. What is the difference between thinking about the experience and how to construct it?
If I see red and think, "That's red" how is that different from I see red and "That' red, and I want to imagine red"? In both cases, we observe red, so that seems self-reflective. But what thought that we are conscious of is not self-reflective? Experiences are by nature, conscious. How is that conscious thought any different from saying, 'that red, and..."?
For the senses:
"But your body also has receptors for events occurring inside you, such as your beating heart, expanding lungs, gurgling stomach and many other movements that youre completely unaware of. Theyre traditionally grouped together as another sense, called interoception."
All of this can simply be summed up as, "empirical sensations". Non-empirical thoughts are things like imagination. They aren't instantly deemed to represent something outside of our internal consciousness in reality. We can invent a thing like a unicorn and say, "Maybe that exists." But that's not the same as getting the image of a horse with a horn from our sight. Analyzing our thoughts is not a sense, because senses are empirical. This makes a nice and clear division which allows logical discussion. The less muddy the terms, the better.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, your brain organizes information and gives it to you, the conscious part. And that conscious part of you is the brain as well. Its been long known that certain portions of the brain process different sensory areas and allow us certain functions. Damage the sight part of your brain for example, and you can no longer see or visualize. "You" are the conscious entity that is able to discretely experience. To focus on certain aspects, refine, and make judgement calls that the rest of the brain must follow. But I don't see how this processing has anything to do with apriori or aposteriori.
Ok, good discussion again Bob! I think I've addressed everything and made my position more clear. Can you make a clear and unambiguous distinctions between apriori and apoteriori for both being and knowledge? I look forward to your thoughts.
Isn't Thing-in-itself a postulated existence, rather than perceived existence? Hence you need faith to perceive it, rather than knowledge?
Your recognition that space is required for outer sense because it must have the possibility of representing a multiplicity of external objects, whereas our inner sense is in time alone because we cannot exercise our inner functions other than sequentially, is an astute and fascinating observation; however, I think it oversteps the bounds of reason and presumes highly questionable teleology. For what you are positing, with respect to the former, is that our internal thinking in-itself occurs only with one occurring at a time; which already presupposes knowledge of how we think as it were itself as opposed to how it appears to itself, and it supposes that that thinking occurs in a time which is not a pure form of sensibility. With my argument to Philosophim, I was merely noting, transcendentally, that my brain must be cognizing my thoughts (that I am aware of) because they are organized in time; but I cannot claim to know that my thinking, which could be occurring at deeper levels of my subconscious and of which I am not aware of, is fundamentally conditioned itself by time and, moreover, determined in-itself to be a series of one thought per time unit. With respect to the latter, it seems like if you are right then objects external to us are themselves in space and our thoughts are in time (alone); which then, beyond overstepping the bounds of reason, incites the question of how could the brain be so pre-constructed to happen to mirror the forms of reality-in-itself?!?.
I dont see how one could prove, transcendentally, that I cannot have two thoughts at a time; other than to say that my brain would fail to properly render that into my self-consciousness. Likewise, I should, rather, say that I cannot see how one could prove anything about how thoughts exist in-themselves, which my previous statement presupposed many things about them as they are in-themselves (e.g., two, at a time, etc.).
Oh I see: number 2 was supposed to say that your senses produce sensations.
I thought it was a good exposition of some of Kants ideas :up:
If there's something about it that you would like to discuss with me specifically, then please feel free to let me know and I would be happy to discuss. An in depth response, given how densely packed the information was, would probably to futile without us honing in on a specific aspect of the conversation.
A thing-in-itself is whatever external thing in reality impacted your senses in the first place, and of which excited your faculties of representation into producing the perception which you ended up having.
If by postulated existence, you mean that reason herself must posit the thing-in-itself, given that ones conscious experience is representational, then yes: we do not perceive things-in-themselvesthats the whole point!
Hmmm, you dont perceive a thing-in-itself: it is, logically, the thing which your senses produced sensations of; and your understanding cognizes those sensationsnot the thing-in-itself. No perception of a thing-in-itself is ever possible for any being which has a representational experience; which arguably is any being with experience at all.
Two things needing to be mentioned here:
1. This empirical vs. non-empirical distinction you are making is NOT the same as my distinction between what I sense vs. I use to cognize those sensations. You, here, are making a distinction between what is sensed about external objects vs. sensed about oneself.
2. The word empirical does not, nor ever has, referred to only sensations of external objects (assuming, and we must assume for your distinction to work, we are excluding ourselves as an external object); because anything which is sensed about reality is empirical (traditionally); and so anything of which my brain senses about my body or its own internal processes (e.g., thinking) is empirical datafor those are sensations of something which is in reality. The only time it would make sense to say that some set of sensations are non-empirical, is if we admit, which is highly questionable, that when we are hallucinating (or something similar) our senses are generating fake data. FYI, I would say that it is much more plausible, in that case, that our brain is simply capable of using the faculty of imagination as a source of fabricated sensations rather than our senses themselves being capable of, on cue, generating fake data.
Of course, as any philosophical discussion naturally goes, each participant believes they have all the unambiguous points (:
I dont think your terms are clear at all but, rather, are muddied.
E.g., to use your tree example, you are saying that, if I understood correctly, the experience of the tree is empirical but that your thoughts about that tree are non-empirical; and this is because the tree is a representation of sensations of something in reality whereas your thoughts are not. However, your thoughts as presented to you in your conscious experience, are representations of something in reality just as much as the tree isso both are empirical; and this distinction sidesteps the whole discussion about a priori aspects of experience, for you completely skipped over the fact that there are pre-structured aspects to the way that you experience that tree!
Lets use the tree example: you are experiencing a tree. Ok. The tree, assuming you are not hallucinating, must be the product of your senses, ultimately, being excited by something in reality and of which your brain is intuiting and cognizing; and so the sensations, insofar as they are raw data of that thing which excited your senses, must be empirical (because they are about reality). The tree, however, is represented to you in space and time which are pure forms that your brain uses to intuit those (empirical) sensations and thusly are not properties of the thing, whatever it was, which excited your senses in the first place. So the space and time are synthetic. Likewise, the tree is presented to you not just in space and time, but also with strict mathematical relations; and this is something which is necessarily something which your brain synthetically adds to the mix in order to represent the thing which is constructing from the sensations of whatever thing impacted your senses (in the first place) (viz., it is impossible for you to come up with a way to represent, e.g., a square on a plotting graph without producing inherent mathematical relations between each line and what not when graphing it). Likewise, the tree is not just represented to you synthetically in space, time, and with mathematical relations; but also with strict logical relations. Viz., when your brain is constructing the objects to present to you from those sensations, it does it in an inherently logical way: it will not, e.g., determine that it should represent that leaf and that other leaf in the same exact place in space and time because a proposition, for your brain, cannot be both true and false in accordance with those forms of intuitionthese are, viz., rules a priori which your brain has which do not apply to whatever thing excited your senses in the first place. Likewise, your brain must have, in order to cognize those sensations, certain a priori, and primitive, concepts; such as causality (viz., your brain must already be equipped with the understanding that it must seek out cause-effect relations in those sensations in order to represent them inherently causally for you in the first placee.g., in order for your brain to represent the sensations of whatever the tree is in-itself which excited your senses, it must already have the concept of causality at its disposal and the rule that it must connect things in those sensations in a cause-effect manner). Likewise, in order to do math (which is synthetic), your brain must, as another example, have the concepts of quantity (i.e., unity, plurality, and totality).
Just try plotting a line on a graph without having the implicit understanding that, e.g., a dot is identical to itself, the line unites the dots, there are multiple dots which are required to make the line, you must add the dots together in succession, etc. Its impossible. Your brain is plotting objects on essentially a graph, namely space and time, to represent objects to you as an experience.
Discrete is obviously referencing space, otherwise you would have to posit that a discrete experience does not contain a multiplicity of objects.
We do not live in space, our brains represent things in space. Do you see what I mean? I think you think that theres a space and time beyond the space and time which are the forms of your experience and, of which, you live in. We only live in space and time insofar as we have conditional knowledge about ourselves and our environment which is inherently in space and time; because thats how our brain represents them.
That you understand things to be in space, like amoeba, does not entail that they are in space themselves. You understand an amoeba to react in space because space is a fundamental form which your brain uses to represent amoeba; or you use, with your reason, assuming you cannot see them with your own eyes nor with a microscope, to understand, conditionally, how they behave.
Your brain does NOT interact with space: it uses it to represent whatever is going on in reality. You are using your knowledge of reality, which is conditioned by those spatiotemporal forms which your brain uses to represent things, to project that onto the things which excited your senses. You cannot validly do that. All you are doing is anthropomorphizing reality with the a priori modes that your brain has for representing it.
Electrons and atoms, and one circling the other, is already conditioned by your a priori understanding of reality; because it is deeply and inextricably ingrained in the a priori spatiotemporal means which your brain uses to cognize things. You are projecting that onto electrons and atoms with respect to whatever they are in-themselves, which we cannot know.
I can give you an even easier example: my car in my garage. When I say my car is in my garage, I am not saying that theres a car which exists in a garage in the sense of what they may exist in-themselves; but, rather, explaining it in terms of the only way I can: as conditioned by the a priori means which my brain cognizes reality. I cannot think away space and time from my understanding of a car, a garage, and a car in a garage not because they are actually in space and time but, rather, because all I have ever experienced, and will ever experience, of a car, garage, and a car in a garage is going to be placed in space and time (synthetically by my brain in order to represent the sensations which were excited by whatever they are in-themselves).
All of which assumes that your experience is fundamentally spatial; and not that reality in which you exist is spatial.
a priori has always referenced, traditionally, that which is prior to empirical data. Prior to Kant, it was primarily used to denote the forms of reality as opposed to its content (i.e., the rationalists arguing that reality is inherently rational because it has spatial, temporal, mathematical, logical, etc. forms); and for Kant, it was used primarily to denote that those inherently rational aspects, or forms, of Nature (e.g., the inherently logical and mathematical aspects to a leaf, or the laws of which is seems to obey) are actually the forms of our modes of experience. Theres nothing ambiguous about this. When someone says something is a priori, they are saying that thing pertains to the prior forms to something as opposed to the empirical aspects to it (e.g., the inherent mathematical aspect to a wooden block as opposed to how it reacts when being lit on fire).
a priori can be a noun or an adjective; so one can denote a certain thing as being the aspect of it which is a priori by saying a priori
Simply put, a priori experience refers to the aspects of ones conscious experience which are prior to the empirical data being represented and which are used to cognize the sensations of those things which excite our senses; and, of which, I gave a detailed account with the treeso I dont feel the need to add another example of this.
a priori knowledge refers to any knowledge which is grounded in those a priori aspects of experience. Such as 1+1=2, !(a && !a), etc.
This is true, because by experience they mean the empirical aspects of experience. E.g., you dont need to technically sense anything in reality to know that 1+1=2; but you do need an experience, even if it be merely hallucinogenic, in order to do math. Viz., a knocked out mathematician cannot do math, but a conscious one can derive mathematical proofs without any empirical experiments.
Ehhh .space is pure a priori. Not everything has both aspects to it. The a priori concept of quantity does not have a a posteriori aspect to itthat wouldnt make any sense.
Space is the extension in which the table is represented; and not the exact mathematical quantity that you measured. Math, not in terms of its axioms and propositions itself but in terms of how your brain represents things with math, does have an a posteriori aspectthe idea of representing it with extension does not.
Your brain learns, arguably, how to deploy the a priori axioms and propositions and concepts of math (e.g., geometry, quantity, addition, subtraction, etc.) in manners to better represent those sensations in space and time in relation to each object it determines is a part of those sensations; and, to your real point (I would say), the exact mathematical relations it attributes to something in order to represent it are conditioned by what it cognizes and intuits it is (based off of the intuitions).
In other words, math itself, which your brain is using, is a priori; but that your brain decides to represent that table as 1 meter long (although it is uncertain what unit of measure it uses, but thats despite the point here) is conditioned by the empirical data which it is represented with that a priori math.
Think of it this way, as an analogy, if we are playing a game where I have a plotting graph (like in math class) which only allows me to draw in straight lines and tell me to represent a shape that is almost a square (but is a little squiggly); then I will use the mathematical principles which I do not learn from the fact that you told me to represent this squiggly square nor from the idea of a squiggly square to draw the straight-lined representation of the squiggly square. You telling me to represent a squiggly square, along with the nuanced squiggly square, in this analogy, is the empirical sensations and the math which I use to draw a representation of it is the a priori, non-empirical means of me representing it. You are, by analogy, with the tree, conflating these two and saying that the straight-lined representation of the squiggly line on the plotted graph is itself purely empiricalno, no, no...some of that is a priori.
In simpler terms, it is the differencing between cognizing and thinkingit is the difference between your brains cognition for representing objects and your ability to reason about that constructed experience.
This is getting really long (: , so I will end it here.
I felt the major point was Kant's relationship with modern cognitive science. You could say that in some respects some of his major ideas have been vindicated, the point being that unlike what some might say, he hasn't been left behind by subsequent science.
Very true. Very true. The only difference is that, I would say, cognitive science can't really get at the fundamental questions that Kant was trying to answer; being that it is purely philosophical. Most people nowadays won't grant transcendental philosophy as legitimate because they think science is the only valid means of inquiry into reality---which is false.
You got it upside down here. Your senses don't produce sensations, but sensations are caused by the external objects, which are phenomenon. Thing-in-itself is not sensible entity, but cognisible entity via reasoning. It is the entity from the reasoning point of view, which must exist, but is unavailable to your senses, hence unknowable via normal perception. It is the entity that must be reasoned, and postulated. It is a different type of perception you need to perceive Thing-in-itself.
By senses, I just mean your faculties (or faculty) of sensibility; which is the power you have to be excited by things-in-themselves.
Phenomenon, in the Kantian tradition, are sensations of things-in-themselves; which are thusly not the thing-in-itself but, rather, conditioned sensations of them. The external object is not a phenomenathey are noumena (in a loose sense) or, if you wish to reserve such a term for merely an object of pure intellect (as it is unclear which one Kant meant), things-in-themselves.
That would be a noumena, in the strict sense that Kant talks about it sometimes. A noumena is an object of thought which cannot be sensed. A thing-in-itself is sensed insofar as it is what excited the sensibility in the first place but necessarily is not migrated over into the sensations.
Right, it is, logically, the thing which, as it were in-itself, excited your senses; but cannot necessarily be sensed absolutely accurately because the sensibility can only sense relative to how it is pre-structured to,
things-in-themselves are never perceivablenot just for normal perceptionunless by a thing-in-itself you are conflating it with a noumena (in that stricter sense of the word).
By my lights, a noumena, in this sense, is a contradiction in terms, because it posits an outer object of intellect; which posits that the understanding, or some form of a faculty of understanding, could possibly cognize an outer object without being given sensations of it. @Mww?
Yes, with the understanding that what we call thinking is nothing but an initial condition of a theoretical metaphysic. In other words, it seems as though we have this mental activity we subsequently conceive as thinking as a function of that activity. When thinking-as-conceived is reduced to a series of thoughts, experience confirms we cannot think a plurality of thoughts simultaneously, which is to say we cannot think more than one thing at a time, which is the same as saying we have only one thought at a time. But this is only a general rule in accordance with the theory, insofar as there may be exceptions to such rule, re: savants, autistics, sheer geniuses, and the like.
People in general, however, all else being equal, do not have the capacity to think more than one thought at a time. In addition, for those promoting the notion all thought is in images, it is quite clear it is impossible to hold more than a single image as a focus of attention, at any one time. Even following upon each other apparently instantaneously is still one at a time.
Thinking-in-itself, that supplemental physical system functionality for which we have grossly insufficient empirical knowledge given from thinking-as-conceived, may indeed have a clandestine level not included in the empirical domain. But insofar as there is no experience, a predicate of a metaphysical system, at all possible from the functionality of a purely physical system, whatever thoughts-in-themselves which reside below the level of conscious awareness are by definition unintelligible, hence necessarily of no consequence.
Perhaps it is merely the natural workings of the physical system, rather than the conscious workings of the metaphysical system, that permits confinement of some thinking to subconscious levels, as a way to prevent mental overload. But then the question arises how does the physical system ascertain which thinking to hold subconscious and which to raise to conscious level, to which the metaphysical system answers ..instinct.
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Quoting Bob Ross
It isnt proved; the transcendental analysis of experience demonstrates there is only ever one thought at a time, which does not prove more than one is impossible. Maybe its a simple as the transcendental principle that knowledge of a thing is its certainty, and from that principle, if all certainty follows from the synthesis of certain conceptions in a single judgement relative to that which is thought about, then if there are multiple thoughts in the form of syntheses of conceptions, there would then be multiple judgements relative to that which is thought about, in which case certainty is merely contingency and the fundamental notion of knowledge itself, becomes self-contradictory.
The critique of pure reason is the textual admonishment not to go beyond what is possible to know, in the fruitless search of what there is no possibility of knowing.
Thats the way I understand it, yes. Perhaps, rather, an impossibility of intellectual capacity than a contradiction in terms.
That understanding can think noumena .which is their true origin after all .. is not contradictory, but the cognition of them with the system we are theorized to possess, is impossible, for the exact reason that forming a representation through our form of sensuous intuition, of an object merely thought by understanding alone, is impossible.
We know this is the case, insofar as we talk about noumena as this something-or-other til Doomsday but never once figure out what one would be like if it was right there in front of our face. We cant even imagine anything about a noumenal object, that sufficiently distinguishes it from a mere phenomenon.
If thing-in-itself is unknowable and unperceivable, how could you talk about sensations of thing-in-themselves? When you have sensation of something, does it not mean that you can perceive and know them?
Quoting Bob Ross
Numena and Thing-in-Itself are described as the same thing in CPR.
Quoting Bob Ross
That sounds like a tautology. How does it get sensed? Why isn't it migrated over into the sensations?
But, in terms of what we actually are, as opposed to what we appear to ourselves, we cannot say any of this is true right?
How can transcendental analysis demonstrate that there can only ever be one thought we have, when those thoughts are not occurring in the time which is used to represent them?
How would such a noumena, though, be a representation of something which is real? The understanding can create an object of pure intellect, but that would always just be a product of imaginationwouldnt it?
No they are not at all. The word noumena is used in a double-sense in the CPR, and Kant is very explicit about that. E.g.,:
(CPR, p. 109)
Thats the whole point of a thing-in-itself: it is whatever was sensedand that is the limit of what we can talk about it. Viz.,:
(PS: I kept in the bracketed portion as another demonstration of Kants double meaning to noumena, although it is not relevant to my point now). (CPR, p. 108)
Because some thing excited your senses; otherwise, you are hallucinating, which is absurd. That thing which excited your senses, was a thing, whatever it may be, as it were in-itself.
Because the way your senses sense is a priori.
That would seem to be the case, but where does that leave us? We continue to think even without apodeitic certainty of being right under any and all conditions. We are left, then, to think as well as we can, in which logic is chosen the sole arbiter.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Because transcendental analysis is downstream from that which it analyses, and it is logically parsimonious by introspection, and is confirmed by experience, that thoughts do not coexist. How that analysis proceeds is unknown, but they dont coexist, and apparently they dont, there are a multiplicity of them, and obviously there are, then they must be successive. And if they are successive, they must be one at a time, the whole syllogism comprised of synthetic principles a priori forms a transcendental deduction of pure reason, by which the notion comes to the conscious forefront in the first place.
Funny, innit. We love our science but understand were limited in our knowledge from it. Why should it be surprising were limited in the thoroughness of our metaphysical speculations?
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Quoting Bob Ross
Representation of something real is phenomenon. Noumenon, then, cannot be representation of something real.
Quoting Bob Ross
Not quite. While it is a condition of transcendental metaphysics that the understanding can think whatever it wants, that which it does think must still be under the rules provided by cognitive overwatch, if you will. One aspect of that overwatch is, even though imagination would be the only means for representation of that which the understanding thinks, imagination cannot conjure an otherwise impossible object, or, that object that does not come under the jurisdiction of the same set of rules, in short, that object for which no possible cognition is forthcoming.
A-Hem
Thought is the synthesis of different conceptions, by imagination; cognition is that by which the relation of different conceptions to each other produce an experience. When understanding thinks an intellectual object, there is no synthesis of different concepts, hence no relation of them to each other insofar as there is no other, hence no cognition and obviously, no experience, is at all possible for conceptions of intellectual objects alone.
Dems da rules, donchaknow, thus it turns out imagination cannot always produce that which the understanding conceives.
Which version of CPR are you reading? There are different accounts for the concept in different versions of CPR. Is it 1sr or 2nd edition? Who was the translator?
You should also bear in mind that Kant has written his summary on CPR and explanation on the concepts in Prolegomena to any future Metaphysics too. There are several passages where Kant uses noumena and Thing-in-itself synonymously.
Thing-in-itself is not available to your senses, ergo there is no sensation of it. If you have sensation of Thing-in-itself, then you would perceive it like you would see chairs, tables and cups. But you cannot have sensation of Thing-in-Itself.
Quoting Bob Ross
There are things that is unavailable to your senses, so there is no excitation from the things. But your reason can infer the things which exists outside of the boundary of your senses such as God, spirits and souls.
Quoting Bob Ross
Some of the concepts are A priori. Senses are not A priori.
It has all the editions in it, as far as I understand, and it is translated by J.M.D. Meiklejohn.
I am not denying that. As I said, no one really knows what Kant exactly had in mind with those terms; and thats why I separated them hypothetically based off of which semantic schema one might accept.
The interpretation I have from the CPR and Prolegomena is what I already quoted, essentially, to wit, that the term noumena in two senses: the first negative, the second positive. The former is a thing-in-itself, which is just to say they are synonyms in this sense, but the latter is not a thing-in-itself at all.
The confusion lies in the ambiguity in your thinking here. What was sensed turns out to be different than the sensations of it, because our sensibility senses according to the way it is pre-structured to, so you are partially right and wrong when you say [the] thing-in-itself is not available to your senses. Kant is painfully clear in the CPR that a thing-in-itself is the thing which excited your senses as it were independently of how it excited those senses and what got sensedviz., something excited my senses such that, as an end result, I perceived a cup: whatever that is, is the thing as it were in-itself.
No, you are demarcating an invalidly stricter set of real things as things-in-themselves; which are really just supersensible thingswhich would be noumena in the positive sense (at best).
Whatever excited your senses such that you see here a cup, is a thing in reality which exists in-itself in some waythats a thing-in-itself. A thing-in-itself could also, in principle, if you want, include noumena in the positive sense; if by this you carefully note, in your schema, that a thing-in-itself is just a real thing as it were in-itself and a noumena a thing-in-itself which cannot be sensedbut, then, most notably, you are still incorrect to say that things-in-themselves are not that which excite our senses but, instead, right to say that some things-in-themselves cannot excite our senses.
Yes they are. There are pure intuitions of sensibility, like space and time, and who knows what else. In principle, your sensibility is pre-structured to sense a particular way; and it is not true that all faculties of sensibility are equally structured to sense the same way. Viz., there could be an extra-dimensional being which senses toto genere different than us, and has different pure forms of sensibility.
You should make note which version of CPR you are quoting i.e. 1st or 2nd. They have many different contents on what they are saying.
Quoting Bob Ross
It depends on what context he was talking about. As I said, you must make notes which version of CPR you are quoting and for your points.
Quoting Bob Ross
Kant is never clear in CPR, because he says totally opposite things in the other parts of CPR, and 1st and 2nd edition of CPR sounds totally different. You should read some of the academic commentaries on CPR too. Not just CPR, because anyone just reading and quoting CPR only would be usually in total confusion and contradictions on what he talks about.
Quoting Bob Ross
If all the daily objects you perceive in the external world had their Thing-in-itself, then the world would be much more complicated place unnecessarily and incorrectly. For instance, when you had a cup of coffee in a cafe, the cafe maid will demand payment for 2 cups of coffee. Why do you charge me 2 cups of coffees when I had only 1 cup? You may complain, and she will retort you, "well you had 1 cup of coffee alright, but remember every cup of coffee comes with a cup of coffee in Thing-in-itself, which must also be paid for. Therefore you must pay for 2 cups of coffee although you may think you had only 1 cup." You wouldn't be pleased with that, neither would had Kant been at the barmy situation
No. You are misunderstanding. The objects which excite your senses in the external world has nothing to do with Thing-in-itself.
It doesnt matter: Ive read many different versions; and there is a consensus that Kant did use the term noumena at least in a double-sense in some parts of his works. I already demonstrated this.
Now it is your turn to demonstrate how he reworded it in a different version with respect to those sections I quoted. You havent even attempted to demonstrate that yet.
This made absolutely no sense. Kant never argued any of this; and I am unsure where to even begin. I would suggest re-reading the CPR. Ill just give you some nudges and pointers.
This implies there are two objects for each object: there arent. Kants critique is epistemic, not ontological.
Not only was this ungrammatical, but it makes no sense. Kant never argued this at allnot even remotely.
The coffee which you perceive is the cognized version of the sensations of a thing-in-itself; whatever it may have been in-itself. There isnt a coffee out there, and a coffee-in-itself which corresponds to it. The coffee which you perceive isnt out there in the real world: it is a perception you have of something.
I was just giving an inferencial scenario of a case from real life, if Kant were alive here today, so that you could come to better understanding of the concept of TII. Obviously you seem to have misunderstood it as if it were from a real life story from CPR.
The problem I, and it seems plenty of other very intelligent people, have with this conception of both Kant's intention, and the (relatively) plain reading of the concepts is that there is no foundation for expecting a disconnect of this kind between experience and that which causes the experience. We simply have no reason to reduce our description to "something". The experience couldn't be without that which 'triggered' it within us, within the bounds of our a priori concepts. We can easily still use the term "coffee" and just accept we can't know it's properties beyond it's tendency to elicit the experience of itself within the bounds of our a priori conceptual schema. Otherwise, we're saying things cause us to experience other things in some pretty direct fashion. That seems both wrong and possible illogical to me at least in the sense that it's pure speculation and unparsimonious. We have no other way to cite the causes of experience, so why are we being all esoteric and indie about it?
Thats literally the whole project of the CPR: you just denied the whole book here (: .
Ok, now you are affirming the CPR (: .
I wasnt claiming that. Are you implying thats what I was saying in the quote you had of my explanation of the coffee cup?
I'm not sure that's the case. As best I can tell, on multiple readings and having traversed probably half a million words in analysis (I include lectures here) the point of the book was the distinction after Hume, as between a priori concepts and empirical objects with regard to reason to avoid error in reasoning as between the two incongruous sets of 'things' (though, i definitely transgress Kant here as he would never call an a priori concept a 'thing' other than the general concept of same). That's in the title, the introduction and the entire body of the text and as best i can tell, the conclusions in the Method (the Method, specifically, is where my take derives from). There is nothing in the CRP that gives me any reason to think Kant saw anything more than a logical (i.e non-empirical, which is how your take has been framed) gap between the thing-in-itself and the experience of same (akin to the induction issue). He, in parts (though, I'm not apt to quote them so grain of salt), notes that we can't have experience of anything, without the thing. And so, being unable to know the thing does not present a barrier to us understanding that the thing is out there in a form that (possibly) we wouldn't recognize. But it might be exactly hte same, on Kant's assertions too. We just dont know. At very best, this is neutral as to claiming that 'coffee' isn't out there (though, some uses of descriptive language would ensure that it isn't, because we have never known it and named it coffee).
Quoting Bob Ross
Reading that quote (of mine, that you used) in conjunction with the above, I can't see how the two are opposed. They both reiterate the same contention, which, I content, is in line with the CRP as a whole.
Quoting Bob Ross
It certainly sounds like it. You have expressed said the coffee isn't out there. Meaning, something else is causing you to have a cup of coffee (in terms of causation, not like it forces you to drink coffee lol).
Quoting Bob Ross
It was coffee. BUt then you go on to say...
Quoting Bob Ross
That 'something' is coffee on both ways to read my take. 1. The object is simply the one we perceive, despite never being able to describe how that's the case; or
2. A different object, which is transitively coffee, has a strict tendency to cause us to perceive what we, in sensation, call coffee.
I have just dropped coffee from my menu, however.
Sort of. Kant was offering a solution, through the critique, between the rationalists (e.g., Wolf) and the empiricists (e.g., Hume): he sublated their positions. More specifically, Kant was seeking to critique the limits of reason.
The thing-in-itself is a concept which reason deploys to demarcate the limits of experience, and so is logical in this manner, but it is about how we experience (and so is not purely logical). The thing-in-itself, in terms of what it represents, is not a figment of reasons imaginationits a real thing out there.
A thing-in-itself is never empirical, insofar as we understand empiricism as the a posteriori aspects of our experience; but it is realnot purely logical.
In the first, you were denying that there is a medium by which we experience: that there is a disconnect...between experience and that which causes the experience. For Kant, of course there is: it is the way we sense and cognize that provides that disconnect.
In the second, you were affirming that there is a disconnect but that this provides no grounds to argue for two different external objects per external objectwhich is absolutely correct.
Lets break this down. If you agree that the something which excited your senses cannot be known from the perception intuited and cognized from the sensations of it; then it plainly follows that what you are calling coffee only holds intelligibility insofar as it is phenomena and not noumena (or qua thing-in-itself). The very concept of a coffee is inextricably connected to conditional human experiencein short, on those a priori modes of cognizing reality. When you work backwards from your experience of the coffee to whatever excited your senses to have that experience of it, you end up with a perfectly unknowable thing-in-itself. Thats how it should be.
Then, you must demonstrate how any phenomenal property of the coffee is a property of the coffee-in-itself; and then you will realize, in failing to do so, that the very concept of a coffee is only distinguishable from the generic thing insofar as it is already conditioned by the a priori means of cognizing it. Thats why Kant never says coffee-in-itself or anything similar, but always thing-in-itself: it has to be that generic.
Yeah see, this is, on it's face, a totally contradictory set of claims. It represents nothing, unless there is a real thing to which you are referring. In which case, it represents that. It can't really cut both ways. This is one of my personal gripes with the CRP that makes it come apart in some of its most important aspects. This reply would go to a couple of your further paras too.
Quoting Bob Ross
False. If that's what you got, I cannot, on review, see how.
Quoting Bob Ross
This would clearly provide a connection. And it certainly does for Kant.
Quoting Bob Ross
No. I did not say this, or imply it. I was very clearly speaking about hte 'object of perception' in contrast to whatever caused that perception. I am saying that seeing a true disconnect (i.e "it is not out there" as you put it) is unparsimonious speculation that I find pretty unfortunate.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't really. That's just the way the thing-in-itself has been spoken about over time. I don't think this was the intention, necessarily, though it is where Kant left it. I also think it's wrong. But that's not an argument about CRP or it's contents. Just that I think this.
Quoting Bob Ross
No. And i gave the specific reason for this 'no'. Unless you accept a total disconnect between the thing-in-itself and hte perception (i.e you speculate that empirically, they are simply not the same thing - not that we can't know this, but that it is the case that they are not hte same thing) then there is simply no reason whatsoever to assume the object which causes perceptions would be significantly different to the perception. I see nothing to support that contention, other than saying "its beyond our knowledge, and so it (depending on which of your posts I take as your position) it doesn't exist" or ".. it is something other than that which you have perceived". Neither of these is tenable, to me.
Quoting Bob Ross
Which may in fact simply be informations from objects "out there". See how weak this contention is?
Quoting Bob Ross
I think you're perhaps not quite understanding what's being said here. No one is working backwards. One is stepping back. There is no directionality. That's kind of the basis for what I'm saying. There is no hierarchy of the primacy of either our perception of the object, or hte object and this is all Kant can really give us. And I accept that. We can't possibly put one before the other without either dismissing our experience, or pretending it is caused by literally nothing. I know you're not saying those things, which is why I posit you're not quite groking me - which is probably my fault. But I note you've made a moral call here. There is no 'should'. There is discussion. LOL.
Quoting Bob Ross
No. No I don't.
Quoting Bob Ross
I thikn you're nearly getting it, now. Weirdly, you seem to be claiming the opposite of hte clear inference from this assertion. Namely, that the two objects must be inextricably linked. Given the mode of perception, there is literally no reason to think the object would be significantly different to the perception. Pretend you couldn't possibly know, all you want. That creates no reason to assume, in ignorance, that there's any major disconnect.
Quoting Bob Ross
I did cover this, in noting he would never use the term 'thing' other than to describe to generic concept of "a thing". Generic. This does nothing for either side of the conflict, in my view. That's just something Kant did to avoid going beyond hte bounds of knowledge. Unfortunately, to my mind, he absolutely failed in guarding against over-extension by making claims about the thing in itself (some, you've reiterated well here).
I am not following the critique here: a thing-in-itself represents something realit represent that. It doesnt represent nothing.
Ok, I was misunderstanding what you mean by disconnect. It would be, then, under my view that there is connect between the object which excited the senses and the phenomena of it insofar as the former is required for the latter but is not knowable, in terms of its properties, from the latter.
You would have to experience the world as it were independently of your experience of it to verify how accurate your perceptions are; which is impossible. All you can know, is that when you strip out the way your brain is pre-structured to experience, then theres nothing intelligible left. Take the coffee, e.g., and remove space, time, the twelve categories of the understanding, logic, math, etc. what do you have left? Nothing but an indeterminate object.
No worries at all, Philosophim!
If there is 'nothing out there' corresponding to your perception (which you have very expressly positied) then, no. It isn't anything. It represents nothing but a gap in the knowledge of hte perceiver. Maybe that was hte intention, but it butters no bread as far as I can see.
Quoting Bob Ross
Fair enough - I'll try to be clearer (generally, not going to restate).
Quoting Bob Ross
I agree. Which, to the degree I can make heads or tails of it, is precluded by the above issue of correspondence.
Quoting Bob Ross
Apodictically, yes.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is yours, and Kant's view. I'm unsure it's mine, but it also does not defeat what I'm putting forward here.
Quoting Bob Ross
The coffee. Quite blatantly.
So, something cannot correspond, from reality, to, one-to-one, your perception: that wouldnt make sense. Your perception(s) are the aftermath of the intuition and cognition of whatever was in reality that excite your sensesthat will never one-to-one map because (1) there are a priori preconditions by which your brain cognizes and (2) your brain is cognizing multiple objects, from those sensations, into one coherent stream of consciousness.
If by this you just meant that there must be something exciting your senses in order for your brain to have the material required to represent (i.e., the sensations), then you are absolutely right.
How? The idea of a coffee is inherently spatiotemporal, logical, mathematical, conceptual, etc. All of that is a priori.
I understand, and I'm not quite suggesting this (though, it seems far more reasonable than pretending there isn't one at all). To reiterate something from an earlier take, there is no good reason to think that which excites our perceptions is significantly different from them. The fidelity between people's perceptions tends toward this, as does "objective measurement" to the degree that that is actually going on LOL.
Quoting Bob Ross
So say's Kant's system. Am well aware of this position. But I don't think that's necessarily the case. The idea of a priori concepts is a baffling one, if you're not going to invoke like genetic memory or whatever. This isn't decisive for me, but I think this, coupled with the above, are points, again, at which for me Kant is left seriously wanting.
Quoting Bob Ross
To make this a speculative proposition: That "something" must be (in the sense of, it would be required) sufficiently similar in form, function and aesthetic to your perceptions to cause them absent any notable aberration in perception (this leans on the above two objections, I suppose, and I take that they are all speculative, and work together).
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't think so, no. And even if it were, you need to explain to me how the thing which causes coffee is not coffee (albeit, having never been named as such - but that's clearly not what's at issue here). If it's not coffee... well. I'm sure it's quite clear why this a rocky road to go down. And perhaps why philosophies like Kant's don't make it further than universities... No one relates to this nonsense.
The fact that space, time, logic, math, and various core conceptions is not evidence enough that theres no reason to believe that our perceptions are closely mirrored of things-in-themselves?!?
Its an innate capacity; not memory.
Thats true of all major philosophical movements to a large extent, because people dont critically think.
I don't think you've grasped what I've said. It is an objection to that formulation of Kant's. It does not seem to me that this is the case. Babies cannot intuit time and space. They develop those concepts as best i can tell, through experience (and if true, in a rough-and-ready way, defeating Kant's position entirely - but apoditicality would be required, and im not suggesting this.)
Quoting Bob Ross
I can't quite understand the question - it seems as if you're asking the question I should be asking? I'm rejecting a significant gulf between the thing-in-itself and our perception of it in terms of form and aesthetics. I would also add, that we have no reason to think time and space aren't inherent in matter, rather htan our perception of it, for hte same reasons. Perhaps you're seeing what I'm seeing, but grasping at the gap as significant in theory? Can't quite tell, i'm sorry.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't think so. Kant is pariticularly esoteric and counter to intuition. Several large philosophical movements have had their day - even Kant's - but it falls away when people come to the similar thoughts I've laid out here, it seems (this, also in universities, in my experience).
When Kant speaks of intuition, he is talking about the innate capacity our sensibility and reason has for attributing spatio-temporal properties to phenomenanot intuition in the sense of what our higher-order thinking abilities does.
With all due respect, this doesnt even address what Kant is talking about; so, no, I am going to have to say that it would not refute Kants position. Babies experience in space and time, which entails that their cognition is representing things with the concepts of space and time which it already has readily at its disposal; and of which the baby is not capable of formulating a concept of with thought.
The space and time which are the forms of your sensibility are not in realitythey are the forms that your brain uses to represent phenomena. Whether or not objects themselves have spatiotemporal properties, whether space and time also exist in reality, is a wholly separate question.
No worries at all. I think you are just misunderstanding Kants view, dare I say (;
Thats true; but theres still a lot of his view that hasnt been negated.
I, also, am referring to these. Babies cannot determine depth and do not see themselves as separate to things around them. They, obviously, have no concept of time or duration. They can't note 'difference'. I am using the philosophical term 'intuition' here (though, admittedly, used the other sense at the end of that post so sorry for the confusion).
Quoting Bob Ross
It does. Your response says to me you aren't engaging with it sufficiently to understand what's being said. Babies do not have concepts of space and time at birth . These are developed from experience. IF TRUE (which I contend, it is) then Kant's system fails on that fact. It is not an inherent ability. It is not something built-in to human reason. It is something discovered, by virtue of, I contend likely, the inherence of those concepts in the world around us. I think Kant's dumbest claim is that without perception time and space are either useless, or do not exist. That is such an insane speculation, as with the gulf between perception and ding-en-sich, that I've had to re-read the CRP specifically to see if there's anything whatsoever that makes it less insane. There doesn't seem to be..
TO be clear: We experience babies in space and time. You are, it seems, rather confused as between this and the baby's experience. I have raised two. I can be fairly sure of this confusion.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, that is the claim. I reject it on several grounds already canvassed. Though, I suggest, most likely, we have evolved to mirror them in sensibility. Again, assuming the kind of gap between things and our perception as would support the position you take from Kant is simply speculative nonsense to me. Absence is not evidence.
Quoting Bob Ross
Per above, I do not think this is a tenable position to take. We may simply have to disagree here.
Quoting Bob Ross
If this is the case, his view is not in line with yours :D
Ok, I may have misunderstood what you were claiming. Let me ask for clarification: are you saying that a baby does not experience in space and time despite lacking the thinking power know that they are experiencing in space and time?
Just because a baby does not understand well enough, e.g., the difference between themselves and other things and space and time does not entail in the slightest that they do not experience in space and time.
I think this is correct, or at least feasible, insofar as if otherwise, it must be the case infants have, not so much an underdeveloped human intellect, but an entirely different intellect altogether. And even if that were the case, it then becomes necessary to speculate on a time condition in which a transformation would occur. Even if experience is the ground for development, it has nothing to do with pure a priori intuitions by which they are possible in the first place.
If @AmadeusD believes that a baby does not experience in space and time, then they are positing that there is a part of human development which is not human experience in any meaningful sense: it would be toto genere different then how we experience and yet with pre-mature versions of the same organs we have.
All that, and the overarching premise grounding CPR, is the determination of rational governances, not the exceptions to them. This necessarily presupposes imbued in the subject the condition by which pure reason is not so much merely possible, but manifests its activity. Infants are not subjects in which pure reason is active, insofar as it is impossible that humans with such insufficient empirical knowledge have the required inkling to question possible experiences, which is the major raison detre for pure reasons activity ..construct principles by which possible experience doesnt contradict Nature.
I mean babies do in fact try to put a round object in a square hole. At least once, and it is impossible for a cognizant observer to determine whether trial and error or mere frustration is the reason he doesnt just keep trying the impossible. If he immediately recognized the impossible, he wouldnt have tried in the first place, right?
Yes, but the thing is @AmadeusD is arguing that the baby that tries to put a square object in a round hold is not experiencing that square object and round hole spatiotemporally; viz., the square object doesn't have extension nor is it placed in succession within that baby's consciousness. Arguably, what, then, would a square, which is a spatial concept, be in a consciousness that doesn't represent it in space?!??
A baby does not have the experience required to name things as square. No parent says to a baby .this is round, that is square, keep em separate, because he knows the baby desnt know the difference.
What the babys doing .who knows.
It really does. They have no experience of difference - which is what is entailed by space and time. They denote difference. Babies do not have a concept of difference. This is particularly obvious when you note that a baby's 'intellect' begins in utero - where they couldn't have those concepts. They are clearly (in my view) learned, and not innate. That 'space and time' are innate is somewhat implausible to me. These seem to be arguments that would need to come down to some supernatural conclusion. Which, you'll note, Kant does.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is a really quite confused way of approaching a clarification imo, and that is not to be rude. I can't quite figure what to 'straighten out' as to why you'd ask this - but let me try: What's at issue here is that you experience a baby in space and time. I think your question words on that level. But that's not to do with the baby, and their ability (as it were). They simply don't access those concepts (to a point, obvs, from our perspective). And so, "experience in space and time" is a third party observation. It comes from you, not the baby. The baby doesn't have a concept of either. (again, my view.. not some scientific claim). The baby probably doesn't have a concept of experience. Automata. The baby lack's the thinking power to apprehend those concepts at all to begin with. I understand the reliance on the claim to 'possibility' but that possibility, even on a reading of Kant's claims, does not preclude having an experience without those frame works available. But this, then, asks the question about whether time and space inhere in objects and so a baby simply learns to access concepts which make certain thoughts possible. This certainly seems to happen to adults in a more esoteric way.
You'll note from the above, that, with respect, this is nonsense.
Your terms don't align with mine, for one thing. Secondly, your claim about Quoting Bob Ross
This is an utter non sequitur that borders on idolizing Kant and his vision. It could simply not be true that he had a handle on much, beyond the logical form of human reason. Babies don't have reason. SO, unless that, to you, removes humanity, then i simply reject, wholesale your entire conjecture here. Quoting Bob Ross
Yes. THis seems inarguable, on an empirical reading before we even get to 'our' disagreement on Kant.
Quoting Bob Ross
In the baby's perception, this also seems inarguable. Not quite sure what the pushback on this is. If you have an intellect that doesn't correctly order your spatiotemporal categories, you do not cease to be human or cease to experience. Quoting Bob Ross
bare experience, unorganised and automatically responded to. This, also, doesn't seem a problem. Adults have this experience also. Take mushrooms my guy. Space and time are not as hard-and-fast as you seem to think, in human experience.
But that is besides the point: the babies conscious experience is still in space and time. They just don't understand that yet in thought. Thinking and cognizing are not the same thing.
What point is it beside, when Im agreeing with it? All experience is IN space and time, whether or not the subject is cognizant of relations as such, in general. And it is a given that thinking and cognizing are not the same thing, at least in accordance with this particular metaphysic.
Kant does not argue for space and time being a prior as a matter of being supernaturalquite the contrary.
The fact that they move at all towards or away from things annihilates this hypothesis in concreto; but, in abstracta, it makes no sense to posit that the brain doesnt develop accurate to a certain prestructure which represents in a specific way. When, then, does the human brain develop enough to construct an experience in space and time? The brain doesnt fully develop until adulthood.
This is exactly why I asked it, because Kant is not talking about what you are talking about: thinking and cognizing are not the same thing. Viz., self-reflective reason is different than transcendental reasonyou are conflating them as one faculty of reason.
Heres the pinnacle of your confusion (with no disrespect meant):
This solidifies to me that you are, in fact, thinking of self-reflective concepts as opposed to transcendental concepts. The baby still experiences, and this you do not contend against (I would imagine), but yet it doesnt have the self-reflective thinking capacities to understand thatthats no problem for Kant. Kant is noting that we have concepts built into our brain for cognizing objectsnot for thinking about our experience of them.
Correct. But this has nothing to do with the Critique: Kant is noting that, irregardless of that, the babys brain is pre-structured to represent objects within space and time which constitute the babys experience of the world; and the baby, to your point, of course, does not have the thinking power to understand that its conscious experience is in space and timethis takes time to learn.
You are, by-at-large, correct that they dont have reason because by reason you mean self-reflective reasonviz., the ability to think about ones conscious experience. Kant means reason in the sense of our brains cognition for cognizing reality into a coherent experience. This was one complaint that Schopenhauer had of Kants semantics, as it led to confusion for people, and S actually advocated to call Kants idea of reason as the understanding and to use reason in your sense of the term.
You are not arguing that the brain doesnt order the objects properly in space and time: you are arguing that the babys brain has a super-human power to cognize in different forms of sensibilityviz., to experience objects ordered in some other forms than space and time.
You are saying that the baby that is trying to eat that toy block, that doesnt really know what it is, isnt experiencing that toy block with any extension nor in any temporal successionso it is an experience akin to some higher dimensional being. Imagine being able to experience things outside of time .thats what you are saying a baby can do.
What does that mean? What would objects look like unorganized outside of space and time?
What you experience on psychedelics is still in space and timeif you have experienced hallucinations that did not take those forms, then I would be interested to hear you elaborate on it specifically.
Oh, haha. I thought you were disagreeing. Nevermind.
I didn't claim that was the case. But God is the fundamental parameter for his entire system. Nothing works without it, on his account, and unfortunately, he only reveals this in the Method. Which leads most readers to assume its not important. I understand that.
Quoting Bob Ross
No. No it doesn't. I need say no more. Quoting Bob Ross
This is a ridiculous question in light of what we're taking about. Crawl before you sprint, my guy. As a catch-all response to the underlying objection: It doesn't matter, because we could never answer this question even if you agreed with me. At some point from the development of sense organs to the abstract, non-language-based thought of "Over there" let's say. That's all we can give. In your system, there's some pre-determined access to concepts that exist in the empirical, physical world. This has no support. Kant's system simply doesn't tell us why this is needed. He just says its the grounds of possible experience. No. It's the grounds of experience in time and space. If he's going to give us the ding-en-sich, then he's got to accept that this in an inacessible 'fact' of our lives. We cannot know whether those concepts are a prior, and it seems, based on experience with actual, real-life humans, that its not correct. Feel free to just disagree with those empirical considerations - but they defeat Kant, if true.
Quoting Bob Ross
I am not. BUt this explains why you're so resistant.
Quoting Bob Ross
You are wrong. Not sure where to take that...
Quoting Bob Ross
And, for me, he's entirely wrong and bares on no explanation for how that could possibly be the case. Just that he can't think of anything else (ironically). Same as god of the gaps. Also, ironically (in the modern, inaccurate sense of that word albeit).
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't. And you need to stop pretending you can read my mind, if you want a discussion.
Quoting Bob Ross
My position, and this is based on a lot of experience, is that babies do not have a 'coherent' experience at birth. They are, at best, mildly overwhelmed by that fact, and usually, VERY overwhelmed. As they learn concepts of space and time, they become more comfortable and less schizophrenic in their reactions to the world. This is not self-reflective reason at all. Schizophrenic people have a similar problem - but I assume you'd say schizophrenics who cannot perceive time 'accurately' have unlearned an a priori structural concept. Which is .. to put it mildly, absurd, to me. If the concepts are a priori, built in concepts, this is not an available option to explain it.
That's exactly what I'm explaining to you is my view - which is why all your above contentions are explicitly incorrect, as to my position. Babies do not have a coherent experience. They may not even have an experience, at birth. WE experience them existing and make assumptions from our projections. That's about all we can say (though, like two of the important points about, this is because we are precluded from knowing - not because its certainly false). Again, if you disagree with this (on grounds other than wholesale accepting Kant's position, anyway) that's fine and you'll have good points im sure, and they can be discussed. BUt you have my position wrong and that needs to be corrected.
Quoting Bob Ross
This
Quoting Bob Ross
The rest of it too (i.e aspects of reflective reason). But without the ability to make those representations, whcih I contend a bare newborn does not, it takes time to learn from your, developed perspective. From theirs, there is no time at birth and for some short period after. I'm unsure there's any kind of sound argument against this, other than what you're doing: simply asserting that there's something else to it. I don't think there is. With respect, this is the prime "agree to disagree" situation for the reason set out above - we could not know whether this is true. I think it is. You don't. That's fine. But I am not misunderstanding anything here, as you posit (or, conversely, you're open tot he same criticism from my perspective, and that's fine too). There is no disrespect here. You have had my position wrong for this whole exchange, it seems.
Quoting Bob Ross
I am not, and I would really appreciate you not trying to read minds, or putting words in my mouth Bob. Ask questions instead. You'd probably get more satisfactory answers.
Nothing in this passage is needed. I am not positing that. I am positing that newborn babies (for, let's be clear: a very short period) do not have concepts of time and space. This seems obvious to me. What kind of experience babies do have is not relevant to this disagreement, if I were to be 'right'. I do not need to clothe the emperor at this stage. I have some ideas there, but they are off-topic for this discussion of Kant's failures (in my view). At this stage, all I need do is present hte plausible (i htink it is) notion that babies dont experience space and time. They experience a jumble of sensation and instinct. Nothing coherent about it (again, if you disagree - that's fine! That's what we're trying to get to).
Quoting Bob Ross
Sort of. But, please, stop putting words in my mouth or articulating my arguments for me. Just ask me to clarify. AM i saying that? Well...
The baby does not experience. It acts. YOU experience the baby chewing a block. It (plausibly) doesn't. This is not complicated or difficult to understand. It gains experience once it can perceive difference. I have gone over this, and if it has missed you I am sorry for either being inadequately clear, or perhaps not addressing it in the right place of my replies. The one caveat I'd add here, is that it's entirely possible your example its beyond the point at which my position would apply. New born babies cannot do what you've just said, at birth. Perhaps babies even five days old can. I don't know - I've not tried to tie that down. That's a secondary exercise, though.
Quoting Bob Ross
Or, get this Bob - lower. Hehe. Flatlander.
Quoting Bob Ross
They may not 'look' like anything. Think of philosophical zombies. Newborns may be just that, in terms of behaviour.
But you've already restricted the possibilities to your existing mode of perception which is not unreasonable, but I think misleading. I am saying, multiple times at length, we couldn't know. We are not babies, and people who are no longer babies are unable to recall, in 100% of cases. Which gives some extremely bare and minimal credence to what i'm getting at, conceptually. You might be right in that restriction, and you might be right about the idea of a priori concepts of space and time, but I see no good reason for it at this point other than simplicity - but then I'd need to take on Kant's system, which is quite complicated and imo very much wanting.. So, not only do i see no good reason, that conclusion also goes against my intuitions and experience.
Quoting Bob Ross
Other than adhering to Kant, what authority are you relying on when making the bolded statement? It seems you're describing your perception of someone on psychedelics. I think you're doing the same with the babies. I assume you'd feel the same about meditators. Nevertheless...
Millions of people have. I'll give a couple of examples of discussions in the lit on this: https://digscholarship.unco.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1249&context=dissertations
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/11/1061 this one has a great phrase "valueless category of human experience". I would say that describes my experiences quite well. They are ineffable because to describe them requires concepts that don't exist in the experience itself. So, take it or leave it - the point is that those experiences transcend elaboration because that would occur in space and time (to be deathly clear: I take these experiences as almost certainly of the mind. Not of some mystical or divine reality).
You can use words/phrases like "I fell into the light" but this does not to describe the experience. It gives you, the listener, a watered-down, pale imitation within your limits of perception, to understand the direction and nothing more. There is no light. There is no falling. They are just best-estimates at values to represent non-values. These experiences are ineffable for good reason: You cannot describe them. They are outside that mode of perception ;)
If by how, you mean ontologically how it would work; then that is an irrelevant question. If by how, you mean why it is a necessary precondition for possibility of human experience; then that is elaborated in depth in the Critique.
I agree, and never disagree with this: my point is that the (sufficiently) incoherent experience is still in space and time. One can have a spatiotemporal experience which the aftermath of the ones brain butchering how to represent objects properly.
Ok, then, by your own critique, how does a babys brain learn to represent objects in space and time?
Schizophrenic people experience in space and time: the disorder is that they experience things which are not there in space and time.
They have to, thoughthats my point. Babies cry afterbirth when they are hungry: that entails, to some degree, that they have an experience.
True, but it wouldnt be human experience anything like all experience humans have ever had that they had introspective access tocan we agree on that?
PZs are impossible; but if I were to grant their possible existence for a second, then I would note that:
Then, a newborn does experiencejust not in terms of qualia. That non-qualia experience would still be in the forms of space and time.
Neither of those links you sent described an experience a human had that didnt take the forms of space and time: those articles are about the life-altering nature of psychedelics. I want to hear a specific example from you to gauge better what you are saying.
Look Amadeus, I am not denying that psychedelics can make one experience things weirdly: Ive had them before. I had a trip so bad that I literally perceived layers to my consciousness, periodically lost the concept of time, and lost most motor function. I think you are confusing, with all due respect, concepts qua self-reflective reason with transcendental reason. When, e.g., I was presented pure blankness that seemed, at the time, outside of time; it was still temporal: I just lacked the ability to properly analyze the situation and, quite frankly, lacked the words to properly describe it. People can perceive time differently, and this can be affected by drugs; but the brain is still hallucinating, if it presents anything to the conscious experience, in the forms of space and time.
I remember what it is like to perceive being beyond time; and I was not beyond time, or else I would not have any memory of itfor my memory assumes at least the form of time when recalling.
I have addressed this point. I shall not labour it, but he does not provide any reason for necessity at birth. Merely necessity for the more developed mind to have certain concepts in place. May just be that there is nothing which requires them in the mind of a newborn baby.
Quoting Bob Ross
I understand. But again, I am fairly sure you must be confusing your experience with theirs. There is no reason to think they have experiences of anything, really. I've used the term incoherent to meet you half way in that sentence.
Quoting Bob Ross
One can also have the opposite (as tends to happen with some psychedelic experiences). We simply couldn't know if one or other was 'necessary' or 'not needed'. I think that's a fair place to land on this.
Quoting Bob Ross
Again, separate exercise. I don't have a good answer, because I've not really thought about it. And as i say, you might, in the event, be right. But i can't in good conscience take a 'hmmm' as a 'it must be X' as I think Kant is doing. That's not to discount it, entirely. That's for another discussion. But this particular position, imo, is not particularly strong. A similar question could be put to Kant (or you): How could these a priori concepts occur, and in what form could they possibly be 'built in'? Without an adequate account of that, its mystical, really.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is a claim which i reject, wholesale. as arrogance.
Quoting Bob Ross
Perhaps - but if that's what newborns have, then that's what newborns have. No harm, no foul (until the question above, of how the transition occurs). It doesn't lead to any other position to accept this. So, we agree, i suppose.
Quoting Bob Ross
You think. I don't. Many don't. You make many claims about htings that aren't known, rather than claiming positions. I get that's your position. Fine. Not mine. I respect your position.
Quoting Bob Ross
Without qualia, that's nonsensical to me. There is no experience. Plain and simple. If you disagree that's the case, that's fine. But your claim here is counter engaging with the position. Thought, I take your point that on your view this would be some form of rebuttal. It does nothing for me, unfortunately. I would want you to describe an experience without qualia, please.
Quoting Bob Ross
They do. And i gave you a phrase from the second one which aptly describes how that can be conceptualised. I understand if you're not seeing it that way, though. But, I think that may come from two places:
Biased towards your own conceptual schema, and lack of familiarity with psychedelic lit. That's fine too. I point you to this, to be brief:
"The more the subject experiences such characteristics of mystical experience as unity (with all of existence), noetic quality (knowingness and a sense of reality), sacredness,transcendence of time and space, ineffability, sense of awe, etc., the richer may be the rewards. In summary, not only do psychedelic substances sometimes bring therapeutic benefit, but there is definite evidence that such benefit depends upon the discernible richness of the experiences mystical qualities."
It is a literal parameter of measuring these experiences.
Quoting Bob Ross
I've been over why you are asking for something impossible. If i am right (that I have had an experience which transcends time or space) it would not be possible to elaborate. Ineffability is a key concept in this discussion. Unless you wholesale reject that notion, please respect this since you have asked.
Quoting Bob Ross
Simply: No. I am not.
Quoting Bob Ross
To use your technique: This is conclusive proof you are importing your own, current, perceptual schema, into ones which are ncessarily outside your ambit. So be it :)
Well, I am just not following what exactly about an under-developed, human brain would allow it to cognize with different forms of sensibility: I get how it could represent things as a jumble and highly inaccurately.
By my lights, if one is affirming that a baby has experience but not immediately with the forms of space and time, then that entails necessarily that it takes different formsotherwise, then, the baby is not experiencing, which was affirmed to begin with. This is a point that I am not sure you agree with, but there would have to be something about how an under-developed brain, in the sense of a babys, that makes it represent in different forms: for there has to be forms to the sensibility of the any being that has representative faculties.
This is where it gets interesting because, and of which I cannot tell if you have realized that, the babys brain having different forms of sensibility, which it would have to if it experiences (to any degreeeven if it be incoherent) and not in space and time, does not itself entail any sort of inaccuracy nor incoherency in its representation; but that was the original point you were trying to make. Then, the claim that a baby experiences but not in space and time because their experience is too incoherent becomes a mute point; because it is not the fact that it is too incoherent that makes the baby uncapable of having those two pure forms. Thusly, you would have to explain NOT why the babys incoherent experience renders outside of time and space but, rather, why we should believe that a babys brain is too underdeveloped to render objects in space and time but it does have the capacity to render it in different pure forms of sensibility.
In short, you would seem to need to argue that the baby just doesnt have pure forms of sensibilityno? At that point, though, the baby has no experience. Which, again, we can be certain that is false: babies react to some degree to their environment.
Nothing about Schizophrenia entails that the brain is defective in such a way as to intuit objects in other pure forms than space and time. There is no shred of evidence to support that. We give them medication to get rid of their temporal and spatial hallucinations.
Thats why I granted to the position, but left in the footnote that I dont think it is possible. Of course, when someone brings up a highly controversial example, then I have to note my position on it; but of course I will entertain the hypothetical despite that.
So this is getting into philosophy of mind, and I am not sure how deep we want to go down that rabbit whole. Traditionally, those who accept qualia note a hard problem of consciousness which revolves, by necessity, around the idea that awareness and experience are not equivalent to each other (although, perhaps, they will use different terms sometimes to express it). Awareness is the bare ability to gather information about your environment; whereas, experience is a qualitative, subjective having of that gathered and interpreted information. E.g., the brain is aware that this block is the color green because it interpreted the light that reflected off of it as green, but the (qualitative) experience, of which there is something to be you experiencing it, is over-and-beyond that bare awareness that it is green. This is, traditionally, the hard problem in a nutshell: why is there something it is like to be the subject having the awareness, of which is qualitative and subjective, instead of just the bare awareness of it? It doesnt seem like, prima facie, e.g., there needs to be an actual qualitative experience of the green block of which there is something it is like to be me experiencing it for my brain to be aware that it is green (as interpreted by the wavelengths). It seems like my brain is more than aware of its environment without having a me which subjectively experiences it.
So, there would be no experience in the case that a baby were a PZ, but that baby would still be, to some degree, aware; and this distinction has not surfaced in your view yet (as we have discussed it).
This is why I put my disagreement with the possibility of PZs as a footnote (;
I understand that to a certain degree; but its the ultimate cop-out. I cant contend with your view that they are experiencing somehow with different pure forms of sensibility if you just blanketly assert it.
Ok, good: this helps. Lets break it down.
1. Unity is the concept of everything in question as one: this is inherently spatial. A person that experiences no ego, which is sometimes called ego death, e.g., thereby experiencing a complete unity with their experience IS NOT thereby experiencing in some form which is non-spatial. Unity of experience is just everything which is presented in space, or in time, or both, as being identical to everything else presented. So this doesnt demonstrate your point.
2. Noetic quality does not demonstrate your point for obvious reasons.
3. Sacredness: same.
4. Transcendence of time and space: I am assuming this is the heavy-hitter, huh? (: I would need to hear what evidence you have for this, and how it works. I have a feeling you are just going to say you cant describe it; but what forms are the experience in when not in space and time (on drugs)?
5. Ineffability. This is related to your point insofar as our words can never, in meaning, be reduced down to what they reference (about reality); but you have to be able to explain what those forms are, which are not space and time, that these people are experiencing things in for us to have any serious conversation; and it should be possible, with inadequate diction, if they really arent just confused.
Then you understand how the concepts of space and time being absent would cause this? Quoting Bob Ross
I....didn't....affirm this? I actively gave the potential that a baby has no experience. You simply rejected that, on grounds that you don't like PZs are possible. This is a confusing approach...
Quoting Bob Ross
This seems to be a new position you've plucked out of nowhere. The preceding section of your reply doesn't help me get there...
Quoting Bob Ross
I did allow for that, and no, that doesn't preclude it. The fact they react has nothing to do with experience. But this goes back to the PZ thing. Amoebas react and I think that's significant here (though, I take hte point if you assert they also have qualia - seems unresolvable)
Quoting Bob Ross
Hmm, don't think so. I have said quite clearly that it's open to us to posit babies don't experience. That was required by my position too, so figured it was inferred naturally. If not, that is, in fact, the (possible) position I would take on this. That was probably a subconscious utility in bringing up PZs.
Quoting Bob Ross
Fair - seemed a much stronger response on its face, than this gives me. Thanks for that!
Quoting Bob Ross
This fairly well explains what I'm talking about with a Baby, but yeah, goes deeper than we probably wanted to. But to be extremely clear: It would be utterly insane to assert babies could 'behave' without any access to data on which they could base behaviour. I just assert they don't 'know' about it, because no experience to speak of (this raises a similar issue as with some other concepts as to when or how that experience, eventually, arises and as noted earlier, I have no good answer to that).
Quoting Bob Ross
That isn't my view. Please, please, PLEASE stop putting views in my words that simply aren't there. Either ask me, or just don't. It's extremely frustrating, confuses the exchanges and wastes a lot of time.
It isn't a cop out. IT is the fact of hte matter. If there is a possible 'experience' outside time and space, there are no ways within time and space to convey it. If you don't accept that, we have nothing to go on. This has been all for naught. You not being satisfied is, sorry to say, irrelevant.
Quoting Bob Ross
No. No it isn't. You have quite inadequately described what that experience is like. It is akin to the 'view from nowhere'. Its literally not accessible through normal consciousness. Again, if you simply cannot accept ineffability as an indicator, so be it. But the fact that it cannot be adequately conveyed should give you pause.
2, 3 and 5 have nothing to do with my claim, per se (so, I agree). They are interesting, but have nothing to do with the concepts of time and space. No idea why you responded to them. I, in fact, highlighted the bit that mattered in that passage (I would add though, I have always found the 'sacredness' aspect of these scales a bit boring and unhelpful. It seems to do more for assigning gravity to one's existing cosmologic views that anything to do witht eh experiences in the trials).
5 can help support the claim by way of giving you a fact of hte matter which precludes the view that they are experiences of 'the normal kind' (i,e of time and space). Doesn't mean they are that, but the fact that this is an extremely anomalous fact which has had to be inculcated into the way scientists assess the reports is telling. Not particularly strong, but figured this was worth noting.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't think so, no. That's just something you want, and understandable. These experiences, if outside the scope of your a prioris, are not available for the same conveyance techniques we use for those within the scope of them. If there is no temporal or spatial aspects to those experiences then there are no words available, because words are dimensional. The experiences can't be conveyed if I'm right. They simply couldn't be. You are literally expecting a square peg to fit in a round hole. It wont. You either accept that ineffability is a quality of hte experiences in question, or you reject that the experiences are possible. You can't cross-reference those things. If I'm right, there is nothing I can do to explain it you, in the aesthetic sense you want a description for. If I'm wrong, then its moot. To bring this back to the first thing I said, no, one does not 'need to' other than to described them as ineffable, if that's the case. And it is, on my view, and the view of those who've had the experiences. Its almost distressing trying to put them into words because of how far away from words the experiences seem (i say seem, because I don't know whether what i'm saying is true - i just think its risible to write them off in the way you are, so doing my best to advocate).
Quoting Bob Ross
Yeah, good, This is a decent approach imo. I understand you want evidence, but by it's very nature having the experience is the only thing that amounts to 'evidence' and clearly that wouldn't come under the descriptor we all know as 'evidence'. So, I take the point in your next line... But, that's the case. There are no words. The 'forms' are whatever they are. We don't have a science, or anything remotely close to being able to investigate these states adequately. Which is a real shame, and it may be that sometime soon, everything I've said will become obviously false based on some new development in neuroscience or imaging studies or what have you. I accept that, entirely. But as it stands, the evidence you want isn't available IFF i am right. If i'm not, you'll get the 'evidence' and be able to pick it apart and reduce to a misapprehension. Which I suspect is partially true, given the only psychedelic experience that could lead to what I'm saying is the Unitive one, rather than the others. I would also add the point that it seems to me no combination of words would move you on this. But that's speculation..
I realise this is a really disappointing place to leave that, and it is for me too - but believe me, for those who have had those experiences, its not just disappointing, its distressing. Imaging having the solution to some global problem. and being unable to convey it? That's how it feels (while that wording is dramatic as heck LOL).
Really appreciate your time and effort on this exchange, Bob. Thank you!
I am not meaning to imply that you agree with what I am saying: I am giving the logical consequences of your position, which you seem to be failing to see (which is fine). If there are moments where I am presenting it as if it is something you are affirming (as opposed to should be affirming to make your view internally coherent and logically consistent), then please call me out: that is unacceptable.
The problem I am having is that I dont think you are conceding that either a (1) being experiences in some forms (which are a prior) or (2) they are not experiencing at all, when this seems plainly true to me.
For example:
And:
If the baby has a jumbled experience that is highly inaccurate, then the baby is experiencing in some pure forms, as noted above, AND IF you are affirming that the baby is not experiencing in space and time, THEN IT LOGICALLY FOLLOWS that the baby is experiencing in other pure forms than space and time.
E.g., saying that the baby may not have any experience does not address this issue that I am noting IF you affirm that it is having a jumbled experience (which you certainly have claimed that before in our conversation). Saying that you presented the option that the baby has no experience at all is completely irrelevant to my addressal of your presented option that they experience in an incoherent manner.
Likewise, if you are accepting, as you mentioned in the first quote above, that the baby does indeed experience but that it is the absence of space and time which makes it so jumbled, then you must concede that the baby is experiencing it so jumbled in SOME OTHER pure forms than space and time; OR DENY IN THE FIRST PLACE that the baby has any experience at all. You cannot have the cake and eat it too (; .
It is completely unclear that you mean by experience in light of the PZ thought experiment. I already went in depth into the difference between awareness and experience; so I feel no need to delve into it deeper without your elaboration first.
I need to ask for clarification on what you mean by experience: are you talking about qualia? Are you talking about awareness? Does experience require self-knowledge or sufficent self-reflective faculties under your view? It doesnt for mine. E.g., the fact a squirrel doesnt know that it is eating an acorn doesnt mean it isnt experiencing it .so why would a baby not experience, as noted in the bolded part of your quote, because it has no knowledge of it?
The underlined portion in your quote seems to imply that you do believe that babies have experience in the sense of awareness, to some degree.
Its not that it is impossible to properly convey with language that makes it a cop out: it is that you are just blanketly asserting that, on the basis of ineffibility, that people have experienced in pure forms other than space and time, which is seems plausibly impossible since the drugs only interfere with the already prestructured ways that the brain experiences (and so a drug doesnt plausibly have the ability to introduce new pure forms of sensibility to the mix), without giving a shred of real evidence. Surely you can appreciate why I cannot contend with your claim here, given its lack of transparency. Theres got to be some inaccurate but adequate way of proving that the brain is capable of experiencing in other pure forms...or we shouldnt take it seriously unless we ourselves have had such an experience.
The problem I have is that you cant explain it even to yourself, so how do you know you werent experiencing in space and time but in an incoherent way? How did you rule out, e.g., that the incoherence was with the objects as related in space and time to you, and as cut out incoherently in sections, rather than you experiencing without space and time?
This is the danger of ineffibility, although it is a valid concept, because people just use it as a god of the gaps. Look, I can tell you that my experience of something, of anything, cannot be put accurately into words; and this is because the words erode some of the emotional and phenomenal baggage of the experience itself. Sure, to a being that were to somehow have a language which 1:1 mapped what they experienced in perfect detail, that lost no meaning whatsoever in such a conversion, it may be really hard to convey the point to them; but I can give examples which at least make sense to me. E.g., the wonder and awe I got from seeing the Grand Canyon is clearly not contained perfectly in my description of I was struck with wonder and awe amidst the Grand Canyon because it doesnt describe the feeling perfectly and only a person who experienced something similarly to that degree of awe and wonderment will be able to map that properly to the experience I had.
I am not seeing any analogous kind of example on your part, and no real responses to why you find the alternative possibilities implausible (like the incoherence being in how the brain is presenting the objects within space and time, or like how the higher-order brain functions [such as separating the self from the other] may be inhibited by the drugs without inhibiting the pure forms of sensibility). Without responses, theres nothing more I can say.
Of course, and you too AmadeusD!
It is also worth mentioning that it is entirely possible for a normal human to experience only in time given a drug, as it is apodictically true that our inner sense is in time along.
The real refutation, I think, of your whole position, notwithstanding my earlier critiques, is that a drug merely inhibits the way that the brain is prestructured to cognize; but it would need, quite plausibly, the ability to actually modify the physical pre-structure to cause a human to hallucinate in a manner that is with other pure forms. Just food for thought.